2016-0616 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting June 16,2016 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Public Speakers: Former Commissioner Gerry Goodman; Sylvia Busch; Harvey Busch; Dennis Stubbolo; Mark Kanevsky Mayor Scholl called up the public speakers who were all in favor of the Social Seniors and did not understand what had happened that the City stopped payments to them. Dennis Stubbolo,President of the Social Seniors,thanked the Commission for their support and said they would accept all the guidelines except for guideline No. 10, at this time. They never sent out mailing lists to their members,they only have some email addresses and some phone numbers. When they register in October for the new season, at that time they will collect addresses of the members and give the City a copy. Mayor Scholl said some years back we had agreed to fund the Social Seniors$10,000 a year to support their cause,and the Social Seniors have done a very good job of building up a base of participants. Because we are taking the money out of the public treasury, part of the stipulation of the funding was that the Social Seniors had to give a spread sheet of their financial activity to our Finance Director on an occasional basis. The other stipulation we put on it, and whether it was in writing or not, what remains to be seen is that we had a cap on how much could be taken out in a salary or any kind of compensation for one of the officers, and that was $400 a month or $4,800. What had happened was we received the spread sheet in April and we saw a payment on there that didn't seem proper and so we immediately stopped funding and we called the Social Seniors. We said let's figure out what happened here and they came in with their accountant. The accountant took responsibility for giving them the direction to make the payment that way which was probably not how we would have liked to have seen it in a not-for-profit that has City funding. But during that conversation we also got some clarity that there might have been some misunderstanding between the City and the Social Seniors about some of the guardrails that were up regarding that funding. Of course when we did that, like most things that happen, a lot of this got misconstrued by a lot of folks. In any case what we decided to do was staff then engaged and said okay let's just be clear what the guardrails are and we will be fine if we can all agree to that funding and going forward, and so that is what this is all about. With that in mind, Dennis Stubbolo made a point about not having a complete roster of members, and that is fine. The point is if you can provide us with what you have, the times that you have it, he doesn't have any problem with making a modification to Item No. 10. Commissioner Goldman said she is a huge supporter and an advocate,and a fan of the Social Seniors. She remembers how the Social Seniors have evolved through the CAC and she profoundly believes the importance of having Seniors programming and activities,currently and obviously at the point which we have stationery,a real permanent location where we can have more programs and events. She is a fundamental believer in all that goes with Social Seniors. Of course from the vantage point of the Commission we want to see basic transparency and basic accountability, and all of those components have to work together, support, advocacy, transparency and accountability. Commissioner Aelion said since the City's inception,there has been efforts to have a Seniors program. Credit goes to the present group headed by Dennis who built up this group from a few members to over 300 members that we have today. He echoed the Mayor's sentiments. 8