2015-0319 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting March 19,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida is not a workshop saying we have this process, it is more about improving communications and getting information out and receiving information. It is more of an additional platform, additional dialogue with the residents. Commissioner Aelion said we are here to serve the people and so he is all for improving communications channels and any vehicle that would do that or improve that then absolutely. The logistics of this and the timing of this etc. maybe because something has to be somewhat structured that has to be some sort of a flexible situation where it is left to the will of the individual Commissioner or the Mayor to spearhead this,and as we are part of a team we are also individual selves to present to our constituents and also to the City as a whole. Vice Mayor Gatto said she really likes the idea, she likes the one-on-one interaction. Every time she goes down to get her mail at her condo at around 6:00 p.m. 99%of the time she gets stopped and asked questions and so she really likes that idea. She thinks that people are hungry for information and she knows there are ways that we generate that information with television and with the newspaper but still she thinks it is important to get that one-on-one feel. Her question is we have to be careful with Sunshine Laws,and she is trying to get a feel for how you envision we execute this. City Attorney Ottinot said we can have those town hall meetings, in fact he and the City Manager were talking about it. In 2002 and in 2008 we held town hall meetings about a budget issue,and City Manager Russo said we had increased taxes and that was the one and only time we increased taxes for the Capital Program in the early years when we were not sure how much money was going to come in. City Attorney Ottinot said also when we were embarking on a program for parks. Commissioner Levin said that is good and she asked if these meetings are noticed, and City Attorney Ottinot said yes, they have to be. Commissioner Levin said she likes the idea, she thinks it is worth a shot and that it is hard to say how it is going to work, we won't know until we try it. Along the same line she would like to bring something up and she had mentioned it in the last article she wrote for the Community Newspaper. We all get an email from Commissioner Heyman once a month and so she is able to get her message to us. She would like to look into perhaps having something. like that available for us, with a border on the outside, we will have links to everything that is going on in the City, and we can have the center for our own message and we can send the messages out. We are limited by how much we can put in the paper and communicate with the residents because we are on this rotating schedule and it would give us an opportunity to get out there more, other than just at the meetings. It is something that she would like to visit at another time. Mayor Scholl said basically he thinks it is a good idea, he thinks making sure that we get participation is important because basically when we are running for office we beg, borrow and steal to get folks to come to our meet and greets. What is interesting when we are interacting with the public is, and he is the happiest when 400 people show up screaming because he knows that folks are still involved in the community. Like when Mr. Kurtzer called him up the other day and he was pretty fired up,and frankly that is what our job is. He feels our job as a Commission is to talk to our constituents, and being a community that functions relatively well, and our constituents and residents are issue-related. The one thing he wants to be careful of is making sure we have an effective forum because ultimately if we 18