2015-1119 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting November 19,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida came here on the weekends and they were rowdy. We probably had more Police calls there on those little properties on the weekends then we have in any large scale building. So truthfully, the intensity on the transient nature of the people that are there on the weekends is going to go down dramatically with this building. Unfortunately we have to suffer through the construction on a temporary basis. Every argument we heard here tonight is based on the fact that we are going to have to build and we are going to be inconvenienced temporarily. Every argument is also based on the fact that when your building was built,or the Marenas was built, or others, they also inconvenienced their neighbor temporarily and so it is a domino effect. What will happen is it will end when our City is built out which is pretty close. Mayor Scholl said we have talked here many times about TDRs and again,what are we doing here? We are taking density that could end up somewhere else,in particularly on the west side of the street to create large buildings. We are taking that density away from that part of the City and we are putting it on top of this building,and that is that extra section. His attitude is, if you live in a 25 or 30 story building and the building next door is going to be 40 or 60 stories it really does not matter because ultimately, and he thinks that Commissioner Aelion had calculated it a while back, ten more floors is about another seven minutes of daylight on the beach. Again, our Ordinance supports high-rise construction on the ocean, and so that issue again kind of takes care of itself Mayor Scholl said we have got to watch the decibel level, at staff level, we are going to have to look carefully at extended hours,and look at this reverse with a beeper issue. He is not sure what OSHA can do about that, he is not sure how we can get around that but we are going to have to figure it out because he completely agrees from that perspective. Mayor Scholl said just about every time we have a site plan approval, a lawyer gets hired two days before the approval and comes in here and says "I didn't have time to review anything, and we should postpone this approval." This is no different,the fact is that the developer did come to the Condo Association early, and his attitude has been for years now to go and talk to your neighbors. It doesn't give your neighbors carte blanche to extort money from the developer, especially when they are building an as-of-right project but it does give the neighbors an opportunity to recognize that yes,your balconies can get clean,your cars can get cleaned, that the developer can act responsibly for ongoing construction issues because stuff happens. This developer in particular, the Fortune International Group, we have dealt with them before and they have always acted responsibly. So,what he would encourage you to do is don't stop the dialogue,you know,don't throw the baby out with the bath water and say we didn't have an opportunity because he can tell you that the developer doesn't want you at City Hall giving us an ear full if they are not taking care of you as good neighbors, but it also doesn't give you the opportunity to extort from the developer. Mayor Scholl said he understands the impact on the Marenas,he doesn't know what to tell you because like he said,we would have to give them approval to build four(4)separate buildings on that site if they wanted to and it is unfortunate but the only remedy to what you are suggesting is that site never gets developed, it is really the only remedy other than you feeling that you deserve compensation from the developer for doing on their site exactly what the Marenas did on their site when they built their building. Believe him when he tells you we would rather see this site be aggregated and having a large site with one unified development on it. This is what we have been encouraging lately in the City, and this is exactly what this 14