Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone. Today is Wednesday, June 17th, 2026, 5 PM. We are having our town council workshop on our budget. With that, Mr. Clerk, if you could please take the role.

Council Member Ramirez? Here. Council Member Lord?

Here.

Council Member Duncan? Here. Vice Mayor Callahan? Here. Mayor Mirabai?

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you. Could you please join and rise for the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, Ralph, I'll let you go ahead and take over from here.

thank you mayor members of council thank you for uh attending today's budget visiting workshop i know it's five o'clock so and then we have a council meeting right after so uh we have as we normally do this is our first budget visiting workshop and particularly this year there's a lot of different changes that we know are upcoming in with this with the in the state so with that if we could have the town clerk please uh put the powerpoint up please We'll try to get through this within the specified hour, the mayor. So thank you. So again, today's our first budget visiting workshop. A couple of things. Let me make sure I got the clicker on.

Is it working?

Okay. So first budget visiting workshop is tonight. We're going to have our second one. It will be on Thursday, July 30th. Our third one will be on August 31st. Then we'll also have our hearings. Tentatively, we have our first budget hearing Thursday, September 10th. Our second budget hearing will be Thursday, September 24th. Again, these are subject to Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners and Miami-Dade County School Board agendas that are out. Once we make sure that we don't conflict with any of those meetings. So there you see Mayor Members Council will have, you know, at least, you know, five opportunities to have an open, you know, public discussion regarding our budget. And you'll start getting the figures on the July 30th meeting as well. Again, the location, the time is 6 o'clock, and the location will be the council chambers. Just a little quick recap. As you know, we had our townwide property values, and you can see 2006. You see our property values still going at a nice, good, steady increase.

Last year, let me click on it.

All right. There we go. Did I click too fast guys? Okay. Last year was a 4.3% increase in our property values. The millage rate for the last 10 years, we've been steady for the last one, two, three, four, five years. We're going to go in there with the mindset of keeping it flat at 2.8332. So we'll start building our budget around that number. This just gives you a recap of the 2025 adopted millage rates throughout Miami-Dade County. We are still the ninth lowest in the county at $2.8332 per thousand. Our fund balance continues to be strong. We have our 2025, again, it's unaudited, but we should be finishing up the audit here in the next couple of weeks here, is at $27.7 million. So, again, strong financial unrestricted balance there. Now, we do know that we had a planned dip for Legacy Park. We had the resolution authorizing the $12.8 million worth for soil remediation. The funding source that we identified was American Rescue Plan, as we refer to it as ARPA. We used $6.5 million of the ARPA. And then we also committed last year unrestricted reserves, we call it our fund balance, of the remaining $6.3 million for a total project of 12.8. Why is that relevant? Because one of the things that we're doing is also making sure that we get maximum amount of our voluntary cleanup tax credits for the eligible brownfield credits, as we call it, for Legacy Park. This provides you a quick summary. Even back from 2021, we were able to capture the entire $58,000, $22,000, $260,000, $23,000, $113,000, $24,000, $94,000. Last year, the reason why that hasn't asked you is because we actually expended over $2.2 million worth of eligible expenses there in terms of what we felt was a lot of the solar remediation that we did there. but we can only go up to one million dollars but we were able to capture the entire million dollars what that means is that the tax credit amount that we have received on the other column there equates to 50 percent of our expenses So last year, although we spent way beyond the $1 million, we were able to at least capture the entire amount, but 50% of it, the $500,000, you'll see here later this year where we sell those tax proceeds. We have an agreement with Publix next door to sell those at 90 cents on a dollar. So we'll start recouping all that, all those funds there. why is that relevant because in 2025 we also had what we call the cost of living uh adjustments uh resolution one of the highlights there that we worked you know harder with the council and many meetings was identifying that no cost of living adjustments will be provided to town employees if the town's most recently audited annual comprehensive financial report Reflects a negative net change in the fund balance in general fund unless approved by town council. So what's that mean for us? our Projected we do have a projected deficit We had solar mediation costs was funded by unrestricted reserves last year because it's fiscal years, right? We we Expended four point one million dollars from our reserves for Legacy Park reserve for Legacy Park solar mediation project Our projected deficit on pending audit in the next couple of weeks, but give or take a couple of dollars, believe it or not, it's about $988,000. If it wasn't for the solar remediation, we would be in the plus by $3.2 million. So again, we knew going in, we were going to be using the unrestricted funds. We know we were going to be capturing it. If it wasn't for just those funds, we would actually be in the plus over $3 million. Now, the COLA for next year. As you see, we used the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumer prices for the Miami, for a lot of the greater Palm Beach area. We go through that annual... column we use the last two years which calculates to 2.6 percent cola that is the miami for a lot of the greater area what's that mean 2.6 percent potential fiscal impact for 2627 budget it's 123 000 506. The reason why I bring that up, Mayor and members of council, because at this point, we'll need some guidance from the council. I mean, we know that the resolution says that there are any type of extraordinary expenses that we know, and there is a deficit, $980,000 and change. And we know that the COLA for next year is 2.6. We know the budget impact is approximately $123,000. So at this point, I'll pause for a second, just have a discussion, just to get that guidance from the council.

I'll open it up. Vice Mayor Callahan, you're recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I was really the one that was working hard on revising this and really to protect the reserves. That's not what happened to us when I was first on the council where we were consistently digging into our... reserves to to meet budgetary numbers and there was just a lot of issues back then um that have been been corrected the way i see it is that i don't feel that we should hold the staff responsible for uh something that was unforeseen this this was i mean if again like you just stated right if if we weren't building legacy park if we didn't have so over mediation we could putting three million dollars in and um on this particular case um i don't this is something that was unforeseen to any of us until we got into the midst of the project i mean i would certainly be in favor of moving forward with uh the 2.6 percent cola any other comments no i agree i would be in agreement um councilman or mayor you're recognized

Okay. So the total then ends up being 1.1 million overall, the nine, the 988 that we're short plus the 1 23, if we approve that. So we're looking at about 1.1 million, right? No, no, no.

The, the, the, sorry. Okay. So the 988 is what we know is going to be the end result of our annual audit. Give or take a couple of dollars, right. Um, go into next year's budget. going into next year's budget, that $120,000 is going to be rolled into that budget. And I'll have a little further discussion about what our plans are for next year's budget as well.

I'm not against going forward with that. You're right. They shouldn't be held responsible for something that was unforeseen. But would it be more prudent to find out what's going to happen with the... With the homes home, homestead tax situation and how that affects us. I mean, I don't know what our total numbers.

I think that's a, that's the lecture. Yeah. I mean, I think we'll kind of get into that. This is the, we're talking about 120. so, and again, right now, we're just, I'm going to agree with the vice mayor on that. When we. Put this before I remember our discussion is like, for things that happened to us.

Yeah.

Right. And this isn't something that happened to us. This is something that we decided to do to remediate an environmental condition. And again, so do we really want to hold our employees accountable for something we decided to do? Uh, instead of something that happened to us, and, you know, I'm in agreement with the vice mayor on it. You know, it should not be on their back solely.

And council members, you must be looking at my presentation, but we're going to get into that in a second, you know, further along, but, but again, thank you.

All right. So, you know, the ordinance requires that we take council, take action on that call. So I don't know if it was regarding an ordinance or just a, or a resolution.

Since this is a workshop, I think you can only, um, You can only direct staff to move forward with a particular policy. And then if you want to do it formally by resolution, that can be done as part of the, it can just be part of the resolution adopting the budget.

Ralph, let's go ahead and we'll do that. We have consensus up here unless anybody...

Yeah, and and and with that call and mayor counsel, thank you and advice for particularly yourself, because this was the safe card that we created. so this was exactly what we envisioned when we're going through that having this open discussion finding out what the extraordinary event is we already knew what it was we committed back last year and then we had discussion to me i love this this interaction because that's what the resolution was meant to do so thank you mayor members council we will proceed with that 2.6 and now we're going to get more into my my presentation okay so next year we have some key projects Some of the key projects that we have are finalizing the upgrade for the software program that's being funded by ARPA. General Fund, ABLORM, we do have a joint use agreement that we're still finalizing negotiations with Miami County School Board to use the fields at Color Bay Senior and Middle Schools. We're getting really close. We actually have one of our final meetings there, but we already know that it's going to be built into the budget next year for, it's called, you know, almost a $42,000 worth of fencing that we need to be, that needs to be done there. But we do gain funding. Again, six acres at Cutler Bay Senior High, four basketball courts, two tennis courts, Cutler Bay Middle, 11 and a half acres and six basketball courts. So I think it's a great price for what we're going to be getting for the public use. Additional incentives. Obviously, we're going to finalize and negotiate with Miami-Dade County EEL on Coastal Ridge Preserve. We are going through, we just got the results for our solar remediation. There are some hotspots that we knew about. So we're getting that pricing together so I could make that presentation to the council. Also commence our five-year strategic planning process. Hopefully there we can team up with local universities there to kind of offset those costs there. Parks and Recreation Department, we funded through FDEP. We have finalized the Cutler Bay wetlands at 53 acres off of 97th Avenue 224. We're also seeking funding for the Coastal Ridge Preserve. Now that we know that it's not designated a brownfield, we were very successful in doing that in Veterans Park that we received a grant from FDEP for FDEP and their contract to clean it up. We're going to probably use the same path with Coastal Ridge Preserve because there are some hotspots there, but it's not enough to justify the expense of creating a brownfield like we did with Blue Herring Park. Commence the restoration on Coastal Reserve, the $250,000 we received in collaboration with Commissioner Cohen Higgins' office. And then we also have the soil remediation at Blue Heron Park to finalize that project too. And that has a brownfield implications there as well. And then last but not least, commenced demolition of Bel Air Park concession standard restrooms. Good news, that project is still within the governor's budget. So it hasn't got to the red pen yet, but it's there. It's still alive. And then obviously finalized the master plan for the veterans park. But I think that we could do, you know, internally and maybe with low cost as well. Because I know that the parks and rec department, sorry, advisory committee has also reviewed that as well. And then, obviously, commence the planning construction phase for Coastal Ridge Reserve that we've had some discussion regarding now what's the next phase for that, for the construction. We have the mass plant, but now we've got to start going through the construction drawings. And we're actually negotiating with consultants so I can provide that cost in the budget. Hopefully, maybe if I could get it in the next couple of weeks, maybe I could probably try to squeeze it in this year's budget as well. It's roughly in that $70,000 range. We're still negotiating it down with it. That is to complete the construction plans for Coastal Ridge Reserve. We do have a master plan, but not the construction plans. Public Works Department, a lot of these projects are funded through different grants. The Saga Bay drainage improvements. We have ARPA grants to finalize construction for the Bel Air neighborhood. That's currently on final stages, but again, funded through ARPA and FDEP grants. capital improvement projects from various funding sources to commence design for southwest 212th street if you recall southwest 212th street it's going to be the back side of our legacy park but that is a four lane highway there we actually had to do a study because we had to comply with the new state law that if you reduce any type of travel lanes you have to do a traffic study we did the traffic study the traffic study came back that is eligible so now you'll see that later tonight on agenda item for uh work authorization for our consultant being paid through ptp as well finalized uh frangel road as you see that's coming towards the final end project there hopefully knock on wood hopefully it's going to be um under budget as well and ahead of schedule We have Caribbean Boulevard. We call it the J, as we call it, right? You know, Caribbean Boulevard from 87 to 184 commenced that construction. And then we also have finalizing the design for Marlin Road Complete Streets that we received two different grants, and that's the one we received from federal appropriations as well. Federal appropriations commenced the Saga Bay Lake Pump Station project. Again, that's a federal appropriation. Finalized Marlin Road, the design. Commence construction on Lakes by the Bay. We also received another million dollars for federal appropriation for Lakes by the Bay, Section 4, water quality improvements there. Transportation-related projects. Continue the on-demand service. It's funded through FDOT grants as well as PTP transportation funds portion of it. Continue negotiations for joint participation agreement. This is something that... We have been working really closely with Commissioner Cohen-Higgins. Myself and the mayor went and met with her several months ago. We then had at least four follow-up meetings with county staff. They loved the project. We had a cost-benefit analysis. The cost-benefit analysis came back at a ratio of 2.04, anything above a 2. It's a great criteria. We've had the conversation with the Public Works Director of Momaday County. We're trying to see where we can include that in the long-range plan. This project here is going to be almost a $20 million project. That's going to be our next Franjo Road, if that makes sense. You can see here the amount of grants that we received, the design phase, the state appropriation, as well as the direct appropriation. We have federal grant for 4.4 towards the construction phase, and we also have an FDOT lab grant for a million. What you do not see on that board is hopefully we'll get the thumbs up or thumbs down at the end of July for FDOT CIGP grant. Don't ask me what a CIGP stands for, but a CIGP grant. But that to me, it's a four million dollar grant. If we receive that, that's a four million dollar swing there, too, as well. So Alfredo Nunez did the presentation several months ago. We've gotten some informal great feedback, but it goes through a ranking process. But again, we showed our projects, our track record. Hopefully we'll get that. That's a four million dollar swing there. Any questions so far for that?

