2013-0221 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting February'21,2013 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida they cannot build it for the price that the City has set. They think that with the$18.5 Million Dollars which is a credit for which the City has already paid, they can provide substantially everything that the City wants. Mayor Edelcup said that we are disappointed as well, all this time has elapsed and we have not been able to'reach a point where we can go forward. We have no choice since the City Manager has recommended termination, and the City does have the right of termination for convenience, and since the Contractor sees inability at this point to be able to do it for the $20 Million Dollar budget that we have set, he thinks we should give the City Manager the appropriate time to conclude the contractual arrangements which calls for at least a two-week period to work out the differences. If nothing can be achieved in that period of time then the only other alternative is to go out for re-bid to see if we can get the price that has been suggested to us. He encourages the Contractor to be in on any possible new bid if that is the avenue he takes. City Attorney Ottinot said in terms of the City's rights,the contract speaks for itself,the City has a right to terminate for convenience but has to give the Contractor a "cure period" and during that period see if matters can be resolved. Commissioner Gatto noted that she did meet with Joe Milton and one of the points she had was the issue on the bridge, she thinks it is fair to give the Milton's the two-week window but that we also need to move on and make a decision of what we want to do. Vice Mayor Aelion asked that if we go out to re-bid that he would like some assurance of the same parameters that we have now. City Manager Russo assured the Vice Mayor that yes it will be the same parameters, and yes it will be bid. We had numerous meetings with our outside Consultants, we have reviewed these numbers with them, and we will get the best possible price. City Attorney Ottinot said for the record that the Contractor has a right to cure. Commissioner Levin said the design/build contract was amended to include a bridge and we already have an agreed upon price to do the whole project subject to the changes that the Commission requested for the Garage. It is her understanding that the Contractor now wants to remove the bridge from the contract, and that cannot be done unless we agree to it. She agrees that the City Manager and City Attorney be given the right to terminate the contract and work with the Contractor to see if anything can be resolved during the cure period. Commissioner Scholl has had several conversations with the developer, the consultants,and staff and like all things that are contested there are two sides to every situation. On one hand the Contractor pulling out the bridge for convenience, on the other hand we asked for a substantial change to the original contract which creates a big opening for the Contractor to modify the original numbers. How those numbers get modified is probably the biggest point of contention, under any circumstances we have a substantial difference. He is not in favor of unbundling the bridge, he believes part of our original attraction to the Contractor and to the deal was the fact that the bridge was bundled in there,and from our standpoint the bridge is a very important design element. He thinks the bridge was unbundled to meet our budget but at the same time we created the budget to have the bridge. He feels we need to go back to the Contractor and make it clear that we don't want to unbundle the bridge, with an eye toward flexibility on both sides. He would recommend that we push that date a couple of 10