Town Council - Regular Meeting

uh today is wednesday january mike thank you good evening everyone today is wednesday january 21st 2026 welcome to our regular scheduled town council meeting uh mr clerk if you could please take the role council member ramirez here council member lord here council member duncan here vice mayor tallahan

Mayor Mayerbott.

Present. We have a quorum. All right. Thank you. I understand Councilman Callahan has got the flu this one going around or something like that. So we would hopefully have speedy recovery to him. So if you all could please join me and rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Oh.

They changed the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, Right. All right. Welcome, everyone. Our agenda tonight is heavy on presentations, light on content, so we'll be good to get a lot of updates on everything. Before we get started, I just want to real quick just give a little bit of update. As usual, you know, the, when the state convenes, the legislator up in Tallahassee is now when you have to go up there and make your needs known to them. And, uh, so we did that, uh, like we've done, uh, councilman Duncan, councilman Ramirez, Ralph, and, uh, Mitch Berman and myself went up there, um, did have a full day of meetings, uh, kissing the ring and making our needs known. And the good thing is, uh, you know, we met with our Senator Calatea and also with a representative Omar Blanco, um, And both of them already knew what our needs were, which was really great. We always do a great job that we get. I want to give staff the kudos because the staff always puts together a comprehensive book on what we need, why we need it, and how we're going to get it done. Um, and they also has things on here that, you know, which other cities and towns don't do. When we go up there, we always have a match and the match means we're putting our money where our mouth is. We're not just begging for money from the state, which many cities do. We actually say, Hey, if you put this much in it, we're going to put this much into it. So we're working together as a partnership. Council and I, we've been up there many times and had great success doing that. They really love the book. They talk about the book. They wish other cities did the book. And this year we did one better because we did a book with a little cheat sheet. Even with little things like, hey, this one's shovel ready with little shovels on it. So, Ralph, great job. You and your staff are preparing that because it makes it easier for us because you only get a few minutes to plead your case. And, uh, and we met with Senator Hooper staff, uh, we're still in the appropriate he's the Senate appropriations chair, which is a really big deal. Um, we went with Senator bro door staff, which is also he's on, he's the sub chair of the Senate appropriation share. We met with representative shop staff members, which is on the transportation economic development committee and representative, which is on the chair of the health and budget committee. So. Those are all the folks that decide what goes into the final budget. Of course, the governor has the final say in that. But the feedback that we got is our project were met very, very well. And we do expect to have at least all the way through to the governor. And we expect to have success with that. And we can only pray that it'll go all the way through this time. Yes, I mean, sorry, Senator, I'll take it already. Councilman Lord. Sorry.

Thank you so much. I did want to thank Ralph Casals, our town manager. Unfortunately, I was unable to be on the trip and before noon the following day, he had fully debriefed me and I felt. Almost like I was there with them. I'm sorry. I wasn't able to make it. Um, I had my summary as well I was there in spirit and in heart and thank you so much for that. It was a very detailed debrief It was a nice one. So thank you.

I also understand you were working omar blancos here prior to the trip. So He did make mention of that. So yeah, she was on it before we were on it. So it was good. So

all right uh with that being said let's see uh we'll move along with our agenda real quick uh mauricio could you please uh read the instructions for the uh community to call in please be advised that when joining the meeting you are automatically muted welcome to tonight's meeting the public was able to make public comments prior to the meeting either by leaving a voicemail message or sending an email to the town clerk there were no voicemails or emailed public comments received for this evening's meeting If you wish to speak tonight, please press star nine and the host will be alerted. Pressing star nine is known as raising your hand. Once you press star nine, you will be placed in a queue to speak and will be called upon by your name or the last three digits of your telephone number. Please wait to be called upon. Please state your name and address. If you are a hired consultant or town employee and or if you are engaged in lobbying activities and or representing an organization, please provide that information before speaking. Please be sure to be in a quiet area to avoid unnecessary noise. A time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each speaker during public comments.

All right. With that, I am now going to open up the floor for public comments. Anybody in the chamber wishing to speak, please come forward. As there is none. Is there anybody in the queue?

No one in the queue.

I will close public comments. That takes us to town council committee and board reports. We all submit our reports. Any additions? Okay. Councilman Lord.

I just wanted to put on the record in my report there are several line item entries about a toy drive that I was involved with and it's referenced inaccurately as cutler bay worships toy drive they were involved in it they helped procure the financing for it but it was the toy drive that i did more as a personal thing but with the miami-dade sheriff's office so i just wanted to clear that up on the record because we did publish that um and i didn't catch it it's my fault so thank you all right and councilman duncan did you address i didn't pick me

Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So as part of our reports and part of the packet, you'll have an attachment, a memorandum, essentially going forward with the proposed Lalita Banyo Pare Memorial Scholarship that we had discussed, that we've discussed multiple times in our town's Education Advisory Committee. And we've had several members come before this council in the last year on a few separate occasions and discuss the potential for such a scholarship opportunity. So if If you have the opportunity to go through and review that document, then ultimately the goal is so that we can instruct town staff to continue to work forward in developing an actual resolution based on the town council's approval. So really it's just a matter of making sure that we're all on the same page and that we can continue to work with town staff to proceed with what is outlined within that report. All right, without objection, Councilman Ramirez.

First, I'd like to thank the committee for putting this forward. I think it's a pretty good idea to do that. I do have a couple of questions. One is, Matter Academy is not listed as one of the schools, and I'm not, I guess I could ask why, or, you know, them being the A school and, you know, through the entire K through, or first grade through to the 12th grade. Is there a reason why they're not on that list?

I believe the language that ultimately ended up going in that we're considering, it's kind of evolved over time, whereas it began as you had to be a student at a specific school within the town boundaries and or South Ridge, because South Ridge is our public school that serves it. and it's evolved into being a high school graduating senior that lives in town but that does not necessarily have to go to a school within the town's boundaries because you don't necessarily want to preclude a town resident who's a senior graduating who qualifies for the scholarship with community service in the town serving the town but happens to go to a coral reef or a dash or you know some other school outside of the town boundary so that would clear that up it still has to go to a town resident that lives within the town, does the community service that would qualify them for the scholarship within the town, meets all the academic qualifications, but removing that specific justification of that specific school from it, then opens it up to other town residents that would otherwise not be allowed.

Okay, I can accept that. I do have a couple more things. Have you guys looked at where the future funding for the scholarships are going to come from?

It would come from our fund here, our philanthropic fund that we continue to contribute and get contributions at our golf tournaments and other events that we do. We've already cleared that, town managers cleared that as far as the ability to utilize those funds for this scholarship. And we have the all clear to do so.

All right. The only, the final thing for me is, have you guys already gone through this, how the selection process is going to work and everything else like that?

Yes. Yes. So ultimately, you know, to kind of put it just out there. So we would announce what the qualifications are for the award and students would have the ability to apply. They would be vetted by the education advisory committee. And then based upon that vetting process, the finalists, so to speak, would be sent over to the town council for review. And then we would award the award itself, the scholarship based upon a vote. It is because we're spending town money. We're spending money that is town money. It needs to come through us. But it would be essentially the groundwork, the legwork would be done on behalf of the town council by the EAC because they have the educational focus. And then it would come to us. And then we would make the final determination. We would award... the scholarship and then we can have you know whether it's done at a town council meeting whether it's also done at say an end of year activity for the student at their respective school at an event so on and so forth that can all be worked out ultimately what this is this is not the final resolution this is instructing the town manager to work with town staff and with our town attorneys to draft a resolution that we can then debate moving forward

I want to thank you guys for all the time you put in. Obviously, you thought this out and kind of vetted all your thoughts and put it before us. So I'll be excited to see what the final is going to be. Thank you. Councilman Lurk.

Thank you. Thank you for your hard work on this. I want to thank the EAC for their hard work. I dug deeply into that attachment. I should mention that your chairperson, Dr. Rose Martin, is in the audience. Thank you so much for championing this cause. I think it's a good one. I think that Lalita would be honored that we're doing this. I have a few comments. One of them was about the schools and I like the way that you guys developed that. I feel like we should, as each bullet under criteria is met, I think a good way to do this is maybe establishing a point system and then the two top students or top four or whatever come before us to make the final decision. Because I have worries that we're a small town And we know everyone and that if we pick susie lord's nephew, you know Like i'd like to have a little bit more transparency and and something and by the way, my nephew does not live in cutler bay Um also I have I'm not going to get into to some questions. I think it's very well done. I actually had a phone call with Dr. Martin earlier today because I don't want it to feel like I'm criticizing this in any way. I'm trying to help you guys fine tune it a little bit. So with permission, I would like to email my thoughts to our town clerk and then have him disseminate to your Absolutely. Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you members of council and you're right mayor as we said earlier it's heavy in the beginning with all the presentations but I think very important information we want to share with the council and the community as well. So first up we have our normal update to our design services for the 16 acre legacy park from Ms. Emma Jones from Stantec who's our owner's rep on the project.

