Welcome to the July 17th, 2024 City Commission meeting. It's been a little while since we've seen everyone, so welcome back. We're also going to the CRA meeting prior to the Commission Public Comments. There'll be a 10 minute recess at 8.30 PM. Ms. Schraout, roll call please. Commissioner Nubel. Here, Commissioner Arnt. Here. Vice Mayor Lonegan. Commissioner Gordon. Here, Mayor Rosenwald. Here. Commissioner Gordon. Here. Mayor Rosenwald. Here. At this point, I'd like us to stand for a moment of silence and then vice mayor will lead us in a pledge. For a moment of silence tonight, of course, think of whatever you'd like to, but I would like to give a moment of silence and of thanks that President Trump was his life was spared. Of course, we mourn the one individual who did die in the assassination attempt in the two. We're severely injured. And we thank the Secret Service. And there's no role for political violence period. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. You know, as elected officials, members of the public, when we gather, right, that's in the Constitution, the Freedom to a Sumble. And when something like that happens as it did this past Saturday. It really shakes us all regardless of political party. So we are, our thoughts are with President Trump and his family for all, everyone, elected officials, general public, appointed officials. There's just no place for that. And I know we all share in that regardless of party. On a lighter note, we have two great proclamations this today, and they both revolve around recreation. We have our first, which is the 30th anniversary gay softball leak proclamation. We'll show you a doubt. Commissioner Neubon? Yes. Commissioner Arns? Yes. Vice Mayor Longan? Yes. Commissioner Gordon? Yes. Mayor Rosenwald? Yes. Whereas the South Florida Amateur Athletic Association, a gay softball league stands as a proud and vibrant symbol of inclusive diversity and community spirit, fostering a safe and supportive environment for LGBTQ plus individuals and allies to come together in the spirit of sportsmanship and camaraderie. And whereas the gay softball league has played a pivotal role in promoting equality, respect, and understanding, breaking down barriers and challenging stereotypes through the unifying power of sports since its inception in 1994 in Oakland Park. And whereas this year the league celebrates its 30th anniversary, offering a platform for athletes of all skill levels to participate, encouraging physical fitness, teamwork, and personal growth, while also providing a network of friendship and support that extends beyond the field. Anoraz, the South Florida Amateur Athletic Association's commitment to inclusivityivity serves as an inspiring model for other sports organizations demonstrating how athletic competitions can be a force of positive change in social justice, highlighting the importance of acceptance and unity, and whereas all are welcome to recognize and applaud the hard work, determination, and spirit of the South Florida Imature Athletic Association at its Founder's Dedication Ceremony Saturday July 20th, 2024 at noon at Wimberley Field located 4,000 northeast third avenue Oakland Park. Now therefore the City Commission of the City of Oakland Park, Florida by the virtue of the authority vested by the chartered as he by authorized Mayor Mitchell is all to recognize South Florida's Amateur Athletic Association's 30th anniversary in the City of Oakland Park and T.R.I. Authorized Mayor Mitch Rosenwald to recognize South Florida's amateur athletic associations 30th anniversary in the city of Oakland Park and reaffirms its steadfast advocacy for LGBTQ plus rights and its unwavering dedication to fostering environment where everyone can thrive, work and play. Thank you. Thank you. Indeed a wonderful proclamation. I will be giving this proclamation tonight to Mr. Jim Stork, the former Mayor of Wilton Manners and the lead co-founder, a number of years back. I know him even more as because everybody goes to Storks and Wilton Manners when we met Mr. Storks, he actually had two Storks businesses. He's the former owner of Storks Bakery and from 1998 to 2001 was also the president of the Oakland Park in Wolt Manor's Chamber of Commerce. So I'm going to come down to present this with you and then later in a bit the little commission will come down. Let's give him a hand. You're going to bring up the board of directors for the South Florida Association which was founded in your city at Wimmerley Field 30 years ago. Woo! Yeah, come on up. In fact, I think it's important to bring some of the Elkhun Park residents that many of our Elkhun Park residents are in our league. And these two actually relocated here, not together, but Barbara's wife would kill me, but they relocated from Boston Sorry, tell Barba said sorry From Boston and they moved to the city of Oakland Park because of the softball league So you have a lot of and we have a lot of members on in our league that are from your city And so I like to I know you have a tight agenda so But we do want a wonderful photo, because he's our Facebook guru. So he wants to post these photos. Let me just officially give you the proclamation. And, you know, what you, Mr. Jim and I met, actually about three or four months ago. And I did not know that, I certainly knew of the very large gay softball, LGBT softball leagues here and actually this is the home of I think of some national tournaments, right here. So thank you for paving the way 30 years ago. We have those diversity signs and inclusion signs around the city, those green signs, race, regardless of race or age, or sexual orientation, gender identity, et cetera. And you were a real precursor and visionary for those signs and the signs followed the path that you and all of you have led. So we're very proud for you all to be here. Everybody who's been a part of the league, please stop up. And if the commission can come down, we'll be taking a photo. You go ahead, Jim. So we have George Kessinger here. It is the co-founder of the league from Wildmanish from George Zalibai. You may remember him and Frank and Paul Falkon who lives in your city and there are close to 500 participants are a league now and our national tournament has their 70 plus teams that come for our national terms. So the league has really grown from Wimbledon to where we are today. Okay, so we're going to get a little... We're going to push this. You want to get down on your knees. So, head only in all of them. Let me put this. Where are we gonna put this? Come on, put this. You won't take it. Do you want to hold the proclamation open? I will. Do you like it that much? I'll try. I'm ready. Can you see? Thank you. Thank you. Just to repeat, Jim, can you talk about Saturday then again specifically? Saturday at noon at Wimberley Field, there's a little breezeway with some shade. We will be celebrating our 30th anniversary. He'll be presenting this proclamation again. And we'll have some special guests from, oh gosh, we have Susan Gillis who's writing your book about the history of Oakland Park and representatives from the Stonewall Museum archives and library. They're going to be there to be a part of this history, which we will probably get an archive submission perhaps even a display at the museum. That's noon. And this is at noon this Saturday. And we're going to keep the program tight like this, because if you didn't notice it a little bit of temperature outside. But he did tell me we were going to play an exhibition game here today in the in the commission chambers Was I wrong? I know you played a little baseball then you you played I know Jack Seiler I see him but you played to ball. I know a lot of you. Thank you again for everything you guys are great You have a little hidden treasure at Wimmerley and we appreciate Appreciate you all. Thank you so much, Chair. We appreciate you. Thank you all, gentlemen. And ladies. Oh, I don't need this. Right. This is this one. Continuing with our recreation proclamations. I've asked we have a proclamation for parks and recreation month. Most of the do with that. Second. Roll call. Commissioner Newborn. Yes. Commissioner Arns? Yes. Vice Mayor Longigan? Yes. Commissioner Gordon? Yes. Mayor Rose and Walms? Yes. Whereas parks and recreation programs are an integral part of communities throughout this country, including the City of Oakland Park, providing a safe and welcoming environment for all citizens to enjoy recreational activities, social connections, and natural beauty. And whereas the city values the beauty of its 200 acres of open space, open green space with its newest additions, North Andrews Gardens Community Center located at 250 North East 56th Court, a $5.23 million community center offering programs for all ages with outdoor amenities featuring a basketball court, covered playground, and covered seating areas, and a wag park located at 600 northeast 38th Street, a $1.36 million dog park feature in a large and small dog section. And whereas parks and recreation are essential for the ecological health of our community, preserving green spaces, wildlife habitats, and natural resources, and promoting environmental stewardship through education and sustainable practices. And while the National Recreation and Parks Association and the Florida Recreation and Parks Association are celebrating, July as Parks and Recreation Month and recognizes the hard work and dedication of the professionals, volunteers, and supporters and parks and recreation. Their invaluable service ensures our parks and programs continue to thrive and meet the evolving needs of our community benefits, gained from quality public and private recreation and park resources at the local, state, and federal level. Now, therefore, the city commission of the city of Oakland Park, Florida by the virtue of the authority vested by the charter, hereby authorizes Mayor Mitch Rosenwald to proclaim the month of Oakland Park, Florida by the virtue of the authority, vested by the charter. Hereby authorizes Mayor Mitch Rosenwald to proclaim the month of July 2024 as National Parks and Recreation Month. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Schraut. And for this proclamation, we'll be awarded to our presented to Mike Dent, our own Parks and Leisure Service Program Manager. I've asked the Vice Mayor, Lana, again to give it to him. Let's give it a hand. Let's give it a hand. Applause. Mr. Dent, we are so thankful for everything that you and your entire team do on a regular basis. I think we also have to have Chris come up here, our parks and leisure director. Guys, over the years, thank you Oakland Park has really stepped up at SCAME. We understand the importance and without you having different events going throughout Oakland Park and our parks and without you, none of this is possible. We know you're working Saturdays and Sundays, putting things together ahead of time. We are forever thankful to have you on the team. And you do a wonderful job. So I just want to say, guys, can we have a hand for these guys in your entire team? Thank you. Gentlemen. Tonight, on one of the gentlemen, Mr. Jordan Davis, the athletic director for Rook and Middle School is not here tonight. So we want to acknowledge him as well. Tonight, we have Mr. Scott Rubenshick, which is the reading teacher at Rook and Middle School. They help us a lot, being volunteers with all our programs as well as mentors and helping out with various programs from neighborhood cleanups and different things like that. So they just help us out with the parts and leisure service department. So here we wanna present this to you, Scott Rubichard. Thank you. Thank you. Let's get that picture commissioned. Vice Mayor, you know who really appreciates them? The kids. That's what it's all about. Thank you. the Thank you. I'll be there for a second. At this point, I'll entertain any additions, changes or deletions to the minute, to the agenda? I'd like to add, Commissioner. I'd like to add the supplemental agenda, which is a Consistive Item 27 to the regular agenda, and then put that on consent and item 26 on consent. Okay. Commissioner Board? No changes at this time. the commissioner Gordon no changes mayor vice mayor the motion. I think that way till he gets done first. Okay, yeah, I've there are changes and like do we need to I like to make a motion to amend the agenda. Second. Commissioner Newbold. Yes, Mr. Arnt. Yes. Vice Mayor Longan. Yes. Commissioner Gordon. Yes. Mayor Rosenwald. Yes. I like to make a motion to adopt the amended agenda. Second. Mr. Mayor Rosenwald. Yes. I'd like to make a motion to adopt the amended agenda. Second. Mr. Newbolden. Yes. Mr. Arnx. Yes. Vice Mayor Longigan. Yes. Mr. Gordon. Yes. Mayor Rosenwald. Yes. OK. At this point, we're going to have our one presentation, but it will be a lengthy presentation, but important presentation. The fiscal year 25 recommended budget summary, Mr. Abert. Thank you, Mayor. The grueling task annually of having to crunch numbers and deliver prudent fiscal conservatism for our tax paying citizens and businesses is never an easy undertaking. We've been fortunate in the past to realize savings that has resulted in millions of dollars of taxpayer monies being saved. Tonight after the last seven months of hard work on the part of the financial services department and the many departments that comprise the city of Oakland Park. We present to you the city manager's recommendation for next fiscal year's budget. And then we'll ask you to consider the various assessments and milledrate so that we can advertise appropriately on the forthcoming trim notices. Without any further ado, then I will turn to our chief financial officer, Andrew Thompson, for the delivery of our recommendation. Andrew. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Good evening, Mayor of Ice Mary, members of the City Commission. As was said, tonight is going to be a very lengthy and substantial presentation because it is our fiscal year 2025 recommended budget presentation. This was published last week as part of the agenda, the message and all of the account information have been posted on our website and the various agenda items this evening all have attachments with the background studies, capital improvement plan, and other materials we'll be referring to in this presentation. So tonight we are asking for a few specific commission actions. The first is this presentation to review the recommended fiscal year 2025 budget. And that's a fiscal year that begins October 1st of this year and end September 30th of next year. We ask that you set the preliminary property tax millage rates and public hearing dates for September's hearings. And there are more than one millage rate that's set. And the millage rate is your property tax rate. We have our operating millageage which goes to fund the general fence operations and then we have two debt service millages. These fund the principal and interest payments of the general obligation bonds approved by voters in 2018 and those were sold in 2020 and 2022. We're also asking that you set the preliminary special assessment rates and public hearing dates for those special assessments. Those assessments are fire, residential solid waste, and storm water. The budget is a plan and it is a very large plan. It details all of the revenues and expenditures for the city for an entire year and those expenditures represent everything the city is an entire year and those expenditures represent everything the city is planning to do in that period of time. The budget sets a few essential rates. First recommendation to central is our operating millage rate. We are recommending another decrease to this rate from 5.8362 mills to 5 or 5.7243 mills. This would be our 10th reduction over an 11-year period and would be the lowest operating mileage rate in 15 years. And so with those reductions over that 11-year period, we've reduced the mileage rate from about 6.4 mills by about 10.5 percent all the way down to that 5.7 rate and that's saved taxpayers more than 17 million during that period of time. The property tax for the debt service milled rate we are recommending that decrease from 0.6338 mills to 0.5534 mills and there are two separate rates for those, both for those separate debt service sales. Those are shown on the screen both are about a 12.7% reduction. We're recommending based on the study that was presented earlier this fiscal year that the fire assessment rate increase from $276 to $382 per residential unit. And this is based on the growth of fire suppression costs where outlined in that presentation and that study, which have grown significantly since the last fire assessment study was conducted. The city adopted a stormwater master plan two years ago, as part of that, it outlined over $50 million worth of stormwater improvements to be accomplished over a 15 year period. We've been fast at work with that and we are recommending a rate increase of $11 for the stormwater assessment fee from $114 per equivalent residentally to $125. And that's to fund that stormwater master plan, particularly principal and interest payments as part of the state revolving loan fund which is city applied earlier this year. And then residential solid waste were recommending an increase of $30 from 310 per dwelling unit to 340. And this is primarily due to the increased cost of disposal last December. We renewed our contracts with waste connections and waste management that provide our tipping services for bulk and regular trash. Both of those increased in excess of 30 percent substantially more than estimated. This increase of 340 still remains well below the countywide average of about $400. Notice slightly above the rate charged in fiscal year 12 by the city, which was $300 per residential unit. One of the other essentials is maintaining all of our fiscal policies set by commission. One of them is that for our general fund that are unassigned fund balance or reserves, stay within 20 to 25% of general fund expenditures. This budget accomplishes that by making sure that we have 22% in reserves. Lastly, the budget funds over $38 million in capital improvements. As the city manager said, the budgets been worked on for many months. And during that time, there's always new information, sometimes good, sometimes ill, and there were some challenges as we went into developing this budget. One of the major challenges was that we had facing increased pension costs both from increases in the Florida retirement system that are set annually by the state legislature, and then also legacy pensions, the closed police and fire pension plan, and the closed general employees pension plan. Both of those are overseen by independent boards. They haven't actually, actually determined contribution, the city must pay under state law each year. And for just those alone, the increase was about $1 million. Overall pension costs in the general fund have gone up about 18% year over year. We have growing public safety costs. Many of them driven by compensation, including the pensions. BSO's contract request increase this year was about a 7% increase or 1.3 million. And that's part of one of the largest budget submittals countywide in their history. We also have increased maintenance costs. We do continue to operate out of many aged facilities and those do have maintenance costs that we continue to incur while also preparing for the new facilities that will be opening. We have the increased solid waste tipping fees that were on top of almost over 40% increase in recycling fees the prior year. This remains a challenge and we hope one that will be alleviated as part of the countywide efforts to establish a solid waste authority. We continue to have supply chain difficulties. You'll see numerous items on city commission agendas for sole source or ordering something months in advance, particularly for especially equipment it has been a challenge to get these items. Inflation is starting to slow down but the prices remain elevated and South Florida remains one of the hotbeds for continued inflation, often leading the nation in recent reports. And then facility bonds, construction costs, it's more than a CPI, it's a separate index, and those prices continue to grow. Next year, nine out of ten city employees will be relocating to a new facility. This is an unprecedented logistical challenge for the city, one that requires that we not only move all of our operations, but that we continue operations during this time. So there is going to be a huge logistical burden staff will be facing. All effort will be made to continue services uninterrupted for members of the community. And there is of course a financial cost for moving all of these facilities. And then interest rates continue to remain elevated. And we started this calendar year with many positive forecasts of multiple interest rate cuts. Most recent information suggests the best maybe won this year. And then finally the city has two rail lines within its jurisdiction. The CSX line out west and then the FEC line here right in front of City Hall. We have numerous crossing agreements for those so that our city rows can go over their tracks. As part of those agreements we are required to fund the maintenance for those. And they both rail agencies provided letters to us this year to find us that there will be mandatory improvements on crossings for both, on both of crossings on 38th. And those are amounting to almost a million dollars. So that is not something that would have been anticipated a few years ago, but the city is still obligated to pay. It is not all doom and gloom, though. If you read the Sun Sentinel, you probably saw that our property tax base expanded again. This is the 12th consecutive year expansion. It was almost 15%. It was the second highest in all of Broward County and well above the county wide increase average about 9.5%. We also have significant private developments throughout the city. Just this one year alone over $260 million in new construction was added in the roles. And just to put that in perspective, that's adds about $1.5 million in property tax to the city revenues. And this is over just a few years, just since fiscal year 22, that totals over $400 million that's been added to the roles. Our tax base now stands at 5.8 billion the highest that's ever been in the city's history. Here's some of those new developments. We have the Oakland project on federal highway and Oakland Park Boulevard. We have Poulta's Oak Tree off Northwest 21st Avenue in Prospect, which is almost completely finished. Then we have Bliss, which is on the tax rolls now. When new construction projects are completed, there's often a delay because it's based on when the certificate of occupancy is issued. So this year of 260 million dollars represents some properties that we've had people living in for quite some time But because it had to have been on the tact for us by January 1st This is the year we're seeing the benefit of that added to our finances We were very fortunate and that we secured low interest rates for our bonds and loans and critical projects in advance of the interest rate Hikes in fact if you look at some of our financial reports, the quarterly reports, you'll see that we actually are earning more in interest than we are paying on interest for the general obligation bonds. And then as I mentioned, we've submitted an application to the State Revolving Loan Fund for Stormwater Improvements. This is a very strenuous application process, it requires a lot of studies, but with success, that allows to secure loans with interest rates of well below 2%, oftentimes below 1%. And then we've continued to have success in obtaining grant funding for capital projects. And just in the past nine years or so, the city has secured well over $65 million and grant proceeds for projects, and we continue to aggressively seek grant funding So see many of the agenda items tonight alone which I believe are referenced to $5 million worth of grant funded projects And then though there's a just go challenge of moving to these new facilities They represent a great opportunity for the city because it frees up the space for us to make improvements to city park when public works is vacated in that area and fire station nine. It also opens up this area for the horizon of Oakland Park Project, which will further expand the city's tax base and add mixed use here to our downtown. And those facilities opening up next year as part of our building our second-century campaign include Fire Station 9, the Public Works Facility North of Commercial, and then a sky building you can see an interior shot there of the upper story and then I'm sure you saw all those in the audiences you came in today and they'll be starting on that sky bridge connecting the two buildings in just a few weeks. So the budget is a very long process. It never really ends because constantly monitored and amended. It's a plan. But developing that plan takes quite a bit of effort. So the strategic plan adoption by the City Commission is always the first item there and that occurs typically in January and it's an opportunity for the city commission to reaffirm or make changes to the strategic vision of the city. We work on the plan since the budget afterwards. We provide a community budget meeting in April. We hold our third one this year on April 25th. And my thanks to those residents who attended. We appreciate the opportunity to discuss the budgetary issues with you in advance. We work in developing the service programs, the revenue estimates, and business plans, staffing request with all departments. And then by June, we do a presentation on the capital improvement program, giving an update of the current CIP and then a preview of upcoming projects. We're now in the adoption phase of the budget. So in July, the City Commission is presented with the recommended budget and adopts preliminary rates for the millage and then for its special assessments. These are included in the trim, truth and mileage notices that are sent out by the property appraisal to every property owner in August. And those will outline what the rates are currently, what the proposed rates are, and the impact on their property. September is when the formal adoption process begins, and there will be three public hearings. The first will be on the tentative budget, and at which time the tentative mileage and budget rate will be three public hearings. The first will be the tentative budget, and at which time the tentative millage and budget rate will be adopted. The CRA board will also adopt its own budget. It will be a reading of the Solid Wage Commercial Rights Ordinance. There is a special meeting just on the special assessments that always must be held separately. And each of those assessments will have their own individual hearings that night. And then we have the final adoption of the Milligen budget, which time the City Commission will also adopt the Citywide Compensation Plan, which sets all the staffing salaries for positions. The CIP, a five-year capital