HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-0114 Special City Commission Meeting SUMMARY MINUTES
Special City Commission Meeting
Thursday, January 14, 2016, 4:30 p.m.
City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida
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AGENDA
•
1. CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL OF MEMBERS
The meeting was called to order by Mayor Scholl at 4:30 p.m., with the following officials
present:
Mayor George "Bud" Scholl City Manager Christopher J. Russo
Vice Mayor Jeanette Gatto Deputy City Attorney Fernando Amuchastegui
Commissioner Isaac Aelion City Clerk Jane A. Hines, MMC
Commissioner Dana Goldman Deputy City Manager Stan Morris
Commissioner Jennifer Levin
2. OPENING REMARKS
Action: Mayor Scholl gave opening remarks
3. RESOLUTIONS
3A. A Resolution of the City Commission of the City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, Ratifying
the"Notice of Limitation of Use"Dedicating the Property Located at 16050,16100 and
16200 Collins Avenue also Known as the Intracoastal Park, in Perpetuity as an
Outdoor Recreation Site for the Use and Benefit of the Public, Attached Hereto as
Exhibit "A"; Authorizing the City Manager to Do All Things Necessary to Effectuate this
Resolution; Providing for an Effective Date.
Action: City Clerk Hines read the title, and City Manager Russo reported.
Public Speakers: None
Commissioner Aelion moved and Vice Mayor Gatto seconded a motion to approve the
resolution. Resolution No. 2016-2506 was adopted by a voice vote of 5-0 in favor.
4. DISCUSSION ITEMS
4A. Discussion regarding the Traffic and Parking for the Government Center Expansion and
the School.
Action: City Manager Russo said the main reason for this work session was to give the
Commission some more insight for what is not a finished process which is the traffic flow as
it relates to the expansion of the Government Center and the new school. Planning and
Zoning Administrator Claudia Hasbun said this is the Traffic Impact and Share Parking
Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting January 14,2016 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida
Study Analysis for the Government Center Expansion Project, and will be presented to the
Commission by Salman Rathore of the Corradino Group.
Public Speakers: Salman Rathore; Gabriella Blagerman
Salman Rathore, Project Manager, Traffic Engineer with the Corradino Group gave a
PowerPoint presentation on the Government Center Expansion Project, Traffic Impact
Analysis,and the Share Parking Analysis. The purpose of the Study is to analyze the current
and future traffic impacts that the project will have on the roadways and intersections,and to
make sure we have enough capacity for the infrastructure concern to be able to handle the
extra project traffic. The report is still in draft and we will continue to make changes as we
get comments and feedback, and do different reviews, before finalizing the report.
Mr. Rathore said this is a Mixed-Use Project with an elementary school, a middle school,
general office building, performing arts, civic center, a fitness center and a senior facility.
Before they started working on the Project,the Parking Impact Study or the Shared Parking
Analysis, they wanted to make sure they understood it, and the different issues. They met
with City staff and the Architect and discussed the project in general,what are different land
users, different shared parking users, etc. They met with the Police to discuss the school
traffic, the routing, the bottlenecks, different man-power required going into the field,
eventually that seven (7) Police Officers are present during the arrival time and during the
departure time. Also three (3) Cross Guards are present to help the kids cross the street.
They met with the School Principal so that they would have a better understanding of the
current and future school enrollment. They discussed issues such as drop-off and pick-up,
the timings,and also they got an idea of how many students use buses out of the total current
• enrollment. There are three (3) buses being utilized for about 250 to 300 students out of
about 2,000 of the total enrollment. They met with the Miami Dade County School Board
about the Project but the main purpose was to discuss the staggering option of arrivals and
departures for the middle school. That was important as that gave them an idea of what the
real issues are after they met with the different stakeholders.
Mr. Rathore said on the Traffic Analysis, they began by collecting data. They collected
intersection volume counts,the analysis included a total of 11 intersections with 3 signalized
and 8 un-signalized intersections. All were collected in the vicinity of the project and during
morning and midday peaks. He showed a map with all those intersections that can be located
by numbers, Collins Avenue and 178th Street,North Bay Road, 170th St. etc. As part of the
traffic analysis they always start from existing conditions. Current impact of traffic on the
network, delays, congestion,bottleneck, in spite of the existing conditions,he went out into
the field and spent about half a day with Police Officers. They looked at the arrivals and
departures,how the queues are developed,how the Police are managing the pedestrians,the
traffic,in the morning,and midday during the departure time. One thing that is important to
note is that the presence of Police Officers and Crossing Guards is absolutely important.
Without their presence there would have been a mess out there to manage traffic and
pedestrians from a safety perspective. In the morning the traffic is dispersed between 25 to
30 minutes. In the midday it was a little longer, perhaps parents were coming in, dropping
off, waiting for their kids, forming queues, picking up their kids and so during that time it
took longer, between 40 and 45 minutes. Still it wasn't that bad due to the Police and
Crossing Guards presence,direction and guidance. Out of the eleven(11)intersections that
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he had highlighted,five(5)of the intersections they showed from an overall perspective were
okay. From an operations point of view, from a delayed perspective they were operating
okay. But all of these intersections had at least one(1)failing approach and are highlighted.
