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Working Together in Tallahassee

Engineered Life Safety Systems

My office has heard from hundreds of residents, not only from Broward County, but
from all over the state of Florida regarding the ability for associations to control their
own destiny regarding additional engineered life safety systems (ELSS). I have read
countless emails and have taken many phone calls from interested Floridians about
this important bill over the last few weeks. You have spoken and we listened.
I understand that adding ELSS could potentially place an extreme financial burden
on our residents in certain condominium buildings. While your safety is a top
priority to me, some of these excessive regulations place an undue hardship on the
citizens of Broward County and the rest of Florida. This bill allows the residents of
each building to have the freedom to choose, as an association, to opt-out of the
requirement for the installation of additional ELSS systems.

For these reasons, I was honored to vote in favor of HB 647- Engineered Life Safety
Systems when it came in front of the Government Operations & Technology
Chip LaMarca Appropriations Subcommittee on Tuesday. I believe that residents should be able to
make decisions about their own community. I also voted against HB 723, which
District 93 State Representative
was a bill making these systems mandatory for buildings greater than seventy-five
feet in height.

Anti-Hazing Protections
I recently filed HB 727, regarding hazing activities within all student organizations
on college and university campuses in Florida. The current statute does not provide
any incentive during a hazing event for anyone to call ‘911’ or offer to render aid
to help the victim. HB 727 is meant to save someone’s life. This Anti-Hazing bill will
provide immunity from prosecution to the person that calls ‘911’ and stays help the
individual when rescue arrives. The legislation also expands the law to allow
fraternity leadership who aided in the planning of the hazing, but were not present,
to be charged with the crime. Working closely with Florida State University, this
proposed bill would remedy the gap in the previous statute and could save the life of
the victim before it is too late.
This bill is of critical importance to all college and university students, but specifically
for the family of Andrew Coffey, the son of Lighthouse Point residents Tom and
Sandra Coffey. They lost Andrew tragically when he and other Pi Kappa Phi pledges
were coerced into drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, with nobody monitoring
how much they were consuming. When Andrew was found the following morning,
there was still a delay in anyone calling ‘911’ for help, out of fear of getting in
trouble. This Anti-Hazing bill would offer fellow students the protection of amnesty
should they find it necessary in an event, to contact the authorities in the event of a
person being in danger of their health or life. As a result of Coffey's death, the Pi
Kappa Phi fraternity was closed and FSU instituted tough new standards for Greek
life on campus. This bill would also offer protections for hazing incidents for students
outside of the Greek system, along with other collegiate programs that also
experience hazing.

I am also pleased to announce that I proudly support Governor Ron DeSantis and
Speaker Jose Oliva in their major increases of funding for water quality and

14 CORAL RIDGE COUNTRY CLUB ESTATES HOA