City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, we're going to get started. All right, I'm going to call to order the city commission meeting of Tuesday, April 28th, 2026. Ms. Brown, if you would please call the roll.

Mayor Ryan.

Present.

Deputy Mayor Guzman. Here. Assistant Deputy Mayor Clark. Commissioner Kirch.

Still here.

Commissioner Skudo.

He's en route.

En route. City Manager Mark Lebelski.

Present.

City Attorney Thomas Moss. Present. Administrative Services Manager Lourdes Lawrence. Present. City Clerk Felicia Bravo here.

All right, thank you. This meeting has been noticed both as an in-person meeting and a virtual meeting. The public may attend in person or participate in the meeting by calling 954-395-2401 and entering the code 368262. Procedures for public participation and comments will be explained in a moment. Information for each item on the agenda has been and is currently available at City Hall and online 24 hours a day at www.sunrisefl.gov. Anyone interested is also invited to call 954-746-3430 for additional information. The city's provided various options for members of the public to address the commission. Prior to the start of the meeting, we asked if anyone wished to speak on any matters before us. We've maintained that list and will call upon speakers at an appropriate time. I'll also open up for public comment at an appropriate time and ask if anyone attending in person or by phone wishes to speak. For those participating by phone, you may press five star on your phone to request to be heard. I'll attempt to take the comments in the order that they're requested by the five star feature, but please be assured all comments will be considered as part of the public record for this meeting and will be considered by the commission prior to any action taken. When addressing us, please state your name, address, and what you're here to speak about. I'd ask that everybody on the call please mute your phones until you wish to speak. Also, please do not place this call on hold as it could cause an unintended interruption to the meeting. If you're experiencing technical difficulties, you may call 954-578-4792 at any time and our staff is available to assist you. As we do before each meeting, it's an opportunity for us to gather individually and collectively for a moment of silence. It's an opportunity maybe for us to reflect on the blessings in our lives and how fortunate we are here maybe celebrate some great artists and some great young people. It's also an opportunity for us to reflect on the fact that we can enjoy this as a community in dignity and respect. But we also take a moment to also reflect that as we are gathered here, can you just give me a minute? Just give me a minute.

That's okay. Maybe you can just step over here and maybe have a seat.

As we take a moment, we also reflect on the fact that as we're gathered here right now all over the world, there are so many that are serving in harm's way and many more in ready support. And that line of demarcation between harm's way and just ready support has been changing and evolving. We see the tragedies and the losses. And we know that for every one of those young men, young women serving all over the world, there's family back home. There's family who are worried about them and wanting them to be home. As we come to the end of the school year, it also means that there are celebrations where somebody's missing. Someone can't be there. And for many families, like the deputy mayor's family, for those who are joining the service, and I had some staff in my office whose son just raised his right hand to join, it's a very, very emotional time because we know how This world is struggling, and we know that for families, while they are proud, we're missing their babies who will go off to serve us. So when we stand for a moment of silence, let's make sure that we're reflecting upon the grace that we have to be here, but also with gratitude for those that are serving our country, all over the world, and for the families who also serve alongside here back home, hoping that they come home safe. Anyone else that we need to remember before we stand for a moment of silence? So if you would, please join me for a moment of silence before the Pledge of Allegiance. Join us for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, All right, well done. Not just a beautiful tiara, but what a booming voice. Well done. All right, we have some business to do before some great presentations. I have the consent agenda 4A through 4I. Can I have a motion?

Move it.

Motion by Commissioner Kirsch, seconded by the Deputy Mayor. Any polls from my colleagues? Any polls from staff?

No polls, Mayor.

Anybody in the public wish to have any items on the consent agenda removed from the consent agenda and handled as a full public hearing? If so, please raise your hand or press 5-star on the phone. I see no hands raised. Can you confirm on that?

I confirm no hands are raised.

All right. Go ahead and call the question 4A through 4I.

Commissioner Kirch?

Yes.

Assistant Deputy Mayor Clark? Yes. Deputy Mayor Guzman? Yes. Mayor Ryan?

Yes. Those items pass four to zero. All right. We have some special items here today, and I know my colleagues will want to join me down here for some of these. We can come on down, and we'll start with 5A or 6A.

Proclamation A, proclamation proclaiming April 30 of 2026 is National Therapy Animal Day in the City of Sunrise. Mayor Michael J. Ryan, Deputy Mayor Jacqueline Guzman, Assistant Deputy Mayor Latoya Clark, Commissioner Neal Kirch, and Commissioner Joey Scudo.

All right, come on, make some noise for National Therapy Day. Tammy, you're going to come on up? So we have a special guest here today on all four legs coming up. And this is a very special time for us to recognize. And when we talk about this, it's important to recognize that there are emotional support animals. And they come in all sorts of sizes and shapes, even birds. I heard about an emotional support macaw that was important to a gentleman. So these are moments where we take the time. And there's a lot more than just recognizing the value of what a pet that we see as a pet can do for someone. It's also important for us as a community to understand and recognize and accept when we see that there are certain kind of rules of the road too, right? About how we engage because we all want to run up. I know I did and everybody wants to run up and just start petting, but there's all sorts. So I'm going to hand it over to Tammy to tell us about why this is so important to have this discussion and maybe talk a little bit about how folks can help out. You can give like an incredibly shameless plug to get help.

OK this is a shock I wasn't ready for this. This is Biscuit. He's a two and a half year old cockapoo and we visit nursing homes and assisted living centers and we've been given the nickname of the wonder dog because as soon as patients see him they smile. And we've had a number of times where a nurse has said this patient has been unresponsive for 48 hours, they're not eating, they're not doing anything and he'll walk in the room and you'll see their hand come out and they'll start petting him and a big smile comes on their face. So he does it, he's the miracle dog. You do still need to ask if you can pet a dog. Service animals definitely they probably will say no because they are working. His work is to make people happy. So a therapy dog still ask but that's almost 100 percent. They'll say yes please. That's what he's here for. He loves it. So if anybody wants to pet him they're more than welcome.

Right now.

Sure. He may let you hold him. He's a little attached to me, but we can try.

Everybody wants in on that. So, you know, the... The important thing is, right, there's so many different uses for therapy dogs. And we see this even in our own police department where we have a dog who's just so incredibly sweet and is really used to help. victims of crime calm down and have because we know animals will take that will disarm us from whatever stress and fears that we have and so the you know we see this not only in hospitals and nursing homes but we see it in our own city and I want to thank the police department let's give them a big round of applause for doing that as well and so how do people help out if they want to get involved and try to support getting more therapy dogs out there for everyone

I work through an organization called Pet Partners and if you look online they definitely accept any donations. If you're interested in training a dog they have an online program and then you have to go through an in-person evaluation every year. So that's it even the airport has what they call ambassador dogs so there's a lot of uses but you just kind of figure out if you have a dog how often you want to volunteer with them he can handle about an hour and he's exhausted because he puts forth an awful lot of effort but pet partners is wonderful they've been great their support and maybe online courses but their their support is wonderful

The brilliance of that, right, is you're able to take a relationship that's so valuable to you and be able to share that with somebody else to do such good work. And so we're really proud, Tammy, that you come here and we do this each year. But we really want to try to support all of us that really believe in this program. So as we go forward in the community, make sure that you're reaching out to the partners and also finding out how you can support um, this type of program. And most importantly, if you know somebody who really could use that help in a hospital setting or in a nursing home setting, what, where do people call to try to get that kind of help?

Want to give your home number?

Not really. So pet partners or what do you call it?

Yeah. Um, If somebody has a need, I could leave my number with someone.

Leave it with us and you can call the commission and we'll make sure we connect. Yep, perfect. Exactly. Well, it's my honor on behalf of the commission to declare National Therapy Animal Day here with Biscuit. So whereas Pet Partners has designated April 30th as National Therapy Animal Day, Whereas scientific research shows that interacting with therapy animals can reduce stress, relieve depression, slow heart rate, lower blood pressure, and strengthen the immune system. Whereas therapy animal teams in the City of Sunrise play an essential role in improving human health and well-being through the human-animal bond. Whereas therapy animal teams interact with a variety of people in our community, including veterans, seniors, patients, students, and those approaching end of life. Whereas these exceptional therapy animals who partner with their human companions bring comfort, and healing to those in need. Whereas we encourage more pet owners to consider becoming pet partner volunteers to help our community by creating greater access to meaningful therapy animal visits. Now, therefore, I, Michael J. Ryan, Mayor of the City of Sunrise, along with my colleagues on the City Commission, do hereby proclaim April 30th, 2026 as National Therapy Animal Day in the City of Sunrise, and I encourage all to celebrate our therapy animals and their human handlers, and tonight, celebrate Biscuit. So let's give a big round of applause. Thank you for that, Tammy. And I know everybody wants to pet Biscuit on the way out. So thank you, Tammy. One more time. Let's give her a big round of applause.

Thank you, Biscuit.

Thank you.

All right, let's make a big round of applause for Brianna, one of our City Sunrise employees. Wonderful to see you again, Brianna.

Likewise. Thank you so much.

This is an opportunity for us to share a little bit about your life and your journey, but the lives and journeys of many others for something, sarcoidosis, that people don't really know enough about. And I want to introduce you to Brianna, who's incredibly courageous and has come here to share her story and spread the message through advocacy and put a human face on what it means to fight hard and to overcome. So I'm going to hand it over to you to talk a little bit about this like you do. You got it.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you, Mayor and the Commission for always supporting me during this time. It's not always the easiest thing to talk about, but it's necessary. We were introduced to psychodosis when my sister was diagnosed with it 10 years ago. And the only time we heard about it was through the comedian Bernie Mac. You still didn't know too much about it. My family didn't know anything about it. So I made it my business because I always say Google is your friend. And I Googled as much information as possible. And what it is is that it attacks your body. It's an autoimmune disease that attacks your body. It attacks the heart, the lungs, the skin, the eyes. For my sister, it was her brain or her spinal cord. So she went through a lot in the two years before she passed. Excuse me for getting emotional. But it's not something that's so common like you hear about AIDS or you hear about diabetes or anything like that. But it's been around for a while. And it's more and more becoming more surface, but they don't know what the cause of it is. They don't have a cure. It's just about knowing your body and speaking up for yourself. And this is what I tell everybody. You live in your body, so you know when something's not right. Doctors are only going to go by what you tell them. You have to continuously push them. If you know that what they're doing is not right, continue to ask them questions. Go to another doctor if you need to. But you have to advocate for yourself and sometimes for your loved ones. My sister was going through vertigo. She was a 911 operator. Excuse me, because I hate to talk about her in past tense. But she was a 911 operator. coming with her A game every single day, but dealing with vertigo, throwing up, headaches, not knowing what's going on. First they told us it was cancer. Then a neurologist said, no, it mimics cancer, it mimics lupus, all these diseases. So she had to have a brain surgery. And it was then that they said that it was psychoid. She was strong, she's still last. A lot of times we think someone has to look sick, but she came with her A game every single day until her last day. And the week before she passed, I said, listen, it's April, Psycho Awareness Month. We gotta teach these people about what you're going through because they didn't believe she was sick. But like I said, she came to work every day like a lot of people do. You don't want to tell anybody that you're not feeling well. You want to keep pressing forward. But we were going to make a whole presentation at her job, and unfortunately, we ended up burying her the day that I was going to go to her job to tell them about it. So my vow, and I'm so grateful for the City of Sunrise to allow me to speak on this, and even with... The Toastmasters, I'm able to use that platform to speak about it. And I went to an event with Toastmasters in a room with more than 50 people from all walks of life. And I asked them one question. How many of you have ever heard a psychoid? Nobody raised their hand. And that let me know now, that day and even now, that it's so important for me to speak out on it and to educate people as much as I can, even as I'm learning day to day, to educate people, because that's the only way you learn. Each one teach one, and that's what I'm doing. Thank you so much.

We remember when you first came up here and you were so nervous sharing your story. You've really found your voice for your sister. And it's making a difference when people will answer. Because honestly, most of us didn't know what sarcoid was at all. And so you've helped educate not only us on the commission and our city staff and your fellow workers, but a community at large. And tonight, we've got all these folks here who most certainly probably had not heard about this, but now they have. It's my honor on behalf of the Commission to declare Sarcoidosis Awareness Month. April is Sarcoidosis Awareness Month. Sar-coi-doi-is. It's an inflammatory disease that is extremely difficult to diagnose. The disease can affect any organ of the body and causes heightened immunity, a condition that results in the overreaction of the immune system, resulting in damage to the body's own tissues. Sarcoid affects people of all ages, genders, and ethnicities, but is most common among adults of 20 and 40 years old. And although sarcoid can affect anyone, the incidence in the African American community is three times higher than in the Caucasian American community. and the disease is more likely to be chronic and fatal in the African-American community. Whereas today, it's estimated that 200,000 people in the U.S. have sarcoid, with more than 1 million living with the disease worldwide and approximately 27,000 to 30,000 new cases each year. Despite increasing advances in research, sarcoid remains difficult to diagnose with limited treatment and no known cure. Whereas the typical symptoms of sarcoid are the formation of granulomas and microscopic clusters of inflammatory cells that group together and they interfere with the organ function. Whereas sarcoid most commonly targets the lungs and lymph nodes, but also can affect the skin, eyes, liver, kidneys, heart, bone, brain, and nervous system. Whereas researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases are continuing to study the diagnosis and treatment of sarcoid, on this occasion we recognize their work and that of concerned physicians and scientists throughout the U.S. And whereas it is important to recognize that those who demonstrate great courage, determination, and strength in their efforts to cope with this disease, as well as their family members who engage in efforts to promote awareness and improve treatment and support for those affected with sarcoid. Now, therefore, I, Michael J. Ryan, Mayor of the City of Sunrise, together with my colleagues on the Commission, do hereby declare the month of April 2026 as Sarcoid Awareness Month in the City of Sunrise. And we thank Brianna for continuing to share her message with courage. And your message is getting better each year. Keep it up. Let's give her a big round of applause. sure the other purple shirts are for something else but that you guys are wearing purple tonight did you know it was sarcoid night is that why let's give a round of applause for rihanna's co-workers and supporters that's awesome All right, one more time, big round of applause for Brianna.

6C, 6D, Proclamation Proclaiming the month of April, 2026 as National Fair Housing Month in the City of Sunrise. Award presentation to students for the 2026 Fair Housing Month Art Poster Contest in celebration of National Fair Housing Month. Susan Nabors, Director of Finance and Administrative Services, Mayor Michael J. Ryan, Deputy Mayor Jacqueline A. Guzman, Assistant Deputy Mayor Latoya S. Clark, Commissioner Neal C. Kirch, and Commissioner Joseph A. Scudda.

All right, come on, make some noise for Fair Housing Month. It's a pretty special night. We've got some amazing award winners here, and we do this each year, and each year the art's just unbelievable. There's a few people we have to thank before we thank our artists. We have to thank our schools and the school advisors who participate with us each year. Let's give them a big round of applause. And the reinforcement of the importance of Fair Housing Month and fair housing all year long is so important. We've been doing this for a very long time here in the City of Sunrise, and it's always a celebration. We see some amazing artwork. And most importantly, it is an opportunity to educate young people about the importance of fair housing and how fair housing is a civil right. And this is something that at a young age they're learning about that is so important and we can't take for granted because it wasn't that long ago in our own history where fair housing was a battle And so now you see these young people who are amazing artists highlighting the principles of why fair housing is so important, why it's something that's going to resonate in their own lives and the lives of all of us. So let's start with the awards because that's always the best part of this. We've got some real big artists here, all of whom the commission wants to figure out how we can become their agents and participate going forward. So I'm going to hand it over to staff who took care of this to announce our award winners.

Walk forward.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to present to our award winners. This is a very special time for us, as the mayor said. This is actually the 20th year that we have hosted this event, the poster board contest. So, I mean, it's definitely a milestone. And like you touched on, Mayor, it is so important, and especially to have our youth continue that legacy of inclusion and understanding the importance that everyone deserves access, no matter who you believe in, what you look like, or who you love everyone should have access and equal opportunity to housing so thank you for that and we'll get started with our winners so we are going to start with k through first and i apologize in advance if i mess up on any of the names i'm a little nervous so for first place we have mr we have ashton pierre lewis Second place, we have Aisha Renaud. Yay.

So beautiful, yes.

I love your dress.

Oh, look at her shoes, too.

And in third place, we have Dominic McGowan from Nob Hill. And we will move on to second and third grade. So we'll start with first, Analeila Anton, Sawgrass Elementary. In second place, we have Bella Winston. In third, we have Angela Libos from Sagres, as well. And moving on to fourth and fifth grade, in first we have Amelia Russo from Nob Hill Elementary. And next in second we have Santiago Martin from Sawgrass as well. And in third, we have Leon Pais from Sandpiper Elementary. Well, this is our award winners.

Give them a big round of applause.

And we're being asked to bring the families up too. Put your darn phones down.

Okay, just sit.

We'll have you step back a little bit. Just hang on one sec. Hi, good. How you doing?

Step back.

We'll get everybody in. I'm going to go out front here.

Let me just stick out front just a little bit.

All right, so we need the award winners up front and the proud siblings behind or next to you. Say it right there.

Could she please go in front?

Sure, if you'd like her to, Bella, absolutely. Maybe she can bend. Okay, you can see, you can look up. Okay, we're good.

All right, so we'll need everyone in between these two podiums. So if you're standing outside of this line on this side. And if everyone could take two giant large steps back. One, two. Okay, perfect. We're getting closer. On this side, we're still a little cut off over here. We want everyone in past my arm on this side. Yeah, that's not going to happen. You'll have to get widely.

Oh, Leon's here. Hold on, Leon.

Leon, come here. Hey, just in time for the picture. Well done. You didn't have to listen to all his speeches and all that.

Well done. You guys are getting a little tired. You can lose me, but not the award winners.

Thank you. Cha-cha-cha. Everyone look at the camera. One, two, three.

One, two, three.

Hold on, hold on. There's all the paparazzi. Come on.

All right, but don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere.

All right, so now what we have to do is we have to declare National Fair Housing Month. And having you all up here is so important because you really are living that. It's my honor on behalf of the City Commission to declare National Fair Housing Month here in the City of Sunrise. Whereas housing discrimination affects people of all races, ethnicities, and national origins and religions. Whereas women, people with disabilities, and families with children may also face barriers to fair housing rights. Whereas the Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing because of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, or disability. Whereas the City of Sunrise supports the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in the selling or renting of housing, negotiating for housing, setting the terms and conditions or privileges for sale or even rental of a dwelling, persuading owners to sell or rent or making available those facilities and services related to the sale or rental of housing. Whereas the City of Sunrise is a recipient of housing funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the form of grants, which have been and are being dispersed in housing programs in accordance with with the civil rights certifications and requirements of the act. Whereas the City of Sunrise administers all programs and activities related to housing and community development, and we're so proud of these young people who are continuing to embody the civil rights that fair housing represents. Now, therefore, I, Michael J. Ryan, Mayor of the City of Sunrise, along with my colleagues on the commission, do hereby proclaim the month of April, 2026 as national fair housing month in the city of Sunrise. And I declare the cities in compliance and we are so proud of these young artists. Let's give them a big round of applause. All right, one more time, big round of applause.

She was sitting right here. She had a blue phone as well.

Good job, good job. Okay, we have a presentation from Broward County Transit. Any word from Commissioner Scudo, because I know he'll want to... Oh, there he is, perfect.

Good word.

Wow, it just popped in like that. Awesome. All right, Broward County Transit requested an opportunity to provide a formal presentation to the City Commission to discuss the proposed Oakland Park bus rapid transit system.

Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, Commissioners. Thank you, thank you so much for having us here tonight. We have a very short presentation to share with you that'll cover a lot of our ideas about how to improve transit here in the City of Sunrise and throughout the county. We have had a tremendous opportunity to engage with your staff here, and City Manager Mark Levilsky has done and his team have really helped us to understand some of the challenges that you are facing here in the county, but also on the upside some of the improvements that are planned. It's super exciting to see the growth that's planned for Sunrise, and we're honored to be a part of that. I happened to watch the, a commission meeting where the topic came up about light rail. And I've got to tell you, I didn't introduce myself, I'm sorry. I'm Cori Cuff-Lonergan, and I'm the general manager, CEO for Broward County Transit. I've had the opportunity to work in this industry for multiple decades. We don't have to talk about how many, but enough to be enough, right? And to also live in cities that have robust transit systems. And when I hear the excitement here about having rail here in the city, I'm super excited for you for that interest. And thank you for that interest. Because when you go across the country, a lot of cities don't want any more rail. They want nothing sometimes in some cases. So the fact that you're so visionary here is very, very exciting for us. And so tonight we're going to talk about what the future of light rail transit is. looks like here in the county uh... and also here uh... extending into sunrise we're gonna talk about the west broward intermodal center because we understand that there's been quite a bit of interest to uh... improve uh... the connectivity uh... for broward county transit outside of the mall and uh... the county has purchased property to uh... work on a intermodal center and then we're going to talk about a topic that i think many of you are familiar with is the oakland park bus rapid transit service. So just as a reminder, I know that our team came here probably a couple years ago to talk about the premium mobility plan. That plan was approved by our county commissioners back in June of 2023. And that plan included adding 200 miles of new transit service And that service took us from strictly being a bus provider and a paratransit provider, which is our top service, which is there to serve our community that have special circumstances and they need special accommodations to access transit. They can't use our fixed bus services, either for cognitive or physical challenges that don't allow them to use that service. And so that's what we have today. And as we look to the future over the next 15 years, we're talking about expanding our service to include commuter rail, light rail, bus rapid transit, and high frequency bus service. We're We know that this investment is going to cost roughly about $5 billion, and we're looking to get a significant portion of that from the federal government through grants, discretionary grants, and also from our surtax, and hopefully a little bit from the state also. And so what we do know also about these investments is about 77% of investments like this go to the private sector. That's been proven by the American Public Transit Association. All the transit agencies in the country are part of that organization. And the other interesting fact about the, for every billion dollars of investment that you make in projects like this, you earn about 43,000 jobs that are available to the community over the life of that asset, which is about 20 years plus. So that also was produced, that statistic was developed by the American public transportation association i want to thank you for your time uh... i my team is going to come up and they're going to get into some of the details and uh... i'm going to have to be a bn he she's up first she's going to talk about the light rail jia is our assistant general manager of planning and engineering and i want to welcome to the podium and thank you so much for your time right thank you

Good evening. Thank you very much for the opportunity for me to give you the updates for the two projects that Corey had just mentioned. My name is Jia Bian. I'm the Assistant General Manager of Engineering and Planning at Broward County Transit, and I oversee the Mall Connector study as well as the design for the West Broward Intermodal Center. So as Corey mentioned, the county has this program, a very significant investment to improve the transit services here at Broward County. And the mall connector is a big piece of the long-range light rail vision as part of the Primo program. The long-range vision for the light rail is to connect all the major activity centers of Broward County including, as you can see on the map, the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport, the Port Everglades, the Commission Center that is on the east side of the airport, as well as downtown Fort Lauderdale. It shows the new West Broward Intermodal Center here, but it's located at the Sawgrass Mills Mall in the city of Sunrise. The implementation of the light rail vision will be realized in pieces because these are significant invest and these are complex projects so we need to do them piece by piece. The first piece of the light rail vision is the airport seaport convention center connector as you can see the solid line on the map. So we're calling it, we're referencing this project now as the connector project As the name indicates, it connects the airport, the seaport, and the convention center, the three major economic engines of the county. Currently, we have initiated the project development and the environmental study phase of the project. During this phase, we'll be developing conceptual plans. We'll be conducting preliminary engineering and environmental study, and we'll clear NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, and we'll be pursuing federal funding. As Corey mentioned, we will need to leverage our local investment with federal and state funding. So we started the project last year and we've hosted our first public meeting in January this year and we're moving forward with having additional public meetings in the later part of this year. We're hoping to complete the project development and environmental study by 2028. I'm giving the details of the study because the rest of the pieces will be following similar studies in order to get to you know, the grant ready phase. The next piece of the light rail vision is the downtown connection light rail project. extends from the Convention Center to downtown Fort Lauderdale, which is another major activity center of the county. We started the feasibility of the downtown connector project this year to look at different options of making that connection. We're not sure if we're going down Andrews or Third Avenue or other corridors. So during this feasibility study, we will recommend the alternative to move forward with. After that is the third piece of the vision, which is the Broward Boulevard light rail connection. And this piece was to further extend the light rail system to the western portion of Broward County, where there are more residents that will use the system to go to the major activity centers, such as downtown airport and seaport. So this one will extend the light rail system along Broward Boulevard all the way to State 07. And once this piece is completed, then we'll be looking at implementing the connection to the mall. So there are a couple of options on how we can connect to the mall. So what you're seeing is option number one on the map, which is to use Sunrise Boulevard. The little jug that you see is really just the alignment of Sunrise. This is a schematic map. So the other option is to go on State 07 to Commercial Boulevard and extend west through Commercial Boulevard. And we're potentially going down on Hiatus Road to Oakland Park Boulevard and then 136th Avenue before we connect to the mall. We have started a feasibility study for this project earlier this year, and the consultants has been selected to perform the feasibility study. Currently, the study is ongoing, and we plan to coordinate with the city as well as the mall to collect input from the major stakeholders. We're looking at completing the study in approximately 24 months, potentially earlier. And as I mentioned, the purpose of the study is to look at which option we want to go with to connect to the mall, either Sunrise or Commercial Boulevard, including the consideration of a loop service that will be using both Commercial and Sunrise.

And we'll be recommending an alternative to move forward to the next phase of the study, where we're going to clear the National Environmental Policy Act, as well as pursuing federal funding.

So with that said, I've mentioned earlier that we plan to implement the West Broward Intermodal Center at Sawgrass Mills Mall. So currently we don't have an anchor facility to accommodate all the services that we're providing, especially the services that we plan to implement as part of the Primo program. So the county purchased two parcels back in 2021 It's about 10.7 acres near the Sawgrass Mills Mall, and we plan to use this parcel to develop this West Broward Intermodal Center, which will accommodate different type of transit services, including fixed route services, express routes, as well as the future high-frequency service, bus rapid transit service and the light rail service. So this center will look at amenities including, as I mentioned, the footprint for the future mile connector light rails project and also accommodate multilevel structured Parking garage we're looking at over 800 Parking spaces and we'll be looking at private carriers, Texas TNC type of service accommodation and We will have customer service ticket vending machines public restrooms bike sharing outdoor seating as well as security and Currently, our fixed route services stop at the entrance of the Sawgrass Mills Mall. So when this project's completed, we plan to replace all the stops that are at the mall entrance. And because the proposed facility is a little distance, a walk from the entrance, we will be looking at providing a covered walk path from the terminal to the entrance of the mall. And here is a timeline for the implementation of this project. I've covered some of them. The county, as I mentioned, approved the replat of the property. And we've selected our design consultant earlier this year. And they will be reaching out to the city, the mall, and Panther Arena to... collect stakeholder input later this year. And we're looking at opening this facility in 2030, aligning with the timeline for the opening of the Oakland Park DRT service. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Abhishek Dayal to talk about the Oakland Park DRT.

Thank you, Gia. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Commissioners, City Manager Mark. We're really excited to talk about Oakland Park BRT project. My name is Abhishek Dayal. I'm the Chief Infrastructure Officer with Broward County Transit. I'm really excited to talk about the Oakland Park BRT project. Some of the improvements we are looking to make, and certainly would love to have some discussions with the city on the improvements that we're proposing. I also wanted to recognize an important partner that we're working with, and that's Lisa Mack from FDOT, who's sitting in the audience here from District 4. And of course, FDOT has been an incredible partner on all of our projects, not just Oakland Park Boulevard BRT. So this project is 15 miles long from Sawgrass Mills Mall, again connecting to the West Broward Intermodal Center that Jia talked about. And on the eastern end, it connects with A1A on Ocean Boulevard. AND THERE ARE EIGHT STATION PAIRS THAT WE'RE PROPOSING AND TWO TERMINIZED STATIONS, ONE OF THEM BEING AT THE INTERMORTAL TERMINAL. THE SERVICE THAT WE'RE PROPOSING TO RUN, THAT WOULD BE EVERY 10 TO 15 MINUTES, SO 10 MINUTES DURING THE PEAK AND 15 MINUTES DURING THE OFF PEAK. So one of the things that we look for in this corridor is this corridor is certainly primed for growth. It is already growing. We have 123,000 people here in this corridor, 55,000 jobs in this corridor, and it is growing. In the next 20 years, there's going to be 20% growth in population and 35% growth in employment. So we definitely see a need for more mobility options in this corridor given the growth that we're seeing now and we're going to be seeing in the future. So this is also a front door to the City of Sunrise. I mean your city hall is literally on Oakland Park that is primed for growth. And we definitely see a lot of opportunities to leverage this growth, this opportunity to put BRT-type solutions on this corridor. As you know, congestion is a big piece along Oakland Park Boulevard. Moving more people more efficiently is really what we're looking to do through this project. This is an opportunity to shape the future through a 15-mile high-capacity transit investment and then connecting all those key destinations. Many of them are in the City of Sunrise, including Sawgrass Mills Mall. And also supporting growth and access and competitiveness, but also promoting multimodal travel and safety. So it's not just people on buses, they walk, they bike, they also drive. So how to make that safe for everyone using Oakland Park Boulevard. So this portion of the corridor, particularly in the Sunrise, within the city of Sunrise, we do see that as a regional transit hub. West Broward Intermodal Terminal, that's just one piece of it, but that's where a lot of the services, not just today, but in the future, will all come and essentially become a hub. So that's why we see this as a great opportunity to connect this hub with the eastern portion of the corridor, which is in Fort Lauderdale. And also, this gives us the ability to improve access without adding more cars, more car traffic on this corridor. This corridor, we selected this corridor because of its high transit ridership already. So we know that the market exists. Right now, Route 72, which runs on Oakland Park, that's one of the highest ridership corridors in our system. Close to 6,000 riders use this corridor, and we think that it's going to actually increase to 9,000 riders with the implementation of Bus Rapid Transit project. improving reliability, improving connections, and then also providing that better access to jobs, healthcare, and education. Any kind of bus rapid transit systems, light rail systems can also provide a catalyst for economic growth. And this has been documented by studies done by American Public Transportation Association. And Corey mentioned that in her opening remarks also that they've done studies looking at projects from all over the country to see what's been the economic impact because of these types of investments. One of the statistics that's on the slide is for every dollar spent in transportation investments, you get $5 of economic benefits. So that's a five-fold increase in the investments or returns on investments that communities can see with the investments that we're looking to make.

I know you've got a number of slides. We kind of understand the economic power of this. Can we kind of move towards what the proposal is for the VRT?

Sure, and if you'd like me to skip over this, also I can do that. But really, we're looking at traffic is going to grow at 30%, and so this is a way to move more people than cars. Safety is also a big piece of this. We do see 2,500 plus crashes in this corridor, so making it safer for everyone using, not just cars, but also pedestrians and bikes. That's also something that we're looking to do. And then also, why BRT now? That's something that can be implemented quickly with low cost and really increase the benefits so that in the long term, more investments can be made along this corridor in the city to justify BRT or light rail type service in the future. So what makes BRT different is, number one, dedicated lanes where it's possible so that there is reliability. And we've done assessment where if you have dedicated lanes, you can actually improve travel times by as much as 30%. So right now, our travel time from end to end on Route 72, it's an hour and a half. And we anticipate that with these types of improvements, you can actually better it by 30%. through transit signal priority, which is smart traffic signals where buses can communicate with signals so that they can stay on schedule. They can actually move through the traffic and through the intersections quicker. That's also another element of bus rapid transit. Another element that we're looking to do is design this like a light rail system. So when a bus pulls into a platform, all doors open. People can enter, exit through any of the doors. They don't have to wait to come from the front, pay the fare, and then have a seat. That actually takes up a lot of time and the bus is actually dwelling at the station longer. By having all-door boarding, just like a light rail system, people can go in and out quickly. The fares will be prepaid. They can pay their fares right at the station, or they can tap their card at the validators at any of the doors as they enter. The stations are also designed as a platform. So they're at the same level as the buses. So they can seamlessly go in and out of buses, just like a real station. And this also makes it easier for those with mobility challenges, people with strollers or bikes, to easily be able to move through and complete the boarding and alighting process. So we're looking at two options for operations of the BRT. One is buses running in the middle so that the stations will be built in the middle. And the other option is where the buses will be operating curbside just like our regular buses do. The stations will be on the curbside as well. We are conducting analysis. Again, we're working with FDOT to understand the pros and cons. There are some safety elements as well as some operational elements that we're looking through to decide on the curbside versus the center running option. Last I would say is this is also a community asset. All the investments can be built around that community asset, especially the design for the stations and how it links to the developments around that station. This is just an example of the proposed design for the station. I also have a quick rendering. I don't know if it's going to play. But this is essentially how the station is going to look. Is there an ability to play this? But that's how it's being proposed with potential for some public art included in this design. So at the end, I mean, there is momentum. This is a top-ranked priority for the county, mainly because of the ridership potential it has, particularly along this corridor. We are working on a design and some environmental... work that is underway. We're coordinating with our partners including FDOT and we've also been doing some community and public outreach throughout this process. We've met with several community members. We've attended drop-in events mainly just to talk about what BRT is because we don't have BRT systems here in Broward County. So educate about what bus rapid transit systems are. We've also collected some surveys. We've received a lot of great feedback through these community drop-in events, and we'll continue to do that, to talk to different community leaders and members, as well as during all these events throughout this corridor. So here's a timeline for this project. We are currently in the planning and conceptual engineering phase. In fall of this year, we're going to start the design, and then in spring of 2028, we're going to start construction with the projected opening by 2030. All three phases, we will have outreach done, community outreach done, and continue to engage with stakeholders. We'll also make sure that this ties in with the West Broward Intermodal Terminal construction, and so that that can be done all as one project. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Corey to close things out.

Thank you, Abhishek. So in closing, again, thank you for allowing us to be here and being so kind to listen to our presentation this evening. I just want to share with you kind of our vision of what it looks like and what's to come. So we're looking forward to a safer, more connected future, and that's one of the goals of the PRIMO program was to connect communities. We want to support the growth in the area and to do that by providing mobility options for everyone that is part of that growth. We want to strengthen Sunrise Regional Position to the extent that we can. You've got a great thing here going, and we want to be a partner with you as you grow Sunrise. We see a lot of value here in the community, very proud of what you've accomplished. I know a lot of people want to be here, and we're standing in line to be part of that team. And, you know... As we move forward with these investments, these are significant investments, and they're the county's commitment to be a part of the growth here in Sunrise. And so we're here for the long term. We're here with you, and we'd like to open up the conversation for questions. I'm not taking them all. I have a great team here to help me out with this, but I know that you do probably have some questions. We're happy to answer them for you.

We do. I think each of us will. First of all, I want to thank FDOT District 4. You guys have been great partners. We've solved issues down along 595 and 136. We've really worked together. And you've been visionary in working with us. So thank you for continuing to partner in this. To Broward County Transit, thank you. We know the express bus system that's going from the arena to Miami is one of the most successful. Unfortunately, the express bus to downtown Fort Lauderdale got cut off quicker than we would have liked up here. We've talked about it many times. We didn't get any forewarning. I've ridden it. I felt like I'd gone to yoga between... East and West, right? Because I wasn't pumping the brakes all the way. It was a great ride. It was fantastic, but it got cut off quick before we had a chance to build the ridership. So we look forward to continuing the dialogue and a partnership that actually includes us. And there was a lot of frustration that was expressed about not giving that a chance. Admittedly, the problem with the express bus to Fort Lauderdale was the feeder system. It was very, very difficult, I think, ultimately, right, to be able to drop and be able to hit the centers that were necessary. But it was not the best example of working together on something. The Broward Workshop has been very clear about its position in my talk and with them. They believe that light rail east-west should be the priority. They think it needs to connect, and I was shocked because Broward Workshop is often seen as very eastern-centric in its values, some would say. But when I spoke to them and they thought one of the most significant issues that we had to tackle in terms of public transportation was a light rail east-west. uh... unfortunately i i i have some questions about really what what's going on here as i understand the uh... dedicated lane or signalization that's all west of university drive all right let's make sure we're clear about this there's not going to be signalization system or a dedicated lane from gold ocean mile to university correct uh... actually there will be signalization Okay, the dedicated lane is only from University Drive.

Dedicated lanes will be only from University.

Okay, and when you talked about the increase in benefits, just to get a sense, you said an hour and a half roughly, but there's a specific number of what you project the timing is to go east-west, right? What is that specific time, hour and minute? An hour and 24 minutes?

It's an hour and 24 minutes, depending on the a.m. and p.m. Yeah, very familiar with that.

That's true. With signalization, it goes to an hour and seven minutes. Is that right? Correct, yes. And then adding the dedicated lane trims only seven minutes off the whole trip. It's basically an hour.

Right. In terms of travel times, yes, but it also brings reliability.

Yeah, no, I get some of that. I understand that part. And I know you've, on a number of these slides, you talk about safety and number of crashes. That's for the whole corridor. You weren't trying to imply that's all in Sunrise.

Correct, yes.

Okay. So when we're talking about this, you know, congestion, delay, and safety issues, you're talking about that whole corridor from the beach to out west, right? Yes. Okay, it's not... We're going to be taking a lot of space west of university, which I have some concerns about. Maybe my colleagues will as well. And while I know you're going to take some time to study this, there's going to be a big investment in it. There's going to be a lot of changes. Ultimately, isn't the real solution here to run light rail down Sunrise to build the stations along there? Because if light rail is going to be the answer, That seems to me to be the best investment. And what we're doing with BRT is, you know, you're trying to address something. I'm not saying it's not trying to address it, but it seems more as a Band-Aid because ultimately it's not benefiting really a lot of the Sunrise residents because it's going to Gull Ocean Mile. It's not really connecting to the other parts we need. And west of university, we don't really need a lot of help getting folks moving around. This commission and the staff believe in public transportation. I'm just seeing that we're taking a big chunk of our space, our land, our roadway, our right of way, and it's being invested. You all spend a lot of money to do this in studies and experts and trying to make sure this works and buses and signals, all that, when at the end of the day, shouldn't we just be focusing on light rail? And I say that in the context that it was 20 years ago or so, light rail was a... 136. Right. No, no, people were fighting against it. We now know we need this. And it's not just us up here. I'm not talking for my colleagues, but it's not just, you know, myself and city staff. The businesses know it, and the Broward Workshop knows it, and it's a countywide effort. So I'm wondering whether the investment to trim really seven minutes... from east to west, is really worth all this money that we're going to spend on it. When we know what we need to be doing, I think we need to be doing, others may disagree, what we need to be doing is getting that light rail to the connectors on the east side that are really important. This is what the bar workshop's point was, from the airport, the seaport, and ultimately the arena and the mall. And I wonder, I offer this because I'm not trying to show resistance, but I'm really questioning whether we wouldn't be better off taking all that time and all that money and focusing right where we need to. It's hard enough to do, right? These are tough dollars to get. Feds aren't always predictable in this, right? And without disparaging, it can change based on policies. For us to have the total lane changes and, you know, ultimately, you know, not put, I don't think commercial is an answer. I think we just ought to be hitting the spine and then working, you know, north-south with the connectors. That's my personal belief. And the ridership change here is, I know it's thousands, I get it, it's real, but it's not the numbers that we're really going to move with a light rail system, where we're getting people to be able to work from the downtown centers out to the arena and the mall. And with the expected vision of the... Certainly the arena and what they're planning to do, which the county is well aware of on the loop and everything else that's coming forward. It seems to me that we ought to be putting all our oars in the water on that and rowing as hard as possible because there's just so few dollars. And I worry about lose priority. And it's all to gain seven minutes from Gulf Ocean Mile, which honestly is not. Maybe I'm wrong, but. The ridership wasn't strong enough for you all to keep the express bus, so I'm not sure I know that I feel as confident that the ridership is strong enough to justify the enormous investment that's going to happen across the Oakland Park. So I'm going to open it up for my colleagues, but what would you respond to that prioritization? And others may disagree with me on this.