Good evening everyone. Emma Jones with Stantec, owner's rep for the town of Cutler Bay. As Ralph mentioned, this is our normal monthly report. And we should have some images, I believe. And that should be popping up. I want to start with a quick summary of There we go. All right. If we can go to the next slide. So I wanted to start with just a quick summary of what we have already accomplished last year, just to jog everyone's memory. We obviously started the construction in April, went through the removal of the contaminated soils, the import of clean soils, and our last items were to do some additional testing and bring in the remaining soils grade and compact. So we are currently in the process of bringing in those final soils with the goal of having all of the soils in by the end of February, obviously compacted and getting that GMP1 tied up. We can go to the next slide. So in terms of the project timeline, obviously this shows phase one and know we're doing well on the schedule um the gmp2 which is the underground utility and infrastructure as we did some additional testing um we you know have been back and forth with germ um regarding some of the levels that we you know we're still seeing um and that's only related to the groundwater and our exfiltration trenches so we are currently doing some additional testing to figure out where to position those trenches on the site. And we're hoping that we'll have all of that wrapped up and a Durham approval in our hand by the end of March at the latest. And then while we're doing all of this in parallel, Kauffman Lynn, who is our selected contractor, they are currently have the documents out to bid for both the proposed GMP2 with the underground utilities, and then also the GMP3, which is the vertical build. We can go to the next slide. So these are just the next steps, as I spoke to. Obviously, additional testing was completed November. Final soil import and compaction for Phase 1 will occur January through February. because this has stretched into 2026, this will allow us to not only get tax credits, VCTC credits for 2025, but we will also be able to apply for them for 2026. Phase two, as I mentioned, additional testing completed in November, samples were reviewed in December, exfiltrations, irrigation, well, locations we actually had a meeting with Durham yesterday to discuss. And we are going to have a follow-up meeting with them in the next couple of weeks. Those documents, the GMP2 documents, as I mentioned, were finalized in December. There was a workshop held by the town as well as Kauffman Lynn. It was an in-person as well as virtual workshop for local contractors to better understand how to bid on the documents. The same was done for the phase two vertical build, which is GMP3. All of those documents, again, were incorporated into that workshop so that we can get as much local contractor participation as possible. And that concludes my summary. Oh, I do want to actually add one snippet of great news on phase one is that as we are getting in the final numbers and wrapping all of that up, we are currently almost a half a million dollars under budget for that, which is great news.

Very good.

And if we can, Mauricio, we also have an extra bonus. This month, council, we have a nice drone footage. And as we play the drone footage, Emma, if you could kind of describe to the council and the audience what they see in the drone footage that was taken by our communication manager, Rod Gibson.

Sure. So as we're doing the flyover, you'll see the circle on the left. That's going to connect across to 212. So then on the left side, that's where the town hall will be located, the upper left there. will be where the community center pool, et cetera. And as we are panning across right now, you're seeing the additional piles of dirt, which are being spread across the site and compacted. And you are currently looking at the future site of a beautiful 12-acre park with a walking path that all of the residents are going to be able to enjoy and spend some nice time outside. Okay.

So Mayor and Council, as you see there, we had the contract to do a lot of work effective January. And as Emma mentioned, we will aggressively pursue the voluntary cleanup tax credits that are eligible up to $1 million in each calendar year. So for 2025, we're already preparing our package to maximize the million dollars. Obviously, the project was $12 million. But then also in 2026, what you see there, it's going to be over a million dollars worth of work that we're going to also maximize our $900,000 eligible VCTC voluntary cleanup tax credits for calendar year 2026. as well. A couple more notes to supplement Emma's package is we are also pursuing our commitment to pursue different grants. I know earlier on we mentioned regarding improvements to Southwest 212th Street. If you live in that area there between Old Cutler Road and 87th Avenue, actually 82nd Avenue, I call it the four-lane highway to nowhere. We actually met with the county, myself, the Public Works Director, Community Development Director, met with the county and And it was one of those like, yeah, it was eventually they thought back in the day before all the wetlands and environmental concerns that it was going to be a four lane highway. Actually, it was so it's not. We have proven through our traffic studies as part of this project that it can be reduced to one lane. We're then taking advantage of our relations that we have with the TPO and their staff. We've met with them, and this is a great project where we're going to, in fact, I think it's tomorrow morning at 11 o'clock, I think both Alfredo and Yanir from our staff are going to be presented before the FDOT committee for a potential $1.5 million grant. What that grant will do is have dedicated bike lanes, protected bike lanes, Similar example that we did a pilot one here years ago is right in front of 212th Street. We have the bike lanes protected with a little center concrete median, not just the little delineators. Number one and number two, there will also be a traffic circle installed that you saw before in one of our previous presentations on Southwest 212th Street and 92nd Avenue. so that's something that we feel that we have a really great shot the the tpo staff have met with alfredo engineer on site they're very excited to make that another one of their pilot programs so again that's just our commitment uh because if we receive this grant that's obviously less money that we'll have to tap into our general obligation bond for that type of improvement on southwest 212 street we're also Working closely with the Miami County of keeping two twelve street, a two lane highway running on the south side of our property there. So we've worked closely with the folks from my many county public works department. Additionally, I know that individual just spoke to council members, but I'd like to propose a council workshop. on Tuesday, January the 27th at 4 o'clock. So again, that's Tuesday, January 27th at 4 o'clock. And this is where we're going to talk about the Legacy Park and the Municipal Complex, what we call our gap financings. As you know, we have a bond for $37 million. We have not drawn that down yet, which is good news because we know that property values have gone up. But at the same time, we know there's going to be some gap financing there. You know, we drew the line in the sand of $49.9 million. And believe me, you know, when we meet with our team, they know that line. But we want to come in with our financial advisor, Lourdes Aberdeen, and our finance director, and provide you some information of all the hard work that we've been doing along with our town attorney's office, Lori Lala and Jeff DiCarlo, they're finance experts, and talk to the council about the financing gap. Again, it's a workshop. and then we'll pursue that uh loan from one of the financial institutions that we received uh quotes from so that's something i think it's a now that we are closer with the plans we we know there's going to be some you know we have better cost estimates than we would have like a year ago so again that's going to be a tuesday january 27th at 4 p.m if if everybody's available the town clerk will send out the invites all right uh everybody available and yeah i think so great great i think that's great uh and and we'll we'll provide those invites and we'll post it on our website calendar and obviously it will be broadcast through the means that we have here uh thank you emma for that report uh next we have update monthly update on frangio road we have a tag team of stefano viola virtually and then we have janet dogado here in person so stefano if you're there take it away yes uh good evening um mayor and council members this is our january 2026 update for the frangio road improvements project

You all can see the screen showing the schedule now. So Janet will come up here shortly to give her PIO update. Jumping into construction activities, we continue to hold our biweekly meetings, construction meetings with the contractor, the town, the engineer of record, and ourselves as the CEI. And then for work zones one, two, and three, which you can see on the graphic, ACASA has completed work in one, two, and three, the majority of the work in one, two, and three, and those areas have been open to the public. Those zones include proposed improvements along Frangio from Southwest 184th Street to Caribbean Boulevard. Jumping into Work Zone 4, ACOSA has been working in this area, which runs along Frangio from Caribbean to Southwest 92nd Avenue. Currently, drainage work is continuing to Southwest 200th Street, and concrete work is taking place at Southwest 196th Drive and Southwest 92nd Avenue. At this time, Work Zone 4 is expected to be completed by May of 2026 this year. And then Work Zone 5 of CASA has also been working in this area, running from Franjo to Southwest 92nd Avenue to O'Cutler Road. Currently, the maintenance of traffic is set up and installation of the proposed drainage structures has begun. At all times, the team is focused on keeping the site clean and safe, as well as maintaining the MOT, maintenance of traffic, throughout the duration of the project. Just a general reminder that a phase being open, it doesn't mean that it's equating to being completely finalized. There are a few pending items that must be installed throughout the corridor before the project will be considered complete. such as the bus shelter installation, final list of asphalt, which is why you may see some of the manholes sticking up slightly. When they put that final lift, that will correct that. Electric service installation, light pole removal installation, and then tree and sod. So those would still be occurring in work zones one, two, and three, but it is safe to pass through, which is why it's been open. And then just an update on the project schedule. The current project duration is from July 2024 to September 2026. Acosta has declared seven total rain days to this point. And so it's still showing work to be completed September of this year. And that wraps up the construction updates. And I'll turn it over to Janet to provide the public information update.

Are you human?

There you go.

So as always, I continue to engage with the residents affected, mostly in phase four and now phase five, which we started like a week ago. So like i said phase five is now closed fpnl so everything has been handed to fpnl in order for them to electrify those souls um right now it's in their hands i know that the town is keeping up with them to find out when but they're like on another time schedule I know they're doing the best that they can. So that's what's going on there. And that's about it. I met with the vet. There's a veterinarian office in phase five and both gas stations. So, you know, like everybody, a little apprehensive at the beginning, but everything seems to be moving nicely. That's it for now. I look forward to seeing you guys on Saturday for the chili cook-off. Any questions for me?

I have a question. So the traffic circle that they're going to be constructing on 200th Street, is that going to be semi-complete before they close off the rest of the road, or are they going to do that entire section at one time?

No, they're working on that roundabout, which is part of Phase 4. And then right now what they're doing in phase five is they're starting to dig up and see what's under there because we've had situations where there's been material that's not applicable. And they start with doing the drainage at the same time that they're finishing up the roundabout. So it's kind of like sort of at the same time.

Right.

But we're, you know, so May is supposed to be a somewhat completed all of the phases and then moving forward to the bus benches, the light poles. Hopefully by then we have them working. Okay.

All right. Thank you.

You're welcome. Bye-bye.

Wait one second.

Hi, Janet. I have a really quick question, and it's more for me personally. Full Cutler Animal Clinic has been my vet since I was 12. Yes. They did send out an email to all their clients indicating that we can still park at the baseball park. At the park. Yes. So in the event of an emergency for our residents and their animals,

the trap we'll still we'll still be able to get there like we did in the beginning absolutely you'll always be able to get to the vet's office okay um the crew knows to make it accessible for anybody that needs to go into that area um actually had spoken to the doctor because he was worried about if there's an emergency, how are we going to do this? Are we going to meet? So we're working on that. And I've informed the contractors in our biweekly meetings. They have my phone number. So it's something that has been discussed.

Okay, good.

