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2013.01.08_TC_Minutes_Regular TOWN OF HIGHLAND BEACH MINUTES OF TOWN COMMISSION MEETING REGULAR MEETING Tuesday, January 8, 2013 1 PM Mayor Bernard Featherman called the Regular Meeting to order in Commission Chambers at 1:30 PM. CALL TO ORDER: Roll Call: Members present: Mayor Bernard Featherman; Vice Mayor Ron Brown; Commissioner Dennis J. Sheridan; and Commissioner Louis P. Stern. Commissioner Doris M. Trinley was absent. Also present: Town Attorney Glen J. Torcivia; Town Manager Kathleen D. Weiser; Town Clerk Beverly M. Brown; Police Chief Craig Hartmann; Assistant to the Town Manager Zoie Burgess; and members of the public. Pledge of Allegiance: The Pledge of Allegiance was given, followed by a minute of silence. Civility Pledge: The Civility Pledge was recited by the Town Clerk. 1. ADDITIONS, DELETIONS OR ACCEPTANCE OF AGENDA Mayor Featherman asked for any additions or deletions. Receiving none, the agenda was accepted as presented. 2. PUBLIC COMMENTS AND REQUESTS Carl Feldman — 3210 S. Ocean Blvd. — I would like to thank Commissioner Stern and Commissioner Sheridan for hosting a fantastic "Light up the Holidays ". With little time and a few hundred dollars we had a great evening. With over 120 residents sitting and many more standing, it shows the residents want more community activities in Highland Beach. One of the highlights of the evening was Father Grace and the Barbershop Quartet singing the Hava Nagila. The residents of Highland Beach have at least three great institutions in our small Town. In the north we have the Holiday Inn which many of us use as an extra guest room and an evening of entertainment. The next highlight in our Town is St. Lucy's Church. St. Lucy's Church always comes forward when the Town needs extra parking as we did for "Light up the Holidays" or a concert hall for the Choral Society and even a polling place to have our town, state and federal elections. Then we have our Town Library. When the grandkids visit, that is the first place we go for the books, DVD's, arts and crafts programs, etc. Town Commission Regular Minutes January 8, 2013 Pacye 2 of 9 The Friends of the Library, over 500 strong, fund many of the activities taking place in the Library; cultural events, art shows, ballroom dancing, yoga, etc. The Library is the most used facility in Highland Beach; more than the Police Dept., Fire Dept., Town Hall. Probably the most used might be the water department because everybody drinks and flushes. This year the Commission has voted to take twenty percent (20 %) from the Library's book budget. I am suggesting we return this money to the Library book budget. The Commission has voted to fund approximately $6,000 to host a luncheon for the cities and town group that was not in the budget. We hosted the luncheon last year and with thirty plus members in this group, we should only host it once every three years. The Commission also voted to fund, which was not in the budget, to join the Delray and Boca Raton's Chamber of Commerce; the reason to promote surrounding community goodwill. But how about supporting goodwill with the residents of Highland Beach and return the twenty percent (20 %) funds back to the Library. 3. PRESENTATIONS Police Chief Craig Hartmann - Today I have the opportunity to introduce our newest member of the Police Department, Eric Aronowitz who is hired as our Accreditation/ Training Manager. Eric has twenty -three years of experience in police work and has a Bachelor of Science in Criminology from Florida State University. He has retained the rank of Master Police Officer within the City of Delray Beach. He has done accreditation and ran their training unit for the last decade and is an adjunct faculty member instructor for Palm Beach State College. He is a Florida Department of Law Enforcement, General Topic and High Liability Instructor. High liability for us is all the dangerous things we do; driving, defensive tactics and our fire arms. He is a certified Fire Arms Instructor, fire arms expert and a court recognized expert in fire arms. Accreditation is one of our goals as an agency for the Town. We will be focusing on this and it is one of the things Eric will be responsible for in getting us aligned with the Commission for Florida accreditation. It is very important; especially when you talk about what we do and the high liability and the things that we have to deal with as a town and municipality. The Town's certification through this is the gold seal saying that the Town's officers are trained, the standards, the protocols are all there in place and they meet that standard that is set by the State. Once you receive it, you have to maintain that and recertification is done every three years. Our Fire Department is an Accredited Agency. The other thing I would like to talk about is the new vehicle, which you approved for us. We have new graphics and we are waiting for it to come in but as you can see on the board that is what our new utility vehicle looks like. The Ford Explorer was ordered but there is a