Okay everybody let's get going welcome back to this community redevelopment agency regular meeting today's Monday April 7th 2025 the time is 1.31 p.m. please everyone let's rise for the pleasure please The recall of the gorgeous dance, one nation under God, even in the middle of the liberty of the injustice for all. Thank you all. Miss Siddins, please call the roll. Chair Waketer. Vice Chair Thompson. Thank you for being here. Commissioner Drucker. Here. Commissioner Nacklas. Here. Commissioner Singer. Here. All present. Very well. Mr. Brown, are there any amendments to the agenda? There are no amendments this afternoon. Thanks. Very well. Are there any corrections to the minutes of March 17th, 2025, if not all, in Tertain Emotion to approve them? Mr. Chair, I move we adopt the minutes as presented. Second. Very well. All in favor? Aye. I think the minutes are approved. So now we'll go to presentations during this portion of the meeting and we'll introduce the Downtown Walkability Consultant, Jeff Speck and Ulta Consulting Team. Mr. Brown. Thank you, Chair. Zach Beer, our Public Works and Engineering Director is going to introduce Mr. Speck and Ulta Team to discuss Downtown Multodal mobility study. Very well. Thank you. Mr. Beer. Good afternoon, Sierra Chair and Sierra Commission. Zach Beer, your public works and engineering director. I'm joined with Jeff Speck today to do a very quick recap of some of the things we doing it been doing on palmada walkability and then turn it over to Mr. Spector really open the dialogue and introduce him. Very good. Mr. Spector. Rick. Hi, everybody. Got my up? Sorry. Well, as soon as I get the clicker, I'll get that. I think there are a few slides before mine. This is remarkable. I was at a hearing in Everett, Massachusetts last week, and we waited for three hours before we got up. So. Oh, well, then let me just preface it. Well, everyone gets things situated. Let me preface it by some of the people in the audience here include two former deputy mayors, multiple, multiple people on the bicycle and pedestrian committee of which I served years ago, who are all patiently, patiently waiting, have patiently waited for years for you to come up here. So thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of this process. Exactly. All right, wonderful. So, Alta, we do have Alta in the audience as well that they will come up to the podium. Do you want, Elliot to head up to the podium? Sure. Very good. That way. We're not all crammed in. Good afternoon. I don't know if this is on yet. Looks on. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having us present here. I'm very excited to be back here to update you all in progress and introduce our special guest. Zach, are you going to do this? I will be. Thank you. So we're just going to be covering two overall items here. I'm just going to provide an update on the East Palm Medo Park Road. As you all know, we were here last November and basically we're working with the city now on next steps and then I will hand it over to Mr. Spock. And so just as a recap in the last year and a half or less. So we've been working with the city and the community on really digging deep into the analysis of East Palma de Parc Road and the surrounding network including downtown. There's a lot of great activity that's going on and so we looked into it from all the different elements, safety, traffic, livability, and really what it takes to create a more walkable and livable community. We used a lot of different analysis tools to kind of create that big picture of what's going on in the street network. And then, we conducted an extensive community outreach process. We got amazing feedback. There were opportunities to provide that input both online through an interactive map and other sources and also several meetings in person. We received thousands of comments online. It was just great feedback that we really compiled everything to help us create the concepts. And so as you can see here, we aim to create several concepts and ideas into what East Palmetto Park Road could look like. And so when we presented these options in November, last year to you all, the, you know, the overarching decision was that a no-build option is not an option. And so let's continue to really kind of think through what could happen on East Palmetta Park Road in relation to all the other activity that's going on, including the campus master or plan, of course. And so we're continuing to do that within the framework of the different elements that we talked about, the traffic, the safety, the public realm. And so we're working on these different options for e-spalmeta park road, but we're also concurrently working with staff on different areas in downtown to identify mobility needs and what could be done in the short term versus longer term projects. We've also engaged Mr. Spock recently to really kind of continue that process and look forward to continuing to work with you all to really dig deeper into the design elements of the future of the corridor. And then we're really excited about what's happening in downtown, including the campus master plan. And so we were asked to kind of be a reviewer of those elements just from the perspective of how it impacts mobility in downtown, because obviously that all feeds into what impacts East Palma do park road. And so without further ado, I'm really excited to introduce Mr. Spak. Hi everybody. Thank you. So yeah, I heard you guys were waiting for me down here. I'm thrilled to have finally made it. Some of you know more about me than others. I was an architecture student or about to be an architecture student in the late 1980s when it became clear to me that the most important work happening in urban design, probably in the world, but at least in the US, was happening in Florida. In Miami, at DPC, or Duwani Playters, Iberic, a firm you've probably heard of, and I reoriented myself from someone who was studying architecture to someone who wanted to be an urban planner and moved here in 93 when I got out of architecture school and spent a decade at DPC. So I've been through Boca Raton. I've been, I saw the B-52s play at Myzner Park. I've had my experiences up and down the Florida coasts actually. I was asked to spend about five minutes just introducing myself and my firm. I should introduce John V. Kirthene, just a way of Johnnevi who's also here from SpectMC. But most people who know me and our work know me from the book, Lockable City. But the writing is kind of my hobby. I mean, I've been a designer for 30 years, mostly doing urban planning and spectamacy is a firm based in Boston. And we do all kinds of different urban planning work for a wide variety of clients and with a wide variety of partners and we can now add ALTA to this list. This is our first partnership with ALTA but we've been fans and hopeful collaborators of ALTA for many years, so we're glad to finally join forces. Spec Dempsey does the full range of urban planning work from regional planning to architecture, actually, but if we have a sweet spot, it is definitely this category of streets and networks. I've become super fascinated with streets because the streets are typically the impediment to making great places in