2011-1117 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting November 17,2011 Sunny Isles Beach, Florida interested in and hoping to do is to work with Ibis Romero of the Sunny Isles Beach Resort Association/Convention and Visitors Bureau and approach our local hotels to see if they are interested in sharing in the maintenance costs in return for their hotel guests having easy access to these facilities as part of their stay. He thinks the Vice Mayor is interested in pursuing this further, and if the rest of the Commission is interested, he would engage in a more serious discussion with the County to develop an agreement with our City Attorney. Public Speakers: Robert Leviyer; Diane Collins Mayor Edelcup said to continue the study and to check to see ifthe hotels are interested in it. Secondly, he doesn't think we need to address this until we are doing the budget for next year because we need to get into the proper mode of when these new projects come up, that we wait until we budget them for whatever year the cash flow of the City will permit it to be done, rather then inject them in as they come along and then try to amend our budget. When this happens, projects we have promised gets pushed back because something else gets pushed forward. His recommendation would be to keep working on it and getting the information but this project can't really get moved forward until we are in a budgetary process for Fiscal Year 2012/2013. Commissioner Aelion said he wants to understand the logistics behind it, this property is County property, and as such they would be coming to us, even though the initial construction cost is over $300,000 with allowances for use of the general public. He doesn't understand the long-term use, how is it going to be strategically managed because you are talking about a maintenance amount. City Manager Cohen said this is something that we already discussed with the County, in return for our investment in the facility, we would actually maintain control of the reservation system for the courts. Mayor Edelcup said we would be leasing it for a dollar a year, and City Manager Cohen said yes, and so in essence it will become a City asset even though we do not own the property. Mayor Edelcup said from time to time to update the Commission on this. City Manager Cohen said yes, he knows that there will be a change of administration at County Parks at the end of this year which he thinks was one of the reasons that the Vice Mayor was anxious to move forward, but he clearly understands the message about budget and he shares those fiscal concerns. We will keep doing our due diligence in the meantime and get as much information to the Commission as we can, and bring this forward at the appropriate time. Commissioner Scholl said next year we are looking at our Capital Projects Plan and it will fall under the pecking order and it mayor may not make it in next year's budget but nonetheless he agrees with the Mayor because sometimes in the past we interject with these things and we lose sight of the fact that we have a set of priorities of the Capital budget that we spend a lot of time rationalizing to make sure we get it into the state that we want it. Robert Leviyer gave information about how many people use the courts, and there are people here who want to help move it forward. Diane Collins said she is one of the tennis players who plays with the great coach Robert Leviyer and has been playing there for over ten (10) years. She asked in terms of timing, if the City does not take this offer from the County somewhat soon would that then jeopardize the City's opportunity to take over the tennis courts. City Manager Cohen said that the County has informed us that there have been several other expressions of interest all from the private sector, the County does have a 17