coming up the city commission shapers gets a technology make over there right there you know a live look and you may have seen a number of new chevy tacos in the police department's fleet we'll tell you why sometimes bigger is but first a new department in the city of sarasota is giving the city zoning code to sort of make over with the idea the simplicity is the key so that's how we plan our tackling that for the first phase in the town we were actually looking at the brown and our primary assignment is to assist the city in moving to a form based code as you can tell by the documents i'm surrounded by traditional zoning codes often are focused more at a specific lot level and on a separation of uses where as you know so they tend to get very word have the lots of prohibition and handling things through that type of land planning where as a form based code we're more concerned with the form and shape of cities how buildings relate to one another how they relate to  pedestrian you know connectivity right now we have a number of documents that are governing you more on a individual lot basis than what we would be looking at in terms of a a sense of place where a neighborhood whether that neighborhood is a downtown or you know other residential neighborhoods so you would come in not only do you have the zoning code governing that lie it but you also have an engineering design criteria manual elements of this city comprehensive plan and these are very difficult documents to navigate in to really understand not only what you can do on that individual law but what the sense of place or neighborhood around you will look like once it's all built out well you know we need to have everybody that we will be starting from what we what we look at and form based coding is not only what's on that individual why things that govern it such as the setbacks or the amount of stories a building can have but we also look at how that lot that building relates to the street to the civic spaces around it so that that's also incorporated into the document it's a much more graphically rich document and again instead of being so word heavy as we were talking about what we do here is to work with everyone to identify and make a you know it's a little bit i think more understandable and clear what those elements are in this instance we're looking at a pattern book you know portion of this some people think a form based code dictates a certain architectural style but in this case the breynton code in sarasota is code that's not you know what we're interested in you can do a modern building you can do a mediterranean revival style what wears instead focusing on our good proportions in whatever style you pick and again being off antic in the design elements but the little grocery store of it is that on their tops a great place for a grocery store why are we hoping more people you know to to i don't know that uses are the users but we're here for three years and you know in the studio we have a physical presence as stablished at the federal building and a very you know inclusive environment where people can come in see the work product interact to ask questions basically what we've done is to divide this into five city areas of the north which is represented by the yellow nor a is in the city limits as well the green is in the south district the area is south of around the hospital area and forty one going east there and then we have the east portion of the city which goes out to the beneath a frugal area so to commence this what we did is we did a lot of view of all of the city plans and documents and a lot of interviews with people to really start to talk to them about issues and problems they were having in their particular area so we selected what we call catalyst plans planning areas study areas those are represented on here by these red target areas by selecting catalyst areas we believe that that will enable the community during those first six months to understand these new terms to get familiar with the deliverable would be what the document will look like again to ask those kinds of questions to get out with us to do walking odd and really be hands on this first round we hold open studio times on you know fridays and friday afternoons from one thirty to four thirty so that people can drop in see what the studios about ask questions receive some of our literature and timelines we're sending out notices we will be to some of these events right now and they've been somewhat informal as we're going along studio time come in provide us with information about their neighborhoods and documentation we've had neighborhood associations that have you know decided to make it a priority to work with us in that within the catalyst areas and a lot of citizen folks since the volunteers and engaged people that have participated in helping us to measure areas of the city war you know to get it right when we go into their neighborhoods and speaking of maker was the commission chambers and city hall has officially moved into the digital world for fourteen years the chamber's has relied on what was then state of the art analog audio in video equipment but as several pieces of equipment began to fail and finding a replacement parts became impossible it was time to step into the digital age now the commission chambers features high definition cameras new touch screen controls more sensitive microphones as well as a multipurpose video switcher the city auditor and clerk has also added a voting and timer system that helps maintain a consistent flow of the meetings and sure the public how board members are voting their project took two weeks to complete we're going to take a short welcome back to city life i'm police chief bernard depi know by now most people are aware of the red light cameras it various intersections in the city but what most people might not know is that there is a hearing process that they can choose should they if you wanted to fight it in traffic court it would go over to your uniform traffic citation the fine would respond actually increased from one hundred fifty eight to two hundred sixty four dollars and then you would actually go to the sarasota county courthouse and fight that ticket in front of a hearing officer what they did is they changed the law on july first of two thousand and thirteen to current that if you get a violation it is now sixty days to pay all right if you want to contest the violation then you fill out a hearing request form and we have a hearing officer that is at city hall and then they hear the cases and then it is not increased to two hundred sixty four dollars it's left at the hundred  fifty eight you do pay a fifty dollar hearing fee we have had some people complain about the fifty dollars hearing fee and all that does is it covers the cost of having a hearing officer there having the personnel  basically prepare these court documents to go over there we picked the lowest of the amount it was from fifty to two hundred fifty dollars we did not want to charge two hundred fifty dollars on top of the hundred fifty eight what the law does we handle about the thirty a month right now and basically a lot of people just they want to ask questions once the video and the