2004 0318 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting March 18,2004 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida County, to make an extremely unsafe maneuver and compound that by having the school buses doing the same thing. He said the County Public School System has agreed to change that and is making their turn-around further north. He stated that there is a substantial safety issue here that we are trying to accomplish and we are not trying to do it on the backs of people who depend on these buses. City Manager Russo said that the City is working on: 1) Expanding the City's shuttle bus service and noted that on tonight's agenda is the purchase of two new buses, and the City just received one new bus and are doubling the bus fleet of Sunny Isles Beach. He said that the City is expanding the service to seven days a week and will be substantially expanding the hours of operation and the locations that we go to ie. accommodating the run over to A ventura Mall, Intercoastal Mall, and some other points west of here. He noted that is not the whole answer to get people from the north side of Lehman Causeway to either connecting buses on the south end or running straight through from the north of Lehman Causeway to their points that they are going west and south; 2) The City is lobbying very hard with the County Mayor's office to have the "K" and the "V" substantially increased and the routes and frequency expanded, there is a good chance that it will be every twenty minutes, and when we couple that with the City's bus service during the bulk of weekday hours, and the City's expansion on the weekends, there is a targeted start date of April 25, 2004. He said that there is a good chance we can get this resolved and an expansion possibly by July, and he said that Susan Simpson, Cultural and Human Services Director, has been dealing with this, and that there are no guarantees yet, but are working very hard to address these concerns. Cultural and Human Services Director Susan Simpson reported that Henry Sori from the Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Peneles' office has been trying to get some definite answer on expanding the "K" and the "V" and it is going to be a substantial project for them. She said Mr. Sori is looking to see if he can get it moved up to July, but definitely not in April. City Manager Russo said that the good news is that they are planning it and the question is how soon can we get it and how much can we get from them. He noted that when the City service is running, it goes right into Ocean View, as a more of a convenience to make the connections. Mayor Ede1cup said that the Commission should do what it can to instruct staff not to do anything until we have a coordinated program. He said we need to know what the times are when the other buses can be expanded as opposed to when the "S" bus is going to be discontinued, because it seems that we don't have enough facts right now. City Manager Russo said that we can defer the implementation until we know that they are going to expand the other buses, coupled with what we are doing with our own bus service. Vice Mayor Goodman said being that the half a penny sales tax is being collected for transportation, he feels that Miami-Dade County should make a greater effort in helping us with more service. Mayor Ede1cup suggested handling it through the Transportation Committee. Commissioner Thaler said the whole thing is the timing and coordination, which needs to be put together by Miami-Dade County and Sunny Isles Beach. Page 14 of 15