Yes, it will be available. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, Ralph.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor, Members of Council, and thank you, Stefano and Janet. Next, we're going to have a couple of presentations. I'll go through briefly, just provide the Council an update. First, if we could go to the Veterans Park, Mr. Clerk. Okay. Put it full screen there. All right. OK, so veterans Park is just briefly 3 1⁄2 acre site. We purchased it in 2023, $8 1⁄2 million. Again, our lake pedastric there was below appraisal. We completed phase one, phase two environmental assessment on the site. Also on town council in September 2024, we renamed it Veterans Park. Cleanup efforts. If you recall, on the north side, we had 19 large invasive Australian pine trees there, if you recall that. So we removed those. And then also through our Parks Department coordinated effort, we removed over 28 tons, almost 60 cubic yards of debris from the old nursery site. Towns Environmental Consultant, Peer Inc., performed additional soil sampling for lead and arsenic for the soil management plan. Good news on September 2025, Miami-Dade County approved our sole management plan. Grant awards. Great note here. On December 2024, the town received a grant for $1.5 million towards the purchase of it. And again, the money's not in the bank yet, but it's in the process there. So that was a great catch for us for the Florida Communities Trust. Here's a little technical map that kind of shows you what what Durham approved and you'll see a little bit easier read on the next slide. On the next slide you'll see the areas here depicted in blue that's high levels of lead the red high levels of arsenic. The orange, I guess, the orange is high levels of arsenic and lead. So the good news there, I want to depict that is that we don't have to scrape the entire site like you just saw in Legacy Park and we just see later on Blue Heron Park. So I call this the strategic dig there. And obviously that's going to be monitored. we'll have to remove on the high levels of lead six inches and then the arsenic you know two feet as well as a combined uh area the purple two feet so it kind of gives you an idea that we we don't have to do such a big uh dig so Our consultant estimates anywhere between $75,000 to $85,000. If you recall, when we closed on the property, the owner provided us a credit of almost $35,000 towards the purchase of it because we knew going in there was some arsenic because we knew that the northern tip of it was a nursery site. So that kind of gives it off right there. But nevertheless, we are pursuing grants from the Florida Department of Protection, FDEP, for property and cleanup soil remediation. These are grants that are available for non-Brownfield designated sites. Non-Brownfield designated sites. We didn't want to go through the designation process. That's a costly venture, especially when you have only maybe the $75,000 to $85,000 worth of cleanup efforts there. But the good news is that the grant, if we land the grant, it's up to $150,000. The way that this grant will work is that FDEP will have their own pre-approved or pool of contracts to do the work. And I can tell you just I've had that internal struggle with my staff, and it took a little bit of convincing, but I agree. I want to keep control of that project, but again, going back to it, the $75,000 to $85,000 will come out of our pocket. So it's worth applying for the grant. We think we have a good shot on that, particularly our relationship with FDEP and our previous example of solar remediation projects that we have there. Master plan phase. So the Parks and Recreation Committee discussed the master plan phase several meetings and provided recommendations to town council. But then we also took advantage on November 25 on Veterans Day breakfast and received input from the veterans here. If you call, some of you were there, we had the little sticky things and really, really interactive. I attended the meeting on January the 5th along with, you know, the vice mayor who's the liaison there, Callahan, and discussed the recommendation from the Veterans Day breakfast. So they're going to be, you know, the committee is going to be recommending once they look at all the feedback they received from the veterans to bring back a new advisory to the council. Hopefully it should occur sometime. It'll be in our February council meeting. But additionally, Town Staff is working closely with our consultant to look at a South Florida Regional Planning Council grant that actually this will be eligible for park improvement as well. So again, looking at every single grant possibility that we could receive there. and lastly we're going to be installing here in the next couple of weeks a monument sign right there in that corner it's a corner of oak color and um crossroads there right they call it there a nice intersection there which is going to be outside any of the sort of mediation area there now but if you go by there now it's nice and clean right now it's nice and cut um and and then we just want to make sure that that we go through that process of keeping this nice open area there and go through the solar radiation project so Any questions for Retro Park?

No?

Okay, great. Thanks. Next one, we'll go to Blue Heron Park. Okay, Blue Heron Park off of 216 97th Avenue, five acre parcel. That's the address within the town, within the Lakes by the Bay community. Yes, the park's been closed since June 2024. The amenities, it has a half mile long walking path that's going to be extended. It has nine outdoor fitness stations and two picnic pavilions that are going to be replaced. Yep, that's me back in 2024. When I think I said, yeah, the park's going to be open really soon, right? But then we have the mayor in 2025, December, with, you know, giving them the updates with the tractors in the back. And then we also were featured with our friends from CBS4. marabou regis regarding our cleanup efforts there as well so we've been very transparent there in all these different videos we shared with the local homeowner association and the master association there as well as we know arsenic is in the soil primary contaminant of concern naturally occurring in miami-dade county component of historically used pesticides and herbicides it was a farm area Remedial approach. I think we're all going to be brownfield experts here after a while, right? Excavation soil above the water table and replacement with clean fill. Most importantly, what we're very proud of, and you're going to see that later in the drone footage, that we, yes, we took our time. I think it was well worth our time to protect the 296 trees that are there that we did not have to remove. I think that was a very critical point there. And I want to thank the homeowner association and some of the residents there that use it on a daily basis for their patients. But I think when it's all done, they'll be able to enjoy that mature canopy that we have there. We also had dust control monitoring. And then part of our agreement with Miami-Dade County Dermatite, we're monitoring the groundwater water levels one year after. This, unlike Legacy Park, does not have arsenic in the water. It's just only in the soil. As I mentioned, we're going to do the reinstallation of nine outdoor fitness equipment. In fact, I might update that. It's going to be new fitness equipment. The equipment that's out there is like eight or nine years old. The parks director and myself, you know, looked at it, and this is the opportunity now to, you're going to install something that's nine years old. So we're going to go through the process of installing new fitness equipment there. It'll be the same spot, same location within the trail. New expanded rubberized walking trail. two brand new picnic pavilions you can see with one there depicted in the picture there it's going to be uh now we start creating our signature similar to similar uh vendor style and color that we have in lakes by the bay so now you start seeing that being created there um quick timeline The town council in June 2025 authorized the issuance of the bid. We then started having our community meetings at town hall regarding the brownfield. Thank you for the folks that attended. We had our first public reading of the resolution on September 11th, designating that a brownfield. On September 25th, we had the second final public hearing for the resolution adopting a brownfield. At that same meeting, we adopted a resolution entering into a brownfield site rehabilitation agreement. Another acronym, right? BISRA. That is key because that then would open up the doors for us to be designated as a brownfield. Because as you know, Miami-Dade County Durham has been authorized through FDEP to serve as FDEP in Miami-Dade County. So it's like we're dealing with Durham because we're dealing with FDEP as well. November 19th, we awarded a contract to Redland Company in the amount of $3.3 million. and very proud of that on december the 5th we were able to have the approved brownfield site rehabilitation bizra approved by miami county derm so far work completed in 2025 we had over 5300 tons and over 237 truck loads that were exported and they're starting from the the north south and then you'll see here shortly in the drone video we've actually even started importing some of the new fill as well Part of the process, they'll have to provide us all the dump receipts of where the dump, where the items being taken to. Luckily for us, it's going to go to the same place where the soil came, contaminated soil went from Legacy Park, which is South Bay Landfill. The import, which is the new fill, they will have to provide us dump tickets and we have folks, inspectors on site of where the fill came from, from an approved Miami County Durham site as well. Is that what you saw in the previous video for Legacy Park that you saw the, I call it the white standee? And then at this point, we're going to go ahead and just show a little quick video. And they tell me I click it. And again, I'd like to give credit to Rod Gibson flying this drone here. And I know Yanira Vega has also flown some drones there as well. And what you see here is another part, the white sandy area there is all the new imported sites there. My little tree islands, as we call it, that's what we call tree protection zones. and then you see the little orange fence there so all the white soil there that is all the stuff that the remedian now you can see here where we now where it drops down where they're still removing some of the uh old contaminated soil there and you can see almost like a close to four foot drop there right going down to the water table there i call these my little tree islands so imagine you know us removing all those trees so it's a really really nice canopy particularly this one tree here um and then as we move south you know you'll see them start doing the more solar remediation and and then you see there where we're protecting the the lake on one side and then also you see the other silt fence on the other side between the the silt fence and the palm trees that is the 97th avenue right away We're not removing any of the dirt there at all. So I just wanted to provide that update to the council. And then from the, I think, click, okay, reimbursement side. as we know this is a brownfield eligible expense to be reimbursed in this case up to 50 of a million dollars per calendar year a little bit different than legacy park because legacy park it's part of a a larger agreement that has a medical facility there as well for publics okay so this is just a park but good news is that additionally we'll receive 25 of eligible expenses at the project closeout so right there Total 75% of all the eligible related solar mediation projects that we will receive voluntary cleanup tax credits from FDEP. And then, as you know, we've done that before. I think it only lasts maybe a couple of days in the market. We then sell those VCTs in the open market at 90 cents per dollar. Just to give you an idea, our first pay application from Redland, that was all the work that was done in 2025, was over a million dollars. Within that million dollars, approximately 734 000 of it will be eligible for voluntary cleanup tax credits because remember some of the other things might be the deposit for the pavilion the the the the trail some other things that are not uh eligible but 734 000 will be eligible and then just just doing some quick math 75 of that total will be approximately 550 000 So this is an advantage of why we created this as a brownfield. This is a big ticket items here. Now, total contract is $3.3 million. Obviously, we could just do the math. We know that $1 million is worth the work in 2025. The remaining $2 million will be in 2026. We will also maximize that $1 million worth of potential reimbursements as well in 2026. So I think it's just important to talk about the business side of that. And again, I'd like to thank all the neighbors there, but at least you see a lot of action there. Think it was kind of a cool moment there I think when we were out there with the the mayor and and and CBS that you literally saw I think remember merit the crossroads You saw trucks coming into Blue Herring Park with clean fill I mean sorry to Legacy Park with clean fill and trucks leaving Blue Herring Park with the entire circle was just trucks Yeah, it was a circle truck of truck, you know So it was like it was like kind of a thing that you don't see a couple times your life You know, you see that going on within the blocks of each other Okay Thank you. And the next one we're going to have quickly is the Coastal Ridge Preserve. Continue my parks route. But I think it's very important, Mayor and Council, I mean, I did a similar brief presentation at the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, but I think it's important for us to provide this information collectively for the Council and then obviously for the community. So this is Coastal Ridge Preserve.

