2014-1218 Regular City Commission Meeting

Home Browse Search

SUMMARY MINUTES Regular City Commission Meeting Thursday, December 18, 2014, 6:30 p.m. City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida ATTENTION ALL LOBBYISTS: CITY LAW REQUIRES YOUR REGISTRATION PRIOR TO ENGAGING IN LOBBYING ACTIVITIES BEFORE CITY STAFF,BOARDS,COMMITTEES OR THE CITY COMMISSION. PLEASE CONTACT THE CITY CLERK FOR FORMS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION. AGENDA I. CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL OF MEMBERS The meeting was called to order by Mayor Scholl at 6:30 p.m. with the following officials present: Mayor George "Bud" Scholl City Manager Christopher J. Russo Vice Mayor Isaac Aelion City Attorney Hans Ottinot Commissioner Jeanette Gatto City Clerk Jane A. Hines, MMC Commissioner Dana Goldman Deputy City Manager Stan Morris Commissioner Jennifer Levin Deputy City Attorney Fernando Amuchastegui President of Student Council Tim Byrd 2. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE /INVOCATION Action: Ari Steiger led the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Rabbi Yisrael Baron gave the invocation, and Rabbi Alexander Kaller and his son Mendel lit the third candle of the Menorah made by the children for Hanukkah. Mayor Scholl gave opening remarks of decorum. He said we are changing some things at City Hall from a procedural standpoint. Typically before we have Commission Meetings,we have workshops the Tuesday before the Commission Meetings. A lot of the issues that came before the Commission got discussed at these Agenda Review Workshops,and we had one this past Tuesday but the actual purpose of the meeting was to stop having these meetings. And so what you are going to find is, as we move forward a lot of things are more aired in the Commission meetings as opposed to at the Workshop. Sometimes you could see that we were rifling through the agenda because things were being discussed previously at these workshops. Now that we are not having these workshops, what he is going to do is at the beginning of the Commission meetings he will give the public and his colleagues a heads up on things that might be coming down the pipeline, and things that he is talking to Management about. He is going to do that for the first time today. Mayor Scholl said that during the campaign process there had been a number of issues that came up for them to address. Recently we had given the City Manager some direction. One is, Vice Mayor Aelion is going to talk about the beach erosion issue as one of the add-on items. One of the things that he had asked the City Manager to do was to look for an engineering firm that has expertise in coastal engineering and we might be able to put some mitigation devices in place off the beach or along the beach to try to help us start mitigating the erosion. Vice Mayor Aelion is going to talk on some programs that might be out there to actually help us with beach renourishment. Mayor Scholl said he knows that is something that has been on the public's mind. He has gotten a lot of calls about it,and there is so much we can do as a City, we have to work in tandem with our City and Federal Government.