So, Mayor, thank you for sharing so candidly your thoughts on this, and it's very helpful for us to hear this because that's why we're here today. to get this input. We want to hear what your thoughts are so that we can take all this back and process it and see where we land. I'm just curious, before I answer the second question, when did the service stop on the Express? Because I've been here about three years.

Yeah, it was before that, and I'm not replowing it, other than to say there was an effort, right? There was a belief that this could work, and it was a minor investment, right? Because it wasn't changing anything. It was going up on 595. But we sat up here, and we learned about it, and it was like the next day that it was going to be cut off. And we've already raised this with – legacy staff. So my point is I thank you for having this type of engagement because we want to be a partner, right? And what the frustration of the commission at that time when this got canceled was we didn't even get the chance to really market it to save it, right? I'm not sure it would have been, okay? We know the Miami one works for a lot of reasons, right? The traffic is so bad and that's kind of the principle, right? When traffic gets so bad, people will go to it. But with 595, it isn't as bad, and the lanes have opened, and we have express and all these things. So I don't know that ultimately it would have survived. But this type of dialogue is important that we don't get surprised. I mean, I know you were up here for that.

That's fair, and thank you for that clarity. I was just trying to get my time frames kind of situated. I know Mark has made a couple comments to us about some of our past practices in terms of communication. And I apologize in advance for that historic perspective. But I can tell you that our goals now are a little different. You know, we want to be out in front of things. We want to get input. While we may not always agree on everything, I think it's important to have the dialogue.

No doubt. So I don't want to spend too much time on that. But to the second question about prioritizing light rail, which – That alone is so expensive, and every dollar is so precious in trying to invest in it. Explain to me why we wouldn't just want that.

Sure. And so the Browt workshop, I am familiar with them and have worked with them on a couple of issues, and I do know that the rail in general is a priority for the workshop. They're very much committed and understand that that is kind of a very prevailing direction of traffic east-west as well as north-south when it comes to rail. And so... What I can tell you is that the original study envisioned all of these modes of transportation working together to solve the mobility challenges that we have here in Broward. At the time of that analysis, I don't believe that the plans for the stadium were fully baked. And so what I would be more than happy to do is to take this feedback back and have us take a look at maybe changing a thing or two here to see if we can maybe redirect those funds. I will tell you there is a need for some level of dedicated service on Oakland Park Boulevard. We know that. And we also have been kind of challenged with having the dedicated lane conversation east of university, which is your point. It's very difficult, and it is a challenge. So these two things, we still believe we need both, but what they look like, let us take that back and see how we can work this.

And in fairness, right, to the chicken and egg problem about the arena and the mall and everything else, we know that those are enormous tourism generators and huge job generators. We know that. There are very few per acre job generators in the county like the mall.

Yep.

Okay. And so that's number one. Number two, the county has worked great with us, you know, for instance, on Pat Salerno and trying to convince the state that you don't have to wait for the development company. You got to do it ahead of time. And that's where I really think, just me personally, others may feel differently, but in analyzing this, having some sense that whether it's baked or not, it is going to happen at some point, right? And the question is, how do we try to align it like we did uh with f dot district four and making the improvements at 136 and 595 because we knew american express was coming right pre-covid we knew we were going to have a tsunami of traffic and we got out in front on that to try to so i think that that you know it's if that comes in this brt is not going to impact it it's not going to move people any quicker they're not going to take because they're not dropping at gold ocean mile right they have to hit the stations that are going to be the feeders and it i so i just offer that i'll open up for my colleagues now but It just seems to me I'd really like some new analysis maybe, and I'm not trying to delay it. I'm just trying to say is that the best use of dollars when we know what our vision is, I think, is that we really need the light rail east and west.

Well, thank you, Mayor, and it's a fair question. Let us please take it back and try to figure some of these out for you and then maybe come back to you with a response, if that's okay.

Perfect. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you. Okay, thank you. Hi. Thank you for your presentation. And if I may say, I'm sorry you had to kind of rush through it. I personally wish this wasn't a quick presentation and we had more time to really go through it thoroughly. I kind of also wish we would have had an opportunity to meet one-on-one prior to coming here to kind of address some of the questions he just mentioned rather than having to come back another time to do this. I know we have three other presentations after you, so I also feel bad for the time that they have to wait because I have a lot of questions, but I know my colleagues do too, so I don't feel like it's fair to everyone in the room. So where do I begin? My question to you is how many Sunrise residents are actually using this service now?

So right now, I've got some statistics here. We are anticipating about 23% of Route 72 that come from the City of Sunrise, and that's expected to increase to 45% with the bus rapid transit.

And where do you get the numbers of the increase? How do you project that number?

We look at a ridership model that considers all the development that's about to occur in the next 20 years. So some of the Metropica development, the phase one, phase two, the Panthers Arena development, we considered the hospital that's going in. So all of those things essentially tells us how many jobs and residents that would equate to. And of course, the travel needs associated with that. So that's what the model typically considers.

So the two designs, there's one in the middle of the road and there's the one on the side. The one on the side, would there be any buffers designed just for pedestrians that are constantly walking on our streets? How would that be affected to where the buses are coming and going?

So that's part of the design that we're actually going to be working on as part of the next phase, how to make it safer for pedestrians but also bicyclists because there's a bike lane down there as well. We've been having conversations about potentially a shared use path just behind the station so that that can accommodate the pedestrians as well as the bicyclists to provide that safer way to traverse this corridor if you're not using the bus.

My concern is if we were to go that route, and again, this is hypothetical, I feel like the greenery is going to be removed. And if we were to put a buffer, I know we've talked about this over the years, what does that buffer look like to help the pedestrians from not crossing? And Sunrise is very unique. So we don't have what most other cities do to kind of avoid those pedestrians from crossing. So I personally like the way it looks now. And I feel like with this design would completely change the city of Sunrise's look. Another question of mine which I've been talking about this for years behind the scenes sometimes publicly but oakland park in general the road is has been just there's um potholes and it just a lot of cracks here and there it's been an issue for years and if i can recall we're going back almost 20 30 years that this has been addressed try and get the road to be repaved and up you know improved and we keep getting the run around it keeps getting pushed pushed pushed year after year after year and i feel like okay well now that this is what you all the county wants that now okay let's get it done but this is something we've been asking for for a long time so if we do not move forward in this direction will our road still be looked at to be improved regardless i i wish i could say i have an answer for you i was not expecting this question um and our department is on the transit side we're not on the

Roadside, sorry about that. But if I could get an answer to Mark and he could get that to you, if that's okay? Yes, please. Thank you.

A couple more questions. Let's just say we do move forward and the projection isn't exactly what you all expected and there is not an increase, then what happens? Like we're just now invested all this money or you've invested all this money and really there hasn't been an improvement. Has that been thought about?

We would scale the system in a way so that it's reflective of the service that we would operate and it would carry the demand. That's been typically done. You can increase or decrease the frequency to accommodate the demand.

And then one last question.

Again, I wish we had more time. If I may, ma'am, I just want to add something to that. So what we have seen, 100% of the time when you build rail, they come. I mean, if you put it in, It happens. This is evidence right here. You can see it on the Florida East Coast Railroad Corridor. You know, Henry Flagler had a dream. You know, he had an idea that I want to take people from the northeast down in Florida and take advantage of the beautiful weather we have here. And so he built a railroad. And guess what?

We knocked it over. We came.

And that is a great example of it happening. So on the rail side, we know that it'll come. Now, on the bus side, the bus rapid transit side, in recent time, we have seen that development does come and people do ride it. And it's up to us to work on the adoption rates and the marketing and the communications and making it a service that people want to use.

And two more points. So I've gone to several cities, Tampa, a lot of really nice designs, but it's not something that I see or have seen in communities like ours. I've seen it more in like a downtown area where it's busy. There's a lot more pedestrians walking around these roads and buildings and whatnot. So I'm a little concerned about that being built in Sunrise. And then the last point I'd like to share is going back to the design of the actual station. It's, to me, looks like it's from the 1960s. It's very retro. The color is like a mustard color. I don't see that reflecting what the City of Sunrise has worked so hard to make us look, you know, the way we do. So I just hope that that does not be the last design, that if we do move forward, that that's something that could be thought about for Sunrise.

Well, certainly the color schemes will be something that we could look at. What we are trying to do is, you know, How many people have been to Metro in Washington, D.C.? So, you know, it's a look, right? You know it's a Metro station because you walk up to it and you're above ground and you kind of see the same architectural treatments. So that's the theory behind this is that it's not just in the City of Sunrise. The BRT goes across the county. Now, we will have some elements that we can address. play around with and maybe the paint might be one of them. But again, this is something we could certainly look at. The whole roof needs to be redone. You don't like the roof, oh my.

But okay, thank you for your time. Thank you.

Commissioner Kirsch. Thank you, Mayor. First, thank you for coming in and sharing the presentation. I appreciate that. As the Mayor indicated, I'm a big fan of light rail. I think that's where our dollars need to go. However, with the BRT, the thing, I've been traveling Oakland Park for a long, long time. The traffic congestion is from Inverary Boulevard all the way to US 1. It's not on our end. What are we doing to address that? I mean, there's got to be some ways. If you want to put dedicated lanes through the City of Sunrise, take our curbs, take our swale, make it beautiful, there are some ways to do it east all the way down to Gulf Ocean Mile. Before I get on board with that, I think we really gotta take care of the problem area before we come here and spend a lot of money on fixes that, yeah, I get it, you wanna put some out there, but we're only saving six minutes. 6,000 riders, majority of them are east of University. So again, I applaud you for coming and doing this, but I agree with Mayor Ryan that the money needs to be on the solutions, the long-term solutions, the light rail, or fixing the congestion from University to Gold Ocean Mall. It's just my opinion on that. Take the feedback as is. It's not a knock on you guys. I appreciate you guys being creative and trying to come up with the way, but I don't think we're really tackling the issues by just putting it at the dedicated lanes from University to Sawgrass Middle. That's just my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong, my colleagues may have another one, but that's where I'm at with that. Thank you for the feedback.

Commissioner Skudow.

So first I really want to thank the residents of Broward County to vote for the surtax. And I would just wanna say for being in Sunrise for 47 years, it's exciting now to know Broward County is finally getting something. Because 20 years ago, the county had great idea to bring light rail to this county. The problem was there was no money. This time, there is a dedicated stream, which is exciting. And the way the mayor said, and we talk about east, west, north, and south. It has always been, Fort Lauderdale has always gotten the bulk of everything. But we understand how important the airport is, that they're expanding the airport, another terminal, the light rail to go around the airport to connect it to the seaport. Now the county, the residents of Broward have invested it in an 800-room hotel. The convention center is now expanded. I'm saying this is very exciting right now. But that's all east. And now you want to take that light rail and now go to downtown Fort Lauderdale. Great. We are supporting that. All the cities in Broward County are supporting that because we know, like you said, the generators, let's start off with that and make sure that you have that captive audience. DOT, I sit on the MPO, we work great with them. We just expanded Sawgrass Expressway, five lanes and now five lanes. The first time that we're now connect Sawgrass Expressway to 95, where 25, 30 years ago, a mayor from Century Village Trenchy, Trenchitelli, killed the idea of the sawgrass going to 95. So imagine, just because of one neighborhood killed progress for the county. And now when they built sawgrass, everybody's like, nobody rides this. And now we're expanding five lanes, five lanes. To the arena, which the mayor said before about DOT, how it's going to change the whole development of the arena. And now we love and appreciate what the county has done. They purchased a piece of property within the City of Sunrise across from the arena because you see what this vision is about the infrastructure that is needed for the parking garage, for the buses, for the light rail. So we know that. All of us up here appreciate it. Just, we want the county to continue this with the light rail, right? I just wanna make sure, as not just for my city, but when you're gonna come down the Broward Boulevard, leaving downtown, because you wanted to connect the airport, the seaport, and all that, now we're gonna go to a development where people work, where the mayor First started by saying when they did the park and ride which sunrise at the 31 municipalities has the largest and most productive park and ride in the county. At the arena, so now that the arena. When we discuss that being developed, that site will now go across the street to the property that you purchased to help. Now, the sawgrass mills mall, like you said in your presentation, a dedicated walkway, because they do not have any coverage for any of their patrons. And I just said this to the city manager. And Sean, the other day I said, I can't believe in all these years that I've sat up here that we never really told the mall to have a dedicated spot for their patrons and our residents and our visitors for the buses. I'm just saying it's very small, but now you're coming with this whole priority of a walkway to the destination, which is so important. But I don't want it just to be about Sunrise because it's more important that we connect the east and west and the north and south. So our other partners that are close to us, and I'll get to the bus side, but I want to concentrate on the rail side, how important it is for Sunrise Boulevard. So for the light rail goes Broward and then goes to Sunrise Boulevard. You have the swap shop. That is going to be developed. Preston Henn passed away. I don't think the kids could sell the property for a certain amount of years, but I'm sure, and I'm not saying anything about the family, I'm sure the property is going to be developed, which is huge for the development of where you want to go right there by 441. Because the connection, what I'm saying is it's not there now where the swap shop, because that's a little bit east. But what I'm saying is if you're coming down Sunrise, right there at 441 and Sunrise Boulevard, Lauder Hill has an 1,100-seat theater. What a huge piece of property that can be developed. That would be the hit for Lauderhill. That would be the bite that they would want, like we want, to get something because now they could transform what they have, right? Then on your thing, you said go north with the rail, okay? So as... A commission and Justin sunrise, but I sit on the MPO. I sat on the regional planning council. I represent the county. And in the end and the regional planning council, it's Dade Monroe and Broward. Okay. So we want these feeders that we could connect to each other. Kind of like the mayor says when he first got on, we have bus lanes, but then the bus lanes don't connect to the next city. So we have a bike lane that goes and stops. But I'm saying if you go, keep going north with the 441. I'm not supporting going to commercial and coming down. I'm just saying you can continue 441 and then you bite Lauderdale, Lauderdale Lakes, Tamarack, Margate. With that north, you can connect a lot. So if you're coming sunrise now, then you hit Plantation. Coming down Sunrise on University. Huge companies they have right there on the corner of Sunrise Boulevard and University. They have the Plantation Walk. They have the Broward Mall. So a small feeder now hits off of Sunrise to them. And then continue University Drive. Now you hit Davey. all the colleges, NOVA, all their businesses, their brand new hospital. So I'm seeing is the sunrise scenario to me being living here so long is so important. And I would 100% support that because I know that feeder is gonna help a lot of cities. And then if you go north for 441 and Southwood University, then you could continue going Because that's what you want. The Sunrise will be the main east and west, and then the University and 441 could be your north and south. And then over time, then you keep doing the feeders to the main generators. So just like the airport, and just like the seaport, and just like the convention center, our little feeder is Sawgrass Mills Mall and the arena that is almost at 40 million people a year. So it's important that we're gonna support something that we know we need, but it's gonna benefit the communities next to us. So I'm not just fighting for myself. I wanna make sure they get a piece of the pie because it's not fair that Fort Lauderdale, the airport and all of them get the bulk of the money and then everybody else is getting drips and drabs. So now we'll get to the bus. Oakland Park Boulevard, Lauder Hill, and Lauderdale Lakes are the highest riderships in the county. On oakland park boulevard, I mean primo i'm just saying i'm on the mpo like we it's like embedded in a how it had every single time. I appreciate that you're here three years and and and you want to be that go getter and we want to support you, this has been a great presentation, you know we want to give you all the input that we can. it's just that. Like Commissioner kirk she said, just like the mayor said. East of University is not the benefit because we have the widening of the roads. The problem becomes, I have to travel that road to go to Federal Highway because there's a Golden Food Service where I have to get my grande cheese from. So I gotta leave my restaurant on University, I'm just saying. So I know this because I'm traveling it and I don't care peak time, no peak time, whatever time. I go Oakland Park Boulevard and it is, oh, it's just, like you said, loads of businesses. That means there's loads of turn-ins and turnouts. So I'm saying the bus is in that right lane. So I don't know, do I support it to go on the right? Do I support it to go in the middle? I mean, you ride it every single day going and coming. And then, like you said, From the Andrews to 95 and then from 95, it's always a lot. So I know when you get out west, you could open up and then you got all this open space, but it's the time from university going east. So I'm not saying waste. Do we spend 250 million, right? Or do we put that $250 million to Sunrise, you know what I'm saying, and help get that going? But we have to do something on Oakland. I know you guys spent a lot of money, and for years we didn't have the money in the county to do studies and to do all the things that you're doing, which is so important. I mean, the mayor wasn't trying to cut you off in any way. He was just like, he was so waiting to go and tell you what he wanted to say. It wasn't nothing to do with your presentation, because I know him like a book when we're up here. He was just ready to tell you what he wanted. You didn't even have to make the presentation. All of us up here, each one of us, knew exactly what we were going to say even before you made your presentation. Not because we got the presentation and we looked at it before. It's just we live here, we know these roads, and we're not to say you don't know the roads better than us or whatever. It's just we just have the passion for knowing what we want and what we want now. And now we've waited this long, and why should we wait even longer? to do a Band-Aid on something that may work or may not work, but if we know the light rail is gonna work, let's put, it's not saying put all our eggs in one basket. We have to figure out what to do with Oakland Park Boulevard. Our problem is it's so developed going east of University, it's hard now to eminent domain 50 feet of every business and every driveway, the whole length on both sides of the street, I mean, you know, when you come west to Sunrise, our shopping center is that butt up to Sunrise Boulevard. There's no landscaping. The car is right up to the sidewalk. So, I mean, how now do you take away all those parking spaces from every single shopping center to allow a bus to have free reign to go? So... You said it's going to alleviate accidents, right? I hear you. We say the same thing for red light cameras and everything else. But take away a lane with all the traffic that we have, then now you just created another headache where people are going to go into the other lane when they're in front of the bus and cause more. So I'm saying it's something more. You have a hard task ahead of you. you have 150 plus elected officials around the county that have all different opinions about what they want for their cities. I mean, I know. But I mean, I want to support the sunrise, the light rail. We need it. We have to have it. But it's not just for us. It's that... East-west that now you could connect north-south for every other city in the county to have the benefit of what the surtax really is. And not just give it to a few when all of us need it. And I know it's a phased-in approach. And I can't even thank you enough. that out of all the 31 cities in the county, you chose Sunrise Boulevard. So, I mean, that is a benefit that we have to support no matter what, because we could be here right now, and your presentation could have been, we're starting in Pines, and we're gonna go Pines, or we're gonna go Hillsborough Boulevard, or we're going Sample Road. So... I'm sure we all support what it is that we just need to, like you said, work through these kinks and not waste money. I wouldn't want you to waste $250 million for the Oakland Park corridor when, yes, it works in Sunrise, but it doesn't work east. But then again, I don't want to take from the people and the residents of Broward County that live in that corridor, that maybe work at the arena, that may work at the mall, that may work at our corporate park, that need that bus to get them to work. And yes, seven minutes, you know, because I'm always on time, I'm never late. So I'm saying to someone that seven minutes, that 10 minutes means a lot. So, I mean, we just have to work out whatever we can with Oakland. But the sunrise, I truly thank the county for envisioning to come down sunrise. I do not support the Commercial Boulevard. I support the 441, and I'll support University to keep extending it, because Broward would be the connector. And then from there, the next five year, the next whatever, I as a commissioner, and I'm sure the rest of the commission would support all the branch outs. But we do have to work on the Oakland Park Boulevard. Thank you. And again, thank you for your presence. And the last, I'm sure you're going to go back and check on why the Fort Lauderdale thing was canceled. But I'm sure the Miami one was very busy. And there might have been only a couple of people that were using it in the beginning. But like now when gas hits $4, you never know if that would change. But Is downtown Fort Lauderdale really the economic engine of jobs? Or is it now Miramar, Weston, Sunrise, you know, where we need that? So, and the park and rides are, go to the one in Davie, it's packed because it's right off 595. Go to the one in Sunrise because it's, right there off of 595 and the Sawgrass Pact. So I'm saying, you guys know what you're doing, they're working, and it's great to see that we finally have the money To do what we want, because for all these years, we were going to get light rail down 136 to go into the corporate park and go to the arena before they expanded 595. And the rail was supposed to be on 595, but because they had no money, it was easier to pave lanes. That to put in a light rail, I could have only wished that the residents of brow county could have voted for a surtax if somebody would have came up that idea. 25 years ago, it would have been in 595. It probably would have been in 75. It would have been on the sawgrass. Look, New York, Boston, all these cities would have never been able to survive if they didn't have a train system. It's true. Everybody, my father was born in Manhattan. And then they said, oh, where are you moving? To the suburbs of, Brooklyn was a suburb. Queens was a suburb. The Bronx, Staten Island. So imagine, New York would have never grown to what it was if they didn't have trains to get in. Because the traffic still, to go from Staten Island to New York City, it's 13 miles. I go to my brother's house, it's one hour and 45 minutes to go 13 miles. So you're on the right track. You guys are doing a great job. We've got to just tweak a little. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

You got it. This is Deputy Mayor.