Okay.

So we all know it's eight and a half acres. We purchased it back in 2020. 8 1⁄2 acres. The address, $8.5 million, $1 million per acre that we did that, and also that one is also below appraisal. We also completed Phase 1 and Phase 2. Council renamed it Coastal Ridge Preserve in September 24 at the same time we did Veterans Park. It was a two-for-one resolution. So Town Environmental Consultant on this project was Peer. It performed the soil management plan, developed the soil management plan, but Miami-Dade County required additional sampling points. So at that point, we stopped it until we cleared everything up. Because just to get to that spot that Peer Inc., um did the samples it cost them nearly ten thousand dollars when it was a heavy brush and woods there so we said you know what we were close with my many kind of derm they allowed us to take a pause until all the debris has been cleaned up and now we're going to start going in there and putting in more sampling points there the town consultant will perform now the property has been done and you'll see uh these little quick picture we're going to discuss shortly here with in the video Another one, grants awarded. We were awarded a second Florida Communities Trust for $856,000. That was the award, if you recall, in my previous presentation, we were awarded up to 1.1, but we fell below the line where they cut off up to 20 million. So it was one of those that I remember, you know a great email the receiver floors committee trust Hey, sorry, we can't give you the 1.1. But would you would you take 856? I'm like, yes Yes, where do we sign so that that we sign all the agreements that it should be deposited a lot sooner than Veterans Park So that one I could say the checks in the mail or it gets electronically. I we also received 250 000 grant and we matched 250 000 for a total of 500 000 for development of the master plan permitting and the removal of the invasives and then just recently in january received a second a third grant now for up to thirty thousand dollars with a match of thirty thousand dollars for the hardwood hammock but wait it gets a little bit better too just a couple hours ago The Board of County Commissioners approved $250,000 appropriation with no town match. And thank you, public, thank Commissioner Danielle Cohen-Higgins that this is one that I know the mayor and I have been working with her for, I want to say, what, maybe three years, at least three to four years? you know so i know that she was very very happy uh to to have that and we want to thank the border county commissioners that requires no match so if you do the quick math there we have sixty thousand dollars you know combined for the floor for the uh uh department of agriculture and another two hundred fifty thousand dollars so they're looking at almost three hundred ten thousand dollars instantly just to start doing the the planting solar remediation same as the other property we're going to pursue the grant from ftp since this is a non-Brownfield designated site, and we have the grant funding, potential grant funding up to $150,000, then it's per site. So we're going to pursue the same process that we did with Veterans Park. This journey, I know the council has seen this before. In February, we approved STANTEC to develop the master plan and they became very familiar with the community here. A lot of familiar faces here. We had, you know, we met with the Parks and Rights Commission. We had the visioning session at the site, cleanup site there. I know that both Council Member Lord and Ramirez were there on site as well. And then we also had the visioning session over wings by the bay there. And you can see our congressman Salazar there with the mayor actually receiving feedback and comments from residents there. So we actually went to a lot of our different events. Then also part of our process that we want to make sure that this property was originally built. on the what's called the environment endangered land B list and we want to move it to the A list. So on September 25th, I'm sorry, September 2025, myself and the mayor presented before the last committee there at their board meeting. We provided them all the information, reason why this property, although not, it was formed in the past, but we feel that it has a lot of great benefit, particularly to the 124 acres on the side there and the plants the county wants. And the last committee board approved it unanimously. Now that recommendation then goes to the Board of County Commissioners. We're hoping that sometime either March or April, the County Commissioners then ratifies their decision. And what that means for us is that we then will finalize our negotiations to Miami-Dade County EEL. Instead of getting 50%, since we're currently on the B list of appraised value on the potential two-acre site, we will then now, if we're on the A list, we'll get 100%. of it. So that's almost a swing of almost a million dollars. You know, we paid a million dollars per acre. We're going back and forth and negotiating with Miami County Eel. And hopefully once we get that a list and we can find us a negotiation, then we'll come back to the council. As you recall, we approved the master plan based on the eight acres. Now that we know that as the negotiations finalized with Miami-Dade County to purchase the two acres, we'll come back to the council and revisit the master plan. Part of the... discussion we have with Miami-Dade County is their concept as part of putting the North Cutler Bay wetlands flowway going up from the Bill Sadowski Park located in Palmetto Bay, coming straight down and you can see where it depicts there. And here's a closer view of the two acre potential purchase for them to county to create their flowway. Why? Because that is buffer land. If they put it anywhere closer to the east, then they'll start going into jurisdictional wetlands there. So that's the reason why this property, in our opinion, has a lot more value than just a regular buffer land. That's why this has been our point when we presented to the last committee of why this property, yes, consider buffer land, but it has value to the overall project of the wetland project. and this is just a sneak peek again something that if the if the eel property negotiations go through we'll bring back to the council what the property would would look like the master plan will have to be revised obviously it'll be discussed at the council meeting and and at this point i'd just like to show a little uh quick video and i think there we go again like to thank rob gibson our communication manager so what you see here is the area that has already been cleared uh these piles we're going to talk about a little bit but to see those trees on the left-hand side that's going to be the theoretical two acres that would be uh potentially selling to Miami-Dade County Eel those trees were left there intentionally working with uh Miami-Dade County Derm we wanted to make sure that there's a lot of a perching area there for a lot of hawks that you have there and all other bats believe it or not so those trees were left there on purpose in coordination with Miami-Dade County Derm And then the southern portion here right by the lake, that is where we have, I call it the little arsenic hotspot there. That's where back in the 1930s, early 30s, there was a farmhouse there with a lot of chemicals there. So that's why now we could expand the testing sites there. then then that goes into the color k there so if i could um if i could just go back to the video real quick there's a way to pause it mauricio if we could just go back to the beginning and pause the where we have the two piles but i want to talk a little discussion about the two piles there okay so yeah we just get a little bit closer there it's like virtual tour here Okay, you can see the positive. So members council, what you see here is those two remaining positive. The reason why they're still remaining because we have already reached our max with the county contract with the contract that we piggyback from the county. It was we have reached their their max when the folks originally, um, estimated they estimate about 5500 cubic yards again it's what i tell people it's not a science you got to look at a forest and how many cubic yards we maximize all the all the um purchasing authorization that i had up to 371 thousand dollars we then went back to the vendor and if we even expanded the cost to remove this believe it or not there's almost like 80 8,000 cubic yards of debris there. I mean, you can see from area, but when you walk it, you're like, yeah, it's like six feet tall or so. We've had a consultant go out there and look at it. The current contractor that we have has completed their task. We then requested at this point, to see if we could get a a quote to chip come in with a big multi-machine chip it and then haul it away it's a it's a volume game right so you obviously the the most the chipping is going to take less volume in a you know 120 cubic yard you know semi if you have there uh unfortunately that task is not in a county contract so at that point i said well give me the worst case worst case if the contractor extended the existing county's pricing for hauling it away the way it is, I know everybody's sitting down, it would be $275,000. Yeah, that's what I said. Well, I said other words. So, $275,000. So, the second part, we said, you know what, let's go back, contractor, you there, you did great work, they just underestimated. Give me a cost for to mulch in place and haul it.

Okay.

137,000. I said, okay, well, I still have that heartburn. So then I said, you know what? Hey, you know, let's get our own contractors to give us some pricing, right, of mulching it in place and then hauling it away. Mayor and members of council, we received at least two written proposals of 44 and 48. at that point so what i like to recommend at this point and normally don't but i want to exploit the removal of this because remember we still got to do some sampling there And I don't want to still have that debris there and maybe attract more, say, illegal dumping there, even though there's a fence property there. What I would recommend if the town council would recommend a motion authorizing the town manager to expend funds to remove the debris at Coastal Ridge Reserve in an amount not to exceed, I'm putting there $60,000, after obtaining three written proposals, which purchase shall be brought back to the town council for ratification at the next regularly scheduled council meeting. I didn't want to wait to get written proposals because I mean, we have like two already. And these are from our current vendors. I want to try to get at least a couple more. But I didn't have enough time before this council meeting here. So if the council would authorize me with that motion, then I'll work closely with the town attorney's office. We'll bring something back and we'll have at least three to four written proposals.

To expedite it more, if we just gave you a dollar limit without bringing those back to us, would that be something that would work as well?

No, it's permissible. Yeah. Okay.

make a motion to approve? What do you say? You think you need it up to $60,000?

Up to $60,000, yeah. Because what you see there, like, for example, on this still shot here, you still see some what we call some C&D material there, you know, some other illegal dumping there, as I call it, you know, that was in the property there. So I would say I'm very comfortable. I don't think I'm going to get, you know, get all the way up there, up to $60,000 to remove the remaining vegetative and I call it other materials that are there.

I'll make the motion for that.

All right. So we have a motion by Councilman Lord to authorize up to $60,000 for removal on the site. Looking for a second. Second. Second by Councilman Herrera. Favor say aye. Aye.

Okay.

That's the ordinance. Is that a resolution?

a real resolution. It'll be a resolution ratifying and that way we have it there. And so, you know, thank you, Mayor and members of council with that. Next, we have no more videos now. Next, we have our friends from Miami-Dade County. We have Francisco regarding our TOD study that we have, that we've been working closely, it seems, for at least a couple of years, right, Francisco, with this? So we have the presentation, you have the presentation on your agenda, but Francisco's here to go through it and answer any questions. Francisco, thank you.

