2016-0121 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting January 21,2016 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida 5. SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS 5A. Annual Report on the "State of the City" by Mayor George `Bud" Scholl. Action: Mayor Scholl presented the annual "State of the City" Address. He said he is very pleased to deliver this State of the City address after serving his first year as Mayor. We have made a lot of progress this past year and he thanked his colleagues on the Commission for their support and dedication. Additionally,nothing could get done without the hard work of our City staff. They spend many hours going above and beyond the call of duty to ensure everything we do flows smoothly. Notably, we lost two members of our first City Commission this past year, Lila Kauffman and Irving Turetsky. In December, we also lost our International Ambassador, Elena Baronoff. We thank them for their public service and our thoughts go out to their families. Mayor Scholl said on a personal note, this is a very special month for him, he and his wife, Dione, are celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary and they have been fortunate to live in Sunny Isles Beach for the past 25 of those 30 years! He noted that his wife is in the audience tonight. The other benefit of living here is that their three children,now all in their 20's,still look forward to coming back to Sunny Isles Beach for vacations and holidays. Mayor Scholl reported that the City is on very firm financial ground. For the fourth year in a row we have reduced our tax millage rate. From 2014 to 2015 our property values experienced the highest growth rate of any city in Miami-Dade County at 18.5%. We are approaching a collective assessed real estate value of$10 Billion, and that is on a little bit more than one square mile of land mass which composes our City. This extraordinary tax base has enabled us to keep the portion of property taxes that funds our City services to one of the lowest millage rates in the County. We are still maintaining a level of services and emergency reserve funds commensurate with what our community has come to expect. Under our City Charter we have a Commission-Manager form of government. This means the City Manager acts much like the CEO of a company running the day-to-day functions of the City. While the Mayor and City Commission act more like a Chairman and a Board of Directors establishing policy,approving budgets,passing ordinances and setting the overall vision for the City. Over the past year, he put a renewed emphasis on ensuring that our City is managed as the City Charter intended,and we are seeing excellent results with no turnover of personnel within the top management positions and minimal turnover throughout the rest of the organization. Being a municipality or a business, you need to attract and maintain employees to carry out your initiatives. Mayor Scholl said given this was his first full year in office, he took the opportunity to seek out and form relationships with the Mayors of our surrounding cities. There are many issues of common interest with our neighboring communities that when we work together,we have a stronger opportunity for success. One issue that made headlines was the Mayors Coastal Community Alliance to raise awareness of beach erosion. This successful alliance, and subsequent press conference, prompted the County to provide much needed funding for beach erosion mitigation. We have also met with our neighboring Mayors and City Managers to ensure we have coordination on issues such as emergency evacuation and transportation coordination.