pictures are shown they do admit the violation a lot of people will come in and say that they weren't driving the vehicle or friend is but there's there's a options when you get it in the mail that you can follow and fill out forms and assign it to another driver if you know at the time of the violation it was in care custody and control of another person you have the ability to fill out a notarized affidavit and assign it to that person so there is other remedies there's been some questions about my car was stolen i'm going to have to pay it it's completely untrue if you  you basically fill out an affidavit there's a there's a few more exemptions for instance a funeral procession you know if an officer is out the intersection directing traffic for a crash there's all these  did comply to but we were probably about two months ahead of time before we had to comply with that where we actually increased the amber time for a from for instance if the intersection was four point five seconds it could have possibly moved up to four point eight four point nine seconds it was all regulated by department of transportation and they were all increased and so now people have more time as far as reacting to the amber times now than what they did two years ago when a quarter speed it down so we can get an idea that lights red right there and they're not even in the frame of the picture they go through the light there's the flash on the first frame in their frame the and that's basically showing that the person did run the light in both photos along with the twelve second video where one of the only few agencies i'm actually the aware is that we're the only agency that we decided to set up a hotline number here at the police department a customer service number the numbers nine four one four eight seven zero zero two two if anybody has any questions about the red light camera program we monitor that daily people leave a message we call him back a law enforcement officer actually calls him back it's myself or sergeant graham and we'll help them with their questions regarding the some people lose their form they have hearing questions they just you know i wasn't driving it we're one of the only agencies that i'm aware of that actually set that up we wanted to do it more of a customer base because you know when they get in the violation in the mail it does say the city of sarasota police department on it and all the other eight most of the agencies what they do is they have everybody call the vendor which is located in arizona so we want to be more of a hands on customer base that they can call and actually speak to law enforcement officer instead of someone that just picks up the phone the customer service rep here's the way we look at it you stop for the light you're not going to get a violation you're not going to hear from us it's just like a speeding ticket you get you know you speed you get a ticket and it cost money and it's the same thing for a red light if an officer pulls you over for a red light your finest two hundred sixty four dollars and you have four points on your driving record which will impact your insurance rate if a camera catches you running the red light it is one hundred fifty eight dollars violation it's considered like a parking violation has no point does not go on your driving record as long as you pay one hundred fifty eight dollars within sixty days this program designed for two things to be placed that intersections that have the high rate of traffic crashes so when we first did we did two phases when the fridge the different first phase was seven cameras the second was like thirteen cameras there all the intersections where our data showed that there was a high percentage of crashes they weren't put at intersections where with a high percentage of people running red lights it was more designed to prevent crashes which is why we started the program his driver awareness i think if you ask people out there in the public are you aware of red light cameras in the city and they will definitely tell you yes and they pay more attention to red light and that's the whole idea and that's why this program was designed it does make money but it's not something that is making millions like some people were tr and while you're driving around town you may notice a new s t d vehicles that don't look like our traditional patrol cars after lake joins us again to explain the shift from cars to s u v s and we spent about a year and a half doing some research on the  nine hundred dollars less than the caprice model we did some research we did some fuel analysis and stuff and and what these new vehicles especially with the twenty four teams it has an active fuel management system on it it's not running on advancement in technology and everything they've come a long way to law roger vehicle we do provide training for the officer before we issue it's own so they're comfortable on doing maneuvers with it and they'll be obviously going through ongoing training with that obviously we all know getting in and out of a top of the officers gun belt on ready all that equipment and getting in and out of a ta is you're basically you're stepping in and out versus when you're an impala you're actually climbing in and out and know look at officer you know this is his office twelve hours a day he's in this vehicle he's getting out of it multiple times during the day to handle calls and so on obviously we want more comfort for the officers there's more hip room had room and so on and on these twenty fourteen cars they also come with a standard feature that's called electronic stability control and what that does is the police pursuit vehicles on the taz they're lowered three inches lower than the consumers cars because it's strictly for police pursuit package also with the electronic stability control that they have in here it's basically preventing that by rollover risk by eighty percent there's some documentation on that so it has a lot of features in here too for safety features for the officer so you can see the rear but see to it it's definitely a lot larger area than what we had in the vehicles as far as ian powell is also with when you get an s u v this is the only vehicle actually that has the rear air built in so we have four rear airports back here so as you can imagine during the summer heat and everything with the older vehicles we have out in the fully with the cage it minimises the airflow if you have to take someone in custody and transport them this is going to basically with the air conditioning back here will help out a lot as far as airflow back here in the rear seat right now we've we purchased twenty five we've put out about fifteen on the street right now and where we're go continue to keep on buying them throughout the year if you have questions or comments about these stories or anything regarding the s p v call three six six eight thousand and check out our new website at sarasota p d dot org and our new community initiative blue plus you which i'll tell you about next time on city life until then police chief part of that the peano and be safe there's only one thing to be to beautiful day on the water and that's a safety on the water so before you leave the dock be