All right, I'm not going to reiterate everything that everybody said. I'm going to concentrate on different areas. But I do support the Sunrise Boulevard pathway as opposed to the commercial pathway. I think it's... better of a connectivity, it's a shorter route, it's more convenient and it hit more spots and it's more of a route that you'd probably get more support on. When it comes on to the Oakland Park, I don't know if you're gonna get the best reward if you create a separate lane on the eastern portion I don't think you're going to get the best use of your funds, the best traffic route, especially if it's only going to stop at two particular areas. I think it's Nabil and University. I don't think that's going to be the best bang. You probably would choose a different route. However, I do support the fact that you would have an innovative bus that would, one, use a ticket service that it would actually opens up in different areas. I do support that. I think that's a great option because it creates a faster entrance and exit. If it was on the path that is closest to the sidewalk, I think it would be probably the best, because if all the sides opens, you might have kids run out, and it may create other problems, and we're trying to prevent crashes and prevent accidents, and that may not necessarily be the best safety method, considering that it's only gonna be one attendant, it's the visual ability of seeing all the different areas probably not going to be SAFE. MY QUESTION IS, ONE, THESE TICKETS, WILL THESE TICKET CENTERS ALSO PROVIDE TICKETS TO LIKE TRYRAIL? WILL IT BE THAT TYPE OF SAME SERVICE OR IT'S NOT GOING TO

And so the short answer is we haven't gotten that far, but the better answer is that we already have that interoperability. We just launched that about a year ago with the SoFlo Go. I always get that South Florida Go, right? And it is an app that all three transit agencies in South Florida are on that same platform. So TriRail is on there, Miami-Dade, we are, and PalmTran, and that is a place where you can buy a ticket and use it on any of our services. So we are fully integrated from that perspective. We hadn't thought about making the ticket vending machine on the platform, other options, but if you have the app, you can do that anyway. To be fair, you know, there are so many amazing innovations that are actually happening in our space right now. What that ticket vending machine looks like is going to be interesting, whether we even have it or not, because tap to pay. you know, you go to the grocery store and everybody uses their phone, they tap and they go, right? And so those boarding opportunities are still under investigation to see, like, what makes the most sense to speed the boarding and ease, make it easier for the customer and improve the customer experience. At the same time, I just want to Ma'am, I just want to assure you about the doors because I know that there is a fear sometimes that the doors on the non-prevailing direction, right? So if you're supposed to deboard on the left of the vehicle, the right door should not open. And we have technology in place to prevent that from happening. So the operator, to your point, has some visuals, so like now there's actually video cameras similar to, or mirrors, sorry, video mirrors similar to what you have in your car where you can see the entire vehicle from various angles. And there's certain safety provisions that we can put in place to safeguard against the doors opening on the wrong side. So I just didn't want you to think that it's, You know, not everything's 100%.

Well, my perspective was if it was in the center, if we were using the center lane, right, then the accessibility would be only on one side or would it be on all sides? It would be on one side, yes. So you would still only exit on one side?

Yes, right, one side, one side only, the other side. And that's for safety reasons so that people don't jump out in the traffic. Got it.

Okay. All right, perfect. That's all my questions. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. And to the Deputy Mayor's point earlier, you could see that we're intensely interested in this, all of us. And the next time we'll provide a separate opportunity, whether it's a workshop or otherwise, to give as much time. And I think it's a really good idea, as was raised, to maybe engage on some one-on-ones. We have a historian on one end, right, who will tell you and quote you every change that's happened, and it can be helpful. And obviously his role in the MPO is hugely significant. But each of us have really been waiting for this conversation. So I didn't – I don't want you to think that I was trying to cut you off. I just knew – we all knew that we have these issues, and we analyze and waiting for this. And so I thank you for coming out and doing this, for the detail and the amount of time and the patience of those people. who are behind you on other presentations to watch because I think it's an important part of that public discussion. And we have a lot of work to do. And as Commissioner Scudo said, there's funds there now. Now it's just a matter of what can we do the most with, whether it's rate of return or however you want to measure it. We look forward to having this continued discussion.

Well, thank you for having us. This conversation has been very informative, and we appreciate you.

Let's give them a round of applause for being here. Thank you. All right, presentation by Children's Service Council. We have the honor of Cindy Ironberg-Seltzer, the president and CEO of CSC of Broward County here. Hey, how are you?

Nice to see you.

I'll break a hip.

Okay, this may be a little lighter than what you just went through. You're going to be getting a copy of the presentation, so you can follow along. But, yes, I'm Cindy Aronberg-Seltzer. I'm the president and CEO of the Children's Services Council of Broward County. Hey, Ryan, it's been a while.

Nice to see you.

Nice to see you. Okay, so I will breeze through this. Obviously, technology is not my specialty. All right.

All right.

Okay, never mind. I'm sure it was delightful.

Well, you can send it to all of us and we'll have an opportunity.

Yes, you'll see it later. So for the, there we are.

All right.

So as I'm sure you all know, the Children's Services Council is a statutorily authorized special purpose unit of government. We were overwhelmingly approved by the citizens of Broward County back in 2000 and reauthorized in 2014. Through community collaboration, advocacy, strategic planning, and funding, we specialize in bringing partners together to address issues that are affecting children. As the mayor knows, we spent a lot of time together after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas tragedy, trying to address how can we solve problems related to children. I don't know who she is, but this woman here has been the president and CEO since CSC was created. I have had that honor and quite an honor it has been too. We've seen a lot of changes over the last nearly 25 years. The council is made up of theoretically 11 members. Right now we have 10 because we have one vacancy for a gubernatorial appointee. There are six people who serve by virtue of their position, superintendent of schools, a school board member, a county commissioner selected by the county commission, a judge selected by the chief judge, the local head of the Department of Children and Families, and the local head of the Department of Health, and then there should be five gubernatorial appointees. Right now we have four. Our mission is to provide the leadership, advocacy, and resources necessary to enhance children's lives and help them to grow into healthy, productive adults through collaborative planning and a funding of a quality continuum of care. It is a ridiculously long mission statement, but I want you to know that each word of that has guided me over the last 25 years. We talk a lot and you're gonna hear a lot about the funding itself, but the leadership and the advocacy are just as important, especially the leadership. One of the things that we take very seriously is we do not wanna duplicate funding. We wanna make sure that we are working collaboratively with all of our partners, whether it be the cities, whether it be the county, whether it be the school district, the nonprofits, to make sure that we are maximizing every dollar that is spent, and we can tell you where every dollar is spent. So overall, in services in 24-25, we put $133 million into this county, into services for children, serving nearly 200,000 of the 400,000 children in the county. Arguably, we serve all of them because the systems that we're improving really affect every child, but we know that the funding itself actually directly impacted nearly 200,000. And everybody's mind these days is where are property taxes going? I know we share that concern that we want all of our citizens to understand that. And you've seen a lot of schematics about all of the dollars. Well, the Children's Services Council is a tiny, tiny fraction of the money. It's less than two cents of every property tax dollar that is spent. And when we get it, 93% is on the programs that we fund, 4% goes to administrative costs, 3% are the required government fees that we have to fund, including CRAs and the property appraiser, et cetera. Now, the part you've been waiting for. What are we doing in Sunrise? Well, so much. We've spent nearly, in 24-25, nearly $6 million that we can specifically identify was spent on services for children and families in this city. Because what we do is we pay based on units of service. So when a child is registered or a family is registered for a program, it may be a countywide program, but based on their address that they gave when they signed up, we can tell you that they got that service. So that's where I'm drawing that information from. And nearly 12,773 children and families were served. When it comes to breaking down what are the biggest areas of our investment, early care and education, which I know is very important to all of you. Sunrise has been at the forefront of promoting quality early care and education. It's $11 million. That goes both for subsidized childcare for low income people in general, and then subsidized childcare for what we've termed vulnerable populations. So if there is a child of a child in foster care, they are not given a priority in the state system, or a relative caregiver, or a mom or dad or both that are in recovery for drug abuse, substance abuse of some sort. And having a young child who doesn't have childcare could be an extra stressor on them. We get them to the front of the line and get them into services right away in order to preserve the family. So those two buckets are about $11 million. And then comes one of the reasons the Children's Services Council was created, was because of the crisis in the foster care system. There had been four grand jury reports that said that our foster care system was broken. So one of our biggest priorities is keeping kids out of the system, hence that vulnerable pop child care, and then family supports. the first RFP that went out when we were created 25 years ago. And those are primarily in-home services to help parents understand how to better parent, how to deal with the stressors, and they have been extremely successful. We have decreased, not us alone, everything is done collaboratively. But when CSC was created, there were thousands of children in out-of-home care, and now it's about 1,200. a dramatic decrease. Youth programs. So we are funding out of school time programs for children in elementary. Well, these youth programs are for the middle and high school age youth. Also diversion programs to keep kids out of the juvenile justice system. Again, there were 14,000 arrests of children when we started 25 years ago. It's now down to about 2,800. don't do anything alone but we do know that the diversion programs that we fund have a 90% success rate that there is not recidivism and we track them for a year after they complete the program so that we know that they are not getting back into trouble out of school time that's our elementary investment which is for low-income children throughout the county to be able to be in a safe environment, but not just safe, but supporting their educational attainment after school. And special needs. I know you all care about special needs. You have one of the premier special needs programs here in Sunrise, in ARC. They're one of the programs that gets a lot of money from us because caring for children with special needs is very expensive. And so we have programs for them after school. We are investing, we have always invested in drowning prevention, but we're doing some focused work now for children with special needs because that is a population that continues to be attracted to water and drowning at a rate that we have not been able to stop. So we're embarking on some specialized training for lifeguards, some specialized water safety training for children with special needs, as well as advertising to make parents aware of things that they need to be conscious of in that space. So as I mentioned, some of the big programs that are funded that are serving your citizens 211. There have been 7,562 calls to 211. You're not advertising that everywhere that you go. I hope you will, because that is the hotline that can help people get connected to services. And one of the things that frustrates me greatly, and I may frustrate you, is when I hear people say, there are no services in Broward County. Are you kidding me? There are services for almost anything you could dream of, but people are having trouble finding it. 211 is their entry point. And I also hope that anybody who's listening today will understand all the services that are available to them through the Children's Services Council. School nurses. We partner with Department of Health and with the school district and provide Nurses in selected schools, high-need schools, and in Sunrise, 2,200 of your kids have made clinic visits to the nurses that we fund.

Food distribution.

We've been involved in hunger mitigation for years, but it has obviously, as the need has increased, we have increased our involvement. And in November, I was really proud to be part of a collective that when the SNAP benefits were or paused for about six weeks. We stepped up with the county and the hospital districts, the Community Foundation and the United Way, and really filled that gap so that people wouldn't go hungry during that time. And Life Net for Families served 842 families in your area. Finally, some trusted providers that we fund in Sunrise that I know are no strangers to you all, ARC, JAFCO, and Broward Children's Center. Finally, in your packet, you should have a few of our publications, but I would like the citizens of Sunrise to know that we are incredibly transparent. All of the data I just cited, all of our outcome, every program that we fund has outcome measures. Our finances are well documented and all of them can be found. We have our annual report, our annual comprehensive financial report that are long documents that I'm sure you all would love to pour over. But if you don't have that much time and you'd like to get it at a quick glance, our popular annual financial report is available that summarizes our annual report, summarizes the annual performance report. We have a funded program directory, a family resource guide, and we will soon be presenting the proposed program budget for next year. Thank you. Oh, in your folder, I just wanted to point out, we have a little summary of CSE in your city, you should have an annual report, a popular annual report, and if you have any questions about agencies that we fund in Sunrise, I have all of them listed right here. Okay, there you go. And now, I suspect you probably will not have as many questions for me as you did for the transit people, but I am

Happy to answer any you may first of all, I want to thank you for your service to our Community and service of your team, it goes back, as you said 25 years and we first met before I was even elected and. At that time, the work that you were doing in the shadow of the. earthquake in Haiti in early 2010, and the commitment to children and to families. CSC took the lead on trying to coordinate all of the providers, and it was the first time I really saw what it means to have an organization like CSC at the hub and the ability to intersect and invite all. It's one of the rare organizations where people do not come with judgment or parochial interest. They know that they're there to try to solve problems. In 2014, the voters overwhelmingly reauthorized because you proved it and your organization proved it. And you continued to live that mantra of proving it. not just when it's up for an election, but each year with all the providers. And I know my colleagues will have other comments, but every issue you touched on has been a pet issue for one of us multiple times, right? Food distribution, the deputy mayor has over and over, and the work that you do with others to make sure they're funding. The number of programs that we don't even realize you're funding. We see the front-facing provider But their funding's coming from this and it's really hard to summarize or you can't overstate at all the work that's been done by CSC in our community and throughout Broward County and to the credit of the voters. They saw it and understood it and their compassion and empathy to make sure that you were reauthorized and continue to do it. So thank you very much for the information. I hope people are watching it. It reminds us all that when we get calls to say 211, whether it's staff or compassion center, whatever it is, these are the type of lessons that we need. So thank you for being here and all the work that you do. Deputy Mayor, and I'll just work my way down the line.

Thank you for your presentation. I do want a copy of that list, if that's okay. Sure. I'd like to know, just so I have the information. I've worked with a lot of programs that have worked directly with your organization to get the funding, so I know how much and how crucial what you do in Broward County is to many of the organizations here, especially in Sunrise. I'm wondering if you guys will be affected by what's happening at the administration, like funding-wise. In terms of the property tax debate? Just everything. Do you foresee any funding issues in the future or near future?

So some directly and some indirectly. So Mayor, you talked about you know the nonprofits, but not everybody knows that we're the funding behind it. That is unfortunately very true, which is one of the reasons I am now going out and making sure that people understand the power behind the throne. I never really cared. We didn't care because folks are going to seek out the service at the nonprofit. And so it didn't matter that we were there. But now we need them to know. So the direct threat are the discussions about the property tax or whatever happens with property tax. Because just like the city, all of my funding, well, in our case, all of our funding comes from property taxes. We have no other opportunity to raise revenue. We can't do fines. We can't do anything else. Our statute is very clear that we have authorization for taxing up to 50 cents per thousand dollars of value or half a mil. We're at 45 cents. That's all we have the authority to do. So if they do eliminate property taxes, that takes away the whole shebang. If they eliminate the tax on homesteaded properties, that would take $50 million out of that $137 million. In terms of the state budget or the federal changes, it affects us indirectly. We don't get any of our funding that way. But of course, when things get cut, like the food stamps, the SNAP benefits going away, folks look at us. How are you going to help fill that gap? If they eliminate the subsidized child care, then Of course, they look to us to fill that gap.

And that's why I asked that question, because I just wanted to make that clear. So moving forward, I know a lot of cities, we usually give X amount of money every year to nonprofits. Is it something you plan on coming back to us, looking for money, just so that we at least know for the future? They can't.

By statute, they can't.

Okay. I just was wondering where that would fall. We can partner.

I would never come to this. But we can partner on things to maximize dollars. I've had people say, what's your plan B if they eliminate the property taxes? And at this moment, plan B would be closing the doors. There's a possibility that they could come up with a different funding mechanism, but right now there isn't one being floated.

Thank you.

Mr. Kirch. Thank you for coming today and giving your presentation. It's incredible the amount of investment that goes into actual residents in this enterprise. Elimination of property tax sounds good, but once you get through it, it's not good for anyone. If this passes, there's going to be some serious repercussions on people's ability to get services. When people go out to vote for this, if there is something on the ballot, I hope they take this into consideration because it sounds good. It's really what I call the wolf in the sheep's clothing. Thank you for everything you do. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your presentation. I hope the millions that are listening, it's another reason to support our investment in home rule. We know what's best for our residents, our local government, what our residents need. Thank you.