improvement plan, the fee booklet and fiscal policies. The CRA will also adopt its final budget at that time and we'll have the second reading of the Solid Waste Commercial Rates ordinance. So going through that process and looking at all the different elements, we ended up with a proposed budget of $166.2 million. The largest proposed budget in the city's history. The city budget is divided into funds. This is required under governmental accounting. In each of these funds serve separate purposes. The largest is your general fund. This is essentially all the classic governmental services, your police, your fire, your city clerk, your library parks. Almost everything, almost all, area staff are all in the general fund and this is supported by your property tax, fire assessment and other fees and revenues. The general fund also supports two smaller funds, your debt service fund and your special revenue funds. Your special revenue funds, the largest of the city's CRA, which relies on transfers from the general fund, and then you have a debt service fund. It also receives transfers from the general fund, but it also receives revenues from the debt service milleges for the general obligation bonds. We then have the city's enterprise funds, of which there are three, water and sewer, storm water and solid waste. These are the city's enterprise funds, of which there are three, water and sewer, storm water and solid waste. These are the business-like funds. They are not supported by taxes. They have their own rates, and they are introduced to be completely independent. And then you can see one labeled GFCIP. This is your governmental fund, CIP, all the capital projects that aren't included in any of the enterprise funds. The $166.2 million budget is very large to put it lightly and it represents a very big change in city operations primarily driven by a growing capital program. If you look at this chart, you can see the fiscal year 2020 budget was only 92.6 million dollars citywide. It's increased by more than 79% since then. And much of the budget is related to capital increases, but a lot of the budget is also related to staff and staffing costs. And the general fund alone 60% of the costs are related to personnel, including the BSO staff that work for our district. And just as a note, even though staff is 60 percent of the budget, the city still operates with fewer staff positions than it did prior to the 2009 housing crisis. Only a few positions are ever added at time, and those are generally offset by increased revenues or conversion of contract services to in-house. Focusing just on the general fund, like all funds and all governmental budgets, it's required to be balanced. The anticipated revenues are $80.5 million, about half of your budget for the General Fund Revenue's constitutes just two sources which are have rates for consideration tonight. Your ad valourium or property tax revenues and your fire assessment. There are a variety of other different categories that together constitute over 150 general fund revenue accounts. Not all of this money is made equally. What I mean by that is you have what are called general revenues that can be spent on any governmental purpose like your property tax and then you have what are called restricted revenues. Restricted revenues such as the fire assessment can only be used for very specific legal expenditures. Like you know we can only spend the fire assessment on the cost of fire suppression. Gas tax revenues can only be used and what's allowed under state law, primarily related to transportation and infrastructure costs. Building and permitting fees can only be used to fund the activities of building and permitting department related to the enforcement of Florida building code. And understanding that there are restricted revenues is important because these need to be balanced against the general fund expenditures. So your general fund expenditures are also $80.5 million. Your largest share of expenditures is BSO and our fire rescue department. Public safety is about half of the general fund budget. And then the rest of the general fund budget is all the other departments that we've mentioned before, Park, Sly, Brary, ECD, which is your engineering and community development, building and community services, which includes permitting, and those public works divisions not in the enterprise funds. Your enterprise funds, of which there are three, they are business like, they have their own fees they're not supported by the general fund they issue their own debt and they maintain their own reserves. The largest of the city's water and sewer fund at 26.9 million dollars which is over 55% of the enterprise funds followed by stormwater and solid waste. A little more detail about these funds. Solid waste is experiencing increased costs. And it's a combination of personnel, recycling rates, repair maintenance and tipping costs. The increased fees from waste connection, waste management alone are estimated to cost around $800,000 more for next year. And that's on top of personnel increases and the elevated cost of recycling. With this in mind, the recommendations to increase that residential special assessment from $310 to $340. Again, that remains below the countywide average of about $400 per residential unit. It's only slightly above the rate that was charged in fiscal year 12. We're also recommending a corresponding increase in the commercial rates of 9.68% to match the percentage of the residential increase. And a present those rates are set by ordinance but I will note that a separate agenda item on this evening's docket does involve shifting that to adopting these fees by resolution. So if that does pass, there'll be a change in how we adopt those commercial rates. For water and sewer, we had a master plan and rate study that was approved last year. It was both are still ongoing. We hope to have the results and be able to present them in the near future. We are in discussions and some of the elements as it relates to wastewater capacity with Fort Lauderdale. Because we do purchase our water from Fort Lauderdale and our wastewater processing is primarily through them in a smaller portion through Broward County. That also goes in alignment with our automatic rate adjustment, which occurs annually on October 1st. This is determined by the provider rates that will be charged, which are set as part of the Fort Lauderdale and Broward County's own budget processes. Our storm water fund, as I stated, we had a master plan that was adopted, included a rate study. We've been working to secure revolving loan fund money and we're recommending an increase of $11.00. That $11 increase will generate about $485,000 more dollars a year. And when we get to the CIP, you'll be able to see that that small increase really helps support some major projects. The Storm Monitor Fund for Fiscal Year 24, its CIP was only $730,000 in drainage projects. Next year, more than $7 million of projects are contemplated with the vast majority of that funding coming through from grants and the state revolving loan fund. So that increase of $11 for a recommendation is primarily to fund principal and interest payments and increased maintenance costs in that fund. The budget is also a means of executing the city's strategic plan and incremental steps. So the strategic plan was first developed back in 2007. It was substantially updated and modified in 2013. And very recently it was revised in 2022 after a public workshop. And as part of that workshop process, a new strategic performance area was adopted, environmental stewardship and sustainability. And so the strategic plan helps departments prepare their business plans as initiatives for each fiscal year. And it goes into the development of the operating and capital budget and also policies that are bought for consideration of the commission. There are more details of the business plan as part of the attachments to the recommended budget on the agenda, but just a very high level summary. We have over 190 different initiatives and capital purchases and activities in support. These are evaluated over $8.5 million. Some of the highlights include maintaining all of our city events, additional funding for the Westside incentive program that was approved earlier by the City Commission this year that has a CRA incentive style program within the qualified census tract area out west of an Oakland Park Boulevard west of I-95. It creates a new volunteer services manager position for parks and leisure services to help revitalize and expand and support our volunteer core and volunteering activities. Recommends the addition of two new ITS positions converting mapping to geographical information system from contracted services to in-house. And then also additional staff in our building and permitting department to help with the administrative burdens of the many different projects they have and with the permits. It also replaces 29 vehicles at a cost of $3.3 million. Average years of service on those vehicles is 15 years. We also have over about half a million dollars in new capital equipment for fire rescue. We also have investments to keep us up to date with the world, including efforts for artificial intelligence incorporating that in our ITS department and continuing supportive our Harlem and Pride community garden pilot program. We recently launched our payment by phone system for utility billing and we also have the first full year of our Keep Oakland Park beautiful efforts spearheaded by public works. As part of the budget the City Commission adopts a five-year capital improvement program. The first year is appropriated and the remaining four years are planned activities so we're just going to look at what's appropriated as part of next year's proposed budget. This proposed CIP is $38.4 million. The vast majority of work is above ground. Almost over $9 million in parks improvements, almost $14 million in streetscape improvements, an additional facility work at about 6.2 million. You also have about 24% for various enterprise fund infrastructure water and sewer 1.9 and then you have almost 20% of the CIP budget related just stormwater. The CIP has grown substantially. Earlier we showed that the citywide budget was around 90 million in fiscal year 2020 and that had a CIP of only 3.8 million. CIP for the next year is almost 40 million. This is a 907 percent increase. Now we don't have time to go through all these projects but some of these highlights include the renovations for the cons community center building and with the work authorization this evening for the design. City Park Phase 2 we've received the grant to redo the trail and pedestrian lighting at Royal Palm Park. We have the Floor and Out of Sidewalk Network, completely funded by grants. Then we have Emerald Lakes Basin drainage improvement, additional design work, one for which we've received about a two and a half million dollar grant, and there's also the initial design authorization on tonight's agenda. And lastly, we have one of our first major construction projects as part of the Stormwater Master Plan. And that's the Northeast 6th Avenue Pumpstations out of Oakland Park Boulevard. Now, this is CIP. The funding comes from a variety of sources. I'm excited to say that two thirds of the funding, over $25 million comes from a variety of sources. I'm excited to say that two-thirds of the funding, over $25 million comes from grants, surtax, and other sources, including a generous donation by City resident to fund the creation of Glenwood Garden to park here in the city downtown. Design work on that project will be underway. Re-capping some of the major items we've talked about, we're recommending a decrease in the operating mileage to 5.7243 mills. We're recommending a reduction of combined debt service mileage to 0.5534 mills. We're recommending an increase in the fire assessment based on growing costs from $276 to $382. Now we saw earlier that the operating mileage in the fire assessment were about 50% of the general fund revenues. And so these are our governmental fees that are being set tonight that fund those general government operations with the fire assessment only going to fire suppression costs. I think it's always important to compare how we're doing to other cities. There's always limitations in doing this. Every city has different concerns, different tax bases, but I think Oakland Park compares favorably under this proposed budget. So you can see here, pardon me, a list of cities, the population between 40 to 80,000. Ranked on Millage, we have the second lowest rate. And that is with us having a voted debt millage. You can see the ones that don't have a little last or a little next to them. That's just district operating millage. So we have the second lowest combined millage rate for operating in debt. Whereas the other cities with debt, they're the three highest. Only city with a lower mileage rate is the city of Weston, which has a very different tax base in the city of Oakland Park. When we look at the fire assessments, you can see that the average for cities are size is 387. So with this proposed adjustment to the rate, we still remain below our peers, well below Weston's rate of 638. Oftentimes it's a matter of policy choice, whether to bear the cost of fire suppression through property tax or through the assessments. We're recommending an increase of the storm water rate, but $11 taking the rate to $125 per EREU. EREU means equivalent residential units. So that's the rate per household for commercial and other non-residential properties. That works out to every 1507 square feet of mme. Surface. 1,507 square feet of impermeable surface. Residential solid waste for recommending a $30 increase. Again, still well below the can of average of 400, and only slightly above our fiscal year 12 rate of 300. We're recommending a corresponding increase in our solid waste commercial rates of 9.68%. We're maintaining our fund balance within the policy limits. We're adding the total of four positions to city staffing. Right now we have 325 positions, which does not include our complement of BSO, our district, which has 99 individuals working for it. That's what it creates to 329 city employees. It is the largest adopted budget in the city's history. And as we go through fiscal year 25 and make various amendments including rolling over ongoing construction projects, it has the distinct possibility of reaching over 200 million. What does this mean to our typical household? On this slide, we can see what the impact is on the median single family home. So you can see here we have what it saved our home's value was in 2024, and that's the assessed value. And that can only increase by a maximum of 3% a year or CPI, whichever is the lower amount. CPI is reported by the state, was 3.4% year over year. This is a reduction. Last year it was 7% prior to that, it was 6.5. So these properties were all limited to 3% if they were homesteaded during that time. And then the homestead exemption of 50,000 as applies to city taxes as taken away from that assessed value. So for our operating mileage, it would have an impact of about $2%, about $20, about $19 a year. With the debt service mileage decrease, it's offset in almost $10 and $44, the net's about $8.72. We have three special assessments, two of which stormwater and solid waste are related to their individual enterprise funds. So that's the $11 increase for stormwater, $30 increase for solid waste, and then as part of the general fund, $106 increase for the fire assessment. Altogether, it's an increase over last year of $155.72 in impact of about $13 a month. And one thing to note is that as part of the trim notices, this is not what residents will see in property owners. They will see our prior rates, our proposed rates, and then for the milled rate, they'll see the rolled back rate. This is a state required calculation that in essence shows what the tax rate would be if no additional property tax was generated over the prior fiscal year. So if property tax revenues in total remained flat. So this is 7.42% above that rolled back rate. Achieving the rolled back rate is very difficult in a high inflationary environment, particularly when we have various cost increases as we're outlined earlier in the presentation. The city is just one of many taxing authorities. There are a variety of different special taxing districts such as the Florida and the Navigation District, the Children's Services Council and others, the Broward School Board, the Broward County, the Broward County Commission, and the Oakland Park. Oakland Park is less than the third of the property taxes on the bill. Just going into a little more depth on Saver Homes, it is distinct to Florida. Not every state has this system. And essentially it serves to help moderate increases in the assessed value for long-term homeowners. So if a residential property is the primary residence, that growth and assessed value will be capped at 3% per year. And then there'll be a $50,000 homestead exemption. I will note that only 25,000 of that applies to the school board's taxes. About 60% of Oakland parks, 15,000 single-family home town homes and condos are homesteaded properties. For non-homes to the properties, residential or otherwise, the cap is 10% a year. So effectively, over time, their tremendous tax advantages can be gained by maintaining your homestead in the same location, whereas people who are moving into Florida from out of state or living in a non-home-stead exempted property have a higher share of increase over time. And the homestead is one of many different exemptions under state law, and I can show some of those out there. Many residents are entitled under state law to a variety of different exemptions, and the property appraiser can help them go through those different options. Just to show what the impact is over time, we looked at what the average single family home was back in fiscal year 22 and it had a market value of about 268 thousand dollars but a taxable or assessed value about 130 thousand. If we then look at see what those increases were every year on the market side of the valuation what BCPA report is it changed in the market rate for single family homes. We can see that by this fiscal year, it's valued at about 465,000, whereas its taxable value is only about 154,000. So over that period of time, there's been a 73% increase in market value. It's gone up around 200,000, whereas the taxable value values increased by 18% so more on 24,000 or so in that change. So with that saver homes, you know, the property tax for a proposed operating mileage $882.00. Without it, that property tax is over $1,659. So over time, the Homestead exemption does provide sizeable savings to long-term residents, even as there's appreciation in the market value of those homes. So tonight we're asking that the commission take action on preliminary weights and set the time for the budget hearings. So we are again recommending a operating military of 5.7243 mills. A series 2020 debt service military to 0.3589 mills. Series 2022 debt service military of 0.1945 mills. And then three different special assessments 382 for fire 340 for solid waste and 125 for stormwater preliminary dates contingent commission approval we would have our primary tentative budget hearings on Wednesday September 4th a regular city commission meeting. We have a special hearing, a special meeting on Thursday, September 12th at 6 p.m. for the special assessments. And then we would have our final public budget hearings on Wednesday, September 18th. This does conclude my presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Mr. Thompson. Always a treat to hear from you and we can all totally hear the dozens of hours, if not hundreds of hours, that goes into that. Mr. A. Beard, did you have anything else? Well, let me first join you, Mayor and thanking Andrew and his team again for all of the hard work that they put into the budget every year. They do a phenomenal job and they're recognized as you know regularly by the government financial offices, recognitions for our reports annually of our finances and our budget. I will reiterate something that Andrew briefly touched on and that this budget is presented to you as a recommended plan. That's all it is. It will not take effect until October 1st and shortly after the first, because several months will have passed from the time that we make this recommendation and the time that the actual fiscal year begins on October 1st, we will be bringing you an amendment to this budget, which will accommodate changes during the next few months when we will likely hear news good and maybe bad that will change various elements of this budget. But in order to avoid the chaos that would ensue if we started digging into every line of this budget between now and October 1st, We urge you, please, to recognize that you're support this evening for the general decisions that are being asked of you regarding setting the military rates and the assessments would be something that we could rely on and that the voters will be notified of and will have every opportunity to engage in September, after which time in October, we will actually begin the business of coming to terms with what next year looks like. There's always uncertainty in the future and we recognize that and we've all lived through that in recent years most notably because of COVID. So there will be changes. There's no question about it after October 1st and they will be brought to you for your consideration. Tonight we're asking you to look at the forest, not the trees, to give us a sense of what our taxpayers can expect in the coming year. And of course, as always, to address any questions that you might have regarding this recommendation. So I thank you very much for your time and your attention and look forward to your dialogue. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. A. Bear. All right, we'd like to begin. I can begin. Mr. Neville. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Thompson, to you and your team for providing such detailed report. Just explaining to the residents, what's going on and how this budget will affect them. Because they're going to be necessary costs to keep our neighborhoods clean. It's going to be necessary costs to keep our neighborhoods safe. We have our BSO and we have our firefighters. And also we need to keep maintaining the proper staff to run the city. So I just want to thank you. And there are some costs that we cannot escape like the storm water. And I just have a question on that if you can explain those increases. I know there's flooding throughout the city. Will this increase address the flooding that the city is incurring? It represents the start of the master plan's implementation. So that master plan included a flooding vulnerability assessment. There's an update to that even on tonight's agenda. And we have been working to secure grant funding and state-roving loan funding to tackle those 15 projects. Now those projects were contemplated to take 15 years to complete. We've already secured $5 million in grants for them. So next year we're starting the construction on the first of those major projects, the Northeast 6th Avenue Prum station out of Oakland Park Boulevard. So the short answer is yes, it's the start to becoming more resilient in making those improvements. I'm not the public works director, but I know that the drainage funds, capital improvement has gone from less than 800,000 to over 7 million. And that is a substantial and tangible increase that will have real ramifications and benefits. So it's very able to complete more of these master plan projects, ideally through a combination of grant and revolving loan fund money. That increases really an essential part in being able to keep that fund healthy and be able to start working on those projects. So it is the start, but it is going to be a multi year effort. Understood and it should be anticipated. We shouldn't, no one should expect it to be done overnight. And I only brought that up because I received lots of calls and I see a lot of comments being made when there's a weather advisory and there's going to be a rainstorm and they start complaining about the streets. Just want the residents to know this is part of the budget that we're working on. And I also want to highlight how you all secure the grants and the reporting. So thank you to you and your staff for so far. I believe it's 25.4 million in grants. Thanks to the hard work of folks in our engineering department that they have secured over 25 million and grant funding for next year's CIP so about two thirds of it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Newbold. