2016-1020 Regular City Commission Meeting

Home Browse Search

Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting October 20,2016 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida taken off the table and they granted you every request is that the only thing that is really here, or are there other issues? Mr.Clark said there are,as Mr. Thomas intimated,there have been discussions between the Association and the developer in order to reach a good neighbor agreement. Commissioner Goldman asked then why are you interposing the Commission by putting them in the middle when you exact array of other issues and decisions? Mr. Clark said because this is not the subject of that, this is apart from that. Commissioner Goldman said so let's put that aside,that is a staff issue. Is that the only reason why you are up in front of us? Mr. Clark said this is about the hours. Commissioner Goldman said this is a staff determination. Mr. Clark said it is a staff determination that we don't feel that the staff has dealt with appropriately. Commissioner Goldman said it is not within the purview of the Commission. Mr. Clark said so the Commission passes the laws and then it is powerless if the staff is not enforcing it. Commissioner Goldman said we are not powerless, we don't have the expertise. We are relying on the Building Officials and our Chief Building Inspector has 35 years of experience. We are not out there making inspections on a daily basis, we are not out there approving those determinations, isn't that really more of a function at the staff level. She knows when she had a client during that construction in the south beach area, we told our client to go to staff, work it out behind the scenes. Mr. Clark said we have tried that,there have been meetings,there have been requests,there have been complaints, we have tried all of those things. At the point when the residents try all the things at some point they want to turn to the elected officials and say help,and that is where they are. Commissioner Goldman said it is not a decision for the elected officials. Vice Mayor Gatto said what she thinks the Commissioner is saying is we bounce it back to staff but she would like to answer that. First the emails are coming to her private aol account, she has no idea how he got her private aol email, The second thing is that she got an envelope a couple of days ago and when she opened it she thought she was getting sued with this giant legal document certified letter, it is a little bit heavy handed and you have to understand that we bounce it right back to staff again. We rely on staff to help us with these kinds of issues. We set the policy but technically at some point it is out of our hands because we are not the experts. Mr. Clark said first of all as to your aol address, he is the one who typed the addresses onto the letter that his assistant sent. He did not have many of the Commissioners addresses,for all of them he used the first initial,the last name,and then the City's domain, he has no idea how it went to aol. Vice Mayor Gatto said she is getting it in two places, the City and her private email, she just wanted to bring it to your attention. Commissioner Goldman asked why certified letters, and the City Attorney has repeatedly told you to bring it to staff,stop involving everybody. City Attorney Ottinot said he thinks it is appropriate now to let Deputy City Manager Morris speak on the process, and some communications. Commissioner Aelion said he wants to say a few words first,he does not know if in the past your firm was retained for similar issues within our City but as you may have learned if you don't know already,our City from its inception back in 1997 has had basically a tremendous infrastructure urbanization process where buildings were being erected year after year. So this issue has come before the Commission in the past, issues of noise and so forth, tests were done also sometimes to evaluate the level of noise vis-à-vis the allowed level of noise, and in many cases it was found that noise that was propagated by traffic is similar or even 18