2007 0517 Special City Commission Meeting

Home Browse Search

Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting May 17,2007 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida Mayor Edelcup said that Mr. Milton made some valid points and he asked Mr. Conner on his take of those comments. Mr. Conner said there as several aspects to the job and it will be complex and that is why staff is very seriously dedicated to this project. He said we can coordinate the efforts to make sure that when we are doing damage it coordinates when damage is being done by others, and when we are making repairs and improving things, they are making repairs and improving things. He said we need to get started on the street portion because we are going to lose funding and it will have to be done, and it won't necessarily be impacted by the construction, so that would be our approach. Mayor Edelcup said one of the reasons why we were moving rapidly on this project was that the funding is available now, and he thinks that Mr. Milton needs to be reassured that, even if we are hiring a third party to oversee the project, that that party will still be reporting to Mr. Conner, and that he is the point person referred to by Mr. Milton that ifthere is coordination problems that need to be resolved, that he can come to Mr. Conner with those. Mr. Conner said that he had spoken to the City Manager about this today and their thoughts were to free him up from the details to be able to respond quickly and to answer questions and to coordinate all the efforts. Mayor Edelcup said that Milton Associates have been building in our City at least ten (10) years now and working with the City to try to make life easier on both sides, and that type of cooperation will continue with Mr. Conner on board. City Manager Szerlag said that we have the same objectives that Mr. Milton has, we want to have an excellent product from the private sector and the public sector, and the final analysis is that we are a small organization, and Mr. Milton can call him, Mr. Conner, or Mr. Vera at any time on any issue. Vice Mayor Thaler asked in reference to additional costs for additional time, if this project takes 400+ days, will this number go up? Mr. Conner said yes but we do have contingency funds in the amount but it might exceed those. He said there are several issues, we will lose funding if we don't move forward, and it is considerable funding, so his comment would be an objective assessment of the situation is you will be money ahead to award the contract, and take the additional funding that is available because you will never come anywhere near spending that much money in the extension of time to coordinate the projects, even ifit lasts an extra 8-months. He said one of the items in the contract states that tomorrow they will erect a sign on site and bill the City so that we can get into the system on the funding and guarantee that funding, we are down to the deadline. Commissioner Iglesias said that he (FDOT) needs an invoice before June 30, 2007. He said this has been going on before we became a City, we got $3 Million from FDOT, during the gaming process, we got $2 Million for this current year, the fiscal year for FDOT goes from July 1 s\ and $1 Million Dollars, since we delayed this, has already been cast aside, not that we lost it, it has gone to previous years. He said utility coordination is very important, when we [FDOT] did Sunny Isles Boulevard in 1985, for the landscaping issue. He said we may want to contact FDOT and during the funding issue we can take the $2 Million Dollars right now, do the roadway work which is the utility relocation, the actual street itself the hard core construction, the concrete and perhaps take that million bucks and put it to the year 2008/2009 which is July of next year for the landscaping. Make sure we don't lose the funding, because we have it programmed and once they start billing it is the future years. He 13