Thank you. And that is an important point. These are local dollars that are governed by local people addressing local issues and funding about 3,500 jobs, not at CSC, but throughout the nonprofit network. It supports about 3,500 jobs. So there's a lot involved. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you for the presentation. A lot of people do not necessarily know what you guys do, but they know the CSC, and they know the logo, and they see it every time we go out. And so that is the most focal advertisement ever. There's some other programs that you have that are excellent, too. that most people may not know about, but I see them in schools, how you guys help, especially kids with disabilities, and that is a phenomenal responsibility and undertaking, and I commend you all for your constant support for those families who need it from a day-to-day basis. Thank you for all your hard work, and hopefully we will continue this in the future, and we will not be having any questions of where funding is coming from.

which is good so again i i gotta thank the residents of broward that they voted for this over twenty five years ago and you know when it first started i guess a lot of people didn't even know it that it was just going to be another fee uh... another fundraiser for someone to do whatever it is with that money. But when you went through your presentation, I didn't even think about the school nurses. So my wife, the first job that she got because it was almost during the COVID and they were looking for school nurses and she just graduated and she was a school nurse. And then to come home and hear the stories, about how some kids go to the nurse's office once a day, twice a day, three times a week, five times a week. And then from there, it's almost like the nurse has become a social worker because then the kids start talking. So it ends up helping where you could direct this child to go. You know, it's not to be like a tattletale, but it's, you know, where you're seeing where some of these kids need help in other areas that, you know, the parents maybe don't know what's available or they're just dropping off their kid to school because, like you said, if they don't have money to pay for aftercare or whatever it is. So I'm saying it turns out to be. And then Jafco, my daughter gets to go to Jafco. They've been in my city forever, never really thought about how Jafco could help individuals with disabilities. She goes to, like, a teen night. She goes to, like, we ask her, we're like, do you want to go? And she's like, yeah. So, like, we bring Caitlin to Jafco. So, like, I never even thought that they had these different programs. So I'm saying now you say the two one one. You I mean, all of us up here as commissioners and mayor get calls from residents on a daily basis or Texas or emails or whatever it is about things that have nothing to do with us. but now knowing like, say, hey, call 211 and there's anything you want in the county or whatever. So, I mean, that's a good direction to staff. You know, I'm sure we advertise what, but maybe we can, you know, have something on our website that, you know, any questions other than, and like our office, Lourdes and the man take calls and the city manager's office probably takes calls on a daily basis that, um constantly residents or people outside the city and and i tell you we get probably a lot of calls from other cities because they call their city and don't get an answer or don't get the right answer or they just don't get any answer and they call us thinking either they're going to get a different answer or maybe they're just going to get the help that they need or the direction that they need. And maybe this 211 is really good. So, you know, we thank you for whatever it is that you do with all the different charities because, like you said, it's important. You know, you're the feeder program. Everything gets directed to you and you pass it through to everyone else. And just imagine if this property tax, how we take a hit, we could still operate. You take the hit, you're done. You don't have any of the leverage. You can't go begging for money because the way you're set up, it's through people's ad valorem. You're that line item. The only one that's gonna, right? But you have the school board that they're gonna get a carve out. The hospital district's not getting a carve out. You're not, we're not, the county's not. So, you know, it could end up being where, as a resident, you say, wow, property tax, I'm going to get to save money, but then don't understand, like, you know, Commissioner Kirsch said, the repercussions of who it's going to affect. You know, then that's a whole other problem that we're going to have now. Who's going to provide services to the residents? Just 14,000 in Sunrise that you provide something to. And that's only that needed the service. There's still 20,000 that their parents are doing okay that they don't need the service. So now go through every single city. You're 31 cities. You're talking hundreds of thousands of services to residents, to kids, to families that are going to totally be lost. So we know you're paying. We just don't know to the extent and hopefully. know the governor and them keep their fighting going on and each of them don't agree on what should be on the ballot and the governor vetoes whatever they don't want and what i'm just saying and and get us to a point where you know maybe all of us talk about this down the road if they want to do a phase in or phase out or whatever it is they want to do at least it gives You know, individuals like yourself that run something so major to figure out how you could change your way. You know, if somebody has a business and they have plan A, something happens, they can go to plan B, plan C, plan D. You're not in that spot. Gives you time to say, look, I know this is the way it was done by the voters, but how could I... Now open it up to something else. How would I be able to operate and how would I be able to raise money to give people like yourself that option to figure out the phase in and phase out? So, I mean, that's another discussion for another day, but we appreciate what you do for our residents and throughout the county. Just hopefully, you know, we don't get the phase out.

And please, if there's anything that I can help you with, 211 is the great resource. But, of course, if you need anything from the Children's Services Council, please let me know. And we do work with your city, and we will do more.

No doubt. And I know you didn't come here to have a discussion about property tax, but Deputy Mayor, you know targeted in on what does this mean for you after you see these services you can see down the line the fear we have that will be shared uh... because uh... we educate students in the city that don't come from sunrise and same is in reverse so this is all integrated it all fits together and so we thank you and uh... honored to be a volunteer lawyer for csc in twenty fourteen as we fought on the ballot issues so Let's see what happens going forward. I'll be there for you as well.

I will always be grateful to you for that.

Don't worry. All right. Thank you very much. Let's give them a round of applause. Thank you. All right. To give a sense, we've got another presentation. Then I'm going to ask the commission to move up 16B after open discussion because there's a bunch of folks here on 16B as well. But we have a presentation by Krisha Reed, the president and CEO of South Florida Institute on Aging. Thank you for your patience tonight.

No problem. And you said my name right on the first try. A lot of people say Cresha, so thank you so much.

I'm sure it was accidental on my part, so thank you. I hope you remind me to make sure I get it right next time.

No, no, you did great. Thank you so much. You know, like you said, I'm Cresha Reed, the president and CEO of South Florida Institute on Aging. I've been the CEO for the past four years. However, I've been with the agency. This year, June, will make nine years, so... Very invested in the agency and the programs and the services. But just in general, I have a heart for service. That's how I grew up. So I don't think I will ever stop. But I'm glad to continue on what we've been doing. So South Florida Institute on Aging, we've been around since 1970. If you are familiar with our agency, you probably know Impact Broward is our previous name.

Mm-hmm.

senior volunteer services, foster grandparent program committee, which was the actual first program that we had in 1970 with a partnership with the school district. So we've had a few name changes. So our mission is to connect, educate, and empower older adults, caregivers, and families to live with purpose, independence, and confidence, strengthening bonds across generations. So like I said, we've been around since 1970. I know when people think of our name, they think we're like a research institute or we might be a medical institute. We're not, we're a nonprofit. And what we do is we utilize volunteers to serve in the community. So retirees that are 55 plus to go out and sit with kids in child care centers to provide tutoring and mentoring services, support caregivers by doing respite or companionship to isolated individuals. We also have a technology program where we teach classes on how to use your devices, computer, laptop, tablets, Chromebooks, all of that good stuff, and even have a help desk so you can call in over the phone and get help, or you can come into community centers that we serve throughout Broward County and get one-on-one support. We also support veterans and military families at the VA clinic. So we have volunteers. They're basically the ones that you see at the front desk. They will guide you to your appointment, give you resources that you need in the community, helping you to understand your benefits. They also help you get onto My Healthy Vet, which again, If you're not familiar with technology or even just using the portals, because everybody has a portal, they're there to help to guide them on looking at their chart, looking at their appointments, scheduling things. They're able to do that for them. And finally, we also support community centers. So we have volunteers that are there either in adult daycare centers, if there's one at the community center, They provide services in terms of the food pantry, our congregate meals, or even just the activities. Sometimes they help to facilitate it depending on the size of the center. So this is our impact in the community. Serving students, we've served, last year, 480, but we've served up to 600 students at a time yearly, 591 caregivers, and individuals receiving companionship 700 older adults receiving technical training and support 900 veterans served at the va clinics 151 residents served at community centers receiving nutrition services through the use of 326 volunteers so just 326 volunteers providing all those support and over 170 000 hours which is a lot Our volunteers serve about 20 to 25 hours a week. Most people are not that dedicated. They might do one hour a month. They might do five hours a week or something like that. They do 25 hours a week. So four to five hours a day, Monday to Thursday or Monday to Friday. This is just more of our impact in terms of what we measure academic engagement for K to five. That's our focus because of the partnership that we have with the district. Also kids demonstrating school readiness. So those that are in the childcare center, making sure that they're ready for kindergarten, as well as helping to increase their social and emotional development. Individuals that report improved capacity for independence, also those that report increased food security, individuals that were experiencing social isolation now report increased social support, older adults that report increased tech skills, such as email, internet, and online services, and which I mentioned before, also portals. So going back through each program, obviously it's the benefits to the community. Here in Sunrise, we do serve in Willoughby, Banyan, and Discovery. We've been in those schools before. I'm thinking if we were in Nob Hill before, probably during the summer, but I know those three schools, we have foster grandparents in those schools that serve. We call them classroom grandmas. So the foster grandparent program is... the first program that started the organization. So that is our classroom grandmas. We do have grandpas, but it's mostly grandmas that work one-on-one with students inside of the schools, mentoring them. So the teachers are the ones who determine the students that need the support. They work with about four to eight students at a time, 30 minutes at a time every day. And they do other stuff as well too. We have volunteers that if the school has a food pantry, they also participate in that. Sometimes they go on field trips, they can do parent night, they do open house, any activities, even in terms of pickup and drop off, they try to make sure that they're involved as much as possible. And then for our technology program, which I talked about, we have classes that are four to six weeks at a time. And that's important because it's consistent. It's a way for individuals to retain information and also for them to build relationships by seeing their instructor, seeing other classmates on a weekly basis, and then getting that extra support through the help desk. So the help desk, they can call in at any time to get, well, not any time. They can call in from 10 to five to get support and then come in and set an appointment at a community center. But we also have a text-based app through an organization that we have partnered with called Carevocacy. They have OPPO AI, which is a text messaging services. You can actually text the number and ask it a technical question and it will answer you. So it's in place of when our help desk technicians are not available, you can text that number. And with our companionship services, again, we have volunteers that are in the homes, which is very important. They're in adult care centers too, but in the homes, really a part of the care plan. That's something that caregivers and the individuals themselves talk about, that when our volunteers come in, they're meeting with the family members, they're meeting with any healthcare professionals to really help push whatever services that is needed in the home. So in addition to just maybe walking with them, providing transportation to their doctor's appointments or grocery visits or anything like that. They actually help if an individual needs to do like physical therapy, they help them to remind them about some of the exercises that they need to do, remind them of taking their medication. Any type of skilled nursing, obviously our volunteers don't do, but at least they can learn some of the skills from the individual that's there and making sure that that individual can continue getting services. Because sometimes a nurse may only come in just once a week, but our volunteer comes in five times a week. So at least they can continue to help them while they're in the home. And our veteran services, I think I went through that as well already. I was just breaking all this down that I already went through. So what I want to finally say too is that the programs and services that we provide, it's a double benefit. So not only does it benefit the individuals that we're serving in the community, it also benefits the older adults. I didn't mention earlier that Two of our programs are stipend-based programs. So they get a stipend on a monthly basis that really helps them, especially for the ones that are low income. They really use it to pay a bill, pay their car insurance, groceries, anything you could think of. It's beneficial for them to be able to have that. And then on a monthly basis we have what we call in service meetings where we have individuals come in to do presentations give them resources that's available to them or things they can take back to their community they have access to that and they also invite their family and friends to participate in it too so it's not just them only, but we encourage them to get all of their friends and family because sometimes people don't know the information that's out there available to them, whether it's for health services, financial services, housing, all of that stuff, medical insurances, all of that. They need that information. So our in-service meeting is a way that we try to also reach the community, not just for our own volunteers, but even for the clients that we serve. And these are the different ways that you can get involved. Obviously, we really want more volunteers. So using this opportunity as a way to recruit, especially in this area, we want more volunteers. We need more volunteers, especially for our senior companion program. We do have a wait list and we want to make sure that we can get through that wait list by having more volunteers. Our volunteers usually serve one to three clients a week, but we have a need for more than that. We usually end up having like about 100 to 150 people on our wait list that we have to go through. So we end up working with community partners. to provide the companionship and even have a little bit of funding to help cover that cost, but our preference will be volunteers.

All right, well, fantastic. Let's give her a round of applause. Really good job. And we know of you through the different names over the years. We've been up here and we've seen grandmothers come here I say grandmas, there were probably some grandpas, but there was mostly grandmas who came in to talk about their services in school.

Bunny and the woman from Phase 1, they used to talk about that program all the time. The grandparents, she loved it. She enjoyed it. She said she'd be at Publix and Walgreens, and kids would come up to her and say, Grandma. I mean, it was a great program.

It was hard to know who was benefiting more, the kids or the volunteer, right? It really was. It's fantastic. Yeah. There'll be some comments, but I do think in terms of getting the information from you of how folks can volunteer, we'll work with staff to make sure we're promoting that because it is a force multiplier in our community, particularly where we have so many seniors with so much experience and so much energy. And as I get closer to that, I'm way beyond the 55. As I get closer to every other threshold, I can understand why people give back. Let me just go around. Deputy Mayor?

Thank you for the presentation. Have you had an opportunity to talk with our senior center?

I believe we used to have our tech services classes there, so we're trying to reengage to do that again, as well as our help desk.

That would be a great idea for our seniors. As far as volunteers go, of course, we always get the inquiry of how can we volunteer. But I do recommend, if you haven't already, is to contact Hands on Broward. Have you partnered with them before?

We have a page up on Hands on Broward for all of our programs.

Are you getting volunteers from them? I'll help you with that. I'm actually on the board.

Okay.

Okay. Thank you.

But to the point, right, we get calls all the time. Folks want to, in our community, we have, we don't, even advisory boards, we have more people apply than we have spots on advisory boards that shows the energy they have. And so that's a really good point. We need to do better at getting connected to the community on that.

Actually, good point. So I know we've been trying to get a hold of this national organization. I mentioned a few months ago regarding serve. And it was it's a volunteer program so much hands on power, but it's like nine big nationally.

Okay.

And I would love to get them on board because you would be a great organization to be like an avenue for people to look at where they can volunteer through our city directly. So hopefully we can get that that linkage right away.

Okay. Deputy Mayor.

Yeah. Everybody knows about that program.

Let's just get up.

yet thank you for your presentation and i think the senior centers is a great start also our advisory boards like the the mayor said and city clerk has a list of people that uh... waiting to get on boards uh... but you know this is somewhere people could get back but i mean that how we could promote uh... grandparents If you could get with staff and maybe our marketing department, maybe Mark could get with them and maybe we could do a blast out to the residents or whatever or grandparents that anyone who's interested in helping in the school or whatever it is. Like you said, you got 150 people on a waiting list. I mean, that's. Yeah, for a senior companion program. Right, that's what I'm saying. You know, that's a definite need that people want to need, and you can't fill that void. So I think maybe doing a blast and advertising it in any way, how we can help you, the senior center and the boards. Like you said, impact Broward. I mean... when you heard the name of Impact Browder, you knew that it was something, you know? So sometimes when you do a name change, you, you know, but I understand you try to, no, no, no. I'm saying you try to rebrand, you know, to, to something new, but sometimes in the mix, you get, you know, you get lost. Yeah. Um, And like I said, we had two residents that were diehards. I mean, literally, I want to say the first 10, 15 years that I sat up here, she came and sat in the commission chambers, her and her neighbor, Bunny. Bunny was a guy, but I'm just saying. And they came here all the time and talked about the impact that it made on them. They would come here and be, like, so happy to tell us, you know, what happened on a daily basis. So, I mean, how do we get back to that? So if there's any way, you know, staff can help you and how we can help you, I think it's a great way to impact the senior community.

One question. So all your volunteers has to be 55 and older. I just want to clarify.

Yes, they do have to be 55 and older because of the funding we receive. 70% of our funding comes from AmeriCorps seniors. So that is the requirement. We do have people that are younger that serve. And don't make that sound so darn old. Come on.

It's not that old. I don't even remember 55.

No, like, so our tech services program, we have instructors that are a little bit younger because we know there's a need, so we don't deny people from volunteering. So we've had different ages, but it just doesn't count in terms of when we report out something to our funders. So if there's someone that's younger than 55 and they want to serve, they can definitely come.

All right. Well, that's fantastic. Thank you. We'll work with you. Thank you for the contact information. We'll work with senior center staff. There's one more thing. Sorry. Send your contact information to the commission.

Okay. I forgot to mention because it's a newer program that we started two months ago. We are also a benefits enrollment center, so meaning that anyone at 65 plus or with a disability, they can call us and we can help them to enroll in SNAP. Medicaid, Medicare, and Medicaid Savings Programs.

Perfect. Great news.

I'm going to give you my card. If you can email me and see the person on the back.

All right. Thank you very much. Let's give her a round of applause. We're going to move to open discussion and 16B. I know, Daniel, you're here, so why don't you set up your presentation. We'll take a short break to give everybody a chance to get themselves set.

Oh, really? Uh-oh.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Yes, thank you.

No, that's okay. My name is Stephanie Pearson. I'm here today representing the League of Women Voters of Broward County. The League has studied the issue of solid waste and recycling here in Broward County going back at least 35 years. In 2017, when discussions first started, and the solid waste working group was formed, the link was there. We have been at every meeting since and given our input along the way. It has been a long and arduous process, but we're very impressed and encouraged that a master plan has come out of this with an emphasis on source reduction, reuse, and effective recycling, and that it is practical and realistic. We're convinced of the necessity of Broward cities and the county banding together for the long-term benefit of all of us. With more than five million tons of waste to dispose of and no place to put it, cooperation is the best way to ensure that in the long term we will have a system that will be less costly, will give the public more control, and will benefit the environment. In these tight budget times, we are aware that cities are concerned about the cost of participating in the plan. Since no new facilities are called for or believed necessary, the cost per household per year has been estimated, well, we have the professional here too. talk about it, but the estimate, our understanding, is only about $3, which is close to $3 per household per year. So we were all happy to hear that it was so reasonable. If we are short-sighted and balk at the small initial cost of this plan, we'll pay later. If some cities go it alone, in the long run, we'll all be worse off. For-profit firms will dictate the terms and the cost of disposal, and our cities and citizens and businesses will have no say. Much higher costs will then be a given. We may face more landfilling and incineration, which is harmful and not sustainable. Economies of scale and a plan to divert as much waste as possible before needing to landfill or burn it will ensure that we are handling our vast amounts of waste as cleanly and efficiently as possible. Some of our local businesses, such as the Panthers and City Furniture, are proving that doing the right thing is profitable. We are in strong support of the master plan and the facilities amendment, which needs to be ratified so we can go forward. It's an opportunity for us to control our future. Thanks.

I'll echo Stephanie's comments. I'm the other Stephanie. Stephanie Joffe. As a Broward County resident, I'm here today to urge the City of Sunrise to follow Broward County Solid Waste Governing Board's recommendation to approve the Solid Waste Master Plan and Facilities Plan. I know some cities are asking, can we afford this? But shouldn't the right question be, can we afford not to do this? Solid waste poses an existential challenge for Barrett County. We generate approximately 20,000 pounds of waste every minute and we are rapidly exhausting our landfill capacities. At the same time, climate change is intensifying, bringing rising seas, more powerful hurricanes, and increased flooding, all of which drive up insurance costs and demand significant investment in resilient infrastructure. On my very small street alone, Dania Beach spent over, it's a really small street, over a million dollars to install a stormwater drainage system, and we still get flooding and heavy rains. We are also at risk for our septic systems backing up into our homes, resulting in public health emergency. We just need to take care of the garbage. Against this backdrop, the cost of not approving the master plan is simply too high, particularly when weighed against the comparatively modest cost of moving forward estimated, as Stephanie said, at $3 per household per year. I mean, that's, you know... I also live near the incinerator, or what is euphemistically called the waste energy plant, at 441 and Oaks Road. Residents of Broward County do not want another incinerator, a distinct risk if we cannot reduce the production of solid waste and process the waste we do generate in a healthier manner. I have been extremely impressed by the hard work and dedication of the SWA executive board members, led by Sunrise's Mayor Ryan, who voted unanimously to recommend the master plan and the facilities plan. They have listened to the public, sought input from industry and municipalities, and work with extraordinary dedication to develop a master plan aimed at both reducing solid waste generation and diverting as much waste as possible from landfills and incinerators, all while keeping the annual increase in cost per entire household less than the cost of one cup of Dunkin' coffee. accomplish this by prioritizing education regarding diversion and recycling using extensive existing infrastructure in Broward County and taking advantage of the economies of scale when we all work together. After visiting the new waste management materials recovery facility, I was struck by how many materials are now recyclable. I know we can do even better, and education is the key to getting there. Proper recycling education matters not just environmentally, but financially. We pay higher reprocessing costs when our recycling is contaminated. So cleaner recycling streams directly reduce what we spend. I encourage every one of you to visit that facility. It is eye-opening and will leave you both inspired and motivated to do more. With that, I look forward to a favorable vote by this commission and ultimately to approval by all the municipalities that have helped shape this effort from the very beginning. Thank you sincerely for your hard work and your dedication to our community and future generations. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Assistant Deputy Mayor and Commission. It's a pleasure to be here tonight. I am Denise Horland, Council President for the City of Plantation, President of the Broward League of Cities, and proud member of the SWA Executive Committee and Governing Board. And I stand here with my colleague, Melissa Dunn, Commissioner for the City of Lauderhill. You're gonna hear the presentation tonight. You've heard public comment. It has been a long road to get here. And it has not been easy, but I'm really proud of the work that we've done. And we all know as municipal leaders that leadership is not easy and we have to make hard decisions. This should not be a hard decision for you tonight. I brought a recent Miami Herald article with me, and I want you to keep just a couple of things in mind as you listen to the presentation tonight. We have finite capacity in our landfill. There will not be another waste energy plant built in Broward County. As you know, Miami-Dade's waste energy plant burned down three years ago. And in its Miami Herald article, they talk about, for this fiscal year, it is costing Miami-Dade $65 million to transport their trash up to Okeechobee landfill. That could be us if we don't take care of this problem and say yes to the master plan. The other issue that is happening with transporting, when you talk about the impact on the roads and the cost to the counties and municipalities, is that it's going to come to a day, and it's happening now up in St. Lucie County, where they don't want our trash. So what are we going to do? And what we're going to do is we're going to sign on to this master plan. It's got to be better recycling. It's got to be diversion, and we are stronger together, and we will have economy of scale in order to pay for this. So I hope that we can count on your vote tonight. I appreciate you having us. And I just want to also thank you for the love you showed a couple weeks ago. I was listening to your meeting for our pilot composting program in the city of Plantation. It's going great. I know that you're taking a look at that. I'd like to invite all of you to come see our community garden where we have our composting. Take a tour of that and hopefully you'll have a community garden too. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, colleagues. Education outreach is important. Behavior change is key. As you've heard, right now, the county is currently recycling at about 35%, and the goal is to get to 75%. Well, we don't do that unless we... help people to see value in changing their behavior, unless we help people to understand from kindergarteners all the way to our seasoned residents. And so the education and outreach piece is important, making sure that we meet people where they are, in their schools, in their homes, and we show them the possibility. So part of this master plan calls for aggressively investing in education and outreach so that we can change the behavior. All right, thank you.