Mr. Rathore said as part of the second phase we go to the future conditions. The future
conditions is current traffic plus the future anticipated citywide road plus the proposed
project traffic. Everything together approximately 2,300 future school enrollment plus this
mixed-use project which needs to be looked at as part of the future conditions. Once they
looked at the results, it was important to highlight mitigation for the future conditions. As
part of the mitigation effort he came up with, as part of the study,two scenarios which were
analyzed as part of the mitigation. Scenario 1 was to just look at traffic, school arrival and
departure traffic as is, and add the project traffic on top of that. Scenario 2 was more of a
standard school option, you have K-1 arriving at a certain time, 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. and
departing at 3:05 p.m. Middle School arriving at 6:00 to 8:00 arriving at 7:40 a.m. and
departing at 2:20 p.m. By the way, that 6:00 to 8:00 timing was discussed at Miami-Dade
County School Board and that is how we came up with that arrival and departure time.
Mr. Rathore said they ran their analysis and the same intersections shown at least one (1)
approach failing as far as the future analysis. Scenario 2 is to come up with some sort of
mitigation, how we can improve it, what can be done to make it work better. For two (2)
intersections,Collins Avenue and 178th Street,and Collins Avenue and 183rd Street,we don't
have to do any major physical improvements, we can achieve that by simply changing the
signal timing. There are proposing mitigation in the form of signal timing improvements for
these two (2) intersections. For Atlantic Boulevard and 178th Street on the west side, and
Atlantic Boulevard and 183rd Street. They are proposing that further evaluation be done to
look at if a signal or a four-way stop sign is warranted for those two intersections. That will
be part of the proposed mitigation to be able to fix problems with these two intersections that
we will be facing in the future. This is just explaining the timing for the existing and for
Scenario 2 for the school arrival and departure times. These times were discussed with the
Miami Dade County School Board and in our professional opinion this is the most condensed
and continue signing. If you look at grades 6 to 8, it starts at 7:40 a.m. then the next school
which is K-1 starts at 8:20 a.m., and then the next one is at 8:35 a.m. and so there is a
continuous 30 —40 minutes difference between each class and then departure is about the
same. It is important to understand that for every arrival and departure that the Police
Officers and the School Guards have to start preparing, like putting in cones and closing
driveways at least 40 minutes before the arrival and departure time,and so that is something
important that needs to be kept in mind.
Mr.Rathore said as part of this project there was some additional proposed mitigation,this is
important because this will help in the overall project. School staggered time is one that they
are proposing,physical improvements like crosswalks from Atlantic Boulevard to the other
side, providing bus lanes, it is very important to educate parents in particular and the
community in general, to make them realize the fact that by utilizing traffic system or
sending their kids through buses will overall be helpful for the community as a whole. They
are proposing that they issue programs making them realize,especially the parents,that this
needs to happen. Again,the Police and Traffic control presence absolutely a must and maybe
one or two Police Officers may need to be increased as far as the staff is concerned, or the
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School Guards who help the kids cross, their number needs to be increased as well.
Mr. Rathore said on bus services, currently the school has three (3) buses, and 250 to 300
students riding the buses. If the buses are increased to six (6), and people are willing to
utilize them, then we would be talking about 500 to 600 students, and that is a significant
reduction in the overall traffic and congestion. It is very important that the City participates
in the Safe Route to School (SRTS) Program which definitely needs to be looked at.
Mr. Rathore said they also did the Share Parking Analysis, they want to find out how many
parking spaces are required for this project. One thing that is important to understand that
this is a Mixed-Use Project with office,retail,theater,and so every different land use parking
peaks at different times of the day. So maybe the office peaks in the morning, or a retail
may have from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., but as a whole there is a shared parking concept.
Basically we are not providing extra parking,and the Mixed-Use usage can be utilized at the
same time,and so that is the whole concept of shared parking analysis. We typically use ULI
Urban Land Use Institute for shared parking,and at the same time the City Parking Code was
also looked at to calculate parking requirements. What we found out was that about 153
shared parking spaces are required for school, for office, for retail, and for this Project.
Mr. Rathore said in conclusion,in their professional opinion the best approach where traffic
is concerned is the staggered traffic approach for the middle school,additional mitigation of
what they are proposing like providing sidewalks, crosswalks, educate parents and the
community encouraging them to use more bus service for their kids, and increasing the
number of buses from 3 to 6 or 7,participation in the Safe Route to School(SRTS)Program,
and most importantly Police and Crossing Guards presence needs to be kept in mind,and the
need to provide 153 shared parking spaces for this Mixed-Use project.
Mayor Scholl said we have one public speaker and asked her to come up. Gabriella
Blagerman, a Senior at the Alonzo and Tracy Mourning High School, said she is here today
because she thinks there is a way to improve the public safety of our City. She has been a
resident here for 17 years, she believes this City is a great place to live in,but they are trying
to focus on pedestrians and safety at the crosswalks. We are planning to pass a Bill with a
company named Project Citizen that has in the past gone all the way up to Tallahassee. The
reason they are here today is because they are planning to focus this primarily for Sunny Isles
Beach and they are looking at different alternative methods at different costs. She knows
there is one yield sign around Newport where you click the button and it lights up, and so
they are looking at something more efficient where it is on the crosswalk itself. They range
in price from thousands of dollars to a couple of hundred dollars. On Lakeshore Drive in
Chicago,they have lines painted on the road where it gives an illusion of the driver speeding
so they slow down. Basically,the reason she is here is to let the Commission know they are
forming this and they are looking forward to contacting you.
Mayor Scholl said we have good news for you. This year we have commissioned a study, it
has been almost a year now,for pedestrian safety and traffic impact. We are going to have a
Workshop on it, and so if you want to leave your name and number with the City Clerk,we
will let you know when we have that Workshop. A lot of things you are talking about are
going to be incorporated into the results of that study. It is better when we do that together,
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and so at that study when they present their findings,you will have an opportunity to speak.
