2014-0401 Special City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting April I.2014 Sunny Isles Beach.Florida a situation and his suggestion would be to put on the next Commission meeting to give the Commission whatever you need in dollars so that we can handle the formality of passing whatever ordinance or resolution that we may need to give the funding to do that. The gates and the grass the same thing, if it is not in this year's budget, if we are going to wind up having to do it anyway we may as well do it now, it is not going to get any better by waiting. City Manager Russo said the grass is the one thing that he really needs to move on. Right now he can prepare a plan but there is a lot of discussion on this. He just came back from a program of the State City Manager's Conference and the whole consideration was, it was right on mark for where we are at, it was on quality services, out-sourcing vs. in-house, and what you should not do in-house, or what has worked and what has not worked. It was very productive to the point no nonsense session with three (3) seasoned City Managers presenting cases. The quality level of detail that you want is best achieved with in-house, whereas core significant functions,just for an example,what they said seems to work better and in his experience it kind of proves this out also. For example,clean our own bathrooms, we can contract that out. What could be extremely costly on the private sector side is contracting out the detailed attention that a trained attendant, a properly qualified attendant, can do in a Park to maintain it, keep up a level of service, and the quality of service, to be able to help people in the Park not just check the bathrooms in between, make sure they are clean, make sure there is no damage. There is a lot of service and routine maintenance that can be done during that day aside from major items that can be contracted out, there is a differentiation is the bottom line. He would be happy to meet with each Commissioner individually to discuss it because he thinks it needs a double level of detail. He is putting intermittent and some part-time staff in Intracoastal Park at least until he can get a little bit further squared away here. They will be watching that Park during the daylight hours from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. He is going to have some intermittent, part-time staff in there. Vice Mayor Aelion said that you have explained very well now his first point was the scope of work of the attendants, just detail more or less the same lines absolutely to make it as efficient as possible, not only standing and watching. On the fencing, if he is not mistaken, didn't we consider a certain full hedge instead of a fence. Mayor Edelcup said no, not on Collins Avenue. City Manager Russo said not the Intracoastal Park because we are trying to keep that view as open as possible because the sculptures are elevated and they have a nice look from the street or from a car. We want to try to keep that open look through to the water as much as we can. Vice Mayor Aelion said granted that Town Center Park has a fence,and so on one hand it may be like a continuation of the third, forth Park down the road. On the other hand it may compromise the look of the Park if you put the fence right in front of it. City Manager Russo said those are all the things that we consider,the essence of his concern is with that being the Park in the south end of the City that will attract the younger children like Town Center Park has, he is afraid that Park could end up as used and with the number of kids. Mayor Edelcup said we had an incident today where a kid almost ran out into the street chasing a ball out of Intracoastal Park because it has no fence. Intracoastal Park is not a deep Park like Samson Oceanfront Park, they are going to be playing pretty close to the street no matter what you do. City Manager Russo said the concern that he has and we kind of expected some of this but he thinks we need to address it. Vice Mayor Aelion asked if there is a compromise on the height, and City Manager Russo said that was the other thing, 8