2011-0120 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting January 20, 20 II City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida be out of there within the next couple of weeks for the demolition of the Pier. Once that is done, we want to go back and put all our efforts into the Mitigation Plan, and that is why we want to start dialogue with DERM to see where we are going to be mitigating. We had some type of opinion of where we are going to mitigate but the plan itself was never developed. In April or May 2010, the Commission passed a resolution that allowed for this mitigation, and so the plan is already paid for, and it should take about five months. Acting City Manager Vera explained the mitigation process once we are disturbing mangrove areas while we are placing the Pedestrian Bridge from 174th to 172nd. When any mangrove area or any type of sea grass is disturbed we have to mitigate and place it somewhere else, and the last that we had to do was to mitigate it towards the back area of Town Center Park. Hopefully they will allow us to put it there, as we have the room to place it there. The other alternative was to pay toward a mitigation bank but at the time we were speaking to them, there were no mitigation banks available. We are going to try again, and ifthat is possible, we will come back to the Commission with the amount of money needed to put into a mitigation bank. Whatever we do behind the Town Center Park we will still have to spend money to mitigate that area as we have to dredge it and put in new seeding and mangroves. Commissioner Aelion asked if they have been specific on a timeframe for this process, and Acting City Manager Vera said with the Mitigation Plan, and with discussion and finalizing the issues with South Florida Water Management and DERM, it will take five to six months. Mayor Ede1cup asked for some kind of timetable in the next 30 days, assuming that the mitigation gets completed in five months, to the next anniversary date of some major event occurring, to the final opening ofthe bridge so that we will have some kind of perspective of when we can see a final bridge in front of us. Without a bridge we are putting life safety in haphazard for many people who live in the Winston Towers area, and the sooner we have a bridge there, the better off they will be as well as residents of the entire City in the event ofa catastrophe on Collins Avenue. He can't emphasize enough how important it is to have a secondary road going through the City and as a Commission we need to know when we can expect that and try to hold ourselves to a timetable. If we don't have a timetable, nothing will happen, if we do have a timetable we can all drill down on it and hopefully move it along to a completion but we need to have a start date and a date that we can expect certain events to occur to the completion. Acting City Manager Vera said after the meeting with DERM, and he is trying to set it up for next week, we should have an idea if there is a bank out there to donate to, it will make things a lot simpler, and if there is no bank, then we will have to go through a Mitigation Plan which could delay us. And so that will give us an idea as to where we are at, and then it is just pulling permits and having the availability. Mayor Ede1cup said besides the mitigation situation, is there any other major permit that could possibly cause another delay, and Acting City Manager Vera said no, the mitigation is DERM and South Florida Water Management, they were working together and it was a big issue but that is basically it. There was an issue with submerged land but the Attorney has addressed that issue, and City Attorney Ottinot said we would have to meet and go through a process with DERM on the submerged land issue. 12