2007 1213 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting December 13,2007 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida City Manager Szerlag said perhaps the best solution would be to give him authorization to do whatever it takes to address life safety issues that pertain to the Fire Department and he will come back and let the Commission know what it costs. Building Official Parker said that our inspectors are in Winston Towers, Arlen House, etc., all the time, they are in those corridors, and they see if there has been a door change, that is something that they normally catch, but what they are not catching are these private lobbies, and the Fire Department are not catching them, as the Fire Department goes through the buildings every year, and they check the doors. Commissioner Brezin said if there is a fire, the inspector will see a door, he doesn't know what is on the other side, he doesn't know that they remodeled the kitchen and put cabinets there. She said that he sees the fire extinguisher, he doesn't know that somebody broke through that wall from the other side, so actually if you are making that comparison where the others they can't see but this they inspect, they have no way of inspecting this without going in. Building Official Parker said that he is just saying that the common corridors have much more visibility then the private lobbies do. Mayor Edelcup said but you will have to inspect all of them. Community Development Director Solera said information is the key, and if we are able to provide a couple of newspaper articles to outline the fact that perhaps those locations that have two doors, for instance Winston Towers, and inform them that if you are building behind those doors which are secondary means of egress and you have done it illegally, the City is in the process of inspecting it. He said when Code Enforcement receives a complaint and they are not certain if that is the fact or not, the property owner is issued a courtesy notice requesting an inspection of the location, but we rely mainly on a citizen complaint or the condominium association that calls us and says that this unit has this issue. Mayor Edelcup said that you may want to send a letter to all of the condo associations and let them handle it from their level of disseminating the information to all of the buildings that they will be inspected some time in the near future. Vice Mayor Thaler said that all of the new condos are being built with one door, and he asked ifthere was a change in those that were built with two doors, that they now permit one door to be a fire door and the other not. He said it just seems to him that if they are allowing all the new condos to be built with one door that it is possible that there has been a change in the past 35 years, and that is something that should be checked before we go into this, and Building Official Parker said that there has been a change. Commissioner Scholl said the issue is when they build behind the door in the kitchen, for instance the service door, is the fact that they still think that there is a door there, and Building Official Parker said that is the issue. Commissioner Scholl said if you block the door up and build, it would be okay? Building Official Parker said in most cases, but the Code says that if you have over 1,500 square feet then you have to provide the second means of egress, and a lot of the units in the Arlen House and Winston Towers are not over that, but if they are closing off the second means of egress and are over the square footage requirements, that is illegal, if you are under that then the Fire Department has been allowing you legally to close off that second means of egress but not by just covering up the back side of it and leaving the door there, you have to remove the door and put back a one-hour rated wall assembly where the door used to be. 25