2012-1018 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting October 18,2012 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Jaime Torrens to report on the General Obligation Bond,and said we will hear a presentation about the school expansion of 12 classrooms above the garage at the school,which will be provided by Architect Wolfberg Alvarez as well as the Contractor at Pirtle Construction. She also recognized Dr. Weissman who is here tonight. Jaime Torrens gave an overview of the General Obligation(GO) Bond the School District has placed on the November ballot. It is $1.2 Billion for improvements and technology upgrades at all of their facilities. The new GO Bond would provide a long-term solution to the facilities needs in Miami-Dade County. The GO Bond would also provide a continuation of the Bonds that were issued in 1988,which are"sun-setting"in 2017. This would provide a financing and funding vehicle to continue improving our schools and update technology at all of their campuses throughout the District. The financing of the GO Bond is a 30-year financing plan,and there is a tax calculator available on their website. The key to this is that they would provide funding and financing from investors outside of the local area infusing capital into our community for both the generation of j obs and improvement of our schools. There are four major categories of work involved: 1)renovation of our older campuses,half of the buildings are over 40 years old and about a third of them are over 50 years old; 2) replacements or partial replacements of buildings; 3) technology improvements; and 4) capacity projects to accommodate growth. There are 400 campuses with over 3,000 buildings, and there has not been a major renovation effort since 1988 when the last GO Bond was approved by the voters. Their most recent focus has been on capacity between class size compliance and the growth in our population. An amendment was passed by the State, however, Miami-Dade County never received its share of funding for class size compliance, and so they had to use local revenue which otherwise would have gone to renovate many of their buildings to comply with class size. Even though we make up 13%of the State's population we have only received in the best year 5% of the funding. Mr.Torrens said that they also have an issue with PECO(Public Education Capital Outlay) Funding which has been eliminated by the State over the past three years for renovation, maintenance,or construction of our schools. Our local option millage which is the primary source of our Capital Program has also been hit pretty severely between a reduction of 25% by the State from 2 Mills to 1.5 Mills and also from declining property values. It was determined that there was no other solution at this time to address the District's capital needs. Mr. Torres stated that the reason this is being done now relates to three items: 1) cost of borrowing right now,there are historic lows on interest rates in the financial markets;2)we have seen a declining construction value and there is a construction cost and there is the capacity and the best value for this District to do this at this time; and 3)there is plenty of idle capacity in the construction industry. Waiting any longer will make it a more costly proposition. Throughout this our School Board and Superintendent followed some guiding principles,the first and most important one is to enhance the safety and security of all of their campuses making sure that all of the students have access to facilities that are dignified and our teachers have safe and appropriate spaces. There is also transparency by making sure there is an oversight committee of local citizens who review the plans to make sure that the commitments that are made are kept, and that the financing is reviewed and audited on a regular basis. 3