Okay. Councilman Lord, you're recognized.

Thank you, Mayor. Maybe I missed it. When you were going through the parks and rec projects for next year, I didn't see a project for the Saga Bay Playground. Are we not going through with that?

Great question. Saga Bay Playground, it's included in this year's budget. It's the inclusive playground that we have. In the state budget that's been presented to the governor's office, we have been already approved. Our grant has been approved, but not funded. So in the governor's overall budget, there's funding for FDEP. Sorry, Ferdap. It's a Ferdap grant for various grants. we are rolling that so once the governor approves that and he approves that line item then we are essentially that's being funded that will be funded so that's still in this year's budget it's still under this year's but but great follow-up question in fact one of the things that we're doing there um just a side note is is i challenged our parks department because you know we we had to take down our playground at belle air park because of safety reasons so we did our own internal inspections with our own cons or consultant and it we just had to take it down There's no playground there now. So one of the things that we're having a discussion, I had Lakeisha actually talk to the state, was if we get awarded, can we just shift the playground to that park? Because Saga Bay Park, if you see that playground, it's still usable. There's a couple different items that might need to be upgraded, which at least I could have that park there with those items there and maybe use it over to at Beller Park that has no playground equipment at all. It's a lot of moving parts. We're waiting for that, folks, to see if we can make that shift. If that is, then we'll report back to the council.

And it would still be an inclusive park.

100% inclusive. We have the footprint there. yeah we'll have that footprint there it's just one of those like okay well is the other park playground equipment sounds with saga bay park yes maybe we have to do a little bit a couple upgrades but not 250 000 with upgrades and again another park at the other end right thank you so that's the moving parts that we have there and then also in bel air park we know that that building is unsafe structure Our parks director has been working with different vendors to start taking out all different pieces of equipment. There's a lot of electrical things that need to be put out there. We actually, Etienne and I think Alan actually went to our friends at North Bay Village where they had a, I want to say Paul Vogel Park in North Bay Village. It was ex-mayor there. And they had almost like a prefab building that is a restroom building. with water fountain and you know ada restrooms and it's like one of those like literally just you know coming like a like a ted shed but it's a lot fancier with meets the florida building code so we actually looked at that to see how quick we could you know once we demolish it can we at least put something out there because right now that park is being operated you know with porta potties right now so we want to make sure that we have that also in place that's another moving part in fact that's bellaire park building is on the governor's list for appropriations for approval so thank you ralph anything else yes all right continue sir okay thank you mayor members council so now we go to councilman ramirez what we talked about here save our homes right from excessive property taxes the the big gorilla in the room was a caller right we understand that that question there there's also The lawsuit filed, we understand we're monitoring that. All the cities are monitoring that. If approved, it'll go in effect January 2027. We understand that. Provides new homes exemptions, the first 150 in 27 and 250,000 in 28. And we're going to get into what our impact is going to be. It also creates a five-year homes exemption of the first 50, and you can read the rest there where it talks about non-school levy property tax. This is going to be really, really tough for all the cities in the state of Florida. Requires legislative to prescribe a uniform procedure for certain local governments to increase the amount of assessed property values exempt taxes. Reducing non homestead property assessment increased limits from 10% to 5% that is that is a big game changer That is basically saying that all the commercial properties They'll have a cap of 5% versus 10% cap. So that's that has a major impact as well So what's that mean? And obviously sorry limits the use of everyone revenue for counties and municipalities for specific purposes. So we know there's a multi page 100 page bill What's that mean for us? Proposed additional 150,000 homes to property exemption. We know there's going to be 10,200 homes that are going to be impacted in the town. I mean, that we have, because we've been working closely with the Florida League of Cities. We have 19,000 homes in Cutler Bay. 10,000 are going to be affected. Reduction, $2.5 million per year. that is a 22 percent reduction of our total avalon collected our total avalon collected last year was 11.6 million i want to keep this on the screen for a second because that that is that is something that you see us and you're going to see us now tighten our belt in anticipation of that right we are preparing for the worst mayor members of council that's that's what that's what i'm trying to prepare everybody for the worst We know there's going to be challenges, but at the same time, for us to be fiscally responsible, we know what that number is now. We know that number is 22% reduction. Part of the issue is that a lot of folks have been here forever, right? And yet that 3%, you know, save your homes. But again, we know that this is the numbers that we have. Our challenge for next year, our challenge for next year kind of goes back to what we were talking earlier. We're going to develop a proposed budget. I'm challenging all my department heads and myself as well to reduce a 2.5% reduction. You're like, hey, what's 2.5%? Well, it's $760,000. I mean, that's my challenge now is with all departments. We're literally item by item by item like we've done in the past with the council. But it's one of those like, hey, well, do I need this or not? Am I doing this for extra services or not? Because we know what's going to happen here. So instead of having that big hit once, and again, that's my goal of two and a half percent, but there's going to be something that's going to be a budget that's going to be a lot less, right? We understand that we have the relationship with the Miami County Sheriff's Department. I've been in communication with my counterparts in Palmetto Bay and Pinecrest, the other two contractors. We know those prices are going up. So we're collectively setting up meetings with the sheriff's staff to kind of look at what else can be further reduced or maybe spread across the county versus the three municipalities. I'm using that for example. That's our biggest department. Our biggest department. You're going to see that later in the presentation. Obviously, you know, I've you know, I've had this meet individual meetings with council members educate our residents the use of the abalone taxes I mean, I know that when I spoke to our state representative and our state senator That you know, he said, you know Ralph We know that you guys in Cutler Bay run a lien machine, you know, but it's gonna be even harder for you I'm like, yeah, I know I know. I mean, so that's something that we're going to be looking at. And obviously identify potential non-essential services which can be further reduced, anticipate approval for the property tax ballot question. Again, that's going to us line, literally line by line, line by line, you know, because we know that this storm is coming. and how do we anticipate it we will educate we will have different uh uh workshops uh there's the league of cities is helping all a lot of different cities put out you know talking points um go out to a lot of homeowner association um and it's going to be I don't want to say a scare tactic. I think it's just more of an education campaign. Did you know your taxes paid for this? That's why in my previous presentation, you see a lot of different roadway projects that we've taken for granted. And I know that I've had this conversation with Councilman Duncan where we say, hey, all these projects, non-adventure taxes are used. Wow, that's great. Because at least we continue a lot of those capital improvement projects. Some cities aren't that lucky to say that. So we will continue our capital improvement projects there. But some other items that are funded through Avalor, that's going to have to have a serious look at as well.

I just want to point out that I'm not a math whiz by a long shot, but in some cities, your rolled back rate is actually going to be a rolled up rate because in order to capture the same amount of revenue as you did in the prior year, you would have to have a higher millage rate than you did in the previous year. And under those circumstances, the threshold for increasing millage would be lower than it normally is, which is a kind of an interesting anomaly that would occur from this. But You know, luckily, you have a very low millage rate. And if you found that the reduction in revenue under the current millage rate was inadequate to be able to pay for all of the needs in terms of services and quality of life that you want to deliver, you have a lot of room under the cap, much more than most cities.