Good evening, Julie Long, City of Plantation. I will keep my comments very brief. I've also been attending many of the meetings. I'm here to ask you to please approve the interlocal agreement for the Solid Waste Authority. Although I live in plantation, pollution and waste is not a municipal problem. It's a problem that we all face. We all need clean air and water. And I think we will be much better together. This is a very thoughtful plan. It's involved many stakeholders, as other people have said. And I please ask for your vote for the children and our future in this county. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Anybody else wish to speak on this matter, please come forward or press five star. Affirm, I see no hands raised.

I confirm.

Okay. I'll close public discussion. Daniel, do you want to make a presentation on this and introduce yourself to everyone, please?

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Assistant Deputy Mayor, Commissioners, City Manager, Mr. Attorney, and I presume many clerks. I'm not quite sure. My name is Daniel Deitch. I am the project manager for the master plan that focuses on solid waste disposal and recycling. I work with a team of very talented colleagues represented by different companies, Arcadis, you may be familiar with resource recycling systems, and Mercury. We've been working with the authority over the last two years, really developing a number of white papers that now comprise the master plan. The master plan, as was mentioned, recommended by the executive committee and unanimously accepted by the governing board and is now in play. And it really is the foundational document for the matter that is before you. I looked at your agenda. I know that you have many of the pertinent documents. You have the master plan. You have an executive summary. You have the amendment, the first amendment, affectionately known as the facilities amendment, which you will be voting on tonight. I want to thank also not only the authority, but the many public stakeholders that have tirelessly attended meetings and provided their feedback and really helped inform the policy directions that we received along the way that led us to the master plan. So the headline says it all. Now is the time for action. We collectively believe that we're in a solid waste crisis. We have limited disposal capacity. The pressure is on us. And part of that is owed to the fragmented system. So as many of you are aware, there was a resource recovery system in the past. For a variety of reasons, that system was allowed to expire. And cities were essentially left to fend for themselves. And they competed against themselves. Many of the promises that were made at that time have led us right back to where we are, which is working together yields greater benefits, and I'm going to touch on those throughout this presentation. The bottom line is we believe this is our generation's opportunity to address this. I'm not sure that we're going to have an opportunity to be back at the table anytime soon if we are not successful in this effort to work together. And if we don't address this responsibly now, we are going to be left to the marketplace that will continue to optimize for themselves. So there are a number of reasons why change is necessary. We are reliant on what we call end of pipe solutions, waste energy and landfills. And as was mentioned, there is limited capacity in Broward County. There are two landfills that exist. One is owned by the county that only accepts what we call class three waste or non-putrescible waste, so that's yard waste, vegetative debris, bulk waste, and construction and demolition debris, and a private landfill owned by waste management that will stop accepting putrescible waste or the kind of garbage that we place at the curb at the end of this calendar year. So really we have the need and the opportunity to reimagine how we deal with our waste and that really has informed the work that we've done. We talk about using a zero waste lens in our approach to this work and what that really means is being more intentional about the waste that we're producing. generate less waste in the first place and extract the maximum value from the waste stream so we're minimizing what requires disposal. But we know that with limited capacity we're subject to the marketplace and competing against each other doesn't give us leverage to really negotiate properly and effectively with the private sector. And that simply leaves you at risk. We know that there is a long-term adverse economic impact for each community in Broward County if we stay fragmented. As was mentioned, our recycling rate is low. So for the two years that we've been working on the master plan, our recycling rate has decreased. We know that we can do much better, and there are specific strategies embedded in the master plan to get us to 75%. and as I mentioned we want to extract the value of the waste stream so whether that is trash or construction and demolition debris or the traditional recycling materials that can have a positive impact on so we know that by combining all of our tonnage together there is greater power and leverage when negotiating we know that that price Prices are a great concern for each municipality. So embedded in the concept of securing preferable pricing for processing and disposal, there will be most favored nation provisions in the contract. So we know that the authority will be getting the best price over the term of the contract. There are basically two levers that we have that we can pull. One is tonnage, so the economies of scale that is created through the execution of the interlocal agreement and the facilities amendment, and also the term. So that's why we're looking at a 40-year term, so that we can bring stability to all the authority members. And we want to make sure that that provides the long-term stability for all authority members. So as was mentioned, the cost to advance the master plan is not zero, but it's not extravagant. And there are a number of reasons for that, and I'll touch on those. But we estimate or we projected through our financial modeling that the impact initial years is less than 25 cents per month per household. And I'll touch on the financial plan in a moment. And we believe that with this approach, the emphasis on education and outreach and engaging the waste generators, whether they're residents, business owners, or visitors, that we can decrease our dependency on landfilling and waste energy stability. building upon the work that's been completed over the last two years with education. The plan also includes convenience recycle centers, and really that is to supplement curbside collection, but also to make it easy to recycle the hazardous materials that we generate. The idea is to make it convenient, and even though those hazardous materials, whether it's electronic waste or oils and medicines, While it's relatively small in quantity, it has a real adverse impact if it is not managed properly, and the best thing we can do is make sure that it is managed effectively, kept out of the landfill. We ultimately want to make it easy to recycle, and we know that that's going to have a positive impact on the communities that are part of the authority. Let's talk about the funding approach. We have devised a three-phased program. The first phase is to get us into next fiscal year. We know that you are quite deep into your budgeting for next fiscal year. We are recommending that you use the same funding approach that has been used the last two years, which is based on population. We also know that that's not the most equitable, the fairest way to finance the programs. So starting in fiscal year 28, we're moving to a tonnage-based program. So there's a nexus between the fee that is paid and the revenue that is generated. That program is agnostic to source. So it doesn't matter whether it's a residential ton or a commercial ton. It is what we call a tipping fee surcharge that will be added to bill at the receiving facility, and then that surcharge amount will be remitted back to the authority to essentially pay for the administrative functions of the authority, which includes the education and outreach, as well as the convenience drop-off centers. And then moving forward, because we know we want to get to an assessment program, a non-ad valorem assessment program, there has to be a rational nexus for that, and the convenience recycling centers provides that rational nexus. And again, that is a program that will be based on tonnage that we believe is a fairer program. So before you on the bottom of the screen is a simple graphic that explains how it will work for a single family home. Based on a waste generation study that was completed for Brown County, on average, each single family home generates approximately 1.3 tons of waste. Based on the revenue requirement, Starting in fiscal year 28, we have projected a need of $2.22 per ton, that'll be the tipping fee surcharge, that is multiplied times the factor of waste generation, which gets us to $2.89 or slightly less than $3 in fiscal year 28. That will increase using an escalation index for the next few years. And then it'll transition in the third phase to a non-advalorum assessment where the price will continue to increase, but essentially at a rate of escalation using CPI. So in terms of what you get, I should say that part of the transition between phase one and phase two, the assessment, the authority will prepare and issue three requests for proposals. One for processing traditional recyclables, one for processing yard trash, and one for long-term disposal. And it's through that that we're going to be able to leverage the economies of scale the term of the agreement to get the lowest processing and disposal costs so this concept should be familiar to you because you're currently traveling under the county's global agreement for processing and disposal so you are currently getting amongst the lowest rates currently and we have used those rates as part of our analysis for for what you can expect in the future and as we bring more tons into this approach we think we can do even And this will provide you with protection over the long term. It provides the funding for the drop-off centers. It provides us with the opportunity to focus on other waste streams. We were intentional in starting with yard trash processing because that then sets the stage to start to bring in food waste in the future, as well as dealing with bulk waste. And lastly, as we've talked about, the public education. What's critically important is that you maintain control over your collection program. You know best how to meet the needs of your community. What the authority is dealing with is really on the back end for the processing and the education to help people understand the why of what we're asking them to do. And all of this provides you with the opportunity to control your solid waste management. So really, you have two decisions before you. The first is go as you are today. Stay with the status quo. We believe that a fragmented approach where it was believed to be a cost-effective strategy at the end of the old resource recovery system, it has not turned out to be the case. It will result in higher costs, less control, and more dangerous for the environment, particularly because of the waste stream components that are being commingled with garbage. And the second option, one that we hope you see the value in, is working together. That means lower costs, long-term stability, and continuing to be great stewards of our environment. With that, really we're winding down the presentation. I know that I've not provided much technical content, but I'm ready, willing, and able to answer any questions.

All right. Thank you, Daniel. Let me begin by a statement and then I'll open up. The Executive Committee and the Governing Board of the Solid Waste Authority has collectively dedicated hundreds of hours in preparation and reading and digesting and taking in analysis over the past few years. Since the Solid Waste Working Group was formed, there have been over 150 public meetings. led early on by Mayor Ross. We carried through to the Solid Waste Authority in getting the cities together for the ILA. We've taken in commentary from industry, from public advocates, from experts, as well as a very hardworking group of elected officials. The recognition was we face a crisis. It's not just what to do with the 5 million tons that we generate each year, or that we fail to recycle in any meaningful way, or that we're landfilling far too heavily and relying on waste to energy. It's that we face a threatening economic crisis. We've ceded our control, our economic strength to industry. We've been fragmented. We've been forced into navigating and negotiating. And along the way, we've lost opportunities to control our own destiny through ownership of the trash infrastructure. We've lost our ability to control and define our own destiny the way we would like to. And these crisis points were generated by decisions 50 years ago, product of breakdown of a political system perhaps, market forces with collective strengths. But whatever the reason, we're at this crossroads now. And we have far less tools, more uncertainty, more risk, and more potential to fail than we ever have, and certainly more than what we had 50 years ago. In short, we have to change behavior. We have to create volume reduction. We have to divert from landfilling and waste energy. But we must also galvanize ourselves to commit our economic strength, the numbers and visions of the tonnage that we have, but also to give ourselves the best chance for long-term stability. If we do not exercise this flow control management through our collective strength, we will cede our future to the market forces. And you've heard about some of that Already, as our landfill options diminish, as landfills no longer wish to accept, as the options are no longer there, we will be forced to buy pricing that will endanger future generations. We'll have few options to pivot. The master plan is a product of accumulated analysis and data. It's been publicly available, publicly examined, and publicly analyzed. Fifteen separate task-specific white papers As I said, over 150 meetings and workshops. Along the way, every participating city has received the opportunity and all have participated. But to understand the crisis point that we're at and the significance of this moment, we have to go back 50 years. Go back to 1975 when Palm Beach County and Broward were relatively in the same position regarding trash and they went in different directions. As a result, we are in a different direction and opportunity than Palm Beach County. Soloway's Authority of Palm Beach County is a dependent special district. They had the opportunity to form that because they had few municipalities and the vast majority of their land was unincorporated. They were formed by the Florida legislature and since then they have defined their future. In 2017, when we all went our separate ways, we owned nothing. In contrast, the Palm Beach County Solid Waste Authority owned seven different recycling centers where they were disposing of 4.2 million pounds of home chemicals each year. They owned six transfer stations, two waste-to-energy facilities, a recovered materials processing facility that was, at that time, doing 100,000 tons of recyclables, a biosolids processing facility, and a landfill that was their last resort. In 2024, Palm Beach County reported a recycling rate of 90%. 2024, we reported 38%, and that's with 10% credit for waste to energy. We are at a point where if we do not make the decision to move forward and give ourselves the best opportunity, we will pay in the future. Palm Beach County spends $4 million on continued education every year, and it is a mature system. They are educating because each day we have to reinforce The price of contamination and the cost to all of us. And we've seen that. Each city has come to learn that with our own recycling contracts, contamination is not just an annoyance, it costs every city more. The penalty fees we pay for that are unacceptable. Instead of following a dependent special district, we went together as a contractual agreement. And at the end of it, for whatever reason, Instead of owning the two waste energy facilities here, even though we as the residents paid for all the brick and mortar, and when the bonds were paid off, the mortgage, so to speak, we didn't own anything. And then we allowed the county somehow to dismantle one of them, and then the county gave up the opportunity to buy the facility that does exist now. As a result, there's very little infrastructure that we own in Broward County. At the expiration of the ILA that formed the RRB, while there was some interest in extending, high pricing offered by the market, the diminishment of recycling, and the sense that we could all save maybe a little bit more if we went separately, we became fractured. As I said, our choices became less as the county allowed certain facilities to be dismantled or didn't give us the chance to buy them. At the end of this, we knew that every metric we had was heading in the wrong direction. We were on pace in 2013. We had a 60% recycling rate and we were headed there. But between the collapse of the market, our inability to work together, we went backwards. Our mission at this point in history is that we must divert as much as we can from landfill and from waste to energy. Every successful trash management program and strategy means sending only that which cannot be diverted or reused to landfills or waste energy. We know food waste is heavy. It's troublesome for landfills, but it's also highly beneficially composted and recyclable. Curbside recyclables are plagued, as I said, by high contamination rates. but we can do better. Construction debris and bulk garbage and vegetative waste are all highly divertible, and yet we're falling short. As was mentioned by the expert, household hazardous waste, while a small component of the waste streams, is particularly troubling. short the master plan tries to take this on in the way that is mindful of the infrastructure that exists as well as our economic strength all the time focused on the zero waste lens and that is purely aspirational because we know we may never achieve that but maximizing diversion protecting our own wallets by combining our our city waste and getting the lowest term market lowest term market pricing we can is critically important Beyond just negotiating better contracts, the plan expands yard-infused waste diversion, generates better recycling programs, builds eight new drop-off centers for recyclers, which have been shown to be wildly successful even in this county, establish coordinated education and community outreach that touches all of our community. For too long, the education has not been there, has not been coordinated, and it's not been synergized. The idea is to eliminate these contamination penalties and achieve better outcome. These investments will reduce reliance on landfilling and waste to energy while moving us forward to a more sustainable economic future and environmental future. In the process of this, we've heard from industry, and industry has gotten behind this. Today we received a letter from the Broward Workshop, and from the president of the Broward Workshop, outlining the support of the Broward Workshop, in support of the master plan and the efforts to reduce long-term costs and hedge against the market-driven rate spikes that we have endured. The letter is incredibly well written and focuses on issues that are important to all of us. Industry knows that this can work. In addition, since we've started this process on April 17, the Governing Board of the Solid Waste Authority unanimously voted in approval of the master plan, including cities like Fort Lauderdale and Miramar and all the cities that along the way have been critical of the process and engaged to make sure we were getting the best plan possible. Coconut Creek this past week unanimously approved this plan. This is significant because for some cities, unlike Sunrise, that are not recycling at all, the decision to continue forward with this master plan means that they will have to spend more on recycling. They will have to reinstitute their recycling programs, and yet they understand the importance of what we're doing here, that this is no longer an opportunity for us to simply stay fragmented, but rather an opportunity for us to solve this problem collectively. Additional cities are much smaller that have voted unanimously, Sea Ranch Lakes, Southwest Ranches, very aggressive in the environmental area, and other cities are moving forward. This is our generational opportunity. If enough of the cities do not vote for this solid waste plan, the solid waste authority will dissolve. The fate of our economic and our environmental future is at stake. There have been plenty of mistakes made along the way to get us to this point. Decisions that were made to allow infrastructure to slip through our hands, perhaps to even not have the best opportunity to buy when we could have, but this is our last best hope. because every metric that we measure, whether economic or environmental, we have failed. It's my hope that we can move forward with this with the support of industry, who has been at the table throughout, the support of our haulers, who have been at the table throughout, the support of the processors, who've been at the table throughout, and significantly, the advocates in the environmental arena who from the outset were very skeptical of what this process would be they have been unanimously in support of this process it is rare that we can bring an entire community together but through this process the solid waste authority and the leadership of so many throughout this county we have been able to do it to this point it's my hope that we'll be able to move this forward on approval commissioner scudo

Okay, totally different perspective. And Mayor, I appreciate everything that you have done on this board, but this is a time right now where this is something where we should have a special meeting for. This is something where we should have a workshop for. But I say this because We're gonna sign into a 40 year agreement, 40. You mentioned about the old RRB. So I sat on that RRB and you talk about Palm Beach's SWA who has an unbelievable system. So here we sat for 30 years watching their system be innovative and everything. And now we're still not going to follow it. We're still not going to follow their system for one. They're a dual stream because it's worked. And now we're going to sign a 40 year agreement with single stream where we're still going to contaminate waste management is still the number one game in town. Okay. They own the landfill. And the people who, and to the league, Plantation, to Mr. Ross, to Bob, to Republic. I just have to put it as a point blank. Waste management has the landfill and they own the incinerator when it was the original R&RB, okay? So they controlled both. Then they sold both. to we liberate a who broke off to be s no now fcc so they own the incinerator and waste management's old incinerator at the landfill got knocked down and they knocked it down because for their business interest they said i want to go one hundred feet higher at the landfill at coconut creek the field coral springs parkland area So they figured they would knock down the incinerator and go higher with the landfill. But now, when she, from Plantation, made her little presentation about the, in Dade County, their incinerator burnt, right? So right now they're railing. And they're going to Palm Beach because waste management ran down there. And now they're just transferring to their landfill in Okeechobee. And if they fill there, they'll just keep going north to their next landfill. But in the meantime, if they want, they could cut a deal with FCC to bring their stuff. He'd be more than welcome. I'm not answering for you. I'm just talking in general. This company would be more than welcome to accept Dade County waste into their incinerator, right? A normal incinerator lasts 25, 30 years. They're at their point where they may need a billion, $2 billion to either expand or do whatever. So this is not just about the master plan and approving the master plan. The mayor mentioned after the RRB ended, we're in good shape. You know why? Our city manager cut a deal with them and we got the best rate. We got a great rate. We're not paying over a crazy amount of money, not disrespecting you, okay? So I'm just talking in general because I've been up here for 30 years. I know a lot about the garbage business. I went to the meeting. I was told I got two minutes, okay? People from the garbage industry went to these meetings and got two minutes. These people have 30, 40 years experience to get two minutes at a podium for something that their company is gonna be into a 40 year contract and got two minutes to speak. I'm not disrespecting the way it was. This is more than just doing a master plan. In this master plan, You're going to start collecting money. Two dollars in whatever it is now that money is going to be used to now start buying property. Right. They say they're going to buy six pieces of property so that we could use as transfer stations. Right. But now think of this. Come on. For the people that don't know and not in this business. In the south. You have routers in the city of Pembroke Pines. City of Pembroke Pines is not signing on to this, okay? They're not. They're doing their own deal. They had their own commission meeting the other night and are going a totally different route. You know why? Because they got waste management in their backyard. Miramar is right next to Pines. You think they want to drive all the way to the incinerator? If they could go to Rudas, would Davey want to go to Rudas? I'm just saying. This is not something that you come before me tonight and make this presentation and think that I'm going to vote for a 40-year contract when I don't have, my mayor sits on that board. but never did we get any full presentations or full discussions about anything my city manager is that thing of tack and still okay so this needs to be totally hashed out for all of us to really discuss what we're signing into this is not i know you've had meetings you had whatever hundreds of hours or whatever you want to say doesn't mean that now my residents, okay, and this is just for my city, on the east side of Sunrise, behind some of our old shopping centers, there are not room, right, for an enclosure. They never had an enclosure. They only have a garbage dump there. four yarder, six yarder, eight yarder. Now in this, it's mandatory that they have garbage and recycling. So now we're trying to clean up on the east side of our city, just like Pompano, just like Hollywood, just like Fort Lauderdale, where the dumpsters are all out and not in enclosures. Now you're going to add more, okay? So these are things that are very important for the areas where were developed over 50 years ago. So then if somebody does, we have to do mandatory. So if somebody wants to open up a business in Sunrise and they don't do the recycling, then we hold back their CO. We don't give them a CO until they're mandatory. It's all about, we're at 30%, 38%. So we did this for 30 years, did it for 30 years and we got to 30%. In the eight years that we don't have a board, we went to 38%, and that was because we got a credit, right? So they're at 90%, Palm Beach. How are you gonna go from 30 to 90? You know how long it's gonna take to tell the people and tell the kids and tell the parents how to recycle? This is not just an easy thing for me to wanna sign onto a 40 year agreement. You say it's only gonna be one and a half percent that it could go up. That's impossible. When you have inflation that goes 1% to 5%. How are we gonna be at one and a half? We don't know the cost going forward for that. So here, I'm just gonna read off a couple of things where it gets to be really crazy to just do this in one night without really having to sit here with my colleagues and to go back and forth.

