2013-0409 Special City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting April 9,2013 Sunny Isles Beach,Florida that they love the parks, love the neighborhoods, but they need more space for our children programs. She would like the City to put in more programs for the children. She is representing a lot of parents who are concerned of where their kids are going to be after school, etc., and if they had additional space for the older kids as well as younger kids. She wants to make sure our kids are safe,with secured closed space,there is not enough space at Pelican Community Park. Mayor Edelcup said that part of our success if that we certainly have had a change in the demographics to the City and our needs keep changing. We are building a number of parks and as we are building those parks, we can figure out where we can build some enclosed spaces to accommodate some of that. Way back in our plans for instance the Intracoastal Park,we are hopeful of acquiring another piece of land down there that would permit us to build a community center at the south end of the City. We also own another piece of land behind Walgreens which is scheduled to be a parking garage and perhaps again an enclosed area there, and so your thoughts are in sync with what we are working on. Resident Vida Raz said she is an Olympic and World Champion in Europe in basketball,and Regina Fridkin translated for her. She said she is speaking for a group of people that the City has no enclosed space for sports activities. At PCP they can start their activities only after 6:00 p.m. because during the day it is used for school purposes. She suggested for the City to open up a closed sports center,cultural center that can be used for our community. We need a place where we can actually practice sports, and hopefully we can have our own Sunny Isles Beach team. All the activities have to be conducted under the supervision of professional trainers. During the morning hours when the students are in school,the retired community can actually enjoy classes there under the supervision of professional trainers, health related such as exercise. We want to see tennis courts so we want to have some kind of training. Everybody has swimming pools in their condos but basically what happens is that we have a lifeguard program during the summer camp but it is conducted in the sun by the ocean, and it would be much easier to conduct it in a swimming pool area and have the kids professionally trained. We can have a nice inside theater where we can come in and see a show not related to the weather. We have a lot of professionals, singers,performers from Russia, from different countries, and it isn't right to invite them to a cafeteria at the School, we need a cultural center for that. Mayor Edelcup thanked them for their suggestions, and said it will give the Commission some food for thought for the next generation of growth in our City. Certainly everything mentioned are desirable things for us to have, and it is a matter of finding sites and also finding the financing and resources to do it all. He is sure as time goes on that the Commission will be very sympathetic to a lot of those ideas and move forward with them. Commissioner Gatto thanked them for coming, and especially for coming from Winston Towers 300. We have a lack of space and we have to be creative, but maybe there is an opportunity in one of the condos auditoriums where there can be an opportunity to have an afterschool art class, or music, etc. Maybe you can start out with a private situation where kids can pay to go to an art class, or learn poetry, learn an instrument, etc. She knows there are a lot of condominiums in her complex that are dark all day and not being used. Regina said they need the Commissioner's help on that as well so they have permission to conduct this sort of class in our building. Commissioner Gatto said the City Advisory Committee is 7