most American cities. If you know my work, we talk about to be walkable, the walk has to be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting, and most American potentially walkable places are already useful, comfortable, and interesting, but they're not safe. And that's a function of how engineering has been practiced in the US for many decades. It's now changing. Everything I've learned about street engineering, I did learn from engineers, so I'm not dissing that entire profession, but there's a lot that we need to recover from in terms of how it's been practiced over the years. A prime example, I'm going to show you a couple quick examples. A prime example is Oklahoma City where they were named in Prevention Magazine as the worst city for pedestrians in the entire country. This was about 15 years ago. Mayor Cornett called me in and we did a walk-ability study that led to the rebuilding of 40 blocks of downtown streets. It was my job to redesign the curb to curb. We discovered that they had fully a third more lanes than they needed because there'd been the farm boom and then the farm bust and there just wasn't that much traffic on their very wide streets. So a typical street like this, we were able to turn into a street like this, with a lot of investment in landscape as well, which I always tell people this is what you do if you have money and they were actually, they had $200 million to spend because of a new tower that was landing in their downtown. So we invested in rebuilding, most of the places we work, we often just do restriping. Because you can often have the same accomplishments just with paint. Here's another rebuilding story. This is in Hammond, Indiana, a five lane main street that was kind of killing the downtown because people just saw it as a place to speed through. This was our plan as part of a larger downtown master plan. And it was just completed. It's just starting to fill in as essentially a downtown parking plaza, you park in the middle of the street and on the side of the street. And the traffic has been calmed. This is another project that connected. It's interesting because it's analogous to what's happening here in a sense in that Carmel, Indiana, I called a bipolar downtown. It had a retail downtown and it had a civic downtown, kind of like your government center campus that's coming at some distance from the main street, right? And so the challenge was how do we connect the main street to the half a mile actually to the civic center? And we designed this street that has created a new heart to the community and now it has one downtown instead of two. And that's what this looks like. It's the Monon Corridor in Carmel, Indiana, which is also a recreational corridor as well as a street. So we've been called in as Aliyah told you to participate with them on the mobility study that is looking at Palmetto Park. And you know, it's got pretty good landscaping, although not too much shade. And it doesn't have a lot of people on it. Although actually I was surprised today to see a little more action than I had expected. We are becoming aware, this is really day one. We are becoming aware of the different configurations that are being considered, the different street sections that are being considered. I'm not in any position to express any opinions yet. I think about where this could go. But I think it's fair to say that we're going to look at all the options that have already been discussed, and we're going to consider those and other options and just try to optimize the solution, which we will present to you probably as alternatives for decision making around where you want the street to go. And then finally, it's also been mentioned that our input is desired on the government's center campus master plan, which is a very high quality plan and certainly bodes well for the future of your downtown. But we are excited to look at it, kick the tires a bit, and see if we could perhaps help with the design of that to integrate it better into the rest of the downtown. So that's essentially our task as I understand it. If I misunderstand it, now's a great time to tell me. And we look forward to working with you. Thank you. Mr. Speck, thank you so much. Again, we're so happy that you're here. What's our feeling on time frames if we're calling this day one? I'm sorry. repeat that one more time. What's our feeling on timeframes if we're calling this day one? I'm sorry, repeat that one more time. What's our feeling on timeframes? From this point, I know there's another item Mr. Brown later that we'll be talking about in terms of work order. What's the feeling on timeframes here? Yes, so before council is work order number three with the all to planning and design. and the overall RFP or solicitation for that our consultant was to look at the entire downtown not just Palmetto Park Road and utilizing that contract has been really effective to be able to incorporate the spec to MC team and have them begin with the specific task of Palmetto Park Road but then certainly open for for, if there's any input that staff gets for their involvement. As it's certainly from where we've been or had a discussion from months ago, the evolution of not just Palmetto, but something that we had talked about late in the Palmetto Park discussion, which was the connectivity across the tracks, the downtown, and how we would think about that as a whole piece versus just the isolated component that is Palmetto Park Road. And again, when would we expect the first check-in? Let's say, on this. Well, I think the initial discussions are gonna be set for the summertime. So as the initial work order that's going through, it already provides initial tasks with the SPE-tempty team. But then certainly, I think their scope is limited to those evaluations. If there was going to be additional scoping discussions, that would probably happen further on into the summer or late summer or beyond that. Very good. Thank you. Commissioners, any questions? Thanks for Thompson. Ms. Knocles. Thank you, Chair Wigdheron. Mr. Speckwelcome. We are truly all happy and excited to have you here in Alia. Thank you. Thank you for the update. So Alia, you had mentioned some short-term projects. You were looking at some short-term projects. Can you tell us what those are and when we might be able to see those? Sure. So we have been working with city staff about trying to move some of the elements that would have a quick positive impact on enhancing safety. And one of those areas is my's Narball of Art. And so we've been discussing kind of improving the safety at particularly a couple of those intersections like second and Maizner as well as southeast first and so we've been discussing a few different options and iterations and the city has been also in discussion with vendors to try to do those demonstration project type installations. So we're in the review process with the city for those now, but once everything is approved, the process is meant to be quick and can be implemented within a month or two. For example, depending on what the availability of materials and all of that. So it can be implemented within a month after we get, so what I'm trying to find out too, what are we looking at to see