Correct. And Mitch, that's something that when I just came back from the city mayor's conference online, that was a topic conversation where some cities to get to make up the difference in what they're losing, they're going to go over the 10 mil cap. You know, they're going to go over the 10 mil cap. They can't. They can't. That's their pickle, right? You know, so just to give you a good example, member council, as you saw the chart before, we're at 2.8332. Just some quick math that, you know, Robert and I did to recoup the funds. We will have to be somewhere in the four mil rate. I mean, so, yeah, that's a conversation that, you know, remember, we've been up here very, you know, stewardship of our coffers. And, you know, we'll sit there and split hairs about, you know, going up 0.0232 or something like that. Now we're talking about a full two numbers there. You know, so again, that's a challenge. We're not in it by ourselves. There's going to be a mountain of campaign. Again, what I wanted to show the council is that we will provide you a budget my own ceiling goal that i have there is is that seven hundred six thousand dollars again that's a challenge that we're going to go through with staff as well so that is the storm that we know that's coming you know members of council so we understand that so there's going to be a big education campaign um next now not only that now we have a house bill 1329 That one is known as the Local Government Finance Transparency Accountability Act. This bill is already in place. It goes into effect on January 1. The other one is dependent on the ballot. This is already in the books, as we call it. So what's this do? The effects requires budgets to be posted on the municipality website, and we're going to go through each one in a second here. Requires quarterly employee compensation reports and annual budget calendars. Requires an annual budget cutting exercise, BCE, with results posted online, 10%. Every city must have a workshop and show how they're reducing their budget by 10% on this bill. Updates how long budget information must remain posted online. Requires counties to provide at least five days' notice before budget amendment hearings. So I'm going to go briefly through each one because, I mean, I think a lot of it, We already comply with but I want to make this a word to the council because this is a whole game changer or that States trying to do to unify everyone to do it the same way So budget posted on the website one of the things you're gonna see us do here shortly in our main budget button Our main page that's gonna be the most important button right there budget reports Okay, so that's something that we're gonna be changing here shortly. It's gonna say budget reports There it is right on the main page. No, click click click click. Oh Our adopted budgets for the last four years will be, as soon as you click it, you're going to get to see our adopted budget. As you know, as transparent as we are, we provide the budget book. The budget book will be provided there. It's provided already in the agenda item, but again, click, click, click, click. This is going to be one click. You're there. You see the budget book right there, full transparency. requires quarterly employee and annual budget calendars let's talk about that for a second so this is the new requirement employee name job title department salary what they made that quarter and what's the year to date For us, we're like, okay, let's see what we do already with our transparency budget. Well, here's what we present in the budget workshops and hearings. We have, I'm using that for, you know, the finance. We already have the position and the salary, kind of break it down that way. So we know that we've got to add some more columns. So again, for us, we'll add that. But the game changer now is you put names and titles departments, but we kind of do that already, but we'll update that. The budget development calendar. I'm just going to go through so you can see, just click all the ones that are reds are new requirements that we will start complying with. The ones in the green, we already do. In one shape or form or another, right? And I'm just going to put them on the screen here and just, you know, oops sorry right there so i mean again you know um if you go to go to the first you know green there it says june july august insert any workshops and proposed budget meetings open to the public we're here now we're using that now example um i don't know i'm just going to the second column the the third bullet there august inform property owners of public workshops on budget as applicable we post it on our website you know we we do all that and also uh these are just the workshops right but now we have been historically and i've always kid about it that we do three workshops a year in the two required hearings this is now telling everyone you got to start doing workshops so for us we already do the workshops Just a matter of maybe just posting a different format or what have you. I don't know. I'm just using, for example, July, the first one in the column, local governing body adopts their tentative military. Everybody does that in July. So now what the state legislator is doing is saying, you're going to unify this. So, again, this is part of that one requirement. So it doesn't scare me. It's there. Requires an annual budget cutting exercise results posted online. 10%. We just talked about that, right? So give you an idea. This just tells you that it's going to be, you know, fiscal year 2728. That's when it starts. Just to give you an idea, this is an excerpt from our budget book. You know, our general fund, the department's there, $30 million. $30 million. using the 10 we're talking about three over three million dollars going back to that column we talked about before for the impact of the 150 000 it was we're at 2.5 getting close you say we're getting close so we're going to do that exercise anyway just to give you an idea this is our revenues 29 million Our largest revenue, obviously, is Avalor. It's 39%. This is right from our budget book. This kind of gives you graphically what it shows you. That's 39%. Again, I had to reintroduce this again. We're still the ninth lowest. and now this is part of our budget book too this is part of something that's actually within our charter it says that during the charter section 6.2 citizen bill of rights a11 now on the bottom that we have to put this on our budget and we do that every year Folks, our biggest department, which is our public safety, it's police department. See that number there, 13 million. Remember we said that we collect 11.6 for Avalon. So we didn't cover that. But in the new legislation, police department is carved out. The police and fire are carved out. summary total general fund budget 300 million using the town's current budget 10 we're at 3 million compared to the fiscal impact of 150 000 we're at 2.5 so you know we're getting close to that that number anyway so this is that exercise that going through the the bce cutting exercise something that we would have to do anyway you give or take you know 500 000 there um updates on how long the budget information must remain posted online last four years well okay remember that little button yeah we got the button not a problem we're going to post it four years detail budget book there it is two clicks away requires counties and i say the word county to provide at least five day notice before budget amendment and hearings town already complies Why? It looks familiar. Budget amendments that we have here that Robert puts together. We had normally done the month of May. Council meeting advertised on the website, e-news and community newspaper center pages. We have the agenda summary, which is the manager's memo, the resolution, the adopted budget amendments. And we also post it online as well. So it's just a matter of, you know, complying with that section there. Again, we don't have to, but what do we do anyway? Any questions for the House Bill?

Nothing but roses and sunshine here. All right, go ahead, Councilman Duncan.

Thank you. It was just a comment. So the exercise that we're discussing as far as the $2.5 million, that's for the $150,000 threshold, but to remind our residents that that goes up to a $250,000 threshold in the following fiscal year, which then I believe would amount to a $4.3 million cut.

Correct, Councilmember. So I provided there the, you know, the best of the worst case. A $150,000 increase in property homestead exemption will have an impact of $2.5 million. The full $250,000 homestead exemption will have even a devastating impact of $4.3 million. $4.3 million. You know, so we're starting gradually looking at those i mean um i wish i was i could sit there and say that the the the the budget visioning would be you know nice vision but i mean i think i think we like having a nice open frank conversation with the council in the community and this is this is where we're at this is where we're at so yes i mean i know that it may not be a lot what i'm sitting there saying i'm sitting on internal goal of trying to come in with a budget that's like two and a half percent less than last year but that's seven hundred six thousand we're at least we're moving it moving it removed and that's we're going back to a lot of items that we're going to have to go through of what's essential what's not essential you know making those those tough those tough decisions

Other comments? Nobody wants to say anything on here. I'm like, oh my goodness. There is, I guess, a downside from being efficient.

Yes, and when I hear that Mayor and I say it jokingly, and I love Representative Blanco and Senator Kalatu, but they both said that it's going to be a little bit hard for you guys. I'm like,

Yes. And I know that we've had this conversation individually.

I mean, maybe for maybe maybe it should be intended for a lot of the counties. Right. We're not alone. We're not alone. A lot of cities are doing this. Some I don't want to say some may have more fat than others. you know but we're we're lean we we are lean here so so again it's it's one of those that we're going to look at every single every single corner that we can members council and the challenge starts now in this fiscal year coming up it's a double moment for us because again i think we're one of the largest um the city that has the largest impact of homesteaded homes that are under 250.

nearly 60%. So it is a real big whammy. And which means we're going to have to get real, real creative between now and the end of the year when we get our final budget going on. Working with your staff to let us know their recommendations. Hopefully they're going to be creative as possible as well, but it's not a great thing. Is it doable? Yeah. Or will we You know, there's mention of grants coming from the state. We don't know any of the details on that yet, but judging by our success with the red pen in a couple of years. I don't know how much success we'll have with that, but we'll obviously have to be taking a look at that as well.

And again, it's going to be a major partnership, right? It's going to be a team effort. Where I say team effort is that is us leaning on the expertise of our town attorney's office, right? Because we have a lot of cities that are in the same boat. There's been a lot of discussions amongst the managers, right? Maybe different creative ways of maybe creating special taxing districts or what have you right? But I mean again, that's it We got to look at all the different options that we never had to explore before but a bottom line for us and and the message that I've been Telling the our state representative and senator that thank them both. They actually came and sat down and looked at it Our budget and I said here it is guys. This is it I mean just when you see their eyes light up saying our police department is 13 million and Nothing against our police department, our sheriff's department, right? That's why we incorporated. I understand that. But our ad valorem of 11.6 doesn't even cover that. And we know that that's something that cannot be cut, right? So even if it did cover it, it's off-limits. I want to say off-limits. It was carved out. That and the fire department was carved out. So it's looking at different creative ways that we could do things differently. It might be looking at every single agreement. every single you know agreement that we have with different vendors or or you know i hate to say it leagues as well i mean everything is up is up it's not it's not a scare tactic it's reality it's it's reality so that's why you know me mayor council i This is how we operate in Colorado Bay. It's going to be a reality looking at those, you know, can you supplement these type of services or what services are non-essential. So it's going to be, this is going to be one of our toughest years, you know, but again, all 467 cities in the state of Florida are going through that as well.

I think it's real helpful, the exercise of kind of identifying what exactly does our ad valorem cover. And again, those non-essentials can be anything from our STEM camps to our elderly activities, to public works, cleaning. They seem like they're non-essential, but the removal obviously will reduce the quality of life. So trying to find that balance between those things is gonna be very, very, very difficult.

And I agree, and I think, Mayor, that's going to be part of the education campaign, right? Because that way people, oh, I didn't know it pays for that. Oh, I didn't know. Well, I'm educating you now. I'm not advocating. I'm educating you of what the impacts are going to be. Because I know fine line there. I know Mitchell keep me out of trouble there with the council. And again, the firm, I love it. I love it because there's a lawsuit that's been filed. But again, we're looking at different creative ways.

The lawsuit really does not challenge the concept. It just seeks to have the state clarify the language of the ballot measure so that it's clean and truthful. Because right now it's confounding and not completely and not truthful regarding what the actual import of the of the measure is under the current ballot language so if it's successful the attorney general will be required to correct the language and present a clearer ballot language for the for the voters You'll note, I think if you look into it, that there are several fairly conservative leaning organizations, including Florida Tax Watch, that have come out in opposition to this because, you know, in their view, governments are not actually going to become leaner. They're just going to find alternates in terms of the ways to fund the services that their communities want. And that may just move the burden of the taxes over to commercial property and to renters largely. And that's something that Florida Tax Watch has, you know, warned is not what it's seeking in terms of its goals of reducing the burden on taxpayers.

As I was told in one interview, or actually as I said in one interview, if you're a homeowner, you're going to lose, you're going to gain by losing, not having to pay a certain amount of taxes, but you're also going to lose services which you're providing. So you might break even. If you were not a homeowner, more than likely you're going to see, you're going to lose the services. More than likely you would see an increase in your income.

the military for the non-homestead which would mean if you're a renter you probably pay more so you're a lose-lose there well and somebody's pointed out like it's not the case here because you have County uh collecting your your waste although it may impact that because the county is going to need they were very reluctant to raise the waste fees um at the at the last go-round the mayor asked them to increase waste fees and the commission rejected that idea But they're going to have no choice. And the waste fees, the subsidy that the general fund pays into the cost of waste, a taxpayer who's funding that, that's partly deductible from federal income taxes. The waste fee that you pay is not. So if they put the waste fee to the full amount and didn't subsidize it, a typical taxpayer might see an increase in, not just in that cost, but a loss of the tax benefit that they would have had, had it been covered by general fund taxes.

All the things are simple. People would not understand. It's very, very complicated. Ralph, I really look forward to, again, as we can start getting a clearer picture to educate the public and the council with the ad valorem so we can start getting creative and having open discussions while we need getting feedback from our citizens on their ideas. So we're all in this together. And if this is a pass, it's basically our hands are tied, unless you can come up with other creative things. Do you have a parks and recreation bond? that the city gets to vote on every year. Do you want to keep your parks going? Yeah, vote for this bond. Or do you want to do public works bonds? There's other creative ways to do it, but like Mitch said, it won't go away unless it's absolutely not needed. Um, and maybe get reduced a slight bit, but in a town like color Bay was very, very efficient. It's almost going to be draconian unless we can find creative ways, or be 1 of those lucky recipients of the grants of the, as mentioned coming through, but I don't think we're going to hold our breaths on that.

i think members council i mean it's it's going to be critical because like i mentioned we're not we're all in it together all the cities so i know that there's a mayor's coalition meeting coming up you know the chamber's hosting uh another one as well there's going to be uh the florida league of cities this year their annual conference it's in broward county in mid-august that's going to be the talk of the town you know so i encourage you know that that you know attend those you know as well because you know we're looking for creative ways you know we're looking for creative ways i mean you know i'm in constant contact with different you know the managers throughout the county it's kind of like you know figuring out different ways you know of what creative ways that you could that you could do i could tell you that that we're in a better position if that makes it there's any uh uh silver lining there Then some of the other municipalities that are are in that middle trade of you know, seven above, you know As we catch him we were in the lower end there, but but we're in a better financial position is gonna be hit Yes, but there's some other other other Councils and managers have even even tougher tougher job with that.

