2011-0809 City Commission Workshop

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Summary Minutes:City Commission Workshop August 9.2011 City of Sunny Isles Beach.Florida sugarcoat it at the administrative level or at the decision making level it is what it is, and unfortunately it is true because now we are dealing with the problem,now we are dealing with the aftermath of that, and it is very hard now to unseat that. He firmly believes that you all have resources and the ability to deal with this in a diligent manner if you want to. If there is a lot of money on the line,that usually incentivizes everyone in the right direction. That is the central issue from our perspective. • Commissioner Aelion said the creative part is finding a way to monitor this. Where are the parameters of the hours spent in a certain property to say that is actually where they live. Mr. Greenfeld said it is the resident's address of the parent that they go by, and just because the Grandma brings the child to school and picks up and goes to the Grandma's house within the City that by rule does not mean that that child should be attending this school because it should be the parent's address. Commissioner Scholl said all he is saying is that if somebody lives in the City and their kid is going to school, if it is a Grandma at least she is paying taxes, he could almost live with that. If that was the only issue we had there would be a couple hundred less students in that school. Commissioner Gatto said Grandma is equal to a day care center and that really is not fair. She asked if there was any kind of penalty that could be imposed if a kid gets caught, in other words, on the backend take a look at it and if they get caught they have to pay, like$500 or something that would scare people into not doing it. Mr. Greenfeld said that the State Attorney's Office would have to do that. Commissioner Scholl said we are stuck with the parameters to work with right now because anything else would have to be at a School Board and it is hard to get but the fact is that they do have parameters that they can work with. It is just a matter of resources from his perspective, if you put enough resources on it, we could deal with it. Vice Mayor Thaler said he has three children in different States and they harass the people far more than we do here, two or three times a year they have the parents come in and verify and re-verify the fact of where they live. We are not harassing the people enough and letting the public know that it is happening, these are things that are all covered up. Commissioner Gatto said the data base is a wealth of information which is the condo, there are so many of them here in Sunny Isles Beach. If you go there and talk to the board members or the property managers and go into the data base and you can find out who lives there. Mayor Edelcup said the most exasperating part of the whole thing is we really don't even know how many we are talking about, and because we don't know we hear numbers either ridiculously low or ridiculously high. It is just frustrating because as elected officials we are bombarded daily by our residents that want to see this resolved. We don't even have an idea the number and if we don't have an idea, than we suspect the School Board has no idea and then at that point there is a lack of confidence in whatever we are doing. Vice Mayor Thaler said we even have two numbers on the teachers,we permitted the teachers if they are working there to have their children there, and we have been told as high as 42 and as low as 9. Commissioner Scholl said there is nothing wrong with that, he is all for that, and we had hoped that City employees would be able to have their children in this school but we had to nix that because of the overcrowding issue. 5