our first demonstration project, when would that be? Just from my perspective, I don't know that I feel comfortable committing to that specific date, because I think we've got to decide from a policy decision or here's some feedback on is it just intersection improvements of the safe intersection which I think is a much more I think it's a much more doable or constrained goal versus thinking about something bigger which is some of the demonstration elements of configurations temporary pop-ups on Myzner, which would require full-scale MOTs or other things, so a much more sophisticated design. So I think that timing of we get through the work order and then establish that and then could certainly present options to be able to implement in the downtown. And then another item that was mentioned by the mayor last time in terms of we showed how dangerous the intersections of US one and Dixie are for example. There's a current Aftah project that we're trying to kind of leverage and so it's currently in review by City staff so Ulta is providing that additional feedback on how to make them safer. So, that's definitely on a more urgent timeline and we're capitalizing on that moment. So, it's kind of multiple things that we're looking at. And then once we understand what's happening with a campus master plan in terms of any permeability into like crossings or others into downtown, we were gonna go back and study that further as well. Okay, so back to the short term projects, we're really talking about months for the first short term project to possibly without giving a specific. I would anticipate that it's probably gonna be a few months in the late summer at the earliest before those went in because I think the intent is also to have Mr. Spect do some more on-site evaluations and make sure we get his opinions prior to taking actionable items. So I think I wouldn't want to propose installations before we went through that process. So our scope of work includes a short, a charat, I mean, a few days that we've tentatively scheduled for June. But we- process. So our scope of work includes a short sharet I mean a few days that we've tentatively scheduled for June but we we were asked to hold off on actually scheduling it until we had our work order but we've we have we have held room in our calendar to come back in June. Great. Okay thank you and then And do I have anything else on here? Alia, so it's been a few months since we saw the last update and what we saw in this presentation was pretty much what we saw last time as well. So I'm sure you've been gathering more data and everything since then. But I hope when you do come back and hopefully now with Mr. Speck on board. You know. I'm sure you've been gathering more data and everything since then. But I hope when you do come back and hopefully now with Mr. Speck on board, I know that there was comments from me and I think comments from some of my colleagues last time that we wanted to see something that was more significant and more about place making. And we've heard from different people in the community we've heard from the 344 group and and you know over these last few months there's been a lot of people that have come up to us and come up to me and talk to me and be Alpomello Park Road of course now we we add on a lot with the with the government campus master plan we've added now that new layer into it. So I just hope when you do come back and when we get another update that it will really be what we're looking for as far as the sense of place and really iconic and a place that is a landmark for our city. Of course number one thing thing has to be safety. So, but I think now we have this great team in place that can really make something special. And I hope that you'll be when you have the design turret, you'll invite people that really want to get involved in the community to tell them what their thoughts are, people that have been here for a long time. Also, I hope that if the timeline is really late summertime, by then we may have a comprehensive agreement close to being done with our government master plans. So it would be tough to come back then and for you guys to want to start all over again. So hopefully now you're having some discussions. The proposal has great, great teams that they work with. And now we have this, we've already had a great team and now we've made it even better with Mr. Speck joining as well, but I just hope you guys really all work together to create what we know can be iconic for our city. Understood. Completely appreciate your feedback. And that's definitely the intent. You know, we knew of Mr. Speck potentially coming on board a couple of months ago. And so in the background we've been working with city staff on identifying those, you know, different spots where we could leverage some improvements. But then I think the design charade will absolutely open up the opportunity for that kind of hands-on experience with the Ulta and Speck teams is structured that way in the work order. And so it'll be really the time where we dig in together rather than have Ulta come up with additional concepts. And then Mr. SPAC come in with another iteration. So this will be more of like Mr. SPAC mentioned a couple of dates of immersive experience of design charat's options possibilities all within a practical realm if you will Thank you very much. Thank you commissioners Thank you chair very term Thank you Halter planning welcome Mr. Speck as a profess trans it nerd that I am and a little bit of a groupie Really excited'm really excited that you're on board. This has been one of our strategic priorities for the last couple of years. We're getting ready to have our strategic planning sessions in May. And I would assume that we will continue with that with all the changes that are going on in the downtown. And I understand that you've been doing your due diligence because we have to get all these moving parts. And it makes me really happy that we're looking at it as a holistic approach and an organic way how we're going to develop that area. And part of the reasons that we went with the Terra Frisbee Group, at least I did, was because they are model, the conceptual model. We know it'll change through time, kind of fit the mold in that area to connect our government campus, Palmetto Park Road, Meister, our Bright Line Station, and that whole area to make it multimodal, and of course pedestrian friendly walkability and place making. So I appreciate you, your guidance through this process. I agree with Deputy Mayor Nockles that we are kind of moving forward with a lot of these processes and obviously community input is important to us both from the government center perspective and obviously from Paul Mental Park Road. So the more that we engage the community is always good. I know that sometimes we can't incorporate everybody's suggestion because then we'll have grid locks. So, you know, I get that as well. And I'm looking forward to those quick builds demonstration. I'm very aware of the FDOT project. I've spoken to different groups, including FDOT. And I'm glad that we're coordinating all of that. So there's not, so we're really, truly connected with all the different projects. So we're not coming back here in six months and having a disconnect. So really excited to meet you, really excited to look forward to working with you and the best is yet to come when it comes to our downtown. Thank you. Mr. Chair, thank you. Just echo my colleagues' comments. I think this, just back in all to where engaged long before this campus master plan had been in the works. So I think it's helpful to focus more on the connection points throughout the downtown, which we've been doing, and not necessarily on one particular street or one set of streets. It's the holistic approach that I think will be useful. And that doesn't have to tie in exactly with the ongoing work by the consultants already working with us, Aneter Frisbee team for the downtown campus. So I think everything can work in parallel and well. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anything else Mr. Beer? I was just going to note that we did, is, Alta is part of our team for that evaluation of the overall traffic of the campus master plan, which is a big component that we're looking to or I changed from before. To the mayor's point, the team is now integrated to be able to evaluate the overall system and do a traffic analysis of the campus master plan in connection with those elements, not just the isolated project. So really trying to look at that elevated system-wide, a system-wide approach. Thank you very much. Anything further? No, Mr. Sack? Thank you for the warm welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Is it brown, anything else? No, not at this time. Very well. Thank you very much. Thank you. So at this time, we will proceed with our agenda. There are no quasi-judicial or related public hearings. And now we will have the time for public requests. Anyone's welcome to come and speak, and please state your name and address. And you'll have up to three minutes. We have received a couple cards. The first card we received is Patti Derbisch. Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon, Mr. Derbisch. I reside at Port 20 North East 10th, Ferris Buckewert's home, Florida. Thank you so much. It's a large segment of taxpayers' perception of consul at this point is you are much more on the side of developers than on taxpayers and citizens. I know you do not answer questions at this meeting, but have suggested you would provide requested information. They would like me to request your records on what developments you voted for or what areas you re-zoned in the city. Also, they would like to know what campaign contributions you have taken from developers. And whether it was to you or to your law firm that you're employed by, this will help set straight their understanding and maybe yours of how people are looking at you. It will clear the air. And we hope you will comply with this and that we can get answers to this and Go forward. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Irving. The next comment I have is from Miss Judy Morrow. Okay. My name is Judy Moro. I live at 1305 Northeast Fifth Avenue. I really enjoy tennis. I bring my tennis racket. I have over 250 signed petitions that I have gotten in the city. And I haven't even counted all of them. Each bag is a hundred. And there's questions when people sign my ballot, our ballot to say Boca Raton, tennis center. They They ask me, and I'm asking the mayor, Scott Singer, Yvette Drucker, George Brown, Mark Wigter, Fran Knackles, Andy Thompson. And that is the people want to know, can the city of Boca mayor and four council people put the government redevelopment campus on the November 2025 ballot referendum to let residents decide? So I would appreciate an answer today or an email from each of you if that can be done. The other thing is there's people ask me, well why does Boca Raton need the partnership. How much money does the city of Boca have for a new city hall? We don't know the numbers. This city got an award for being outstanding, complying with financial records. Yet we do not know how much money is set aside for the city hall, a new city hall, which every time I go there, there's less people than 10, 20, 30 years ago. Because most people pay online, some of the permits are only accepted online. Also people want to know how much money does the City of Boca have for a police station, a sub station in East Boca, a police station west of I-95. So of the people that I've spoken to individually that have signed my over 250 petitions that I have personally gotten. This is my unofficial results. 90% of the people want to save our Boca Raton Tennis Center. And they tell me they want to save the parks, the green space and I'm sorry to tell you they do not think a water fountain and sidewalk is the kind of park that you can use to have energy, exercise, fun, and enjoyment, which we can now with our tennis, our basketball, our softball, and all downtown. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you. Appreciate it, thank you. And I'm sorry I'm nervous. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next card we have is from Mr. Juan Casito. Good afternoon, Juan Casito. 55th 16th, 17th Avenue in Boca Raton. Thank you Mr. Casito. And I actually start by saying something really positive. I see the men sitting in there. I think it's really an honor to have George coming home back in our city, helping us with creating a better place. He's truly one of a kind. In regards to the Palmeiro Park Road process, I am actually concerned that we actually seem to be doing things backwards. We now have the right guide, Jeff Speck, is the right person to design a memorable significant iconic street walkable. He has the experience, he has the capability to do that. He is a designer. You heard him talk about his design ability. We should have actually hired him to start with, to put the design of this street together, and then maybe higher-alted to put the drawings together to the construction. Because it seems to me that we're wasting money as a city, having a group like Alta collecting data, and I don't have anything against them, but quite frankly, I mean, it's been, I don't know how many months already, collecting data and producing nothing. I'm pretty sure that once we see the ideas from Jeff, spec, we're going to be looking at what we really need to do in our city. And I would encourage it to look into that contract, the expansion of the contract with ALTA, because it seems to me that what we need is a designer. Somebody that understands how to create places, how to create walkable streets as we are designing them. This issue of collecting data is taking us nowhere. I happen to have Jeff Speck's books. I've read it many times, so I know his work and I think it's the right person to do what we need to do in the city. So I am actually surprised that he is working under ALTA, in order to sense his own entity. So I would encourage you to look into that, to create what we need to create. I appreciate your work. But again, George is a great addition to this equation, so he going to help us navigate through this process. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's still open for public requests. Anyone please? Miss Mayotte, please. Welcome. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Monica Mayotte and I resided at 60 Southwest 21st Street, Book of Retone. I'm very happy to be here today and I'm overjoyed that Mr. Speck has now going to be engaged in this project for our downtown I think he's as Mr. Kisato said he's the right person to do this. I first engaged with Mr. Speck and started conversations in 2023 and had ongoing conversations with him during my last year on this council. So it makes me very happy that the effort that I started is now coming to fruition and it's a good day, like I said, for the residents and the visitors and the residents and the residents and the visitors of the downtown and all of Boker were told to have Mr. Speck on board to be able to look at the holistic approach to walkability in our downtown. So thank you again for all your hard work. I'm sure it was a long time coming to get here, but I'm glad we finally made it. So thank you to the council, Mr. Brown, to Zach Beer. I appreciate all your hard work. Take care. Thank you. Yes, just let me say if it wasn't for you I would not have read that book either so thank you for that. Yes It's still open for public I appreciate all your hard work. Take care. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, just let me say if it wasn't for you, I would not have read that book either. So thank you for that. Yes. It's still open for public requests. It's a rock. Welcome. Wish I had brought my walkable city's book, so I could have gotten an autograph today. So I'm Andrew Livino-Rark. I live at 100 Southeast Fifth Avenue, Boca Raton, Ben Hurst in 1979, served on several boards. Ultimately, was an electedon, Ben Harrison's 1979, served on several boards. Ultimately, it was an elected official and served two terms of 2017 to 2023 until I was termed out. I'm gonna stick to my note so I can be intentional with my message, but I'll be speed reading as I usually do. So give me please some grace if I go over by 30 seconds. I'll do better, I'll do my best to not. Today I am representing workshop 344 plus. Instead fast. So give me please some grace if I go over by 30 seconds. I'll do better. I'll do my best to not. Today I am representing Workshop 344 plus a steadfast resident volunteer group. By the way, for those of you that don't know, there are 344 acres in our CRA downtown plus the pluses for the adjacent areas. Workshop 344's purpose is the redesign of Palmetto Park Road and the focus on walkability, connectivity and place making an initiative that I brought forward in May of 2022 when I served the community as a City Council member and Deputy Mayor. Thank you for Deputy Mayor Mayot for really counting for Jeff's back. That was just so important. So I don't work alone with workshop 344 I collaborated from the very beginning when it was on council with a group of volunteers that represent every discipline that would relate to this initiative and some of them are here that could get out of work today if you just wave your hands to show. We have some people here today. We have served the community on planning and zoning board, the community appearance board, we are architects, urban planners, real estate attorney, a land use attorney, a landscape architect, excuse me. Urban planning professor, civil engineers, commercial real estate professional, retail real estate professional, financial professional, and a branding professional. That is all part of Workshop 344. It has been a gift to work with these community leaders and volunteers who have been devoted to our city for years and years in the specific initiative, this specific initiative for over three years, Bellmetopark Road. Let me say that we are collectively very happy to welcome Jeff Speck aboard as a consultant. Thank you to the council for getting this finally done. We've been looking forward to this for a very long time and I was very glad to hear him, so I don't know if he's still here, but I was very glad to hear him say a walkability study because it's been called a multimodal study and from the beginning that always rub me a little the wrong way because it truly was not the intent when the initiative was brought forward. It was about walkability and place making and connectivity. So we know we have a tremendous focus on the government campus and kind of wishing that Palmetto Park Road had already been done. So we could be looking at the government center and what's going to be the transit oriented development and we could have one downtown and I think Mr. Spect mentioned that too. So let's look at this as one downtown not we don't want to silo of another downtown. Workshop 344 has always been about connecting the dots in downtown Boka for more walkability to be safe and have a memorable main street. And yet and I have to say this I sorry, when we came forward at the last meeting that we talked about Palmetto Park Road, after a little bit of discussion, we got to share our vision video and talk about what we saw as a vision, and we were met with silence, and we have continued to be met with silence. And we thought we presented creative, thoughtful, bold, iconic ideas that could benefit the community. Not necessarily the end-all solution. We really wanted to start the collaboration and conversation as we could see this moving forward. So I will ask you to please foster space where the community voice feels that they are heard. And or at least acknowledged, I would ask for that. And I would ask you, I would ask you if you're willing to do that, and it's not a rhetorical question, I really would like to hear back from you. So I'll cut to the chase, at fast traffic is not safe. It's unpleasant, and frankly it's scary. And it's not good for business business and it's not good for the community. So right now we have a highway cutting through which should be the heart of our downtown. So thank you for your time. I appreciate it as usual. I'm over. I appreciate the grace for letting you do that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rark. Thank you. Appreciate it. It is still public requests. Anyone else please state your name and address and you have up to three minutes Yeah, I guess you have my card, but you didn't read it. So my name is Heidi clear 1 0 0 1 North East 4th Avenue Boca Raton. Please very well. My question is The me we have a short short timeline for this campus approval from last meeting where it was presented and then they said it was going to change. That's what I understand, maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. But tomorrow's meeting, you've got this thing where you are commended to cancel meetings and to reschedule meetings all over the summer, which is the most crucial part of this approval and information dispensing to the public. So I want to know why they're canceling the workshop in June to reschedule the first workshop, a regular in July to cancel the second workshop regular meeting in July to cancel the first workshop and regular meeting in August and Attach a resolution of the council's wishes to Assistant with this two-27 which I'm not really sure what that is But I just want to know why all these changes over the summer at such an important part of the information that the public is getting on this project. I mean, I don't expect an answer, but I would like to know that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's still open for public requests. Thank you. Mr. Salon. Thank you, Mr. Wigher. Larry Salon, 396 Cottonwood Lane, woodland book retone florida I'm a member of the planning zoning board, but I'm here today speaking as an individual I am so excited that just spec is on board you guys have got a real stark attack here very exciting And I wouldn't I think it would be in our best interest if we could have just spec look at the entire downtown. Like in his presentation he did other downtowns, the whole streetscape. You know, 4035 is going to expire in March 15th, 2028. That's less than three years from now. And when that expires, if we let it expire, the zoning is going to revert back to what we had in the 60s, which is of course what gave us the blight to begin with. So I think we need to rewrite 4035 and just spec would be the ideal person to hire as a consultant to get that job done and get it done in the best interest of our city. I would hope y'all would consider that favorably. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's still open for public requests. Thank you. Hi, Alison Nila, former vice mayor, Highland Beach, 6200, North West 2nd Second, Book or Tone. I just wanted to congratulate you guys. I think it's fantastic. It's like a brother-fresh air. I think everybody's very excited about this, with Jeff Speck. And I think that you guys are on the right path and going in the right direction. I just hope that he is taking more of a lead rather than a follow and I think that you know we really need to have more design. We need to have design in the city, place making and so connectivity, consistency, continuity. So I just you know I understand all is involved and I understand city staff is involved in engineering but we really need to have an urban designer And I think he's the right person, and we just need to make sure we use him to his full stability. Thanks. Thanks very much. Anyone else? Mr. Rung? Johnathan, on GM6501, Congress Avenue. So it's good to see that Jeff's spec made it in. However, Mr. Salon made a good point. Why are we just focused on one area? Maybe citywide, not just downtown wide, because I hear walkability creating this urban-like environment. We're sitting in the ripest part of this city to be developed. And instead, there's no plan. There's just throwing it against the wall and hoping developers are gonna do what's needed, which is all they do is do what's going to make them the most amount of money. Councilmember Nackless fought so hard in the CIMD to have 2,000 square feet of retail. The reality is that's nothing. And we're not doing any sort of planning in this city. I'm gonna blow all your minds. Mr. Shad, I think is extremely capable of planning and land use. And enable him, please. You, seems like you don't wanna include the city and Mr. Shad in the downtown redevelopment, the government campus, seems like they're staying very quiet on that where you have professionals who work for the city. But then you're not enabling him anywhere else to look at units per acre in an area such as this. You're going to listen tomorrow night to 791 Park of Commerce. 234 units going on a tiny parking lot, which they're keeping all of the commercial on that 10 acre lot, which in reality it's going on to three acres of that. It's all going on the front parking lot right down the street. So it's a big charade. We're allowing much more development and you're hurting the city. You're hurting the development of this area because maybe that office building would go. Maybe there would be more units and a much nicer bigger building that incorporated the uses that are needed, the mixed use, the live work play. We have a lot of living and working around here. And we're missing the critical component. You have a man who talked about walkability. We're not talking about it here. We're adding tens of thousands of people living in this part of town and we're not giving them that environment. So let's stop just thinking about the downtown and maybe that new state bill is great. That's going to get rid of the CRA and maybe we can start looking city-wide instead of just looking in the CRARA. Thank you. Thanks Mr. Angel. Thank you. It's still open for public requests. Going once. Miss Lang, you look like you're ready to come up here. All right. Amy Lang, 801, Azalea. Very excited to have Jeff Speck here. Very excited to have a focus on walkability in downtown and around the government campus. I just wanted to add a comment about beyond walkability, also, bikeability, because they are two different things. And when I think about living in Boko Raton for the rest of my life, or not, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. But I really want the last 10 years of my life to be able to Zoom around this town in a wheelchair if I need to and feel really comfortable Going out my door and getting to all the things that I need to get to on average Most people can't drive the last 10 years of their life and many people are disabled so You know I live just on the backside of that government campus, and I really want us to think about as this is being developed, not just walkability, but how can we expand that walkability out? Because bikeability and rollability and micromobility allow us to do that. Allow us to expand that out. And just like the gentleman said, there's a lot of other areas of the city that we need to connect. And that is the way that we can do it. And clearly, I see on the agenda that there's going to be conversations about e-scoters and e-bikes. There is demand for this. There's demand for micro mobility. There's demand for all kinds of different types of small vehicles that can be put into a protected bike lane now. So that's just, I think, the vision that we need to add and we need to put that piece of it in. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Going once? Going twice? OK, we'll close the time for public requests. Just briefly, we don't really answer specific requests per se, but we do summarize, usually, some of the things. There will be specific conversations for our summer schedule, specific conversations in the workshop following this meeting about the downtown government campus and all the planning things associated with that as well. And in the future, a lot of the things that people talked about will be on the agenda in terms of 40, 35 and those kinds of things. Mr. Brown, anything else you want to comment on? Just briefly, Mr. Vichy had asked for a couple of public records, really. There are the records of the minutes of the council meetings will show who voted how on which projects. And as far as campaign contributions, I believe those reports were available through the City Clerk's Office. So that's just a matter of sending a public record request to the city clerk's office. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, so we will move on with the agenda now is the time for resolutions in regular public hearings and we'll ask the city clerk to read the title of the resolution. Resolution number 2025-03-CRA. A resolution of the Book of Retone Community Redevelopment Agency cancelling and rescheduling certain regular meetings in June 2025, July 2025 and August 2025. Providing for severability, providing for a peeler, providing an effective date. Very well, Mr. Brown. Thank you, Chair. As the City Clerk mentioned, This cancels the second meeting in June June 23rd Second meeting in July July 21 and the first meeting in August August 11th It's for the traditional summer schedule for the CRA I'm happy to answer any questions Very well Mr. Brown and how long has it been the custom of the city and to do the slightly abbreviated summer schedule? At least 15 years. At least 15 years. Very well. Okay. Any other questions? Mr. Brown? Just quickly Mr. City Manager because a question I've been asked about why this was happening. Could we explain what the benefit is of not only have we been doing this for 15 years you've established that but why is it that we do that and what benefit does that provide to the staff? In terms of the staff. It allows time particularly because we're in the middle of preparing the budget at that time, bringing it forward to you all allows time to carefully review the budget document as well as with the implications are financially for the coming fiscal year. It allows us to begin planning for whatever changes to the strategic plan we've made in May. It allows extra time for that and it's just extra time to get things prepared as we head toward the new fiscal year in October. Thank you. Thank you. And to add to that, Mr. Brown, if we needed to have a special meeting over the summer Could we do that if we need to have special meetings a special meeting can be called call the mayor the council the manager And we just need to provide a reasonable notice of the meeting Thank you of course with statues Thank you very good Mr My colleagues at the points. I just wanted to clarify to mr. Brown you'd mentioned as cancelling meetings But we're actually reschedcheduling the July meeting. We will have a meeting of the CRA in the mid-Deep July 14th. 14th, yes. Very well, thank you. And then I think we covered it about all the other things to make sure that the public remains informed. I'll just add that we've had this on our agenda now. I believe, for 14 consecutive meetings, and by the summer, we will have had it on our agenda for 20 some odd. So there will be updates when information needs to be provided and is available, but at least time this gives us a benchmark to do all the other good things that allow staff to proceed with the work of the city. Thank you, and I'd point out that anything that's changing new information, updates, et cetera, will be on the website as well, the campus website. Yes, and there will be another update at the next meeting, following this meeting as well. Thank you. So now we'll open up the public hearing with respect to this item. Any member of the public who wants to speak on this specific resolution? More than welcome. Seeing no one come forward, we will close the time for public requests for public hearing. And we'll ask for a motion in second to approve resolution number 2020-04-03. So moved. Very well. 2025, sorry. So moved. So moved. 25-03-03. Very good. Second, very well. The citizens please call the roll. Any other discussions? Sorry. No. Yes. Yes. Singer. Yes. Director. Yes. Thompson. Yes motion passes five votes to zero very well There's no other business to consider so we'll turn to the directors of pro Thank you chair. First item is ordnance 5732 is on the agenda for city council tomorrow evening. It's an amendment to the interim design guidelines of the CRA. In an effort to streamline processes, we are no longer bringing before the CRA a recommendation to the city council on a matter that the city council has to act on in the first place. And basically what this amendment does provides design flexibility in relation to the requirement for architectural bays. Right now there are specific standards that limit flexibility in design particularly for allowing a more contemporary design. This will improve that. And the ordinance will be presented for city council's consideration at tomorrow night's meeting. I also wanted to take the opportunity to introduce a new member of city staff whom some of you probably have known for a long time as I have. I'm glad to welcome back to the city staff. Mr. George came out. George, you want to come up and say hello to the gang. Mr. came out was with the city for a number of years. I don't remember exactly, but very many years until about 2010. And he's been with the city of Hollywood as their community redevelopment agency director. We're bringing him on board particularly to assist with CRA matters. There are a lot of them coming up, particularly as was mentioned earlier, the rewrite to35, as well as creating the land development regulations for the government campus and various other projects associated with the CRA. So I just wanted to formally welcome George to the team and let him say hello to everybody. Mr. Kameho, you are recognized. Thank you. The green light on? Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you Mr. Brown. Thank you Mayor and City Council members. Although this is a and see our meeting so thank you CRA Board members. It is somewhat surreal to find myself back in Boca Raton but I am so grateful for the opportunity and so excited frankly because there are so many things happening all of which you know have the potential for a really amazing outcome. So I'm just grateful and frankly humbled to be able to be a part of that. And I look forward to hopefully making some positive contribution to the process and to the outcomes. So thank you to each one of you. Thank you so much. Welcome back. Well deserved. Thank you. We appreciate your dedication to the city. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. All right. Mr. Kailer, and your report? I have no report. Very good. Then we'll turn to Commissioner's report. Mr. Thompson. No report. Thank you. Miss Knackle. No report other than again to welcome Mr. Kabeho back and just Welcome Mr. Speck with open arms and looking forward to the next few months. Thank you, Mr Mr. Mayor No more months and Mr. Chair Mr. Rucker no report. Thank you. Thank you. I just have a brief report. Very good. So we're back here, just a quick recap. We know the CRA was formed in the late 1980s. One of the comments was discussed in terms of the CRA about what it does. The tax increment financing helps the agency, helps it finance specific improvements, helps us do a lot of the infrastructure. It will help us do the necessary infrastructure for the remaining 17 years of its 10 year. It's slated to expire in 2042. There's a lot of significant infrastructure projects that are going to continue. Of course, well, we'll pass back to the future's future. you know, as you know, when he went back to the, when he went in the future, it was 2015. We're well ahead of that now. So the CRA has been here for a while, but there still is work to do. The way that our CRA is set up, we've had several meetings, and I noticed this, our CRA is set up in sub areas. So some people come up to the microphone or an attorney comes up and they talk about sub area A, sub area E, sub area G, because that's how it was set up. So they're not talking any special language, but it's talked about in specific