commodity hold on it. As we phase the other vehicles into our fleet that is what they will look like. This Saturday we have pet registration in front of the Town Hall from 9 to 12 and it actually came about from one of the residents. Officer Paul Shersty is leading that event and PetSmart and Police K -Nine will also be there. Regarding our dispatch and communications, I will give you a quick idea of the way we work. All our 911 calls and our police calls that don't go through our administrative number through the Town, they all go to a central dispatch point. The central dispatch point for this Town is the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office. It has been like this for years. You call 911 they dispatch us. If it is a fire or EMS call they route it to the Delray Beach Police and Fire communications, which is housed in the Delray Beach Town Commission Regular Minutes January 8, 2013 Page 3 of 9 Police Department. They then send that fire or EMS call to our station down here and it gets dispatched. The challenge we run into here, is that our calls are going all the way to West Palm Beach to a huge Sheriff's Office facility that dispatches for the whole County. If it is a fire or EMS call, they may take the information and send it right to Delray. Delray then again asks some of that same information and we have had situations where people had to repeat what has happened, where they are and what is going on. Nobody can understand why this is going on and it doesn't make sense that we are duplicating our efforts so to speak. What we have looked at doing is eliminating the Sheriffs Office and then all our calls, any emergency calls fire, EMS or police would go right into the Delray Beach Police Department. They would in turn dispatch us and/or the Fire Department. What this does is take one extra piece out of our point of service. It would eliminate our calls from going all the way to West Palm Beach. There is a lot to this and it is a huge step in our progression for officer's safety and our interaction with the Fire Department. Fire Chief Connor and I have talked about this before and we are certainly aware of the benefit of getting that direct information not just for fire or EMS, where life safety is the most important thing and is the majority of what dominates our calls for service in assisting the Fire Department. There was a report of over 700 or so calls last year in Highland Beach. It is critical that we are not losing that time. The Town of Gulf Stream has used the City of Delray for decades and certainly they understand the value of that. They don't have a Fire Department situated in their town, but the Fire Department in Delray responds to Gulf Stream calls and they dispatch to the Police Department. This is something we have discussed with the Town Manager, and everybody agrees that it makes sense. We are hoping to bring that forward to you in the next few months to see whether this is feasible and everybody that is involved in it agrees that it is. From a public safety standpoint, this is something we want to make sure happens. We can do this with no disturbance to any of the operations here. It looks like we can keep the number that everybody has to the Sheriff's Office. It would just roll into Delray 911. If we need additional manpower resources when things happen, we are going to end up calling Delray anyway because they are much closer with a quicker response time. We are exploring this right now and hope to bring back more information to you, but we wanted you to know that is on the table and the Fire Chief certainly agrees this is the right way to move the public safety end of what we are doing. Commissioner Sheridan — Coincidentally, this past weekend during our service at 7:30 in the morning at St. Lucy's we did have a need for an aided call. One of our ministers collapsed on the altar and the Priest that was the celebrant yelled out call 911. One of the head ushers called 911 and spoke to the person there that didn't identify themselves. He finally asked, are you 911 and the lady answered yes. Her next question was "Was the person breathing ?" and we waited and we waited and we waited. We had a second call made by a cell phone to the same area and we had been told that it was in progress. We waited a little bit longer and the head usher sent an usher from our church who ran to the Fire Department, which is next door, and knocked on the door. The officer answered, and when he was told what the problem was, he said he had not received a call yet from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. So we are there at the altar, we did have a doctor there and he was able to stabilize him. When he left he was unconscious and we had no idea what was going to happen thereafter and after seeing this I am a strong proponent of changing over when someone's life is involved in a few minutes we can save I would like to go ahead and do it. Chief Hartmann — That is a good illustration of the problems you have when you have more than one dispatch point of service. They can go to multiple places