Commission approves facility use agreement with Optimist Club and delegates limited operational authority to city manager

The Cooper City Commission unanimously approved a facility-use agreement with the Optimist Club and included limited delegated authority for the city manager to make minor operational adjustments during implementation, according to the meeting record.

Background and motions: The resolution (recorded as Resolution 2025-37) authorizes the city manager to enter into a facility-use agreement with the Optimist Club of Cooper City. City staff and the club negotiated the agreement over recent weeks and the manager asked the commission to delegate limited authority to make non-material operational clarifications (for example, allowing modest timing adjustments tied to registration deadlines or implementation timelines) so the transition to the city’s registration system could proceed without repeated commission-level approvals for immaterial changes.

Insurance and implementation concerns: Commission discussion focused heavily on insurance (liability and accidental injury coverage), background checks and operational details such as whether coaches should be treated as residents for registration and how concession-stand health certifications would be handled. Optimist Club representatives confirmed they had liability and accident policies and that they were reviewing additional coverage through a broker; staff said the city had not yet completed a legal review of the insurer documents received during the meeting and asked the club to promptly provide the certificates for review.

Specific operational clarifications discussed in the meeting record: - The agreement as drafted permits registration discounts for coaches when needed to recruit coaches; the city attorney clarified that the provision as drafted treats registration discounts as not constituting compensation and allows them with prior city approval for other forms of compensation. - Staff proposed treating coaches as residents for registration purposes in order to match historic practice where many coaches lived outside the city but received resident rates to encourage coaching availability; commissioners said any coaching-related discounts should be applied consistently across the same program. - The city attorney and city manager discussed adding language in the adopting resolution to delegate limited operational authority to the manager to make small timing or administrative changes without altering material terms of the agreement.

Optimist Club representatives, including the club president, told the commission they are willing to accept the city’s version of the agreement and asked that the city work with them to implement the new system. The president said the club contains many long-time volunteers and asked that past issues not be used to "throw out the baby with the bathwater"; he urged the city and club to move forward cooperatively.

Vote and next steps: The commission approved the agreement and the manager’s requested limited delegated authority. Staff will review the insurance certificates the club provided, finalize implementation details (including registration procedures and concession requirements), and the manager will be authorized to make minor operational revisions as needed so long as they do not change material terms of the agreement; material changes would return to the commission.

Why it matters: The agreement clarifies the relationship and operational expectations between Cooper City and a long-standing youth-sports operator in the city, and the manager’s limited delegation aims to allow the program to transition to the city’s registration platform without administrative delays while preserving city oversight on material policy issues.