Town Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. If everyone could please find their seats. We'll call today's meeting into order. All right. Today is Thursday, September 3rd, 7.12 p.m. We will call tonight's meeting into order. If everyone could have their seat, please. Madam Clerk, if you'll take the roll, please.

Yes, Mayor. Mayor Danziger?

Present.

Vice Mayor Benberghi? Present. Commissioner Travani?

Here.

Commissioner Valdostegui?

Here.

Commissioner Wangot?

Here.

May we have a quorum?

Thank you, Chief. If you'll lead us, please, in the pleasure of allegiance. Thank you. Item 1D, invocation. I believe our esteemed guest was not able to make it. We have somebody filling in.

Thank you.

I just wanna welcome everybody and may God protect us and may we always make the right decisions for this town. God bless us all, thank you.

gather this evening in gratitude for the beautiful town of Surfside and the vibrant community we share. We ask for wisdom, patience, and clarity for our mayor, commissioners, and town staff as we work together for the betterment of our residents. In this season of renewal, with upcoming holiday of Rosh Hashanah, we offer a heartfelt prayer to the entire community. May the year ahead be remarkably happy and sweet one for all. May our decisions be guided by a spirit of unity, may our homes be blessed with health and peace, and may the days to come be filled with sweetness to be shared prosperity and mutual respect for all. I also see some students here. Hope everyone's off to a great year.

Thank you. 1E, agenda and order of business. Any additions, deletions, or linkages?

Yeah, I'm sorry. There's a walk-on item that I have. And I have it here. I sent it to Sandra. And I would like also that nine, hold on a second, 9G, I would like to move it, you know, like earlier.

All right, is there a second?

No. I'll second. I'm just curious what the 9K is.

It's the ADA beach mats. So it's actually 9H on the amended agenda. Oh, I see. Amended the agenda last minute.

Okay, second. Second.

Mayor, if I may, what is the walk-on item by the Vice Mayor? She did not disclose the name.

The walk-on item is Aqua Child Swim School.

And it will be item 9K.

It's basically survival classes for the kids, for the community center.

So we're adding 9J, survival swim.

That's correct.

Hold on, hold on. So the thing is that I want this to really do it tonight since we need to budget it. We need to put it in the budget and we're working on the budget. So if we can also move it, I'm sorry, it's not gonna take long, but if we can move it for earlier.

Could we just try to get through the other things too?

Yes, of course. But this is for the benefits of the kids. I mean, I don't even have babies. It's for the residents. It's not for me.

Yeah. All right. I second that. I do have actually, though, some agenda suggestions as well.

So maybe if you don't mind, I can state them and maybe we can go into one motion. Let's do it.

Yeah. Let's finish this motion and then we'll move on to yours. Yeah, yeah. All right. My second then stands.

All right, all in favor, so nine H and J go first. All right.

Nine.

All right, so I'd like to add an item 1G to talk about board and committee appointments for the youth council. I guess for the end of the discussion items, I'd like to have a discussion of enforcement of residential parking limits. It's something I'm hearing a lot from residents about, and we talked about it a lot with Mario, but I feel like we need to restart that conversation with Sandra. So that would be at the end of the nines. Oh, and sorry, I would also like to pull item 3i from consent just to briefly discuss it, the acting town manager agreement. So to restate, I'm adding 1G, board and committee appointments, moving 3I to the fives, and then adding a new 9K or whatever it is to discuss residential parking enforcement. What was the first one? 1G, board and committee appointments. Okay. Is there a second for these? I'll second that. I just want to make sure we make 3I a priority. 3I?

I'm happy to move it to 5A if that... Well, it'll go after the threes before four.

Okay.

All right. All right.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Anybody else? All right.

Do we have commission remarks?

All right. Give it a second. All right, Mayor and Commissioner Martz, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us. We see a full room. Always so excited to see that. Hi. I'm just going to take two points of privilege. Number one is on June 24th, we honored and we gave the key, this commission approved the key to the city to three individuals. who collected over $2 million for the families, which were given out immediately, helped with temporary housing, and even helped with the housing afterwards over the course of the years of people that lost their homes. On June 24th, one of the founders of that organization was there to accept. Tonight, we have another member that is here. She, I believe, was out of town, but has moved back to Miami. Sofia Bencion, if you want to just get up, say a few words, and then the commission would like to present the key to the city to you. And I didn't tell you you'd be speaking, so surprise.

So I got a promotion since you gave the key. I changed my last name.

Congratulations.

Thank you. I'm really honored and humbled to have taken a part in helping people that really needed it, and I'm hoping that I can continue that legacy. Although I'm in Brickell, but I'm just a half hour away, so I'm hoping to help out as much as I can.

Thank you yes, we were very close to remember you at the show all day long for weeks and weeks straight so aside from the money. You know we appreciate everything you do wish it was taking place during the that day, but we're happier here and we've got a little something for yourself, the Commission would join me up front. before we continue i'm just going to quickly turn it over to chief metellus has a little presentation i know that over the course of the last couple years we've neglected to recognize and honor those officers that have stood out over the months so i'll turn that over to the chief good evening mayor vice mayor and commissioners i'm not a manager so

But a week and a half ago we had a an award ceremony so and thank you for the mayor the vice mayor and the commissioners for coming and the and also the employees that they came out to support our officers. So yes, what what what occurred was we we had a bunch of awards that we hadn't given out and they were they're sending back from a couple years back so With our officers, you know, some of the most important work our officers do for the community members happens quietly moments before they become an emergency. And we recognized the officers and civilians as well. They're very important at our department awards ceremony. So we want to want to publicly also thank our honorees for their dedication, service and unwavering commitment to keeping Surfside safe. So I'm going to read off the honorees. For the Officer of the Year for 2024 and 2025, the Officer of the Year for 2024 was Officer Tammy Campbell. For Officer of the Year 2025 was Officer Errol Lage. Officers of the Month for 2024 were Officer Arch, Officer Campbell, Sergeant Cruz, Officer Gentile, officer Leighton officer Lewis that had to do with the call that they were on where they ended up rescuing a person who suicidal option that goes the quarters for for the first quarter 2025 through the 4th quarter or officer Smith officers Leighton officer Gabriel. And the civilians of the quarter for 2025 were some of our parking officers, our community service aides, and one of our communications operators who included parking officers Acosta and Perez, community service aides Furman and Laurent, and communications operator Stephanie Kamer. So again, for every honoree we want to thank you and thank you again, mayor vice mayor commissioners for being at the award ceremony as well as the other employees and appreciate your time, thank you.

Thank you chief and thank you question for your patience opening up to mission comments.

I guess I'll start. It's nice to see all of you here. In my September Gazette column, I wrote about our regular monthly meetings as a kind of civic ritual. And I wanted to say just a word about that. I think there's real value to doing the bulk of our business on a fixed schedule. on a time that everybody can count on and plan to attend. And we see that in this audience, not just the number of people here, but the state of mind that we're all in when we come here and gather with a purpose. As Commissioner Weingart said, I want to echo that. I think this is a season of renewal, and I want it to be that. And I hope that one thing we can kind of leave behind is the sort of legislation by fire hose that we saw in August. In August, the commission met four times in a legislative capacity and we pushed legislation through. Legislation was pushed through basically from soup to nuts with very little discussion. And I think that's bad for both the civic ritual that I was referring to earlier, but it's also bad for the legislation itself. And I want to just give an example of something that helped me to see that even more clearly this week. On Tuesday night, I went to the Miami-Dade County League of Cities dinner and I sat with some council members from Bay Harbor. And we were just talking about some of the new laws passed in Surfside, including the law about commissioners now being allowed to have offices. And I was surprised to learn that in Bay Harbor, the town manager has a strict policy that the council members are not even allowed to be in town hall at all during regular hours. They don't have key fobs to get in. That's how strongly they believe in protecting the council manager form of government in their town. I mentioned that in the past, a former commission member had told me that's how things used to be in Surfside, not by law, but by custom. We have veered in a completely different direction, and I only learned that about Bay Harbor through the regular course of events, you know, sitting next to people at the League of Cities. When we rush things, when we meet four times in one month to legislate, there isn't time for information to percolate up, for people to learn about what we're talking about. And I think you get bad policy as a result. And so I'm hoping that the regular monthly meetings like this one can really be the place where we take our time. gather reflectively and collectively and make the best policy that we can for the town in the spirit of the invocations that we heard tonight. But I think what we did in August was not ideal. And I think that's just another example of that.

So I just wanted real quick to say that I'm sorry for what happened yesterday and the day before yesterday with that water main break. That was very, very, very unfortunate. I'm really looking forward to see the root cause analysis of this, to see what happened, why it happened, and to ensure that it doesn't happen again because I mean my experience in society that in the past that we've had some some issues but usually was maybe a couple hours. This was very very long and I'm I can imagine that for some people that must have been really hard especially overnight so yeah well we'll do our best I guess is a town to make sure that doesn't happen again.

and following from commissioner trevani uh thank you to our public works and our neighbors that came out to help as well um that was uh tremendous i know it's greatly appreciated i also wanted to recognize and to add to chief metallis myself my wife and i got to witness i think it was just this past friday and we went out to the beach for a few moments a few minutes and while we were there there was another family that was here on vacation from the uk and their six-year-old daughter went missing. And she happens to suffer from epilepsy, and they were concerned that she had an incident in the water. Well, we call 911. Within moments, Chief was there himself with the entire force. They initiated a search very rapidly in conjunction with the Marine unit from a neighboring town as well. and very rapidly brought back young Carla to her parents and reunified them. It was a very special moment, and I'd just like to congratulate and recognize Chief for that one.

I do have to say something about that. So I did get there. That was the last one there. That was the cops. That was all them. That was Sergeant Cruz, Officer Matthews, Officer Arch, and Officer Lage. And they got there in a flash. I've been working with a lot of these guys for almost 20 years now. And that was, the credit really should go to them. That was all them. So please congratulate them.

Madam Vice Mayor. The opening speech. All right. All right. Moving on to item three, consent agenda. Sorry, we have 1G. 1G. Sorry. Oh, sorry. Wrote in the wrong one.

OK, 1G, youth council. So yeah, we discussed this at the August meeting. And we didn't have the full complement of commissioners at that meeting. So I'm hoping we can make some progress on it tonight. So I reviewed the charter of the council and had some correspondence with the town attorney.

And he confirmed that the five seats that we

added through the changes made on July 16th are reserved for returning members. These are the at large seats they're called. So we have a situation right now where six returning members have applied for five at large seats. My suggestion was that We work with the attorney and just maybe find a way to seat all six. That would be my preference. But in the alternative, if we have to, and I don't want to do this, but we could ask the attorney just to draw lots for five. But I mean, I foresaw this problem in July, and that's the reason why I voted against this charter. But here we are. I do think we should appoint the five at-large members tonight, because the six applicants are the only people who are eligible for those five seats. So I'd like to make a motion that we appoint, as I said, and maybe we can get advice from the town attorney on this, whether we can appoint all six. My motion is to appoint all six if that is legally permissible in the alternative to draw lots for five of them.

So I want to ask if Steve wants to make any remarks on this. Steve?

Yeah, sure. Can you all hear me? Yep. Yes. Great. OK. So unfortunately, the charter itself doesn't provide a mechanism like many of our other committees does for selecting the non-voting members. So I was going to suggest that probably the most equitable way of doing this, and this is up to the commission because you're going to have to decide amongst yourselves sort of the best way to do it, was to have each council or commissioner who's prepared to make the who's prepared to make what I'm going to call a nomination can do that. And then you can vote on them as opposed to an appointment. The appointment, they're not really appointments. Appointments are the five sort of as of right members. The other five non-voting are at large, and you don't really get an individual appointment. So what I think is probably a way to fairly do this is just to the extent that you want to make the decisions tonight, that each of you choose a person who you'd like to nominate. and go ahead and have the commission approve it. And that way you can do that. And those people that are ready to make those nominations tonight can do that. If you're not ready yet, then you may have to wait till the next meeting to finish that off. But again, Commissioner Velastegui is correct that these are limited to the people who previously served. So that's the group of people you would nominate from. You could do it any other way, you want a lot, you can throw all six names in a hat and the clerk can just pull them out and five out of the six will become, the first five out of six will become the members. There's no right or wrong way to do this, but you can do it certainly this evening and however, whatever process you wanna follow.

Is that helpful? Yeah. I mean, we talked about because they weren't here for that. I think it's terrible for one child to be left out. And I also think that it's even worse if that's done through a public process where we're nominating them. So I really I appreciate the town attorney's advice, but I really don't want to do it that way. I don't want us to each name an at-large member. I just think that's... I mean, I don't even feel qualified to decide. So I really wish we could just appoint all six. And if there's something that we can do to do that, that would be nice. Otherwise, I would ask the town clerk or someone to draw lots. Yeah.

Well, I personally would like to find out who's applying and see who's most eligible and go through that history, and that would be my pick. Come again, sir?

What was that?

I'm saying there's five spots. There's five commissioners. I mean, you could throw yours up and flip up a coin if you want. I would like to do my due diligence.

I mean, I think some of these kids who are waiting for the at-large appointments, I mean, they've already started their senior years. They're applying to colleges now. One of them applied in April. Several applied in May. And they're still waiting. And I think the Youth Council meets for the first time next week. I would love for them to be part of that. We've kept them waiting for so long. I mean, is there any interest in trying to just seat all six? I mean, that is my preference, and I would like to see how we can make that happen. I don't see any reason to have to choose here.

What happens when a kid wants to join next week? It's seven, then it's eight, then it's nine?

They are the only six eligible for that seat.

Currently.

They're the only returning members.

It's open to anyone.

No, that's what the attorney just said. These six applicants are the only applicants for the at-large seats. They're only people in town eligible. So nobody else can come out. And we have to choose five of them, which I think is terrible. But here we are. And I think they should be able to start next week. They're already in school.

I mean, the charter says five and five.

Five and five, right?

All right, so my motion, and there is a motion on the table.

By the way, the charter that they wrote and presented to us, right, that we adopted.

I know, and I raised...

I just want to be clear because I know I'm going to be the bad guy next door tomorrow, but this was the charter that they wrote, presented to us, that we adopted, and we said five spots. Right, and at the time I raised the objection that this is going to leave one person out, and here we are. Listen, that's the way things work. So unfortunately, if you want to do a lottery so you don't have to feel guilty, then I don't care if that's the method you want to take. Go for it.