Yeah. So, yeah, we were here March of this year and had some public outreach events. And since then, we've wrapped up the project and we're here to show you at least what your stationery is in your city look like town. Again, thank you for the opportunity for having me here and letting me present this project to you. This project is funded with federal funds and CITT funds. And I'll start the presentation here. Okay. All right. So, in general, right, for these TOD projects, we like to, you know, recognize them as maybe a catalyst for development. On this corridor, we have the implemented BRT work. While we're doing it, it was being implemented, right? So, it really made sense to show what development could look like. You know, where we could be creating new urban centers and making sure that new development falls within the context of the existing area. On the right hand of your screen, you'll see our typical framework that we use to create these TOD projects. This is one of several that we have at the county, right? They're all federally funded projects. And one of our main goals is to ensure that our corridors, or at least our future rapid transit corridors or existing rapid transit corridors are, you know, complete with transit support of land use and zoning. That's one of the main goals that we look to accomplish. And also accentuating where new development can happen and where those opportunities may arise. Throughout this project, we were here in March with one of the public meetings. We had in total two public meetings in person and we also did one virtually. We organized over 40 meetings with the development community, the public, local stakeholders to get interviews in and understand what the sentiment was towards development in the community. We also coordinated an online survey campaign that generated over 500 responses. And again, for that survey, we leveraged our social media, our newsletters. We shared it with all the communities along the corridor to get all those responses, right, to generate all that feedback. Um, and you'll have some key findings there on the on the side. I mean, I'm going to try to go through this pretty fast and you guys have a long agenda. Um, so we selected 5 out of the 14 stations, um, for the station area planning process. we try to really encapsulate every single typology along the corridor. So that's why there's a big breadth of the difference between all these different stations, right? Howard Drive being neighborhood, Eureka Suburban the one with the where the mall is we actually combined those two since they were so close together and we were able to do a larger station area plan that area being categorized as a metro urban center right lots of development can happen there Bower Drive also a metro urban center but a different a different context right that's completely a clean slate And then we also looked at the end of the line at Southwest 344th Street. And we also tried to make sure that we had different conditions, right? Some of these stations or most of them are incorporated on the east side and unincorporated on the west side. Some of them are fully within city. Some of them are, you know, like Power Drive is fully unincorporated area. we um to select these five stations we looked at over 46 different um kpis key performance indicators some of them are underneath right so that's those are some of the variables that we looked at we organized them into six or seven categories and we were able to um you know there was different categories there was affordable housing economic development um um yeah um Those are the two that we went with, right? I don't remember the other four, but those are the ones that we weighted heavier than the other four or five. And that's how we got these selected stations, right? So these stations performed very well in affordable housing opportunity, economic development opportunity, and affordable housing need. And I mentioned the typologies that are listed there. Those are the different types of typologies that we came to based on the surrounding area. And these are the two stations within your grade town. So Eureka Drive Station, there's a diagram of kind of where your town falls at this location. And it's Palmetto Bay, Cutler Bay, and then again unincorporated on the west side. This next slide shows existing conditions and one of our renderings. You can see on the rendering that there's, you know, pretty dense development, right? You'll notice that on the unincorporated side, there are taller buildings than on the incorporated side. And at this location, I think let's go to the next, there's your municipal boundary. So here we can see some of the infrastructure improvements that were that were noted right one of the big issues at at this uh station was um a lack of um pedestrian infrastructure across us-1 and that's actually occurs several times along the corridor it's a recurring theme um so you'll see that we um recommended some some bridges to cross. It's not on this one, but it's on the next one. We looked at... One of the things that we look at is bicycle and pedestrian connectivity. So you'll see here that we added some of those projects to complete the gap. The west side is disconnected from the east side. So there's also new thoroughfares that were made, not thoroughfares, but pedestrian connections to link Bella Park and the elementary school to the other side of the transitway. We looked at the Miami County Health Department property, right? We identified that as an opportunity for redevelopment. A lot of that property can be used to support affordable housing and other types of housing needs. One of the recurring things along this corridor is a lot of surface parking as well, right? So you'll see that a lot of the development that you see proposed is refocusing what those surface thoughts can be and making them go vertical and adding additional mixed uses to those sites. As well as the shopping center, right? Lots of surface parking lot that can be redeveloped into more housing. Creating smaller blocks as well helps for the walkability. Like I mentioned the downtown the Cutler Bay shopping center right that can be redeveloped to get rid of some of the surface parking. There is a an industrial area on the west side of us one and. We recommended. um adding like an overlay zoning to to that area we obviously we've uh at the county we've shared this internally with all of our internal dtpw agencies and as well as the tpo and rer um so we've shared all these ideas with them uh to see which ones i can take off um but let's focus more on on your uh so number one right northwest uh 185th street intersection that's a new intersection along um us-1 very tricky for them to actually uh approve that but we wanted to do with that is is you know it's it makes a statement right like um Traffic on us one needs to slow down and we have to create different techniques to be able to allow pedestrians to cross the street, right? You'll see that we did propose Bridges in some locations but a lot of the feedback that we got back from mostly from the from the I Guess the local employees right is that when they go to lunch right they don't really want to walk backtrack to to a pedestrian bridge right that a lot of the times the options um you know they will just jaywalk on us1 even though it's dangerous because it is a a much quicker um straight shot to wherever they're going um so we definitely recognize the issues along us1 Um, mentioned the health department, um, we mentioned that, uh, us when pedestrian crossing, um, public, uh, publicly accessible open space. Um. There are some of the connections that I mentioned that are needed, um, to to be able to access from the other side of those open spaces. Um. also knowing that redevelopment is to occur um open spaces would have to happen on that private property when that redevelopment occurs um you know as much as uh in on the color bay side as well as on the unincorporated areas right there is a lack of of open space adjacent to the transit way um so we're definitely um you know recommending that um uh any P3 projects, try to secure that open space. And that's something that we recommended to our own joint development team at DTPW, right? These are recommendations that we've shared and hopefully they can secure some open spaces. So I mentioned the two pedestrian crossings to cross the transitway, right? You see those yellow dots, those connect both sides to very important amenities like the school. And then there was, there's new roadways proposed, right? So, and the idea with making the block smaller is that that would allow for more walkability, make it more of a pedestrian-oriented type of development, right? When you have the really long blocks, it's really more of a car-centric type of development. So move on to the two station areas combined into one, right? The Caribbean Boulevard Station and the South Allapattah Road Station. So on this, you'll see that most of the area is part of Cutler Bay. You'll see that development on the west side is definitely larger than what we recommended for the Cutler Bay side. And this mostly, you'll see there, that's mostly, that's all existing surface parking lots, right? Mostly for the target. Some of it is also our park and ride facility that was recently expanded. And that can also be a TOD in the future. so we we did meet with you know uh with town staff and um and we did review all these uh proposals with town staff um so there's a lot of information here um obviously the the mall redevelopment There was a few ways that the plan could be enhanced by adding more public space and more water features, creating a street network that provides better circulation. Shared parking could be an option that helps redevelopment as well. We also took a look at additional parcels adjacent to the transitway and what redevelopment could look like along there. That land between the US-1 and the transitway does make it a little bit tricky for redevelopment. The area northwest of the station, I believe that would be number... number one. That's an area we'd like to encourage redevelopment, more mixed use. And the same with the area that's listed number two, right? These areas are ready for redevelopment. And we also take into consideration that all the nearby single family properties, right? We don't We don't propose anything should be happening in the single family areas. This is all commercial and government uses. Okay, so the, um, we also recommended that some of the development, uh, leading to the station, um, should stay a greenway like that South Ella road. Um, you know, we, again, going back to, um, the, the bikes, bicycle and pedestrian analysis that was done. Um, it really. You know, there's a lot of projects coming, coming online in this area that are planned and we didn't know that Alapata road is missing some kind of agreement project to provide that connection. From the Black Creek trail up to the station. That would create another another great connection to the station. We also realized that the South Dade government complex is also being redeveloped. So that's also a good area for connections to happen. We noted that the Black Creek Trail should connect to the transit way. As well as that Allapattah Road. Right now they're kind of about like a 10 to 15 foot height difference. So we'll work with the people at PROSE to come up with some kind of a solution. Um, pedestrian bridges, so I mentioned that there was a pedestrian bridge recommended for this location and this was actually already we were started moving forward with this 1. there's already a study started at the county to to to look at. that location for the bridge. We worked with the manager, Mr. Casals, to secure a landing site on the mall property as well. So we're definitely moving forward with that bridge study and trying to get that implemented as well. And as well, not just the bridge study, but through this process, right, we do meet with other internal DTPW agencies to do this kind of work, right, where we can give the idea of a bridge to a different team and they can start working on the PD&E just like, you know, we will have a team start looking at what we need to do to get that South Allapattah portion of a greenway installed, what that can look like, whether it's going to be a bike lane or if it's going to be a trail. We can start that. We've identified those gaps. As well, I do believe there's some additional gaps along Caribbean Boulevard and Southwest 100th Court. And we forward this information to, again, to the multimodal team as they're the ones that work with the traffic engineers to install these items. And again, a lot of a redevelopment of surface parking lots, making the block smaller so that they're more pedestrian friendly. And yeah, that's mostly, that's most of the recommendations. Oh, this is a better rendering here. You can see close up. Yeah, I already went over pretty much everything there. Any questions?

That was obviously a lot. And again, your master plans are very far looking. Remember, our master plan started, what, 20 years ago? Um, and it's a lot to take in without a doubt. It's a drastic change from what we have now, obviously. Um, council, do you have any questions on that? All right. Councilman Lord.

