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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2023-12-20 Marine Advisory Board Minutes1 City of Dania Beach Marine Advisory Board Wednesday, December 20, 2023 6:30 PM APPROVED MINUTES on 02/21/2024 Board Members: Antony Thackham - Present Neil Kutchera - Present Clive Taylor – Present Gregory Ralston – Present Stacy Brown - Present City Staff: Michael “Mike” Huck – Lifeguard, Chief Ocean Rescue I.Meeting was called to Order at 6:30 p.m. II.Approval of Minutes – Minutes 03-15-2023 Approved III.Reports and Discussions IV.B.S.O. Reports - None V.Old Business – Update on Broward County’s 2023 Marine Summit and FWC’s definition of derelict VI.New Business – Agenda to Broward County: (1) Dedicated BSO Marine Unit for the City of Dania Beach (2) Presentation to the City Commission to change the speed limit from “minimum” to “idle” speed at Harbour Towne Marina and Royal Palm (3) Have count sign moved (4) Change Ordinance for boat storage (5) Have land re-zoned to “mega yacht” or “marine-related industries” VII.Comments VIII.Adjourn - Board Chair, Clive Taylor called meeting to order at 6:30 p.m., a quorum was established. -Motion to Approve Minutes: Motion Stacy Brown, 2nd Neil Kutchera -Reports and Discussion: Board Chair Clive Taylor stated he will add this later on, BSO was not present. -Old Business: Board Chair Clive Taylor stated we can talk about it, Broward County’s 2023 Marine Summit held on 09/28/2023 which no one went to. He went on to state that it was very good and informative. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) was there, they talked about derelict, and they are very aggressive now. All it takes is a few stickers and they have defined what a derelict is: (1) no motor can move (2) open areas where you can get in and sink it (3) a list of them, and if a boat does not comply with these, they get a sticker for 21 days. They have gotten money now to remove the derelict. He thinks Hollywood has gotten rid of a lot of them in North Lake. It was a good meeting overall and he was the only one that went for you guys. He asked the Board, where were you guys? - Board Member Thackham responded he went to the last one. - Board Chair Taylor asked when was that? Board Member Thackham stated before this one. -Board Chair Taylor moved on in saying it is good for the Board to attend these because it gives you a feeling of what other committees are doing in the county and there are quite a few of them. He thinks there are like 8 that go from Hallandale Beach up to Deerfield Beach. The county asked him to send them their Agenda as to what he feels they should be working on: (1) Dedicated BSO marine unit for the City of Dania Beach (2) This Board needs to work on a presentation to the City Commission to change the speed limit from “minimum” to 2 “idle” speed at Harbour Towne and Royal Palm [they’ve been trying to get the speed limit changed for years]. They had a public meeting about 1 ½ years ago and nothing has happened yet. He mentioned he is going to send what he has to them, even though it is a year old. The other thing is the city is living on a gold mind and they don’t know it. The land on the south side cut off from Seahaven which is a very exclusive mega yacht dockage. There is a boat in there right now that is about 300 feet long and there was another boat restored from 29, that was there for a long time and was quite famous. The land should be re-zoned to “mega yacht” or “marine-related industries”. We will call it the Bahia Mar of Dania. It is sitting there, and they don’t know what they are doing. Somebody has cleared out the shoreline. He asked what’s this a secret investor? He stated that they need to be focused on this because they need their approval first before anything goes in there. He mentioned it shouldn’t be condos. - Board Member Brown stated she thinks it’s in their minutes also and expressly designated areas. - Board Chair Clive Taylor continued to say a 17-foot depth that was stretched from US1, with no bridges at all. No other county can say that they should book it. Don’t let all these useless condos that will just add to traffic. The marine industries and the activities that they do are non-invasive, quiet, and its big money coming in. He will send this to the county. He asked the Board what is Jerry’s last name, the Italian? - Someone from the Board responded Chris Capellino. - Chair Chair Taylor stated Gulfstream Road floods all the time. The neighbor that lives catty- corner of him, no one was doing anything. Traffic passes his house and floods all the debris in his yard, so he has been parking his boat on a trailer on the swale. He got cited and had to move it. While there is this poor guy getting flooded, the city is doing nothing to help him. He had to put more gravel/asphalt to get his land up a little bit. But the cars go through there so fast, it’s like a wake. It blows it all over his yard. There are other boats in their neighborhood, that are about the same size, covered up – they didn’t get moved. He proposes to bring to the city a change in the ordinance. For 15 years, he had a Ford350, 20-foot-long van. He parked it everywhere with no trouble. We are a marine city, what is wrong with parking a 20-foot boat on a trailer in a swale? I think it should be legal, there are no docks anywhere. He thinks the ordinance should be changed about boat storage. He will fax this to the county. - New Business: Board Chair Clive Taylor added to new business (see attached). [No attachments were provided to Board Liaison]. - Board Member Brown asked did the city ever respond to their request for information on the beach re-nourishment or where the sand went from the parking lot or anything else from their prior meeting? - Board Chair Taylor responded zero. He added they also didn’t get a response about where’s the money collected from parking. They don’t know that either and they should know. - Chief Ocean Rescue Lifeguard Huck added that the sand from the parking lot was put back onto the beach. This was the first time this past week