2015-1113 Special City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida territory. Ms. Cutt said working with the Army Corps of Engineers is pretty eye opening. Mayor Scholl said what he thinks we are hearing is that it is the squeaky wheel syndrome. If we want to do something,you know you can always sit back and leave our fate in the hands of the County and the State and eventually, hopefully they are going to get to us. He knows for a fact, under the current Dade County Federal Project that is in place, we were third on the list from a hot spot perspective, and so the $10 Million that we kind of goaded the County into, it was the Mayor's Beach Alliance, the County wasn't moving and then when we had the press conference then all of a sudden all of our phones rang. For the$10 Million the County is going to put up, but they are going to get some matching funds, is really probably only going to cover the coming year for the City of Miami Beach because they had the two (2) worst hot spots, we were third. He thinks we will get treated kind of picky lee eventually at some level,or the question is,do we spend the money to build the data to create a position of advocacy, that is what Penny is saying. She is saying that we don't expect you to be able to afford to go out and form your own beach renourishment or maybe even afford these mitigation techniques, in some cases we might be able to afford them. But at the very least, we should probably do the data which is also going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions but you should build the data in order to create a position of advocacy in order to go out and prove that you do need these things or that these things would be effective and that ultimately then it comes down to who pays. If you can prove it to be effective and it may mitigate the State and the Federal government's requirement to renourish our beaches in the future, they may kick in earlier if we kick in as well. What we have to contemplate as a Commission is how much do we want to spend on this, do we really see that there is a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel or not. It is hard to say. Mayor Scholl said one thing that he does feel very comfortable with, he feels that we have the right experts. He can tell you that they opened his eyes up to really what happens here. The truth is, this is science and engineering, and coastal engineering, and even that isn't a perfect science because there are so many contributing factors, that to model it, it is complicated. It is a conflict modeling exercise. It is hard to say that in 2012 when the Pier was done, that the old Pier didn't contribute to slowing down that sand. When the Pier was done and that project started to trail off, the sand from the north started to trail off in 2013- 2014 and all of a sudden that little black dotted line is 2015 and it is back. It is hard to say but the one thing we do know, based on the science, if we had some impediments under the Pier that created a greater sense of natural ability and slowed things down. What it is doing is the sand is moving and it hits the wall so to speak even if it is not a solid wall,and then the sand falls out of suspension and drops, and then you start to build the sand up there but the trick is that you can't do that and completely gut the south end of the Pier, and that is where engineering comes in and there is a balancing act there. Or do we put these little walls of rocks offshore where the sand builds up against those and then creates that effect, and so there are a lot of things we can do. Those types of projects we can probably afford,again,the permitting is one of those Federal exams we go through in order to get something done. It is terrible permitting but you can permit it. The good news is that if we found something that we want to do, the permitting process is so onerous we can be going after the money while we are going after the permitting. We can start the permitting process and start lobbying our co-payers because remember, it is not our beach, it is a County beach. And the fact is, as many people come from Hollywood, or from West Dade to use that beach especially 12