You know, so my motion is what it was. I'm hoping for a second that we appoint all six if we're legally allowed, and if not, we draw lots.

All right, second.

Okay, so I don't think you can appoint six based upon the charter which was adopted by the resolution. I think you are limited to five. Again, how you make that decision, if a majority of you want to do it by lots, you can do that. And otherwise, my suggestion is just to simply make a nomination, which you could do tonight, or you could do it any other time.

I mean, yeah.

There's only one kid on this list that I know.

So I want to say something. I mean, it's not that we are evil people, that I'm a bad person. We don't want to play bad. We just have to agree with what the charter says. I feel very guilty, very bad, choosing from six. We have to choose five. Yes, it feels terrible to leave one, you know, to be left out. I feel terrible. But the charter is a charter. I mean, there's nothing we can do about it.

I mean, I also had like five people ask me to be on planning and zoning, and I had to choose one. Like, that's how this works.

I mean, I feel bad, but.

So anyways, whatever. You flip your coin. You do what you want. I'm going to pick Joan Epstein, if he's still eligible. And you guys can take who you want.

I just want to say, well, there's a motion and a second, I think. I mean, look, if we pick them, the motion and the second is to draw lots then. But I'm not comfortable with the idea of one child being excluded through a public process. Can we please not do that?

It's by the charter that we are still bound by law. But we don't have to name them. We approved the charter that they did, right? You want six spots. They said five. This is the rules that we're going by. I don't want to start opening up this item all over again because here we are, month five, discussing the same item. So let's move forward. Let's choose it however method you want. You want to draw lots. You have your motion. You have your second. Let's call the roll. I'd like to choose somebody that I know and take it from there. It is what it is. Madam Clerk.

Just so we can go back to motion. The motion is to draw lots on the appointments, the large appointments.

Yep.

Commissioner Wyngott.

I'm gonna nominate Isaac Pak, impressed by the.

Then the vote is no. Yeah, it's either a yes or no.

Oh.

And so again, to be clear, just so you know what you're doing, you are voting on the method of selection right now, which is do you want to select them by lot, which would mean put all six names in a hat and pick out five, and those are the choices. rather than making an appointment or nomination like you were about to do. So the motion is to go by lot. If that's not approved, then I suspect that you'll do it just by nomination and vote.

Commissioner Trevani, can you, are you okay with that motion and you continue to second it?

So this is to draw the vote. Yeah. You're seconding to draw the vote. Yeah.

Yeah, I do. Commissioner Weingart?

I mean, I mentioned the name already, so I don't really want to back out from that, so I'm gonna say no.

Commissioner Trevani?

Yes.

Commissioner Wildostegui?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Bambamurgi?

So we're voting for 5-5 or 5-6.

We're voting right now to either make a lottery or choose someone. So if you want to do a lottery, the answer right now is yes. And if you want to actually select someone from the list, the answer is no.

Yes. Lottery. Yes.

All right.

I mean, it's a very hard... What's your advice, attorney?

It's up to you. Yeah, this is not.

I just, I don't wanna be the bad guy. I love youth. If I can choose all of you and all teenagers of the town to be part of this board, I would. I just don't wanna be.

Well, if you don't want to make a selection of your own and you're not prepared to make a selection of an individual, then you would vote yes to go by lottery. That way, it's really not your decision. It'll just be by the clerk's draw.

Okay. So I'll vote. The clerk will choose for me.

So I'll say yes.

Yes.

Mayor Danziger?

I'm going to say no. I would like to actually put a little thought into it, but OK. Mayor, the motion carries. Yep. All right. Moving on to an appointment of a board. It doesn't require public comment. There is no decision here.

OK. the, what you should probably, do you want to go forward now? Now that you've decided on the method, do you want to actually go forward and do the?

No, the clerk will do it offline tomorrow. They'll notify the children and that's where I will take it. I think we wasted enough time in this meeting on this item.

Okay.

Yeah. But it's going to be done tomorrow, before the meeting.

So long as you're, so long as you're not, no, the next meeting is the 9th.

Yeah, yeah, then they'll take care of it tomorrow.

Okay, so long as you're not voting, that's fine. If you were voting, you would have to actually disclose those votes. But if you're not voting and you're delegating the function to the clerk through lots, they can do that.

All right. Moving on to item three, consent agenda. Can we get a motion to approve? So moved. Is there a second?

Second.

All right, 3i has been removed from this. Madam Clerk, let's call the roll, please. I don't see any speaker cards in this.

Commissioner Tramani?

Yes.

Commissioner Valdostegui?

Yes, on consent.

Commissioner Weingart?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Pomerge? Yes. Mayor Danziger?

Yes.

Mayor, the motion carries.

Thank you. Moving on to item 3i, acting town manager agreement. Madam Clerk, if you'd read the title of the resolution into the record, please.

Yes, Mayor. Item 3i, a resolution of the Town Commission of Town of Suiza, Florida, approving contract in the number five with keys and associates in force.

3i.

The new 3i.

My apologies. A resolution of the Town Commission of Tar Heels of Florida appointing Town Clerk Sandra McCready as acting Town Manager in addition to her duties as Town Clerk, approving the interim employment agreement sustainably in the form attached her to us exhibit A, providing for authorization, implementation, and providing for an effective date.

Thank you. All right, can we get a motion to approve?

So moved. Is there a second?

Second. Second.

All right. Opening up to public comment and then to commission, Ms. Salazar. Two minutes, please.

Allie, Ms. Salazar, 9317 Bay Drive. First of all, the kids all came to talk on item 1G, so that wasn't OK that you just deprived them of the right to speak, which is why it was important that you not change the rules at the last meeting, which you did. I wanted to say that I've been working with Sandra for many, many years. She's an amazing contributor to the town, and I think it's a good idea to have her acting as interim right now. I hope that because everyone's become friends over the years, that you can still maintain professional boundaries. It's hard to say no to people that you're really close with. So I think we can give this a shot, and I know that she's going to do the right thing. And sometimes she's going to have to say no. And I do love the idea of the key fobs being taken away the way the other towns do it. That's the only way to maintain independence. This is a manager form of government. The most important person in the town right now is Sandra. And I feel better knowing that that's the case right now. I don't feel okay knowing that everyone's got their hands in the pot trying to influence that. So I would urge you to, I mean, it's too late. You already voted in the middle of the week with no one at the meeting to give yourselves office space and be up in her business all day long. It's a mistake. It's going to be a problem for her to do her job. It's going to be a distraction. I would urge you to give her her space and abide by the rules. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Does anyone else want to speak on this item that hasn't submitted a card? Please step up. Seeing none, closing public comment, moving on to commission. Commissioner Valdostegui, you pulled this item.

I did. Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but I did want to hear, perhaps, from the attorneys on this. I was a little confused about, in the contract, section 4.1, page 234 of the agenda. And I think this is actually, I mean, I hope this is a friendly amendment. I think it's actually protecting Ms. McCready. It says right now, during the term, she reports directly to the town commission, during her term as an acting town manager, McCready reports directly to the town commission with respect to both the position of acting town manager and the position of town clerk. I think that actually is reducing her independence because in the past as town clerk she doesn't report to the commission and now she's being asked to report to the commission as clerk and i realize it's the same person but it is two different offices and i would think that she should maintain her section 14 charter protection as town clerk during her stint as acting town manager, and she reports to us only as the manager. Again, you might think I'm slicing the deli meat too thin here, but I was puzzled by that wording. And I wonder if we could just say she reports directly to the commission as town manager, as acting town manager.

So you did identify something that And we did that for a purpose because she would, in effect, be working for herself. Because in your town, unusually, the clerk actually does not work for the commission. So we wanted to try to create a separation. But if we leave it silent, I'm totally fine with that. Just want to recognize that... there is sort of this awkward situation where as the clerk, she will be reporting to herself as the manager. We wanted to try to create a bit of a separation there, but it's not necessary. And if you'd like, we can simply say acting, that she'll respond in her capacity as acting town manager to the commission and leave out the position of town clerk.

Here's what you all think. I'm more comfortable with that change. It just seems to, again, it gives her a little bit more protection in her role as clerk, which I think is a good thing.

Our charter already specifically states that the commission will not interfere with the duty of the employees other than the managers. I think it's redundant. I think you're trying to create a protection over an issue that doesn't exist because the charter already forbids us. And I don't understand, again, the problem that we're trying to solve with this.

Well, if what you say is true, then the contract as written conflicts with the charter. That's exactly my point. So if it's a minor modification to the contract, the contract should conform with the charter rather than relying on the charter to override it.

I'll trust the attorneys who drafted this. And if they feel it has to be changed, then let them change it. But if they're comfortable with it, we can move forward with this.

Do I think it has to be changed? No. But there's no harm in changing it. We just want there to be a clear understanding and distinction between the two positions, that they're independent. The way that this has been done in terms of the nature of the employment, what she's really doing is retaining her position as town clerk, but assuming additional obligations those of the acting town manager. That's the way this is structured. So, listen, it makes little to no difference. If it'll make Gerardo happier, fine. Take it out and leave it at town manager. Doesn't make a difference to me.

All right, so you wanna make a motion to incorporate those changes? We gotta get the motion first.

Making a motion to make those changes?

No, it's an amendment. There's a motion and a second already on the floor. It's an amendment to delete from the last five words, or six words, I'm not sure, one, two, three, four, five, six words in section 4.1.

Well, the motion was to approve, so whoever the motion maker was has to modify the motion with these changes as described.

I believe that was Commissioner Weingart, right? Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah, just the amendment would also impact the word both, which is earlier in that statement.

Correct. Yeah.

Okay, so as motion maker, I'm taking a motion to amend as suggested by council.

Second.

All right, so it's adopted by the motion.

The seconder of the original motion was Commissioner Otravani.

Yes. Now there's an amendment. Now there's an amendment. which is to delete the reference to both and simply have the reports directly to the town commission with respect to the position of acting town manager period.

Correct. So moved. All right, Madam Clerk.

Commissioner Valdosta-Gay. Yes, I'm sure one got yes, I'm sure that any yeah, that's been a murky. Yes, we're dancing or yep, Mary motion carries.

Thank you item for a one second reading rescission modification of ordinance 2026 1804 amending chapter 90 zoning article 2 of the code requiring planning is only board advice a municipal projects. Madam clerk if you read the title of the ordinance into the record, please.

Yes, mayor. I didn't for a one an ordinance of the town commission of 10 of sorts of Florida repealing ordinance number 2026 dash one 804 this entire year leading to plan is only where powers provided for reinstatement of the town could to its previous version provided for civility provided for clarification and inclusion in the code, but if our conflicts and provide for an effective day at a 4, 8, 1.

All right Mister attorney if you'll do a brief intro and then we can ask for a motion for we open up for public comment.

Sure. This is second reading of an ordinance. You passed this on first reading. This simply returns back to the original ordinance. And what this does is leaves the full power over design of public projects, municipal projects, with the commission. It doesn't require that it be routed through the planning board. That's this simple amendment.

Steve, may I ask, and I just want to add in, because the Planning and Zoning Board reviewed this at their August 27th meeting, and there was additional language added, providing that the Commission may, at its discretion, request the Planning and Zoning Board review major projects in course. So there's a little bit of an addition there that was recommended for approval by the Planning and Zoning Board. So that language is in the memorandum at the beginning of this item.

Thank you, Alex. I've looked at that. We face a little bit of a dilemma on a lot of this stuff because it doesn't really come through our office and we don't get to see it. And I went through that proposed language recommended by the planning board and it's really, it's troublesome because it has all sorts of references in there to terms that aren't defined I think it's going to be very problematic if you enact that as part of this this evening, although you could. But I envision having problems immediately with that it mandates that the manager now take all the items to the planning board which is exactly the opposite of what this ordinance does so you effectively just put the items all the items back before the planning board It runs you in circles. Yes, I know they recommended it. I would not suggest that it be adopted as they drafted it. It's going to take some work. If that's the desire of the commission to have these matters go back to the planning board under some circumstances, I think you should do that separately and move forward with this. Then if you want to have a planning board review, direct us to draft something.

All right. So let's get a motion on the table for now, and then we'll open up to public comment.

Well, we have the suggestion not to proceed with it. Can we make a motion for it to go back to P&Z to work with council on cleaning the language? Is that an option? Well-

I think you can just approve without the added language that was recommended at PNZ. Just the deletion as it was originally brought at first reading.

That's my recommendation. If you want to defer it, I wouldn't defer it back to the planning board again. We have their language. That's not acceptable language. So if you want to defer it, you can defer it and direct us to come back with language that you want incorporated. But you've got to tell us what that language is. I'm telling you that the language they suggested doesn't work.

So, I mean, I think the intent was clear when we spoke about it the first time, right? There is a process, again, a process that has never existed in this town, but we want to make sure that the planning board, which is consisting of professionals, is utilized as best as we can on projects that, you know, that affect the city. But at the same time, the commission should not be hampered by that and shouldn't be delaying projects, which was the intent of the original bill. So I think the intent is there. I think the motion should be to direct the town attorney to come back at the next month, because I think that the will of the commission, as stated in the last meeting, was to kind of come up with some sort of process. I know the attorney has expressed issues with some of the wording being too vague, and I think that's some of the stuff that has to be worked on, some of the specifics of it. I'd be okay just bringing this back next month. I don't think this is an emergency. There's no project waiting for us to approve already, and we have a little bit of time to iron this out before it finalizes. That would be my take on it. Again, I would ask for a motion before we open this up and continue discussion further, just to know that we're looking to move this forward in some fashion.

A motion to defer is always in order. I would like to get a little bit of direction from you on what type of planning board review you would like to see so that when I go to the drafting table, I know what to write. So if there is a sense of deferring this so that we can come back with some modification of it, I need a little bit of direction.

Okay.

If I could say something about what the intent was.

I want to, again, before we get into discussion, I want a motion on the table because that's how we start these things.

All right.

Make a motion to move this forward, item 5A.

I'm sorry, what was the last part?

Item 5A. All right. Make a motion to move this item forward.

4A1. I'm sorry. 4A1. All right, let's second it. Let's open it up to public comment, and then we'll iron it out. George.

All right, next slide. George Kouselis, 9225 Collins Avenue. I agree with the mayor's kind of direction as to mull this over another month. There's nothing pressing here. I do, though, disagree with your attorney except for one word. I really do disagree with his opinion on this. So the first sentence here, and this was really crafted, not to obligate the commission to seek the planning board's approval.