So I just like to end with that, you know We're in a better position or money that Monty Python movie I'm upside down and I'll wish I knew is the other guy getting whipped. Who are you lucky? Yeah So, all right. Any other questions or comments? Okay, Councilwoman Duncan. I'm sorry, Lord. Lord, that's okay.

I just wanted to add on to what Ralph was saying. I saw that they opened the registration for the FLC's conference at the Diplomat, which is mid-August. I've already registered. It's right in the middle of our budget talks, right? And it will be the hot topic. So I think it would be prudent for as many of us who can make it. I'm taking time off of work to go, but I think it's a wealth of information for us and let's use the league and the information they can offer and try and attend that if we could. I think it's gonna be really important this year.

I agree. There's all those conferences we can learn so much. Right. Was that anything else, Ralph?

No, Mayor. We'll see you back at 6 o'clock for the regular council meeting.

10 minutes. All right. See you at 10. In 10. What's that? Yeah.

Well, that would be one expensive kick-ass.

good evening welcome back everybody uh today is wednesday june 17th 2026. welcome to our town council meeting mr clerk if you could please take the role Council Member Lord?

Here.

Council Member Duncan? Here. Council Member Ramirez? Here. Vice Mayor Callahan?

Here.

Mayor Budd? Present. May I have a quorum?

If you please join me for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. it was a good feeling whenever you say the pledge of allegiance and it's the entire crowd and the entire council saying it loudly and proudly so i appreciate that all right welcome to our town council meeting um mr clerk if you could please read the directions for calling in please be advised that when joining the meeting

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. We did receive a couple of emails for public comments that was forwarded to the council, but no voicemails. 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 thank you very much i'm now opening up the floor for public comments wish to speak please come forward is there is none in the auditorium is there anybody in the queue no one please please come forward yes I'll take two boxes. I'm okay.

We'll be back for sure. Okay. All right. Go ahead.

Some people couldn't make it today.

Can you give me your name and your address?

My name is Mackenzie Schold and I live at 28231 Southwest 136th Place. Hello, good evening. Thank you for having us here today. Mr. Mayor, Commissioners, and members of the audience. Hi, I'm Mackenzie Schold and I live at 28231 Southwest 136th Place. I am also joined by Amber. We are members of Area Base K through Agra Scout Troop 2311. We are currently working to complete our bronze award, which is the highest award that fourth and fifth graders can earn. We chose to help stray animals as our service project. This is the dog which over this past weekend we with them from 7.30 to 10 a.m. to ship 55 cats and kittens to their new homes and socialize them and other animals that haven't found a home yet. We are asking for your support in making our goal possible for This is the Dog. Stray animals are a big problem in our community. They get abandoned or surrendered. That's why we are fundraising to help get as much food for dogs and cats as we can so they don't go hungry. We are politely asking the town of Cutler Bay if they would allow us to place a pet food donation box at a place you guys recommend. The food we will collect will be given to families who need it so pets can stay with their owners. We hope our goal will be surpassed because no one likes seeing stray animals on the road. Thank you for letting us be here tonight and now Amber will share some additional information.

good evening mayor and council members my name is amber and i'm a girl scout from troop 2311 we are happy we are here today to share our bronze award project with focuses on helping animals in need through our partnership with this is the dog as girl scouts we are taught to make a positive difference in our community through this project we are collecting pet food toys blankets and other supplies to help rescue dogs and cats while they wait for loving homes now we know you have a lot of important decisions to make we are not asking for dog parts all over the community although we are pretty sure the dogs will approve of that idea but what oh you can continue go ahead what we are asking for is your support in helping us raise awareness and collect donations for animals in need unfortunately many rescue organizations rely on community or support to provide food shelter and care for rescued dogs and cats every donation whether big or small can help make a big difference in an animal's life. Together we can help provide comfort, care, and help to pets waiting for their forever homes. Thank you for your time, your service to our community, and for giving us the opportunity to speak today.

a lot of people couldn't make it here you all we have to say you all are very prompt with your meetings i think we have two other scouts that were on their way but in traffic they might not make it but to just wrap up thank you so much for allowing their public comment my name is jennifer messimer scold i'm their troop leader in communication with the town manager mr casals i just wanted to also share that this organization this is the dog that we partnered with is volunteer based Uh, 1 of the things that we're doing is that at your at your discretion, if there's a look at a town location where you feel would be a high visibility, high traffic spot, we would ask that we have nothing to obtrusive that would impact the dog park.

So I certainly understand.

Yeah, just to have a location.

I'm asking you to continue to get in touch with the town manager and he'll get his staff to work with you on that. Okay.

Perfect. And then if you all could help through the town social media to amplify it, it'd be great. And then all the food that's collected would be promoted on social media channels so that the people in Cutler Bay and South Dade, you know, from Cutler Bay South would have an opportunity for those in need in order to collect the, would take advantage of the food collected to help keep the animals in their home. So thank you very much, unless you all have any other questions.

Justin McKenzie, was everybody here today? No, I'm kidding.

Okay.

All right, thank you very much.

Thank you. Have a good evening.

Anybody else?

Yeah.

Anybody in the queue? No, one in the queue. Okay, public comments is now closed. Well, that moves us on to our town council announcement board committee reports that submitted any additions. Councilman Duncan, you're recognized.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor. I just have a few items that I'd like to just get consensus on from the council that I'd like to work with town staff on in developing for future councils as far as resolutions and ordinances. The first of which is I'd like to seek consensus to work on urging a new resolution to the state legislature to amend the current firefighters, retired firefighters cancer bill to eliminate the 10-year cap that is currently in place for retired firefighters and to work through some of the other limitations that are currently within that. This kind of hits home to me. I have a cousin who was a A retired firefighter in the Tampa area is dealing with cancer and there's a lot of other issues and risks that you take within that field. So it's just something that I'd like to at least work on a resolution urging the state legislature to take up. I just want to make sure that I'm not going down a path where there's no opposition from the council for me exploring that with town staff.

No opposition. And council, I'll give you, after you sign it, is that on that item you want to do? Council Member Ramirez?

I'd like to piggyback on that if you don't mind.

Yeah, that's absolutely fine. Okay, fantastic. Next one, I'd like to work on updating and kind of future-proofing our current ordinance as it pertains to farmers' markets. Our current ordinance on the books is from 2012. It eliminates or it limits the times in which a farmers' market can operate to the morning until 3 p.m., We have a farmer's market that's been operating here in town recently. It's very, very hot in the mornings and up to 3 p.m. Other municipalities allow a farmer's market to operate into the evening. I'd like to work with town staff to explore the feasibility of and to propose extending those hours within reason and putting limitations, of course, just to keep ourselves safe and protected, but to allow farmer's markets open. to operate at later hours than 3 p.m. This also goes towards when we have our legacy park, one of the ideations that we had was having a farmer's market exist within that park. This would allow us to operate at past 3 p.m. within our code. So I just want to see.

Was that a resolution ordinance?

That would be an ordinance because that's part of the code.

Objection. Bring it forward. We can look at it. Okay.

Okay. Number three. I'd like the consensus on creating a Cutler Bay historical task force similar to what we did recently with the environmental task force. It would not be a standing committee or task force. It would be tasked with collecting stories, histories, artifacts, things of that nature, that then after a specified amount of time that the council determines, whether it be six months, what have you, they come back and provide a final report. This would go towards providing historical exhibits in our new legacy park and town hall that highlights the history of Cutler Ridge, of Cutler Bay, of the town, not just once we incorporate it, but the entirety of the town, including our our rich veteran and military histories uh it's not something that we have this like i said this is not going to be a permanent standing committee it's just something i think that would benefit us to get some volunteers from the town in an official capacity working to come up with and provide this type of information uh to the council to then determine what the best way to put it forward

there are from my engine there are one or two groups out there that are already kind of working on that kind of stuff so um but i don't know enough about it at this point um even rose martin brought something up to me to know about that um so it kind of i kind of like the idea of having our history chronicled and and put whether it be a task force or a private group would be the best question so if you want to bring it forward let's look at it and then in the meantime For any groups that are already doing that out there, maybe we can explore that together.

Absolutely. And we can absolutely, and that's something that if I have the consensus to bring it forward, then I'll bring it forward and we can debate that on the dais and figure out the best way to kind of put that forward.

Okay.

Thank you. And then the last item that I have, it's just kind of something that in going through our code and going through our charter, there's nothing, ultimately what it is, is I would like to work with the town staff to kind of future-proof The way that we conduct business in that ethics, transparency, and public trust safeguards as it pertains to people who serve on this council, on this body. Right now, there's no protections in place if you are directly related to somebody who serves. There's nothing legally that prohibits that from happening, but there is a certain... Idea that if you have two people who are directly related to each other serving Simultaneously that there might be issues as it pertains to sunshine as it pertains to compliance and ethical behaviors I would just like to codify and work with the town council in the future to determine What types of steps and what types of things that might be it's really looking at expanding reporting expanding sunshine expanding compliance within those elements that already exist within Florida statute, but Requiring them in that event and this is something that it can be worked on with town staff and come before this entire group or a future council for that matter and determine how that would be Best implemented or not and just looking for a consensus to be able to at least work with staff to explore that Miss you have thoughts on that or is that something you want to explore with him?

um it well, I I haven't I Councilman Duncan and I haven't discussed this before, but there are And I'm not exactly sure what he has in mind, but I think there are models out there that we could borrow from if we need to.

Yeah, okay. Go ahead. I got the advice. Sorry.

I have a comment. I think this is a great idea. In my very first Florida League of Cities event after I was first elected, I met a husband and wife who were both sitting on a council and I was intrigued how they

handle the sunshine and and all of that so i i actually think this is a great idea i think it's again i'm always worried about creating new laws uh things like that that can be challenged so um I would suggest that you get with Mitch first, kind of explore it a little bit, and then bring it forward if you think it's something that any of us can bring something forward. But this is something that I have no objection to our town attorney. Thank you very much. That's all I got. All right. So that takes us to our town attorney report.

i mean i was going to skip him um town manager report ralph thank you mayor members of council uh once again thank you for everyone participating during our budget visioning workshop that occurred before this council meeting in case somebody missed it it'll be posted on our website but thank you mayor members of council because we we did have a meeting before this meeting for the budget visiting In regards to town management, we have our monthly update, our design services for 16 Acre Legacy Park. We have Emma Jones from Stantec, our owner's rep, that will be providing you a brief update.