and you are transferring calls if you have the opportunity to eliminate it that is what we should be doing right now. Town Commission Regular Minutes Jgpik M 8 2013 Page 4 of 9 Fire Chief Connor — I have come here today to bid good year to everybody and also to produce our annual report to you. This is a composite of our entire department for our fiscal year for 2011/12 ending September 30, 2012. Highland Beach has an annual component to our report that begins on page 61 and just ever so briefly on page 63. To back up what the Chief was saying, within your town last year for the quickest of overviews, we ran a total of 736 calls and of those seventy percent were EMS or EMS related. The rest were everything from alarm activations to minor fires, a couple of car accidents, etc. As a medical provider, as a paramedic myself and as a nurse I can reiterate what the Chief was saying there is a saying in medicine and that is "time is muscle" be it referring to the heart literally as a muscle or "time is brain" is another saying. So when you are dealing with stroke patients and cardiac patients in particular, in the demographic of this community would be prone to such emergencies, four to six minutes after a period of that length of time without oxygen is when permanent damage to either the heart or brain begins to occur. So as you can tell just by the incident that Commissioner Sheridan relayed from this past Sunday, time is very precious and just losing 90 seconds or 120 seconds that is two minutes you are cutting half way into the survivability of such an emergency by unnecessary delays by just dispatching much less our response in our arrival on the scene. I, too, would like you to consider the dispatch of Delray taking over that I think it would expedite it would remove some of that duplicity and allow us to provide even better care to your residents. Mayor Featherman — I did speak to one of the lieutenants who was in charge of about six or seven stations around Highland Beach and I told him my concern is if we have an emergency where we need another ambulance can we get a second one quickly if the first emergency ambulance is out. He said that within four minutes he could get another emergency ambulance here and that was a concern to me because if we do have someone who has a heart attack or hurt and then another one occurs a few minutes later, we need attention and this would eliminate some of the problems you had. It is so important that we have back -ups in that as well for our community and from what you are saying it sounds good. Chief Connor — Contractually you have the services of back up from the entire Delray Beach Fire Department so there are five other stations to back up the residents down here; not just for fires but for EMS. There have been instances where there is more than one EMS call going on concurrently and we send a unit in. The closest one is in the vicinity of Atlantic and AIA. 4. BOARDS AND COMMITTEES: A) Board Correspondence: • None B) Board Action Report: • Read into the Record C) Board Vacancies: • Board of Adjustment & Appeals — Two Appointments • Code Enforcement — One Appointment D) Monthly Board Meetings • Beaches & Shores Advisory Board — January 8 ffi — Met this morning. • Planning Board — January 9th — Canceled. ■ Bd. of Adjustment — Meetings are scheduled on an "as needed" basis. Town Commission Regular Minutes January 8, 2013 Page 5 of 9 • Code Enforcement Board — Meetings are scheduled on a "as needed" basis • January 29 — Candidate "Qualifying" begins at noon. 5. PROPOSED ORDINANCES AND RESOLUTIONS: None 6. NEW BUSINESS A) Authorizing the Mayor to sign Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (SRF) Amendment to State Revolving Fund Loan Agreement D500200. Town Manager Kathleen Weiser — This is a clean-up item. In 2009, the Town secured a low interest loan with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to finance the construction of the replacement of the water main transmission line. During a recent audit, the Town's Auditor revealed that there is a discrepancy in the amortization schedule and this simply clears up that discrepancy to what the actual semi - annual payment is. MOTION: Comm. Sheridan moved to authorize the Mayor to sign Drinking Water State Fund (SRF) Amendment 3 to State Revolving Fund Loan Agreement D500200; seconded by Comm. Stern. A voice vote was taken. Motion passed with a 4 -0 vote. 7. MISCELLANEOUS — ITEMS LEFT OVER: • Minutes November 27, 2012 — Workshop Meeting December 4, 2012 — Regular Meeting MOTION: Comm. Stern moved to approve the November 27, 2012 Workshop Meeting minutes and the December 4, 2012 Regular Meeting minutes. Motion seconded by Vice Mayor Brown. A voice vote was taken. Motion passed with a 4 -0 vote. 8. REPORTS — TOWN COMMISSION: A) Commissioner Louis P. Stern — I would like to welcome Eric Aronowitz. We have met once or twice and your reputation precedes you. We welcome you aboard and good luck. I would also like to Town Commission Regular Minutes _January 8, 2013 Page 6 of 9 commend the Police Department on their Pet Registration. I have had nothing but positive feedback from the residents and I look forward to coming and eating one of your hotdogs or hamburgers. B) Commissioner Dennis J. Sheridan — No Report. C) Commissioner Doris J. Trinley — Absent. D) Vice Mayor Ron Brown — I would like to say thank you to Commissioner Sheridan and Commissioner Stern for hosting the wonderful "Light up the Holidays ". Good job. E) Mayor Bernard Featherman — No Report. 