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate it. I want to start, Andrew, thank you to you, Mr. City Manager, you and your team, the directors from every department, and in all honesty, every employee who played a part in making this budget possible by working hard every day and helping to contain costs. It's absolutely amazing to see a $92 million budget just five years ago skyrocket to $166 million. That just goes to show the direction of the city and how hard everyone is working. Oakland Park continues to make outstanding progress. This budget shows how we're investing in our future, how we're going to be so much better off in years to come, because we're actually tackling some of the problems, many of these problems that have been out there for many years and we just haven't been able to get to them. Mr. Avery, I've got to say, without the grant funding, a lot of this is just not possible. We would not be doing near as much as we're doing without that grant funding. So I appreciate staff for all they're doing, Andrew, this proposed budget is impressive. I know myself every year, it gets to budget time. This is my 10th budget with the city. And the first year I got here is the year that Mr. Avera got here and one thing that I expressed Mr. Avera is, although every year we've been fortunate, the home values have increased and the city has brought in more money. I've always felt that even though we invest in the city and we put more money into projects We've got to give a little bit of that money back thus reducing our millage rates We're obviously not going back to the rollback rate But we still are reducing that millage rate a little bit so Mr. Aver I want to say thank you for always Duet net every year say thank you for always tweeting that every year. Again, guys, it's not a lot that we're giving back, but we're not raising it and we're giving something back. So we are working hard. We're improving the city for the future. Andrew was talking about pensions are one of our biggest pain points right now. 18% increase year over year in pensions. We have a BSO contract with a 7% increase. I think that's a little bit excessive. I did ask Mr. Andrew yesterday in a meeting on the BSO contract. There's a $7 million fringe benefits line item. And I asked, we shouldn't see something that just says $7 million fringe benefits. We should know exactly what that $7 million represents. So I had asked Andrew to go back and take a look and break that down for us. So we understand my perception of fringe benefits are not necessarily when I hear fringe benefits I think in something up above and beyond not your insurance costs and vehicle costs so I would Mr. Andrews Andrew could you and I was able to get more clarification on that the document that I saw saw utilized the term fringe benefits was in their budget submittal letter. And what they have labeled as fringe benefits really was just a roll-up of the benefits above it. So you'll see in the letter that's attached to the agenda item, the recommended budget summary that it breaks out, the pension, the fight-up. So I agree with you that the term we just use the term benefits because it's all inclusive where it's fringe I agree can sometimes could refer to something else take home car but when BSO's Kate it's referring to all those benefits they have enumerated above. So I'd be happy to go through those but it doesn't represent separate benefits that are not being reported as line that we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing and we have been doing We very much appreciate Bia, so they do an outstanding job here in the city. Just we have the responsibility of keeping an eye on that budget. When we see something go up 7%, and I know there are a lot of factors, headwinds that we're dealing with this year, especially after the pandemic and all the costs are increasing and everything. But 7% was a little bit excessive and I would like you know I would hope that they'll trim a little bit of whatever they can from the BSL budget in the future. We also took a hit with our solid waste costs the dumping fees going up. Again, there are so many expenses that the city has right now, even equipment, the cost of vehicles, the cost of dumping and tipping. It's just kind of a painful year in regard to costs going up. I always have to be transparent. There were a few decisions made by a prior commission and this commission that I found somewhat painful and I did not think that we were necessarily most physically responsible. I'm going to talk about that a little bit later when we get to a different item. I'm not going to take up our time now, but the state has not been our friend either when working with this budget. The state sets requirements for the city to pay certain pension costs and expenses for fire, for police. I'll give you one example and I apologize I'm not 100%. Sometimes I have a different, a different, difficult time articulating exactly how it went. Right now, when pensions are calculated, they're calculated throughout the number of years of the pension. Now this is if I'm, hope I'm explaining this right, and if I'm not, if you could interject, I would appreciate it. The state put out a rule recently that said we have to have our pensions funded within eight years. What that means is we normally would have 30 years to fund a pension. The state came out and said, you have eight years to totally fund that pension. So what happens then with all that extra money? Once we hit eight years and we invested, so we're putting a lot more money in these pension funds, this is money that would have been earned later and built up those pensions. So now what's gonna happen is after eight years, these pension funds are gonna be astronomical because they're still gonna earn all that extra money. And we, our residents already put the money in there to cover it. So, state has not been our friend at all. And it goes from that to just taking away our home rule for how we either decide we want vacation rentals or whatever the situation. And so, I just bring this up folks to understand there are so many factors as a city manager and his team were working through this. And, you know, I'd like to say the state's been our friend but they have not. BSO the costs went up and to some degree I think the commission made a few mistakes along the way this past year and the prior commission on some of the decisions we made. And again I'll talk a little bit about that is it for now. So I just do want to say Andrew Mr. A. Bear. I appreciate this budget. There were certain elements of it that I really wanted to say. Hell no, no way. But I understand the factors that you that were you were up against. And you know, there's just really no no option but to do some of the things that you did and the bottom line really is we're doing an outstanding job in Oakland Park we really are look at all the developments we're doing it responsibly we're getting awards Andrew and his team are getting awards annually so So I feel really good. The little things that happen that do upset me. We just got to see if we can change those in the future. But thank you, Mr. Mayor, appreciate it. Thank you, Vice Mayor Lonergan. Mr. Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Thompson and your staff. This is an amazing budget. It's amazing what you all have done to bring this budget to us tonight. Considering the high interest rates, the supply chain that's very challenging, the increases in the elevated inflation and so on. You were able to navigate through and bring us a budget that's solid, a budget that's going to take us forward to our next fiscal year. I know you consider many factors to put into this budget to keep us sustainable. It takes expertise, talent, commitment to do the right thing by our citizens to manage their tax contributions and all the fees that they pay into this budget it takes a very skilled pallet a skilled captain to do what you guys have done a skilled captain to do what you guys have done. We are strong. We always say that we are the city on the rise. And we have the proof to show how we are able to manage the budget and keep the city solid and viable. So I just want to say thank you for all that you do. The grants, the over $25 million grants is certainly a huge plus for us. And we thank those individuals who are also skilled and knowledgeable on how to solicit these grants and secure them. So we are really excited about all that you all have done. Commissioners have said prior to what I'm saying, we are all just excited about where we are right now. I just wanna say a huge thank you to you and staff. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Gordon. If everyone can just please silence their phone, please. Just take a second to silence your phones. Commissioner, thank you, Commissioner Gordon, Commissioner Arnst. Yeah, one thing to say. I got a hell of a lot of reading to do. And you know, I'll do it. So that's all I have to say. Yeah, but I want to thank everyone who had everything to do. It's not just Andrew. It's all the staff. And I know they don't like ever coming down here. They're very shy but thank them for me because and it's not it's all the department heads it's everyone it's not just you know that's just finance everyone so but I say I got a lot of reading to do. Indeed, Commissioner Arts we all do and maybe next time we can see the full budget team like we did I think ones last year. Mr. Thompson, Mr. Abert, thank you for this. You know, it's always a tough call when we have to reduce increased fees or reduce or increase millage. Of course it is. And I respect Vice Mayor Lattergan, you'll talk, I don't want to say descent. You'll talk. I know what you're going to say because you brought up last time, I think, or a few minutes ago, but I appreciate your critique because we're not, who think is never good in a democracy. So I appreciate that. But I think we always have to err on a fee increase as much as we don't like it versus getting out the Oakland Park has increased your taxes, your property taxes, which we're not recommending. In fact, the opposite had out of 11 years a decrease and this decrease this year is a bit more than last years for the millage. So thank you for all this work. I just want to have one question I've always talked with the city manager about is and Mr. Thompson or Mr. Thompson, if you, whoever would like to address it, we have a lot of staff and then we have BSO, which is a whole menu of more staff than we have part time recreation workers, typically in the summer. This budget's proposing for new new, is it four? Yeah, four new positions, which also has benefits, which that would also get the 3%, or it may shouldn't say 3%, but typically we get the cost of living to the consumer price index. And I was curious, and we've had this for public consumption, how is the decision made as to when we have contract workers, to when we have employees? I know Mr. A. Bear, your philosophy is as long as you're here on Earth, but particularly in this role, you will do your dandist not to lay off someone, which I actually applaud. When we do convert people, this one is on page 30, my glasses today, page 39. Certainly bringing back the volunteer service manager, I think one person doing two positions, we definitely need to separate that. A new administrative assistant, which I support for building and permitting. And then to an IT, overseeing the GIS technology, which we've approved previously if I recall. the GIS technology, which we've approved previously if I recall, with these salaries come benefits, with these benefits come, they've come part of the team, and then when there's raises, here's four more people getting raises. I know that it's not a simple decision, but if you can talk a little bit about how you think of when to bring on a full-time staff and frankly convert. Thank you, Mayor, and that is an excellent question. And one that takes up considerable hours on the part of my management team and myself. You allude to a philosophy that I have ascribed to for more than 35 years now. Many of you know my own personal history was that my father was a public servant and due to a work action that he was involved in, he was fired. He was fired at a time when our family did not have resources and ultimately had to sell our home to provide for the well-being of his family. And seeing that happen to somebody that I knew was as dedicated and committed as my dad was to his career, has left a deep impression on me. The truth of the matter is that for 35 years I've had the unfortunate occasion to be faced with decisions about terminating individuals, but it was always for wrongdoing, or other factors that made it obvious that they were not in compliance with the expectations and standards that I set for our employees. But I have never, never once, never told an employee that they could no longer rely on bringing home a paycheck because we had to lay somebody off. I've never had to do that. Because I don't think that's the commitment that we make and I know it's not the commitment that they make to us. So every time we add a new position, I struggle with whether or not the next time we have the kind of downturn that we had in 2008 and 2009 or back in 2000 and 2001 or before that in 1989 and 1990 or before that in 1970 and 71 and before that and before that and the fact is it happens. It always does happen and I want to be sure that I can save every one of those people because the last thing they need to worry about is having to stand in line at an unemployment office when the line stretches around the block. So it's a tough decision. There are several different factors, maybe more than several, that go into the consideration. Not least of which is that first item. Can I save this additional body that we're adding to our ship in the event that crisis strikes us. But there are many others, sometimes as what's happening right now in IT and the changes that are taking place in cybersecurity and more importantly, perhaps artificial intelligence and what the implications are for us as a city and for our future, we may find out that we are not able to buy people with that expertise. And we may end up having to go outside to shop that around simply because we've seen the scenario over the last several months alone where many of our IT staff have gone to other more lucrative opportunities outside of the city. We simply cannot sometimes compete. And in situations like that, we will look at contracting the position. On the other hand, there are times when it just doesn't make any sense, and we can do a better job ourselves in house. And that's what we're hoping to achieve with these additional positions that you've outlined. But any one of these can be a conversation that could last 20 or 30 minutes easily, just to talk about the various considerations that a department had and I negotiate when we finally bring you a recommendation and trust me. It's never an easy solution one way or another, but we do the best we can as managers to try to make the right decisions. So thank you for the question, Mayor. Thank you. And I'm asking you a question here. Now I'm going to ask you and if you even know this, for cities are a size that I'm not talking about. We love the SO, but that's a subcontract. Is this still considered for our full time staff? Is this still considered? I don't know, you know, a small compliment, and we contract out a lot, or is this a kind of a, for a city, our size, and for our scope, it's kind of an average. Do you even have an idea of our complement? Similar to the list that Andrew put on the board that showed how we rank with other cities regarding our milledrate. There are many variables and it's interesting. Weston was the only city that we had listed there of the same population range that had a lower milled rate than we do and well-quested and actually takes an entirely different approach to city employees. They only have a handful of city employees there and almost everything that they do is contracted out. And as a consequence, and they've been very successful, I think, in running their operation over there. But again, one of the challenges that you're facing when you're comparing any two cities is that I would venture to say that we're all fruit, but some of us are apples and some of us are oranges and some of us are oranges and many others are bananas or strawberries or papayas. So it's hard to give you a template that says, this is how we would rank in that area. But you raise an interesting sort of side note, which is how do we compare with other cities when it comes to compensation for our team? And the truth is we do on a regular basis try to assemble that information for comparative purposes and we do try always to stay competitive. But the fact of the matter is people who are intrigued by opportunities where there are promotional opportunities or alternatively compensation increases will seek those out and will go elsewhere. And we have unfortunately seen that happen as well. Several of our IT staff for example went to other cities. And that is something that I work very closely with Steven Scott, our director of human resources to try to assess whether or not we need to make adjustments to that. And of course, Mayor, you know you've been very engaged in some of those decisions about how we change the structure and often over the past several years we have brought to you with your support recommendations that even though there's a framework of minimum and maximum ranges for a position as people learn new skills, get new training, are certified in various areas. We give them an additional step up or two similar to what Fire enjoys annually as a given in their step increases and we are implementing many of those strategies as well to try to stay competitive. But again, that's why you have a management team to try to make sure that these decisions are regularly reviewed and that we make the right choices moving forward. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Raybear. Any other comments on the budget presentation? Okay, well thank you. So we'll look forward to that on a future agenda. With that, we're going to move on to a public hearing for an ordinance on the second hearing, second reading item one adoption of the city of Oakland Park 2045 comprehensive plan. Thank you, Mayor. As you will recall, no doubt the first hearing on this item came to you several months ago. The comprehensive plan is an overarching idea of where we would like to see the city headed in a number of different critical areas of our operation. This evening we are bringing to you our second reading this has been vetted now by both the county and the state and we're going to turn to our wonderful team in community and economic development which is headed by Sierra Marrero and her assistance I see are also here with us Rick B Bugai, who has been fabulous in keeping us up to date with these complexities. So if you could walk us through this item, please. And before we do, I'm going to ask the city attorney to please read the ordinance. No problem. An ordinance of the city commission of the city of Oakland Park, Florida, adopting amendments to the city's comprehensive plan, including amendments and revisions to the future land use map series. In accordance with chapter 163, section 163, 3184, the Florida Statutes amending the goals, objectives, and policies in future land use element, housing element, transportation and mobility element, infrastructure element, intergovernmental coordination element, recreation and open space element, conservation element, sustainability and resiliency element. Coastal element, economic development element, private open space element, conservation element, sustainability and resiliency element. Coastal element, economic development element, private property rights element, capital improvements element, public schools facilities element, land use implementation element, capital improvements implementation element, and monitoring and evaluation element and creating the elements of sustainability and resiliency, economic development and private property rights, containing a provision for inclusion in the conference of plan, providing for severability, codification, conflicts, and an effective date. Say that five times fast. Okay. The development is taking its toll, making room for all the people moving to Florida. Housing. We want to point out that we create a vision statement that aligns with the strategic plans of the city. It was our goal to reflect, plan that reflect, I'm sorry, a vision that reflects all of the policies that you all brought to us in our strategic plan efforts, but then also really take what we've started to build is building our second century campaign and bring it into the future for the entire city. campaign and bring it into the future for the entire city. As stated, this is our plan. It has as alignment with the strategic plan that was created back in 2023, updated in 2023. As we go through this presentation, you'll see different elements that you see on the right hand side of the presentation that will let you know which one of the strategic plan elements that we do align with. As Mr. Thompson had previously stated, this was a very well thought out road map for the city. And this is going to be the road map that we use to guide us on how we establish the planning of our second century. The state is a charter county and so the state statute does require that our comprehensive plan is an alignment with the Broward County plan also known as Broward Next and our plan has officially been reviewed by Broward County planning council and they have agreed that we are an alignment with their plan. So jumping into the elements, I know you guys have seen this before, from the 2007 plan, you have three new elements that we've added. The sustainability and climate resiliency portion, we have the economic development and property rights. So future land use, this is as previously mentioned kind of the core of the comprehensive plan. I know that it was stated before, very well stated that the comprehensive plan is really the DNA of the city. And so this is what we're going to use to shape what the future of our city looks like. So we, as I stated before, Bard County has recertified or is in the process of doing the recertification by the Planning Council for consistency and As the core of this this will be what dictates how we use the land moving forward throughout the entire city One of the first elements that I wanted to dive into is housing So we do have a housing element which aims to protect and beautify existing neighborhoods, provide different kinds of diverse housing opportunities, but also address the affordable housing. We do, we did actually have an affordable housing presentation a few commission meetings ago with Daniel Roseman, where he touched on the counties recently adopted 10 year affordable housing plan. And so now we have kicked off our next stage of affordable housing planning with Mr. Roseman and working on developing what Oakland Parks affordable housing plan and initiatives and programs looks like. So I just wanted to dive into a little bit more of the affordable housing component and this is to we aim to help ensure housing affordability and like I said from a diverse range of incomes. Our goal is for equitable housing for vulnerable populations with the quality throughout the entire city. Currently we are set with the AMI of 80% and we are with an encouraging of 60% AMI which is in alignment with the Broward County. I just wanted to point out the Broward County program that I'm sorry the 10-year master plan for affordable housing because that aims to help workforce housing which is the missing middle at this point in a lot of communities within the county. So moving on to the transportation of mobility element. Transportation and mobility is one of those that I think is often overlooked but is actually very critical in the success of our city. Even when it feeds into the affordable housing or housing components because if you can't leave the house or get where you need to go it's a little bit difficult to You know be successful. So the transportation is an element that is throughout the entire comprehensive plan It touches most of the other elements throughout that plan. We do have the goal of being Safe and accessible to all we are already coordinating with some of these goals with other agencies such as the Department of Transportation, the MPO, Metropolitan Planning Organization, and also with Broward County on some other initiatives that they have. As part of this policy, we have implemented the best practices in the comprehensive plan around the Vision Zero and complete streets initiatives, modeling after the MPO and Broward County. All right, economic development is one of our new items, our elements that have been put into this comprehensive plan. This was really as a reaction to wanting to attract those new businesses. You know, it started in the downtown core. Now it's going to expand outside. We want to promote culinary arts. We want to prioritize that redevelopment, not just in the downtown, but throughout the city as a whole and create that true second century that we're all looking for. Recreation in open space. So, our goals here to maintain our existing amenities and while existing sounds a little boring, remember some of those existing are now new thanks to our building our second century campaign. We are looking at ways to create more diverse facilities for a quality throughout the city. We always are going to encourage accessibility and connectivity with those being our goals in mind as we plan out the CIP projects that you saw in the prior presentation. A lot of those you'll start to see those connectivity projects which will start to connect to all of those different facilities. We are always have the goal of creating more open space in our new development. And as we continue to work through a lot of our analysis, implementing these goals, you'll start to see those policies go into effect. Sustainability and resiliency is a very important topic for all of us here. I know flooding is a hot topic, and this is this portion of the plan has our goals for building best practices. It does align with our joint climate action plan with the city of Wilton manners. Also it takes hazard mitigation into account and we start to focus on flooding in areas in a geographical component throughout the city in this element. Conservation and coastal management, those are actually two sections that we've combined together. And so this is part of our environmental and stewardship and sustainability component. This is promoting water conservation, whether it be through different programs, it could be through irrigation and different ideas that we have that we want to implement throughout. We also take into consideration sea level rise and other kind of flood impacts that are impacting a majority of our city. We do prioritize the preservation and protection of our resources during development, but then we also want to make sure that we're creating more areas that we can create the First stormwater runoff and other Environmental impacts that are impacting our residents Infrastructure and capital improvements. We have additional goals where we are encouraging the level of service standards to follow the national and regional best practices, but in my very personal, very biased opinion, I think we have the best practices because we're building the best second century. So for capital improvements, level of service standards were also updated to reflect those same national and regional best practices, as well as our current operating procedures. Some other elements we have in the land, I'm sorry, in the Comprehensive Plan 2045 are the land use implementation, the capital improvement and implementation, and the monitoring and evaluation. These are required by Broward County to ensure consistency with their land use plan, but they were created in a streamlined manner to be more useful in the interpretation in our comprehensive plan. And so this is really going to be our road map as to how are we going to implement and how are we going to evaluate and monitor through our reporting periods. and monitor through our reporting periods. Intergovernmental coordination and public schools are two other elements within our comprehensive plan and there was not a lot of updates to these two sections but essentially it is the current operating procedures between Oakland Park and other entities and also this element does include the levels of service for the Florida Inventory of School Housing and so that was in collaboration with Broward County and the school board and any collaboration that is necessary in these elements. So while I gave you a brief overview of the elements I do want to give you a little bit of background. So the Planning and Zoning Board did recommend this for approval for a vote of 5-0 on October 9, 2023 with nine recommended actions. Those nine recommended actions have been taken into consideration and changed within the comprehensive plan that's before you this evening. The local Planning Agency recommended approval at a vote of 5-0 on October 10, 2023. On November 1st, City Commission passed the ordinance on first reading. As the 5-0 vote, the adoption on first reading did enable