What you can do is to contrast your ideas with what the Consultants come back with, and
then that will get coordinated into the record, and then we are going to have a bunch of
decisions to make on how we go about it. Mayor Scholl thanked Ms.Blagerman for coming,
and she noted her four classmates and teacher in the audience.
Commissioner Aelion said in the Executive Summary you mentioned categories, one of
which is Elementary School (K-5). This is a developed facility, not part of the
developmental,he understands for purposes of traffic calculation you have inserted as such.
Existing dynamic functional and he thinks that is a little misleading, that is not part of the
project,just the last four are following that, and he would like that corrected. Also, you are
proposing, besides improving signalization, a four-way stop on 183rd Street signals area,
which is something in the past that we have tried. Remember that A 1 A is a State road,and if
the State has to get involved here, and we have tried a number of times to ask them to
improve lights and four-ways stops at certain intersections and they have always been
reluctant. Did you or staff approach the State in seeing the feasibility of the State taking
action on your recommendations? Mr. Rothore said no, not yet.
Commissioner Aelion said you are saying the proposed bus lane on Atlantic Boulevard
which according to your drawing would be situated just south of the proposed project. Now
that is very close to the entrance to City Hall. Today the scenario is that the Police actually
block off vehicle traffic for the required period from the back entrance to the RK Plaza,and
so if we would have a situation where the bus lane would be placed more south,that would
entail a closure more south and would impede the flow of traffic and the service to our
residents from that lane which is extremely important. Collins Avenue is already so
congested,and they want to have an alternative,and this is indeed by far the busiest Plaza in
our City, and access to it has to be very relevant. Ms. Hasbun said it is not very clear in the
image but we are proposing a bus lane actually in the parking lane on Atlantic Boulevard,not
on the actual road. Commissioner Aelion said we are talking about a school bus,it will need
more room. Ms. Hasbun said yes, we will make modifications to that lane.
Mayor Scholl said Atlantic Boulevard is a City street, and so we could put the stop signs at
178th and Atlantic Boulevard, and so the good news there is we can do that if we wanted to.
Commissioner Aelion said there is illegal parking by parents on private property and in this
particular case, Publix. Today in a present scenario we have about 40%to 50%or more of
current pickup time, and maybe even in the morning of parents parking their vehicles on
private property to be able to pickup and drop-off their children. That is something that the
City has no control of, and he thinks the Police are raising up their hands that they can't do
otherwise. In light of the future development of that site which will make it even harder for
parking because it is going to be on the upper level, this impact is something that, and he
doesn't know if you took it into consideration or not, but it is definitely an impact on the
whole projected study. As such, his concern is that if you take into account that those
vehicles are not supposed to be there or if those vehicles are4 not to be a part of the present
scenario and place them outside which makes them legal parking,then you have a completely
different picture.
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Commissioner Aelion said today he received an email and the person who sent it, didn't
know about this meeting. This is a parent with four(4)children who live in Golden Shores
and she tells him the following: Is anything being done to combat the traffic it causes during
school pickup time? It is coming to a point I can't even go to any of the stores around the
school at pickup time because there is no place to park, Publix or CVS. Even then with the
fact that the residential parking of the regular buyers at the Plaza when there is a pickup of
children,it is so flooded that regular residents that don't have to pick up their children cannot
park there, and all the parents of course are taking up the parking spaces." And so that is
something that is very real and it is happening in real time in our City,and that being such an
intricate problem of what we are having, he thinks that is extremely important to address.
Mayor Scholl said what Commissioner Aelion wants to understand is if we are doing
something, if we could do something,or if it was considered in the plan about the fact that a
lot of the vehicle pickup and delivery happens on private property. Chief Maas said it does
happen. Mayor Scholl said he feels that the Chief has a different perspective on that because
unless the property owner wants us to do something about it,we don't have a lot of bearing
on that. Chief Maas said we cannot enforce or do anything with regard to private property.
From the very beginning when people were utilizing the Publix parking lot to drop their
children off and to either leave their cars and walk them, or to have the children walk which
was a huge safety factor, Publix tried to enforce certain things and then quite frankly he
believes their corporate offices were contacted and they said to leave it alone.
Chief Maas said in the afternoon currently for the pickup what used to be open for the RK
Plaza,which you addressed just north of the Government Center, is now blocked off by Mr.
Katz who does not allow any ingress or egress which has incensed a lot of customers who try
to get into there and don't know that it is blocked off Again, it is private property and we
have no enforcement power. Recently Mr. Katz did start towing vehicles from that parking
lot that he knew were school related.
Commissioner Aelion said he understands the status quo but change is coming to this
property. Chief Maas said if you are stating that the private properties that are being utilized
currently and have been for the last number of years for pickup and drop-off by parents, if
that were taken out of the equation,what would the impact be on our regular streets because
it would now be all vehicles that would have to pickup and drop-off The impact would be
immense, it would be huge. Commissioner Aelion said that is what he needed to hear and he
wanted Mr. Rathore to hear this because he wanted him to be aware of this and to work with
this because this is a real thing. Chief Maas said our only salvation right now is the fact that
so many people do utilize those parking lots. Commissioner Aelion agrees and the Mayor
had expressed it very clearly that we have no power as a City for the benefit of our residents
to do anything regarding private property, that is it, and that is his point.