Good evening, everyone. Emma Jones with Stantec as owner's rep for the town of Cutler Bay. Can everyone see my screen? Excellent. There we go. So a quick project update for everyone. In terms of phase one, which was GMP1 site remediation, We are still seeking the closeout for this phase. We have submitted a soil verification report, was sent to DERM on April 16th. They came back to us, asked for some additional information. We sent that over on May 5th and we are back and forth with them working to get that rectified. The final earthwork is obviously pending their approval of the soil verification report. Phase two, which is GMP2, underground utilities and site work. The permitting, Salts Mickelson Architects with their sub-consultant Chen Moore, they recalculated based on some groundwater calcs and submitted to DERM the week of June 1st. Germ comments were received on June 4th. The stormwater plan and calculations were resubmitted on the week of June 15th. These calculations were based on the exfiltration trenches and the stormwater management, and that's around, basically, we're trying to avoid any of the plume areas with the arsenic and iron. So onsite, current onsite activity for the Legacy Park. Mobilization is completed to site currently. There's a temporary trailer compound. The actual double wide office trailer permit, that's currently in progress. Hoffman Lynn is back and forth with the town just to make sure everything complies with the flood compliance. The Coffin Midland are maintaining the temporary fence, i.e., the windshield that you guys see, keeping it tidy so it's not an eyesore. There are coordination meetings being held with C. Davis and Redland, and that is to solidify the GMP2 and work through pricing for final cost savings. The west and east edge of the property line are going to be remediated. That's sort of the final remediation, soil remediation, and we are waiting to do that as we were then going to move the fence a little further out, obviously, to finish the site. And then next steps, along with the west and east edge remediations, we will be excavating the pool and remediating those soils and bringing in clean fill. And all of this is going to occur while we're waiting to get our final permitting to move forward with this. So offsite activity, contract procurement is in process. As I mentioned, Davis and Redland contracts, they should be finalized this week, and the elevator contract negotiation is underway. Again, temporary power, coordination in process, and submittals are going back and forth within the team. Phase three, which is GMP3, the buildings in the park. There is ongoing coordination between Kauffman-Linn and Stultz-Michelson to address outstanding permit comments. GMP3 value engineering is ongoing. We are constantly getting pricing in every day and then RFIs again back and forth between the team. And RFI is just for everyone's understanding our request for information. So that's when the construction team reaches out and says, we have a question on the drawings and that goes back to the design team and they answer the questions just for layman's terms on that. And then along with all of that, we are looking into art in public places within the buildings and we are formulating an RFP for that. And we're looking at the facades that you've seen that have the egret images on them as well as floor murals for the buildings to satisfy those requirements. And we're working through those RFPs and we'll let you know when they're ready to be released. And then phase four, GMP4, will be the Southwest 212 improvements and there's ongoing design currently and pricing and then the final design will be submitted. In terms of the project timeline, this is where we are right now, obviously middle of June. And then the pool timeline specifically, we're here. And as I mentioned, we're going to start to excavate for the new pool at Legacy Park and get that moving. Happy to answer any questions.

Any questions from the council? No?

all right all right no questions thank you thank you next mayor members council we have an update on frangio road project we have tonight virtually stefano viola and we also have in person janitor gato uh from kimberly horn associates so stefano

Anybody there? We're not hearing Stefano right now. Marisa, do you have one? He's muted.

He's muted. Okay. Could you unmute yourself?

All right, so if you can unmute yourself, then Janet, you're gonna double dip here. Yeah, just come up. And if you could just walk us through the presentation for on right now. All right, let's let's continue it here. So just if you could put up on the screen, Maurice, and we'll just walk us through it.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, I'm happy to be with you today. So let's see. I'm sorry.

There you go. You're good. Hey, Janet, I will save you from that. I will take over. Apologize.

Thank you, boss.

Yep. Good evening, Mayor and council members. This is our June 26 update for the Fanger Road Improvements Project. Jumping into the construction activities, we continue to hold our biweekly construction progress meetings with the contractor on the town, the engineer of record and ourselves. For work zones 1, 2, 3, and 4, ACASA has completed the majority of the work in these areas, and they are open to the public. These zones include the improvements along Frangio from 184th Street to Southwest 92nd Avenue. ACASA is currently wrapping up some outstanding items that were identified during our substantial completion walkthrough. Then for work zone 5, they're currently working within that area, which is on Frangio Road from 92nd Avenue, Oak Cutler Road. they are still finalizing the reconstruction of this roadway section and at all times the team is focused on keeping the site clean and safe as well as maintaining the MOT throughout the duration of the project then just for the general reminder that while phases one two three and four are open to the public that does not equate to them being finalized we have some pending items that must be installed throughout the corridor before the project is considered complete these items should not impact public use of the roadway and include the bus shelter installations, electrical service installations, lipo removal installation, and installation, excuse me, and then the landscaping tree and sod removal, and then the final lift of asphalt. Specifically on the final lift, Acosta's tentatively planned to begin paving the final lift of asphalt starting June 29th. And that is for the phases zones one through four. They're expecting that to take three to four weeks. And during that process, the residents should expect some changing detours throughout the duration as they move throughout the sections and paving it. And then we are continuing to coordinate with the county and FPL regarding the light poles. We've been informed that the light poles were not being used until all light poles have been installed and an FPL account has been created by the county, which we are working with them on. And then they have to inspect it and perform and clear it. At this time, we do not have a specific timeline, but we are hoping to have those on prior to final completion in September of this year and then. As we jump into the schedule, the current project duration is from July 24 2024 to September 2026 cost is declared. seven total rain days but as we see here in the duration i've just given you most likely this project will be done prior to september just the light poles might be the only thing that just lingers as we continue to work with fpl in the county on that and now i'll turn over to janet apologize for that

okay he didn't leave much for me to say but um as always i am available for the residents and the business owners um to answer questions i visit with them regularly um i was pleased to announce finally the opening of phase four also um materials that were at the staging area have already been cleaned out so that's another plus in the right direction and as um stefano mentioned the final lift is scheduled for june 29th um prior to paving i will be distributing flyers to let everybody know more or less the detours and more than that um how it's moving along right because they're going to expect detours but just letting everybody know more or less phase one expect two to three weeks and it'll be fluid um flyers and information given to the residents and the businesses And that's it for now. Does anybody have any questions for me? No.

The final lift is going to be starting. Yeah. The question is, why didn't they pave it all the way up to the manhole?

Yeah. So that'll be taken care of on the 29th.

That's the... Ralph, we saw FENL recently and they said they're going to expedite getting that power to those poles. Apparently that was just lift service.

Yeah, we actually, you know, cornered them at the meeting. I think it was yourself and myself and Council Member Duncan. I mean, I thought it was intimidating enough to have us three around them. And we'll follow up with the FPL representative because they said they were going to try to expedite. But as you hear Stefano say, you know, there is an expedite sometime before September. I want to get a lot closer than that, obviously, you know, because we're getting a lot of calls of the beautiful light poles that Folks never seen they want to get energized as well as if I left those are top two calls that we get of course So so we will follow up with FPL and hopefully I get a better response here by next month If not have FPL representative here to explain why not Very good.

Okay.

Thank you so much Anything else well, yes, Thank You members council so now on some brighter note last week myself I Alfredo Quintero in the near Vega accepted and let this I'm gonna try to hold this up here without making this fall down here We accepted the James Lee Whit award for excellent and floodplain management for the Association of state floodplain managers in Milwaukee believe it or not and we were in a conference that had over 2,500 certified floodplain managers and our project was selected our town was selected for all of our efforts and Folks, there's only been three other cities and counties in the state of Florida in the 60-year history of the organization. So that's kudos to Alfredo and Ynir. And part of the reason why they're not here today is we're actually driving tomorrow to Port Charlotte. The Florida Stormwater Association, we're receiving the Excellence Award for our integrated stormwater program for the stormwater program, the projects, and the efforts. We're receiving that award tomorrow at 9 o'clock in the morning. over in Port Charlotte. So two back-to-back awards. So kudos to everyone there. Great team effort. And again, members of council, you know, we're entering that budget season, as we mentioned in the budget visiting workshop. I encourage all the residents to stay informed and join us on our websites. And that completes my report, Mayor.

Thank you very much. Takes us to the town attorney's report.

I don't have anything for you.

So this takes us to our town clerk's report.

Friendly reminder, your Form 1 is due by July 1. And also, I left on the day is the fact sheet for the SB 180 training. If you have not completed it, that also is due at the same time.

All right. Thank you very much. Takes us to our consent agenda. It pulls. None. I'm looking for a motion to approve. So moved. We have a motion by Vice Mayor Callahan.

I second.

We have a second by Councilwoman Lauer. Oh, if they ever say aye. Aye. I apologize for that. Okay. All right. That takes us to... Second. Okay. All right. It takes us to item 6A. All right. This is quite judicial. Mitch, do you need to read the statement?

I'll read the quasi-judicial statement now. Quasi-judicial public hearing notice. Please be advised the following item on the agenda 6A is... If you wish to comment on this item, please indicate that you would like to do so and address the council at the appropriate time. An opportunity to speak on this item will be afforded to individuals after the applicant and the staff have made their presentations on the item. all testimony including public testimony and evidence will be made under oath or affirmation additionally each person who gives testimony may be subject to cross-examination if you do not wish to be either cross-examined or sworn your testimony will be given its due weight the general public will not be permitted to cross-examine witnesses but the public may request the council ask questions of staff or witnesses on their behalf pull agenda packet on this item town code of ordinances in the town's comprehensive plan are all hereby entered into the record persons representing organizations must present evidence of their authority to speak for the organization further details of the quasi-judicial procedure may be obtained from the clerk any lobbyists must register before addressing the council on this quasi-judicial item disclosure of pre-hearing transactions pursuant to section 2-237 of the town code of ordinances all applicants are required to disclose on the record whether any consideration monetary or otherwise has been paid or offered to or requested by any person or entity in exchange for any promise or agreement to support oppose or refrain from supporting or opposing any quasi judicial agenda item or application the disclosure shall include the person or entity to which such consideration was paid or offered or by which such request was made whether the consideration was received and the position such person or entity agreed or promised to take at this time the clerk will swear in any persons who wish to testify on the quasi-judicial item if you are going to be testifying please stand now

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give is the truth to the best of your knowledge and belief? Thank you.

Finally, the town clerk shall confirm receipt of any ex parte communication disclosures that were received prior to this public hearing. Members of the council should disclose any ex parte communications that were not previously disclosed for the record at this time.

Mr. Mayor, I have met with the builders for the contemporary on two separate occasions just to discuss the project.

All right. Anybody else? Councilwoman Lord?

And I've actually disclosed this before, but we've had the developer present to the Age-Friendly Community Committee on two separate occasions in 2022 and 2026.

So I just want to put that back on the record. Anything else?

All right. Nothing else. All right. Julian, anything else, sir?

We'll have the clerk read the title.

Okay. Please read the title, folks.

