City Commission Conference Meeting on 2025-09-16 1:30 PM - Sep 16, 2025

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Fort Lauderdale City Commission 2h 50m 1 speaker 4 agenda items transcribed 4 days ago official recording ↗

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What topics are introduced at the beginning of the meeting?

Dean Trantalis 0:00

Welcome to the City Commission conference meeting this uh September sixteenth, twenty twenty five. 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 as soon as my computer Warms up. You're ready to go.

Dean Trantalis 0:41

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 b on our behalf with regard to the the intersection and crosswalk controversy. And um Howard if you'd like to come up to the uh podium, introduce yourself and give us a little update on what's been going on. Thank you.

Howard Dubasaur 1:21

That's it. So good afternoon. My name is Howard Dubasaur. 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 eleven locations but ten locations of 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.

Howard Dubasaur 2:07

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 calming 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 and Milosh, whose department I should know off the top of my head.

Paul (Unknown) 2:54

Transportation and mobility.

Howard Dubasaur 2:55

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 twenty 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 ten minute recess and consistent with the other cities came back and said that request is denied. We then went forward with the hearing.

Howard Dubasaur 3:39

The state actually goes first even though it's our petition and the FDOT had two lawyers there and then the assistant uh secretary uh 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 if 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.

Howard Dubasaur 4:29

Um their As you probably know from the city of Delray Beach and from Ky West. within hours of the order having been issued.