Just got to interrupt, but I'm happy to have a workshop.

Right, good, exactly. So not voting on this tonight would be where we have the workshop and then... No, no, no, that's all I'm saying. But I'm just saying, a 40-year term with no opt-out clause. So once we sign in for 40 years, that's it. If we opt out at any point, then anything that we as a city paid in with that $2 over 20, 30 years, we get nothing, we're not part of any of the facilities that you're gonna buy after that. So there's no unknown long-term cost. To require collection, to comply with objectives, the collection charges, it's all about the impact for commercial, The revenue that we're going to lose on commercial, because now if you recycle more, the city loses more, because we all have franchise fees. Years ago in the old RRB, when we dumped X amount and we paid money into the tipping fee, At the end of the year, the city would get money back. We got $500, $700, $800, $1 million. Fort Lauderdale would get $2 million. Hollywood, $2 million. I'm just saying. So you paid in, but what you paid in, you got out. So I'm just saying, these are other options. You know what I'm saying? But if every city wanted to go to FCC and say, excuse me, Mr. Healy, City of Sunrise, like we did now. We want to cut a deal with you. What is he going to do? Say no? That's his business. So either he's going to get 31 individual cities or he's going to get one where you have the economic flow control. So I'm just trying to be, you know, frank on all these different things that it's not, you know, the residents that came up here from the woman voters said, oh, it's going to be $2.80 a year. Like that's what your garbage is going to cost. That's not the case. Now it's going to be where the residents, their stuff is going to go on their bill. So right now they get water, wastewater, and natural gas in their bill. Now the garbage won't be on their bill. It may just go on if they go to that route to put it on your tax bill. So you won't see it on a monthly fee. So you'll see like your water, wastewater, and garbage, the price every month went down, but it's going to be on as your tax if you go that route. So... I just want to make sure that I'm not signing on to a 40-year deal. And the mayor said this because he knew definitely 100% I was going to bring this up. No, I'm just saying of what you said because it's true. We paid for 30 years as the RRB to pay for the landfill, to pay for the incinerator, the ash monofil, everything that we did. So we paid all that money, and then we were so mad at the end that we didn't own anything, right? So now you guys had this board for now six, seven years. Their property came up for sale. And the county didn't buy it. So for 30 years, you didn't have this option because you were so mad that you paid for 30 years and didn't own it at the end. But then it comes up for sale and you don't buy it. And this board didn't go to the county and fight to say buy it. Because then everybody would buy into it that you bought it and now you own it. And then I would be sitting here saying I'm signing it for the 40-year because now I own that place. But they didn't do it again. They made a company not even from this country buy it and now they own it. And God bless you. I mean, hey, that's a great business decision that they bought it. But we're in the same boat again. Now we're going to pay this company for 40 years and not own it. The only thing we're going to own is the six transfer stations that you're going to buy with the money. And I get back to the thing, what I said about root is root is already is in pines. What an unbelievable sophisticated system. So anybody that signs into this deal has the option to go there, right? Then go to College Avenue and Oaks Road, right? You have two other people. You have waste management again in the middle. and then you go to the north who do you have again waste management so they have already have the three best facilities right now and you want to build six more why would anybody want to go to your six when it's easier to go to waste management three then you only have coastal who is on college avenue what a smaller facility but you know what coastal is his own hola, and he could bring his stuff to himself. That's if the city allows him to direct the stuff that they haul to their place. And then they also have one in Pompano. Alhola Republic, right, they have EnviroCycle. They have a recycling facility, and they have a C&D facility. They've had it for 20, 30 years. They're remodeling it right now, but the city of Sunrise, their alhola, We don't even haul our stuff to our own provider. So what I'm saying is there are cost savings if we wanted to cut our own deal. So nobody's going to tell me that if I don't sign in, I'm screwed. I'm not. But I'm not just looking out for myself. I am looking out for the whole. But there is more to this than just signing a 40-year when there's a lot of things that I don't know, okay? And if I'm in the business and I don't know everything, imagine a commissioner that's just new What do they know? So are they going to just rely on what the city manager says and says, oh, yeah, great. Sign into the 40 year deal. Well, I'm not doing that. I'm not signing into a 40 year deal unless I sit with my colleagues and hash this out. I'm not being spiteful. I'm just saying I know you guys done a lot of hard work, but there's a lot in here that doesn't make sense. There's a lot of unknowns in here and there are a lot of things that you still got to work out before I'm signing a 40 year deal.

So, okay. So I think, you know, obviously that's good to have these points raised and it makes it all the better if we're able to convince you of that. There's obviously some statements that need to be clarified. These are not transfer stations, but I think this is part of that process to allow us to have that continued discussion, whether it's one-on-one with the consultants or otherwise. I've always followed the sense of my colleagues If you want to have a workshop, let's have a workshop and let's make sure we do it timely. We'll get the experts here in industry and have discussions with it. But I want to be clear. We can't be Palm Beach County. It wasn't that we didn't look at a plan and we couldn't pull off a binder off a shelf and just say we're going to be Palm Beach County. We can't be. We can't build our way out of this. We lost the opportunity and it's not an issue the board didn't ask the county to do it or didn't we didn't even frankly get invited or not known about it and when we told the county not to expand the landfill they ignored us. So it was a problem but that was a decision they made and we're stuck in this point and so there's enough to resent about the decision not to own the brick and mortar from 50 years ago why that would possibly happen I can't conceive of a good legitimate reason or why they wouldn't go try to buy it maybe there were reasons why they didn't but we're here and part of this plan is to make sure that those that participate whoever it is do get the best contract rate are unable to negotiate around the most favored nation and that we achieve quite frankly the outcomes that we need to so our work is to convince those that have doubts about it I will say I could care less about franchise fees That is something I've heard from a couple of cities that they're afraid to sign on because they're going to lose their franchise fees. To be clear, what that is is just giving money back to the city after charging people more than they should have to. And it was good. And we didn't all understand it. Some did. But that's not the issue. And there is no mandatory commercial recycling in this program, although it is worthy of a discussion. And we know from certain parts of the commercial industry that they're interested in trying to move forward where they can reduce their other hauling costs but to the extent that there's a request from one of my colleagues to have a workshop or more dedicated meeting i invite that because i believe in this program so daniel i thank you i think what we'll do is uh we'll schedule if that's the will of the commission we'll work together with staff to schedule a special meeting on this it is that important it is that generational and i don't shy away from it or fear it okay Yes, sure. I didn't see really apologize.

Can we make a motion whether we support it or not? Or that's yeah, sure. I'd like to make a motion to support it.

Okay, there's a motion. Is there a second? Well, I I'll hand the gavel, but I don't I don't think I want to get you know, if there's going to be a no vote, and I think, let me just be clear. It's important to get a sense. But I think what's most important is that we will try to work, we don't have to achieve unanimity. cities to this point have but that's certainly always been the goal and it's something this monumental that would be our goal so while you know we can force forward a vote and maybe it goes through but a no vote is more dangerous and i think what has to happen is we have to make sure that the questions that have been asked are answered or if they're not answered they're addressed so that's the only reason i would hesitate handing the gavel off to support commissioner kirch i apologize so

A lot of points Commissioner Scudo raised are valid. A lot of points Mayor Ryan have brought up and through the Solid Waste Authority are good. My gut feeling is we don't really have any choice but to approve this. However, I would like to hear some more information that Commissioner Scudo was asking for to make a completely informed decision. No, like I said, my inclination is to go forward and ultimately approve this, but as a professional, courtesy to my colleague, I will listen, evaluate the points that he wants to bring out through a workshop, and then we can come back and bring this forward as we would do with any other important issue that the city is facing. I just, Commissioner Scooter's got a hard sell coming my way because I am leaning more towards

approving this but i i'm not saying this i'm saying to have the haulers in this room to get their understanding to get bob's understanding to get the board's understanding to show exactly where they're the in each part of this. Nothing is totally worked out just because the board is approving a master plan. We are not the only city questioning this. And I'm saying is, if One or two of the big cities do not approve this. This does not go through. So it's better to get the understanding of what everybody is talking about so we make the right decision. It's not just because Plantation approved it and Coconut Creek approved it, but if Miramar, if Fort Lauderdale, if Pompano, if a few others don't approve it, Only one or two have to not approve it, and this doesn't go through. So isn't it better to put all the information out so everybody has all the understandings so that maybe those other cities that are thinking not to do it after we hash it out, they may want to do it. But let's get it all out. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying I'm against it. I'm not saying I'm not against it. I would have only wished that the county would have bought Bob's facility. We're already by that. Come on. But that was just now. That just happened now. It wasn't like it happened 20 years ago. It just happened now.

But what's that have to do with where we are? So I agree with you. It's a frustration. And there's enough hand-wringing to be had, but we've got to at least move forward to have the discussion. So what I'd rather entertain, Commissioner Clark, did you have your light on?

Yeah.

Okay, go ahead.

I only wanted to add that we should do it sooner than later. If we're going to have a meeting about it, let's not wait another month or two. Right, exactly. Let's make it as quick as possible so that we can really have a full understanding of what's going on and being able to sign on. as or off as quick as possible so that we're in the number that it's counted. So we're not waiting.

Yeah, look, this, you know, we're at a process. This was approved by the governing board on April 17th. We're at our next meeting. The idea was to bring this forward as rapidly as possible to have this discussion. Um, the issue of, you know, doesn't have to be a mandatory vote tonight. I think these are questions that have to be answered. It's incumbent on each of us to take the time to, uh, meet with staff, if they meet with industry, if necessary, talk to the haulers, talk to others. No, but we want to have a workshop. Let me finish. And so that when we get to the workshop, we're not for the first time asking questions that need answers, but rather trying to make sure that we're working towards getting the answers even before we walk in there. So I'd like to schedule that workshop. We need to schedule it as rapidly as possible. Um, why don't we, I'll have to entertain a motion to table first. Um is there a motion to table second motion table by Commissioner Scooter second by Deputy Mayor all in favor say aye aye any opposed so that passes okay so let's talk about what that looks like for a workshop because you know if we're going to ask for this and folks got to be available I'm available okay I mean it's up to you the rest of them to pick a date

During the day or an evening.

I mean, it's up to whoever could we got to be able to get a 50 quorum. That's all.

Yep. Whatever, whatever you all want to do. How's May 5th next week?

I'm in trial.

How's May 19th?

Morning or evening?

Evening.

I don't know. I mean.

Scheduled Orlando trial that week, but it may get continued, so I don't want to say yes. What about May 11th?

I can't do May 11th.

Let's do a Saturday.

I'm okay with a Saturday. I don't care. Saturday, Sunday, I'm fine with, but... Yeah, you need staff.

What about May 14th, May 13th?

I can't that week.

May 22nd. Friday.

In the evening, yes, not during the day. I have a deposition all day that day. 21st.

Well, that defeats the purpose of getting this done sooner than later.

I got you. I'm with you. I'm trying to find a date. And then they wonder why it took so long to get this all the way to the working group and SWA to get things done.

What about May 25th?

Well, May 22nd works.

Memorial Day, isn't it?

Yeah. May 22nd works. If it works, everybody else.

Has to be in the evening. I can't do it in the day. That's a Friday night. I'm happy to do it on a Friday night. Works for me.

I'm fine.

I'm fine. Good. All right. May 22nd. That's what we'll do. We'll notice it. Five. We don't have anything that night, do we? Trucks or something like that.

Can we do it sooner in the afternoon? Like a three or four? Maybe four? It's a Friday night. I would hate to have staff here late.

Yeah, I'm good anytime. What have you guys picked?

Start at three. I do not believe I'll be able to get there by three. Many hours. So four is a possibility.

We know where you stand already. So, you know, we could just open up the meeting.

Fair point. Uh, no, it's a fair point, but, uh, obviously for the questions and ability to answer them, try four o'clock and I'll make my best effort to, uh, uh, to be there at four. It's a fair point about staff. Mr. Lebowski.

We'll make it work, mayor.

Okay. Is everybody okay with that? That's what we're doing?

Mm-hmm.

What do you need from us, Tom? Can I clarify whether this will be a special meeting or a workshop? We're going to do a special meeting. So it won't be a workshop. Will we be able to take action?

We're being told the University of Florida commencement ceremony is that day.

At 7.30. What is?

It's a graduation commencement ceremony.

At the Faith Center. At 7.30. Well, let's see if three hours is enough for a single topic. And it'll be incumbent on us to flush out the questions in advance, make sure we're working with staff, and try to get as many of those answers ahead of time. And I know my colleagues will be expeditious in raising, and we're not a commission that's been prone to just pontificate.

We'll get right to the points.

All right, that's what we're going to do. So, Mr. Moss, what do you need from us in directing staff for a special meeting on May 22nd at 4 p.m. Eastern. Yeah, there's time to advertise. There's plenty of time to advertise. Just the purpose for which the special meeting is called. It is for the purpose of 16B. All right. Is that fair enough? That's what I figured you'd figure. All right. Thank you, Daniel, for your time and for those who've... Sure, Mr. Healy, go ahead.

Bob Healy with FCC Environmental. For those of you that haven't been to the facility, we send out invitations. Tomorrow we are hosting an open house, kind of a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new ownership of the facility. And if you have any particular questions where we can meet one-on-one, I'll be available for that. Certainly we'll be here for the workshop. But if something's on your mind pertaining to any of the discussion tonight that I can answer, I'll be readily available. So we look forward to welcoming you tomorrow. What time is that, Bob? It's from 11 to 2, Commissioner.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Let's take a short break. Thomas P. Moss, City Attorney, First Reading, City Commission Meeting 414-2026, Pass 5-0. Do I have a motion? Motion by Commissioner Scudo. Seconded by? Second. Commissioner Kurtz. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this matter, please come forward or press 5-star on your phone. I see no hands raised. Can you confirm no hands raised?

I confirm no hands are raised.

All right. I'll close public discussion. Any discussion from my colleagues? Call the question.

Deputy Mayor Guzman. Yes. Commissioner Kirch.

Yes.

Commissioner Skudo.

Yes.

Assistant Deputy Mayor Clark. Yes. Mayor Ryan.

Yes. Item passed is 5-0B. Commission discussion or action or a second reading of an ordinance of the City of Sunrise Floor approving an amendment to the uniform. signage plan for the Amherst Bank Arena, providing for conflict, providing for severability, and providing an effective date. City Manager Mark Lebowski, Shannon Lay, Director of Community Development, First Reading, City Commission Meeting 414-2026, Pass 5-0. Do I have a motion? Move it. Motion by Commissioner Escudo, seconded by Commissioner Kirch. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this matter, please come forward or press 5-star on your phone. I see no one can come forward. Can you confirm no hands raised?

I confirm no hands are raised.

All right, I'll close public discussion. Any discussion from my colleagues? Call the question.

Assistant Deputy Mayor Clark. Deputy Mayor Guzman? Yes. Commissioner Kirch?

Yes.

Commissioner Scuddo?

Yes.

Mayor Ryan?

Yes. Item passes 5-0. As I understand it, C is being withdrawn by staff? That is correct, Mayor. Okay. Do I need to do anything on that, Mr. Moss? No, sir. Thank you. D, Commission Discussion and Interactionary First Reading of an Ordinance of the City of Sunrise, Florida, amending Fiscal Year 2025-2026 Budget Ordinance No. 720, amending the General Fund 001, the One Penny Sertax Fund 181, and the Stormwater Fund 444, provided for severability, provided in effect today. City Manager Mark Lebelski, Susan and Neighbors, Finance and Administrative Services. Director, I have a motion. Motion by Commissioner Scooter, seconded by Commissioner Kirch. This is a public hearing. Anyone wishing to be heard on this matter, please come forward or press five star on your phone. I see no one come forward. Can you confirm no hands raised?

I confirm no hands are raised.

All right. I'll close public discussion. Any discussion from my colleagues? Call the question.

Commissioner Scooter?

Yes.

Assistant Deputy Mayor Clark? Yes. Deputy Mayor Guzman? Yes. Commissioner Kirch?

Yes.

We're in.

Yes. Item passes five to zero. All right. As I understand it, 17A has also been withdrawn for this meeting. Is that correct?

17?

Yes. 17A. Yes, Mayor. Mr. Moss, anything that I need to do on that one?

No, that's going to be renoticed at a future date.

Okay, fair enough. 16A, strategic plan presentation approving the city of the vision statement, mission statement, and tagline, City Manager Mark Lebowski. This will be our 12th presentation of the evening.

Thank you, Mayor. Mark LaBelsi, City Manager. Over the past couple years, we've been working hard on creating our city's first strategic plan. This comprehensive process included a robust community engagement and outreach to help us define the city's path forward, both short-term and long-term. The planning and engagement process has provided us with significant community feedback to help prioritize efforts, identify key themes, identify key areas of focus, identify strategic goals to support key areas of focus, and identify desired outcomes for future of our community. We are at the point of the strategic plan. We'd like to engage the mayor and the commission in selecting the final three components, which would be our vision statement, our mission statement, and our tagline for the City of Sunrise. I have here Cheryl Trent, a Raftelist, formerly S Brand, to walk us through those three items as part of presentation. I'll turn it over to Cheryl. Okay. The floor is yours.

Good evening. Thank you very much. I very clearly heard that this is the 12th item on your agenda. So I will, because there was an extensive report in your packet, unless you have some questions, I'll skip over the process that your city manager just presented to you. But this is the culmination of these three key critical components. And there is a difference between the three. So before we hop into that, I just want to briefly touch on what that difference is. A vision statement is very aspirational.

It's your dream for the future of the community.