Thank you for that. There is a ton of information in that presentation, a lot to unfold. I did want to talk a little bit about the pedestrian bridge. That was actually one of our legislative priorities last year. I'm really happy to hear it's being discussed. If I'm not mistaken, I think it was Commissioner Cohen-Higgins who allowed the PD&E study. So thank you again to her for that. Because within the next couple of years, we're going to have 5,500 units there. And if we need them to cross over to get to the BRT, a bridge is going to be very necessary because it's a six-lane highway, right? So that's really my only comment. I'm really happy to hear that that's part of the discussion.

yeah no that was yeah it was very it's very you know um fruitful to get things like that moving um so yeah we're excited about it too that pdd i believe has has um it should be started already all right um councilman duncan thank you mr mayor uh thank you for your presentation and it was very very lengthy very informative a lot of information to digest um i guess the questions that i have

What now that this is, you know, the kind of through the master plan process, what's the next steps with this? Because we've seen lots of images and pictures and buildings that are proposed within this master plan.

Right. So, I mean, so the development you saw there is it happens mostly on private property. Right. So as development comes in, you'll see, you know. landscape start to change. As far as next steps, like I mentioned, this is FTA funded, so they didn't give us any exact, you know, you know, final steps that we had to, you know, any hoops to jump through, right? For implementation-wise, like I mentioned, we've met with all of our internal DTPW agencies, you know, which includes, you know, multimodal, the traffic engineers, highways, bus operations, right? We met with all those teams, lots of work with our joint development team. So all the recommendations we shared with everybody too, so that they can take these ideas with them in their work. We presented, not only are we presenting to you, but we presented already to CITT, three TPO subcommittees, the corridor commissioners, right? and you guys as well, right? And, you know, as far as implementation, you know, these are ideas, right? These are recommendations, these are redevelopment strategies. It really takes, you know, uh political willpower like you guys have here in this room or or the commissioners to really take one of these ideas and and and run forward um uh as well as ralph with with the with the bridge is very helpful and getting that moving along and securing the landing area um and but through this process of of kind of of sharing the document with everybody um that's kind of like the in the implementation that we've um kind of um Are going through, right?

So we don't have any required implementation, but things the only other follow up question that I have a comment would be. Um, ideologically, when you were developing the master plan and going through and trying to determine what these areas could look like, uh, based upon the, you know, the transit way, um, is, is the idea of all this additional, you know, high rises and mixed use and, and, you know, those types of, of, uh, properties is the idea that that would be. to provide more housing for residents that currently do not live in south florida or relocating people that are currently so i mean yeah so the county is expected to grow to 3.5 million by 2045 right so that's you know an extra seven by 2045. yeah yeah no no no

So, I mean, those are those are the projections that we work with from the TPO and from, you know, from. So do we want, you know, more townhouses and more sprawl? No. I mean, what we want as far as a transit agency is we want higher industrial development next to our rapid transit stations. Right. And as far as TOD, we've been, I would call it successful, right, since the beginning, right? The county has a rapid transit zone legislation, which has been there since the beginning of the metro rail. It's gone through different life cycles. Most recently in 2022, there was some expansion on it. And all the development that I showed on those renderings, that's all doable within current zone. So there's not a need aside from a couple of areas that are existing industrial that we wouldn't want to get rid of. We would just want to redevelop it consciously while allowing new uses. So that would require some kind of overlay zoning, but there's no need for any kind of overhaul of any zoning code.

I don't envy your position in kind of having to come up with solutions for that type of a population explosion over the next 19 years i would just you know my only comment then would be that i hope that our friends at the county can figure out um some of these transit way issues that we've been experiencing now without the added million people uh and we can we can add these high rises in these these places for people to live all we want but if we don't solve that before that then we're kind of stuck in the same same boat if not a worse situation right right that's all i have thank you yeah

Thank you very much. I also wanted to give kudos to commissioner Daniel Cohen Higgins for getting the study done and and working on the bridge. And I appreciate that. So, with that being said, let me be the bad guy. We're looking at 5,500 apartments in South Police City Center, another almost 4,000, over 3,500. You guys are trying to slide into our two stations. You said that they're looking for ways to slow down traffic. You don't have to look anymore because nobody will be moving. There'll be so much traffic that cars won't be able to move. so um i have a question for for a car manager i know you guys would end up doing a traffic study as these things progress along but are we also going to be able to do a traffic study so that um you know we don't get we don't get numbers that get construed on both different on on different sides council ramirez like as we mentioned before this this

um project was funded through the fta federal transit agency in order to look at density along the transit way Right. So we've been on that side and we still remain on that side that we think, at least in Cutler Bay, we never passed a resolution. We always said Metrorail or bust. Right. So in order to feed that, in order to feed that, you need that development. As Francisco mentioned, yes, it looks a lot big scale. You see on outside our town limits. I want to emphasize that it's currently zoned that way. You just see a target there today. But it's currently zoned for what, you know, Francisco and his team showed. So that's not a surprise to us. Not a surprise to us neither is that we also have, you know, zoning along our US one corridor along that trans way up to 75 units per acre. That's a lot, a lot of density compared to our neighboring municipalities. And then we also know, yes, the big monster, the gorilla in the room south of the mall, the 5500 units. Well, we know that's coming. We know that's coming. We addressed it by what? Getting working closely with Commissioner Cohen-Higgins and our friends from Miami-Dade County Public Works Department, and we secured a PD&E study for the bridge. That we know it's coming. The other things that you see there, I treat that like, and I say it in a fun way, It's almost like the mayor mentioned, almost like a Charette style, right? I mean, what Francisco showed you there is that, well, here's what the future shopping center could be on Eureka Drive. That's great, but that's not right now the way it looks. We understand that. There has to be a lot of zoning things that have to be done. That's just their implementation trying to figure out how do you make it a pedestrian friendly, bicycle friendly, how do you feed the BRT? So when it comes to items in Cutler Bay, you know, we know we control that. We control that. When it comes to items in Cutler Bay, also a council member, this council has a rule where an ordinance that any developer that comes in, they have to pay us to do the study. the mall is paying us several hundred thousand dollars to do the study. If I'm not mistaken, right, Julian? I mean, they're paying several hundred thousand dollars and they don't get past goal until we are comfortable with that, our own consultant doing that. So, yeah, it's a lot of big scales there. I know it's like, that was my first reaction. Where are these buildings coming from? But it's currently zoned that way. So I think it's one of those that it's, again, it's a study. I'd like to thank, you know, Francisco and his team because we were able at least to put in the pedestrian bridge as part of that study. Going back to what we mentioned, you know, thank you, Commissioner Cohen-Higgins. In fact, in one of our, I think it was, Mitch, if I recall, it was during our lunch, you know, we just had a little 15-minute, 20-minute lunch break that we had to go into Capitol Building. We ran into Secretary of DOT, Secretary Perdue. mayor and i grabbed the corner hey pdme study coming you're going to see his findings he loves it why why did he love it he said it and the rest of the council members that were there is that they love that private public partnership we wanted to make sure that it's not just the government paying for the pda so the government paying for the bridge is also the developer who's going to benefit from that side as well. So we had one of those impromptu conversations, like seven or eight minutes regarding the bridge. And even when we went up there before, when Secretary Miller, who now is the public works director, right, in Miami County, everybody knows about the pedestrian bridge in Cutler Bay. So we actually took advantage during our lunch break, you know, a little quick lunch break in there between sandwiches, right, in between meetings. And we snuck in a conversation with Secretary Miller. So, Council Member Ramirez, it's, It's a long-winded answer to say that those are just the planning phases right now. When it comes to Color Bay, we control what's on our side. And what's on their side, they have the density there already. And I think it's just a matter of feeding the machine. Yes, we know there's some east-west traffic concerns with the BRT. But when we all close our eyes, at least in Color Bay, we say Metrorail or bus here. Right? And that would be the vision there. And we do have the density there. I think this is kind of for them. But again, it's not like tomorrow you're going to see a bunch of applications coming in for all that development there. Right.

That's correct. And even the projects that you do see currently, they're smaller than what they're allowed to be. Right? So... And that's, you know, even what's allowed to be built is not being built. So that's kind of like where we're at, right. Where, you know, we should be getting more units, but we're, you know, still the, um, the public sentiment isn't there yet. Right. Right. So that's kind of, uh, one of the, uh, one of the goals here as well as education of what it should look like.

And sorry for this guy. And I think the fact that it's funded by FTA, the pedestrian bridge is called out in the study. It'll open up a lot more funding opportunities for us as well at the federal level as well. So there's a couple of critical paths here. We've got the state level. We've got the federal level. We've done good in both aspects of it. I wanted to make sure that bridge was in that master plan there. So thank you, Francisco, for your presentation.

