2013-1219 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes Regular City Commission Meeting December 19.2013 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida how many accomplished musicians, actors, and dancers would love to come to Sunny Isles Beach during the winter when it is cold in New York. We just need to get the grants to fund the fair, and places to stay when these grants are available. Why not a Winter Shakespeare Festival ? Commissioner Gatto sent her a CNN clip of these kinds of street happenings. We need to design progressive urban spaces, and there are a lot of grants for this because this is the means of creating social dialogue with art. Again, bringing diverse groups together.and generating curiosity in the community. Ms. Dannheisser showed photos of stairs over a street, where you can sit and watch the traffic in New York City, why can't we do it here over Collins Avenue? We would like to convert our public spaces,right now they are for recreation, but let's make it places to think and dream and have whimsical characters in our park, art work, and street performances as well. We can create edible rooftop gardens, all of these gardens that she showed in photos are on rooftops of buildings in other cities. There is grant money available and this is the kind of thing that contributes to sustained ability which is another big current issue in cities. We would like to create a kids planning program. The International City Managers Association(ICMA)is having a crisis right now,they can't recruit people into the business, they don't see enough people wanting to come into local government positions. But there needs to be some awareness of it,and we need to generate that awareness in kids. She knows that Commissioner Levin has gone into the schools to talk about civics,and some of the kids are here in the audience. This is where you can see the kids in the bottom photos where they are designing playground tiles and they need them to be installed in their programs. The sheet of white paper with red circles on them, it was a planning session of kids who listed all the things they would like to see in public spaces, and what you see on top was designed by kids, inspired by kids,why not our kids? In addition we want to encourage civic engagement in general in partnership with the school, promote municipal leadership, and civic engagement,and she would hope that Commissioner Levin would stay involved in that effort to create our future leaders. Maybe each of you would mentor somebody and let them follow you around and understand what it is you do. Ms. Dannheisser said that the City Manager set up a meeting with the Netanya Foundation and Shlome Warner who is on the right side of that picture, these pictures come off of their website. Mr. Warner told us about staffing, budgeting,fund raising,and the fact that this has been magnificently successful in Netanya, Israel. He warns that because he was given the time to develop this, he said please tell your Commission that they should know that it will take three(3)to five(5)years but it will happen. They would like to do a kick-off fundraiser for us in Netanya. Ms. Dannheisser said where do we get the money for this? By significant grants that are out there, and she has located eight(8)people that she hopes to bring up to the Commission the next time which will be the next quarterly report. The grant that had been written and secured by this person knows where to go, and the City Manager has ordered a publication that directs us to these places as well. We are looking for donations and gifts, we will try to be a joint public/private partnership. That will include the use of some private spaces for public art,and of course corporate sponsorship. Now that the Perez Museum is open and we have seen some excitement that has been generated around that. We are starting to become a community that supports the arts, with Wynwood, Art Basel and the Perez Museum, and 5