2015-0115 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting January 15,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Mayor Scholl said that some of these issues were already addressed at the last meeting. He asked City Manager Russo to speak on the fact of the lighting study and the FP&L issue. City Manager Russo said he goes back a ways with the Golden Shores neighborhood,in fact when he was first City Manager in 2000, we built the Government Center, we made a deal with Tony Roma's, we did a lot of great things, but the thing he was always most proud of was the improvements we made in the early years of this City in Golden Shores and those should not be forgotten. It is like anything else,we are building from the ground up and that is what started in this City in 1997. The first time he came here and drove around,that is the first neighborhood he ever went into. In October of 1997 they were interviewing for a City Manager on the roof of the Newport Hotel. He saw the garbage on William Lehman Causeway,the flooding in Golden Shores, and it was very clear to him that the County did nothing for this unincorporated area. City Manager Russo said just to give you a little background, we had to start with the foundation. In 2001 we spent about$3.4 Million to redo the drainage in that neighborhood and we totally rebuilt the pump station. We did it by relining so that we did not have to dig up entire front yards of everybody. We put in all new catch basins and paved every single street in Golden Shores. We developed the area that was bought as the park,we opened it, expanded it and bought the space next door. We also put in that first extra-large bus shelter cover for the school buses to pick up the kids. We went around to see if anyone wanted benches or other things around the neighborhood and ultimately the main entranceway was beautified, and so there were a number of things. This is the natural evolution of that neighborhood because that really struck accord with him because he saw how neglected it was by the County and especially the drainage pond which was the worst situation. City Manager Russo said that we are now at the next step, the City has to award it and it takes a while to get these things off the ground. Again from hearing these concerns since he has been back, we have just entered into contract with one of our consulting engineers, Calvin Giordano and Associates, to do a lighting study now. We are studying further the planning for the undergrounding of the utilities which will resolve a lot of these concerns. Aesthetics is always important but it is also a safety issue, and it is also a very complicated issue as the Mayor alluded to in his State of the City Address. It is very difficult and Steve said it, FP&L was difficult enough but worse there is no incentive for the Telecommunications Companies to cooperate and remove their wires timely,and charge us a reasonable amount of money, but that process has been started already. It has been in the works and we are going to try to move that ahead because one of the things you have to realize, all of this comes at a price. All the people on Atlantic Isle paid for the undergrounding. We are currently planning undergrounding on Collins Avenue, the developers are either paying for it themselves and undergrounding it, or there is a Special Assessment that is going to be implemented to do this project which is probably the most complicated one in the City. But we are going to be reviewing the cost estimates that were done a couple of years ago for Golden Shores, make sure they are right, and start dealing with you on that to get it going. But in the short term, we are doing the lighting study because we are still going to have light poles on the street except the wire is going underground to the easements that are in the rear of the properties. In the short term we can 14