And everything's available on our project website. If you want to go in there and peruse it, grab some ideas.

moving forward just want to say that i have some comments from residents stuff i'll talk to you about that afterwards okay after the meeting and stuff okay oh so okay thank you okay thank you for this go um great segue for feeding the brt

Next, we have a presentation from our friends from Miami-Dade County Department of Transportation and Public Works. But before I introduce Jerese, I'd also like to recognize Sean Eggerson, the Deputy Director and Chief Transit Operations Officer for Miami-Dade County. Sean, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for your patience here tonight. So with that, I'd like to have Jerese Rodriguez come in. She's very familiar with our MetroConnect services that we have here. And for a little quick introduction, Presentation, there's been some changes to Metro Connect, as the Mayor and Council knows. We've had a long-standing relationship with the Miami-Dade County Transit Department. In fact, since 2012, they've been operating our circulator. And then we were, I think, the only municipality, right, that joined the Metro Connect early on. and there's been some changes to it i want to you know introduce juries that you know publicly recognize her and thank her because she's been behind the scenes you don't see her as often but we deal with her all the time alfred and you near do as well as i do so with that juries if you could just start your presentation thank you good evening everybody thank you for the opportunity to come here and present you an overview of the metro connect program and the upcoming changes

MetroConnect is the county's on-demand microtransit service. It provides dynamically routed, on-demand, near-corp-to-corp rides, including wheelchair accessible rides. The MetroConnect was deployed, was launched in 2020. The intent was to provide trips or service on only first and last mile trip. But because this happened during COVID, we were forced to adapt and modify the scope to provide essential service for essential trips. So it was changed to allow for all purpose as long as essential. within the designated areas. What started like four service zones in 2020 is now at 13 service zones across the county. We serve about 2,000 rides per day, 250 rides only on Color Bay. Color Bay is about 15% of our daily ridership, 15% of the whole program, carrying 250 rides and about 250,000 rides since the inception in 2020. The MetroConnect operates at a service level of 15 to 20 minutes pickup times and a ride availability of 85%, meaning that every time, 85% of the time a ride is requested, MetroConnect offers a ride, so meaning the seats that are available. The budget for this is about $8 million per year, and the cost per ride is about $14 per rider. This is below the national average of $20 to $30 per rider. Because of the multiple budget constraints that were going on, the board approved, the county board approved a combination of service adjustments along with service efficiency measures that we are expecting will will maintain the current service level of 15 to 20 minutes pick-up time, 85% ride availability while reducing the budget, the annual operating cost, and maintaining the desired service levels of service. With the board approved this combination of service adjustment and efficiency measures, we are adopting, we adopted a budget of 5.1 million per year for the following two years that started in January 1st. This is expected to reduce the budget by 30%. So the combination of the service adjustments and service efficiency measures that were approved include the fare collection. We are establishing a fare of $3.75 per ride and a discounted fare of $1.50 for rides that are connecting, starting or ending at designated transit hubs. We're also reducing the service hours, meaning that now all the service zones will be operating from 6.30 in the morning to 7 p.m. No service, no weekend service in the zones of Dayland and Westchester. We're also implementing a fixed route mode preference that means is that if the rider requests a MetroConnect ride and it happens to be in an area that you have premium or you have a better fixed route option, MetroConnect is not going to offer the rider a ride. INSTAT will offer and will provide information and navigation instructions how to get to the fixed route service or station. We're also establishing three-mile distance cap, which doesn't apply here in Coler Bay because the rights don't see the three-mile distance cap. We also discontinue services in areas that we have very low productivity or low ridership or the areas that are rich in transit. These are Civic Center and Waterford Business District. All these changes are starting on February 1st. I THINK I MISSED IT HERE. THE BOARD APPROVED A TWO-YEAR CONTRACT EXTENSION WHICH ALLOWED THE COUNTY TO GO OUT AND ADVERTISE TWO COMPETITIVE SOLICITATIONS, ONE FOR THE ACQUISITION OF THE SOFTWARE AND ONLY FIVE SOFTWARE PLATFORMS THAT WOULD ALLOW US TO MANAGE MORE EFFICIENTLY PARATRANSIT AND MICROTRANSIT OPERATIONS AND ANOTHER SOLICITATION FOR THE SERVICE DELIVERY OF MICROTRANSIT SERVICE AND THESE TWO SOLICITATION WILL REPLACE THE CURRENT CONTRACT FOR METRO CONNECT SERVICE. SO ALONG WITH THAT TWO YEARS CONTRACT EXTENSION, THE BOARD APPROVED A DESIGNATED PURCHASE FOR TWO YEARS IN A TOTAL AMOUNT OF 10.9 MILLION. AND WE ARE EXPECTING WITH THIS, THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SERVICE ADJUSTMENTS AND THE SERVICE EFFICIENCY MEASURES, WE ARE EXPECTING TO HAVE A fair box revenue of $950,000 that will reduce the county contribution to $9.1 million for the entire period of two years. Of course, we expect and it's expected that for the implementation of these service adjustments and service efficiency measure will have an impact on the ridership. So we're expecting a decrease of about 30 to 35% in ridership. And this is very difficult to project. This is based on estimates of previous studies across the nation, but we don't know exactly how the ridership would be impacted. We know for sure the most likely gonna be reduced. So this is how the pre-procurement timeline looks like. On January 1st, we started the two-year contract extension for MetroConnect. In February, we're gonna be implementing all the service adjustments. We're gonna be advertising the solicitation for the software. In summer of 2026, we expect to advertise the solicitation for regional services for MetroConnect. And in October of 2027, we're expecting to be able to award the two contracts. And then the extension will be ending in December of 2027, and January of 2028, we'll have the new contract in place, which is going to be replacing the current contract. Now, how does this affect Color Bay? As you see here, Color Bay is the most productive zone of MetroConnect. It has been from the very beginning, always has been carrying the largest amount of riders. and in the program. And all these dots shows where are the pickup and drop-off locations. Most of them happens to be on the transit way stations and transit stations. In Color Bay, about 32% of the trips are connected with transit. And if you look at the color bay that is the light purple, you will see that you have dots everywhere, meaning that MetroConnect serves the entire municipality. And on the bottom, you will see the top five destinations of MetroConnect. Now, we do have a ridership that exceeds 250 rides per year, and this is about, pardon me, 250 rides per day, and this is about 56,000 rides per year. It's an average. The cost for rides is $11, with 20 cents this is the lowest in the program but this is the zone with the lowest cost per rider and it's below the national average as well and We are expecting that, I'm going to show you now how this change is going to be impacting the Color Bay area and service. Well, we're expecting that will be a reduction of 25% in ridership. That means that instead of carrying about 250 passengers per day, maybe we'll have something around the 200. reducing the total of 56,000 rides to something about around 40,000. And how this change is going to be impacting Color Bay? Well, starting on February 1st, we're going to have a fair collection. We're going to have fair, meaning the rides will be $3.75. But if the right is connecting, connecting, starting or ending at a transit hub, designated transit hub, and you can see at the map we're showing the preliminary list about 13, about 13 designated transit hubs in Color Bay. If you are connecting to that, starting or ending your trip on one of these, transit hubs, the $1.50 fare will be covered by the town, which will represent that what means is that the rider will have no charge for that ride. So it will be free for the rider, but the town will be the municipality will be covered in that cost. And we estimate that that will be about $35,000 per year. The rest of the trips that are not connecting with any of these transit hubs would be $3.75. When the rider opened the app, the Metriconet app, and tried to schedule a ride, it would show how much you have to pay, and the rider would need to pay at the moment via phone or via the app, Metriconet app. So now the service hours will be reduced. So the service is gonna start at 6.30, ending at 7 p.m. And as I mentioned earlier, we are expecting a reduction of 25% in ridership. In overall, the 13 points are showing our locations that have a considerable transit activity or community services. That's all, any questions?

No, I don't think so. Thank you. Oh, my Lord.

I'm sorry the 2nd time I let someone step away from the podium before I decided to ask. So you were saying the Waterford business district is no longer going to have met. No, that's where I work.

And the reason is, it's a very low already. Should we propose to that for the district to. We cannot trust the service and provide service during the peak hours, but it was very low. So we analyzed the area and the service there, and they have the service, the high ridership that was only 60 people a day, it happened during the peak hours. The thing is that they didn't, they passed and adopted a budget without considering the contribution. So we're always offering them to help to implement the fare and also reduce the service for only peak hours. And that will help in the future if they want to contribute. And Civic Center is because there is premium service there and too many options for the riders.

Right. What I wanted to mention was in the beginning of this very difficult Miami-Dade County budget from this past year, I paid very close attention to Mayor Cava suggesting that we cancel MetroConnect altogether. I had conversations with her because we do have a great deal of ridership here. I'm happy to see that one of the top five is to transit way. I watched the county commission meetings and watching the discussions at that level on Metro Connect. It was very clear that it was designed for first mile, last mile, and we were not utilizing it that way. I think partially because the BRT wasn't completed yet. And so we were using it in other ways. I'm very proud of the town for covering the fair for our residents. to go to public transportation that's a bold move and we always set the standard very high here in our town but i'm i'm grateful that we still have the service here for our residents and ridership might die down a little but Before I came here today, I pretended I was hailing an Uber to come here to see what the cost would be. And the cost for me to Uber here from my home was $4.25. So it's still less expensive for our residents, for the most part, to continue to use the Metro Connect. And I hope that they do. So thank you for your presentation. I'm glad we're able to continue offering this to our residents. Thank you.

Just a thought, or maybe a suggestion or whatever is it possible you guys to consider corporate sponsorships to try and cover some of that that shortage gap in the in the budget and maybe either make this free again or lower the lower the fair cost even more. I don't know if that's possible or not, but just a suggestion. Maybe.

yeah that that could be uh considered so we are we don't know what's going to happen now with this trend we know that going to be reduced but we're hoping that providing this transit hub for the the fair of 1.50 is going to create that balance that will be people will be considering to use to connect to transit and at the moment we're not accepting any discounted program discount deferred program so that's something that because we're considering this like a premium premium service but it doesn't mean that the later we can go back in depending on what happened now and hopefully we're gonna keep the keep the the ridership and hopefully what we're gonna see is an increase in connections in the data that I presented and we have presented it based in prior BRD So we don't know now how we need to sit down and analyze how BRT is feeding, I mean, it's increasing the MetroConnect ridership. Actually, it's the inverse, how MetroConnect is feeding BRT. We know that the South Quarter is about 32% of the entire MetroConnect ridership. But we don't know exactly now how we just need to go back and look at the data. And hopefully this is going to be encouraged transit connections that I think are going to happen, especially here in the town that's going to be free for the riders. And it's something that we're using, we are planning to use as a model. How with this kind of partnership and having the contribution of the municipality can help us to increase connections with transit. Thank you.

Ralph, sir?

And thank you, Jerese, for the presentation. I think the key takeaways for us, Mayor, is that, you know, I know we keep using the word reduction service, but it's actually going back to what the intended service was.