It says may at its discretion request planning and zoning board, um, review of major municipal municipal projects.

That's it, so that you guys may do it. You're not obligated to do it because one of the concerns was that you don't want this to unnecessarily gum up the works, but you do value their perspective. So this is kind of working out of the meeting you had a month or so ago of some people didn't want to do it at all and other people wanted to kill it, et cetera. This is trying to... thread that needle. So you may do that. Now what I would do is just change the word shall, the town manager shall. The town manager may seek the P&C board's advice and review. And what it does here, it also says that he has to do it in a way that doesn't interfere with the commission's normal review of such things. The town manager is running the whole circus here, he or she knows when the project is coming for approval before a commission, say in December, and has to schedule it so that the P&Z board's review doesn't push that into January. It says it right there. And so you're protected. I would change the word shall to may. They're not obligated to do it. But they may do it as long as they don't interfere with your normal work. Now, it makes a few definitions here. Major projects, important municipal buildings. If we do a storage shed, I don't know if we need to do that. We know what we mean by important municipal buildings. How many do we have anyway, really? And public facing townwide or district wide improvements I said district wide because we may do something with sidewalks or whatever in the residential area that we're not going to do townwide But district wide we would So and I think things like that things that you can see not infrastructure things underground but stuff you can see that are not just a random sign here or there but systemic through the town and the last thing is at appropriate intervals now unlike a public or private project when you see it which comes to you fully cooked you know they've been working on it for months that's the way that process has to work but this what in this process you really want to see it earlier you want to see it when commentary can actually influence the design so schematic design when And those of you who are in the design professions, it's a very traditional milestone early on in the process where you define what the building will be and what it will look like in the very broadest strokes. That is perfect for a, if you're doing a building for a planning and zoning board to have one bite of the apple and say, could you do this or that? And then you guys get the benefit of their opinion. It says appropriate intervals such as because for a signage project, there may not be a schematic design thing. For a lighting project, you know, every project will have its own thing. It's easy to say when you have buildings. But since the word may would be all through this thing, being tied to definitions is not going to handcuff anybody here. And it gives the town manager the ability to do something that doesn't bog down the schedule or the system. So anyway, that's my two cents on this. I think it's good if you want to mull it over a little bit. But the word I would change is may after town manager. Thank you.

Thank you. Eliana Salzauer.

Eliana Salzhauer, 9317 Bay Drive. I'm going to disagree with the previous speaker. As a trained lawyer, when you say may, it also means may not. You don't have to. And it's just like you don't have suggested speed limits or suggested laws. Don't kill someone. You may or may not kill someone. You may or may not speed. Unfortunately, you do need a process. Municipal projects are a big deal. And the reason why this ordinance was passed in the first place was not to hamper anyone or tie someone's hands or anything. It was actually to defer... just this judgment for actual experts. You all say that you really took your time to do your due diligence to put people on the P&Z board that know what they're doing. There are five commissioners here and only one of you is a trained engineer with design background. One of you. The rest of you are you know, like watching HGTV and picking out what you like or don't like. And that's not the way to do municipal projects. Government is really slow. It's frustrating. I've been in your seat. I was on Parks and Rec for 10 years. It took us a decade to get anywhere with the parks. It takes a long time. That extra month or two months is not going to slow the process down, but it is going to dramatically add to the quality of the project. You're going to get feedback from professionals for free, right? Without spending taxpayer money, you're going to get the expertise of the people that you have appointed to P&Z because of their knowledge and their training and their expertise. I don't see why you wouldn't want that. If you have a project, then they're going to maybe have something to contribute to it. They're only going to make it better. These are your appointees. These are, and not to use the word puppet, but the people you appointed were appointed for a reason. They're going to perform as you want them to anyway. So it absolutely doesn't slow the process down unless you don't even trust your own appointments, which is not the case. You specifically appointed certain people and you excluded other people because they follow your same vision here. So there's no harm in keeping it. I think that it really is important to maintain this because millions of dollars, like the movie Waterworld that got made and hundreds of millions of dollars down the tube, municipal projects can be the same. Once it starts, you're like, well, let's just finish it, right? And it becomes many, many millions of dollars thrown away. Just take the time, the extra time, meeting, which is really all it is, right? It's a P&Z meeting, then they meet again the next month, and then you're done. It is a drop in the bucket, you know, in the grand scheme of things. I would urge you to do that so that everyone can have a chance to speak about it, your P&Z experts can speak about it, and you can really put the best project forward with taxpayer money. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Just pick it up where it was. I did present it to the Planning and Zoning Board. You know, this was something that we worked on, and I thank you, George, for the input on it, and we've worked on this to get it, kind of massage it to a point where we felt comfortable presenting it and hopefully bringing it here. The attorney, I believe, is, you know, at the end of the day, the attorneys want black and white. You know, we don't want open-door interpretation in the laws. think you know where it says major or appropriate intervals I think we need to iron those out the intent was clear of what it is the Commission was looking for at the last meeting so there's no point we going redoing that it was very clear we don't want to be hampered on our projects but at the same time we would like to create some sort of policy within the town that it is the norm to try to put our projects before planning and zoning as part of the process so I Um, what is it exactly? I guess turning it back to the attorney, what can we do to clarify it to try to get something back next month aligned with what is written here without going back to the drawing board?

Yes. One of the things, um, this is the first time I think I've ever had any, uh, uh, conflict with George. Um, but, and, and by the way, may, um, resolves 90% of the problems. So, um, uh, where it's not mandatory and it leaves it up to the manager's discretion when to take this municipal projects to the board, I think solves that issue. That was my main concern of the direction here. You could actually, enacted with that change tonight. I'd prefer that you didn't because I'd like to make it a little bit clearer. This concept of appropriate intervals I really don't, I mean, does that mean 60, 90, you know, percent drawings? I don't know what that means. And the manager who may want to take this to them, you know, how often is she or he supposed to take it to them? Every three months? Every six weeks? There is some cleaning up here that I'd like to do. If you're going to vest the manager with that authority, I think we should give the manager a little bit more guidelines on when she should be doing this what a major project is so that she understands uh clearly what she should be taking there or at least you want her to take there so if you adopted it with may i would not be unhappy we'll live with it we'll figure it out if you want to make it even better then defer it for 30 days and we'll come back with something that i think will be a little bit tighter

So Mr. Mayor, I'd like to speak to something you said earlier. The intention of, I mean, and this is really a general point to start. When we debate things that we disagree about, I think it's helpful to try to think of the other person's intentions, at least in a favorable light so you can try to understand the position. This was clearly not passed to hamper anybody. I want to get things done and built as much as you do. The point of this was to ensure there were two points. One was just to ensure quality design. We don't have a town architect. So that means that whenever we do a municipal project, the design is being done right now by just elected officials. We don't have anybody overseeing. And you get some very bad results in this town. And I just want to point everybody who's in this building, when you go outside, go to 93rd Street. the signage has a complete mishmash of styles. You have modern white lights. You have stop signs and other signs that are in a traditional black color with finials, and they don't match at all. And nobody thought about that. An architect would know that stuff. Moreover, and this is advice for the lawyer, and this speaks to the motivation, there is an inconsistency in the code. That's why we passed this. If you look at section 9017, paragraph two, it says that the Planning and Zoning Board shall conduct a design review for all structures to be constructed and renovated within town limits, all structures. But then when you go to section 9018, the design review process is laid out and it applies only to private property applicants. So we have a discrepancy in the code because according to 9017, they're supposed to be doing design review of everything built in the town. So we modified section 9018 to make it clear that the design review process applied to public buildings as well, because that is the plain language of 1917. That was the reason for this, right? At the beginning of the meeting, I spoke about the problem with legislation by fire hose and the chaos that it creates, and we're seeing it here. The commission, the mayor speaks earlier about the will of the commission was very clear. The commission had exactly 48 hours to discuss this before it passed on first reading. It went through a discussion item in the morning at 11, and then it went through first reading at noon. There was no deep thought put into any of this. And you can see that coming out in the hasty assumption that this was done with some malicious intent to hamper construction, completely false. This was done to correct a discrepancy in the code. between 1917 paragraph 2 and the more restrictive process laid out in 1918. If we revert to the old law, we revert to the old problem. And we wind up unprotected from the kind of bad design choices that have unfortunately plagued the town from time to time. I want to get things done as much as anybody. I'm not trying to hamper anything. But I want things to be done well and with a good eye for design. I also am humble enough to recognize my own lack of expertise. I'm not a design expert, though I do have opinions. I would love, since we don't have a town architect, for the experts on planning and zoning to give their expert opinions. Why on earth would we take that away? Thank you.

I have a question. So do we have that inconsistency if we revert back to what it was before?

If I may. Sure. Sorry. And Steve, I'll step in because Steve and I have talked about this for quite a bit. If you read 9017, it says all structures.

Let me read it here real quick.

Sorry. It says all structures based on the terms below. And then in 9018, it outlines the design review process and a process that's applicable to the single family homes, but then there's other site plan review processes for the other structures. And those are gonna be for the multifamilies and all that sort of thing. So I don't necessarily believe that based, you can read each category of the type of review that goes before the planning and zoning board so that you don't read this conflict into it.

But then you're turning the term all into surplusage.

It's all based on what is below and it breaks them down into different categories.

My apologies, Mayor, if I may, it is 8.15 for Good and Welfare.

All right, can we put a pin in this?

Yeah.

All right, we'll come back to you, Commissioner. Two minutes and 43 seconds, okay?

I'm kidding.

All right, so let's put a pin in this. We'll open it up to Good and Welfare. Thank you, Madam Clerk. All right, best part of the night. Michael Karukin, three minutes, please.

Michael Kerrigan, 93-65 Abbott.

Thank you again, Commission, for holding the meeting. I'm going to once again identify something that's not on the agenda regarding your upcoming budget meeting. I once again want to voice my hope that you will line item veto the $140,000 personal assistant for the mayor. I think that the mayor, if he wants this position, should identify the specific work that he cannot presently perform in addition to just emails, because $140,000 to answer emails seems like a lot. It's not a one-time expenditure. I want to remind you of that. It would be like $700,000 over five years or so. So I think you want to consider that before adding on another headcount to the payroll. There's also the pension liabilities associated with another employee. There is convenience for an elected official is not by itself a sufficient justification for creating a permanent taxpayer-funded position. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Crook. And Jonah Epstein.

Sorry, give me one second. Joan Epstein, 9317 Bay Drive. We already talked about this issue in the board, but I just wanna, I wrote a speech for it, so I figured I'd say it anyways. You guys already voted on it, but I don't know, just express my opinions on it. So good evening, Commissioners, Mayor, Vice Mayor, thank you for your time tonight. I'm here to talk about the future of our Youth Council and how we can maximize its impact in our community. The primary goal of this board is to get young people directly involved in civic engagement, local politics, and community leadership. Right now, limiting the capacity of our youth board works against that exact mission. I understand it's against the charter. This is just my personal opinion. When we completely turn over the board every single year, we spend most of our time just adjusting to meeting procedures, learning parliamentary rules, and getting our bearings. By the time we actually understand how to navigate the system, I speak personally on this, the year is over. The constant cycle of restarting holds us back, and as a result, our community loses out on real continuous progress in youth development. We completely agree that fresh faces and new perspectives are vital. That is why we need more seats, not strict caps. In fact, during one of our final meetings of last school year, our board passed a motion, I don't know if you guys got it, to actively expand the capacity of our youth council with a possible maximum capacity of 10 for future endeavors, showing that we want this board to expand. And expanding the board allows us to welcome new voices and ideas without sacrificing the continuity experience, and momentum needed to make lasting change. If we want young people to care about local government, we need to make space for them at the table. Expanding the Youth Council sends a clear message that our community values youth input and wants us fully engaged. I urge you to support the students that care enough about our home to be leaders in it. I'm asking for your aid to build a stronger, more inclusive foundation for our youth leaderships. I'm not doing this for my resume. I'm doing this because I grew up here and this is my home. And over the years, the Surfside I know and love has been vanishing. The once warm and welcoming community where I'd say I knew probably every single member on staff, every lifeguard, everybody. has been slowly vanishing. It's become staggered, divided, both in our lack of youth programming, all programming pretty much caps out at middle school and significant portion, all of my friends and a lot of people are actually above that age criteria. We have no programming for them, but also the politics that have plagued this town. So the children are our future and like the quote, let us lead the way. Don't let a seat cap cage our voices. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Jack O'Malley. Jack O'Malley, 9249 Dickens Avenue. I have just a brief note. Good evening, sorry. My name is Jack O'Malley, I'm a senior in high school. I served on the Youth Council last year and applied to serve again back in April. In July, I supported the compromise you guys passed, keeping the five regular seats for new members and creating five at-large seats for returning ones. I still think that was a right call for a fair balance. I'm grateful the commission decided on a lottery tonight to get the council moving, although we won't be able to include the six members. My only ask is that tomorrow's lottery happens somewhere returning members, if possible, and our families can be there to see it, since it won't be done tonight, and that the time and place gets shared with us ahead of time. Thank you all so much for your time and everything you do for Surfside.

Thank you. I'm having a hard time reading the first thing. Ms. Dominguez, right? She's not on here, all right. Constanza, okay.

Paul O'Malley.

Hi. Paul O'Malley, 9249 Dickens Avenue. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor and the Commission. Thank you for having this meeting at a time I can be here. It's very hard during the day as I work. And thank you for all the work you're doing. I know it's not easy. I just came to support the Youth Council. I think... I've seen these children grow in our town. I think they are actively participating, which is great. I know that the decision tonight was to have a lottery. I hope it is, under Sunshine laws, an open and fair lottery. And I think it's great to encourage the participation of the youth in Surfside. I think I became a citizen about 11 years ago, and one of our, not our duties, but our obligations is to be informed and to participate. I want to recognize that and thank you and also thank the members of the youth Council past and present and yeah that's it the other comment I would make is. The priorities of the town I appreciate the way the town is prioritizing development towards the benefit of the town for the budget items I do question some of them and I hope that you debate them fairly and openly. Thank you.

Thank you. On the sales are.