Chief Maas said he wanted to make one point, what he was trying to get confirmation on
was, and he doesn't want anyone to be misled, the intersection at 178 Street and Atlantic
Boulevard is not a four-way stop or a typical four-way intersection. You have 60 feet
minimum between the next which would be considered a four-way which is Atlantic because
it is offset there. So in theory you would have a three-way stop there, there would be then
another stop sign placed further down. Mayor Scholl said the good news is that is doable
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within our purview, and Commissioner Aelion is right about Collins Avenue, we have no
leverage over FDOT to make them change the signalization but we can put the three-way
stops in if we want to.
Chief Maas said for those of you who may not have been on the Commission at the time,the
signalization was changed in the very first year, about 18 months after the school was first
started. It had to be extended because in those first several months it was absolute gridlock,
and finally FDOT came out and extended the timing east. He doesn't know if we would get
that benefit again because as you know FDOT's concern is moving the traffic north and south
on Collins Avenue.
Commissioner Levin said one of the things she had brought up was whether or not we have
any leverage with FDOT to get them to change anything for us on Collins Avenue with
regard to the signalization. One of the proposals was for the 6 through 8 graders to start
school at 7:40 a.m., is that unusual? Mr. Rothore said no, that is not unusual. As he had
indicated that this time was selected after we had a detailed discussion with the Miami-Dade
County School Board. They provided us with a list of elementary schools, middle schools,
etc. for all of the Miami-Dade County area out of which we looked at different middle
schools and there were options starting at 7:20 a.m. and at 7:40 a.m., and so that is how we
picked that time.
Commissioner Levin asked how SRTS work? Ms.Hasbun said we are looking into that,she
does not know the details exactly but it is a combination of a program within the School
Board and FDOT, and the MPO,and so all of these agencies work together to create certain
improvements to an area surrounding school that would allow for kids and parents to walk
their kids to school. Commissioner Levin asked if they actually devise the plan and give
money? Ms. Hasbun said yes, they do work on plans and grants for these improvements.
Commissioner Levin said we have classes starting and ending with the day beginning at a
certain time and it ends at a certain time. What are the lag times before and after the times
that the classes begin and end because if we are thinking of staggering it,we will still get left
over traffic from before-hand. Is it really helping at all? Mr. Rothore said it does help
because in Scenario 1 as he had indicated in his presentation, one option is that everybody
shows up for school, kindergarten all the way to 8th grade, and you have an absolute
nightmare or gridlock. The better option is to stagger them and then provide like a 30-minute
or 40-minute arrival staggered difference,and at the same time for departure also. And so we
are looking at the best possible option that is out there. Of course the worst option is that
everybody shows up and out of that option, the better option is that you stagger them.
Commissioner Levin said if the later people are starting to show up before classes begin,are
they going to merge with the outgoing traffic of the people that have just been dropped off?
Is it part of what you look at? Mr. Rothore said from a traffic study perspective,and it is all
reasonable assumptions of course that we typically use and apply. For other studies that he
has done, the assumption is if your departure time is 1:50 or 2:20,there is no reason for you
to be there at 12:50 or 1:00. You can probably be five or ten minutes early, or five or ten
minutes late and then maybe 5% or 10% traffic that kind of merge with other grades but if
there is a certain time and everybody is getting out, let's say 1:50, and the next one is 2:20
and the next one is 3:05, from a realistic point of view it will be happening at a separate
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staggered time,that is the assumption behind it. Commissioner Levin said she understands
but she doesn't know how much it will improve, is it just going to prolong the whole time,
that we are going to be gridlocked or is it actually going to help because it will be better by a
certain percentage but we can't tell.
Commissioner Levin said for the school parking next door, there was a number of parking
spaces given for the school, their teachers from the annex will be parking here? We are
going to have additional teachers because the school will be growing,additional classes,and
so we need additional school parking, is that what that is about? Mr. Rothore said right,the
share parking analysis that we performed, it included parking specifically for school usage.
We looked at the number of classes,and looking at the City Code,minimum parking that we
are supposed to be providing for each class,and then based on that we alternatively came up
with a total for the shared parking, and so yes, school parking was definitely considered
separately and was looked upon. Commissioner Levin said the 250-seat theater, and the
proposed 63 parking spaces,is that because you are assuming that most events that will take
place at the theater will be at night so that there will be additional parking available? Mr.
Rothore said that is based on the City Code, for every four (4) seats you are supposed to
provide one (1) parking space.
Commissioner Goldman said she thinks it is a very comprehensive, a very effective study.
We all recognize here in the room that we have the physical constraints which dictate a
limited number of solutions to the mitigation,the traffic issues. Obviously the big take away
is that having staggered times of drop off is really the main way to mitigate some of the
traffic issues. She wanted to talk a little bit on mass transit, how would adding additional
buses, who would be responsible, is that a County, a School Board initiative? How do you
incentivize people to use mass transit, would it be for the benefit of just the younger kids,or
the older kids, how can we kind of merge these additional school buses and get people to
actually participate in that and get involved? Mr. Rothore said right now the whole idea is to
kind of highlight the very planning level,preliminary mitigation,and concerned agencies that
needs to be the coordination, if the buses go from 3 to 6, Miami-Dade Transit needs to be
involved,the local school needs to be involved, City departments needs to be involved,that
is something that will come along at a later stage, and that has to be looked at on a separate
basis. This is more just giving ideas as to this needs to be done, how that will be done is of
course a good question,that will be done at a later stage as we get more detailed coordination
among different agencies.
