2016-0114 Special City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting January 14,2016 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida School Guards who help the kids cross, their number needs to be increased as well. Mr. Rathore said on bus services, currently the school has three (3) buses, and 250 to 300 students riding the buses. If the buses are increased to six (6), and people are willing to utilize them, then we would be talking about 500 to 600 students, and that is a significant reduction in the overall traffic and congestion. It is very important that the City participates in the Safe Route to School (SRTS) Program which definitely needs to be looked at. Mr. Rathore said they also did the Share Parking Analysis, they want to find out how many parking spaces are required for this project. One thing that is important to understand that this is a Mixed-Use Project with office,retail,theater,and so every different land use parking peaks at different times of the day. So maybe the office peaks in the morning, or a retail may have from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., but as a whole there is a shared parking concept. Basically we are not providing extra parking,and the Mixed-Use usage can be utilized at the same time,and so that is the whole concept of shared parking analysis. We typically use ULI Urban Land Use Institute for shared parking,and at the same time the City Parking Code was also looked at to calculate parking requirements. What we found out was that about 153 shared parking spaces are required for school, for office, for retail, and for this Project. Mr. Rathore said in conclusion,in their professional opinion the best approach where traffic is concerned is the staggered traffic approach for the middle school,additional mitigation of what they are proposing like providing sidewalks, crosswalks, educate parents and the community encouraging them to use more bus service for their kids, and increasing the number of buses from 3 to 6 or 7,participation in the Safe Route to School(SRTS)Program, and most importantly Police and Crossing Guards presence needs to be kept in mind,and the need to provide 153 shared parking spaces for this Mixed-Use project. Mayor Scholl said we have one public speaker and asked her to come up. Gabriella Blagerman, a Senior at the Alonzo and Tracy Mourning High School, said she is here today because she thinks there is a way to improve the public safety of our City. She has been a resident here for 17 years, she believes this City is a great place to live in,but they are trying to focus on pedestrians and safety at the crosswalks. We are planning to pass a Bill with a company named Project Citizen that has in the past gone all the way up to Tallahassee. The reason they are here today is because they are planning to focus this primarily for Sunny Isles Beach and they are looking at different alternative methods at different costs. She knows there is one yield sign around Newport where you click the button and it lights up, and so they are looking at something more efficient where it is on the crosswalk itself. They range in price from thousands of dollars to a couple of hundred dollars. On Lakeshore Drive in Chicago,they have lines painted on the road where it gives an illusion of the driver speeding so they slow down. Basically,the reason she is here is to let the Commission know they are forming this and they are looking forward to contacting you. Mayor Scholl said we have good news for you. This year we have commissioned a study, it has been almost a year now,for pedestrian safety and traffic impact. We are going to have a Workshop on it, and so if you want to leave your name and number with the City Clerk,we will let you know when we have that Workshop. A lot of things you are talking about are going to be incorporated into the results of that study. It is better when we do that together, 4