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 Haulover as they come from Sunny Isles Beach, that beach is a public beach. And so the County does have an obligation to maintain that asset, it is not our asset, we just get the benefit of building on it and using it. He thinks this is not a question we are going to resolve today obviously but he thinks we have got very good experts. They have explained this in as plain an English as they can explain, we all get the gist of it, and it is our decision. Are we going to spend money on more analysis to create a scientific arguable argument for going after additional funding, or even contributing a chunk of our own funding in order to create some of these engineered breakwaters somehow, in one form or fashion because we can't afford our own beach renourishment,that is going to bankrupt us,that is not going to work. We are going to have to rely on what goes on. He agrees with Penny that we have had these extraordinary projects where they dig these basements 30 feet deep. To your point Commissioner Levin whereby we get the benefit of that sand, and it is going on right now. You know we have got that truck haul project,the County was dragging us through the mud on some of those approvals. What he would recommend is that staff works with our Consultants to figure out the cost of some of the phases of these surveys that we may want to do,and then they come back to us. Then we would have some kind of idea of the economics and we can decide what the risk versus trade-off is. Commissioner Levin asked if there was a finite data collection period that we need to do it or does the length of the data collection period differ depending on what we are looking at? Would there be any benefit in doing something that is ongoing over time,forever? Ms. Cutt said she thinks there is tremendous benefit in doing physical monitoring surveys over the summer more frequently than every 1,000 feet along the shoreline. Commissioner Levin said how many claimers,and Penny said indefinitely because if a named storm effects our beach, FEMA will provide funds to replace the loss volume of sand,and so the better data you have, if you have current data for what the condition was prior to the storm and you can justify this as our loss as a result of that named storm, then FEMA money is available to replace that volume of lost sand. That data feeds any future applications but when you do go in for an application you need current data from preferably the summer prior to the application period. Ms. Cutt said to address several of the Mayor's points,there can be funding available for the design and permitting fees of some of these projects. And so it is not only limited to construction of the actual project,there is normally some funding available,and Dade County scores very high because Dade County has so much public beach access. So being part of the Dade County Project means the holidays within that project typically get the 49.8%cost ratio from the State. Another thing to consider is the cost of structures can sometimes be more than the cost of a small beach nourishment project. There was a comment earlier that we may be able to afford a structure but not a project, that depends on what we are looking at. The permitting of that structure then within itself with the NEPA Environmental Impact Statement is a grueling process. Mayor Scholl said the argument would be that structures may have a longer term solution, the beach could all be gone within a year or two but the structure might have a longer life but that is what the State would hopefully tell us. Penny said right, and the sand when we do these sand replacements its sacrificial sand, a lot of municipalities like to look at it these days as maintaining the potholes from the roads. Commissioner Aelion said these are as advocacy too. The validity is basically when it is approached at a Federal level, he understands the permitting requires but as far as using 13