That's correct.

Just going back to our journey, and here's where I want to at least give kudos to our Public Works Department and grants coordinator, because we originally received a grant for $577,000 to kick this project off. Then we did such a great job with the ridership that the following year we received another grant for $330,000. We showed the ridership information, showed the little dots that Darius showed there, another grant for $176,000. Then subsequent year, $200,000, and now another $250,000. Each one of these grants requires us to have a dollar-for-dollar match. So we have been showing our expenses through the CITT that we're using the first and last mile. And you're absolutely right. In the beginning, we were like, well, the BRT is not there. So we were just using it as an internal mobility. from your house to you know x place not not a hub now that the brt is there now we go back to what the original intent was so we've done you know over a million dollars with the grants with the fdot so you don't thank you and we've been leveraging that closely with metro connect and you're absolutely right councilman lord folks will figure it out yes if you're telling me it's going to be 3.75 to move within the town and uber is more expensive i'm calling metro connect And then if you're going to one of those designated 13 designated transit hubs, it'll be $1.50, but you instantly will receive a credit from MetroConnect, the county, and then we'll pick up that $1.50 tab. So it'll be a little bit of service adjustment, but I think, you know, with the outreach efforts and I'm telling you, some of those folks are really savvy because the only way you could go to MetroConnect is through your app on your phone. So it's amazing seeing the seniors there and Teresa's gone with us to Pinewood Villas and taught the seniors how to get the app. And these folks are very, very savvy with their app. So there might be a little bit of drop off in the beginning, but I think we're going to do some nice promotions, you know, through the staff there and promote that as well and still try to be that gold standard there as well. Yeah.

have to say one of the the things that made this uh metropolis so successful here is since 2020 we worked together with your marketing team and community engagement and we went out to the community educate and we told people we told the the seniors how to use the app it's just amazing how many are using and corporate has the largest numbers of seniors and people and will share or people that have mobility limitations using MetroConnect. And the reason why the numbers are no higher is because the fleet. We maintain, we keep the budget in place with a given number of vehicles. If we increase, that increase. So it's always has been, color bay always has been increasing. And also we noticed that comparing with other areas like dayland zones, Here the residents are willing to wait longer than in those areas. Like we saw that when we're offering rides, we don't offer rides over 30 minutes. That's not this part of our criteria. You cannot have many deviation because the time in the vehicle has to be short. The wait time cannot exceed the 30 minutes. And after that is say that it's not there is no ride available, but it's because we keep it on that service level. And we noticed that here the residents are waiting, they are willing to wait 25 and 30 minutes and they will request until they get the ride. it's a different um which sounds different by area but it's it's incredible how different is here and how people really appreciate and part is of them because of the town effort to promote and teach um and help the community to use how to you and teaching how to use this is the system now it would might take time because they need to learn to they have to input a credit card or a away could be digital the payment it could be by calling will take time but it will require us to go out and also talk to to them to the writers and we have been starting issuing a message targeting message just telling the people this this changes are coming and how to use it but i say it has been successful because of the partnership and the and the word that the town has put on this

think another advantage just to close mayor remember the council is that uh right now contracts with your local agreement we pay you know up to a certain amount it's like 35 35 percent of the operating cost which which equals to let's say in in vehicles say two vehicles and we pay for two vehicles per month in those operating hours the fact that we are leveraging the zones that was created by the county that that transit zone there might be again you know i'm not putting words in jerry's mouth but there might be might maybe six or seven vehicles kind of waiting for them to get pinged Right. And we take advantage of that because any one of those, it could be maybe three or four or in Cutler Bay, you're moving people around, but we're only paying for two. Yes. So that's the part of that partnership, continued partnership they have with Miami-Dade County. I'd like to thank, you know, Sean and his team because we created that zone there. So that way, yeah, there looks like there's a lot more, but we're only paying for two. And we drew that line there for $35,000 a month for the interlocal. But we'll come back with the revised interlocal. We're And Jeris and their staff, you'll see the business side of it, you know, coming here in the next couple of months for that. But I just want to provide that recap there. We'll go up, go through and update the website. In fact, just like yesterday was, I think it was you and Commissioner Cohen-Higgins, remember promoting the Metro Connect video. That's still on our website. So thank you, Jeris. Thank you, Sean, for your team and the continued relationship that we have since 2012. You are my transit department. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your support.

Mayor, one last thing. One last thing. Good news. As you know, we complete our state of the town. We had a lot of great sponsorship. We had a great event in this venue here. I'm proud to say that we raised over twenty eight thousand dollars. Once we did all the all the expenses and recap, we're able to put back in the community fund a total of eleven thousand six hundred seventy three dollars and sixty six cents. So that is going back to the community fund. So thank you, Vivian, Julia, for all enrollment for your Hefferson Broad so that we were able to bring back, you know, almost getting close to the Gulf for a tournament. Eleven thousand dollars. Thank you. That completes my report.

Thank you. That takes short town attorney report.

I don't really have anything.

All right, great. And then our town clerk's report. No report this evening. Perfect. It takes us to our consent agenda. Any polls? If not, looking for a motion for approval. So moved. We have a motion by Councilman Lord. Looking for a second.

Second.

Second by Councilor Ramirez. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right. We did have an appointment to the Youth Council Committee with us today. And I believe it's Dominic Campbell. Is that correct? Dominic, can you please come forward? If you could, Dominic, just tell us a little bit about yourself and why you decided to serve our community. We're glad that you did.

um my name is dominic campbell i am a 10th grader at miami southridge senior high um i'm in the game design and animation magnet and i'm very honored to be part of the youth council committee i've lived in cutler bay for my entire life and i love this community so I just wanted to help do my part to support it and make meaningful changes that would help me and my family and my peers at school.

That's pretty much it. All right. We want to say thank you again, because it is a commitment to serve like that. I want to also say thank you to your parents for, first of all, raising a fine young man who could be a part of our community. And anybody who wants to be part of this community and loves this community is welcome and appreciated. So thank you so much. Yes, Council Member Ramirez.

All right, so last night, Dominic came to his first meeting. Hopefully, he was somewhat impressed he showed up today, so I hope that helps. Very impressed with our youth council last year, this year, with my involvement, and I'm extremely happy that you decided to join us. I also want to thank your parents for sticking around and also contributing to the meeting with some ideas and some comments and everything else. I appreciate that, but I just want to take a real quick second um because there's a lady here that was uh two years ago sitting on the uh youth council and she has been my uh advisor for the last two years and she's just uh she's super duper so letty uh for real thank you so much for for giving the time to the council um after you after you uh finished your your time on the council so thank you thank you mr mayor

But just today, the Miami High School had a press release for the National Magpair Awards. And in Tucker Bay, you know, four schools are mentioned in there. We have, let's see, elementary schools, you know, we've got Phillipville, Hunter-Ray Middle School for the parent. Thank you for letting me be on the Council. It's an honor. Anyone in the queue?

No one in the queue. An ordinance of the Town Council of the Town of Cutler Bay, Florida updating the Town Water Supply Facilities Work Plan and adopting Water Supply Facilities Work Plan related amendments to the Town Growth Management Plan providing for transmittal, providing for conflicts, providing for severability, and providing for an effective date.

thank you members council like to introduce uh julian perez community development director to present this item julian i'll make this very quick good news uh good evening uh mayor council town clerk town attorney and town manager The item before you tonight is the Water Supply Facility Work Plan, and this is the adoption phase. It's the second hearing. This document was transmitted to the State Land Planning Agency on November 20th of 2025, and it went through the process very successfully. This meeting has been publicly advertised in the Miami Herald Sunday, January 11th, 2026, page 15 8 and a copy of that advertisement is attached to your package as i indicated they went through the state process on the section 163.3184 is the expedited state review process the application went through a number of state agencies as well as the south florida water management district the south florida regional planning council and miami-dade water and sewer From the state's perspective, all of the amendments were accepted, and so we're good to go there. There was only several comments, and the comments were made to the text or the background information. It was not made to the amendments. So the amendments are clear. There's a matrix that I went ahead and put together that shows the water management districts comments and our responses, as well as Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Commons and our responses. So it's very clear. The comments were specifically on one major area that had to do with water supply sources, as well as water conservation. And the information was just to update the information that we had on record. From now, where do we go? The adoption hearing is basically the last step in the process. So once this ordinance passes tonight, I have, or the department has, and the town has 30 days to put together the document again. and submit it to the state of Florida Land Planning Agency. They'll look at it again and they will release the letter saying it's complete. And once it's completed, then it becomes effective and we have met the statutory requirements. And the next time that we have to update this document will be in 2031. according to the county's record will probably be the first municipality submitting and getting this document approved so um with that you know once we get this one approved we'll go ahead and finish the process with the state any questions

So moved.

We have a motion by Council Member Lord.

Looking for a second.

So moved.

Second by Council Member Ramirez. Roll call vote, please. We do have to open the public hearing. Oh, that's right. Opening the public hearing on this item. Anybody wishing to speak, please come forward. There is none in the auditorium. Is there anybody in the queue?

No one in the queue.

That being said, we have a second and a first and a second. Roll call vote, please.

Council Member Duncan? Yes. Council Member Ramirez? Yes. Council Member Lord? Yes. Mayor Mirabut? Yes. Motion passes.

Just a quick note, one personal privilege for Julian. As I mentioned during the first reading, Julian took on this effort, worked tirelessly over the weekends, several weekends, because we could have sent this item out to one of our consultants and we received pricing about $20,000 to do this process. you know publicly thank julian for all his his you know 18 hour days on a saturday while we're probably home watching football you know he was out there doing this thing there and and you know publicly recognized because uh you know kudos and like you said we're we even did that and we'll be the first getting that approved so thank you julian all right great julian thank you on behalf of the council as well but that this meeting is adjourned