A resolution of the mayor of the town council of the town of bay, Florida, approving an amendment to the existing declaration of restrictive covenants for property generally located on Southwest 216th street between Southwest 88th place and Southwest 93rd path consisting of approximately 18.52 acres of vacant land and unimproved land. and identified by folio number 36-6016-000-0027, providing for an authorization, providing for implementation, and providing for an effective date.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, members of council. Tonight we're going to have our planning and zoning director, Julian Perez, present the item on staff's report, and then the second part will be the applicant.

Sorry.

Okay, great.

Good evening, mayor, members of the council, town manager, town attorney, clerk, members of the audience. My name is Julian Perez and I'm the planning and zoning director. This evening before you is a request to modify a previously approved covenant. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a brief introduction. I'm going to talk a little bit about the historical approvals, and then we'll get into the evaluation of the project itself from a comprehensive plan, the land development regulations and other documents associated with the development, not only of the town of Cutler Bay, but also Miami South State. And that's a competitive analysis that has been done that was submitted to the Economic Development Council and to the rest of the other cities and town participating in the Miami-Dade South. So, And then finally, I'm going to walk you through some of the benefits, community benefits, that we successfully negotiated with the applicant to make sure that this project was one, that it was integrated, one that was multi-generational, and that really meet the needs of the town. So with that, basically that is our introduction. As indicated by the clerk, this is an amendment to an existing declaration of restricted covenant for the property generally located on Southwest 216th Street between Southwest 88th Place and Southwest 93rd Path. And this is to integrate a multi-generational residential use, it's a mixed use, to complement the previous approved senior living commercial and public open space uses originally approved in 2022. and later amended in 2024. What do I mean by that? That there was a site plan that was amended in 2022, and then later it was updated because of a live local act that was made in court. For the record, this public hearing was advertised in the Miami Herald on Sunday, June 7th of 2026 in the neighbor section. Also, courtesy notices were mailed out on Friday, June 12th, 2026 and about 1156 of those smellers went out to the residents. Two of those were sent out to international people living outside the country. The property itself was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2026. Sorry. As you can see, the project location, as I indicated, on Southwest 216th Street. And as you know, this is one of the last parcels left on this huge development. And that has been there for quite some time because of many reasons. One, environmental, other changes in the market, and so forth. And finally, now we have a developer that wants to develop this property. On the official land use category, this is a mixed use. And on the zoning district, as I indicated, this is an NC2. The NC2 has a maximum density of 11 units per acre and a maximum flow area ratio of 0.4. The history goes back to 1970, as some of you know that have been around here for quite some time and are familiar with the project. And this basically started with an agreement governing the land development, and that was executed by Saga Bay Development Corporation. The parcel was designated for originally for business and that means office uses restaurant bars drugs drug stores coffee shop beauty shops barber shops and other compatible business service uses now this is saga bay development uh as known as delays by the way the reason why i'm going through this is because it's very important that everybody that's not familiar with the project knows that there's an extensive history associated with this project then That was in 1970. Then in May 28 of 1982, then there was a covenant declaration restriction. And this very specific parcel from N through X and AA, okay, was only designated for residential use. Later on, it was amended and then there was a residential allow. And I will go into that in a few seconds. In 1982, the subject property and application was sown BU2, and that is a special business district and that was done by Miami-Dade County. And it remained as such until the town implemented its growth management plan and land development regulations in 2008 and 2012 respectively. And that's when we went to a future land use of mixed use and then we went to a zoning classification or zoning district of NC2 and that's neighborhood center. So neither of these designations at that time permitted residential. Then on October 19th of 2022, laced by debate, mixed-use land use designation and the NC2 subdistrict zoning tax was amended to allow a senior housing residential. The existing declaration of restriction restricted covenant at the time limit the subject parcel to non-residential that's very clear but with this then in 2022 it was approved the 2022 approved 196 senior housing units ages 55 and older Very important. Then later on at the same meeting 42,250 square feet of medical office was also approved as well as 7,100 square feet of office use, 14,100 square feet of restaurant and 9,307 square feet of retail use. All of this was on resolutions number 2294 and 2285 respectively and that's part of the manager's report as an attachment. then that same meeting on that same time, okay, as part of the site plan and the flume and the zoning tax amendments, amendments, the developer proffered a restricted covenant to provide landscaping improvements within the linear park, senior programming and incorporated a designated pick up and drop off location for the town circulator. On that site plan, there was a series of conditions and one of those conditions in that site plan said that by the time of permitting that's when they were supposed to go ahead and record the covenant because it's very important because this covenants were never recorded all right but there is a condition on that site all right on november 15th of 15 of 2024 is another important point in this whole process because the developer came back to the town on that day and they requested that they wanted to modify that site plan and convert it into a live local act and that was approved so they went under the state section 166.04151 of the florida statutes and that is your live local act This approval, it's very important because this approval retained the same mixed-use horizontal residential development program, except an increase in the number of units from 196 to 322 senior housing units. All right, so that was part of that process, part of that approval under the Live Local Act. Now, it is important to note that pursuant to Section 3-30, dash 30 10b of the town code the 2024 site plan has been extended through july 19th of 2028 consistent with the tolling time period requirements set forth in section 252.363 of the florida statutes all right and this basically what it says that every time there is an emergency because there's a disaster or any other emergency declared by the governor then the permits then are extended for a certain amount of time and that's the reason how we got here there were like six or seven different uh emergency orders now that gets us to february 24th of this year when the developer submitted a land use application seeking to modify the existing declaration of restricted covenant the original among other things to implement the proposed multi-generational component into the mixed use project and what do we mean by that it's a 120 age restricted which is 55 and over and 202 non age restricted units, a total of 322 units. And this is where we come in with the evaluation of this covenant. This is where we come in and we sat down with the applicant to ensure that there were certain community benefits that now would enhance the project and benefit the community itself. And we'll get into that in a few minutes. As part of this whole analysis, we went back, as I indicated originally, and we looked at our comprehensive plan. And we look at those policies that a project of this magnitude would further. Not only did we look at the comprehensive plan, but we also went ahead and we looked at other documents to ensure that this project itself was not only consistent with our comprehensive plan, but would also further some of the information provided in the competitive assessment sorry that i'm going through here um because in that competitive assessment that was done and funded through the edc and it was submitted as a draft on april 2026 that's the competitive assessment in south miami-dade county it really shows some very interesting information regarding our demography and also our labor force and i want to take a few seconds to talk to you about that because it is very interesting what's happening in the town of cutler bay when it comes to the uh bottom part of the Demographic age cohort. What am I talking about? I'm talking about the age cohort that goes from 50, 55 to 64 and then 64 and over. Okay. And this is what the reason why I'm bringing this up is because this is the type of project that is trying to address that population. Because of the, the age. component to it the uh 120 units that's going to be set aside in perpetuity for that age cohort that falls into those two cohorts all right so what we're looking at here is that those two cohorts are the only one of the the rest of the other ones that from zero to 10 or 12 and then 25 and so forth those are the only two that shows an increase in population Those are the only two that shows increase in population. And what that tells you is that to a certain degree, there will be a demand for those type of units by that population. Let's say, for example, you have a family that have lived all their lives here in Cutler Bay, and now they're empty nesters, and they really wanted to stay in our community. Obviously, the first thing that they're going to do is they're going to look at Carla Bay to stay here because you have your extended family and so forth. You also have, you know, your kids too, that you want them to stay in this community. Well, you know, you have another component of this project that would provide that environment for them to stay, not only for them, but as part of the negotiations, we're also We also negotiated with the applicant that certain units would be made available to people that are in the military, people that are teachers, first responders, and so forth. So by looking at those numbers, then again, we tried to cross-reference our analysis to see if there was a need. So now we went away from the comprehensive plan, the policies, now to the real life, the numbers. Then we also went ahead and we look at the labor force. Unfortunate numbers were not very specific for the town of Cutler Bay, but there were numbers for the region, the south region and between 2017 and 2024 Miami Dade County from a labor uh force perspective only grew by 8.4 percent during that period however this region right here grew by 13.2 meaning again you know that we're going to have more job opportunities and so forth and there was going to be need for housing as uh as as we move forward the next analysis that we did was to look at the existing evaluation, the standard evaluation review criteria, and these were the same criteria that we used in 2022 to evaluate the original request. We went ahead as a department and we looked at all of them and made sure that they were all crossing, not only based on the 2022 report, but also on our comprehensive plan and the other documents that I just mentioned that we looked at. So in every category, they were in compliance. Now, let's talk a little bit about the community benefits. And the applicant is going to come before you. He's going to give you a lot of the information that I just walked you through, but in more detail. And they are also going to talk about these commitments that they have made to our community. First of all is the linear park and the extended hours and the number of stations that were going to be located throughout the linear park well we were able to successfully negotiate with them the time we were able to successfully negotiate with them the stations that were going to be in you know throughout the linear park and that we wanted to make sure that that park was functional we wanted to make sure that that park was open Until a certain time where everybody in the community could go, especially a young families, because we've seen a lot of that and those young families that work on 267 and that we still wanted them to also take advantage of the park. So that was 1 of the things that was 1 of our priority. The next priority is. something that has really been a major cornerstone i would say like an obstacle to the development of this location and that's the environment the environmental cleanup and the applicant has committed to cleaning up this site um through the brownfield program uh to address the arsenic issue and arsenic folks let me just mention something is everywhere around here it's not only the town of cutler bay is everywhere you find arsenic Then finally, we look at the senior housing. All right. And we wanted to make sure that the senior housing was in perpetuity. And that was very important because we just don't want another developer in case they started to come back and then change it. And we just wanted to make sure that it was done through the covenant and it was not done through a condition on the site plan. All right. Although the site plan itself, which is not the the issue here at hand tonight uh because it's not administrative as you know because of the live local act but we're going to have a covenant to make sure that those conditions go into that covenant all right and it's not something that is very easy for them to even if they do it administrative for them to come and change it so what we're doing here is to make sure that all of these community benefits are put in a place that is safeguarded okay so next is the utility the underground utilities underground utilities the reason why we kept going back and asking to putting it there and if you look at other improvements if you look at other restricted covenants you're always going to find the underground utility we wanted to make sure that we continue to underground the utilities and every opportunity that we had to bring it up we did so the next item The next item is the priority leasing. And this is where the applicant is going to get into more detail as to what we agreed to. But the bottom line here is that we wanted to make sure that certain segments of the population were able to participate in this project. And specifically, those individuals that work for our different agencies, especially here, that was one, we included the town of Cutler Bay, its employees, also as part of the negotiation. They were not part of those approvals back then. Now they are, and now they're part of the coveted. Next, we wanted to make sure that they had an excellent targeting marketing program, that they were very aggressive in finding the population that we identified, that we wanted to make sure that we give them priority. So they came up with a very, I would say, a very strong program to do that. Then finally was the military rental partnership program. This was extremely, extremely important, I think, to all of us because of the military base that we have on Homestead Air Force Base, the number of military personnel, especially, especially those young, soldiers that I just enlisted, that they're coming from somewhere in Kentucky, Louisiana, Louisville, those places. And these folks are not your officers. These are the guys that are going to be on the ground. They're the ones that are going to be serving the planes. And we wanted to make sure that there was affordable living close to where they were going to be stationed. And that was something that the applicant was very receptive. And as a matter of fact, we even negotiated a minimum. of 20 units is going to be reserved for those folks with that uh the department recommends approval of this uh modified covenant and if you have any questions uh i'll be more than happy to answer those questions uh but at this time i would like to pass on the presentation to the applicant let the applicant before we do questions so go ahead applicant come on bring the applicant on

And we're going to set the timer for 20 minutes, please.