Vice Mayor Gatto knows we don't have a lot of options but she wanted to start with a little
story that happened last week. She left the office not paying attention to what time of the day
it was, she was coming down the ramp from City Hall, she sees on her left a car as she is
pulling out onto the street,there is a car,a mom waiting for her kid in City Hall's parking lot,
not in a parking space,just out there in the middle of nowhere,and so she tried to get out but
could not make the left turn and so she made the right turn to go north but she knew what
was going to happen, it just brings you back to the street, that is the quagmire. And so she
parked on the side of the street and she went back up to her office and sat at her desk. It is
really a mess,and she knows this is a complaint,but it is what we have now times 100 which
will be later. We will need more Police, etc. She also wants to talk about staggered hours
because for her intuitively and she understands Commissioner Levin when she asked that
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question, but it just elongates the pain is really what it does. And so she is not sold on the
idea,she understands why it is an idea,but she is not sold on it because she knows now if she
leaves at a certain time and maybe 30 minutes she can wait and leave,but now maybe it will
be 45 minutes. Also,the four-way stops, she knows it is a solution but she spent many years
on the west coast. You can't drive through the streets in San Francisco and fly through,every
street is a four-way stop and everybody knows that you yield to your right. Here, nobody
knows that and nobody cares and no one is going to obey the rules. She deals with that on
174th and North Bay Road, and so there is a lot of possibility for confusion and accidents.
Also, the increase in school buses, you know that the school buses are scary and tricky,you
can't pass them,and she stays away from them at any cause because they can be dangerous to
your driving record if you screw up. She knows that you have come up with some good
solutions but it just seems like all of this is just going to be amplified in a very big way once
this gets going. She is not sold on the staggered hours.
Mayor Scholl said if the 163rd Street bridge went up and 900 cars back up and head for
Collins Avenue. If you can stagger the cars by 10 minutes apart,it would greatly mitigate the
amount of impact that is hitting Collins Avenue at one time. What they are saying is,and it
is just logic and science, basically if you are going to have 600 cars there, and you spread
them out in half hour increments, it is going to mitigate the problem. It is not going to make
it go away, it is going to elongate the pain, but it is going to create a lot less impact on the
area then having the 600 cars there at one time. That is really all we are talking about. He is
hearing a lot of objections but the fact is that there are no easy solutions here, this is not a
silver bullet kind of solution. This is going to be a combination solution that basically take a
crappy situation and mitigate it a little bit. We have professionals and they came back and
are giving us different options here. But logic would tell us that if you take 600 cars that are
going to converge on a time zone within a ten-minute window of that time zone, if you
spread it out over an hour and a half, it is going to mitigate the impact a little bit at least on
the surrounding folks that have to deal with it. He believes that the staggering of the cars
will make a difference.
Mayor Scholl said let's go back to the genesis of the problem. When he got elected, and we
all know about the traffic problem at the school, and we started to talk about the school
expansion project, and he always tries to tie things back to what they call in the blood
banking business, Root Cause Analysis. What is the root cause of the problem? The fact is
that we live in a City where the weather is nice most of the time,and 80%of the kids that go
to that school are within walking distance because it is Winston Towers in the City core,and
that is where all the kids live, they are all within walking distance. Yet we have 600 cars in
the morning that come to that school to drop kids off. What does that tell us? That tells us
that anybody that lives in the City whose kid can walk to school does not want to deal with
that issue, and so they let their kid walk or ride their bicycles to school.
Mayor Scholl said last Spring he sat down with the City Manager and said we have got to do
a study or something to figure out where all these cars are coming from. So what they did
was we had some folks go out over the course of a week and take pictures of every license
plate in the morning and in the afternoon that was dropping a kid off, be it in the shopping
center or by the school, then we ran all those license plates through the DMV, and we
actually did this last April or May. It was two different periods. What did we find? We
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found that there are hundreds of cars coming to school every morning from out of the area.
Now, like he said to the School Board,it is not actionable to remove people from the school,
but it sure tells us where the genesis of our traffic problem is coming from.
Mayor Scholl said the fact is that we have a huge traffic problem there because there are a lot
of people going to that school who do not come from our community, and we even
discounted the ones that came from Eastern Shores or Golden Beach because we know that
they belong here, they are legally in the school. He is talking about people from out of the
County. Then the argument is that there are divorced parents and maybe they are staying
with the father in Hollywood that week, but the fact of the matter is if he was a divorced
parent and he has got to deal with that traffic every morning he would let the kids stay with
his Mother during the week and walk to school. But the fact is that we have a tremendous
amount of people in that school that don't belong there.
Mayor Scholl said because the Administration was remised on making sure that the folks that
deserve to go to that school are the ones that are going there, we took it to the next step and
wrote a letter to the School Board. We said we understand you need a school expansion but
we don't want to create an expanded environment without dealing with the root cause of the
problem which is what we call District Jumpers, which means kids from out of the area.
That is the technical terms if you are a School Board official,District Jumpers. Frankly,they
blew us off at the beginning.
Mayor Scholl said about two months ago he wrote a stronger letter that basically said,we are
looking at planning the school but we would be remiss if we took taxpayer money and we
invested it in another school without dealing with the District Jumper issue. We could not
build enough schools as the schools are so well regarded they would fill up immediately
every time and be overcrowded. And so the fact is at that point we started to get a dialogue
going with the School Board Officials. About six (6) weeks ago, he and the City Manager
had a meeting with the higher ups of the School Board. The way our school works is we
have our Principal and then there is a Regional person,and then an Assistant Superintendent,
and then the Cabinet member,and then the Superintendent of Schools,Alberto M.Carvalho.
Just before the holidays, we started to deal with the No. 2 and the No. 3 people in the chain.
