All right, Mayor.

So thank you all so much.

Today is April 22nd, 2026.

We are here for a special city commission meeting to discuss, as the city commission has before, the status, the implementation, and the impacts of the um the Dune implementation that's been taking place on Hollywood Beach.

And uh we set this meeting in order to uh consider and take any action uh deemed necessary um with regards to the agreement uh that uh was uh brought about this work and so I'd like to turn it over to uh city manager Raylon Story and thank our uh county partners for being here.

Excuse me, Mayor, can we do roll call, please?

It's a special meeting.

Okay, uh roll call.

Let me let everybody's microphone up real quick.

Go ahead.

Commissioner Biederman here.

Commissioner Cantana here, Commissioner Shoeham here, Commissioner Hernandez.

Here, Vice Mayor Clary.

Yes, Commissioner Gruber?

Here.

Mayor Levy.

Here.

All right, City Manager.

Good morning, uh, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners.

Um, as uh you are aware, um, at our last city commission meeting, we had a robust discussion uh regarding the shoreline protection project uh that is currently underway um on uh Hollywood Beach, and some of the concerns that you all were hearing from residents, public safety, business owners, um staff had uh been out on site, a number of different uh folks from different departments and had been in contact with uh our partners at Broward County.

It's important to note that uh the city uh over many years, really decades since the 1970s when beach renourishment programs first really began in South Florida, have been partnered with the county on these types of programs, with the county providing a lot of guidance and leadership in this regard.

So in 2024, uh the county undertook a renourishment project, completed, I should say, a renourishment project on Hollywood Beach, and a part of that project was the installation of dunes, and we worked uh pretty handily with the county to uh try to figure out how to make that and tailor that to really work well on Hollywood Beach.

At the same time, several of us also are very aware, and and in fact, attended even a presentation yesterday on the long-range plan because this is an ongoing uh ongoing issue on Hollywood Beach.

How do we keep sand?

Not just on Hollywood Beach, but all of the beaches in Broward County, um, and but particularly south of the inlet.

And so another project that is very important to that is the Sand by Pass project, a project that has been in the planning and permitting for 30 years and began construction this past fall.

So I say all of that just to really share that these, even though we're here for a very specific discussion today on the current status of a project, that it is part of this larger framework of cooperation and collaboration with Broward County on these efforts.

Jennifer Herrado, who leads uh that division.

Um, we uh spent a great deal of time, Jose Cortez, Chris Roschek, our consultants with Moffitt and Nickel, um, and some folks from public safety on the weekend working through a lot of the issues.

And so you're going to hear from Jose Cortez uh this morning on how those discussions went.

I think we've been able to uh really uh come to agreement on much of it.

Um there may still be a little additional guidance that we need from you regarding those discussions, uh and we hope to get that today so that we can uh move forward um in a continued collaboration on this issue.

So with that, I will turn it over to Jose to give you an update on the discussions.

Good morning, uh mayor, vice mayor, commissioners, uh city uh the manager and city attorney and everybody else.

I will uh move on to give you before we go into the details of the project a little bit of background on kind of the history of the city, how we got here, timelines, so that uh it is beneficial in the context of the discussions today.

You know, the adopted the adopted uh Doom Master Plan, as you all know, uh was adopted in 2020, and that Dune Master Plan, for the most part provided the framework in which any design of dunes uh for the city of Hollywood uh was going to be undertaken.

Yeah, so it is not intended to be a set of design documents, but more of a guideline of what the city aspired uh or aspires to have uh as part of this of this uh master plan, yeah, with a vision uh long term for how the beach and the resiliency elements uh are kind of meshed together to provide uh what the city wanted.

Uh at the same time, while the city is in the process of doing Dune Master Planning, the county also has uh coastal management element, and some of this was presented in 2024 that supports the same initiatives of you know, increasing living shorelines and dunes, and pretty much aligns with the city's uh Doom Master Plan concept of you know, adding resiliency to our city as well as to the county.

Uh through the process of uh the segment three project, which uh was funded through multiple different uh sources of funding, the Army Corps of Engineers uh with the county completed the beach enlargement in April of 2024.

You see the permit number from there, and the what you see in the right in the left-hand side of the screen is a letter that was sent back to uh the previous city manager, George Skeller in 2003, that the county at that time understood that they had you know funding to undertake the work and that there was not going to be a need for the cities to uh contribute to the project and that the city the the county was undertaking the job uh completely uh in uh for the benefit of the of the city.

Uh for other context and timelines, I think going back to historically, and there's a lot more timelines.

I was just put in here the ones that are kind of the most relevant, but there was already discussions from 2023 on what this design concept should be for City of Hollywood within the context of what they needed from a resiliency standpoint of view, as well as the city's Doom Master Plan.

We worked through those, and then in February of 2024, we came to the city commission to adjust the amend the Dune Master Plan to reflect an 8.4 NABD because our Dune Master Plan only referenced an elevation uh as related to the new wall heights.

And at that meeting, there was there were discussions about what the city commission wanted this design to look like and what was intended for the design to have uh incorporated as part of it, meaning that the project design uh needed to meet the intent and the desired desire of the Doom Master Plan.

Bishminelli is finished a couple of months later.

And then design continue.

Um and I think the latest presentation that was done to commission was in October of 2025, where the access agreement with the county was brought to this body for review and approval, and that included discussions on the design uh elements of the project and what the vision and desire of the city commission was.

Again, in concert with the Dune Master Plan.

Uh the agreement was executed in June 13th, and construction of the dunes began in June 13th, January 13th.

And the Dune construction began in January 20th.

From that on, we've been dealing with the project and challenges and issues here and there that you know always surface and projects, and that brings us to the city commission last week and today, and we're kind of share with you our evaluation of the site and current situation.

So for the purpose of the discussion, and I think this came out uh out of out of the site visit, we kind of broke down the project in kind of four segments.

And it reflects kind of the unique uniqueness of the different areas, whether they're have a lot of erosion.

Uh and and as we're going through the discussion, I'm going to show you how each of the segments uh is reflected during the visit.

And uh, and and then we'll share with you what the county has proposed that can be done in those areas, and at the end, we'll obviously give you the recommendation of what we feel should be appropriate given where we are today.

Uh, main concerns that have uh prevailed or been part of this project is obviously the protection of the coconut palms.

And I think that as we go through different segments, this is prevalent in pretty much all the areas where we have palms, uh, the post and rope, uh, some uh uh have uh talked about the how high they are, the elevation, if the ropes are correct.

So as we go through the different segments, coconut palms, the post, and pedestrian access, uh will be but that became an issue at the beginning of the project because there was a kind of a misunderstanding of whether the access points were supposed to be at elevation.

Public works is working on uh lowering those segments where those access points were left at at a higher elevation, and and the and the contractor from the county, starting from Bugambilia south, was going doing them at grade.

So we are currently in the process of lowering those access points that were not lowered as part of the project until we agreed with the county that they had to stay at grade.