2011-0519 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting May 19, 2011 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida Commissioner Gatto said if we enclose the Park it will allow it to operate on rainy days, and for ten (10) hours a day, seven (7) days a week if the sound reduction is effective. There will be short term pain, i.e. dollars spent, but long term gain. Kids are skating after the Park closes at 8:00 p.m. and before it opens at 3:00 p.m. It is a blatant disregard for the rules and regulations, and if the Skate Park is going to operate in good faith in the community they should be cognizant of their present behavior. She is for closing the Park in the interim until we can figure out what we can do about the noise. Cultural and Human Services Director Susan Simpson said she called the owners of the Sugar Drop Shop, and he said he was going to work it himself today to make sure it closes at 8:00 p.m., as he is having problems with his young employees. Ms. Simpson said she expressed the concerns of the Commission and the residents and that they must, per their contract, follow those rules. Mayor Edelcup asked if it is possible for Public Works or the Police Department to go by there to assure us that the hours will be strictly adhered to. Ms. Simpson said we have the Park Patrol, and we will have a Public Works employee go by at 8:00 p.m. to make sure that they are shutting down, and help those young people that are working there to get the people out. Vice Mayor Thaler said if it continues we should put our own people in there and get rid of the vendors, and in the short term we should look at reducing the hours. Commissioner Scholl said he would blame it more on the consultants because we hired professional park designers and they should have raised an issue about the noise associated with a skate park, and then there is the 40 -story building adjacent to the Park which is going to exasperate the noise, and so at this point he feels on one hand we made a mistake, on the other hand we have a very successful amenity. It does work, it is getting kids off the street into a relatively isolated safe environment. In his mind, spending $400,000 to enclose the Skate Park is not a lot of money relative to the benefit that we are getting out of it. And so at this point he is for enclosing the Skate Park. In the meantime, as the Mayor pointed out, we could limit the hours while staff works out a deal on a structure, and then ultimately we will have to close it while we are building the structure. He would be in favor of making a deal with one of the building manufacturers, it is not in a place where the building is going to be seen on the street, and so it doesn't have to be aesthetically beautiful, it needs to be insulated properly from the inside. As Commissioner Gatto pointed out, if it was enclosed, we would get twice the use out of it, we wouldn't have kids sneaking into the Park in the middle of the night, we would have a much better ability to regulate the use of the Park, and we would have no issues extending the hours or being open on holidays. Commissioner Aelion asked about the hours, and Commissioner Gatto said it was a recommendation that she had made and she recommended 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Mayor Edelcup said if we want this to function properly, we have to have reasonable hours for the concessionaire. He also cautioned about building a building when we don't know what it would really cost because we have mangrove swamps around there, this is not a rectangular piece of land, and if you enclose it, you will have a on -going huge maintenance cost of air conditioning, and so before we jump into this, we should check this all out. Vice Mayor Thaler asked how many children are involved in this, and Ms. Simpson said that attendance did drop a little since it opened but they have an average of 30 children per day.