One is Vivian Santiestebanpardo,Region Superintendent,and one is Iraida Mendez-Cartaya,
Associate Superintendent. Just before he went on vacation he had a meeting with Vivian
Santiestebanpardo, who is really a primary decision maker in this whole thing. Basically he
and Vivian came to a meeting of the minds where he just said I am not doing this unless we
come up with a mechanism to basically deal with all the existing kids in the school,and then
deal with the intake. His position was, there are 2,000 kids in the school, we can look at
every one of them, let's hire a temporary staff, you tell us what the rules are, what you can
and can't do and there are privacy issues, and they have got their own constraints but let's
hire a temporary staff and lets go through every kid in the school. And then when we have to
go to Winston Towers 300 because there are 20 kids that live there we can send a Police
Officer over there with a School official and basically verify that the kids actually live there.
It is not perfection but at least we are going to take the problem head on and then we are
going to have a mechanism for basically dealing with it. And then going forward we are
going to be much more rigorous about when somebody applies to get into the school.
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Mayor Scholl said the problem has been that it is general knowledge that it is easy to get into
the school. You show up with a piece of paper that looks like an address in Sunny Isles
Beach and they will let your kid into the school. The fact is that it is an A-rated school and
parents, this is near and dear to every parent's heart, they want their kids to have the best
education possible, and so they will beg, borrow or steal to get their kid into an A-rated
school even if they have to lie, and even if it is illegal, and then they have to ask their kid to
lie which is even worse. Before the holidays he had an email with Vivian Santiestebanpardo
and she committed to him that we would go through legal this month if the School Board
figured out the mechanism and that we would actually start a program to deal with the
District Jumpers. A few days ago he had a conversation with Iraida Mendez-Cartaya who is
her boss and sits on Superintendent's Carvalho's Cabinet and Iraida confirmed that they are
going to do what you are asking us to do.
Mayor Scholl said his point is that is the root analysis where he thinks a lot of the traffic is
coming from. When that is all said and done,whether that alleviates 100 cars,or 50 cars,or
10 cars he does not know but at least he feels like we are getting to the core of the real issue.
Because the real issue is, he believes that if that school was only attended by the kids that
should go to that school,the only time we would have an issue is on a rainy day. On a rainy
day is when it would get backed up because parents don't want their kids to walk to school in
the rain. He doesn't think we would have the issues that we have because we have the school
bus handling everything else. You know the school buses,the kids that are supposed to go
there,the school bus can pick them up in the morning from Eastern Shores and even from the
north end of the City, they go to the Arlen House, they go to Atlantic Island, you know you
can get a school bus voucher to get to that school, and so what parent would want to drive
their kid to school from Arlen House and deal with that traffic when you have a school bus
alternative.
Mayor Scholl said and so at that point, if we genuinely have that problem solved we can
mitigate it greatly. He does not believe that we are ever going to totally fix the problem
because parents are always going to find ways to get their kids into school when they really
want them in there but if we get the reputation that you are going to get caught and when you
get caught your kid is going to be removed, it is going to be embarrassing, it is going to be
difficult, it is hard on your kid. And again, he feels terrible for the kids, the last thing he
wants to do is to remove a kid from a school mid-semester and take him away from his
friends but unfortunately the parents put the kid into the situation by lying,and by creating a
false environment and then they ask the kid to lie when they go to school.
He said we were in a situation not too long ago when we were at some induction and are
sitting with the kids,he is not going to mention names,and the kids wouldn't tell them where
they live because they knew they were sitting with public officials and they didn't live in the
area. That is terrible to put a kid through that. He just wrote a newsletter article for it, it is
going to be in his State of the City address,he is making a very demonstrable public effort to
tell parents, and put everybody on notice that we are doing this. We didn't tell anybody we
were doing the license plate thing because we wanted to try to figure it out but the license
plate situation it certainly confirmed his concerns that all of these cars are coming from spots
they should not be coming from. And that gave them some evidence that the District Jumper
issue is the underlying issue to all the traffic and that is the root cause of the real problem.
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Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting January 14,2016 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida
Again, it won't make it all go away but he believes that if we deal with the District Jumpers
and we have our professionals help us with mitigation techniques which might be staggered
times, three-way stops, whatever that is, he thinks that we are at least going to try to do
everything we can to try to move the issue forward.
Mayor Scholl said that is his update on the District Jumpers. The good news is that he feels
he has gotten assurances from everybody that are necessary in the school system that they are
really going to work on this. He told them he wants two actionable plans,one is dealing with
the kids that are already there that don't belong there, and one is how we are going to deal
with the intake going forward. Of course their first feedback was they don't have the budget
for this. We spent so much money on this school that it would be a drop in the bucket for us
to pay for it. If we save one Police Officer in the morning from having to stand there, the
cost of our study is already paid for, and every year the Chiefs budget goes up and we have
to allocate more and more public safety resources to this issue. He feels good because he
feels as a Commission we are throwing everything we got at it,we get a root cause analysis,
we have got a traffic safety analysis,etc. But he made it very clear to the school system that
unless we get to the root cause of the problem because we could build three more buildings
and they would fill up immediately because it's a great school,a great community,everybody
is involved but we have got to mitigate the District Jumper problem.