I think it's heartbreaking to see the Youth Council politicized like this. It was a wonderful program to get our kids involved, kids that grew up here in the community, to give back to the community. We try to protect our children, we try to raise them in a loving environment, and then we have to throw them to the wolves. Unfortunately, became the a wolf's den here um even from now it's six five out of the six like who's losing out on that and then they start naming names and it's you know i can't i can't do anything to protect my kid from this this is what the world is but we can we're the ones making the rules for our town we can create a better environment we can create an environment where all of you kids feel welcome and are able to participate and don't have to even question that the lottery is going to be a fair process And it's terrible that we're in this situation. It's already September. These kids applied back in June and May. There hasn't been a meeting. They were doing great programming last year. They were doing college information sessions. They were doing safety initiatives. They were doing a ton of stuff. When you went to an event, the youth council was sitting there signing you in and saying, hello, you got to know your community. It was an amazing feeling. And we've got none of that. There's a beach party going on this weekend. Youth council's not going to be there. We've had no youth council involvement. There's not a youth council meeting going on. This is the problem. We lose. When you guys sit here and politicize everything and think it was done to pay back, all you're doing for two years is settling an imaginary score. That's mental illness. That's not government. That's not good government. And the people that suffer are our kids. Okay, so that's the first thing. And I can't even believe that this has been dragged out. This is the simplest thing. You're putting kids on a committee to talk about doing nice things for the community. And it's become this like, oh, I don't want to do that. And we're not doing it this way. And there has to be a cap. They're not ruling the world. Nothing they do. These are non-voting members. They're not even voting members, these six kids. Like, and you can't have six non-voting members there. Whatever. It's just like Survivor. It's a game of Survivor. Anyway, moving on. The budget item. I was at that budget meeting last week. Thank you for having this meeting during the day, you know, in the night when people can come. It's great. Please make sure that all meetings are held at this time for the budget. It is... I'm going to have more to say about the PR firm later on because that's on the agenda, but... The audacity to ask that taxpayers pay $140,000 for a personal assistant to the mayor is mind blowing. Every time I feel like we've reached a low, we go lower. That is just absolute inappropriate use of our taxpayer funds. I got my tax bill. It went up. Everyone's tax bill is going up. We're getting less for our money. I don't have an assistant. I'm juggling a lot. Everyone up there is juggling a lot. Even if the town needs an assistant town manager, then hire one. But no one's sitting up there. This is not a job. Again, if you can't do it, you can resign. But it's volunteer, and you can have an AI assistant at your hand anytime.

Thank you. Sophia Batur.

Hi, my name is Sophie Butori, 9517 Carlisle Avenue. I'm one of the Youth Council re-applicants that a lot of you don't know. And I'd like to start this off with how thankful I am to have this chance to speak and to have had the chance to serve on the Youth Council Board. I see the decision has already been made. And unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much we can do to change this. Unfortunately, as teenagers, we don't have much of a political voice. I had a speech written, but now it's a little useless. So this new speech will now serve to call out the verbal exchange I have witnessed between you all today. When asked whether you all wanted to vote on straws or nominate, Mayor Danziger decided to nominate someone via, there's only one name on this list I know. Even though the question was straws or nominations, I found that to be impolite. It happened with Commissioner Weingart as well, albeit possibly for a different reason. Once the decision was made for Straws, Mayor Dan Zeger then proceeded to say that he wanted to put more thought into the decision. Yet his initial nomination was one of the applicants simply because it's the only name he recognized. Many of you don't know other Youth Council members, and that's not our fault. We have experience. We served a year. We created events. We talked to the ex-mayor and many commissioners. And I'm really sorry if you end up looking like the villain on Next Door, but I cannot sit down and stay silent while I lose further faith in the political process. Thank you.

Thank you. Dave Sanchez.

Dave Sanchez, 1089 4th Street, Bay Harbor Islands. I come with a bit of news from Bay Harbor. I have talked to certain council members and the mayor and other elected officials. In Bay Harbor, in the meeting on July, there's been a proposal to raise the tolls. It might affect for anybody. It takes the tolls, going to the mainland. The proposal of raising it would be from 225 Sun Pass, currently right now, to on December 1st, 325 Sun Pass. It's... It's a lot. Originally the proposal was a couple cents over years and such, but this is what the council wants to do. We have to replace the bridge for certain reasons. But another thing that came on that same meeting was that we have new lawyers. And these new lawyers were looking at the three contracts that basically control our uses of the bridge and the land and the Sun Pass and all the such. and they found and they decided that reading the contract they saw that there was precedent for a discounted pass for any eligible reason. So pretty much kind of target the residents of the town. And so they now have that ability. Now, current proposals, which kind of seems solidified, is from 360, that was the year plan, to Bay Harbor residents being only 200. Now, there are lots of discussions about what can we, form out of this by the council members in Bay Harbor. I suggest the council members, they couldn't really decide on one exact thing. They did direct the town mayor of Bay Harbor Islands, Isaac Salvatore, to talk with the other mayors in the area. And just wanted to update you on that. In my opinion, and I will constantly go to the meetings, I think that Surfside, Bell Harbor, even Indian Creek deserve to be on that discount pass plan due to the importance of reaching the mainland. And you'll be surprised how many other municipalities of individuals that have addresses registered in North Miami, North Miami Beach, Sunny Isles, Miami Beach, North Bay Village, Aventura for some reason. They pay for the pass plan. And so ongoing discussions should be made and let's see what happens. But I want to keep you updated on that. Thank you.

Thank you. Maryam Aishad. A fancy sticker. Thank you.

It is fast. It helps.

I was able to read it.

Marianne, my shine, 9225 Collins Avenue. with the sticker. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioners. I just wanted to bring to your attention an issue of safety and well-being. I have talked about this several times over the last two years, and recently over the last year with the former Acting Mayor Mario Diaz, and also former Chief Press regarding the sidewalks on Collins Avenue. They are in extreme disrepair. I know personally of two friends of mine who have fallen, and one is still going through rehab over one year, and another over five years still is going through rehab. And the first question each of those, the town manager and chief asked me was, well, did they sue the town? And that should not be the first question asked. And the answer was no. But how many falls do we have to go to? How many times does somebody have to sue the city before this really grave safety issue is taken into serious consideration? And as I found out, it is the town's obligation to take care of the sidewalks. That was my information. So it's terrible. It cracks the holes. And when it rains, forget about it. It's very slippery with the red paint. So thank you. And secondly, at the last August senior brunch, brought up that by a resident she asked that people respond to the postcard regarding the post office that they if they would like a post office in the area so I am the liaison for a lot of seniors. Thank you.

Thank you. Jeff Zomper.

Jeff Zomper, 8827 Emerson. I noted in the town manager's report that there was a memo from the acting finance director, the outsourced person and they went through a whole bunch of things that they're doing and they certainly do have a full plate. They mentioned in that report that they have not started on nor do they intend to start on until other work is done the audit of the municipal parking fund. I raised several times that we need an attorney review of the language and the resolution that entities signed in order to avail themselves of not having the amount of parking that would otherwise be required. Once the finance people look at what's there and what is, you know, I looked at it, and they're going to have the same questions. It needs to be resolved through a review by the attorneys, and that does not have to wait forever. Until after the audits are done and everything else that they're working on is is There they meaning the finance people are working on is done Last time I raised this there was a lot of litigation that was being worked on by the town attorneys that's resolved I'd like to ask again that that the the town attorneys come back with their opinion, which I probably, I may not agree with, but with their opinion on what is owed to the town and by whom. Because I think it's hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, those are all the cards I have for good and welfare. If there's anyone else that wants to speak before we close it. All right, seeing none, we will close Good and Welfare, open it up to Commission remarks. Commissioner, if you want to start.

Sure, thank you. I want to just say to Vice Mayor Kerrigan, I completely agree about the legislative aid for the mayor. I think it's an unnecessary position. And the points you raised are good ones. There are even more that I hope we'll talk about. A chief question that I have is, how is this person going to be hired consistent with section 14 of the charter? Because presumably the mayor isn't supposed to have any role in hiring the person. And I wonder if that's going to be honored. We haven't seen a job description yet. I'm very concerned. To the members of the Youth Council of the 2025-26 Council who are here, I just want to say, the appointments that happened tonight, I mean, this was not ideal, but at least five people will serve. This could have happened in August. At the August meeting, I made the exact same motion that I made tonight. And it didn't go through because the mayor said that if it passed, he would move tonight to undo the appointments. And he was counting on the votes of the Vice Mayor and Commissioner Weingart. He was quite confident they would vote the same way. So we could have had clarity on this a month ago, but we didn't for that reason. It's in the minutes tonight, and it's also on the video, so I encourage you to watch that. And you should know that, and your parents should know that. You should also know that the Youth Council could have been decided in June. It was supposed to be decided in June. Most of you applied in June. The rules got changed in June by the mayor. after the applications came in. I thought that was really unfair. I also want to make sure you know two of the regular seats are still vacant and there are some neighbors of yours who are high school juniors who are waiting to hear back and two of the commissioners have not yet appointed their regular seats and people have had applications in since May. This isn't, I'm afraid that Commissioner Salzhauer is right. This is a politicization of the process. I can't see any other reason for this. When we appointed the first two youth councils in the past two years, we just let everybody on, and it was very simple. Commissioner Maishai wrote to everybody advocating, just let everybody on. I don't know why everything had to change, but this should have been resolved in June. You should have been meeting this week or even last month, because it's an August to August charter. And you're right to wonder why that hasn't happened. Again, I want to say there's two of your neighbors out there who are still, at least two, who are still waiting for a word. The other thing is I've advocated if we're going to be selective, I think we should have a seniority requirement. When I voted for my regular member, I appointed a high school senior who had not served before under the new charter. I thought that was the fairest thing to do even though there were a lot of good applicants. I think that should be the way going forward, and so we can sort of depoliticize it as much as possible. I don't feel comfortable with any system where we are individually naming children in the town. This is not like the other boards. This is not like planning and zoning. We either let everybody on or we do it by seniority, but what happened this year is terrible. And again, I have to just say the truth about what happened. That's important. I know that there are other issues here that people have raised good questions about. I want to continue to seek clarity on the parking fund, Mr. Zomper. It's a great mystery to me. But I have to get that off my chest. It's important. And I think people need to know the truth about why it's September and there are still empty seats and the council hasn't met yet.

So yeah, just a few quick thoughts. So on the sidewalk, yeah, that's an interesting point. I think it's in FDOT's right of way. I don't know how we share the maintenance with them. I think if it's cracked, that'd be maybe something that is not up to us, but that's something that we probably need to look into. also because it's going to save money to the town because we have a few lawsuits that came our way because of that. Some of them I think you always have to see if the cracks and the condition is normal. for the standards or not, so that's I guess what we gotta look into. Then regarding the parking fund, so it's on one of the documents on tonight's agenda on the report, I think it's on the town manager's report. CONSULTANTS WHO ARE DOING THE ANALYSIS, ACTUALLY THE AUDITING FOR US, THEY'RE GOING TO JUMP ON THIS IN OCTOBER. I THINK IT'S SLATED FOR OCTOBER. BUT THE LEGAL TERMS, THAT'S ACTUALLY A GOOD POINT, SOMETHING THAT WE CAN LOOK AT I THINK IN PARALLEL TO THE FINANCIAL ANALYSIS. And yeah, we've had that workshop on the budget on Thursday. I expressed my opinion there too. It's unclear to me at least what the legislative aid would do and how it would fit in the charter. So we definitely need to understand how that's going to work. And regarding the Youth Council, I just want to say that I was very happy to see that you guys came out here, that you spoke. That was great. And I'm happy to see that we're going to get going on this. This is the most important thing. So thank you for that.

REGARDING THE SIDEWALKS, SOMETHING I BROUGHT UP AS FAR AS THE PAINT REMOVAL THAT WAS PARTIALLY DONE AND NOT COMPLETED. THERE ARE STILL SLICK SPOTS SO IT'S SOMETHING THAT HAS COME UP IN THE PAST BUT DEFINITELY A PRIORITY ITEM AND I DEFINITELY APPRECIATE YOU BRINGING IT UP BECAUSE THAT IS SOMETHING THAT IMPACTS EVERYONE AND AS COMMISSIONER TRIPANDI MENTIONED HAS BEEN AN ISSUE. So definitely something to keep on our radar. Thank you, Mr. Sanchez, for informing everyone about the E-ZPass discussion. I appreciate you bringing it. Sorry? SunPass. I come from Maryland. It's called E-ZPass there. But appreciate you bringing that up. That's something that's... important for us to know about and I'm sure the mayor's will connect we have seen wonderful relationships with our mayor's and we'll be able to relay that information as that comes forth

I WANT TO SAY SOMETHING. YEAH, JUST A FEW THOUGHTS, ESPECIALLY TO THE YOUTH COUNCIL AND TO EVERY OTHER BOARD. THE FACT THAT THE BOARDS ARE NOT COMPLETELY FILLED IN, THEY'RE There is no negative or hidden agenda or something negative towards that. There's no bad intention for that. Not at all. It's just some of us, we did not have the person to appoint or it's just there are no bad intentions. I hope you are smart enough not to get influenced by the hate thing. I hope, because none of us here have that intention. Not for the youth board, not to any of the boards. We are working here to make Surfside beautiful. to make the best for this place. We're working here voluntarily. We don't get paid. We're just putting our hearts into it. There is no negative intention, no hateful mindset towards meaning bad. I hope you're smart enough and pass this message to the rest of the crew, because you guys are young. Don't get poisoned by the hate, I'm telling you. There is too much going on, too much hate, some hateful people in this town don't get influenced. Suriset is beautiful. And there are so many beautiful people in this town.

