2015-0219 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting February 19,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Chair Viscarra said there are five(5)meetings left and we meet every other month,and so we would like one of the Commission to attend one meeting. Because it is difficult with the Sunshine Law to communicate, and for the new members to understand,and to allow us the opportunity to interact with a Commissioner. Mayor Scholl clarified that she wants one of us to attend each of those five meetings because there are five of us, and he said that would be perfect. Chair Viscarra said we could provide community input as we are talking about a point that came up in her meeting with the City Manager. We can help provide the community input with the beach mitigation of the project. We can help with the people who live on the beach when work has to be done people are inconvenienced in one way or another. Something else that became apparent in our first meeting, you brought up the traffic issues, it seems that all roads lead to FDOT, and that having a subcommittee for traffic may not be the most productive if there is really nothing we can do when everything has to go to an expert or a traffic engineer. Therefore,we are considering reorganizing our subcommittees or if we can be redirected in what might be helpful. We also had some input in sporting events, we have a member who was very enthusiastic, he had a lot of good ideas and brought the meeting to life,and we all got excited. However,when speaking with the City Manager he had said that would be nice but everything has to be budgeted, you have to plan well ahead, and so they would be happy to entertain these ideas for the future. Now we just ask that the Commission give us some direction, if you have something that is more pressing we can focus our energies on the things that would be useful to you as opposed to coming up with good but not workable ideas. Mayor Scholl said the idea of going out with the City Manager on a field trip, and maybe there are two field trips, there is one to understand the inter-workings with the City which is maybe go upstairs and go over budgets and understand a little bit about what that process entails. We kind of live and die by it and so we understand it very well and we take for granted a lot of times that everybody that deals with the City understands it but that is not the case. Your sporting event is a great example. If it is not in the budget then we have to budget and then we would have to appropriate special funds and what have you. The idea of the City Manager taking the group out, and again the City Commission cannot do that under the Sunshine Law. Two of them cannot go to one of the meetings and discuss anything because we could potentially have to vote on it. But the idea of a field trip is a great idea because the City Manager could take you around and show you the hot spots, all the things that we talk about weekly that we need to work on and that gives you a lot more context on that and with us coming to your meetings individually that would add context to your meetings. The City Manager can give you a pretty good scope of what he is working on and what the global objectives are and he thinks we can do that individually as we go to your meetings over the course of the year,and hopefully it will keep you from wasting time which he knows everybody's time is valuable and at the same time we can have some symbolic dialogue. Chair Viscarra said we have a very dynamic and interesting group and we are ready to roll up our sleeves but we do need guidance. Commissioner Aelion noted that Chair Viscarra was a member of this Committee last year and asked if she has had interaction with the past chair Dana Goldman. Unless we can capitalize on what Commissioner Goldman did as Chair last year then he thinks to continue 25