9. REPORTS — TOWN ATTORNEY: When we went through the whole Charter process, you adopted two Charter amendments; one that you adopted needs to go on the ballot. In speaking with the Town Clerk, she has advised that the one that goes on the ballot, in response to the question has to say "yes" or "no" and we wrote "for the amendment" or "against the amendment ". With your permission I will revise it so that it is a "yes" or "no" and then I will circulate a copy so you can see that. Commission agreed by Consensus. 10. REPORTS — TOWN MANAGER: A) The Town Commission in November gave consent, by consensus, to support a Charity Twilight Cycling Ride on March 23 We have had another request for that day for an Ultra Marathon Running Race. It is not the same time; plus one uses the street; one uses the sidewalk. Actually the Ultra Marathon, the one that is the second request that came in, has traditionally had that date, but we had already approved the other one. There is no objection between the two events and it is the third year for this Palm 100 Ultra Marathon Running Race. They are requesting use of the parking area in front of Town Hall for a check -in and water stop and they will provide us with a Certificate of Insurance. I would like authorization to send a no objection letter to FDOT for that particular event. MOTION: Comm. Stern moved to authorize the use of the Town property for a water stop and to send a letter to FDOT voicing no objections; motion seconded by Comm. Sheridan A voice vote was taken. Motion passed with a 4 -0 vote. B) Before the meeting, I put a letter in front of you from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. This is a cycling event that is going to take place on Sunday, March 10th. They too are asking to put a stop out front in our parking lot and I would ask consensus to send a letter of no objection for this event. Town Commission Regular Minutes _January 8, 2013 Page 7 of 9 Commission agreed by consensus. Q The last thing, for information purposes as I do not need permission from the Commission, is that some of you attended the Beaches & Shores Committee meeting this morning; we lost around nine of our trash receptacles on the beach and I am going to move forward with replacing those. The reason I am bringing it up to you is that they cost about $1,000 a piece and that is approximately a $9,000 expenditure, but it is something that is very important. 11. CONSENT AGENDA No items scheduled. 12. PUBLIC COMMENTS AND REQUESTS RELATED TO ITEMS DISCUSSED AT MEETING Ron Clark, 4750 S. Ocean Blvd — I would like to make some comments regarding the presentation made today from both Chiefs. As a professional manager for many, many years, I have had the opportunity to oversee a one - hundred transit Police Department. A very important item for that Police Department was accreditation and I would encourage the Chief to very much move forward, and the Commission to move forward with supporting the Chief in getting this Police Department accredited. There were a number of items that were very positive with that. One of them was federal monies and state monies that became available to a Police Department if they were, in fact, accredited for certain trainings and certain things we would be able to access down the road. Another item, as far as the professionalism, was to be able to get along and be recognized by the peer communities; particularly with the police enforcement. What we have here is a small group in Highland Beach. Obviously we deal very closely with Delray Beach and Boca Raton Police Departments. Having an accredited Police Department here is going to elevate how each of those communities look at us and deal with our issues and problems and actually work with the Chief. The second item I would like to discuss as a Property Manager here in Highland Beach is the issue of 911. Unfortunately, I have had the opportunity to make multiple calls to 911, and one of the things I have learned in my tenure of doing this, is that one of the first things I do when I call 911 for someone is to immediately ask for the Delray number. I do not spend the time trying to explain what the problem is to the Palm Beach Sheriffs Office 911 because you only have to do it all over again. Often times I know people get excited, but if we can encourage people that when they have to call 911, until something is done, what they simply need to do is say this is Highland Beach and I need to talk to the Delray Beach dispatch and explain it to the dispatch. You can save many minutes by doing that without having to do it multiple times. I have had the opportunity to time the emergency