Thank you. All right. Mr. Meischat's point, hopefully, again, we'll have a conversation with staff. Hopefully, they'll take a walk down Collins and try to isolate these issues before somebody gets hurt. As far as the post office, just FYI, the notice that went out, they've already found a spot. They're not asking for your input. They're looking to close within the next couple of weeks. We'll find out where and when. But that was just a courtesy notice. They weren't asking for people's input. They had a certain amount of space they were looking for that certain requirements and when they're middle of closing on a property when they do we'll find out where it is. It's should be relatively close but again they're looking for a lot of space. As far as the musical parking fund again I think the town has responded to that multiple times that there's no fund and savings put away it's been allocated to fix parking spaces and It's used for the town, but as for why it hasn't been a priority, it's because the people that we've hired for about $64,000 a week, their job is to file the reports from 2024 and 25 before our finances are taken away from us. The previous commission never filed any financial reports, and the state was about to take away our ability to spend our own money. That holds precedence over everything else, and that's where they're focused right now. I know they filed 2024. I'm not sure if they filed 25 yet, but regardless, that's what they've been hired for, and that's what the focus is before we lose our ability to spend our own money. As far as legislative aid, first we get it approved, and then we'll worry about it. Now, I'm not concerned because, as I said this at the budget hearing, this is not a new concept. Most cities have this, and we can just adopt and adhere to what a lot of the cities have. So this is not a new concept. And if it's approved, we'll worry about it then, and we'll look at what other cities have done. As for the Youth Council, I just want to point out there's been a quorum for the last couple of months. So as to why they haven't met, that's beyond me, but this hasn't been held up for this meeting. You guys are at large. You're non-voting. It doesn't play into whether there's quorum or not. THERE'S BEEN THREE MEMBERS CHOSEN FOR THIS BOARD AND THEY SHOULD HAVE MET MONTHS AGO. I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. THAT'S ALL I HAVE TO SAY. WITH THAT, WE WILL MOVE BACK.

CAN I ASK A QUESTION ABOUT WHAT DAVE WAS MENTIONING ABOUT THE TALL, THE CAUSEWAY, THE TALL AND THE CAUSEWAY.

Again, it's not really conversation time.

No, yeah, just a quick question. Did you get any conversations or nothing?

I haven't heard anything. I mean, Dave has brought this up to my attention. I'm going to be getting together with the mayor at some point soon, very shortly, and I can bring it up and see where they're headed. Obviously, as you know, it's not a mayor decision. It's a commission decision. Exactly, yeah, but I know you guys meet and talk. Yeah, and I'm surprised I haven't heard anything or it's been brought up, but we'll definitely be bringing it up on my end to find out what's going on there and see what we can do about that. It's going to come for a quid pro quo, I can guarantee. All right. Where were we up to? I think planning and zoning, the second reading, 4A1.

Yeah.

I think you had the floor, Commissioner Karani.

Yeah. So all right, so I think that here we're talking about schedule, we're talking about definition of the words that we use in this ordinance. So I'm okay with the concept of what George was outlining earlier that we kind of ASK FOR THE PLANNING AND ZONING INPUT ON LARGE MUNICIPAL PROJECTS AND DISTRICTWIDE INITIATIVES. I THINK THAT WOULD MAKE SENSE. AND I WOULD ACTUALLY ARGUE THAT MAYBE WE COULD, THAT WOULD BE MY POSITION, THAT WE ACTUALLY MAKE THAT PART OF THE PROCESS. Because if I interpret the concerns that came up at the last meeting correctly, the concern is when we have every, I don't know, like a trash bin. That is going to be added to the time that has to go through the planning and zoning. If that is a concern, then I think that by putting a good definition to what we need the planning and zoning to work on, but make that part of the process, I think that would be an acceptable way to move forward to me.

Sorry about that, I got distracted.

No, yeah. Oh, that was it. I'm done.

So first of all, again, I appreciate you supporting it the first time around with the intent of what we were trying to do. To be clear, this wasn't about necessarily trash bags, right, or trash bins. We had a former commissioner get up here during public comment and talk about how important this was, and yet for two years, they've never pushed it onto themselves, right? Previous commissions haven't pushed it. Somehow this magically came around right before we get into office. And if you watch the meeting and the agenda item, the intent was to delay. And to the point, same thing with the memorial, right? The memorial came forward and Commissioner Valdestegui was like, oh, we need to go to planning and zoning. And then they would suggest a change. It would come back to us, then we would have to push it to them. And before you know it, seven months later, we're still talking about the memorial. So in those instances, that's what we were trying to eliminate, because at some point we are the elected body by the people and we represent the people. That is what elected government does. Now, we also have a group of professionals, so we still want to be able to create a path or a process in which they are no they know they'll be tapped in the manager knows assuming we have that time um let's throw that on their agenda before it comes to the commission a week and a half later right our agenda closes three days after their meeting so that's by that point whatever project was going to be put onto our agenda should be flushed out usually at that point so there's no reason why that can't happen but at the same time We should not work restricted.

So what if, because that actually came up earlier, the design process is divided into milestones, right? There's a 30%, 60%, 90%, whatever. I think that maybe we should clarify where we need the PNZ's input on. Maybe we define preliminary design, for example, which is usually where architects get involved. And so that doesn't go back multiple times to your point.

So I think, I mean, Mr. Attorney had the issue with the may and shall, right? And then the second point he brought up was the clarification of when is that interval. Rather than just leaving it up to the manager, let's define what these intervals are. I'm not an engineer. As they said, I watch HHTV. So that's as far as my architecture experience goes. you know to the point that some of the things were said here you know that things don't match in town well that's what happens when you get a new commission every two years and difference of opinion and a different planning and zoning board every two years you're going to have projects that don't match that's what happens as far as bad design there's no such thing as bad design design is subjective one person likes it the other one hates it that's what it is that's the definition of art and design So to say these terms is not fair, right? What I like and what you like may not be what someone else likes. And what they like may not be what I like, but too bad. Whoever sits in this seat makes those decisions. Now, we're getting their input because, again, professionals. So let's get their input. Why not? They are our selection. We made that board. We have the faith in them. Let's show them that we have that faith. So we're all for it. I think, again, I don't know the intervals. I'd hope the attorney can work that out and present something next month that is a little more defined, if that's what the issue is. But I think as far as retroactively going back, I think the intent of the commission has already voted to eliminate this entirely, right? So we are sitting here and trying to find a middle ground, not to go backwards to the way it was. We've completely agreed. If that's the choice, we're eliminating this again tonight completely. So we're trying to work towards a goal that sets some sort of process in place but doesn't restrict us because we shouldn't be restricted from moving things forward at the same time.

There is, and just let me say this, there really is no process. By simply inserting the word municipal process into the planning and zoning functions really creates a bit of a mess The concept of the Planning and Zoning Board is based upon submittals. The entire ordinance contemplates that what's happening is that a property owner is submitting a project and that it gets reviewed. And now we're talking about a process where there is no submittal. And so that code section is not designed to deal with municipal projects. If you want to set up a structure for the review of municipal products, we can do that. And I'm happy to do that. You can defer it and we can bring back something a little bit broader that separates a municipal project from The other commercial projects, governments have this process. I mean, there's a chapter in Dade County's Code 33.313 that deals with municipal projects. It's a separate process. It goes to the county commission. It doesn't go to a board. That doesn't mean you don't have to do it. But governments have, for governmental projects, a distinct process of review. They're typically unique. these governmental projects. So if that's what you want to do, if you want governmental major projects, and honestly, I think that's important because when I hear about the design of a poll, I don't think of that as a major project. If that's a major project for a light poll, then we need to clarify that in this ordinance because I would not, if I was reading it, I would not consider that a major project that had to go to the board.

So could we all agree to have our attorneys flesh this out and bring it back to us?

Yeah.

Can you bring back a proposal?

Yeah. So right now there's a motion to move this item forward that's been seconded, I believe. So if the item now is a motion to defer to allow the attorneys to bring back a proposal for municipal development to be incorporated into the code, I'm happy to do that. That would be the appropriate motion to defer with those directions. And then we can bring it back for second reading with the additional provisions for major municipal projects.

All right. Does the motion maker accept the change?

It just takes a motion to defer.

Yeah.

Got it.

I'll make a motion to defer with the direction to draft code for municipal major projects.

Oh, I think if you defer though, you've got a, or set it on the table, you've got to set a date, right? Fine.

So we'll bring it back to your next regular meeting.

Okay. All right.

October 13.

Yeah. If you table an item without a date, it kind of dies.

Okay.

Um, who seconded it or that that was a separate motion.

It was a separate motion to defer.

All right, is there a second?

Second.

All right. Second. Madam Clerk?

Yes, Mayor. Commissioner Weingart?

Yes.

Commissioner Travani?

Yes.

Commissioner Vildostegui?

The motion is to ask the attorney to come back to defer? Yes.

Vice Mayor Pomergi? Yes. Mayor Danziger?

Yes.

Mayor, the motion carries.

All right, thank you. Hold on. We've had a request we have a if we can move 5d I have a 5a we have Somebody that's been sitting there for a while. So we'd like to get him home This is for Kim Lee horn street lighting. We're okay moving 5d up All right, sure Let me just read that in to get the item started approval of the proposal and project we horn and the associates and for professional engineering services for the Townwide Street Lighting Improvement Project. Madam Clerk, if you read the title of the resolution to the record, please.

Yes, Mayor. Item 5D, a resolution of Town Commission of Town of Charles, Florida, approving the proposal and project agreement with Kimley Horne and Associates, Inc., pursuant to the continuing services agreement for professional engineering services related to the Surfside Townwide Street Lighting Improvement Project, providing for authorization and implementation, authorizing the expenditure of funds, and providing for an effective date. Item 5D.

All right, can we get a motion on the table? Can we get a motion to approve?

Motion to approve item 5D.

Second. All right, let me just see if there's public comment.

Yes, I just received one card for public comment as well.

You want to just call it out? That's fine.

Jeffrey Zomper.

Jeffrey Zomper, 8827 Emerson. It's fine that you got this contract reviewed by the attorneys, and they're comfortable with it. But you need to, before you commit to $139,000, decide whether, as a commission, you're going to vote for new lighting as part of the budget. There was a guesstimate that was thrown out at a meeting that I was not at but that I watched of $1.5 million. Bless you. That's a guesstimate. You have no idea. You have no idea what kind of polls and how ugly they are going to be that Florida Power and Light are going to provide you. You have no idea what the cost of nicer polls, which you're certainly going. I can't wait to watch this commission choose polls. You may want to use the Planning and Zoning Board for that. But how can you approve a contract, unless you are approving it conditionally, for $139,000 without knowing what you're going to be doing from a budgetary standpoint on this item. There's a number of other items that you're also going to be addressing this evening, and I'll be back up again on those, that also, too soon. You've got to figure out what your budget is going to be. because the offsets in the budget is either utilize what the first budget draft had for surplus for these items, which you may choose to do, or continue with the surplus, or reduce taxes. Those are all of the choices. But all of these things affect the budget.

Thanks.

Thank you. Anybody else?

I don't have any more speaker cards, Mayor.

All right.

I guess... Mayor, if I may? George, nothing? If I may?

Oh, yeah. I want to... George Kisselis, 9225 Collins Avenue. Having done a number of public projects, funding for public projects is never easy because when you appropriate money to figure out what you want to do, And then when you actually get the money to do what you want to do, they're not connected in a way. And I think, unfortunately, you sometimes have to move first because you won't know what the second answer is until you do some work up front. And that's just the nature of it. So I think, you know, you... move on this one, how you see fit, but I think you need to disconnect it from the bigger purchase down the road, because you don't know what that number really is, and this will help you know.

Thank you, George.

Mayor, just briefly, this item was approved by the commission on August 11th, under a discussion item. However, during your budget workshop, there was some discussion regarding the difference between solar and traditional street lighting. So we decided to bring Kim Lee Horn, a representative. His name is Armani Rodriguez, and he's gonna do a brief presentation. And then from there, the town commission can provide direction. However, the proposal you have in front of you is the one that the commission approved on August 11th, which is for traditional street lighting. So you will have to make the decision if you wanna defer this, if you decide to go with solar so we could get a new proposal or not. So with that,

To that point, I'll add again. This project, as far as street lighting, went through the budget workshop multiple times. This is a priority of the commission as it was a commission previous. The $1.5 million didn't come out of the thin air. It came off, remember, the Four years ago, we went through this project also. We had some sort of estimate in front of us at that point. So that's the estimated price, but we won't know until we go through this exercise. And to George's point, something's gotta happen first. So we're going through step one, which is finish the engineering, get the full report. And then we'll find out, right? So as to the point that the managers just made, there was a discussion about solar. Solar could be eight times the price and then that's gone. But we have to have these discussions first before we push forward with the project. So turning it over to you. I'll stay quiet now.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commission. My name is Luis Armani Rodriguez. I'm a Florida licensed professional engineer with a background in electrical engineering and a concentration in lighting design and photometrics. I was asked to speak with the commission today to go over, as the mayor had mentioned, the two options that are available to us. Moving forward with design, whether the commission would prefer traditionally grid-powered street lighting that would be owned and managed by Florida Power and Light, the local utility, or a city-owned solar street lighting system. Um, so just to speak at a very high, high level, a lot of words on the screen and they're available to you, but just to, to go over some important points, um, on these two systems as they stand, uh, the traditional grid powered lighting, which you are all used to, um, would be just an extension of that, of the existing system. It would look very similarly and the purpose of this proposal is to fill in the gaps that currently exist. in the existing residential street lighting in the city of Surfside, or the town of Surfside. If you were to look at it from a solar, or look at the system, if you were to use solar to fill in those gaps, the advantages that you'd see are that they are not, being not dependent on the grid, they're reliable in instances of power outages, and The nature of them, that they are not interconnected with the existing electrical system means that the installation up front is less intrusive for your residents and city staff. Some important considerations, though, for solar are that Then we can discuss that on this slide is that the aesthetics are going to be slightly different from what you may be used to. The polls themselves have to be larger to accommodate the additional electronics that are associated with the solar powered system you'll have both the panel sitting at the top of the pole. a battery backup system that allows the light to operate in the evening time, in the night sky, and then a larger pole base to accommodate the additional electronics that have to sit at the top. So with that, you would see an increased foundation, increased engineering as it relates to the wind design and speed, and additional concerns regarding the durability of not only the pole and the fixture itself, but also the sensitive electronics that are associated with it. To briefly go over the effort and the construction and maintenance effort related to either of these two systems, a traditional grid-powered street light is owned and maintained by Florida power and light the town would pay an upfront flat rate fee per month to operate and maintain each individual light fixture a solar off grid option would be completely town owned and maintained meaning that if a panel were to fail and the light were to be inoperable, it is the town's responsibility to replace that panel. The same would go for the battery or the light fixture itself. The big point on construction that I would like to discuss is that the main difference between them is the more intrusive nature of a traditional streetlight installation where we're not mounting a fixture on an existing Florida power and light pole where we would need to provide a new underground electrical conduit to a new street light location. There would be an underground trench from the nearest or from the FPL selected power source to the new light location that would allow that light to operate. You avoid the need for that trenching with the solar option, but your excavation is still an increase, a marginal increase, due to the fact that your foundation is going to need to be larger, likely deeper, to accommodate the wind speed requirements for the larger and heavier pole.