that they’ve done this. - Board Chair Taylor stated back in the 90s when he first joined this committee, there was a guy there who was a marine architect. He asked the Board have they noticed the floating buoys around the city that say Dania Beach? - Board Member Brown responded yes. - Board Chair Taylor stated the marine architect was responsible for putting them all in and free of charge. Clive mentioned at the time he was just a member, at the time they wanted to put a sign (the sign is still there today but it is covered with mangroves and rocks) on county property and it says marinas, restaurants through the loop go down Dania cut off canal because when the county was promoting to go in the loop for kayaks and canoes and everything else. They put it on county property. Assistant City Manager Collin Donnelly 3 showed up at the last meeting with pictures. The county said to him that they should move it, they told him to go to the environmentalist for the county – move it out in the intercoastal where it is visible and off county land and put better wording on it. And have it where it doesn’t rot because it was mostly wood. He forgets the guy name but he got it done. He put move the county sign. Board Chair Taylor added to the list move county sign in the wrong place. - Board Member Kutchera added that there is a pretty visible sign there now. - Board Chair Taylor asked Board Member Kutchera have you been there lately? -Board Member Kutchera responded about a month ago and the county is doing a project right now to remove the invasive plants in the area. -Board Chair Taylor stated that can be something else that they add. He also mentioned that Collin was a good guy and he’s glad he is still with them. He asked if the Board had anything else or other comments. -Chief Ocean Rescue Lifeguard Huck asked the Board if they know of any good dock builders? He advised the Board that he built the existing platforms for the lifeguard towers, but they aren’t deep enough. So, they are going to hire a company to build them. They had to take one down because it was about to fall in from the last flood. They had to take it down about 2-3 weeks ago because the platform was collapsing due to losing so much beach. The crane was able to pull it out. The city wants to hire a company to do it. -Board Member Thackham stated the guy who built the bridge is really good. He mentioned talking to Tony which is one of the partners for that company. -Board Member Kutchera added that Ebsary is also good, they’ve done a lot of work for Port Everglades. -Board Member Brown asked about the restaurant. She asked why didn’t they put a cover over the playground? -Chief Ocean Rescue Huck stated he doesn’t know. - Board Chair Taylor asked is the army core still doing the beach? -Chief Ocean Rescue Lifeguard Huck responded no. He mentioned yesterday you could see out past the pier was all sand. It is something that a really sophisticated engineer needs to come out and go through. He thinks a lot of it is because of Port Everglades. Anything south of a port is just deleted and north of Point of Americas, Haulover is full of sand and Bal Harbour is full of sand. The ocean was supposed to have south-facing inlets. -Board Chair Taylor stated Hillsboro has a pump and every inlet should have that because we created this problem. He thinks Boynton has it and Port Everglades needs one bad. -Chief Ocean Rescue Lifeguard Huck the thing is the way that Hillsboro inlet is it allows all the sand to flow into the inlet and they just pump it out on the south side. Port Everglades doesn’t have time because it is just so much money going in and out which is why they made it so long that sand doesn’t build up in the inlet, it builds up north of the inlet. -Board Member Brown said they have to figure out a way to get it all the way back across. -Chief Ocean Rescue Lifeguard Huck agreed. It’s like the whole said bypass project. - Board Member Brown asked what happened with that? -Chief Ocean Rescue Lifeguard Huck stated they were talking about dynamiting that, creating a cavity. The cavity would fill up anyway because there is plenty of sand there anyway and you really don’t need to do that. You just basically need to pump sand from the north of the inlet. -Board Chair Taylor stated you can have an underground tunnel, ground pipe pump on one side and ship on that sand to them. -Board Member Brown asked how can they get this on someone’s docket of things they actually need to think about? - Board Chair Taylor asked Board Member Kutchera if he could answer this question? 4 -Board Member Kutchera responded he could not. But do see that there is a sand bypass project on the Broward County website that appears to be an active project. He mentioned that procurement is said to occur in the summer of 2023 with construction by the end of 2023. -Board Member Thackham asked why we don’t try to do something like that as opposed to putting more sand that ends up washing away. He said we just keep wasting money. -Board Member Brown mentioned the bigger issue when they cover the reefs, they lose the natural weight reduction potential of our reefs. Every time they have a sand pumping, it washes back offshore and it makes this nice soft radiant for the waves to come up to take more of our beach away every single time. And that’s why no reefs are surfacing now. And so that is the bigger picture, which unfortunately the sand removal doesn’t necessarily fix but it helps re-nourishing the beach. Getting an update on that would be a big forward movement for them and the tunnel that they are supposed to be creating. -Board Member Thackham said he has a friend that is a diver that they are actually going down removing the coral and hopefully bringing it back when – he doesn’t believe he even said when. - Board Member Brown said she could do coral but moving sand doesn’t really help. - Board Chair Taylor asked for a MOTION TO ADJOURN meeting, Board unanimously adjourned meeting at 6:56pm. Respectfully Submitted, Alberlean S.L. Pollard “Abbey” Parks & Recreation, Administrative Coordinator II and Board Liaison