Thank you.

I think I got it.

Which way is it?

It's back. Okay.

Good evening, Mayor, council members, city attorney, Mr. Manager, and guests. Thank you so much. My name is Iris Iscara. I'm an attorney at Greenberg choice with offices at 333 Southeast Second Avenue. I'm joined this evening by my co counsel Devin Vickers. And I'm also in representing George Navarro, who typically many of you know, has been handling this application, but he unfortunately he couldn't be here this evening. so i will try to do my best job to be mr navarro with his um specificity this project is 18 and a half acres as many of you know located on 216th street between 88th place and 93rd One of the things that we wanted to just kind of give you is a quick overview. I think Mr. Perez did an amazing job at giving you a lot of the details. But one of the things we wanted to just start the conversation with, we're maintaining the community benefits and what the client has done is really come up with an enhanced project that has really gone above and beyond, especially with the integrational focused design elements that I believe are so critical to many communities, not only in Cutler Bay but across South Florida, to be able to have the elderly along with the young. The project overview maintains the medical commercial uses. It maintains the previous community benefits regarding the linear park, the golf cart parking, the charging stations, the hosting of the senior events and the town circular stop. In addition to that, it has updated the design elements for the intergenerational focus community, Affordable housing caps now exceed 50% of the units. We have dedicated essential worker and hero housing and we have dedicated military service and additional benefits that I will go into in more detail. I'm going to go quickly through the 2022-2024 site plans because I believe the planning director did a very good job at that so I don't think I need to add much. I think many of you were here during those applications so I'm going to skip to the issue at hand and the application before you. So in looking at the site, when Live Local was adopted by the state, interestingly enough, many communities, some benefited, some adapted. Here, if you were to look at this without the existing covenant, the 18 and a half acres could allow up to 4,625 units. Thankfully, you all have a covenant that restricts that. And because of that, you are able to sit down at the table with any new development and come up with something that's appropriate for your community. So that covenant is actually a safeguard that this covenant will be a further safeguard of that and in perpetuity. So I just want to highlight that because the covenant process is something that I think most jurisdictions have that it is really the way everybody can come to the table and decide on something that is really appropriate for their community. The covenant that exists today allows for the remaining 714 units that haven't been built. So that 1982 covenant allowed like 3,941 units, allowing 714 to remain. Our community is only proposing 322. So there's still additional units for somebody else to develop, but we're proposing 322 of those units for this particular site. In addition, of those 322 units, 129 units will be workforce housing restricted. So I want to explain because sometimes I want to make sure the numbers don't get a little confusing, but we have 322 units, 120 are elderly and 202 are non-age restricted. That's almost like one bucket, right? On top of that, we also have the affordable housing components, the military components and the hero housing components. So it's the overlap of these two systems that is really coming out with an amazing product for the community. The other thing with this here provides a comparison of the three projects as evolved through time, and each time it got better and better. And we are very proud of the product that is here before you with regards to the development, the enhancements, the community engagement, they've been working on this for a very long time. And I think the critical component to their project success is truly the intergenerational design of the community.

Excuse me one second.

When designing communities for the elderly, one of the things that the studies and many of these organizations has come up that Even though all the elderly have housing near each other, they still are suffering from many different things. Improved health and well-being, reduced isolation. Having intergenerational communities helps support both, helps support that elderly person could help take care of a young person's family or child. To me, I think the elderly are the best security system any community could ever have because they know who's coming in, who's going out, who's happening with what. So that's been my experience with them. And it also provides for wellness and open. And these communities that have both the young and the old all interchanging with each other actually supports for a much better well-being of both communities, the young and the elderly. In addition to that, oops, sorry, the AARP also came out with a study with regards to reducing isolation, improving the mental health and economic opportunities and reduction in ageism, which is contact between the different groups and the stereotypes. our community is proposing to have senior living for 55 plus age restriction for 120 units we're also proposing family and hero housing young professionals health and fitness wellness programs a fitness center a 3.5 acre walking trail within the linear park so there's a walking wellness trail in addition to that we've also committed to 12 exercise stations along that To me, it's going to be an amazing space with the lake to have the openness, to have the exercise. It's very zen. It's going to be a wonderful opportunity for the public to enjoy. We also are going to have medical uses on site, preventative health care and on site medic. And then we also have along the front, along 216th Street, we have a real retail component, which we're proposing approximately 10,000 square feet of restaurant, 4,500 on one end and 4,000 on the other. um to anchor the community and one of the things that i think that this project really brings to the table is proximity proximity between age groups proximity between uses proximity between open spaces if you look at this new linear park and you look at your blue heron park and the new park that you all are improving in legacy it's right in the middle so somebody could essentially travel, you know, exercise or walk through your Blue Heron connect around us and ends up at legacy. So this is like a connector piece of your public open spaces. In addition to that, in April of 2026, our team appeared before the age friendly committee of the Cutler Bay. And we went over the eight pillars of the design of the of the project and it was positively received by the board. We received good feedback and good engagement. So we appreciated the opportunity to appear before them. So again, I wanted to just break down a little bit of the numbers so that we're all clear on what's being proposed. We have 147 hero workforce housing units. We have 120 elderly and 27 units that are workforce that are non-age restricted. And we also have 20 units that are military service members. That is a total of 167 units that will have rental restrictions on them. In addition to that, live local typically requires 40%. This project has 52% of a rental restriction with regards to the units. So as rents go up, we're in South Florida. I've never seen them go down. It'd be nice because my kids are looking for apartments. They're in college, but rents go up. So what happens is that these rental restrictions will, as time goes on, will be more and more favorable for the community because rents will continue to go up, but these are continually capped. And these numbers are established by HUD. These numbers are established by Miami-Dade County. And these are numbers that we actually have to file an annual report in the covenant. It requires every year that we file an annual report in January to the manager of our status and our compliance with these numbers. This is the latest of the AMI tables, the average median income that's issued by HUD and Miami-Dade County with regards to income limits and rental. hero housing program is one that our team is extremely proud of they've been working with it attracts law enforcement firefighters health care professionals town of cutler bay employees and educational employees in the neighborhood we have received uh positive feedback from Matter Bay that they're very supportive of this because they would love to be able to have teachers housing near them. We also spoke with Billy McAllister of the Fire Union. He said it would be great if his folks can have places close by to their stations. So this is something that we think would be very successful and probably rent out right away. The military rental program, this is Homestead Air Force Base, is our neighbor, is our security, are so many things from a big picture perspective. So the opportunity to have 20 units dedicated to them for that they could have the opportunity residences near the base, I think would be amazing for them. So that is part of the program. This gives you a preview of the linear walkway around the park that around the project that I was mentioning the wellness loop. So the community benefits. This is one that I wanted to go over in detail because some of the community benefits were from the original project and some of the community benefits are what I'm calling the enhanced community benefits. So again, the 3.4 acre linear park and walking trails and space for town center program remains and it's being enhanced with 12 pieces of exercise equipment at those exercise stations. We are continuing with the 51 golf cart and charging stations. for the project. Neighborhood retail shops and medical uses within close proximity, those uses will remain. We are undergrounding the utilities. The environmental cleanup via the Brownfield, as many of you know, the site is at Brownfield. Our team is working with Michael Goldstein and Brett Boumon, who are here this evening, in case you have any questions with regards to the cleanup. We anticipate that if the Brownfield designation is successful, we'll be probably spending the next six to eight months on just cleanup items. So the community access to the pickleball courts and the children. So in the town center, when you come in, you have the linear park that goes around it. But in the center, there are pickleball courts that we have opened it up for the lakes of the of the Bay Master Association. And I think the underlying 12 or so associations under them to be able to come and use the pickleball courts. Pickleball is a very popular sport. We've also enhanced the project by complying with the town's art and public places program. We have also worked on the shared maintenance costs of future signalization and improvements of up to $450,000 along 216th Street. And we maintain the town circular stop at our site. This provides you a depiction by our architect Evo Fernandes from Modus Architects was here this evening that shows you where the linear park is, the access right from the sidewalk all around the site. Here's a depiction of what the park would look like along the edge of the property. With regards to the covenant modification, I believe Mr. Perez did an amazing job to go over the covenant modification requests and the restrictions and the securities that are being provided to you all within the covenant. and the importance of the covenant with regards to the future restrictions and compliance. I did want to point out that there's two changes that we worked with the city attorney on between yesterday and today, and it was a clarification of two things. that the commercial use come online at the same time as the residential and the second that the linear park include 12 pieces of outdoor exercise equipment. So these two changes were added between the published version and today's version. So I just wanted to note it as amended as to these two additional changes for the record. In addition, I'd like to introduce into the record the lakes by the bay letter of support for for the project we've met with them, our team has met with them. And we're very excited of such an opportunity. And we are very I'm very grateful for their support in writing that we'd like to introduce it to the clerk. And my colleague just told me that we also got Miami Dade firefighters support in writing and we'll be delivering it to the clerk for the record as well. With that said, I'm open for any questions. Our team is here. Should you have any questions that you'd like us to respond to?

Thank you very much for my mom and open up the floor now for public comments. They'd like to come forward, speak on this item. Please come forward now. If you're going to go ahead and get in line if you could.

Good evening. My name is Avis Russ. I live at Lakes by the Bay, Laguna Point at 21940 Southwest 98th Avenue. And I have a few questions about the project. While it looks very nice and it looks like we're making progress in the community, I was wondering if there had been any impact studies on first of all property values for the homeowners that live in that area. It's going to impact us in some way and we have no clue as to what that impact might be but there have been other developments like this in residential areas and I'm sure there's some history there and I'm sure we well me and my husband and other homeowners would like to know what the impact might be on property values and the other question is around trash mount trash war is probably filled to the brink as it is and what kind of accommodations are going to be made you know for the extra trash uh crime uh impact study have you done one uh when there has been a community like this impacted by a development such as this the traffic mitigation traffic's definitely going to be an issue but the first thing that i'm sure most homeowners are concerned with is property values

Thank you. This is not a question and answer session. This is for public comments. The applicant or staff can maybe address some of those things after the public comments.

