The Fort Lauderdale City Commission held a conference meeting on Monday, June 30, 2025, beginning at 1:30 PM. The meeting covered a neighbor presentation, a state legislative update, and several business items including the Transportation Surtax Interlocal Agreement, Holiday Park parking proposals, the Himmarshee Entertainment District, and a mediation update with Miami Beckham United. The meeting was recessed at approximately 6:00 PM and was scheduled to resume at 6:30 PM for the evening session.
Good afternoon, everybody. If you all take your seats. So this is a day I've been waiting for my whole life. John Herbst now gets to be mayor for the day. Thank you, Dean, for giving me this opportunity. I appreciate it. Meeting in turn. No, sorry, I can't do that. Hope everybody's enjoying our summer so far. I'm getting ready for the 4th of July. Yeah. Should be on. Yep. Yep, we're on. We're good. All right. Well, once again, thank you everybody for coming on in. I appreciate your making the time to come on down and be part of our government. So it's a conference meeting for the City of Fort Lauderdale for Monday, June 30th, 2025. And we will start off. We have one neighbor presentation, and then we're going to move on after that to our end of session uh state legislative update. So, Troy Liggett, you've got your turn at the mic. Thank you, Commissioner Herbst. Vice Chair Herps, I should say, and members of the commission. Um, thank you for this opportunity. I'm Troy Liggett, the resident of Fort Lauderdale representing the Middle River Terrace Neighborhood Association, whereas where I'm serving as my fourth term as president. Um I'm a former member and chair of the Central City Redevelopment Advisory Board, commonly known as the CRAB, which is what I'm here to make my presentation about. Um I'm here to ask for your support and action on three issues involving the Crab, which is a vi which advises you on the Central City Community Redevelopment Area. As background, the Central City CRA was established in 2012 to combat blight across parts of several neighborhoods north of Sunrise Boulevard. The CRA runs from Lauderdale Manors in District 3 to South Middle River, Middle River Terrace, and Lake Ridge in District 2, and is important to Point City Heights neighborhood in District 1. As I mentioned, I have three requests for you. First, I ask that you consider extending the three-year term of service of the CRAB to mirror that of the nine-year term of service for the Northwest Progresso Flagler Heights Advisory Board. The Central City Advisory Board serves three, can serve three one-year terms. Thus, you appoint them every year, and they can serve for only three years total. This is unlike almost all other city boards, except for the short-term ones that you appoint for specific reasons. Um is very different from the other CRA's board. I ask that you extend the terms for two important reasons. First, there is an extensive learning curve for new advisory board members. And the CRAB spends an ordinate amount of time simply bringing the constant flow of new members up to speed. By the time by the time they figure out what's going on, and I can attest as a former board member, they're gone. And we start over. Second, the CRA has a lifespan of 30 years, with 17 years remaining. And redevelopment is a long-term task that needs consistency. The lengthy nature of CRA projects is generally longer than the short three-year terms of advisory members. So the board that was involved with creating a project is almost never around to serve for its implementation, which has caused problems specifically on the recent Fourth Avenue Streetscape project, which was designed five years ago and faced many delays. There are many reasons why it's taken over a decade for the CRAB to endorse the rezoning proposal, but I suggest one of the most significant is the constant turnover of the board. We're on our fifth new board since the initiative began. The constant turnover also directly led to the Crab's recent endorsement of a rezoning plan for parts of the southern part of Middle River Terrace. They passed the plan by an eight to two vote, and I suggest that that vote total is incredibly deceiving because six of the eight votes were appointed by members were by members appointed just a couple of months before the vote, and had never been engaged in the rezoning process before their appointment. Indeed, five of the six were recruited by one South Middle River resident on behalf of commercial property developers who are not pleased with the compromise and plan endorsed by an equally loud-sided vote the other way just 10 months earlier.