2005 0908 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting September 8, 2005 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida don't want us to do that in conservation. The comments from the Department of Transportation were minimal, looking for promoting through land use policies, alternate modes of transportation, mixed use developments, pedestrian connectivity, the kinds of things that we have already done in the Town Center, and they want us to demonstrate sustainability of the adopted levels of service on the roads. She said that the City of North Miami was the only surrounding municipality that had a comment and they are concerned about air quality and our research shows that there are no issues. All of these issues have been addressed in various portions of the EAR and that they are now ready to bring this back to the Commission at their next meeting for adoption, recognizing that after it is adopted the State then does their formal review and they still have more comments. Mayor Edelcup noted that we should have more specific affordable housing instead of only listing Marion Towers. Ms. Eichner said that in the comments that we are getting back from the State, Sunny Isles Beach is not alone. She said the issue of determining the need for affordable housing, there are problems with the numbers that the State requires the cities to use, they require cities to use the Shimberg Institute out of the University of Florida, and what she is finding throughout South Florida is their numbers don't make sense, their projections of build out don't make sense where they have gotten their numbers as far as affordability don't really work, so we really don't know what the need is or the projected need. Mayor Edelcup mentioned other sites to add. She said what the purpose of the EAR is in the Comp Plan is to show that the City is going to be proactive in providing affordable housing and maintaining what you already have. She said that a lot of the sites that Mayor Edelcup mentioned may very well be sources of redevelopment which are also other goals and objectives that we have already identified for the future, and she cautioned in terms of being sites specific. She said the Marion Towers was easy to identify because it was through Federal funding, and the others are more of what the current market rates are, and she cautioned that we really don't want to list them and then be put in the position where the City needs to take action to ensure those rental rates or sales rates stay the same or if the City or someone wants to go into redeveloping those properties, we would then be prohibited because they have been specifically defined as affordable housing or work force housing. Ms. Eichner said the first step is to wait for the formal comments to come back and then her recommendation would be to continue to work with the South Florida Regional Planning Council who is actively working on affordable housing policies and solutions regional, and that would gain acceptance by the State rather then going through a specific identification. Ms. Eichner said that there is a group called the Broward Housing Partnership which is a group of elected officials, South Regional Planning Council, bankers, investment people, developers, and so on, that are putting on an Affordable Housing Summit at the Broward County Convention Center, the first weekend in October, and the purpose of it is to bring together regulatory agencies, people who are developers and builders in the field, and people who need work force housing, and come up with a list of the types of things that can be done to effectuate affordable housing. Commissioner Goodman asked what other municipalities are doing and she said that right now very few cities are just about going through their EAR process, nobody had definite solutions, what they will do is iftheir EARs identifies that it is a need or a desire of the city, then the Comprehensive Plan will go through the motions of having policies, establishing some type of CRA and to further assist in providing affordable 20