us to transmit the package to the entire comprehensive plan and supporting documents to Broward County and the various state and regional agencies who did conduct the reviews. There was a series of comments back and forth which Mr. Buckeye was fantastic at tracking and keeping track of. I don't know how he did it. But that was all completed which brought us here tonight after all of that effort where staff recommends that the City Commission conduct a public hearing and adopt the proposed ordinance on second reading, amending the City of Oakland Park's Comprehensive Plan. This action will update the long range plan document for compliance with Briard County Land Use Plan and the various state and regional growth management review agency objections. Recommendations and comments is required by Florida Statute and will create the new 2045 comprehensive plan for the city. And with that being said, Rick and I are available for any questions if you may have them. Outstanding presentation. Thank you and at this point I'm going to open the public hearing. Anyone who would like to speak on this matter and this matter only, you have up to four minutes. It's a matter of no. Fitzbud. I just need to say your name and address. Thank you. Fifth but who? 720 North East 59 Court. No family gardens community. Hi everyone. I got three four minutes so I got to go after this. I want to thank Mr. Thompson for this report. The last segment of this presentation. You're awesome Mr. Thompson for this report, the last segment of this presentation. You're awesome, Mr. Thompson. Thank you, sir. One question for you. I wonder how we could survive. Mr. Butler, we just have to focus on the comprehensive plan only. And that's my question. Mr. Thompson, how are we going to fund this complaint? Because I spent several Zoom hours in presentations in the planning and zoning board helping to push this complaintlain by Miss Sierra Merano and Mr. Buckeye, Mr. Sudden, and the previous director, Mr. Peter Swarth. It was impressive community-wide input on this conflain. I appreciate the economic development, the transportation, and the housing, which I saw it was maybe initiated at 60% AMI, all right, but it's locked in at 80. My preference is to go with the urban, the urban league plan, because they came in and created a 30% AMI to 120 for affordable housing all throughout our great city. So, you know, maybe we could take a look at that, but 60 is good for now. 60 to 120. I could go with that. So let's look at that intensely. Also, in the complaint, we did a, we all, I do support every aspect of it, every aspect of it. Now also you'll be hearing workforce development incentives. We need to look at incentives that's placed in the comp plan because it's going to be a great strategy in broadening out the base and creating the more diverse workforce, come on, a more diverse economic development in small business and maintaining our small businesses, especially in the downtown core. This comp plan is gonna encompass all areas of our city, especially our downtown core. So we need to focus on it and enhance and strengthen all levels of our city. With that, I definitely support Miss Marano's. You did a great job, Mr. Buck, you did a great job in this plan. You listen to us. And that's what matters. The listening that occurred all throughout the city with all the residents, it was impressive. And you're able to take detailed notes and I am proud and happy that this plan is available and I encourage the commission to adopt it completely. Thank you so much. I have to go. Okay. Thank you. Our next speaker. Hello. I'm not a stall is the the previous speaker. So hi, my name is Max. I don't know if you guys can hear me well if I'm close enough to the mic. Can you just say you're pulling him in address? Max Goldstein 1021, Northwest 150th Avenue. I actually live in plantation, but I do come very often to the city of Oakland Park. Usually driving on an Oakland Park Boulevard. And that's actually what I wanted to talk to you guys about because it's part of the comprehensive plan, your transportation element. The main focus that the City of Oakland Park should have is to assist and support Barrow County's Primo plan. I know that you guys received a presentation on it about a year ago. I don't know if you guys have been talking about it at all since then, but the first project of Primo is a bus rapid transit on Oakland Park Boulevard. And that's going to be the test case for how transit could work throughout all of our county, not just Oakland Park, and it's the best corridor to have bus rapid transit on. So I would really appreciate it. If maybe not part of your comprehensive plan, so you don't have to go through and edit all that, I have to do another public hearing, but maybe if you guys could to support sending a letter of endorsement for the project to the people who are involved with that project. So Br, Brown County Transit, the Board of County Commissioners, and FDOT, because they own this portion of the right of way of Oakland Park Boulevard, and the support that it gets dedicated center running transit lanes. Because the only way that people are going to switch from driving to taking the bus is if the bus can avoid traffic on the road. And I will personally be the first bus in that seat if that's done, because I live very close to the sawgust ball and I love a lot of the restaurants here in Oakland Park and I want to take that bus to the restaurant so I don't have to drive I can drink if I take the bus let's put it that way thank you. Thank you. Sorry. Good evening Jack Dorn 4529 Piner's Trail West I just want to quickly commend the city staff for the incredible job they did with this comprehensive plan and the process that they went through to get community input and to incorporate that in the comprehensive plan itself and to listen to the PNZ board and the recommendations that we made and to then incorporate that. The document is impressive just looking at it, but to understand the background is even way beyond that. So I just want to commend them and thank them for that. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Dwarren. Good evening. Good evening, everybody. My name is Christian Cardenas, and I'm the previous tenant at 3492, right down the street here. And what's your card address? I'm at 387N Field in Boca Raton. Thank you. But I'm actually a representative of two investors, and unfortunately we weren't able to open our business here in Oakland Park despite a tremendous amount of that. I'm sorry to interrupt. Is this about the comprehensive plan? Yes. So I see that we're doing a great job of trying to allocate funds for developing businesses. I just wanted to express that as an investor coming into this city with all of the exciting things that are happening, we had a tremendous uphill battle to get through permitting. We had a tremendous time having basically previous work that was already inspected, accepted in today's, I guess, code. And so as a result, we ended up investing about $200,000 into Bill Fineberg's space and ended up paying him $350,000 to get out of a personal guarantee. Now, I want to express this to you because we are the number four business in that same space that has gone through an extensive process to just open a business. That being said, I'm very excited about what's happening in Oakland Park. And both me and my investors are looking for additional space. And we're looking at Verizon. It is a bit more expensive than what we were dealing with here. But I just want to illustrate some of the frustrations that we experience so that way in the future, if there's a way you guys can accelerate that for future investors I mean we would have an open business right now. Thank you very much. Thank you sir. Sure coming up. State your name and address please. Hi good evening my name is Sam. I live in 3541 North Hills Drive in Hollywood. Sam can you say your last name please. Sam Barons. see your last name, please? Sam Barons. Thank you. Yeah, I also am somebody who comes to Oakland Park fairly well. I have some friends who live in the city and in the vicinity. And I'd like to echo the sentiments about the Primo plan and supporting the dedicated center running bus lanes for Oakland Park Boulevard on the bus rapper transit network. You as a city have an opportunity to appeal to Rourde County Transit to F dot, the ones who are going to be making the final decisions. They listen to the city councils on this. And it's very important as someone who just sat in traffic on Oakland Park Boulevard just getting here. I can tell how serious this is on that thoroughfare and it would be an opportunity to pioneer real bus rapid transit in Broward County. And so as the council, I would hope that you guys could maybe endorse that. And I just got to ride the Sunrunner in St. Pete, which is a very similar kind of system that they've implemented in the last few years. It's a fantastic system. It runs from downtown St. Pete about 10 or 12 miles all the way out to the beach. And it's a it's a shining example of what a BRT can do in Florida with minimal investment, but huge return. And so you know this is just something that I would I want to see it be set up for success as part of the comprehensive plan. And hopefully the comp plan can also address transit oriented development around this system. But the primo plan is already planning for BRT so it would be great if we can set it up for success and have a dedicated center running lane to make sure that the buses have room to not be caught in mixed traffic which can really slow down service. Thank you. Thank you. Excuse me, one second. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Ray McRoy. My address is 1808, Southwest 11th Street in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, like Max and Salam also, not a resident of Oakland Park. But you guys have been chosen by BCT to be the first city and mainly the main thoroughfare that's going to get this first edition of Bus Rapid Transit in South Florida. And we wanna ask for your guys' endorsement that you guys can hold Broward County Transit and specifically Broward Commission to them and hold them to make it the best possible service and that it's that would be a Gold Star service with Max was saying with Senator running lanes. As your, I guess, controller, I'm not sure it's positioned, but as you was talking about, there's 20, 25 challenges, money's always a challenge. If we do an execute a correct implementation of the bus rapid transit, we can do high level transit oriented development on Oakland Park. And sometimes it might be hard to envision an Oakland Park, that's not just a thoroughfare with these kind of shops on it. Oakland Park sees maybe like 47,000, 50,000 vehicle trips per day but Coral Way in the city of Miami sees roughly 40,000 trips per day and they haven't done anything with it but the city of Coral Gables section commonly known as Maricopa Mayo also sees 40,000 trips per day and it's a hub of business, small business, housing and it's printing money into their tax, into their tax fold. So I think it's an economic decision that the city endorses it and holds the county and FDOT particularly to make it the best possible product and service possible. Thanks. Thank you. next speaker. Going once. Okay, this, thank you all for your comments, for the comprehensive plan at this time. I'm going to close the public hearing and entertain a motion. Second. We'll have some discussion. No discussion. Okay. Vice Mayor Lonegan. Yeah, just it went on first reading and the same thing. I think it's a great blueprint. Great guidelines. There are a lot of things that offer potential improvements for Oakland Park that we can run with. So again, I support this. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. I Commissioner Gordon. I just want to say thank you to the presenters. Excellent job. Very concise. Comprehendable. Thank you so much. We know about this as the vice mayor said. This is second reading. We're happy it came back. We want to thank the P and Z board for their efforts in this. The residents and everyone who was involved with putting this comprehensive plan together. We just wanna say thank you and I do support this. Thank you, Mr. Gordon. Mr. Nubel. I too just wanna say thank you, Mr. Moreira. Mr. Nubel. I too just want to say thank you, Mrs. Marrera, Mr. Buckeye, for such detailed presentation and also the input that was given by PNZ Board and the residents to make the necessary changes to make this comprehensive plan the way that it is. So thank you. Great. Thank you, Commissioner. Just two things. Since we last read this in December on the infrastructure chapter, and this is a high level, right? This is a comprehensive plan, but flooding has occurred, which actually, Commissioner Nubo, you referenced in our, you know, regarding our budget. And Mr. Abert, can we just get a little more high level on how this, what this comprehensive, very high level, of course, what this comprehensive plan says about, obviously nobody wants flooding, what we will do to address flooding? Yes, the comprehensive plan itself is a goal setting plan. It doesn't intend to itemize the various projects or prioritize those projects within this specific plan. Rather what it indicates is the goals and desires of the city. And as a compliment to the comprehensive plan, you have various master plans for elements that are contained in the comprehensive plan. In the case of flooding, you're talking about the stormwater master plan, which has been alluded to this evening previously by the Chief Financial Officer as part of our upcoming budget. So the overarching goals that are outlined in the comprehensive plan is to ensure that we address the integrity of our city and streetscapes by protecting and being resilient to the changing climate issues that we are facing here in South Florida. We about line briefly some of the specific projects and I will add one thing that we failed to mention when we talked about those $25 million dollars plus in grants that we're going to receive next month for the next year for the CIP is that almost all of the grants that we get require matching funds and in order for us to come up with matching funds, we have to look at adjusting our fee schedule. The adjustments in the assessed recommendations for the stormwater plan are relatively minimal, but what that will do is leverage those additional dollars to match the grants that we are receiving that will assist us in achieving the goals that have outlined within the comprehensive plan and more specifically within the stormwater master plan. One of the big projects, as you know, that Commissioner Gordon has championed very aggressively during her time here on the commission was attention to the Westside Lakes area which have experienced considerable challenges during heavy rain events and now we have a specific project that will be gun next year for design purposes and over time we'll connect those lakes directly to the canals for additional drainage. So we all realize that we're facing higher sea levels. We're all aware that the recent storm events that we've had since 2020. I've been here for 20 years and I haven't seen the kind of flooding that has occurred within the last four years ever before. And I fear that this is only the beginning of the challenges that we will see as we move through whatever the challenges and that will give us the guide post if you will to those strategic individual projects that will actually realize change on the ground level in our city. Thank you Mr. Rebair. Because I think we all get the same emails and phone calls about flooding and we've done significant undergrounding over the past 10 years and we are not the base and we were but there's still a bit of basin with all the factors we can't control but we're the factors we can so just for public consumption we do have a there's the infrastructure section or chapter if you all the best we're ever mentioned one of them says on 314 if you'd like to read it, one sentence here, eliminate flooding problems while preserving groundwater quality through plan growth, the provision of drainage and once again, storm water management systems, and the implementation of adopted development codes and regulations. We all in the commission wish we could prevent the flooding. Of course we do, we can't. We're doing our best with mother nature and we're trying to catch up as best as we can. We caught up incredibly well over the past decade with all of our bid packs. How many did we have? You were the mayor at the time, when they're ten or eight or so, I don't remember how many there were. So the other thing I wanted to just bring up that Mr. Bud who referenced was for housing. And I would like us to think about a, I'm happy to support this document. We put it down to 60%. And I've had some of all thinking after that with what Mr. Budhu said about 30 for two reasons. One, after this and my correct Mr. A. Bear with the Commission, then we had the urban league come to us I think after this correct and what Mr. Butto's that was correct we did approve a range of the Housing from 30% they didn't have it all specific but you know 30% to I think the 140 and perhaps I think some market rates so we actually have have already adopted on first hearing for that one for first reading That's going to come back to the 30% Also when I represented us as prior mayors have at the Board of realtors A few months ago at in Fort Lauderdale and I was with Mayor Turntalis and Mayor Ryan from sunrise and mayor messom from From Miramar etc a number of them, I don't remember which exactly here, there are about 12 of us, they talk about 30%. So this is kind of like a number that's being bandied about. So I would just ask us if you're all right with it, that we could bring a discussion item in the future. Mr. Abert, you said we could entertain, if the commission wants to a text, let me ask you, we could entertain a text amendment. Once this is passed and made, once it's adopted, so to later date, the comprehensive plan can be amended by a text amendment. Okay, and that just comes from us looking at that. Okay, thank you. So I just wanted to share those two comments without anyone else having any comments. Mr. Vice Mayor. Mayor, there's one thing that I was hoping to ask. The new element property, private property rights. It's a new element, I think. I've brought this up before, I think, along with private property rights, our private property responsibilities. And I think that at some point we should add responsibilities in here and define exactly what those responsibilities are or give a general idea of those responsibilities. Because I think with everything, with rights come responsibilities. Thank you, Mr. Ricebear. So I'm hearing Mr. A. Bear to leading from this to text potential discussions to talk about one to talk about within the private rights also to entertain a private responsibilities and also to revisit the basement that is the commission. The commission is not able to do that. The commission is not able to do that. The commission is not able to do that. The commission is not able to do that. The commission is not able to do that. The commission is not able to do that. The commission is not able to do that. The commission is not able to do that. The commission is not able to do that. The commission Commissioner Arnx. Yes. Vice Mayor Lonegan. Yes. Commissioner Gordon. Yes. Mayor Rosenwald. Yes. And it is precisely 830 and we are taking a break for 10 minutes. Thank you. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. 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I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to start again if everybody could please have a seat. All right. We're going to continue the commission meeting. We're going to be expedient tonight. We're not going to make this an 11 a.m. night. I know there's. Can I say I am? I'm so tired. Yeah. It will will certainly not be 11 a.m. We'd have to change the ordinance I got your attention on that that was no I fatigue or nor 11 p.m. Everyone if you could please take a seat or just have your conversation outside at this point we're going to go to an ordinance on first reading update to chapter 13 of the city's code of ordinance is related to solid waste. Nordinates of the city commission and city of Oakland Park, Florida, mending chapter 13 entitled solid waste, providing for additional definitions, providing for penalties and enforcement, providing an update to placement for collection and removal after collection, providing for deletion of section 1339, 1351, 1352 and 1361, and the entirety of each aforementioned section, providing for severability, conflicts, codification, and effective date. Thank you, and Mr. Raybear, there's a presentation. Yes, thank you, Mayor. As you know, part of the challenge with the budget next year was addressing the complexity of our solid waste enterprise fund. The tipping fees have escalated dramatically. And as a consequence, we have taken appropriate resources and review of our current code. And we're going to be bringing in introducing you this evening at first reading to some recommendations that we think will assist us in keeping our class in check for our residents. Joining us this evening is the Public Works Director Albert Carman and the Assistant Director Julie Leonard. Albert, if you would please. Okay. Good evening, Vice Mayor Vice Vice Mayor of City Commission, City Manager, Albert Cardin Public Works Director, I'm joined here by Julie Leonard, my Assistant Public Works Director. Tonight's item is the update to the Solid Waste Ordinance, and then, whoops, there we go. The Solid Waste or Sanitation Services Enterprise Fund as Mr. Thompson talked about. The city provides a residential garbage recycling and bulk service and also commercial garbage service. In June 2023, the city entered into the ILA with Broward County and other cities in Briar County to form the solid waste disposal and recyclables materials processing authority. That ILA prompted the review of the city's code. The city's code, there were two separate reviews of the code. One was done by the Solid Waste Consultant College Cessar Consulting, and then second was done by the Neighborhood Enhancement Division or Code Division. The Pro Pro's code changes are provided in your backup. So here's a quick highlight, as again, Mr. Thompson talked about, the increase, just over the last two years, the increase in disposal costs that we've experienced. In this is in addition to the employee cost, vehicle or replacement cost and fuel cost have all gone up. Some of the highlights of the revisions fees or special pickups are going to be proposed to be increased from $60 to $100. Other fees settings such as a roll-off service, additional service for additional cards and all those are going to be proposed. And we're also proposing taking these changes into to be set by resolution to be consistent with other fees set in the cities. Also important to note this is not part of the fees Mr. Thompson or the ad not have warm annual assessment done for the storm or that will continue to be done by the in the budget process. So those fees are part of that annual assessment. Language changes, there's some minor language changes chapter 13 that referred to the old resource recovery system or resource recovery board. That board was abandoned in 2013. This out language was removed and other clarifying language added and deleted. Also proposed changes to eliminate unlimited monthly bulk pickup that's currently on the books. Currently that we have the unlimited amount we are proposing going to 10 cubic yards per month. That's the size of a standard smaller car such as a Toyota Corolla or under Civic. And that concludes presentation. We recommend the staff except adopt the orange, the remaining adopt the orange on first reading, amending chapter 13, the solid waste. And then Julie and I are available for any questions you may have. Thank you, is there a motion? Any other ordinance for it first? Did he write up the motion or don't them? Second. You seconds. Second. Okay. Discussion. Nice mayor. Thanks mayor. I just want to say thank you to Albert and his team and Julie. I just want to say thank you to Albert and his team and Julie. I know the costs are out of control and it's beyond our control. So whatever we can do, I know we have a lot of home run businesses that end up bringing their trash home with them and leaving it out. And then our residents end up paying for that. So I know there's a focus on eliminating that. Reducing the size of the pickups I think is good. I made a recommendation to the city manager yesterday that maybe right pre pre hurricane season if we could do a yard waste only pickup and anticipation of hurricane season coming. So in other words, nothing but yard waste. Once a year right before hurricane season that might help out too as a preventive measure. So I just want to say thank you for all you're doing to try and rein in the expenses there and do what you can to make it easier on our residents. Thank you, Albert. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner Newble. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Albert. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner Neubel. Yes. Thank you, thank you both for the great presentation and notifying, you know, the prices are increasing. But the decrease in the debris pickup, how are you gonna notify the residents? This is, this is plan. I'm, oh, Albert will have a big part of that, this. This is this is plan. Oh Albert will have a big part of that but much of that will also fall on the shoulders of the clerk and the PIO. So this is first reading. It won't be until second reading that we will finalize the development of a plan and it will certainly be something that we undertake over several months. So while the second reading should it pass, would actually implement the new regulations, it would not necessarily be enforced until we do a significant effort undertaking education for our citizens. And that's likely to take many different aspects, including on our website, on our email blast, on our utility building, potentially door hangers and pamphlets. And then even after that, when we do see violators we will not be immediately taking them as for violations per se. There will be courtesy notices that are given out. We understand that this will be a process of education because it's been many many years that people have expected that whatever they put out is going to be picked up free of charge by the city. We simply can't afford to do that anymore. So we're going to take our time in rolling this out, but we need it implemented first so that we have the authority to actually act should it become necessary. Once we identify, repeat violators who have received notices of courtesy, then and only then would we actually look at violating them and finding them for their failure to comply with this regulation. Thank you, City Manager. Mr. Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. I like that gentle approach. Right? This is a transition, but I like it. Because this is budget season. So we have to trim the fat where we can. And picking up only 10 qubit yards opposed to whatever you guys have been picking up. I think this is great. This is a way of minimizing that cost. I think it's a great endeavor. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, both of you. Thank you. So, so you can still put out one use couch a month, right? We'll pick it up because as long as that bigger than a Corolla, right? I don't know if you've projected this because it's hard, but it seems like it's going to obviously with containing it to this the size of a Corolla, you're going to just move quicker. Obviously, do you have any projections? I mean, I don't drive around the city always on board. I don't really remember who has bulk trash, what days. But do you imagine this is like an, obviously, it's going to cut down time, I assume, but do you think it's going to really make it quite more efficient? Our current staffing level is that we have three bulk trash trucks that go out Monday through Thursday and they work 10 hours a day. So usually they're they're running out their route sometime Thursday around noon. And then we go into the the special pickups that we are and usually we do that the rest of the Thursday possibly on overtime Friday will be I also eliminate that over time so so minimize it I can't say eliminate but minimize it so hopefully the the same three people are able to pick the three at the same three trucks are out there picking it up Monday through Thursday and then we can again trying to reduce our efforts over time. I like that cost savings, which of course then goes into the recycling. I support recycling. I think we, well, I assume we all do. I can't say I want us to abandon recycling. That's not in me philosophically, but when you see that cost increase for recycling, and then we know we have, then there can be contamination, right? If you have all the whole bottle I talked to someone earlier today who used to work in solid waste, not in this city. If you have a whole huge dumpster of just plastic bottles and there's a can of paint, the paint spills, right? It could be contaminated. I would call that contamination and then what's done with it and does it even count? And recycling is, can you, Mr. Carbon, do you project that, you know, a year from now like is recycling costs with, with whichever vendors we're using? Just, are they going to continue to you think spiral out of control? I mean,? We're not the only city dealing with this, but if you can't project it, that's fine. But what do you think? It is, Barry. You're a correct statement. It's tough to speculate. I am in your house that I don't agree with stopping recycling process. We've spent a lot of years, decades, educating people on how to recycle and now saying no, just cup it in your try. This cycle that we're in about raising recycling, we'll come down when it does, I'm not gonna project. It will come down as we get cleaner recyclables, as we have, as the new authority gets in line, and they hire somebody who strictly markets the recyclables, then they can do, as such as Palm Beach County and Miami Day County, who have, they get better recycling rates, not wood that we had five years ago, not that we had ten years ago, but they're a lot better than we have here in Broward County. We'll be able to market our material if it's clean. So it will get better over the next, but I can't project how much better it was going to be. Thank you. The problem is there's only a market for aluminum right now. No market for cardboard, no market for paper, plastic. A lot of plastic ends up across the continents and they throw it in the water. I throw my glass right, Mr. Carbin. I throw my glass away. If I have a glass jar, what I've learned from me on the commission and prior is there's no market for glass. Am I correct on that about glass or my wrong? Educate me if I'm wrong. That is a correct statement. The market for glass is not there. Glass, if you look at our outreach programs that they're both there silent on glass. We do get glass recyclable, but we pay for them to recycle glass. Thank you. The markets are there right now. Yeah. Okay, so thank you for this. Any other discussion? Roll call, Ms. Traut. Commissioner Neubel. Yes. Commissioner Arns. Yes. Vice Mayor Longigan. Yes. Commissioner Gordon. Yes. Mayor Rose Mold. Yes. At this point, the commission is going to recess for community redevelopment agencies, CRA meeting. And so at this point, we and we will be able to move forward. We will be able to move forward. We will be able to move forward. We will be able to move forward. We will be able to move forward. We will be able to move forward. We will be able to move forward. We will be able to move forward. We will be able to move forward. We will be able to move forward. We will be able to move forward. We will be able to move forward. We will be able quite pulled up. I'm taking the city attorney super quick. Thank you. At this point we do have a presentation our CRA update July 2024. Mr. Abert or board. Thank you. Thank you board chair. Yes we will bring exactly directly an update on what's been happening in the CRA. I asked Ms. Herrera to keep this tight because we do have a long agenda But she will give you some highlights and then we have a couple of items for your consideration. Nesa Herrera Thank you executive director Aver Good evening Sierra board chair vice chair and board members Nesa Herrera CRA and economic development director and as always it is a pleasure for me to provide you with an update of all the exciting things that continue to happen within your CRA. Businesses continue to believe in Oakland Park, and we're excited to welcome food friends catering to our community. They provide food catering services to all occasions. TMP Electric provides premium electrical services and serves Oakland Park and South Florida. MJ Draperies and Interior's Interior has also joined our community and they provide interior design and the fabrication and installation of draperies We're also very excited to welcome Oasis do or downtown as you may know prison pals close earlier this year about two months ago So what happened was that the owner of the franchise, Prison Piles, decided to close Prison Piles as a franchise and has worked in relaunching a new concept that features healthy menu items that include smoothies, bowls, beer and wine under the name of Oasis. Immediately south of them, there will be a premium meat retailer that will also join our community in the next few months. So in order to support these incoming businesses and the existing ones, the city signed a development agreement with our investments. This formalizes a public-private partnership to create the sky building, which is the first mix-use development project within our community. As you may know, this project features the future home of the City Hall, structure parking, but it also includes 16,000 square footage in commercial space to bring commercial uses that will create a vibrant daytime and or night time customer base that will support other businesses within the downtown. Additionally, the sky building features 17 live work units and 119 residential units that will increase the local food traffic that will support the businesses in the downtown. And will ensure the economic viability of our culinary arts district. As part of this development agreement, the, excuse me, let's go back here. As part of this development agreement, the city agreed to allocate funding for tenant improvements to support this project. However, we have learned that the developer has been offering this type of incentives to build our incentives to their prospective tenants. Therefore, in order not to conflict with these incentives already been offered by the developer. CRA staff is recommending the creation of a new incentive program, which is the Sky Building, Job Creation Pilot Program. I'll talk a little bit more about that, because it's part of the CRA agenda. So let's summarize what this amendment to the agreement we do in order to create that program. It will convert the city's responsibility to provide tenant improvement to an employment support type of program. This agreement also provides that the city will allocate a minimum of 260,000 and allows to see a range in the city the discretion to increase or allocate additional funding to ensure that all base or commercial base within the sky building are occupied promptly. The benefit behind us is if we do that, if is ensure the activation of this base will also result in the activation of downtown which is greatly needed by our businesses that are now existing. It will also guarantee or ensure the long-term stability of our businesses within the culinary arts district. Another item related to the sky building is an agreement between the city and the sky building developer and our investment for the installation of a generator that will support the operations of the city hall on this site. The city and the developer recognized the necessity to provide uninterrupted power to the city operations that would help city departments to provide essential services to residents during a power outage or during emergencies. The generator capacity required by the developer does provide life safety components during a power outage, but it's not enough to provide for the continuation of services to the city hall, to the city hall as the tenant. Therefore, in order to accomplish this, the city must substantially increase the capacity of the generator at this site. Having said that, the benefits of approving that agreement or upgrading the generator is to provide uninterrupted city operations during power outages or emergencies. It also eliminates the need for a separate generator and reduce maintenance cost. As part of this agreement, the city agrees to pay the cost differential between the generator required by the developer and the upgraded generator. In the amount, and this cost would be in the amount of $250,000, but also in addition to the cost differential, it also includes the cost associated with the installation. As you have seen, everything that we do has an economic development purpose behind it, including our special events. Our special events are intended to bring food traffic to the downtown to support our businesses and also to provide visibility to them. The next special event actually is going to take in our downtown. So please mark your calendars and join us at the next Oakland Park Art Walk. That will take place on Main Street. And please also be prepared to join us on November 16th. This event takes place from 6 to 9 p.m. And while you come and explore the different artisans that participate at this event, also stop by your businesses and support them. and while you come and explore the different artisans that participate at this event also stop by your businesses and support them. In support of the redevelopment efforts that the city has undertaken, it is important that we also build long-lasting partnerships between our business owners, property owners, realtor, so work in the area as well as other community partners that have a stake in the downtown. It is for this reason that the CRA hosts bi-monthly meetings to share updates of upcoming projects that may be of interest for these partners. Also, understand and make sure that everybody understands the vision and where we're going into different responsibilities in the role that everybody plays in to realize and in achieving that vision. This meetings are also an opportunity to provide feedback on city services and operations. Actually, at the last meeting, Brad Ostrov, Director of Building Services, had an opportunity to share with the group the improvements that they are making to the building and permitting processes. And the attendees had also an opportunity to ask questions and provide their feedback on those initiatives. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues Brad and Sierra Marrera for attending these meetings and addressing the concerns of our business owners. The next meeting then will be on September 10th and we encourage you all to attend and take advantage of this space. The location has not been confirmed but once those details are finalized we'll be sure to share those in our platforms and through this CRA email blast. This meeting takes place from a 30 AM to 9 30. And with that I conclude my presentation and I'm available to answer any questions you may have. Terrific, Mr. Herr Rarrowie, you. And at this point, let's see. So that's the presentation. So at this point, I'll entertain other questions from the board. Board member Gordon, any comments? Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Miss Herrera. Great presentation. I did have a question about the tenant improvement incentives. That's the 260,000 is that correct? No, so as part of the development agreement that the city signed with the developer for the construction of the sky building, the city committed to allocating funding in the amount of $260,000 for tenant improvements. However, we have learned that recently the developer has been already offering those type of build out improvements to their prospective tenants. So in order not to conflict with that incentive that they're already offering, we are converting that commitment to an employment support program, which is the Sky Building Joc creation pilot program that we will be further discussing later on. Is that? Yes, thank you. No, you answered my question. for their discussing later on. Is that? Yes, thank you. No, you answered my question. I just had an additional question to what you said. It's an employee incentive, employment incentive. Employment support program. Okay. Where? For the tenants. For the commercial business, yes. For the tenants in the sky building. Right, for the tenants in the sky building. Right. And I'm asking you these questions, please, for the consumer consumption, you know, public consumption, right? So can you explain a little bit more about how that's going to work explain a little bit more about how that's going to work. This incentive, because I know that one of the goals is to and this is combination, from the city as well as the developer is to fill those spaces. So you want tenant buildouts. Okay, that's how you, you know, get those spaces occupied. So I'm just trying to understand the employment incentive portion of it. So board chair if I could. Yes, Mrs. McAvery. That item is coming up. It's item number four on the agenda and we'll talk about it in more detail. Well, I was gonna suggest if the board chair would like for us to, we could bring that up first so that we can explain it in more detail. We have a separate and more comprehensive presentation that might assist you in understanding how that will operate and rather than doing it now and then repeating it again. I understand. I leave that to the discretion of the board chair. I would say for myself I'm okay I can wait board chair. I would say for myself I'm okay I can wait on board chair. And I was even seen if we can but we can't we can't transfer an item from the city commission item city commission agenda the CRA agenda because it's not right it's not been publicly noticed. Oh I apologize it is on for do we want to talk about it right do we want to talk about that? Let's let's do it when it comes now. I'm kind of jumping a guy and I can wait. I'm patient. I can wait. Okay. Thank you mayor. Apologize on that. Okay. Thank you. I just have one question. We're member on. Yes. Real quick. The city to see me and I put the answer. The generators are going to be diesel or is that going to be a natural gas natural gas? Thank you Natural gas Sorry Thank you for your presentation. And thank you for always connecting with the business, the businesses in Oakland Park because I know I've contacted you several times and you've reached out to the businesses to answer any questions or provide any information they need so that they business remain successful in Oakland Park. So I thank you for that. Thank you board member or vice chair. Thank you chair. I appreciate it. Well great information. Thank you for all you do. I agree. Welcome to the new businesses That were announced today. That's great news And I see on July 9th our friends at black flamingo actually hosted the The downtown Business meeting. Thank you for doing that for us. We appreciate it And if you guys haven't been to black flamingo yet, you got to go. Great brew, great food. We're going to save the comments for the other two items. Correct? Yes, for the agenda. Well, it's up to you. It's your it's your moment. Yeah. Okay. I'll save my comments for the other stuff. Thank you. I would have said thank the other stuff. Thank you. I would have said thank you, Mr. Herrera, and great to see our business, some of our business owners in the audience. I do want to take this time. It will take two minutes, what's important to read because you did mention about, we're a city on the move and we're a dynamite organization, but you know what? We can always improve, and this is an outstanding improvement. And I wanna thank you, Mr. Abert. Ms. Meraar, Ms. Herrera and Mr. Ostroff, who's not here. This is an email, this was a summary of what was provided the downtown partners' meetings on permitting, and this is important guys. Since I've been on the commission, we've all received, can we kind of streamline this a little more? This is for public consumption, Mr. A. Rare. I mean, and Ms. Herrera, I know you, Ms. Love, I know you talk to, obviously, and everybody talks to applicants, whether they're residential commercial. This is like huge. And I do want to read this. Please give me two minutes. I'll still try to get out, out soon. Ms. Under Mr. Ostrov to another others leadership to improve permitting processes we have this is from an email I received that's publicly public consumption. Fully implemented the online permitting system to allow customers to submit and pay for permits without needing to visit the department in person. That's number one. Number two, introduced pre-application meetings for projects to address potential issues preemptively. Number three, implemented an online appointment system, excellent, to enable customers to schedule time with the appropriate staff for planning permit reviews. And number four, under this section, and there's one more section, implemented a system to track all permits that have not been issued within 20 days. I repeat that. This is huge. It has implemented a system to track all permits that have not been issued for 20 days. I want to give you a hug right now, Mr. Aber. This is excellent. Seriously, this is excellent. I'm elated. I'm just so tired, but I really am elated. This is why I did not find any address in the issues because of today's. This is outstanding. Are we going to be perfect? No, no one's perfect. But this is great and this is such an improvement and we're going to see a difference. One more section. Optimize permit reviews and inspections. One, priority is now given to ensuring this is a major, the same inspector. Does subsequent inspections for each discipline. It's not going to be perfect, but that's excellent. Two, checklists have been introduced for each discipline to standardize inspections to the extent possible. Great. Number three, reports are being generated to assist and track in these initiatives. Outstanding, remember data. I'm a professor PhD. We run by data, right? It's great. For conduct construction meetings pre-during and post, I love this to allow communication among disciplines and to manage expectations. And five, provide additional training for inspectors on best practices for consistency and thoroughness. Honestly, in my time, and I commissioner newboat doesn't like to need to talk about the times I ran and didn't, wasn't time, and I, I, Commissioner Newbold doesn't like to talk about the times I ran and didn't, wasn't successful, but I've been engaged with the City of Oakland Park for basically a decade. And this is, we are responsive. This is thorough. This is comprehensive. And this is forward thinking. And this is about continuing, in this case, commercial, but certainly residential investment to with the permitting process obviously we're talking about this in the CRA capacity and particularly in the downtown but this is obviously city wide so I just want to take this time I was going to say frankly a commission comments but to thank you mr. Raybear and Miss Love if I recall who's kind of Brad Ostroth supervisor and then in conjunction with you Miss Herrera and Miss Marrero and everybody you know obviously everybody on the team thank you for doing this this is As when I leave in November, I'm gonna remember this is one of the highlights for what an amazing staff you all are I'm very you can tell I'm pretty excited about this I will end my comment now and I think we now have a agenda item to go to about this. I will end my comment now and I think we now have a agenda item to go to. Public comments, Daria, I have to go to this public comments. So at this point we will take public comments. At this point anybody who'd like to talk about the RAA business can be the redevelopment agency business. You have up to four minutes. So you feel free to come forward. Hi, my name is Hi, my name is Stephanie Tata. I am co-owner of Black Flamingo, like many of you know. Stephanie, I'm sorry, you just need your address. I'm sorry, 3482 Northeast 12th Avenue. So we're right down the street from here. Sorry, I'm a little choked up because this is been a lot. But I'm here today because when we initially came here four years ago to Oakland Park, we came here with a grant in hand from Hollywood, actually, for $250,000 for construction of our brewery. And after coming to Oakland Park and seeing that Oakland Park's values and the progress that we saw was more in line with what we wanted to create. We decided to come here and spend our money out of pocket. We came in with a $150,000 budget to start our construction, something that should have only taken 8 to 12 weeks. Something that eventually snowballed into three years. Three years where we paid rent, three years where permitting took quite some time, and I understand that you guys are making those changes now, but a lot of the businesses that are currently opening, or I'm sorry that are currently open, we've suffered a lot of that. Between these four years, I have spent almost a million dollars between permitting construction and rent. Never making a cent back during that time. I disaffected my family greatly. I had to sell both properties that I had that were our life savings. We put everything into Oakland Park because we believed in it. But I don't feel that permitting was fair with us. I feel that a lot of the changes that were made could have been solved with meetings beforehand that we did ask for. We at the beginning never asked for grant money, but when this snowballed and got out of control, we did reach out many times to the city. And everyone kind of passed the buck when we asked at permitting for them to please make these changes in a timely manner. We were answered with, I don't know why you come here and cry so often. You're going to be laughing to the bank when you open. And what I can assure you is I'm not laughing to the bank. I am now crying at a commissioner's meeting because I will never make that initial investment back. And I understand that, but I do need help to be able to keep my doors open. Because I'm at the point where they're gonna have to close. I have no operational cost left. And this is, to believe on time, because I know that a few of you have already been inside my business. You have seen what's in there. And I can assure you that between the two bathrooms, a large bar, a walk-in cooler, and two ACs that we installed. There is no million dollars in that building. And I am just reaching out because if there is some sort of relief for the current businesses open, we could definitely use it because I have no more funds to give. I have maxed out my credit cards to pay rent. To be able to stay in the city, we have invested, we did everything we could. We appreciate the support that we've been given by the community here and I think we've built some great community and some amazing regulars. But I can't see us staying open as a possibility as of now. I know Kith and Konex to us also close down and a lot of these businesses cannot keep up with it and a lot of it had to do with the permitting process. It should have never taken that long and it greatly affected us. I don't know, I don't want to say for sure but I have heard and I'm not going to name names that there is a business down the street from us that is receiving some sort of assistance. So if that is available in the budget I ask you to try to help black flamingo out because we're on the verge of closing and I don't want that to happen. Thank you for. Thank you. We will talk more later after public comment in this meeting. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Okay. Our next speaker, Mr. Little. Yes. Mr. Mayor Neiman, address please. Patrick Little, 3580 northeast 12th. I have. Street. I know exactly what you're. I have. I have. I know exactly what you're going through, ma'am. When I first opened it took me over a year to get my permits approved to, since they have been approved, I've been open coming up on four years. It's especially in this economy right now. It's very, very, very tough. You know, everything that we can do as a city, as a community, every little thing helps. And in my opinion, permitting has let us down. I'm not on a witch on here. I'm long gone. I'm past all that crap. Thank God. But it cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars on my time in my money. In community enjoyment, I feel like we run a nice operation. Our establishment is very localized. I feel in my opinion everyone enjoys it. But I feel like we don't have support from the city. I, a lot of you I look at, I see you all the time, you guys are friends, you know, at the end of the day. Like, we need help. You know, I'm here, I've been here twice one time, I received like a fireman's awards, I put the city off and burn it on fire. I'm not here asking for money. Like, I just want your guys to back not just for me for the city. Like, we're losing more business, more businesses than we're gaining. Like you guys can put up New York City down the street. Like you got the high rise here and you're going to revamp all this stuff. If we don't have businesses, if we don't have standing tenured places, it doesn't have to be restaurants, it's retail, it's all itself. Why do people want to come here? Like you want to come here because it's a nice place to live. Look at Flagler Village, you got all these restaurants, these places have, businesses have been there five, ten years now. That's what we should be looking at, like longevity. I understand, oh, we signed a new place here. We signed a new place here. No, like those places should last 15, 20 years. This is a small city. We're looking at mom and pop places. Like we don't want, you know, I mean, look at these, I'm sorry, I'm just really flustered here. We don't want big franchises coming in here. That's not what Oakland Park is. We're not big franchises. We want mom and pop small businesses to succeed. And we're not getting the help to succeed. There's tons of business models out there, wine and food festivals, art walks, all this stuff. They generate money not only for the city, but they also generate money for the business. Okay. Why are we as businesses gonna do a food festival down the street that we have to pay for and make zero money on exposure yeah exposure is great but this is a small city all these people are gonna come into our business anyways why are we gonna fork out two three four thousand dollars how long does it take to get that back an An average person spends in a restaurant $8,526 a year, something like that. In Oakland Park, maybe we receive a tent of that? Like we all need to work together. It's a family. Like you guys, you know, family on the move, city on the move and all that stuff. It's not just about higher rises and developments and all this stuff. It's about the core of the businesses. And that is us. That's the small businesses. And that is what we need to be focused on. We need to be focused on small business and helping small businesses succeed. You guys just talked about earlier, you have a budget for $1.3 million on vehicles and that's for 19 vehicles. That's $114,000 of vehicle. I'm 39 years old. I haven't had $114,000 in vehicles in my life. Thank you, Mr. Little. Okay, one more thing. I'll fill the bus for this thing if I have to. Because what we're gonna know about a little over. You can tell you something I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor. What we're going to do here is we're going to start helping us. We're going to start helping small businesses. We definitely heard your comments and I'm sure we're responding. I appreciate that. So let's start now. Okay. Thank you, sir. Not four years ago when the permanent system failed us. Let's start right now. Thank you sir. Not four years ago when the permanent system failed us. Let's start right now. Thank you. Okay. Next speaker please. Chris Fisher 37 11 North East 13th Avenue. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, vice mayor, city commissioners and city staff. I'm going to go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and a bad name and permitting as well when you talk to contractors and different developers. I'm here tonight to do the same thing. You commissioners reside on this day as not just as a conduit to your constituents and our residents, but you also are supposed to be people of action. More so than just voting yes and no on agenda items. We have a big problem here in Oakland Park and its policy, which is your job to fix. And with that problem, you're obviously seeing, and as you've heard of tonight, our small businesses are dying. It's hard to be a city on the rise when a few individuals and their greed are pinning Oakland Park down. I heard from two different business owners within our CRA last night after our coconut meeting. And I've spoken all these business owners that have spoken tonight. And these are two different business owners that said they would never do business in Oakland Park again because of the permitting process. The beautiful vision of building out from our CRA and creating prosperity beyond the downtown, that vision right now has glaucoma. Commissioners can't grant, grants take time. Okay, small businesses don't have it. You heard Stephanie from Black Femingos say that someone in the city permitting office once told her that she'll be laughing all the way to the bank. The reality is now these businesses that had aspirations of that misguided notion are faced with crying their eyes out on the way to bankruptcy. You can't affect this by reaching out to property owners, or you can affect this by reaching out to the property owners, the landlords, and helping them to see that the rental fees are too high for our city. Tonight we have an agenda item which you already sent through and consent agenda, which I don't understand, but you know where you basically gave another parking waiver. We did this a couple of years ago and I'm not going to name names. We all know who he is. He owns multiple businesses within the downtown. He did that. We keep giving, giving, giving to property owners and they don't give anything back outside of property taxes. So it's time that we start asking these property owners, these landlords to help us out. Our AMI is not as high as most of the other cities within Broward County. Our Price per Square foot for these businesses we're charging downtown Fort Lauderdale rates. We are not downtown Fort Lauderdale. That will change when horizon comes in sky building and there's more people living here and there's more opportunity but the walkability that was promised is not there and we know it. I walk these streets every night with my newborn son and I get to see Norah Thai which is probably our busiest restaurant and there's nights where I look in and there's one person sitting at a table. You've all eaten there, you've eaten at past place, you've been to black flamingo, you know, we've seen, go back to Fat Tap and some of the other trendy spots that have come along over the years And it's the property owners and the rents that they're charging them. It's too high and you and folks, I know Tim, you're a huge advocate for small business. Mitch, I know you're a doctor, but you've seen this. You've all been a part of the ribbon cuttings and I'm looking at three small business owners right there who grew up in that. You know what it's like. It's a very difficult time. I don't want to say we're in a recession because I'm not an economist. But all you have to do is just walk down the streets and you see it. So I think if I can ask you to do anything, please, is to reach out to these property owners, find out a way they can lower the rental values and still make money so that we can get to that brighter future that we have laid out ahead of us. You see you with big scissors all the time with these ribbon cuttings for new businesses. Use those big scissors. Go cut some of these rental prices and help these small businesses out, please. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Fisher. How are you guys? My name is Andres Wolfe. I am part of Black Femingo. Again, it's not like going to be the same. I'm here, but we're leaving for Lauderdale as well. And I just wanted to say because- Just for the record, just say your full name and address. Andres Wolfe? No, I said it. You see, I don't speak English. So thank you for bearing with me, bitch. And you guys, thank you for opening this space for the address. 3482 Northeast, 125. Thank you. Just for the record. Yes, for the record. I mean, my wife's speaking English. So she was doing the job. But to me, to see her like, hear breaking her voice is like, it sucks to me because I promised her this future in Alcom Park. It's not a lie that we got this grand money. I believe we spoke about it with some of you guys. And we got it in Hollywood and it was great. It was going to be awesome. But I remember when I saw that corner and I fell in love. And I say, oh my god, this is what we want. We want the sense of community. We want the inclusion and everything that's going on here because there's many good things going on here, right? And I know you guys are doing the best job possible to make it happen. And I know it's hard also when you have the policies and everything in place, but some things don't work. Like, you know, the permitting plumbing guy and, you know, all the people that makes other people's like processes a little bit harder. And in some cases, it means it was like in my case. When I got my CEO, not even my CEO, what I had passed, plumbing, I cried. And he said, well, this is like a university, so feel good about it. Like because it was three times that we changed plumbing and everything. But I guess at the end of the day, I don't want to say that because I guess you guys know already that there's a problem in the permanent office with the people, but I wanted to talk because I think I thought to my wife as well in bringing her here in the dream because at the beginning it was my dream, right? I hope for giving more money, not more money like a food to my kids' table. You guys all built a beautiful case for me to talk. And it's all the presentations that you did. They were awesome. The budget one, the development one, and the CRA. And what you say, Mr. Herbert, like about not having people and taking pride in ascending people to looking for a job and everything, but unfortunately for us, after having like years of to, you know, to align, to look for a job. For us as an investors here is like, oh damn, I have to look for a job to kind of maybe help my business to thrive till the traffic comes to the strip. And that really, really sucks because it's like a part of a saying you feel not you guys, but as an entity, you feel that the city failed you. It's like, you know, it's not a, oh, what I'm not so I'm failing to be an American today. And I want to just encourage you guys because the plans are great. What do they say? All the presentations are great. And I said it at the meeting that we have last week. There's a face and a story behind every, you know, every business that should be here. More than, oh yes, we're doing it. We have every processing in place because when we were looking for answers and everything, most people were like, you know, and I remember because we've not only run out on money when we were doing it, but not even our contractors wanted to be brought. We're not going to be even for the for the for the inspection because we know what's going to happen. So I started having the inspection by myself like I end up doing the project by myself and without knowing anything of what I was doing and I remember the the inspectors I'm not gonna say names and whatever they say hey, it's not my job to tell this guy what to do So they weren't like as loving and caring as these projects are looking because they look great And if you guys can put it in place it's gonna going to be a better feature for that. And I, and, and just, it closed this, because Christian, the guy from Buddha was here talking and the, you know, a lot of money is set that to happen because I don't want to leave. I want more other business to come and we all try together because I don't have another chance. Like, oh, let me just go another place and try to So sorry, I couldn't finish but thank you guys for listening to me Now he's over. Thank you so much. Oh really sorry. Okay, well Thank you next speaker Jack Doran 4529 Pioneers trail west I'm kind of known by a lot of people. I think I have a reputation to being a cheerleader for the city. Some people feel it's excessive. And I think that they report that email that I wonder who wrote up, but that email that you described, Mitch, is on ecstatic about it also. It's about time and they're incredibly important goals and policies. But I go to restaurants and I go to different facilities, especially on our Oakland Vark Main Street. And one after one business owner tells me about the problems that they've had with permitting in the city for the last several years. It's embarrassing. What am I to say to them? What am I to do? So then, frankly, and I wasn't going to make this public, but it's just feels appropriate now. I talked to two department heads to ask if they would meet with these business owners to try to establish some communication between them. I was told no. So in respect to all the current department heads, none of the current department heads I'm referring to. So what is that about? Why will they not even talk to these people? Yes, I understand that some of the business owners did things without a permit that were inappropriate. So I'm not saying that there is an fault on both sides, but it's disproportionate and it's embarrassing. Every other aspect of our city I am so blanking proud of. But this, I don't know what the problem has been. And I just really encourage the commission as or seers and our city manager and the apartment heads. To correct the situation because these businesses are going to go away. And other businesses seeing that will be much more reticent to come here. A representative of PULTI told me we will never come back here again to the city. That's major and they said it with anger and yes, developers blamed the city and all kinds of old there, the city's fault, the city's fault. My own permit for my house was got lost for two months. A close friend of mine and I signed a contract on the same day. He was able to close two months earlier than I did, because mine got delayed, and I was never told why. And I wasn't going to try to use any political poll to push it. But I finally, after two months, Carlton said, just let me know that it's going to be dealt with. and when? So there's a problem here. So that's in terms of of the business owners. There's another agenda item that I do keep on hearing about, that rents are a bit, I'll use the term exploitative in some cases. So that puts additional pressure on the part of the property owners on these businesses. And when rents are, you know, like right now, eventually when the sky building's built and when Verizon is constructed, there will be foot traffic, there will be support for the business of it. Right now, I would recommend to these property owners give a one or two or three year introductory rate for rents to help them survive because otherwise you're going to empty buildings and Empty property that you're not going to be getting anywhere from It's where we're relaxing it a little tonight. Thank you, Dr. Dorn. Anyway, thank you very much. Thank you Our next speaker Thank you mayor commissioners Tim, 1015 Northeast 39th Street. I didn't intend to talk on this item, but I decided I would because my wife and I live about three blocks from here on the west side of Dixie. And you guys know I come up and I whine about us having a difficult time crossing Dixie Highway to go to the businesses on the east side. So I'm intent over the next bunch of years to try to help you guys find a way for that connection. We opened a business on the Fort Lauderdale guy. Finally left there, opened a business here in Oakland Park, Adbol's Nifty Thrift, bought a house, three blocks from here. Remodeled the whole thing, put in a swimming pool, Moise said, we've never had one. We did not have a good experience with the building department. So I wanted to tell you, because I think you guys know, I'm honest and reasonable, but I never went to y'all about it. But I remember, particularly the swimming pool, this was a time during COVID where you couldn't walk into the building department. You had to press the buzzer outside. And then if you were lucky, they would answer you. A lot of times they wouldn't, but you'd see people in there. I don't think there was a good leadership in there. The pool took, the pool permit took forever. One of the last moments I thought it was about ready. I went in and I said, you know, you guys told me if I redid this and redid that and my pool guide redid this and redid that, you give me a permit. And they said, there's no record of a building permit for you for a swimming pool here. My head almost exploded because it was like six months ahead. So this is why I came up to talk to you guys. I think whoever was responsible for running the building department just didn't give a crap about citizens. And I think you've changed that, what I understand. And by what the mayor said, I think things have changed. But you're here in all this frustration back here. My wife and I love to walk across Dixie. Go to Funky Buddha on Thursdays. Buy one set of wings, get one for free. Then we walk down to Big Dog's saloon. They got a great chicken filly. And they're nice people and they got a pool table. The ones in between have struggled. Personally, we tried a few of them and we found them too expensive. My wife and I were old people, you know, and we're not going to pay, you know, $37 for dinner on the Tuesday night. A lot of them have now closed. So you just have such a tremendous opportunity and a tremendous challenge. The city is exploding. This is going to be the coolest place forever, but you're all gonna have to work so hard, particularly you, sir. Just to get all these moving parts working together between the new building, city hall, the downtown businesses, the building department, I'm there to help and I know it will work out. And I'm sorry that it's a bit of a bummer discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Our next speaker. Good evening. Hi Ernest O'Levis 1736 Northwest 38th Street Royal Palm Civic Association. I had no intentions of speaking either, but to hear the same things repeated over and over again, it was shocking to me in the sense that honestly, I'm a carbon copy of all that. I always thought that the culinary district being pushed so hard was a business error. People decided to, you know, we were supposed to have all this development, we were going to have this fabulous school, and then we were going to have the restaurants. We didn't get any of that. Then we put these restaurants in here. There's no economic base for them. They have been sad. I have watched them close for six years in a row. The city did these businessmen a disservice. The culinary district was backwards and and so we really did fail in an economic sense and You know my other story was so small, I just ignored it. But yes, I asked for a permit. I got a new fence gate and you thought I had murdered a small child. It was failed, it's like fine. And it was like, well, you did this wrong, you did this wrong. I'm going, okay, you know, I thought I was doing better and apparently by trying to do better, I couldn't have done worse. But that is a common theme around here. Is that, oh, you guys are always doing everything wrong. And it's like, people, the citizens aren't educated on this. I look at the permits. I go, I'm not really sure what form to fill out. We try to fill them out. If we pick the wrong one, we do it over. You know, it's it's the bureaucracy. You're used to that. But when I made a might, what I thought was a moderate complaint, I got shut down really hard. And I got okay, never fight a bureaucrat that's mad at you. And then I talked to my contractor. And he said the same thing that these other people were saying. He said that he had never seen a city that was so hard to deal with and that he deals with all the cities and Broward. Again, I just took this as small incident, small observation, but it sure seems to me that it's extraordinarily widespread. And so, you know, it's too late, it's water under the bridge, the people have been harmed, and I don't know that you can rectify it, but you should take account that you cannot encourage small business to come, unless the business is there first. So, I encourage your planning staff to make economic cash flow projections when they talk to businesses. I never expend my business without doing a cash flow projection first. And it is true. Sometimes you will have civil servants be a little bit condescending to the civilian population. It's just so common it happens. I hope you can root it out. Thank you. Thank you. Excuse me. Any other speakers tonight? I'm going to have a board comment as well as comment from the executive director. I do encourage us to we often our board members have zero comments. I challenge you all to have comments tonight please. All of you please very thoughtful comments about what we just the people we just heard we spent. I don't even know, probably at least a half an hour and of course was relaxed. We needed to do that for over four minutes. So please have thoughtful comments about what we heard tonight. Mr. Executive Director, please, please, please be thinking about what you'd like to say. We're not going to solve every single thing here. I just have to say this though. I too had to permits for a roof and for a fence. And I had to call. had two permits for a roof and for a fence. And I had to call, I waited this certain amount of time and then called. We're fixing this. Honestly, I wish prior commissions respectfully had addressed this. And I'm talking all the way back to 2016 because I heard about the permitting problem when I first ran for office in 2016 and months ago when I heard three people before noon three different entities talk about permitting about three or four months ago I called Mr. Raybearance and we must do something and I so appreciate as I said earlier Mr. A. Barron and Mr. Oftroff, but I hear you loud and clear. That's great now. What about us? So we hear you. Please stay for our comments at least. We'll be having them very shortly. At this point, we have a consent agenda. Item two. Go ahead, we've seen a motion. The motion. Pro of the minutes, June 5th, 2024. A resolution to the Board of Commissioners of the Vocal and Park Community Redevelopment Agency approving and authorizing the appropriate CRA officials to execute the first amendment to the interlocal agreement between Broward County, the City of Oakland Park, and the Oakland Park Community Redevelopment Agency for the Sky Building, formerly known as Oakland Park Square, redevelopment project, providing for conflict, severability and effective date. Motion to adopt. Second. Any discussion? No call. We're member Noobold. Yes. We're member Orange. Yes. Vice Chair Lonegan. Yes. We're member Gordon. Yes. Chair Rosenwald. Yes. Now we come to item four. recommending the adoption of the sky voting job creation instead of pilot program. Mr. Aber. Thank you. Miss Herrera will you bring this up and we're going to have to get through this fairly rapidly so we can attend to more pressing issues please. Mr. Herrera before you start we do need to extend the meeting to 11 o'clock or start we do need to extend the meeting to 11 o'clock or till businesses if it ends prior to that. Set of motion. Yes. Second. Local. One renewable. Yes. Remember aren't by Sri Lonegan. Yes. Remember Gordon. Yes. And chair was involved. Yes. Sorry, Mr. the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We propose sky building job creation incentive pilot program that is tied to the amendment to the development agreement that we touch on as part of the previous presentation. The proposed six amendment to the sky building development agreement converts the city's financial obligation to provide funding for retail tenant improvements. And take it into consideration that the developer is already offering tenant improvement incentives to their prospective tenants. For these reasons, this amendment converts the city's obligation to an employment support program called the Sky Building Job Creation in Santa Feiro Program that we're discussing today. The Sky Building Job Creation Santa Feiro Program is intended to provide financial assistance to encourage businesses to create new jobs within the CRA. Businesses that are seeking funding under these programs are required to provide quarterly payroll reports in order to get this funding. They would have to demonstrate that they incurred into payroll expenses that meet or exceed the scheduled grant funds, as we're going to see later on based on a table that I'm going to explain. Businesses will be able to submit their application starting October 1st of this year and the program is intended to sunset through December 31st, 2029 unless the the CRA board decides to extend it. As we explained, this program provides financial support for businesses within the CRA, within this guide building, excuse me, to support the businesses during the first critical two years of of operations. This will help with ensuring the long-term stability of the downtown. Eligible businesses must create at least one additional full-time equivalent position other than the owner, the principal assist of its equivalent to be eligible under this program. They will, the funds will be awarded over a two-year period, and it will be disbursed on a quarterly basis. This program also provides a threshold of funding threshold for culinary and non-colonary businesses. So culinary uses that least one retail space are available are eligible to receive up to $40,000. The CRA may award additional funding for businesses that lease multiple retail spaces up to a maximum of 96,000. Non-colonary uses that lease one space are eligible to receive $32,000. The CRA may provide additional funding for tenants that lease multiple bays up to a maximum of $80,000. At this point, CRA staff recommends that the board approves the adoption of the Sky Building Judgment Program and authorize the appropriate elected officials to implement this program. With that, I'm available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Mr. Rera. Mr. Raybear, was there anything more from staffer? No, this program has received the support of the developer and we are encouraged to try this out to see whether or not this might assist us and assist him in drawing business to the downtown areas. So your support for this would be much appreciated. Thank you. Sure. Resolution of Board of Commissioners, Ocampark Community Redevelopment Agency approving and adopting the Sky Building Job Creation Incentive Pilot Program and authorizing the appropriate CRA officials to implement the Sky Building Job Creation Incentive Pilot Program and authorizing the appropriate CRA officials to implement the Sky Building Job Creation Incentive Pilot Program in accordance with the program guidelines providing for conflict severability and effective date. OK, is there a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Is there a second? Thank you. I just had one procedural comment, and I think this're referring to the commission meeting, not the CRA meeting. Are we good with what we did? Okay. Thank you. Discussion? Vice Chair. Thank you. Chair, I appreciate that. You know, this amount was built into the project to begin with. It's designated for the project. I think this is an interesting experiment to see how it goes. At this point, I. I'm obviously unwilling to support it. I moved it forward after the discussions recently. I know we can't use this money towards other things because it was designated specifically for this project. So yeah, I'm gonna support it. And again, I'm considering this an experimental project. If it turns out to be a winner, that's great. And maybe as other things occur, we can implement it in other places. And it turns out that it doesn't work right for us. We know not to do it again. So that's kind of where I'm sitting with it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I don't disagree with you one bit. My thoughts. But here's my big concern. You're trying to bring people in here and there are people moving out