May I ask, you mentioned something, and it's a question I've had.

Is there no alternative that involves just putting additional light arms on the existing utility poles that avoids the tranching? I mean, is that a third option that we can consider?

It can be evaluated situationally. It's, of course, going to depend on where the appropriate pole locations of non-used Florida power and light poles are. Because ultimately this design is going to be driven by photometrics, not just existing pole locations.

Right.

So where both of those can match up, then yes, you would have an opportunity to save on additional trenching in certain instances. But if we're going to look at this from a true photometric design standpoint, there are likely instances where that is not an option because of, the lack of an existing pole in the location that it would be required for the photometric design.

And to what extent is there, like, an aesthetic consideration and just sort of the regularity? You know, because I can imagine, you know, you have dark spots and you want to address them based on the photometric analysis. But there's a certain, like, rhythm to street lighting, too, where you want to have poles evenly spaced and kind of balanced as you go down the street, right? So... So it can't just be ad hoc to the particular, you know, each site on each block. There's got to be a kind of vision for what the whole thing looks like. Certainly. So will there be a design option that includes just additional arms on current poles? Because I'm sort of inclined to favor that. I'm sort of... hoping that we can at least consider that.

I think the proposal for the traditional grid-powered lighting that would be owned and maintained by FP&L would include lighting where, in the situation that you've described, where that is an available solution.

Was the estimate provided based upon in any way the existing lighting survey that we have in place from a few years back?

Can you clarify which estimate?

I don't know what year it was. I have to pull that up. There was a lighting survey that was done a few years back. So was the estimate of, it was 139,000 that was previously approved by the commission. Was that based upon that survey in any way, or this is all new, fresh data?

Yes, yeah. So that, the study that was prepared is being used as a basis of the design for the proposal going forward.

Got it, and this may be ahead of ourselves, but with the solar option, I believe I've seen streetlights with an integrated panel, so you don't see something so noticeable and separate.

Sure, yeah, different manufacturers offer different solutions for the integration between the panel, the battery, and the light fixture itself, which can be explored if the commission would ask the proposal be revised for a solar lighting option.

got it and one more question we'll have here is given that we are uh in the hopes of undergrounding utilities at some point in suicide history um we you know obviously are going to be taking that into consideration with this uh with the solar option would you say it's more simple option to move a single pole where needed if other utilities need to be ran underground there whereas with the full underground with the integrated conventional lighting there's gonna be a lot of underground work done for this alone and then that may interfere at a later point with other utilities

Certainly, I think there's two important things to discuss there. Yes, the ease of moving a pole because it is not interconnected in the solar option is certainly available to you all at a future date. That said, the traditional option would still be serviced by and provided by Florida Power and Light. So the undergrounding exercise that would be up to the utility would also take this into account. And I think that they would then have the flexibility of providing and maintaining that street lighting continuity dependent on their future undergrounding.

I think that's one of the big points and things that we have to consider is number one, the electrical line, right? First of all, what is the cost difference that we're talking about, right? And right now it's all theoretical, but Is a solar option three, four, or five times the price, or is it, you know, what is the difference of a pole that is integrated into the grid versus a full solar option?

Difficult to evaluate in that the cost of the utility provided, Luminaire, is a fixed rate monthly cost assessed to the town, whereas the proposed solar option would be a large upfront cost with maintenance costs then amortized over the life of the pole. What's the warranty difference on these two? No warranty to consider in the traditional grid powered in that if a light fixture fails, it is on the utility's responsibility to replace it in place per the monthly fee that is assessed to the town. The warranties for the solar option, the manufacturers do of course offer warranties on it. They're not as, and I apologies for not being able to speak more concretely on it as it is manufacturer dependent. Um, they tend to not be as lengthy as the warranty of a, of a town owned traditional streetlight as opposed to a town owned solar light, mainly because of the sensitive nature of some of those electronics. Um, I think it would be important to note, though, that the cost of a of a solar light in the locations that we're looking at here would likely be more. Would like would likely see a larger cost to the town than elsewhere in the coastal considerations of these of these light fixtures and the corrosive nature of of the salt air to these. to these devices. So the additional hardening and additional coding that would be required for these electronics is going to increase the cost more than where you would see a solar light elsewhere.

And just to reiterate what the commissioner one got mentioned that if there is you know, assuming 5, 6 years we get the ssup we get underground and done. Fpl would be managing and moving the polls if they were tied to the grid as opposed to if they're on solar.

Yes, it would be on on fp and now and then at that point it's a discussion between the stakeholders to see are essentially to manage the fpl replaces the street lighting that is on existing poles that are to be removed as the power lines are undergrounded with a new standalone utility-owned electrical or light pole. Were you still in the middle of the... No, this is the last slide that just discusses the The situational recommendations that you would generally see in the design field for traditional grid-powered street lighting versus solar, where you could generally see, or in my experience, you'll see solar lighting used on a smaller scale for open space park lighting, widely spaced residential communities, master planned residential communities. You don't often see solar lighting backfilled to residential communities that currently have traditional street lighting that is existing to remain as the nature of this design is supplementary.

All right. I'm curious. Sorry.

That's something that we... Can you speak into the mic?

You can come on.

Go ahead.

Hi, Rivka Weingart, Mrs. Commission. 9595 Collins Avenue. I was just asking if there's any state funding or grants for choosing a more energy efficient, clean, green option for lighting up the town.

Great question.

Yeah, thank you for your question. None that I'm currently aware of. Now, if there was a request to move forward with exploring those opportunities, I think that that is something that a design professional firm would be able to help apply for if that was the desired solution.

Listen to that point. We've also had a conversation with our grant writer this morning and like we haven't. Not activated her but we haven't brought her into this conversation yet right. The commission is moving forward on this project. We haven't explored grants you know state grants and appropriations for not appropriations but grants specifically for improving lighting community safety street lighting and even solar and we're just starting to move quickly on this project without even having that discussion. So just to highlight that, there's still a lot of questions, but we were moving forward with the engineering, not the project. We still had plenty of time before the project came before us, before the project was scoped out, engineered, and designed, but we definitely need to be engaging with the grants, our grant writer on this, Christina.

Yeah, so... I think that if we were to consider the solar option, we don't have enough data to make a decision. That's how I feel anyway. It'd be interesting to see what it would take you to get to a point where you'd be able to provide a ROM for both options, like a rough order of magnitude for both options. I know the maintenance side is somewhat more difficult to estimate, but all I'm asking for is not, like I said, rough order of magnitude, so it doesn't have to be surface-side specific. It could be based on benchmark cost, typical of South Florida or whatever cost indexes you have available. And with that, we probably would be able to make it. Now, I don't know if to get to a ROM, you will need to further develop your study to like a preliminary engineering concept. In that case, me personally, I would suggest that we would look at how much that would be and how fast you could give that to us. But then with that, we could really see the two options because this would be a more qualitative decision than really like an engineering decision.

I have one question about this product, and there was one point I wanted to make to the commission, just tangentially, though I think it's perhaps might be of interest. We talked about this briefly at the retreat in July, and I realize what's before us here is for the area west of Harding. But when I think about the lighting problem in town, I think the biggest issues are on A1A, where you have this very sporadic lighting that's meant for cars. And the pedestrian environment is really dark, especially on Harding. It's a little late in the game, but I wish in a way that we'd started with A1A. I know that raises issues with FDOT and coordination, but I think some of the issues are simpler there because they already have the trenching, and we might be able to do something that's less intrusive, you know what I mean, with the kind of pedestrian height lighting that Mr. Kouselis has advocated before. I wish we were talking about A1A tonight. I realize it's a little late to say that. On the residential district, though, I would love it if we could get a product that was just an interim deliverable that was just kind of like pick a few Surfside blocks and show us a rendering of what that block would look like under different scenarios. Because these drawings don't show the utility poles that we have. And I am worried about the extra clutter from new poles of any kind. And I would kind of like to know what that looks like before we go too far into the project. I support the idea of improving lighting. I know it's been a very important one for the Vice Mayor and others, and I would like to move forward. I'm not 100% convinced that it's needed, and I just want to see what it will look like on a block. Are we going to get a moment where we can see the existing utility poles the various options on some blocks so we just know what we're actually talking about here? Sure.

The outline of the current proposal doesn't include renderings or artistic visionings for what those blocks could eventually look like. But that is an additional service that could be provided.

Is that something that we'd be interested in? I'm asking the commissioners here. Yeah, they're not hearing me. Thank you, Commissioner. I know you are, I know. But I would really like to see that. I kind of want to know what this is actually going to look like on a block.

I heard two points from you. Number one is how badly it's needed on the secondary streets, right? What's that? Number one, you had mentioned you're not quite sure how badly it's needed on some secondary streets. I don't live there, but I've heard from a lot of people in the residential areas.

No, no, that's why I'm saying I want to go along with that, but I'm curious about what a design is going to look like at the block level.

You're saying on an actual, like install a few there and see what that looks like, or on paper and design? Okay.

I'd love to see a rendering. Pick a random block where the photovoltaic analysis suggests that we need more lighting, and just show me what that block might look like under various scenarios so we at least know what we're talking about here. you know, specific vision that includes like what Surfside actually looks like, because this is not, you know, this is helpful, but it's hard to imagine, like those polls with the utility polls, you know, I just kind of want to see what that will look like before we go too far into this.

So we're not there yet. And we could chat GBT and throw it in the air if you want. But like, I feel like you spend the first half talking about Collins Avenue, which has nothing to do with the conversation tonight.

It has something to do with it.

It has zero to do with the conversation tonight. And then you want to talk about and continue like theoretically what it's going to look like. How about we move forward on the engineering of the project, get a price of the project, and then we can talk about the design and the elements and where they go and things like that, because we'll have a better picture at that point.

But I am asking, in the second part, and the reason, I'm just putting the point about Collins out there because I think we should talk about it. So I took the opportunity to say it. Yes, I realize that's not what we're debating here. What we are debating is the scope of this project, and I'm trying to see if we can get a deliverable that will be useful in the evaluation of the project. And it sounds like this is something Kimley Horn can do, but we have to ask them to do it. So I think that's very much on point.

But I think we have to decide if we want to go solar or non-solar.

The discussion tonight, we've already approved this item. So we're not going to go backwards in the conversation. The question is, do we restart the conversation that we want to reengage them to give us a plan with solar? Now, how much is that going to cost? What's the difference? We're hearing tonight that, first of all, they're not recommending it based on the elements. Number two is the entire cost is now on us, moving from now into the future, versus a system that is managed by FPL indefinitely. So I mean, I'm pretty sure that solar is nice theoretically, and it's good, as he said, for a park or for the walkway. But when you're going to start sticking hundreds of these things throughout the city, we have to maintain them. And in four years, they rot over because there's saltwater, because that's how everything works in this community. Can't keep a bicycle outside for more than three days before it rusts solid. I don't think it's practical. I think it was a nice solution. So I would like to just approve this thing that we spoke about. Let them get to work so we can actually have a project to look at. And then you can see where the poles look and what they look like. And we can choose the poles. And again, based on the engineering of what kind of poles, how they overhang, all of that was already discussed and put forward. And hopefully we'll have a better idea of that. But the discussion tonight is strictly, do we want to stop what we were working on and have them start doing a solar proposal? Or is what he told us tonight efficient? And at least for me, I've kind of got the overall picture. It's probably not the smart way to go forward. It'll cost a fortune. It'll delay the project. And we're going to look at it, and we're going to have a $2 million project versus an $8 million project, if not more. And the $8 million project, we're going to have to manage on our dime moving forward forever. And in five years, when the batteries start blowing up and they stop working, it's all on us.

Yeah, I don't know, like I said, we don't have the numbers, so I'm okay even with the traditional option. The only thing is, it's gonna be more disruptive for the town, because we have to dig trenches. Now, that's why I was interested in the numbers, meaning if the difference is staggering, as you said, I have no idea. Honestly, on this, I have no clue. But if to me, if they would be able to come with that at the next commission meeting, so in four weeks to prepare that, they show us the two options with numbers. I'd be okay with that.

That's another, remember, the $100,000 and whatever it was does not include the engineering and the cost analysis for solar. So now we're essentially doing two jobs. That's a separate thing. So either we pivot and we're focusing on solar or we're adding another $130,000 or whatever they're going to charge us to now do two of these engineering assessments. Right.

Do we have a ballpark of what the engineering costs would be for that? I know there's additional time.

From my understanding, you're not asking for a full set of engineering drawings for your analysis and understanding. So if this proposal was for $140,000 or $60,000, a proposal to provide, and I say it, but I, of course, without going through it all, I don't want to be tied to the number, but you'd be looking at maybe half or less to provide a true analysis that can go through both options and provide you an accurate cost number. Okay.

And for clarity, I was in the restroom when I believe you read through this part. Your firm is not recommending going the solar route despite some of the perceived benefits of it. I appreciate solar. I do a lot of them in the professional world. But I understand there are times when it's not, you know, there's a better way to do it.

Sure. I also see the benefits of solar. I just think that there is more often or not a time and place for these fixtures. and where you can actually get the greatest benefit from them. I think on a already crowded and busy residential street with a bunch of structures and existing street lighting that is not going to be converted to solar, that kind of clash kind of from a design side diminishes that benefit of the solar option in this instance.

So one of the other benefits that had been discussed was in the event of a power outage or major storm, we would still have a standalone lighting solution for our town, which would be of tremendous value. When a major storm comes through nighttime, it's dark. It's very dark. So are there options to incorporate into the conventional system that would provide some of that and mitigate that concern?

I think my short answer to that would be no. Based on my understanding of FP&L street lighting system and offerings, the street lights themselves connect directly to FP&L distribution, meaning that if a line is impacted in a storm event, Everything on that line goes down and isn't restored until FP&L restores it. So once the homes regain power, the streetlights do as well. There's no utility backup option for, say, just the streetlighting fixtures. That would keep them up in an instance of a storm while the homes themselves are without power.

So maybe we could, I'm kind of spitballing now here, but if we approve this tonight and then maybe we'll look at the option of having the first and the last pole in a block with a solar panel that would activate in case we have a storm. It's not, of course, it's not the same light that we have everywhere, but at least it wouldn't be pitch dark in the whole town. That could be possible.

