The Sarasota City Commission met on July 21, 2025, at 9:00 AM in City Hall. The meeting included a proclamation, scheduled presentations on FPL's undergrounding program and the Colson Hotel, citizens' input, approval of minutes, consent agenda items (including discussion of the annual Floodplain Management Plan and the Bird Key Yacht Club conditional use), board appointments, a city manager search update, a legislative public hearing on vacation rental ordinance amendments, and three quasi-judicial public hearings. The meeting adjourned at 6:21 PM.
All right, good morning, everyone. I'm gonna call this uh Monday, July twenty first, twenty twenty-five regular City Commission meeting to order. And if you haven't already, uh, please silence your phones. And I'm going to call on the city auditor room clerk for the invocation. Please stand. We seek your divine strength, wisdom, and guidance in the deliberations that affect the lives of each of the citizens of our community. In the name we pray, Amen. Item is requested to be continued to another date. Move to approve. vote is that your vote yes all right uh the motion passes uh unanimously all right all right and if commissioners you'll join me out front we have one short presentation okay this morning we get the honor to uh honor a legacy business and today we have bikram yoga Sarasota are they here come on up did I say that correctly is okay thank you whereas the City of Sarasota Legacy Business Program recognizes the contribution of local longstanding businesses as an important part of the growth and prosperity of the city and whereas on July 19th 2005 bikram yoga Sarasota open for business as yoga caliente and whereas for 20 years big Rom Yoga Sarasota has been teaching authentic bicrom yoga and whereas the Bikram yoga Sarasota good thing I could ask you if I promised right has been a city's picture and contributing asset to the vitality and prosperity of the downtown Sarasota since two thousand five now therefore the city commission of the city of Sarasota Florida on behalf of the citizens of our community takes great pride in recognizing Bikram Yoga Sarasota as a legacy business and do would you like to introduce yourselves and say some good morning everyone my name is Timia Fusfash and one of the owners and my husband Farke Fusfas we co own BRM Yoga Sarasota and we really appreciate this recognition we really love teaching uh and we we like to be part of the city and you know the community so we we will be appreciated. Thank you tell us where you're located for if anybody doesn't know I know where it is well we are right on the corner on second sea second street and Lemon Corner across the bus station and Hell Foods so we've been there over 20 years so come and see us. Thank you thank you so much commissioners we'll get we'll get a picture for uh here three two one I don't have here okay we have a couple of uh scheduled presentations today so we'll go right into those that's agenda item um we'll start with agenda item two one and it's a presentation regarding the FPL storm uh secure underground program and I'm gonna call upon FPL area manager Devaney Iglesias to make the presentation and if you all will introduce yourselves for the record thank you thank you mayor alpert good morning commissioners interim city manager um my name is Devanie Iglesias for those who don't know me I am um as stated the area manager here for Florida Power and Light Company uh we received a request to go ahead and give a presentation an update on our underground program and I brought the experts to do that so sitting here with me I have Michael Flowers and Troy Todd uh so they'll go ahead and jump into this presentation for you and then we'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have following it. So they'll go ahead and jump into this presentation for you, and then we'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have following in. Thank you. Okay. And again, before you speak, recog you know say your name just because then on the transcript, people know who's who was talking. Yes, ma'am. Troy Todd. I'm the lead project manager for the West Region for the Storm Secure Underground program. Madam Mayor, Commission, we think thank you for your time for allowing us to give this presentation for you this morning. So FPL, you know, we're continuing to work on building a stronger infrastructure and some of the smartest grid technology in the U.S. So statistically, we have about 100% of our transmission structure uh structures have been either upgraded to steel or concrete. Approximately 82% of our power lines have been hardened and or undergrounded. 50% of our distribution lines, which are our neighborhood lines, which we'll talk to uh further in the slide, uh have it uh been converted to underground power. And we have approximately six million smart meters uh in our system. Uh about 220 intelligent devices, which is part of our smart grid technology. And then we have continuous tree trimming and pole inspections uh to help us harden our infrastructure uh in event of major weather events. So right now, one of the leading causes of power outages throughout our system on the overhead lines is due to vegetation. So you can see some of the pictures there. Um those are some of the obstacles that we deal with when we have a major weather event. Um it doesn't just include a major hurricane or a severe storm coming in. Um it can also include uh afternoon thundershowers. As you guys know, uh some of these flare-ups from these afternoon thunder showers can be pretty extensive and cause a variety of damage, including vegetation damage. So our storm secure underground program, or as we like to call it is SSUP, uh we do we concentrate on the neighborhood power lines. Um on a slide there, you can see uh the picture to the left is uh our major transmission lines that carry high voltage power uh from the power plant into the substations. And then from the substations, the middle picture is our main feeder lines or what we call our backbone lines, um, backbone lines. So that this is uh this carries electricity from the actual substation into the community itself. And then the picture on the left are the actual neighborhood lines that you'll see uh throughout various neighborhoods in the entire state and within the city of uh Sarasota. And our program, uh these are the power lines that we are concentrating on converting from overhead to underground uh to improve the reliability for those customers. Now we use a data-driven uh process uh to decide which areas that we're gonna go into and convert. And part of that data-driven and some of the data that we acquire are from uh uh past performance of that power line and major weather events, past hurricanes. Uh we also take into consideration power line outages during our afternoon thundershowers and any vegetation issues that may we we may have encountered on that specific power line. And then we also uh take some other data-driven reliability information, and that will help us determine which areas to concentrate on most I'm Michael Flowers. I'm the Storm Secure Underground Program uh lead outreach person. And so for the process of the program, we use Pike as one of our vendors and URB. It's a what we call a turnkey project. So they're the ones who are actually doing the work and we oversee them. Um and it's a three-part uh project. We have design, outreach, and construction. So if you see here, year one, we get a conceptual design that's given to the outreach folks.