It should be succinct. It should be clear, no jargon, easy to understand. But it should also be something that involves people. and wants to bring them to the table to talk to you about achieving that vision. The mission statement is very much a purpose. It is what the city exists to do. The basic core purpose of the city. And then the tagline is much more of a conversation about a really short marketing statement that immediately develops an image of the city. All three of these things should be short enough that you could print them on the back of a business card, but the tagline in particular could be printed on a logo or easily on a T-shirt. So it's something that will follow the city through many, many years to come. All three of these are what we would call evergreen. The vision in particular is supposed to be extensive, 10, 15, 20 plus years, because that vision is always something that you're working actively toward. The mission rarely changes because rarely are there significant changes in what the city actually does for the community. And then the tagline, as you start to build the brand and the image and identity around that, that is also something that should stand the test of time. So all of the work that's gone into this has brought us to the point of being able to suggest three options for each of these areas for you to consider and hopefully determine one this evening. So what I'd like to do is hop right on in to the vision statement. What we put into your packet and what you see here in the presentation is what the vision statement that was created in 1991 was. So you can see it stood the test of time. However, there are some updates that we do recommend making to it, and you have your three options here. Each option was developed through the conversations that your city managers just mentioned. The conversations with you. You remember seeing me here a few times before. the conversations with your community, conversations with your internal staff. And so you have these three options. I don't want to read them to you unless you'd like me to read them into the record, but that's what I thought. So I would like to hear what the commissioner's desire is to select one of these three options to carry forward, knowing that this is a decision we'd like, but it's not that you can't change the decision after you live with it for a year or two if there's something that still kind of makes it itchy. It's your vision. You can easily come back to the process.

So let's do this. Start with the, you know, they need to kind of be synergized. At least I'll just give you mine. We'll just throw it out so we can get our discussion going at 9 o'clock. I chose vision statement option number one, mission statement option number two, and tagline option number two. That's just my thinking without talking to other folks.

That might be an easy way to do it. If anybody else has a one... Let's start with vision statement.

So, if I may, I'm not sold on either of these vision statements. I feel that there is a few more powerful words that could be used to reflect the City of Sunrise and our diversity, economy, tourism, children, families, everything. It could be added or modified. So I don't know if you guys are sold on these three, but I'm not.

Is everyone here?

I'm actually not sold on them either. I just feel as if it's not captivating enough of what the city looks to be in the future. There are so many things that are coming on the horizon, and it doesn't. speaks to me for the next 20 years. I feel like there needs to be some other words needed to be added to make it more impactful so that anybody who sees it five years from now can still see a path towards the next five years and then the next five. It didn't really, it looks to me like a now statement and not a future statement.

I have a few samples, if whenever.

I'd hesitate to wordsmith up here. Yeah, we do. I think the point, though, is that as long as anyone's feeling a momentum of discomfort with choosing one, I think you can suggest a process, of course. But perhaps what the idea is to go ahead and just try to put fingers to a keypad, put together some options, submit them to Mr. Lebelski, meet with Mr. Lebowski, there might be words that are chosen that staff says, wait, this could be maybe said differently or whatever, and then get those to you, then we get them back. It won't be transmitting sunshine because you'll just be saying, hey, these are what were suggested. They're not going to be – I mean, maybe once we're up here, someone will say, yeah, that was my choice. But we're not sharing information that way amongst – each other and then allow everyone to feel comfortable with it and I would just say that's true across the mission statement and the tagline for that matter I think you have to be mindful that when you do the vision statement and the mission statement you want to have some continuity of thought and the tagline doesn't necessarily have to be right we can look at what other cities call themselves it's greener on this side or whatever they call themselves I'm sure that's not part of the or it's a minor part of any of their mission or vision statements. So tagline can be totally different. But assuming everyone was kind of okay with that type of process, Commissioner Kirch.

I'm good with that. I was just going to say for my personal preferences, whatever that's worth, I like vision statement option one. I like mission statement option two. I like the city that rises above the rest.

To keep ones that we've used informally. All right. So that's a fair one. Yeah. I like that one too.

I don't like that. There's some options that have sunrise already repeated in after you say city of sunrise, then it should be something completely different. And I too, like the city that rises above the rest.

That is not on here, right?

And coincidentally, it's also in the suite. If you haven't already seen it, it's kind of already there.

All right. So I think we can come back and talk about that. That's a fair point, the informal ones. And then folks may think about it and offer some new ideas. Does that work for you, Mr. Lebowski?

Yes, ma'am.

All right. So what we'll do is let's put it on some sort of timetable. When do you want to come back and talk about this? Second meeting in May? Is that fair?

Or do you need it quicker? No, I'm probably not going to be here for the second meeting in May.

How long have you been doing this?

How long have we been doing this? Forty years.

No, how long have we been doing this with them?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

We've been working on this for probably two years now. Two years. And you already, I met with you about this. So we waited two years for this. All right, well, we're here now.

What are we going to do about it? Right, I'm just saying.

I think the idea on the vision is solid, and I would encourage you to focus on your emails with the key word, like the key words or phrases you think best represent, as opposed to trying to craft a sentence, because it's easier to work with your key words. Do you have the same reaction to the mission? Because the mission is just a purpose. It's pretty straightforward. Or do you think we could reach some consensus on the mission this evening? I think we'll...

I didn't like anything, to tell you the truth. No offense. I didn't like anything that you came up with. That's fair. Right, there you go. Keywords as well on the mission then? Two years, this is what we got.

And then it does sound like there's some consensus on the tagline, though. The city that rises above the rust. Is that something we can get this evening?

I think we should do this as one package.

Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Any feedback is helpful.

This was an 0 for 3.

No, I appreciate it. Y'all have a good evening. I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for your work on this. Thank you.

Thank you for staying throughout. All right, city clerk's report. How much did that cost? No report, sir. City attorney's report?

No report. Thank you.

City manager's report?

No report, Mayor. Deputy Mayor.

I just have one thing to share with my colleagues and the city of San Marias, if you don't already know, I announced that my son, Jose, will be joining the Army. The plan was for him to start enrolling in the fall, but we just found out this week that he will be leaving June 23rd. So it's been really difficult for me to accept, and I don't want to start crying, but I just want everyone to know that my focus right now for the next two months is my family. That means, you know, city phone calls campaign is not my priority right now. I hope everyone understands that. Okay.

Thank you. Best of luck. I know it's a hard time for all families. I remember when my brother went off and I've staff that works with me in my firm and his son just signed up and he's going and it's created all sorts of, it's a very emotional time. Okay. Thank you. Assistant deputy mayor.

So I have a few things today. I know, I know, I know.

Don't leave them bottled up.

Hey, I got a book. I got a book, so don't worry. You got a few things. I got a book.

A few things. So first, I wanted to commend the city about the Autism Swims event that we have and all the different activities that we have to really support families, especially in this time when there is so many thoughts about reducing or eliminating resources to individuals. For years I had an employee that had a child that had autism and I didn't even know she comes up here every year to actually attend this event and she was here this past weekend and she was here the year before and to see the joy that it really brings to these individuals, it brings me joy. So I would just want to commend the commission and the city for making sure all of this happens. And so I wanted to give that feedback so everybody knows what that is. Then I also wanted to, Last week I attended a panel discussion and I was sitting in on another panel discussion and there were a few attorneys on that panel discussion and they were talking about a city that is the most difficult to work with and they just went on and on and on and unfortunately our city was in that list and Why I'm bringing this feedback is because while we are providing services, sometimes the recipient of those services do not see the... What kind of panel was it?

Is this contractors? What are you talking about?

No, no, no, no. This was just a random...

But most difficult to work with in what regard?

So they gave examples of building permits.

Right, which is so classic, right? And sometimes, I'm telling you, about 90% of the time, It's because the contractor didn't do something right. I've gotten emails that are misleading their fences.

Wait, wait, wait. This was on the perspective of the business owner.

Correct, right. Here's what happens.

By hiring someone who doesn't know the law. So you hire a contractor.

The contractor comes in and right at the outset says, by the way, I'm going to do this job, but city of, insert, is the most difficult. They're setting up ahead of time that there's going to be a problem. I'm going to tell you why. Because I talked to a business owner who heard this exact speech. And then at the end of it, it went so smoothly. They were like, I swear to you, I think the guy was just setting up for his own problems. So they say it's the most difficult. Then they don't go pick up the permit on time. They get notes and they don't respond to it. You get the chronology from Shannon. And she hit every metric. but they weren't returning responses to the comments, and they blame us in the warping post. So what I would say is that when you hear that, get the name particularly business owner because they are not in the middle now one thing we tried to do and i've talked to Mr. Lebelski about this we tried to say that if an owner is hire a contractor put a permit in make sure the owner's email is on there so that they get the notice when you know what happens the contractor doesn't put it on there or they put an email in there that's their own so they don't ever find out and i'm going to tell you And this is over 15 years of this. 95% of the time. It's the contractor who didn't respond to the comments. He's too busy. Didn't pick up the permit because once he picks up the permit, the time starts. So that's what the delay is. And so it goes on and on. So it's a fair point. Just invite you to get with staff. Cause again, When I first started, every one of these, I'd be like, what? You guys, do you see what this complaint was? And you'd get the chronology, and you'd be like, the guy's never picked up the permit, or he never responded to the comment, or this is the fourth submittal. We can't figure out why he can't get it right, and we have to go have a meeting. So it's a fair point. Nobody's perfect, and we have to accept we're not. But what you need to do, in my opinion, when an owner says that, Get me the information. I'll get you the chronology. Because I've had owners call back and apologize for having sent such a hot email once they were like, oh, turns out the contractor. You can ask everybody.

The best is I call Sean and I say, Sean, could you look into this permit? And then he calls me back. He goes, on April 12th, the comments were made. He picked them up, didn't bring them back until June. Right. We had additional comments on June 2nd. Didn't pick up for three weeks. Still has not picked up. I just got one the other day. The lady from Sunrise Lakes, her husband died. So now she wants to move back to New York. So she's trying to sell her condo. The people who put her windows in never closed out her permit. I'm just saying, it's like a never ending that they don't close out stuff. They don't do stuff. And then the easiest thing, like the mayor said, We made it now where, once we went automated, that they would get the email to say that they could pick it up, and then the resident gets it. But what they do, they don't give the, because they took a deposit, they're busy, they don't have time to do it, So by you not getting the email, you can't say, so then you say, oh, I'm going to call the city. I want to find that Obama permit. And then when I call Sean and he looks into it, that's exactly.

If I can also add, when I first started on the commission, I got a lot of those same concerns or complaints, if you will. And after doing my research and talking with staff, just like they're all saying, it was a contractor's fault. But not only that. Also with working and being around other municipalities, I have so much respect for our staff because there's such hard balls with things where they need to be, where our permitting process and once things are installed and done is usually like 99% the right way once it's approved. Whereas other cities, and I know this for a fact, they have a lot of problems. They're not done properly. So I commend staff for being as red tape that you are.

And the other part is keeping the chronology, the ability. I know it's extra work every time, but staff looks at it like, we're going to respond to this because we take pride. Now, there are times where there's been a delay, whatever happened, and staff says, I'm going to pick up the phone and solve it. But overall, I would say, even if there was a delay, like they hit missed a mark, it was supposed to be done in 21 days, and they were at 25 days. Overall, the complaint isn't based on that. It's... So next time, every one of them, because first you look great, you say, tell me exactly, then you find out, and then you tell them, hey, your contractor messed up.

So nobody let me finish. But this was already a case that I was working with and knew fully information about what was going on while they were having this long conversation about it on the stage. So I was able to tell them the rest of the story, which they did not know about that went on with this particular case. So what my point was is that sometimes when we are giving out information, we really kind of need to give that entire story. because when the particular person called, they only got the portion that affected them. They didn't know about the rest of the story, so they just ran with it that we were delaying, but they did not know the rest of the story. That was my point.

So it was a Paul Harvey moment is what you were trying to make. Yes. Okay.

I was trying to get there, but everybody just chimed in quickly. Well, no, but I think it does- Which is great that everybody ready to defend, but I was- Well, and it's not just defense, right?

We need to continue to demand more compliance on this because nobody should be, none of the owners should not know what's going on. They shouldn't allow the contractors to pull the wool over their eyes. But it's something that no matter how much we ask for, it doesn't get done.

Next thing is the National League of Cities. I'm on the IT committee. And so we had a very lively conversation that talked about data centers and how they are interested in different cities and the downfall of them actually being in cities. And I wanted to just bring up that particular information so the commission can. look up, do your own research on it, provide some more details about it, of what's happening in other cities and how it's affecting them, and also just point out what just happened in Opelika as well.

Do you have that info you could pass?

Yes. It's a raging issue. There's one state right now trying to consider whether to ban. It's a raging issue across the nation. There's one city out there that's got 9,000 residents, and I think they have 20 data centers they're putting in. So it's an issue of water and electricity drain. But I'm not so sure because of the lack of home rule issues that what we're going to be able to do.

Yeah, and I think some of them are coming to our neighboring cities as well.

So I'm not exactly sure how. Take our ability to legislate that.

Um, so that's one thing. And my final comment is due to, I know the taboo in the room of, of what's going on. Um, we have seen a lot of data online about people talking about a lot of things. And I know one of those areas, which I try not to read, but one of those areas is, or, um, police department. And so I want to have at some point our police chief come and tell the commission what his process is gonna be in the future as to where the chain of command is gonna be, because right now we are sitting without a second in command, and I think it's important that as a commission, and how we can really move forward as at some point we're going to have to make decisions about what is going or who is going to be our new police chief and we kind of need to start thinking about that at some particular point. So I just want to put that all in here with everybody so that we can really start thinking about it and at some future commission meeting we can have an update of what's going on so that we can all be informed at the same time and not separate times. That's it.

Okay, Commissioner Kirchner.

In USA Newspaper.

They've been around forever. They're the original Spanish language, Hispanic newspaper that's been doing a lot for the city of Sunrise over the course of many years. Hoping staff will reevaluate the budget cuts on that paper. look forward to hearing more about that.

Yeah, again, this has to be part of that broader, which we established in the last budget process and the budget before that to make sure we were getting out in culturally focused media, whether newspapers, radio, or otherwise. And so it'll be time for staff to report back to us on that, particularly as we head into the budget season. It's more important than ever that we have sustained and targeted outreach in ways that are not just based upon this. I'm on the phone. That we're reaching the community where they need to be reached. So I hope we'll have a discussion about that. Staff can report back on that.

Actually, can I add to what you just mentioned? It's a good point. So communications in different languages. I know we've had this conversation many times. I don't see that really happening often. But then my question to that is, given the talk about the DEI stuff happening next year, will that affect us if we decided to put out communications in different languages?

You can talk to Tom Moss. My reading is no.

Okay, we just have a couple words we can't say Just want to make sure we got everything Yeah, I'll take an update cuz I got no idea what they're talking about It's gonna be so much fun reading it.

All right No report for me. We're just good. Oh, you got a book so Commissioner Kirsch brought up something they reached out to me also the Spanish newspaper They've been providing a service for us for people who still like to read in person. It gets delivered to businesses and to wherever. So, I mean, it's a minimal cost. Every event promotes Sunrise. But then I discussed what the city manager's office about – the marketing when we do that why did we switch away was a good partner for us. They showed up at every single Tunes and Trucks. They had a tent. They were very active. They promoted us and talked about us on the radio. I'm not questioning what you do and your thing. I'm just saying we had built a good relationship with someone that came to all the Tunes and Trucks. They gave out giveaways. They helped us during times that we needed to get stuff out to the residents. They were at 4th of July events, and now we went to whoever, which I don't see that we get the bang for the buck. If you feel you have a good relationship who you're working with now, but I just feel that when we had Kenny Walker and we had Vaughn and we had those people, I think... having the facility that we have, knowing who they are and they're bigger, we can maybe broaden. I don't know why we switched out. I had asked and... Staff said they would get back to, I guess, us about why we switched to someone else. But I just thought we had a good working relationship. If something went sour, then I would like to know. Or if we just try to go in a different direction and change, I don't know. But I think we had a good relationship talking with Kenny Walker, talking about him talking about us on the air. I mean, I think it was more of a personal rather than just, oh, go to Toons and Trucks and that's it. You know, it was more like, you know, whatever. So it's just my.

I think you all are like, wow, we're all in sync for the first time when one commission meeting. Anyways, I was going to say that a lot of other cities have this amazing host from stations like what you mentioned. And yet we're bigger cities and I believe we have the funding to do it. So I really believe that we should be putting top quality funding events with the right people. So thank you for bringing that up.

We had the privilege to host Mike White and Rob Stevenson from the Panthers in the arena. He seemed like a very personable person, seemed very down to earth, not a standoff person, knowing that he comes from Disney, knowing that he comes from Amazon. I know staff itself was worried about who would be the next CEO for the Panthers to wonder whether it's gonna just be a hockey team or it's gonna be a destination. I got that feeling that I think we're gonna be a destination. I think he has a lot of good ideas. He listened to us. He didn't just talk. He listened to what we had to say. He didn't rush us. He didn't come in for five seconds and run out the door.

Joey talked to him the whole time.

Sorry. I got five minutes. look i think it is a very important time that today when the county came and did their presentation i think all of us staff wise city manager wise police fire all of us up here for them to pick out sunrise boulevard over any other boulevard, it could be the biggest benefit that we could get in this surtax dollars where this could have went anywhere. And like I said, I would be more than welcome to support them doing the 441 and the university because then it branches out to other cities and then we're not the only ones that benefit. So I think If they're going to support us, then we should be able to support the other communities where those links could tie in. And then from there, they could do those little branches would be a bigger benefit for us as a city to bring these other cities part of it. The last thing I wanted to say is Commissioner Guzman brought up her son, congratulations on him, that he's gonna be a fine young man from watching him play his little flag football and throwing the football down the whole thing. But I have one daughter that's graduating who is gonna walk across and then Caitlin's gonna roll across.

Oh, that's awesome.

So Elise is graduating from Western and Caitlin's graduating from Piper.

Oh, that's awesome.

Both of them. And then to Chief McNamara, you guys did a great job with the open house, crowded, a lot of residents. People had a lot of good time. Kids were spraying the hose. Police was out there also. I think the burgers and hot dogs from... fire were much better they would probably be much tastier because I guess they work as a family you know cooking rather than the cops who are on their own so hats off to fire out there and then to the developer that's building the affordable housing on 44th street Oh, my God. I could only pray that every developer that wants to come to the city comes up with a plan, submits it into the city, and is banging out a floor a month. And that's going floor, block, stud, and keep going. I mean, to staff, Shannon, I'm sure your people are on this. I mean, it's truly, I mean, I go every day. I have to drive that to go to work and go home. And I can't believe when I go in the morning and then when I drive home at night. Like how it's going. So, I mean, damn, if we have any other affordable projects available in the city and they want to do something, that's someone to partner with. Whereas we have partnered with some others. I know there's a lot of different with drainage and sewage and pipes and for some of these other ones. But, whoo, I could only imagine... this guy's moving. So please tell them, you know, you're duly recognized, not even from me, but from the neighborhood, are saying, I can't believe how fast this thing is going up. And I think that lake in the front, what a prime move to have that. And then to the other person that we hosted in the suite, someone who else is bringing a property forward, you know, I just hope that they could come up with something very iconic on the corner of 136th and Sunrise. You know, that's what I said. I said, I'm happy to see that you want to do density, two 12-story buildings with retail on the bottom. And it was just my opinion that I said that, you know, to be on that corner and to be the gateway to the arena and off the highway and to whatever's coming with Wisteria, and Metropica that whatever they put on the roof, Shannon, if you could direct them in the right way to really make something iconic on the corner of those buildings up top or something and what an unbelievable piece of artwork that they could put on that corner could go a long way to start that corner. And then maybe we could work with the gas station across the street. You know, they got that little fountain, but maybe... Maybe they could help, but I know the people who own that property and own that corridor and the service road wanted to build some apartments back there too that own the shop and center behind. We don't know if that is still a dead thing or... Right, I'm just saying. So if that could be another iconic corner, then you'd have two plus Metropica III that could have something really substantial on those corners, so... All right, that's it.

All right, motion to adjourn. Motion by Commissioner Kirsch. Do I have a second? Second by Assistant Deputy Mayor. Anybody in favor? We're adjourned.