It could be a much smaller scale.

Yeah. Creative solution.

I guess, can we incorporate that into this project that we're approving tonight?

Or is that gonna be? Are you asking? The project itself, as a photometric design, can accommodate the request for an additional light fixture type that can be incorporated into the street lighting. Impact to the overall design I guess would need to be the the proposal would need to be revised to include this to ensure that it matches your expectation Yeah, but but I would treat that as an add-on Meaning that because this is this is an additional item, right?

So if we approve this tonight, you can go ahead move forward. We don't have to wait but then you can send us the What the design value for that? and on would be, and then we would approve that separately as a change of order. Sure.

All right. Want to modify the motion? What are we doing?

Yeah, so there's only one, I'm sorry, one more comment because I think we talked about that. Do we, I didn't see, maybe I missed that, like a workshop, a presentation or something that we have at some point when you get to a point where you have your preliminary design in place and we take a chance, which is similar to what Commissioner Vildosti was asking about. I mean, the rendering is something that you could maybe, again, if it's going to cost money, you can put that as part of the add-on that you can quote. But I think the important thing is that at some point we want to see what this pose look like and decide.

Let's make the image more relevant to our community, that's all. Yeah, exactly.

So is that part of the proposal?

Not part of the current, but as you'd mentioned, it can be. Our team is fully prepared to offer you, to prepare something that you would all find, that I believe you would find a value that would allow you to visualize it, the impact to your streets and your community a little better, yes.

Okay, yeah, you don't need to go crazy on that, just something easy.

Sure. All right.

Yeah, I think residents will want to see that, because they want to know, how is this going to affect my block? What's it going to look like? Is there going to be a new pole in front of my house? We're going to get all these questions, so that rendering will help sell the project.

So we'd have to modify the motion? Who made? One second.

Yeah, I don't know if it's too crazy to ask. Maybe they can install like a couple of solar poles so we can see how in the meantime we're working on it. Maybe you guys can come and install a couple of them so we see really.

I'm not representing an installer or a contractor. I'm just representing the engineering design.

Right.

I know they're going to, where they're going, how separate and things like that. We're not there yet.

But if we know where to install one at least, so we can know if it works, how it works, what type of light it gives. I mean.

No, at some point I think we should.

No, we're going to see the samples eventually as we're getting there, but for now we've got to move the project forward so they can just study the town.

I love the solar energy because I've been hearing hurricanes, and when I come back, I remember we left, we come back, and it's like a ghost town. So I like that idea that Andrea... It's very expensive to have the entire town on solar, but to put here and there a few of them, 100%, I think it's a great idea.

If we put one in every corner or something.

Okay, so we make a motion, or how?

There is a motion on the table made by Commissioner Wangott to approve, and it was seconded by Commissioner Travani.

Okay. So we'll approve it, but just if we can tweak it a little bit and add those few to the corners, the solar to the corners.

I'd like to amend the motion for the firm to come back with an amendment or change order for the addition of a solar element at street corners as a backup in the event of a power failure.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's approved, but you're going to come back to us with the proposal. Sure. Okay. So I'm going to second that.

All right, you just gotta agree to the change, we're good. All right, Madam Clerk, can you call the roll, please?

Yes, Mayor, Commissioner Travani?

Yes.

Commissioner Wangot?

Yes.

Commissioner Buldostegui?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Bermudez? Yes. Mayor Denzinger?

Yes.

Mayor Zemushkin-Carris?

Thank you, moving on. Thank you very much. Thank you all for your time. Appreciate your patience tonight. Thank you. All right. Moving on to item five, a public hearing annual rate resolution of solid waste management service. The title of the resolution into the record, please.

Yes, mayor. Our resolution of the Town Commission of Southern Service of Florida relating to solid waste management services, including collection, disposal, and recycling of residential solid waste in the Town of Service of Florida, reimposing solid waste service assessments against assessed residential property located within the Town of Service of Florida for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2026, approving the rate of assessment, approving the assessment rule, and approving for an effective date. Item 5A.

Vice mayor if I may, this is a public hearing and the item must be open to the public.

Yeah, any comments, public comments? Okay, no comments.

Vice Mayor, this is the annual rate resolution. It reimposes the solid waste assessment at $400 per residential dwelling unit. This fee has been in effect since September 2025. We're currently in the process of having a study. We should receive it within the next month, and then we could reassess and revalue the fees. Right.

Through the Vice Mayor, so the rate that we approved tonight, this is going on the property tax assessment? Correct. So any change we make is for the future or? Now, I think we've spoken about this before, but just for benefit of the commission and the public, do you anticipate that... My understanding is that this is probably not going to be enough, that we may have to eventually subsidize this from the general fund as well.

That is correct.

Yeah, because I just want people to know that. Last year, we raised this fee. And, of course, whenever you raise a fee, people don't like that. But I think that the expectation is we're keeping it the same, but... WE'RE EXPECTING A SHORTFALL.

YES.

AND THAT WOULD BE COVERED FROM THE GENERAL FUND?

YES.

OKAY.

OKAY.

DO WE NEED A MOTION TO APPROVE THIS? YES. OKAY.

I'LL MAKE A MOTION TO APPROVE ITEM 5A IF THERE'S NO FURTHER DISCUSSION.

SECOND.

I will call the roll now. Commissioner Buldocegui?

Yes.

Commissioner Weingart?

Yes.

Commissioner Otaviani?

Yes.

Vice President Pemberghi? Yes. Mayor Dantzinger is absent. Vice Mayor, the motion carries.

Okay, next item, 5B, communication services proposal.

I didn't fight be a result of the tongue commission of some of sorts of Florida selecting public communications group LLC for comprehensive marketing and communication services for the town and selecting a service option in the amount of $300,000 up in for authorization. I've been for implementation and provided for an effective day I didn't fight be.

Probably comment.

Yeah, so 5B.

All right, Paul O'Malley.

Yeah, Paul O'Malley, 9249 Dickens Avenue. Thank you again for listening to me on this. I know it's the first reading of this. I'm concerned just about the need for a PR firm, essentially, for the town. I know we have a tourist board. We have a lot of public communication on the beauty of the town, the benefits of the town. I know we have a gazette, we have a website. Each of you are very good public communicators with your own Instagram. And so I'm just questioning the need for a $300,000 spend on more PR. There's a lot that happens in the town. I know there's a lot that's decided on the commission meetings. The town offers a lot. But I feel like this is an extra spend. And again, I'm interested in hearing more details on this. But we already have a lot of communication from the town. Now, could it be better managed potentially? But there's also, I believe, someone employed by the town in PR. And so this seems like an additional communication that seems, I don't want to say frivolous until I understand more, but I'm really questioning the need for such a spend. Again, $300,000 may not be a huge amount of a budget of $28 million, 1% of the budget, but the percentages add up over time. So thank you.

Thank you. Mitchell Kinzer. Not here. Eliana Salzauer.

Eliana Salzauer, 9317 Bay Drive. This item is particularly frustrating to see on the agenda. I was on the tourism board for the past two years. I was a commissioner, and for 25 years, I've been working in media. That's what I do. And so when I see something, there's very rarely an area of expertise like the lighting or the garbage. That's not my career, okay? But media is my career. This is the biggest waste of money I've seen at the dais since the last time they tried to do this with Deitch and, you know, we had, what's his name? The other... the other commissioner that got drummed out of town. Anyway, they wanted to do this as well. And it was ridiculous. This is not marketing for tourism. This doesn't bring dollars back to our town. If you want a marketing company to handle our marketing, you do that with tourist tax dollars out of the resort tax fund. That would be an appropriate use of that money. It means there'll be less parties for residents or less something else, but at least the money will be coming from a place that it's supposed to be coming from and used for those purposes. Our town is eight blocks long. If you go and ask residents, knock on every door and say, hey, what's your wishlist for the town? No one will say, I wish we had a PR firm. No one will say they want better, quote, Flickr emails or videos, more Mondays with the manager and Tuesdays with the trash and Wednesdays with whatever. Nobody needs more of that. We are getting enough amazing stuff here. We can see everything that's going on. When people say there's a sinkhole, yeah, because we all walk right around it every day. When people say there's no water, we already know there's no water because we turn on our sink and there's no water. We have a great police department that gets messaging out when there's a public safety issue. We have a great communications department right now. We have an in-house, fully staffed communications department with a person and an assistant in there. They are doing a great job. We have a Gazette that people enjoy reading. We do not need to be spending this money. And it's not $300,000. It's not a small percent. It is $1 million because it's a multi-year contract. We just talked about there being a shortfall in the garbage. You have extra money, that's what you're going to need it for. No one cares. It doesn't improve residents' quality of life. to get more emails. In fact, it's worse. Nobody wants more information. We have enough information right now. But we have the meetings in the evenings after work where people can attend and they can feel heard. That's great. The reason why people are upset is not because there's not communications. It's because you're doing these ambush meetings where there's not any time to get to them. That's the problem. So I would urge you to absolutely not spend this money. We just talked about street lighting costing $1.5 million, right? Great. You don't sign this contract tonight, you've got a million dollars to put street lighting in the streets. Everything adds up. This is not monopoly money. This is our taxpayer dollars. And this is not a first reading and a second reading. This is the only reading. Thanks.

Michael Carrick and 9365 Abbott. Again, I sent everybody an email on this. Hopefully you all received it and read it. I just want to read a couple of things into the record. Yes, I am opposed to this, but I wanted to remind everybody that why should you be entering into what is easily going to become a multi-year agreement before you even pass the budget, which is coming up. This could easily exceed one million over three years. The other problem I have with this contract is the why should an outside vendor automatically receive whatever raise a town employee receives? I think that's just weird. I think you really need to reconsider some of the items in this contract. Why isn't the vendor required to justify its own annual increase based on performance KPIs and market pricing? I also had some problems with the intellectual property provisions here. If Surfside pays to create these photographs and videos, why doesn't Surfside own the raw footage and original files? In my email I mentioned that There was a question to the town attorney. Hopefully, you asked the town attorney the question, but the question is, if the original footage documents town business, does it constitute a public record, regardless of who owns the material, and what contractual provisions guarantees the town permanent possession, preservation, and access? And what happens if some of this material contains pictures of a minor? You guys have, everybody talks about some of that, the proliferation of, identification of minors on the internet. The other question I had is what existing employee workload or outside contract expense goes away if we spend another $300,000? If nothing goes away, isn't this simply adding another layer of communication spending for, as the previous speaker says, we already do a pretty good job. Everybody knows about everything pretty much instantaneously. The only thing I think I don't know about is why a particular helicopter might be flying over. The other reason is just, again, there hasn't been a lot of information about the different options that were in the contract. In other words, why are you choosing a $300,000 option over the $210,000 option? What are you getting for the additional $90,000? So those are just some of the items. Again, I think that this is another one of those line items I think you should delete out of the upcoming budget. I think you guys are on the right course with the budget overall, but there's just some items there that are just not necessary. You guys need to understand the difference between needs and wants. You have a communication department.

It's effective.

You have many other ways of communicating things. I just don't think this is necessary. I urge you to vote no.

Jeffrey Zomper.

Jeffrey Zomper, 8827 Emerson. I also agree that we have a communications department at present that does a very good job and that cost that's in the budget for 2027 at about a quarter million dollars. This PR firm started in Aventura, and their promotional material heavily cites Aventura. Aventura has seven times the population of Surfside. Aventura has an estimated operating budget of twice what Surfside has. From what I can tell, Aventura's contract with this PR firm is $180,000, $200,000 if you include extras that are optional. This item should be part of the budget process that has not been concluded, as I said before. We are a small town of 5,000 plus residents. Do residents really want to pay an extra $60 per man, woman, and child for this? I doubt it. Most would rather pocket the money. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, seeing no other speaker cards. Anybody else? No. All right. Closing public comment and moving on to commission. Let's get a motion on the table before we continue. We get a motion to approve.

Well, I'd like to make a motion to defer this to the budget process to discuss it tonight, but I'd like to include this into the larger budget process.

The adoption of this is contingent on the budget passing. Okay.

And I'll make a motion to proceed with 5B then.

Well, there's a motion on the floor. There's a motion that has to either fail at this point or be accepted.

I'm going to second that. I'd like to understand this a little better.

We can still talk about it, but... No, your motion is to defer it.

So, Madam Clerk, call the roll, please.

Yes, Mayor. Commissioner Weingart?

No.

Commissioner Travani?

Yes.

Commissioner Valdostegui?

Yes.

As we have a murky no we're dancing or no we're the motion fails, thank you can I get a motion to approve.

Make a motion to approve 5 the communication services proposal.

I'll second it, but I do have some changes to this. Mr turning online yeah. All right, couple items that kind of stood out. Just wanted to make sure that they clarified the way it was structured. I would ask you, and again, I'm gonna give you kind of the pointers and just go back with the vendor and kind of Iron this out, but essentially kind of mimic what we have with the other existing contracts, which locks it in, which effectively locks the rate in for a certain period of time. So it's a three-year contract locking in that rate that was given, which auto renews at a 3% increase year to year, if not canceled 90 days, if not terminated 90 days notice. So, you know, I understand what was trying to be done here. I just don't think it was structured correctly. And effectively, this would be aligned with all the other kind of contracts that the city goes for.

Okay. May I also make a suggestion to the attorney for a change to the contract? And I was trying to look in the minutes for when I last proposed this. One second.

I need the motion maker to adopt this change.

Oh, okay. So moved.

You're not the motioner.

So moved.

Oh, sorry. All right. Second. Adoption. I'm the second. Great. All right.

All right, yeah, so I was trying to find what other contract I asked for this for in the previous commission. I'd like there to be a, if you look at page 282, they talk about public records laws. I'd like there to be a requirement that the firm, when they communicate with any town staff or elected officials, that they use town emails or cell phone numbers rather than any other sort of encrypted communication system just so that we have clear public records of all communications with the consultant. And I'd like that to be part of the terms of the contract. I think this should be general language. I think it was with the previous acting town manager contract that I asked for this. But I think this should be part of the contract. I hope the motion maker will be amenable to it.

Can I make sure that I understand that you want that any communication between the vendor and town and anyone in the town should be on what?

On town email or town cell phone texting, you know, rather than anything like signal, WhatsApp, or any encrypted communication. That it all be through, you know, easily discoverable town communications methods.

OK. So would that preclude anybody from communicating with you, for example, on your email?

On my private email?