right now. And we've got to do something to retain businesses in this district right now. I don't care what the CRA's got to it provide money for renacist or something kind of happened because I've seen too many businesses Go out. We got another one getting ready to go out and maybe another one at that another one for that and it's You know you want more people in here, but the problem is you can't keep the people we got here I'm a business owner. I mean, luckily I own my property. Like, so I don't have to worry about running or anything. But the problem is, I know what it is to be in a small business owner. Everyone I talk to, all my customers that own businesses, the summer their business goes like this, it goes, right down to nothing. I mean, you can hear a pin drop in some of these places. So I don't know what the answer is but we've got to, I would like to have, you know, it's not the night to do it because it's just, we've got other pressing issues right now. This is, but to you, this is a super, super important thing that we've got to do something about retaining businesses otherwise you're just gonna have a revolving door and no one's gonna come on come in if they keep seeing people coming in here seeing people leaving here like the floodgates are opened up sorry but it's just not gonna happen I mean Mr. Olives is pretty much right when the business plan wasn't started. When you when you know, this is before my time on the culinary district before that should have been, you know, we started to say, you've got to have the. Foot traffic, you have the availability of people to visit these culinary districts and we're in the process of doing that right now. Don't get me wrong. The problem is the cart was put before the horse. I have to agree with them 100% the cart was put before the horse. Now we got people or just but somehow we need to do something here soon. And if it's putting money into the new budget to the CRA budget for next year, so be it. But I just can't see people leaving here and leaving it's in regards to what happened to pass. Pass is the pass. I'm looking forward to the future. So I'm going to keep it short because we've got a lot of stuff to do here before 11 o'clock. Thank you, member Gordon. Thank you Mayor. I agree with you, Vice Mayor, when you talk about this item and the fact that you will support it, you know, based on, you know, the fact that it's here and it's a good program and it's a pro, it seems like it's going to be a good program. Let's just hope it's a successful program. I agree with you, Commissioner Arne's. We have an issue. We have a problem here. And it's not going to be solved overnight. During my briefing, my agenda briefing, I did ask the question when I was introduced to this item. I wanted to know. So what happens to the existing businesses? Well, the new businesses push out our existing businesses. We don't know. But hearing what the business owners said tonight, it resonated with me. I don't know, and it's just, I mean, this is on this surface, because I was always told where there's smoke, there's fire. So this is smoke. And I don't know how we are going to assist and happen our businesses sustain their business. But we put a lot of emphasis on small businesses. Invisity and viscity is made up of small businesses. Small businesses are the heartbeat of this city. So we need to find a way to support our businesses and keep them sound and sustainable. That's all I have to say right now. Thank you. Board member, new vote. Thank you. Yes, there was a lot said and I know this calls for, it calls for further discussion and ways for everyone to come up with a way to be sustainable and maintain their business now here in downtown Oakland Park. I'm bringing about, I apologize for the option. When you said needs for their discussion, are you talking about the item we're talking about or more? Right, we need to find, we can't find a solution right now tonight. We need to be a discussion just like Commissioner Ernst said. We need to discuss ways to maintain these businesses. Coming from a small, coming from a family that own a small business. My parents didn't, they already, they didn't have much, but they did everything they could to maintain their business. The way they started off, they did not end it. But I sympathized with you, but I also just remember my parents, the way that they ran their business. And they didn't have resources. They didn't even know to go and ask for resources. So I just think it's good that we have a city here, a county as well, because we are not an entitlement city. So we don't have all the funding that everyone think that we have. So we will have to go out and look for other resources. That's why I say there does need to be a future conversation to see how these businesses are maintained. And I understand that I don't know. I mean, I heard everyone tonight that came up and spoke and do know, you know, I didn't know as much until like what I didn't know as much because no one ever really called me or reached out to me and I'm not just saying it's okay, but I'm glad I know now that let us know that we just have work to do. So thank you. Okay, so on this particular item, on item four, I'm supportive, and it does, but we're gonna get to our reports from board members, where I am gonna address everybody a little bit more on the item, because this is the job creation of an incentive, particularly for the sky building. Any other comment on this item? Roll call please. Board member Nubel. Yes. Board member Arns, Vice Chair Lonergan. Yes. Board member Gordon. Yes, Chair Rosenwald. Yes, so now we come to reports from board members. I'd like to begin. I, at the age of 13, my parents had a Montgomery ward store, so I'm certainly dating myself. I remember a Montgomery Ward's the older people, years like a Sears, and I grew up every Saturday working in the store and helping unload trucks with my dad and the driver and selling it. It was a catalog store with a small retail. So while I'm not a business owner, I certainly grew up with one. My parents, I said, are you going to pay me? They're like, you get to eat. But I did get some Star Wars stories, so that was cool. So I know from my parents what they did, and it closed. This is in rural Maryland and they're closed. We just passed a job creation incentive program. I agree with Commissioner Arnts I think no one up here I shouldn't say this. I doubt anybody up here would disagree with what you said about permitting. I have enough. After years and years and years since 2016 when I went to the local government academy here, it's the problem. I think it's a very important thing to do. I think it's a very important thing to do. I think it's a very important thing to do. I had enough after years and years and years since 2016 when I went to the local government academy here It's the problem continued and now there's a solution and I am think it's like I said one of the best things I've heard since I've lived in Oakland Park for a decade But we have a problem and you have shared it and we hear you It's there's emotion here. I just want to say, I, I, you know, we want to do many things. The city attorney said that we can do a work. This year, I can do a workshop. I would like us to think about Mr. Executive Director and team having a workshop specifically on this. But I know people will say, well, that's fine, but where's economic assistance to help us? And I hear that point very loud and clear along with improved permitting, in which we are finally doing. So I do want us to think about Mr. Executive Director as having a workshop on the specific issue through the CRA at a time to be determined, but relatively soon. Sooner than later, I also support Commissioner, Board Member, Arnsd and Newbold, and really all of us on what's out there. What is out there for the county? What's out there at the state? We're looking at our budget, we're non-tiff funded, so that means the City Commission funds the CRA budget. We don't get additional money from the county. So these are things I appreciate you all talking tonight. I know this was very upsetting and emotional. We hear you. We, I live a block from here too. And it pains me when I saw Switchbox close years ago. I live near the Christmas refresher, so we're both walking the same street. I walk with my dogs, I don't have a child, they're my child, children. So we need to do something. I'm gonna turn this over to the board. Some of you may have spoken already about your general comments, but I wanna just turn this over. Vice Chair. Thank you, Chair, I appreciate it. You know, Chris, sir, I have to say, Chris, I have to say, I have taken pride in Oakland Park as far as new businesses open. I make sure I get to those new businesses. I talk to the owners and I say, tell me, how is the process? How is staff? And, and a lot of times they're very honest with me. Sometimes they'll say to me, they'll say, it was okay, but I'd rather not share. And I think they're nervous to say something to city staff. So I can assure you as information came in, I would have discussions with Mr. A. Bear and we'd discuss, I'll give you a prime example. This past Saturday night, I went to the new Il Pasadillo restaurant. First time I went there, the two owners were in there. He said, gentlemen, how was it? How was the permitting process? He goes, yeah, he said it was good. We really had no problem. I said, well, how was staff? And he said, staff was good. And he said, Tim, I had two problems. He said, one, staff told me I couldn't put up four flags on top of my restaurant that the maximum was two. And I said, okay, okay, thank you for sharing yet. And I'll share that with the city manager. And he said, what was the other one? He said, took a little bit longer with the process for permitting. Again, shared with Mr. A. Bear, he jumped on it right away. Not only he's jumping, but he went to the, did you make it to the restaurant, sir? I do have a try to. Okay. But I have confidence that when Mr. A Bear hears about something he does get concerned, I am concerned as Commissioner Newbold said, my phone really hasn't rang much, and as I do get around, I do ask business owners, genuinely, Charlie's that opened up by an Oakland Park Boulevard. They were a little bit frustrated, permitting, you know, worked with them. They originally didn't even want a grand opening, talked them, talked with them a little bit, everything went much better. They had a grand opening. So I guess my point here is please, please encourage people if you're not going to share with Mr. A. Bear, call one of the commissioners and let us know. I know it's not perfect and I'm going to say this is no excuse, but I know we've got so much going on that some of the things aren't quite up to power as it should be and I'm saying because there's so much going on it's not an excuse and I apologize genuinely. I know like the rest of the commission want to work on a solution and it sounds like Mr. Abert and his team already put something out which which the mayor had read a little bit earlier. But trust me, now that this is on the radar and we are aware, if you say, if you would say vice mayor, what are your recommendations at this point? It's our job to improve the city, improve the quality of life, and increase traffic in this city. It's the business's job to give them quality service, a good product, and a good price. So we got to make sure that we can expedite the process to get you open. Have you guys loud and clear? Completely agree. I have no disagreements that we need to fix it. And you know, I can only say at this point, I'm sorry and we'll work on ways to try and make it up to you. If it comes to more events on Main Street, we'll put more ban events on Main Street in front of the restaurants just to drive more traffic. We will, I'm going to ask the city manager to look to what we can do immediately event wise that's not real expensive to try and drive traffic in so that it's not just a matter of we're going to give the business money, we're going to think of smart ways to get people here to get in there to spend their money. I think that's an initial good first solution and we need to jump on it right away and I can give you my commitment that I will work with the city manager and the team also I'm going to have to do a good job. I'm going to have to do a good good job. I'm going to have to do a good good job. I'm going to have to do a good good job. I'm going to have to do a good good job. I'm going to have to do a good good job. I'm going to have to do a good good job. I'm going to have to do a good good job. I love Oakland Park restaurants and when I feel welcome when they smile at me they welcome me back Some of them maybe don't even have the best food sometimes. Okay, I'm saying some some are just average Some are wonderful, but that's what it's about right that's You welcome me in you give make me feel like I'm part of your business You know what I'm saying? That's what we need you to do. We need you to make sure. Smile. Welcome to people. Give them good price, give them good product. We'll continue working on driving in traffic, whether that means putting some bands in, whether that means more art walks, whatever it is. I want, you know, probably about seven, eight years ago, I really thought, and I really thought what this city needed was a hotel down on Oakland Park Boulevard to drive people in to Main Street. So I'm going to push on that again. I pushed on it in the past. I really feel a hotel brings people right to downtown Oakland Park and has them utilize our businesses. So again, you again, I believe I can speak on part of the commission. You have our attention, you have our commitment, and we will do what we can as quickly as we can. Thank you Vice Chair, rest of the board. To excuse me, Mr. A. Barrett, the executive director, just wanted to have a word real quick. Thank you. I'm sorry, I'm having problems with my mic tonight. We can hear. I'm I'm frankly ashamed that these experiences have happened to you. I'm not going to try to make any excuses because there are none that will allow us to make you hold. And I don't have an answer tonight on where we might be able to provide additional assistance moving forward. And unfortunately the new director of our Building Services Department who has instituted the proactive measures that the mayor has referenced this evening is not here this evening. So I don't know how to express how disheartened I am, that this happened under my watch, and that you have experienced the kind of disrespect that I have heard this evening. Had I known that any department had in this city refused to meet with somebody, I would have dramatically taken that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to together first thing tomorrow and we will navigate to the best of our abilities, some recommendations to the commission moving forward. I am not prepared this evening to provide that information because I don't have it without consulting with the experts that I rely on. If ever again anybody in my staff tells you that they don't have time to meet with you. You have my telephone number and I want to hear that immediately because that is simply not something I would tolerate. I also want to apologize that we have a long agenda this evening. I had not anticipated that this would come up to this extent certainly and we have an obligation legally to end the meeting at 11 o'clock. We have no choice about that and we also have to address the urgent issues of setting our trim notice information that has to be delivered in a timely manner by the property of Prazer's office. So I beg the deference of this board and this commission that this evening, if we could please provide me an opportunity to try to come up with a plan here. I think the mayor's suggestion of a workshop may be excellent. opportunity to try to come up with a plan here. I think the mayor's suggestion of a workshop may be excellent. And I'll talk individually with each of you on a strategy moving forward. But if I could appeal to you this evening, we have to get through the items that are on our agenda. We don't have any choice on that regard. Thank you. Thank you. As pressing as this is to the public and as immediate as I will give my attention to it, I do have an obligation to inform you that we've got things we've got to attend to this evening. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, let me suggest that we have an instead of workshop a special meeting because if there's any action we want to take, workshop we can't take any action. So if we're going to do something that's have a special meeting because if there's any action we want to take, work it out, we can't take any action. So if we're going to do something that's have a special meeting and we'll worry about that then, what I want to do is, I don't know, cut it or run off their comments tonight, but we've got a lot of stuff to do here. And we've got some, this is the marriage that we got some stuff that has to be done tonight. X, absolutely. And I'm, I'm, I'm, I don't know how I feel about this thing. I'm, I'm tired of, I'm tired of having the revolving door. I'm tired of the revolving door. Okay, we'll stop. So, the blocks my dice as I do just super quickly though. For a member, new bold. Yeah, really quickly. I just, I just want everyone that came up tonight. You were hurt. We're going to get together and we're going to discuss. So just know that. And again, you have my number. Please call me. And as well as any of my colleagues up here. So thank you for coming up. Thank you for sharing. And I apologize for anything, any bad experience you've had that does not represent the city. But we will get it right thank you. Thank you Mayor just want to thank everyone for coming out tonight and expressing this critical concern and as Commissioner Newbold said call us anytime we are called public servants we're here to serve you. Okay, so never feel, don't be hesitant, hesitant to pick up the phone and call us. And thank you so much for letting us know and we're on this. Thank you as mayor. I also apologize for past and present for everyone's experience because the buck stops with all of us. If you ever turn it as to be the mayor. of us, whoever's turn it is to be the mayor. We will be public facing about the permitting. I will ask the city manager, we need to put that out there to the public, our processes, and we will take a look at these ideas for relief, for economic relief. We can't answer them now, but I like your idea, word number, our civil special CRA, or commission meeting, whatever we need. We need to see our meeting. See our meeting. At that point. We're going to convene the city commission meeting. We'll need to do roll call. We're going to have our consent agenda. I think you eat public comments first. I apologize public comments. So we have to come up eat public comments first. I apologize public comments. So you have to come up with public comments. Whilst the first person is coming Mr. A. Bear, if there are particular items on the agenda, we need to move around. Please be prepared to suggest that. Tim Smith, 1015 Northeast 39th Street, Oakland Park. I'm going to condense my four minute speech into one minute because you know I'm a whole lot of time. So this is an item. There's nothing negative about it and I'm not asking for any money. So I'm talking about the Pioneer House again. All good news. Just real quickly, Mayor Dewey Hawkins built that thing. Mayor 25 years. Mayor Turbavill bought it after that and the first fire chief lived in it. It's according to Open Park information, the only notable historical residents in the city, the only one. So we've got the outside all buttoned up. We got really lucky with a lot of the people now. I need your blessing, manager, commissioners, to move ahead with the inside, with no funds needed from the city. This morning I got a commitment from an air conditioning company called On Point. They're wonderful. They're going to redo the entire air conditioning system for nothing. They're going to redo the entire air conditioning system for nothing. So that's coming and we still need a lot of things and we do have some people that we can come in there and take a look. What I wanted to do and if you'll pass one of these to each of your commissioners. This is my idea to how to make that happen is we need to bring in all of our people, all of the folks, the neighborhood presidency, advisory board people to try to embrace our history and get this historic house done. I can't do it myself. There's too much left as Mr. Abert mentioned at the last meeting. So this is like an invitation to all these neighborhood presidents, the advisory board people to come together and decide how we can make this happen. So this is kind of a mock invitation. I'd like your blessing to move ahead in this direction. And if you just tell me yes, I'll do it. And thank you very much. And thank you for your service to your citizenry Thank you We'll address that question at commission comment next speaker please Sorry, don't need to state my address you do unfortunately, yeah 3580 northeast 12 and your 34 petriple I just want to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm going to but we all have to work as a team to do that. And to work as a team, we need to work with small businesses, and we really just need to get dialed in. What's going on is good, but it can be better like everything else. So let's just make it better. Let's make it great again. Thank you all. Okay, thank you, Mr. Little. Mr. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Little. Mr. Fisher. I too. I'm going to be rapid fire quick here. Chris Fisher 37 11 North East 13th Avenue. I think you all had some wonderful follow-up comments regarding the small businesses. Mr. Abert tremendous job with humility that you showed. It took a lot of courage to be able to say what you did about the way the staff interacted in years past. I think it took great leadership right there. I just want to say ultimately, a lot of this was spoken, Mr. Longergan, Commissioner Longergan, and Vice Mayor, you spoke a lot about permitting. You all did, obviously, we were during the CRA in those comments, but at the same token, I think you still, like I suggested, need to contact these property owners. Talk to them about rental relief. And if anything, Mr. Doran and I talked about in the past, a teaser rate, if anything, you know, if the city can look into a teaser rate until sky building and horizon building are finished. I know it's like four years off, but something that can help. Pat's too humble to be able to say this, believe it or not. But meat and bone opening directly across from butchers barrel. That is not what the city envisioned. We envisioned normally an early onset of the quaint small business downtown. We were going to have direct competition. That is basically the same business opening right across the street from each other, which is just for lack of a better phrase, assifying, considering the small businesses that are struggling right now. So if we could have any sort of thought process there, either just think it speaks to the property owner, just being greedy about getting somebody over the rent again instead of thinking about the vision of the city and what is to come. Because it's a great vision. And I challenge the CRA and the city to really look into a rental relief program. Christian who spoke earlier, that $350,000 that he gave for what was to be Voodoo brewery. I talked to the finebergs. Voodoo brewery is coming but they're doing an corporate style. So guess what? His 350,000 that went toward the build out of that building he couldn't afford to pay for and he just paid off the finebergs. They're basically getting a free restaurant to move into because the building's coming in. So it's just not making a lot of sense right now folks. Rental relief program, they need something now. It can't wait. Please call these these property owners. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Fisher. Mr. Butto. Mr. Action, huh? Fitz, Fitz, but who 720 North East 59 court? How to get back from my event? I read the agenda item today. This afternoon, the sky building job creation center pilot program. Mr. Herrera, thank you for doing this because it's much needed. I see my entrepreneurship program is not in there. We'll have a discussion about that later because I have ideas on that. The job, this Senate program, I'm all good with the hiring but we don't want duplicational services. We have career source borrowers and we have our very own IOC, OIC here. Okay. They provide grant funding for payroll for these employees that want to up small businesses here in Ocampaign. I was always advised by the year and a half ago the city of Orlando has a great CRA program. What they do, they give start-up companies and existing minority owned companies women, any justifiable business that want to expand in the downtown nexus, they give rental relief up to one year for a small business so they provide a bona five business plan, financial plan, and marketing plan for success. To see, that's what the city should do. We get the plans, make sure that who's going to thrive in our downtown, especially with the sky building. Yeah, I'm all for the belief of rental assistance, helping them pay the way to give them that rental belief for a year, two years until the businesses have been running. And also when we are sparing, especially on the north side, the north and south side of the sky building. We want to make sure we have a competitive rental who's going to succeed. We may have to go big box name for a while, you know, maybe get a Chalope or a Starbucks or a Dunkin Donuts or a public downtown public right there. In our downtown nexus we need businesses to strive. Yeah, we want to do mom and pop culinary. That's fine. But I'd rather make sure we get the success because what's going to happen if we want to redevelop that area of downtown. They're going to go to the central part of Oakland Park, which is another hub, SBA hubs on area and they're going to want to expand in that area hallmic bride Near prospect that's fine, but there we got to build infrastructure there So the business that's could strive in that area. So this job is sensitive program. It's a good start I like it, but I read a rental leave for the businesses first Be competitive with their business plan. We gotta see how they're gonna make money in the future. As a player, I got good of me. Mr. Thompson, I gotta be like Commissioner Ones. I'm gonna need that whole book, because I wanna get dev into all aspects of your budget. It's, I can't wait to make public comments in all the assessment fees, fire, solid waste. They are really important increases that's going to occur. I've been monitoring the community and the thoughts about the increasing taxes that may come. And people are hurting out there. So we got to be used to term, be not to be flexible in our budget this upcoming year I'm looking forward to all the projects that are completed and seeing what all tax revenue to be placed within the city I'm looking forward to getting that analysis done with all the projects that we have so with that our closed out with my time 10 seconds left have a wonderful evening and I can't wait to have the discussion later. Appreciate it Thank you, Mr. Butler. I Dr. Doran Jack Doran 4529 29 pinears trail west of this is the reader's digest version. I know you don't you have legal stuff you gotta do I would just suggest that you try not to forget about what was being discussed at some point about the fire assessment to be being extended to not for profit and religious organizations, but it's good to give them lead time to prepare for that. So I'm not suggesting that that would be enacted this year, but at least a prize of them, but that's something that you all are planning if you decide to do that, and I hope you do. And I know of some developers in our CRA have asked for as various concessions or that means there are requests to the commission, to the city manager, to do certain things. Tonight down the agenda is for an extension of a parking variance. And there have been in the past, other developers parts asking for sidewalks to be put in and payvers and lighting. And so they ask things for things. Well, let them, maybe the commission can begin to ask them for some consideration in their rental rates. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Doran. Yes, sir. State your name and address. Thanks. Good evening. Name is David Maughan, address 3040 North East 6th Avenue, apartment 317 Oakland Park. The bliss apartments that were mentioned earlier, new resident there. I'm just going to read my note to be brief. My request is very simple along the lines of some of the comments earlier in support of the Primo plan, putting forth the first piece for the Oakland Park Boulevard BRT, which is for bus rapid transit, as you may know, and I would love to see the city of Oakland Park submit some kind of letter to FDOT and the county board of commissioners and the BCT, Brown County Transit. They're very interested to hear from the city. If that's already been done, I apologize, but from my understanding, they've said a letter from the municipalities along the route. We'll go a long way and getting that forward. So we'd love to see that. And specifically, just mentioning that we want to see the project include dedicated center running transilanes for that to really make sure it's successful. I don't think it's a reach to say it ties into some of the concerns here too about moving the city forward. I'm going to go to an example as a new resident, living in new development, wanting to access transit to get to the grocery store to get to the downtown agency. I did go to black from anger recently, so I've been there. So I think it all ties together to that and that transit and just supporting the efforts that are happening at the county wide level. If the, you know, the Oakland Park City Commission could support that too. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Hi, how you doing? My name's, my name's Alex Bordman. I'm a, I live at 2600 Northeast Nineteas Street in Pombo Beach. I'm a local transit and micromobility advocate. I'm here as well to David's sentiments about sending a letter, having your city send a letter to BCT or county commissioners, as well as F dot to really make sure that as this city continues to grow and I love the city of Mocome Park, I work here. I, you know, friends that live down here, my friends that I hang out down here, I do love this city. I'd like to see as you guys bring on this new housing on board that you do support a center running bus rapid transit line. Primo plan is going to have 16 different stations. I think it'd be fantastic as Tri-rail is coming online on these FBC lines that this becomes a more walkable mobile city. And it's going to, the rest of the county is going to be watching and seeing what other cities put up resistance to having a center running BRT line. And it really is, it sets a standard and makes your streets safer because center running lines are going to have their own traffic lights that are going to be able to just whisk right past all that traffic. It's also going to make your streets safer because as you integrate those stations, it'll make Ockerm Park Boulevard less of a safety hazard. Because I don't know if any of you have been out on those roads on foot or on a bicycle, but it is quite dangerous. That road is what's called a road. So I mean, there has to be active implementation to build those streets differently so that they are more safe for your residents, for pedestrians, for bicyclists, and for service workers who are going to rely on this kind of transportation and visitors as well will be able to use it and your citizens. So I just think it's an excellent it's a very simple thing I think for the city to do and I would I would encourage you all to do that and thank you so much for your time Thank you next speaker Good evening Good evening. Will Lestrum 34 55 Northeast 5th Ave unit 5 Oakland Park. I know we're sure on time so I'll keep it short. I would also like to advocate for the BRT that is planned for Oakland Park Boulevard. Right now it's in the planning phase and it's incredibly important that cities voice their opinion about what they want to see from this route. One of the main points of contention is going to be whether it is like center running or at least have dedicated bus lanes or whether it runs in traffic. It is incredibly important for it to be successful for ridership and all that, that it have its own dedicated lanes. So thank you all for your time. Thank you. Any other public comments? We're going to close public comments. We're coming back to the agenda. We will ask the my colleagues on the commission for time if we can defer items 23 and 24 to a their next meeting. Just go start with consent agenda. I'll get you through this thing real quick. This is from the city manager. Yeah, I'll get you through. Don't believe me. Where's the rest of us? Okay, could you take the consent agenda? Approval the minutes May 15th, 2024. Code lean settlement for 1571 to 1573, north these 45th street. Resolution to city commission to City of Oakland Park, Florida, proving authorizing the appropriate city officials to execute a stipulation in settlement agreement between the Gapa A.M. Sanders LLC, 1164 East Oakland Park Boulevard LLC. City of Oakland Park providing for conflict, severability and effective date. Resolution to City Commission City of Oakland Park, Florida, proving and authorizing the proper city officials to execute and submit the application and all necessary documents related to the 2025 cultural facilities grant for the open-air seating and performance space at City Park Project, providing for conflict severability and effective date. Resolution to city commission to city Voting Park Florida, proving and authorizing appropriate city officials to execute a work authorization with Hazen and Sawyer PC for professional consulting services for a vulnerability analysis update to FDEP 2022 requirements, provided for conflict severability and effective date. Resolution to City Commission to City of Elk and Park, Florida, proving and authorizing the appropriate City officials to execute a work authorization with Craig A. Smith and Associates, for Emile Lake Basin drainage improvement project, providing for conflict severability and effective date. Resolution to City Commission to City of Oakland Park Florida, approving and authorizing appropriate City officials to execute the first amendment to the interlocal agreement among Broward County, the City of Oakland Park and the Oakland Park community redevelopment agency for sky building, formerly known as Oakland Park Square, redevelopment project, providing for conflict severability and effective date. Resolution of City Commission to City of Oakland Park Florida, approizing the appropriate City of Fiscal to execute the 6th amendment to the development agreement between the City of Open Park, Open Park, Dixie LLC for the development of sky building, providing for conflict, severable and effective day. Resolution of City Commission of City of Open Mark Florida proving authorizing the appropriate City of Fiscal to execute a work authorization between City and Keith Engineering for Engineering, Landscape, Architectural Design Services related to the Royal Palm Park lighting and trail rehabilitation project Providing for conflict severability and effective date Resolution the city commission city of welcome by Florida proving an authorizing appropriate city officials to execute a work authorization between the city and Curie sewards Aguila architects for engineering and architectural design services Required for the new fire station nine facility project providing for conflict, severability and effective date. Resolution and city commission and city of open park floor to approving authorized and appropriate city officials to execute a work authorization to carry certain Agula architects for architecture and engineering services for design and construction and administration services related to the columns building renovation and city park project providing for conflict, severability and effective date. Resolution and city commission and city of open park floor to approving authorized appropriate the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Council for the Infectivity. Resolution to City Commission City of Elkman Park floor proving an authorizing the appropriate City officials to execute a generator agreement between Elkman Park Dixie LLC and the City of Elkman Park for the installation of a generator to support the City Operations and Sky Building providing for conflict separately and effectively. Resolution to City Commission City of Elkman Park floor proving an authorizing the purchase of global AIS brand furniture and fire station nine project WR Inc. Piggy back in the terms of conditions to state of Florida contract, 5612-000-20024-MYACS, and approving the proposed budget amendment, providing for conflict-severability and effective date. Resolution to City Commission to City of Alcombarque Florida, approving authorizing the sole source purchase of vehicle replacement parts of services for fire rescue trucks. From Expert D so Inc. Providing for diesel ink provided for conflict severability and effective Resolution the city commission city of welcome by Florida proving authorized in the purchase of oil lubricant products from Palmdale oil company Inc. Peaky back in the terms of conditions city St. Petersburg contract Palmdale oil company Inc provided for conflicts ever been effective date Resolution the city commission of city of our Florida approving and authorizing the social service procurement for truck repair services from environmental products group for the city's public works, providing for conflict severability and an effective date. And emergency ordinance, the city commission of the Valkympire, Florida pursuant to section 2.17 and the the charter of the city of Valkympire, Florida. The city commission hereby ratifies and confirms the declaration of the state of emergency in the city of Valkympire giving the impacts created by invest 90L providing for severability, conflict, effective date and repealing prior ordinance. Resolution of the City Commission of City of Arcana, Florida, approving and authorizing the proper city officials to actually get the seventh amendment to the parking waiver agreement between the City of Arcana, parking AB Realty, allowing a one year extension of the deadline to obtain a certificate of occupancy for suite B and removing any provision or language in the original agreement as amended, limiting the use of a suite a to athletic facility providing for complex severability and effective date And resolution city commission city of open park Florida proving an authorized appropriate city officials to execute a license agreement between the United States Postal service in the city of open park providing for complex severability and effective date Mission a new rule. Yes. Mission a orange. Yes. Vice Mayor Longham. Commissioner Gordon. Yes. Mayor Rosenwald. Yes. And I'd defer 23 and 24 to after the the assessment rates are done. Is that a motion? Yes. Roll call. Commissioner new bull. Yes. Missions. Yes. Vice Mayor Longham. Yes. Mr. Gordon. Yes. Yes. Mayor Rosenwald. Okay. So we are at item 25. Resolution of City Commission of City of Elk and Park Florida, ratifying the collective bargaining agreement between the City of Elk and Park, the Metro Broward Professional Firefighters local 3080 rank and file unit for the period of October 1st, 2023. To September 30th, 2025, providing for complex severability and effective date resolution the City Commission City Volkmerc Florida ratifying the collective bargaining agreement seen the City of Oakland Park Metro Broward professional fire fighters local 3080 I I a F F battalion Chief Unit for the period October 1st 2023 to September 30th 2025 providing for conflict severability and effective date. Motion adopted. Commission new call. Commission bull yes, yes vice-amerilan again no commissioner Gordon yes mayor Rosenwald yes, I need a I'm gonna need another motion based on the city manager's request to now here items 28 29 30 and 31 we just need a separate motion. We have a separate motion. Oh, I apologize. Sorry Is there a motion for 25b? There's two resolutions in A and a B. Yeah, make a motion to adopt the second resolution Second Yeah Commissioner Neubel. Yes, Commissioner Arns by Smeralon again. Oh Commissioner Gordon. Yes, they're reasonable commissioner new bull yes commissioner arms vice mayor long again commissioner Gordon yes very Rosemolle yes I need a motion to rearrange the agenda to move to for us now to go right to items 28 29 30 and 31. I may as defer to defer to defer after the to defer those two items. Right but we still have 26 and 27. Those items were added to the I apologize you're right. Okay 28. The city of Oakland Park Florida relating to the provision of fire rescue services facilities and programs in the city of Oakland Park Florida establishing the estimated assessment rate for fire rescue assessments for fiscal year beginning October 1st 2024 for the properties within the city of Oakland Park directing the preparation of assessment role authorizing the public hearing and directing the provision of notice thereof, and providing an effective date. Most should adopt. Second. Roll call. Discussion. Sorry, discussion. Vice mayor. Yes. Go ahead. Okay, thank you. You know, this is why I was really upset that the agenda was so packed, because there are things that were rushing through here that really needed to be discussed. This is one of them. Staff did their best based on difficult factors. I think to some degree, and please accept this with my respect, but the commission has made some bad decisions in my personal opinion based on factors. Staff did their best on the fire assessment fee. I believe this is a 38% increase, which is unbelievable. In my opinion, decisions were made that were not fiscally responsible and should not have been made, not it was not fair to all households. I believe that in my opinion, although legal opinion was obtained, 700 houses were removed from paying a fire assessment fee. That's a lot of money and based on the law, we were not supposed to have the existing other household owners pick up the expense for that. It didn't come out of the same kitty, but it did come out of the general fund. So those people in fact are paying for this, so I personally don't agree with it. Long ago, we only had a millage rate and all the fees were with the millage rate. And the commission's back and said, you know what, all these people that are excused from paying from the millage, we're going to set up these fees so that it's fair and everyone pays a little bit what we're doing now, what the commission has done, which I disagree with, is they're chipping away and they're taking people off of paying that fee. So they're putting us back in the same situation we were before. So I'm a little disappointed. I'm only going to support this only because the city manager and our finance director were put in a situation. This runs again with the other one that was just a proof that I voted no on. It was initially when we went into negotiations, last year was a tough year. And one of the first things I asked I said, you know what, we need to give staff at least 5%. I think you guys will remember when we spoke about that, because it's been a tough year costs went up. I believe all our employees are equally as important. We don't have any black sheep in the family. And it turns out that we treated one union better than we treated the other two. So we treated some employees better than we treated other employees. I completely disagree with that. This is not about the firefighters. This is about equal treatment for all employees. So, firefighters held out, got a greater amount than any other employees were worried about, firefighters leaving going to a different city. The truth is, let's ask public works. How many drivers have we lost from doing pickups of trash because we can't keep people Air cell all I'm trying to say is this was the most difficult situation and I lost sleep on it last night I felt bad about this, but the truth is we're treating employees differently. This is a once a year annual Cost-a-living raise and we're giving some people more than we're giving others. We're treating some employees better than we're treating others. In my opinion, it's wrong. I'm only supporting the fire assessment adoption fee because the city manager was put in the situation and we have no choice and I got to be a team player. So 38% did not have to be 38%. Some of the employees could have been treated equal to the other employees and it was very disappointing to me. So that's where I'm going to leave it. I will support the fire assessment adoption fee. But we looked and we spoke about it historically. Our unions were never fairly treated and that's wrong and all the employees to me are equally important and I know some have said well this is more important than that that's your opinion but I just want to share so that the public understands why I voted the way that I did and how I feel about it thank you mayor thank you vice mayor Thank you Mayor. Thank you Vice Mayor, other discussion? Another night, yes. Tonight, no. Okay, I'd like some time to tell you why the fire for you went into effect and wasn't because tree and all households are equitable. This will come back again. Thank you. If I'm not here, Commissioner Noble, could you have any comments? No, I don't. Roll call. Commissioner Nubel. I'm sorry. Commissioner Gordon, the two of any comments to out of fairness, I apologize. Roll call. Commissioner Nubel. Yes. Commissioner Orange. Vice Mayor Longan. Yes. Commissioner Gordon. Mayor Roseville. Yes. Item 29. Resolution of City of Oakland Park, Florida related to collection and disposal of solid waste recyclable materials and bulk pickup services in the assessment area consisting of the entire legal boundaries within the city of Oakland Park as maybe amended from time to time describing the method of assessing solid waste cost against assessed 2024, directing the preparation of an updated assessment role, authorizing the public hearing and directing the provision of notice thereof and providing an effective date. on again, Mr. Gordon. Yes. Mayor Rosamond. Yes. Item 20. Resolution is. I apologize. Item 30. Resolution in the Commission of the City of Elkhambark, Florida estimating the cost of stormwater management services providing by stormwater utility determining that a certain real property will specifically benefit it by services provided by stormwater utility establishing the method of assessing the cost of utility against the real property that will be specifically benefited thereby directing the director to prepare direct depreporation of a tentative stormwater management assessment role based upon the methodology set forth herein establishing a public hearing for the proposed stormwater management assessments and directing the provision of notice and connection therewith providing for severability and effective date. No sure, no. Second discussion. Local sorry. Local Commissioner new bull. Yes, Commissioner orange. Vice Mayor Longhans Commissioner Gordon. Yes, Mayor Roosevelt. Yes, item 31. Resolution of the City Commission of City of Wilkampok, Florida adopting a proposed operating military for the city's general operating fund for the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2024 and ending September 30th, 2025 adopting an acquired millage levy for Voted Debt Service for General Obligation Bond Series 2020 for the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2024 and ending September 30th, 2025 adopting the acquired millage levy for Voted Debt service for General Obligation Bond Series 2022 for fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2024 and ending September 30th, 2025 providing for conflict severability and effective. So both. No, no, you're plugging the numbers first. You're gonna plug in the military commission, Commissioner. Yeah, I think to adopt the military, 5.7243 mills for the general operating budget and the We have put them on the screen now commissioner Three no, what's the total for? Well, I got it here just give me a second I kind of hear just give me a second. Another commissioner want to help. .3589 mills for the 2020 bond and point 1945 for the 2022 bond. second. Second discussion. I'll just say this is our lowest in 15 years. The 10th reduction 11 years. Kudos, Mr. Thompson. Thank you. Roll call. Commissioner Nubel. Yes. Commissioner Arns. Yes. Vice Mayor Longan. Yes. Commissioner Gordon. Yes. Mayor Rosemond. Yes. We're going to go quickly go. I'm going to go. I apologize. Motion without the resolution. Second. Roll call. Commissioner Noobel. Yes. Commissioner Arnst. Yes. Vice Mayor Lonegan. Yes. Commissioner Gordon. Yes. Mayor Rosamond. What's the resolution? Okay. Yes, so we've, let's go back to items 23, please. I'm sorry. Item 27. Item 27. Okay. No, no, 26 was on consensus. No, 27's on consensus. So we're now moving to item 23. I'd like to make a motion to appoint Patrick Gross of planning the only board. Discussion? Did you say Patrick Gross? There's a second by Commissioner Newbold. Yes, second. Discussion? Roe call. Commissioner Newbold. Yes, Commissioner Arnst. Yes. Vice Mayor Lonegan. Yes. Commissioner Gordon. Yes. Mayor Rose Maldon. Yes, Commissioner Arnst. Yes, Vice Mayor Lonegan, Commissioner Gordon. Yes, Mayor Rosenwald. Yeah, item 24. We need to read the resolution. Sorry about that. Yeah, motion to dock. I can't make the motions. We have read the resolution first. Resolution of the City Commission of City of Ocampak, Florida pointing one member to serve on the planning and zoning board for writing for conflict, severability and effective day. Motion to adopt. Second. Local. Commissioner, Commissioner N new bull. Yes, Commissioner aren't yes, right? Mayor Lonnigan Commissioner Gordon. Yes, Mayor Rosenwald. I'd like to make a motion appoint named tram to the police fire pension board second roll call Commissioner new bull. Yes, Commissioner aren't yes, right? Mayor Lonnigan Commissioner Gordon. Yes, Mayor Rosewald. Yes, listen to city commissioner city of Elton bark Florida pointing 21 member to serve on the police and fire pension board providing for conflicts every Billing effect. Oh, shoot up. Second real call. Mr. Neubel. Yes, mission. Aren't by smell on against commissioner Gordon. Yes, Mayor Rosenwald. Are we good? We're now commissioner comment? Okay, commissioner comments commissioner arts real quickly. Thank you for getting the green stripe in Sierra, Mirero. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. getting the green stripe in. Sierra Mirero, thank you, thank you, thank you. I owe you a debt of gratitude. Thank you for bringing that. Yes, I know, but thank you for bringing that. This is a green stripe. Where? On prospect road from the new development, east to 19th, the terrace. Awesome. Thank you. That's it. Vice mayor. Thank you, mayor. Just one thing. during the food thing on Saturday, food giveaway on Saturday. Some people were mentioning that the word was going around that there is going to be no library built and people were kind of upset. That folks I just want people to understand that is not true. We are going to have a new library eventually. You know what the factors are, what's delaying it. So you can squash all those false rumors that are out there. You will have a brand new library some dates just taking a little longer than we thought. That's all mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Gordon. Yes. Thank you to staff tonight for putting together this wonderful agenda. We got through it and Thank thank you. Thank you for all of the public comments and your voices have been heard have a good night Thank you, Commissioner Newborn Thank you. I too want to thank everyone that came out and spoke That call whenever they have a concern do know that we care and we do want to address any concerns regarding the city, even accept your positive feedback and tell us you are proud and you like the way the city is going. So I just want to thank you and thank you for talking about the Pioneer House. Since Mr. Raybear is going to be talking to each of us individually soon. He'll vet it with everyone about moving forward. I personally support moving forward and for the interior and connecting with Mr. Marrero as needed as Mr. Raybear is directed. We heard you loud and clear about the run to relief. And for everyone who's watched, this was a huge agenda. I would suggest in the future when we just meet once a month in the summer, we put this or frankly have another meeting. We've rushed through some of these. Please know all five of us that had our individual briefings and all of this. The three assessments and everything budget wise and the village will all still be back for a second one and we will have more time to discuss that. I promise, thank you. At this point, we're moving to Mr. A. Barretty report. I have three minutes. I said everything I can say this evening about the comments that were made by the public. And as I indicated earlier, I have committed to coming back to you with some recommendations. And there will be discussion both with staff and then amongst yourselves on how we move forward from here. And I feel confident that with a solid plan, we can ensure that the improvements are implemented as expeditiously as possible. But again, I extend my apologies to everybody for the trials that they've had to experience. Thank you, and we're going to move on this, trust me, and including getting that new permitting operations out. Mr. Schwartz, thank you for covering for Mr. Dudy any comments? No comments, thanks for having us. Mr. Monsho, adjourned. Motion adjourned. Thank you all, everyone. Slate is asleep well.