response. Our facilities are on the very south end of Highland Beach and with each call that I have ever made, from the time to the Delray Dispatch to services, it was three minutes or less which I think is excellent. I applaud the Fire Department for that. Town Commission Regular Minutes January 8, 2013 Page 8 of 9 Carl Feldman , 3210 S. Ocean Blvd — On today's Agenda under Boards and Committees, No. D, it says "January 29 Candidate Qualifying beginning at Noon ". I would like to propose something different this year. Every year this Town is inundated with campaign signs. It really blights the Town. If we have three, four how many candidates we have, we only have three miles and we can have 100 signs up. What I would like to propose, if the Town would allow it, is to get a banner put up in front of Town Hall, like we did for "Light up the Holidays ", listing the election date and what candidates are running and that would be it. If the candidates would agree to that, the money they would put into signs they could put into this banner at a great savings and it also would not blight the Town. Town Attorney Torcivia — You have first amendment issues where people are allowed to put up whatever signs they want. The Town is trying to regulate that and we went through that when you passed your Campaign Free Ordinance. Even just for Town Hall there was a lot of discussion about that. There is not a lot that the Town can do unless you, for example, ban all signs. Because if you are banning particular signs, then the first amendment says you are basing it on their content of what is being said as opposed to signs for Chevy, Toyota and everybody else. You ban all kinds of signs then that is a different story. Mayor Featherman — How does that affect us where we did pass that we are not going to have any signs within City Hall. Town Attorney Torcivia — That is just within City Hall. Carl Feldman — What I am saying is not ban the signs but the candidates getting together and agreeing to it, not the Town. Have the Town allow us to put up the banner on Town property as we did for "Light up the Holidays "; one banner in front of Town Hall, not the Town full of signs. Would that be okay with the Town if the candidates agree to it? Commissioner Stern — I don't know how far out the Resolution that we passed extends. Does it go to the front of the property or just the buildings? Town Attorney Torcivia — I will look at it again but I think it was just the buildings itself. Commissioner Stern — I can only speak from a personal perspective. I don't think I would be sitting here if I did not put signs up when I ran for this office. I got a lot of compliments on the colors, the picture. In fact a number of people told me they didn't even know they had an election and thanked me. I for one find signs an asset. Commissioner Sheridan — I feel that, unless the Town makes a decision on this banner, it is strictly in the hands of the candidates which way they want to go. I think Mr. Feldman is trying to get the feeling of what the Town Commission would do regarding this one banner out there, and if there is permission given for that, then he would approach the other candidates and see if they were in agreement. I don't object to that but I truly feel that anybody running, if it were myself, I felt the same way that the signs, even though they did definitely get out of hand, they did serve their purpose. Vice Mayor Brown — I like the signs. I think they are great. They are only up there from February through March 12 and I see nothing wrong with signs along the road letting you express who you are to get elected for whatever office you are running for. George Kelvin, Braemer Isle — How did we lose nine trash receptacles from the beach? Mayo 1 r Featherman — inspected the entire beach with the Police Department sand buggy and the trash receptacles were already lost. They were washed away with Sandy. George Kelvin — I would hope that when the Town purchases the nine new receptacles that they would be somehow anchored in the sand to prevent them from being washed away in the future. Vice Mayor Brown — The one that was in front of our Homeowner's Association was tied down with a thick rope onto a piling. Ten to twelve foot waves Town Commission Regular Minutes January 8, 2013 Page 9 of 9 were coming in and there was no way the receptacles were going to stay there regardless of how they were secured. George Kelvin — I think it might behoove the Town to get some kind of an engineering report as to what type of anchor would be effective against the water incursion. If we are going to spend $9,000 it would be a shame to have them swept away with the next hurricane. 13. ADJOURNMENT There being no further business to come before the Commission, Mayor Featherman adjourned the Regular Meeting at 2:10 PM upon a MOTION by Commissioner Sheridan• seconded by Commissioner Stern. APPROVED: Bernard eatherman, Mayor Ron Brown, Vice Mayor Absent D ' M. Trinley, Commi io r Dennis J. Shetidan, Commissioner — k6E�� o 's P. St , Commissioner ATTEST: Beverly M. rown, M C Town Clerk Dat