Public Speakers: Roslyn Brezin
Commissioner Aelion said if after the efforts from the County we find out that the numbers
are not as pink as projected in other words still the potential density of students and cars are
going to be more or less what it is now. He said taking that into account,then the main thrust
of creating this extra wing for the school, his initial understanding was,remember when the
school was built the target was 1,200— 1,300 kids, and Hans said 1,600 kids and then as the
years went by it came up to 2,000 kids which is already an explosion with the ratio being
completely outside of the required ratio of teacher to student. He was thinking that it would
be a blessing and a big aid to the whole traffic situation if part of the kids that are presently
attending the elementary are going to be moved so that it is a deflation of pressure. But what
we are saying here in building this we are projecting an additional 233 to 300 kids and we are
going to deal with it, actually we are shooting ourselves in the foot, okay, we are separating
the elementary from the middle school,etc. He said in San Francisco which the Vice Mayor
is from,at one point he thinks it was built,you reach capacity and that is it. You can bring in
100 more families with children and they will have to go to other schools because the
capacity has been reached. That is one point that has to be looked at also. The point he
wants to make is,the scenario is the result is not really what we expected it to be after the big
effort by the County to get the District Jumpers out, then shouldn't we sit down again and
consider the number.
Mayor Scholl said we have no choice because the thing is that we don't but at the same time
he feels we have got to do the root cause analysis first, and the thing that upsets him is he
does not want to see Sunny Isles Beach residents who pay taxes and contribute to that school,
have to send their kid out of the district because we know that 20%of the school is coming
in from Hollywood. We will do our best,and the system will still get gamed no matter what
we do but if we get a reputation that we are going to be tough on it, he believes that at least
we know we are putting our best foot forward and then he completely agrees with
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Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting January 14,2016 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida
Commissioner Aelion. If we feel collectively we have done everything we can do to mitigate
the problem, then we have got to make the hard decisions, there is no question.
Vice Mayor Gatto said this question might be for the Chief, before the Annex is built in the
next two years,would it be possible to guide the kids that are released at 3:00 p.m. south and
around to the back so it is possible to open up Atlantic Avenue? That still allows us,which
is cut off right now but if it were to open up, we could go to Publix, we could go to the RK
Shopping Center, CVS, you know try to look for a creative way to open up Atlantic
Boulevard and have the kids go around to the back which is North Bay Road. Then we can
also get out of City Hall and make a right turn if we had to because we can't make a right to
go to Publix and we can't make a left because we can't get out into the traffic,we are trapped
unless we go to Collins Avenue. Is that a possibility at all,to get the kids to go south instead
of north? If they are going north that is Publix problem,that is why the parents are parking
in Publix.
Police Sergeant Lee Athanasiou said right now the reason you are not seeing the traffic
flowing,the reason we have RK Shopping Center blocked off is because school pickup,the
area where parents pick up their children is on it and we don't want the cars passing by while
each kid is getting into their cars. We don't want one of them to step out into traffic and get
hit by a car,that is the only reason we block off Atlantic Boulevard. That is the only area at
the school where we can stack enough cars to get'them off of the side street. Right now the
way traffic is flowing is backed up from in front of the school on the east side of Atlantic
Boulevard wrapped all the way around 183rd Street, all the way around North Bay Road,all
the way back to 181' Street and then all the way back to Atlantic Boulevard, and from
Atlantic Boulevard all the way back to 178th Street. There is no other place to pass through
where it wouldn't back up even further.
Police Chief Fred Maas said the kids go in all different directions at the end of school. A
number of them come to the Library and the Government Center,they come south,and most
importantly they cross from the school from the west side of Atlantic over on to the east side
and that way we can cross them safely. What we find especially on Wednesdays when
everyone gets out of school at 2:00 p.m.,either he or the Captain post themselves at the exit
to the Government Center. We keep them from blocking that egress and so if a car wants to
turn in or come out and turn left,we stop them from blocking it. Vice Mayor Gatto said that
really helps at least on that day when they all get out at the same time. Chief Maas said the
other thing is that not too many people are going north on Atlantic since Mr. Katz has closed
off between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.that entrance and exit there so people now know they cannot
get into the shopping center from the west side,they must go out on Collins Avenue. Mayor
Scholl said that probably works in your favor in some ways,he guesses it was an outflow but
at least at the end of the day you have more control over the flow of traffic. Chief Maas said
a few cars get stuck in the line, and their frustration is if they don't know it, they are in line
waiting and when they get up there they realize they can't get into the shopping center.
Former Commissioner Roslyn Brezin said so many of the students in this school are not
residents. No way can we address this in an easy manner. In most of the condominiums in
their offices, and she thinks they will cooperate with us if we make that request, each
apartment has documentation showing the occupants of the apartment when the apartment
was rented or sold, you cannot stop Grandma from saying that Grandchild lives here, and
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Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting January 14,2016 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida
some of them have two or three Grandchildren who live there. The only way that you are
going to address this is by having the cooperation because most of them are from high-rises,
and they have one apartment and they register three Grandchildren, etc. But there is
documentation showing who actually is occupying these apartments and we will have to seek
out the cooperation of management of the different condominiums. She knows for a fact that
there are several of them in her building that she knows do not live there.
Vice Mayor Gatto said you bring up a good point. One of the things she wanted to say was
her Condo docs have limits to the number of people that can live in a one-bedroom, a two-
bedroom, and a three-bedroom. Mayor Scholl said this is why we are going to lean on the
Chief a little bit, as the front end of the process are the school records which has to be done
by the School Board employees because of privacy issues. But when we actually go out into
the community to verify things he thinks what we are going to say is to collect all the records
for one building and then our liaison or school officer will go there. The management is less
likely to give one of our officers a hard time about going through the verification process.
Your point is very well taken, and it will be completely remised not to try to do something,
that is the point.
Chief Maas said he used to have a Traffic Unit for the City,now he has a Traffic Unit for the
school. Some of the issues that he has as you know because they complain to you and send
you emails, we have as many traffic issues from 4:30 on through the rest of the evening but
unfortunately our whole Traffic Unit is dedicated to the school Monday through Friday.
