2011-0906 Special City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Special City Commission Meeting September 6, 20 II First Budget Hearing Sunny Isles Beach, Florida and Commissioner Scholl agreed. Mayor Edelcup said he has a problem with these numbers and he would rather not see a number like that because if we set a number like that, somehow it winds up getting spent. Commissioner Scholl said he was confused as to why we are adding the expenditure through 9/30 to the budget, and Assistant City Manager/Finance Minai Shah said it is the expenditures through last fiscal year 9/30/2010, and Commissioner Scholl said he understands that but wasn't that part of the original budget of the project because we were at $4 Million and we were adding about $1.1 Million based on the current discussions regarding the additional expenses that we needed, he thought that the $500,000 that we already spent was out of the original budget. Assistant City Manager Shah said that was the understanding but when we actually did fund the account for professional engineering services a few years ago, it was her understanding that when the City went back out to get the construction company it was $3.7 Million and change, the original adopted budget was $3.5 Million, $4 Million minus the half a million, but because the contract came in over, plus there were components of the services that were not included in the contract such as special inspections, etc., that is what brought this number back up to $4 Million. Commissioner Scholl said we will go back over that because he was under the impression that we had about $3.7 Million and then we appropriated an extra $.5 Million which brought our appropriation up to $4 Million. We had the additional expense with Calvin Giordano and Associates, and we have a pretty good number on that now but that didn't add up to $5.8 Million, it added up to about $5.2 Million plus change, but we will discuss it. Mayor Edelcup said he wants somebody to come back in the next couple of weeks with the numbers. Commissioner Scholl said the goal is to present a hard budget. Vice Mayor Thaler said what you are saying now is that the Pier is up to $5.2 Million, and Commissioner Scholl said based on the last time that they spoke about this, we are getting our final numbers for all of those additional costs that we didn't put in the original budget, and we are up to $5 Million and change but he believes that the numbers we have are manageable, before a lot of those numbers were estimates. But this extra half a million is new to him because he thought that was in the original budget, and Assistant City Manager Shah said that half a million dollars was for past costs to Marlin Engineering, and Commissioner Scholl said the money we spent on Marlin was part of the original scope of the project. City Manager Cohen said when we first put these numbers together we were under a different working assumption, we have since changed our working assumption and our numbers, and we neglected to go back in and adjust the numbers that you are seeing on this page. Mayor Edelcup said that the completion date is wrong as well. Commissioner Scholl said the point is that we are getting close to getting our arms around it, we are getting close to the timeline but we are not there yet. City Manager Cohen said what we are bringing forward to the September meeting are all the elements related to the Calvin Giordano contract including GeoTech Special Inspection, etc. He said we are not bringing forward at that meeting, the additional insurance which is another item, should we be bringing that forward, and Commissioner Scholl said no, he wants to scope the whole thing at the meeting, basically we are just about there on the numbers based on their conversations and our meetings with Calvin Giordano and Associates. We should bring clarity on the half of a million dollars, and there is a dependency on the timeline based on the final permitting but we should have a reasonably 6