2007 1115 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting November 15,2007 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida and we have appraisers out there looking at all parts of the City. He said that there is a workshop scheduled in December [December 6,2007 at 12: 15 p.m.] to discuss it further, but over a year ago we announced to the public that part ofthe area that we were considering for future parking could be on the north side of Sunny Isles Boulevard, so that is a portion ofthe City that is in consideration although no permanent decision has been made yet. Vice Mayor Thaler said the one word that is being left out of here is coordination, and that is what is being asked for here, and the City should coordinate with all the stores that are there and coordinate both the signs and the timing and explain to them that most all of this is out of our control. Commissioner Iglesias said that there should be a key phone number that can be the trouble shooter for any questions the public may have. City Manager Szerlag said that Public Works has an email contact with many of the property owners and renters along Sunny Isles Boulevard and there are continual updates. He said that he also mentioned to Assistant City Manager Vera and Public Works Director Conner that we would like an article in the Sunny Isles Beach Community Newspaper called "Construction Zone Update" and every two weeks when the newspaper comes out there will be an update about what is going on throughout the City. He said they would meet with property owners periodically, through the email system and handouts to let people know the status of all our projects. Construction Manager Shahin Hekmat said the schedule bid by the contractor was for 300 days of construction time and noted that the job was phased in four phases. He said the first phase was supposed to be on the south side however we had a problem with FPL, as we are trying to underground overhead lines and FPL has not finished designing the project so we couldn't start on the south side. He said that they also contacted the City of North Miami Beach regarding a portion of their watermain that has to be replaced, and that is one of the items that the Commission approved tonight for Marlin Engineering to design that portion of the watermain. He said then that there were a number of things that prohibited the start of the project on the south side, as well as the problems with W ASA and the construction out there, for approximately four months. As a result, we could not give notice to proceed to the contractor, which delayed the project and that is where we are today. He said that we are sorry about not noticing in time, we felt that we had the notices out there, we had signs on the west side ofthe bridge notifying the traffic that there is going to be construction starting. He said as far as trying to expedite this project, we have worked with the contractor, and there is the issue of the light poles that we have ordered as the average time for delivery is anywhere between 12-16 weeks, and after talking to the Contractor he has managed to cut that down to about 8 weeks away which will put us somewhere in the middle of January to complete most of the work on the north side and then move to the south side. He said that they are still working with the contractor to see if we can expedite other issues such as the electrical, irrigation, landscaping, etc. and hopefully we can move the project faster than we expected. Brian Garcia, owner of Reel Bait and Tackle, 229 Sunny Isles Boulevard, stated that you said earlier the reason you started the project was because you were going to lose free money that the City was getting, and that the City should help them financially, as the City started the project overnight, the barrier was up and he couldn't get to his business. Commissioner Iglesias said it is federal money that has to be used for construction projects, and the project did not start overnight, the first time the traffic calming project was brought up was in 1998 20