Some food for thought here, if we stagger the hours, which we believe would be a good
thing, we would rather see them staggered on the later time which works in Broward.
Typically it says 8:20 a.m. but that is the time they are due to be in their seat, the young
children from K through 6,start arriving at school as early as 7:30 a.m.because that is when
breakfast is served to them and they can go into the cafeteria. We find that we are set up by
7:40 a.m. our officers with the crosswalks and signs,etc. If we back it up earlier for the older
kids it is going to push that whole schedule of officers back another hour earlier which means
on the lagging end of it that they are also going to get out earlier because they are only
working ten-hour days. However, if it moved on the later side which they do for the older
kids, it would be within the framework of what they are working now and the time that they
still get off. For example, if it was 9:00 a.m. start time and they get out at 3:45 p.m. it
certainly helps us. These are not just from Police considerations, it is a well known fact that
the older children often times will walk with them,drop off the younger ones first,and then
they are able to go to their school or their classroom, or the parents will be comfortable
dropping them off Not the reverse, not having the young children start at 6:30 or 6:45 a.m.
to get there and then they have nothing to do with the younger child.
Mayor Scholl said he thinks what he is hearing is before we make a formal recommendation
to the school system,we sit down with them,this is going to be a cooperative effort,and they
are going to have to reconcile their own position internally about what is the most efficient
way to do this. And then we will sit down with the school system. He thinks we can work
with them with recommendations and obviously the Chief will work with our staff members
and we will make sure that we get a holistic approach to it. Chief Maas said we know in
other districts it does work better that way with the youngest. We have two schools that are
six blocks apart in his residential area and because it is staggered one hour there is impact but
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Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting January 14,2016 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida
only for those two schools at that time,they never intersect each other. Mayor Scholl said he
doubts if our Consultant has taken the sociology environment into account, he is just
distributing the flow. Obviously we are just assuming that 600 cars is 300 as you distribute it
across,200 per group and the timing of those groups isn't something that really have to be in
our purview. Chief Maas said correct as we go out there every day with the parents and kids,
and know what the patterns are with them and almost know how many of them come from
the school to the Government Center for the Library,for different events that are here. Also,
Mayor, your point is well taken with regards to the private shopping centers, if he was a
District Jumper or coming from another County, he doubts he would be pulling up to the
front of the school and dropping his kids off. He would probably stop at a remote site and
this he knows because we have received complaints from people who watch the cars line up
in front of their building,the kids get out,or they wait for them to get out to pick up the kids.
And so that may also alleviate a lot of the private property parking.
Commissioner Aelion said he came down hard and he apologizes on his comments.
However, he wanted to compliment you on one of your calculations and your staggering
involving the County School Board, etc. One real data that you produced is the net time of
drop off and pick up in the morning which is about 20 to 35 minutes, and in the afternoon it
was about 45 to 50 minutes. What you did do very astutely and he thinks it is commendable
is that with the staggering calculations you went and said you have the 55-minute spread in
the morning, and the Chief should be aware of this on the net, you did a good job of
maintaining the contractors time, i.e. the 20-minute spread between morning and afternoon
also in your staggered calculations,and so in the morning we have a 55-minute spread and in
the afternoon we have an hour and 15 minutes within the staggered times,and so that makes
sense as a result even though that is just a recommendation but that is based on something
factual and basically something that has been already studied and actually accumulated and
written as it is also for real data, real calculations. Maybe from that you can build forward.
4B. Discussion to Set a Special Commission Meeting to Award a Contract for the Collins
Avenue Undergrounding Project.
Action: City Manager Russo reported that we have a deadline of March 2017 to install all
the conduits related to the Collins Avenue Undergrounding Project. We recently opened the
bids on that project and received three (3) bids, and the low bidder is approximately $5
Million,the next bid is$7.3 Million,and the third bid is$9.2 Million. We are in the process
of diligently vetting the two lowest bidders right now. We want to get this awarded as soon
as possible to be able to meet that deadline. His initial intent on having this on the agenda
for this work session was to pick a date, because we can't have it ready right now to go out
with the agenda on Friday,we have got to finish our homework on this. He introduced Paul
Abbott who is our owner's rep Consultant for this project. We have another option and it is
up to the Commission, we can either set a date probably just a week after the Commission
meeting of January 21, or we believe we can be ready by the early part of next week. If you
want we can put it on the agenda as a placeholder and if we can get it all done we can still
take action at the January 21,2016 meeting. After discussion,the City Commission said to
put it on the January 21, 2016 agenda.
Public Speakers: Paul Abbott
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Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting January 14,2016 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida
Paul Abbott, President of HPF Associates, said the good news is the low bidder who we
already vetted is a very responsive bid. They are reviewing a couple of items,and we expect
to hear from them tomorrow possibly Monday at the latest. We are going to go ahead and
talk to the second bidder which we think they have some errors on the high side and we are
going to offer them that opportunity. Bidders one and two are extremely qualified groups
and we are very pleased and comfortable. We had 17 in attendance at the pre-bid,we had 7
GCs who would have been those responding and we only got three but that is just what the
market is right now. He thinks we will be ready to make a recommendation by Wednesday.
5. ADJOURNMENT
Commissioner Aelion made a motion to adjourn the meeting,and Mayor Scholl adjourned it
at 5:57 p.m.
Respectfullyr'submitted by: Approved by Commission on Feb. 18, 2016
2
Jane A. Hi es, MMC; City Clerk George H. Set Mayor
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