This City Commission Conference Meeting on September 16, 2025, covered a range of topics including the state legislative program, city attorney search, public art program, and a development agreement termination. The meeting began with a public appearance on the FDOT street art controversy and included discussions on infrastructure projects, neighborhood concerns, and city hall plans.
Welcome to the City Commission conference meeting this uh September 16th, 2025. Um I appreciate you all being here today. We have a number of things to discuss. And um we have quite a few guests visiting with us today, so we'd like to accommodate their schedules and probably take them first so we can move forward with our meeting. Um soon as my computer warms up, be ready to go. So normally we take up uh communications at this point, and we don't have a communication from any of the advisory boards today, but I would like to take this moment and invite um the people that have been working on our on our behalf with regard to the the intersection and crosswalk controversy. And um, Howard, if you'd like to come up to the podium, introduce yourself, and give us a little update on what's been going on. Thank you. That's it. So good afternoon. My name is Howard Dubisar of Weiss Soroda Healthman, and happy to be here. Uh yesterday I had the privilege of representing the city of Fort Lauderdale in an administrative hearing at the Florida Department of Transportation. As I'm sure everybody understands, there was a memorandum issued by the department and a letter sent demanding that the city remove what they thought were 11 locations but 10 locations, various types of street art. And you were given the opportunity to file what's called a petition for a formal hearing. Uh the difference between a formal hearing and an informal hearing, informal, you go and you have an argument. There's no presentation of witnesses, there's no judge, there's somebody who's a presiding officer from the department itself. In a formal hearing, it actually goes to an administrative law judge who runs the proceedings if it's a trial. You'll have witnesses, you'll have exhibits. Because we think there are material factual disputes, not the least of which is whether, as Fort Lauderdale has in its contract, that these are traffic common devices versus the state taking the position that these are detrimental to public safety. Um we had requested a formal hearing and filed that petition. Uh nonetheless, the department maintained that we needed to appear for the informal hearing that they set, and that was yesterday, where I was joined by uh various city representatives, including your city manager, assistant city manager, uh Miloch, whose department I should know off the top of my head. Transportation and mobility. Thank you. Just doesn't roll off my tongue like that. So in any event, uh the first part of the hearing, the presiding officer who is a 20-year member or employee of the Florida Department of Transportation, uh, invited us to argue why it should be formal as opposed to informal. Um this is the third hearing that I've done of this type. I did it for the cities of Delray Beach and Key West. The same thing occurred. We went to Orlando to the rest stop at Turkey Lake, where they have an office building, and we argued why it should be formal. Uh the presiding officer took a 10-minute recess and consistent with the other cities came back and said that request is denied. We then went forward with the hearing. The state actually goes first, even though it's our petition and the FDOT had two lawyers there, and then the assistant uh secretary of transportation. They made their legal argument. Again, there was no evidence, no presentation of witnesses, and then I made mine uh and I was given the opportunity. They they rebutted me, I gave rebuttal to them. What happens at the end of this hearing is we're invited to give written closing arguments as opposed to actually presenting a closing argument there. The deadline for presenting our written closing argument is Thursday, and we will be doing that at the close of business on Thursday. Um experience proves to be accurate in this case, uh, prior experiences, we'll have that order probably at some time on Friday, Monday at the latest. Um there, as you probably know from the City of Delray Beach and from Key West, within hours of the order having been issued. Uh FDOT was on the scene with Florida Highway Patrol shutting down the streets, and they painted over the artwork. Uh in Delray, at first they painted over the mural between weather and automobiles. The paint went all over the place, then they went ahead and sandblast it. So putting it in the context of your case, unfortunately, we're going to expect a similar outcome based on the informal hearing. Uh and that leaves the city with some options at this point. One of which is, and again, because this is not executive session, I'm not going to get into what we call work product or strategies on how to deal with this or anything that would be privileged, but I can tell you procedurally what could occur at this point is we could file a notice of appeal. Arguably there is a rule that might result in staying the action without a hearing. Usually you have to file a motion, which like we would do in an abundance of caution anyway. In addition to that, the city can bring a declaratory judgment action in circuit court in Broward County, seeking to have declare that a memorandum which gave rise to this was effectively a rule, but the uh department didn't go through the required rulemaking pro uh process, and there are a whole host of other issues that we couldn't raise in there, including the fact, and this is something we argued vociferously at the hearing. The statute that this is predicated on in part is 3160745 Florida statutes. Uh that statute specifically contemplates that the department can give you a directive and you're required to comply with it, and there could be some financial implications if you don't.