sub areas. Over the years, we've done infrastructure work in specific sub areas. Sub area B is Meisner Park. More recently, you could appreciate where the Alina residences are is Subarea E. A lot of new infrastructures there. I invite everybody, if you haven't already, to go on Meisner Boulevard and walk past the Alina residences sidewalks. Beautifully landscaped, more modern sidewalks, buffered sidewalks, in line with what Mr. Speck, our staff, of course, who works so hard to get it this way. The future of what the sidewalks could be. Please go take a look, because it's a vision for what the future is going to be. Likewise, there's one area of the city, Subararia A, which has not been touched in 60 years or more since the city hall has been built and its extension. Subaria A, near the Bright Line train station. Now with the government campus, potentially a Bright Line northbound train platform coming, there's going to be significant work that has to be done there. And the CRA and the TIFF will help us finance some of these things. Likewise, as we talked about today, the connectivity portion with Palmetto Park Road, getting across the street, potentially a pedestrian bridge, really, really important for safety, connectivity, improvements like that. The CRA is also responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of our downtown facilities. It's critical to our economic vibrancy. Summer simple like paint. Summer more complicated. We talked about a pedestrian bridge. Of course, sidewalk, lighting, electrical infrastructure. I've had many conversations with some of the engineers about the water sewer and drainage infrastructure of sub-area A. These are not sexy things. These are just things that we're going to have to do because they haven't been touched in 60 years or more. And as a part of this redevelopment process, the private sector is going to help us pay for some of these things instead of taxing the taxpayers. And I think that's the reason why we're all supportive of this. Of course, park and reconstruction, relocation, and as Mr. Brown said, enhancement as a master plan is important. I saw this right here from the Beechland Parks District as well. So that's important. And of course, there'll still be some deferred maintenance as well. All these projects are important. They're critical to our vibrant downtown. They help spur economic development. They help create sustainable jobs for our people, our community. They improve the area. They improve taxable values, not just of the houses in the CRA. But please go to the record and look. Look at the taxable values for the houses near the CRA, because they're doing quite well because it's connectivity to downtown. So we have a lot to do this year as Mr. Brown said. I'm happy to be a part of it. And likewise in the next meeting, we'll be talking about it more. I won't be reading all the events every week, but it is important to know that Ms. Riley and the Downtown team are always doing some amazing things with the programming. The best thing to do is to go online to the downtown bokeh.org website or the app. You could list those things. And also, as Ms. Nockle said last time as well, the Boca Connect on Demand service now goes to the barrier island. So again, in terms of providing connectivity, mobility, transportation solutions, so people can leave their car at home. This pilot program that we've now expanded is super, super important to helping us reduce traffic downtown. So please use it. Please use it. Obviously, we're monitoring these statistics often. So please use it. Of course you could email any of us anytime or me directly and yes. Mr. Drucker. All right Mr. Reader I wanted before you adjourned I wanted to give an update on the CRA belt. Oh very good. My apologies I don't know I didn't have it on my notes and I just would you say about the exploration of the CRA. So if I could have just a couple of minutes before we move on from the CRA. So we've been tracking Senate Bill 1242 and I want to thank Senator Burman and Senator Polsky, those are the senators that represent the City of Boca Raton who sit both on your judiciary and they both vote no on the bill last week when it was heard. The bill was heard April, it passed through the judiciary eight three last week and this bill is to eliminate CRAs. If you've been listening to us and there's a lot of conversation and if you need more information you can email me directly. It's now in rules as of April 2nd. There's been a lot of feedback that's been given. I also want to thank Ms. Gibson and our lobbyists because we've been just giving a lot of data that was used during the hearing last week. So we're still monitoring it. Obviously, we believe that the CRA should exist. It's a part of our economic driver here in downtown, and one of those bills that we are watching very, very carefully. And I'll give an update on the rest of the bills that we're watching. Thank you. As we proceed into the next meeting. So thank you. Mr. Chair, just to touch on that, thank you. Councilmember Drucker, I spoke with our lobbyist on Thursday who is meeting with representatives on the Senate side. The Senate language is not as clear as the House language is. The House language still has some ambiguity. Made some suggestions in the light of our practical experience and we'll see what happens. It is a matter of, I think, great public importance that at least the legislators understand the good work that CREs do, so hopefully they will through our communication. Thank you. And me else? And I was up there not last week, but the week before with Florida League of Cities, I was our official fly-in. And we met, I had the opportunity to meet with not only people that represent the the city of Boca Raton but our goal was to me with other folks that don't necessarily sit there. We just got lucky that our senators both sit under judiciary but a lot of the people that are on that bill don't necessarily sit on for the city of Boca Raton. So very important when I was there there was another hearing held that I attended and and participated in to make sure that we explain how it impacts our city. Because some of the people that sit on those committees, they represent other cities. And the big thing is that one model doesn't fit all. We keep saying that. Like not one city is not the same. You know, we're not the same as Miami-Dade. We're not the same Boca is not the same as West Palm. So a lot of the folks that I spoke to that week, representatives, House representatives, including representative, Gossas Simon, who is our representative in the city of Boga, and other electors, House reps and senators that I had the opportunity with, we were able to give out the information on this given provided as leave behinds. When we had those one-on-one meetings that are really important. Thank you. Likewise, as we know, there is a lot of happening at the CRA with infrastructure and projects. So thank you all. Thanks for the advocacy in Tallahassee. As we were all there, doing the same. It's very much appreciated. We have a lot of work to do this year in the next coming years. So thank you very much. So without anything further, we will adjourn this meeting and immediately convene at 239 P.O.