City Commission Conference Meeting on 2025-10-23 1:30 PM - Oct 23, 2025

meeting

Fort Lauderdale City Commission 3h 47m 3 speakers 8 agenda items transcribed 3 days ago official recording ↗

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What is discussed at the start of this section?

Dean Trantalis 0:01

Everybody and welcome to the uh Fort Lauderdale City Commission Conference meeting. Uh thank you all for being here today. Uh we have some very important things to discuss and to decide today, so uh um very happy that uh we have people here to participate in the process. So uh for those of you who are here for the first time Uh we begin our conference meeting by going through the agenda and tonight excuse me, this afternoon we have uh One communication from the uh From the um Uh The Board of Adjustments. And um And Let's see, it starts out with a motion made by Miss Pat Rathburn. Seconded by Mr Hogopian. Communicate the following to the city commission. The board desires that the following be addressed. That the administrative variance does not apply to any new construction.

Dean Trantalis 0:57

City Commission w may want to reconsider hearing appeals because of what the board anticipated would be their sheer volume. Um That suggests that people would disagree with what the Board of Adjustment has to say and they would want to come to the City Commission? And that's are they saying that that would happen on a regular basis? Well remember we we let we let them bypass the court process, right? And we said we would take those appeals. We would take that, right? Yes. Um Yes, Mr. Fajardo. I see you waltzing up to the podium.

Anthony Fajardo 1:30

Just wanted to make sure I was here to answer any questions you might have regarding that. We um Have talked about it internally. Uh sorry, Anthony Fajardo, Director of Development Services. Uh we've talked about that internally. If you want us to make a change to the ordinance we could, but we think an interpretation will cover it. Um we're basically looking at anything that's brand new would have to go through the typical process. Anything that's subject to an existing structure and some kind of change to modify it would go through the administrative process.

Dean Trantalis 1:56

So so um We're not looking to make this change. So I think that we want i the the Board of Adjustment is asking that new construction, not be able to appeal to the city commission. uh if there's an adverse ruling at the at the board's uh Meeting. Is there any appetite on the Commission to change that? I'm not sure that's correct. to our ordinance that has the administrative appeal process um

Earl Hall 2:31

not administrative review process for variances. And it also has a change for the appeal process. That allows a uh an order of the uh a order from the board to be appealed directly to the city commission and that's what

Dean Trantalis 2:48

they're alerting you to as their concern. Right now those appeals are taken to circuit court, right. So this is to allow a homeowner to not have to go through the expense of going to court, they could instead come here to the city commission. Correct. That that was the philosophy

Anthony Fajardo 3:09

and the Board of Adjustment, just based on the t uh the time that they take on reviewing these items, just is

Dean Trantalis 3:16

wanted to point out to the uh commission that it may uh take up a lot of your agenda space if you were to hear these appeals on a regular basis. Well I think we anticipated anything like that. I think it's important that You know, anything we can do to save a property owner the expense of going to court 'cause uh it could be expensive. And um I mean I would just be in favor of keeping it okay, so we have the administr we have the we have the um recommendation by the Board of Adjustment and if there's any further discussion on that we can take it up tonight when we when we discuss the item for vote, correct? Okay. I one clarification, Dwayne. The new construction part is handled okay though, right? It that is what Anthony was talking about with regards to the intent.

Dean Trantalis 4:01

Correct.

Dean Pasqual 4:02

We um we revise the language and that's I believe

Earl Hall 4:07

Uh Would be page four. Page seven of the um draft ordinance. We've rev revised that language

Dean Trantalis 4:17

to ensure that it's applies to only existing single family residential dwellings or existing accessory structures to existing single family dwellings. Thank you. Any further comments or questions from the Commission? Um and Mayor, my m my thinking of why I was a proponent to to change this from appeals to the court to appeals to the Commission is to allow neighbors to