sure that you have all your required safety equipment on board each person must have a coast guard approved life and they must be age and size appropriate and don't forget to have a throwback flotation device while a fully charged fire extinguisher a whistle or air horn a visual distress signal like a flare gun or handheld flares and be sure to check their expiration dates and know not required a v h f radio can be one of the most important pieces of equipment carelessness and attention and excessive alcohol consumption are the leading cause of boating actions in the state of florida pay close attention to your surroundings and all the signage and finally designated driver and don't forget anybody born after january first of nine hundred eighty eight is required to take a safe boating course all boaters are encouraged to do so as well these basic tips can help you and other boaters enjoy a waterway safely say on the water welcome back to city life i'm standing in one of sarasota most diverse neighborhoods gillispie park with its mix of cultures an architecture and families well let's let the residents explain well we're bounded on the west by orange avenue on the east by three zero one or washington on our south by through the road and then north by tenth street it's a wide variety of everything and that's what makes it such a cool neighborhood because the cultures that konami clavell the architecture and that the look of the neighborhood the feel of the neighborhood is everything it's a it's an incredible mix that's one of the things that makes it so unique is that we have there's a lot of rental housing in this neighborhood and there's a lot of there's actually homes that were built that cost over a million dollars so we're kind of spanning a huge spectrum of diversity that you just will not  see in a place like lakewood ranch where you know they built two hundred homes that that are all in the same exact price point and that's that's wonderful for a family with you know that that needs that kind of stability and security this little more a little more rough and tumble here this is you know you've got all kinds of backgrounds and you've got all kinds of interests there's a lot of artists that live here and there's a lot of people that are very very passionate about the community and rebuilding the community i grew up in the suburbs for me life was pulling into the house going into the backyard insulating yourself from your neighbors in the world when i came to the last the park i noticed a very interesting thing people didn't do that they sat on their front porches they actually talked to one another they said hello to one another's so without even knowing a sense of community and it was downtown or close to downtown so we knew because we love sarasota with all that it has to offer we knew that we could live in a neighborhood close to the city have access to it and be part of this of this particular community and that's a that's a pretty good thing and it a selling point for the neighborhood you know because it seems like i just have a tenant asked me last night what's the house you know how is the neighborhood i get that lot how is the neighborhood and i said to him people either love this neighborhood because they love the diversity in the activity and the and the feeling you know what you feel when you come into this neighborhood or they hang onto this kid this  past the park is not quite such a good neighborhood and i said it's too bad because that keeps a lot of people out of the neighborhood that might come in and find absolutely delightful place to live or rand to or visit just come in and visit our park the park is great and my husband and i walk the park a lot couple three times a week with our dog it's a ten acre park when it was originally designed it was an experimental farm john hamilton gillespie went to first mayor and then eventually it became it became gillespie park there's a huge pond in there there's docks and there's a beautiful playground there's pavilions that you can use if you want to have a picnic and there's beautiful tennis courts that are free and it's it's i love the way that the park is designs because you can come in from a bunch of different streets and you know you really don't notice this unless you kind of have lived here for a while but any street that you come in on has a pathway leading you into this park so it's not fenced and it's not like you have to kind of walk around to get to the one pass any street you get into path which is really kind of cool an amazing thing for me when i moved here we had just closed on our house and after we closed my wife was inside the house i was sitting on the front porch thinking now what do i do and as i look at my closing papers and i glance up on being invited to a porch party one of my neighbors came down and said we're having a porch part i want to come and join us you don't have to bring any food just come down there and it was a wonderful gathering coming into the neighborhood and l so it's a very nice place it's a good place and you know it has a lot to offer and visitors to the glass to be part playground especially children will be happy to see the new addition there the new playground located in the northwest corner of the park features three player is which swings slides and climbing structures make overs like this one are necessary to replace old and potentially dangerous playground equipment normal or average wear and tear you know whether things like that location i would guess they made at least fifteen to perhaps twenty years just as this one is but if the environments are different like say at the bayfront where you have salt exposure from the water and just the amount to use that that playground gets a lot of use i would say you know ten years would be unrealistic just because of those conditions so it really depends and the way we kind of look at it is we want people to use it and that's why we put it in so if we can go every fifteen years and plan accordingly and in a way technology and an systems advance we want to be able to update that so that it keeps it fresh and keeps the kids excited the modern equipment is designed not only for fun but also helps bolster dexterity in the eye hand coordination the playground was closed for about a month while the work was being done  cost about ninety thousand dollars take a walk downtown and you'll likely see a stranger playing a colorful piano right there on the sidewalk that piano is one of six of the instruments placed around downtown as part of a public music slash public art project approved by the city commission early this year the pianos are hosted by several businesses downtown who help to secure them at night and then we'll them out in the morning professionals and amateurs are like are invited to sit and play to their project kicked off in january with a free concert at five point six pianist in the seven local artist who customized the pianos were on hand to the delight of a big crowd the project is in a six month trial period but so far which  that's all we have time for right now but we hope to see you again on city life we leave you now on a high note back at the piano concert at five points until next time i'm john