Yes.

I mean, that is the hope. I mean, I think that's sort of the general norm. You know, I defer to the attorneys on how best to kind of operationalize that, but I do think that when we're dealing with any contractor, there should be sort of a general presumption that communication happens through town emails or ordinary text. So, you know... Ordinary text.

Okay. I think I understand what you want. I'm just trying to understand whether... whether that text could be on, I don't know, if Sandra was communicating with them, how would you envision that happening, that she would only, text would be to a separate telephone number, not her regular phone number?

No, through her town phone, through the town email address, or through her town cell phone number, and for elected officials as well.

Okay. I think we can work something into this contract.

Well, I have a question for you, Mr. Attorney is any town business, whether it's done through the town phone or personal phone, is it subject to public record?

Yes.

Thank you. So again, I don't understand the problem you're trying to solve.

The problem is that it's just easy. You know, it just is automatically, if somebody makes a records request or something, it's just available through the town email. Rather than through any any other like we shouldn't be doing any town business on signal whatsapp or anything like that And and I think it's important. I think there are It's because you want to get to the substantive discussion. I have some questions about how this is going to work Consistent with our sort of ethics laws and public records laws, and I think it's going to be much easier to have it all be transparent So I think it's it's it's just good practice especially with outside vendors to use the standard modes of communication rather than anything else

I think it's implied, and I think you're trying to solve an issue that doesn't... You're conflating two different issues here.

I'm not. I realize that it's discoverable, and I'm very well aware of the record clause, but I'm asking for this...

I'm not accepting your modification, so...

Okay, you're not, but you're also not the motion maker.

And I'm the second, and any modification to the motion has to be adopted by both the motion maker and the second, so I'm telling you I'm not adopting it. CAN WE MOVE FORWARD INTO THE DISCUSSION OF THE ITEM? AGAIN, YOU KEEP GOING WAY OFF. YOU'RE MAKING THESE ASSUMPTIONS. LET'S MOVE ON WITH THE DISCUSSION.

I'M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW WE'RE GOING TO COMMUNICATE WITH THIS PERSON. THE SAME WAY EVERYBODY COMMUNICATES WITH US, GERARDO. That's right. I just want to make sure, you know, there was good reason for, I mean, I think it's in the interest of good government. You know, I may not have convinced you, but I think this should be part of the contract. I've asked for this in other contracts, and it wasn't controversial.

Just so I know, was it incorporated into any other contracts so I can see what was done before?

It was, I can't remember which one. I was trying to look in the minutes. I thought it was with Mario Diaz, but I couldn't confirm that in advance of this meeting. But I have raised it in the previous commission as well. So this is not a new thing.

Okay. Are there any other items that you all have identified that you'd like to see addressed in this contract?

Well, I think that the intellectual property ownership is quite important, actually, to Mr. Crook's point. This is always an issue whenever you deal with designers. So I guess here it's the same thing. This is not my field, but I see the same mentality. So it absolutely needs to be our property.

Well, anything that they generate for us is public domain in the course of their work. So it is a public record. So anything that is done by this firm for us that is generated by them, content everything, is by virtue of the fact that they work for a government. is a public record.

Ladies and gentlemen, I need you to stop yelling out from the crowd, please. You had your opportunity to speak. Please stop disrupting. I would think as two former commissioners, you know how this works. I'm not listening to you.

So if you could just take a second look at that because I think I've seen this in the past with other departments and it might need to be clearly defined.

If you could.

Yeah, okay.

Again, this is subject to, we're going to approve it subject to the town attorney adopting what the changes and just making sure this is kosher.

And I'd ask not only just the changes, but that in a form and content, that the contract is in a form and contact acceptable to the town attorney so that I can address that you may not even be talking about.

Excuse me one second, Steve. Guys, Eliana, I need you to sit down and stop talking to the members on the dais, okay? It's extremely disruptive. Sit down. You had your public comment. Please stop disrupting this meeting. All right. So I guess if the motion maker will adopt to ensure that the attorney is subject to the attorney's review as well, we can move on with this item.

So moved. I have some comments.

I'll second it.

Okay.

All right. All yours.

All right. So just a number of comments or a number of really good points that were brought up. So I'd like to work through them. Number one, the helicopters were in reference to new air conditioners being placed at St. Regis. Unrelated. But that's what that was about. The idea of tourism was brought up. I serve as the liaison to the commission for the tourism board. Recently, actually at the first meeting, I had to leave in the last five minutes or so, but I found out after that they approved a $80,000 spend for It's a Surfside Thing video segment. I want to pause for a moment, and I want to recognize the efforts of Cindy, who does a phenomenal job on marketing, and none of these discussions is to limit that. So I found out about that spend independently. I come from the world of business. I know how much goes into marketing. I know, as a dreamer and a visioner, how much we want to get done and what it takes to get done. So I recognize and appreciate that. And she's always phenomenal and extremely responsive in regards to the Gazette, in regards to photos from events, and everything like that. So I want to make sure to recognize that. In marketing, in communications, there's internal marketing, there's external marketing, and there's general communications, and then there's crisis management or crisis response. Those are general categories. There are many more subcategories. So internal would relate to employee morale, employee relations, communicating, recognizing birthdays internally, things like that. External, in our case, would be a combination between communications to the residents of Surfside and beyond, and it is a factor to take into account the tourism effect. We benefit from about 5.4 million or so of tourism dollars that come in, And that is driven by communication, by people knowing about how amazing this town is, that the beaches are beautiful, the town is beautiful, there's amazing restaurants and all of that, and hotels. I actually just recently realized that a resident in our building at the Sylmar does marketing communications for Four Seasons, and we had a long discussion in regards to tourism. So that was $80,000 being spent on a video segment. It's a lot of work that goes into it, and that's part of the recognition here. So something to recognize is what would be inclusive in a package like this. It does sound like a lot of money. I get that. But, you know, the value there and the lift that it could help beyond what we have already to amplify and to be a synergy to what we have. And beyond that, Again, I see it as an investment for the town because think about it for money, a good chunk of that that's already being spent. I don't think anyone realized that $80,000 was just spent beyond what we have already. So it's not a crazy figure to think, to look at across town, across the entire budget and the potential value as far as tourism response that we'll see from that as well. So a chunk of it I think could be covered when we work the budgets from tourism. Thank you, Commissioner.

I appreciate you highlighting the fact that this town spent $80,000 on a video series. So eliminating the extra position that was in there, bringing in an outside source is not $300,000 completely. And I love how somehow it became a million dollars because now we're calculating three years. It's not a million dollars. Let's be honest. And if we're going to be dishonest here, then that's extremely disingenuous. And I get it. Some of you want to see me.

You don't.

Here we are. So, you know. Let's call the roll, because we've.

I'm sorry, I'd like to discuss, we haven't discussed. Can I ask something?

I mean, I have three comments, I haven't had the opportunity, okay. So, let me see if I can, because I agree, I agree with the concept. I don't disagree with that, I agree with the concept. I think the only thing is that I was trying to think about a way to maybe trim this budget. I would argue that maybe 210 would be plenty, $210,000. The idea I think for us is to have a way to tap into professional resources that could actually complement what Cindy is already doing and would help the town promoting the policies that we implement and that we work on. I remember seeing this video that this company made for the... in Aventura when they were adopting their micro mobility new rules. And it was the interesting fact and the reason why I think this could be beneficial is that I know that we have the gazette, we have the emails and all that, but it's the engagement of the people that normally don't get that involved. that matters in this conversation. And from the numbers that I've seen, this is what happens when you have a plan like this that gets implemented. So there's value. I think that there is value. I've also seen a, and I don't know if everybody received it, I don't know how that thing went, but when I had the opportunity to look into this, I saw a sort of an app, I think, that was developed to illustrate the budget. uh which was very nice honestly because budget for example is one of the things that people have uh let's say a lot of people not everybody there's some people that are passionate about it but a lot of people don't really know what's going on and and and sometimes the assumption is that We're all up here to misappropriate money or to mismanage it or to steal or to do things like that. So I think something that illustrates a budget in a simple and clear way would help. And I would like to add that to this. But I want to see if the commission could entertain the option of going with the cheaper option. And I just want to clarify, we do have a termination for convenience here. So after 90 days, if we don't, I mean, not after 90 days, if we don't like it, then we can give a 90 days notice to the vendor here. So that's my question to the Commission. If we want to entertain the $210,000 option so that we maybe save a little money, focus on what we need. And again, we can always scale it up if we see that we have that need, that it's going very well, that there's other opportunities. But maybe we should start with that.

If I may, I'd like to, I mean, I do like the idea of exploring the cheaper option. I think we are rushing into this. We haven't had a chance to discuss this as a commission in this way ever. It kind of came up very quickly at the retreat, but we went straight to a contract. I think that's very strange. I mean, it's kind of hopscotching over the budget process. And the reason why I made the motion to defer it is that when we meet in the budget workshop next week, there are all these discretionary items that we're weighing against each other. And there were things that I wanted that seemed to be not getting support, but like the canopy for the memorial and another tree giveaway. And we have to balance these things against each other. But this is jumping to the top of the queue, it seems. And we haven't really had a chance to talk about it before. I think we should be weighing the options a little bit more carefully. I also just think, I want to say from the point of view of just general values, What some of the speakers said here, no one's ever asked for this. I'm not sure this is even a good thing in some respects. This stuff about marketing is good enough. Yeah, it's good to market the town. And Mr. Mayor, I see the clock has started, but it was only started when I spoke and not when others have spoken. And that's not right. You've got to treat the members of the council equally. So I ask that you turn that clock off. I'm going to speak my piece regardless, because it can't be done in a discriminatory fashion. If you look at the materials here that have been given to us by this group They tell on page 275 this story about the city of North Miami Beach When a senior city of NMB official was arrested on felony charges PCG was on site within 15 minutes of the call They they aligned everyone behind one message paired with immediate action coverage crested within two days and then receded Is that a good thing? I mean I would want the media to cover a felony arrest as much as they want to. I don't want the coverage necessarily to recede. You turn the page. They have this weird bullet point standing with the press. We go out of our way to help reporters get the story right, and we position our clients to look their best in it. That sounds like it's something for the benefit of politicians. This is about making politicians look good. I'm very concerned about that. I think we have had problems in the past in the town where the media of the communications have crossed a line into promoting elected officials themselves. And I'm not even referring to any commission that any of us served on. Years ago, before any of us was on the dais, the Ethics Commission issued an advisory opinion about some videos the town was producing. And they were worried that many of them were promoting the commissioners as individuals rather than promoting the town. And so this is going way back. I want to share that memo with my colleagues maybe for the next meeting. But the way that... You look at their materials. This is about making individuals look good. When the mayor has talked about the need for this, he mentioned this moment in Aventura when their 4th of July fireworks show went awry because of an explosion. And then they had to spin. And they kind of made it all kind of glossy. I'm really uncomfortable with the use of communications to make elected officials look good. And I think that's where this is going. I don't really think this is about marketing the town. And I think we need to think very seriously about what the content of these communications is going to be. I'm worried that it's going to bleed into something inappropriate. We also haven't had any chance to talk about the $210,000 option. I'd like to know what that is. I want to just second some of what Commissioner Weingart said. I think we have an excellent communications director in Ms. Reyes. I don't see the need for this. No individual in the town, no resident has said to me, you know what, we need more social media. I think this is like tripling our annual budget in this area when we're considering other cutbacks, when we're going to be weighing things against each other next week. What is this really for? And I ask you to think about that. I'm looking at the materials here, and it looks like spin. And it looks like spin for the benefit of individuals. I can't get behind this. We can work within our department. We can create an assistant position that was part of the budget, that's always been part of the vision. And I'm concerned about how this proceeds. The reason why, I want to say again, I wanted that... extra protection about public records, is because there is a danger of the elected officials communicating directly with the consultant. I want to know how this is going to work with Section 14 of the Charter. Is the town manager the only person, and under the town manager, the communications director, who can communicate with the consultant, or are elected officials going to be also talking to them directly? And how do we know what's going on? And I don't know that we have safeguards in place for that. So I don't see why we need to rush to any decision about this tonight, especially when we have budget workshops next week. But I would like a chance to have a full airing of this. I'm in no way convinced of the need for it, and I have some worries.

All right. Thank you, Commissioner. I'm going to make a couple of comments, and then I'm going to move this item along. You said that this is very sudden, right? This is very sudden. This is the first time you're hearing from it. First of all, Mario brought this forward to us a while ago. I know this particular vendor reached out to me a while ago, reached out to the other commissioners, reached out to Commissioner Trevani, and reached out to you multiple times. And for some reason, you were the only one that refused to sit with him. He called me once. Please don't interrupt. Please don't interrupt because I don't interrupt. He didn't reach out multiple times. Commissioner, don't interrupt me. I don't talk over you, right? You do. Please provide me the courtesy that I extend to you. You sit here for hours at a time going at me, and I stay quiet. So please let me respond, all right? You had the opportunity to sit with him. You had this opportunity for the last month and change, and you refused. All of us up here, except for you, took the time to sit with this individual and go through this plan ahead of time. You didn't. That was your choice. And as far as you keep saying making the elected officials look good, again, you have this problem that you don't understand, right? You were just on TV talking about the memorial. You forget that we may disagree up here, but at the end of the night, when the vote is done, that is the will of the commission. And you seem to have a problem with that. You should not be going on television after going against the commission, because then you create disruption and chaos in this community. I understand, and everybody else here understands, that regardless of our opinion here, at the end of the night, the commission votes, and that's the commission's will. So all the PR and the marketing will represent what the commission does. You may not like it because you may be that odd man out every time, but that's your choice. And at the end of the night, it's whatever the majority of the commission decides. That's who he represents. And you seem to have a very difficult time understanding that based on your actions. Madam Clerk, let's call the roll, please.

Yes, Mayor. Commissioner Travani?

Just for clarity, we're voting on the $300,000 or on the $210,000? So I'm happy to add it.

I like the other dashboards there as well if you want to add it in there and go up to the next level. But for now, we're keeping it to this.

No, I'm saying but the $210,000 or the $300,000? And then we can add the budget to it.

We're going with what they've, at least I've sat and spoke with him about. And that's what we like. And that was what the commission has pushed forward right now.

The 300,000. I would vote yes to the 210, but I'm going to vote no to the 300. It's a big commitment. I appreciate that.

Commissioner Valdostegui?