Okay.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. My name is Christine Taylor. I live at 9846 Southwest 222nd Terrace. I am a member of the Lakes by the Bay Master Board, and I'm here to say that we support this. I'm also that elderly 65-year-old, and I'm also a teacher, so I check off a bunch of boxes. The contemporary has been a really good neighbor. They have been to at least three meetings. They have taken their time to go through all of this with us on the master board. They've presented everything. They've gone through all the different questions that we've had. They've come back with answers. And we now have an agreement with them, which I'm not going to speak on. That's an attorney thing where they're going to be a good neighbor and help us maintain all of the public areas. so i'm here to support it i'm here to on the behalf of lakes by the bay master board to support it and say this is the first meeting i've ever been to in my life so it's very interesting what you guys do thank you for your service i'm sure you guys don't get paid enough to do this so thank you thank you any questions of me because i'm actually here representing just for you to make comments so did you bring the line up forward and we don't have to have that silence in between on the lane recession

All the way to the front. There you go. Okay.

Good evening. My name is Barbara Libby Brown. My address is 8757 Southwest 213 Terrace 33189. I want to thank you for what you're doing for our community. But I would like to make a comment. As we are identifying or there was a by the lawyer, I believe that please do not forget Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Miami-Dade County Public Schools have a handful of schools down here at the South, and I would implore that they meet with the powers that be, because there are teachers, I'm an educator, I'm a principal, and there are teachers who are in desperate need of housing. So please do not forget Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Lauren Rodriguez. I'm a resident in Isles of Bayshore. I live in the cove in 22560 Southwest 89th Place. I think this is going to be a great addition to this project. I just had my son a month ago with my husband and we've been in this community for two years now and we love Cutler Bay so I think this is going to be a great addition to our community. especially with young families. And I love the addition with healthcare profession as I am a healthcare professional myself. So I think this is going to be a great addition to our community.

Hi, my name is Gabriela Fernandez. I'm a resident of Color Bay. I've been a resident for about four years. My home address is 8800 Southwest 191st Street, and I'm very excited for this project. That was my twin sister, so we live nearby one another, but it's nice to have this project, to have families, growing families as one for myself. um my husband and i lived here again for four years and i think also as a healthcare professional as well i love the emphasis of you know as an older community having that accessibility um for healthcare so i approve of this project thank you good evening mayor council

My name is John Sperling. I live at 9553 Southwest 189 Terrace. I live on a cul-de-sac. In our cul-de-sac, there's four, there's 12 homes with four, four of the homes are either police or fire. Most of these people bring their vehicles home. So there's always representation in the neighborhood. So I feel it makes it much safer. There is very little, there are very little places to go in Cutler Bay with golf carts, first of all with golf carts. with for restaurants and activities so i would i would welcome this this community 100 um there needs to be more restaurants obviously because there literally is none i know um i know that flanagan's is supposedly moving in by publics but you know that's long time out um so there's nothing about this that i have any opposition to so i appreciate your time thank you very much thank you

oh by the way my wife's a teacher in this in the school board as well so thank you thank you all right anybody else anybody in the queue no one of the queue okay public comments is now closed you know as far as with property values it's kind of hard to answer that question because there's so many different variables going into it but uh just as a general you know you have legacy park going in you have blue heron park being rich i think the property values in that area are going to be pretty good um So all of Cutler Bay has been doing very, very well, but that area is going to do really, really well, especially after it goes in. And Julian, we do require graphic studies on everything that we have, again, so that's required.

Yes, there's a traffic study that is on its way. It should be done mid-July as part of the site plan approval. There's also a trip generation study that was done when they started this process that is available. And the number of trips, the AM as well as the PM are very small, the increase. I can give you the numbers if you want to. Okay, but that's correct.

And the trash, of course. We require everybody to keep their trash taken care of. Mitch, did you have a comment, sir?

I was just going to speak to the solid waste issue with respect to the current landfill, the South Dade landfill. It is running up against capacity, and Miami-Dade County has now contracted with several haulers to move the waste upstate to upstate landfills by rail. And that's the current solution. However, the county continues to discuss the replacement of the old waste-to-energy facility, which was destroyed in a fire. And that could be part of their long-term solution. But right now, they're able to adequately landfill the waste upstate.

And I don't know if you all remember a couple years ago when a similar project, I remember a little boy saying, I'd love to go and get ice cream. Because one of the things that we do need in Cutler Bay we've all been working on is more restaurants, more types of places like that. And I think one of the things that I like about this project is the cornerstones on each side is specifically for restaurant space. um which is great there's nothing better than having a good restaurant uh within the neighborhood there's so many you know you see ones like elaine's down the street struggles for for places to go well we could we could have something much better right there so um but with that i'll open it up to the council for comments or questions so okay well councilman ramirez you're recognized well no whenever you raise your hand i can call on you so you're done

Good evening. All right. Thanks for the presentations. You know, pretty good presentation. I have been on the fence a little bit because I'm not a huge fan of developers getting something approved and then coming back and trying to ask for more and more and more. But Live Local actually kind of created that, so we kind of have to live within those confines. Basically, it kind of boils down to, do we have 322 units that are actually split in threes to accommodate different generations? And also for people that are first responders, teachers, and such. Or do we say no, and we have 644 units with no commercial, no restaurants, no nothing, just here's a bunch of apartments sitting there. so i think you kind of have to look at the lesser two evils when it comes to that but i can tell you that i was very impressed with the developer when you presented the 192 units so i'm pretty sure that you guys are going to do a pretty good job you know making sure this looks beautiful and it is well maintained and uh i appreciate the fact that you have met with the town and really kind of wanted to give a lot of things to this town to make it something that's very uh you know, kind of open, kind of open pretty much for our residents. So I kind of know which way I'm going to go on this. And I just wanted to kind of, you know, put my thoughts out there on that, you know. So we'll see what everybody else has to say and see what happens at the end. Thank you.

Councilman Duncan, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Councilmember Ramirez. Yeah, I'll echo some of the sentiments that he had said. I do have a few, I guess, questions or points for clarification. Could you put the slide back on that demonstrates what the rents will be just so that our residents will have an understanding as to what that is? Because, I mean, we can, you know, until we're blue in the face, say 120% of the AMI, but for most people, you know, you tell them what the monthly rents will be and that's a little bit easier to kind of grasp and understand.

Correct. And I will do this. What this is, is that this is the tip Oops, sorry.

There.

Thank you very much, Mr. Kirk. What this provides is that this is the maximum rents. If you go to the right columns, the last six columns provide what the rental income maximums will be. So for at 120%, a studio is $2,862. A one bedroom would be 3,000, a two bedroom would be 3,678. Now these are maximums that are established by Miami-Dade County with regards to, it's a correlation between the income limits of the resident, as well as the rent that could be charged at a maximum. And these includes any additional fees as well. You can't like charge the rent and then you have like a pool fee or a gym fee. This is maximum of what can be charged to each tenant.

Okay, thank you so very much for sharing that. Moving on, so I'm very pleased of the development where essentially the certificate of occupancy for the retail would also come online the same time as the residential. That was one of the things that I was hoping to at least discuss tonight, but I'm glad you all worked that out ahead of time. Similarly to how the vice mayor was able to work with the public's property to get those out parcels insured that they were built and not just get the residential part built and then oops, we're not going to build these. So I think that is the biggest public outside of the parks and the green spaces. I think that's going to be the biggest public benefit is additional retail, additional restaurants, medical space. So I'm glad that that was taken care of. A point of clarification, I guess, for Julian. Um, so if I'm not mistaken, this is live local, so any sort of site plan approval, or that's not coming before this council. That's not administrative councilman.

No, so all of it, it's administrative. And again, what we're going to do is we're going to get those conditions and we're going to put them as part of a covenant. Okay.

So, the traffic study that that's currently underway, or that's pending if the traffic study comes back saying that improvements need to be made. beyond the $450,000, what is the enforcement mechanism for that?

Well, those improvements, those are mitigation improvements. They're going to go into the conditions and those are going to go into that covenant and they're going to have to do that as part of the approval. That was not exempt by Live Local. I want to make that very clear. That was one of the things that was not exempt.

I do want to emphasize that the traffic study is performed by us internally.

Absolutely, sir. That's according to code. Absolutely.

Looking out for what's in the best interest of the residents, especially along that 216th corridor. So any sort of negative impacts of traffic with this development, if anything needs to be added, whether lighting or traffic signaling, curb, what have you, it would have to be handled at that point.

Yes, it's going to be handled through the conditions again.

Okay, perfect. And then the only other point that I'll make, and just to re-emphasize in the same way that Councilmember Ramirez did, is with the live local, just for the residents to understand, they can, as of right, so 714, I believe was the number that we did, 714 units without this council ever saying yay or nay correct so i'm glad that that our town staff and and the team has been able to negotiate a lot of very positive community benefits that are going to benefit all of the community not just you know the lakes by the bay and isles bay shore community but all of cutler bay So thank you for that.

Thank you for all of your work. Sure. And I just want to add something to it. We also added a number of conditions that have to do with security. And that is on the crime prevention through environmental design. Those are going directly into the conditions on the site plan. And again, I keep making an emphasis of this and a covenant. All right. So added protection.

then one other if i may i'm sorry uh the linear part so the hours being extended publicly to 9 30 then that will require lighting to be installed absolutely thank you councilman lord thank you mr mayor um i'm gonna piggyback on what he just asked about the lighting i have concerns that the lighting might spill into the residents the residencies do we have like assurances that that won't happen

yeah and that'll be part of the site plan when we submit the site plan we are anticipating to have low lighting actually around the linear park there's actually low lighting and highlighting because it's both have different coverages of the lighting but we have the different types already included in our site plan thank you i do have some comments a lot of that my colleagues have already covered i want to show people

what this could have looked like if you guys didn't live local and and i really appreciate this so these we i have two of these these are from it looks like a prison to me and i'm just not comfortable with that and i'm glad we're not doing that I had a great deal of phone calls, one of which was from our former Mayor, Peggy Bell, with many, many, many concerns about this project. Now, like I said in the beginning of this, we were presented at the Age-Friendly Community Committee twice on this project. It was well received both times. It was better received the second time that we're doing intergenerational because that committee has been working for at least a year on trying to do intergenerational activities. We know the benefits of the young and the older people being together. They're vast. I talked about them when we had our workshop. So for that part, I can tell you that the committee is very excited about that development coming in. Because I had so many phone calls and I had a very long discussion with Mayor Bell, I ended up having the town manager send to me the Zoom from the HOA meeting, and I listened to that, and there was a lot of chatter about the property values and a lot of chatter about the traffic. I would suggest that I'm by no means a traffic specialist. I would think that at some point we're going to end up getting signals put in, which for me, Residents to understand that's not to impede your traveling. It is traffic calming. So it would actually help that situation. The linear park has me. So I also went through the covenant like crazy again. I'm a paralegal. So I start reading this stuff with my, my legal, my legal hat on. I'm really excited about the linear park. I was going to ask if we could have more equipment than Blue Heron Park has, and you guys beat me to that punch because Blue Heron only has nine pieces of equipment.

Oh, I like beating. I'm so competitive. That's awesome. That's awesome.

I also want to shout out that this linear park is at the sole cost of you guys. This is a gift. I look at it as a gift. And the maintenance. Yeah, and the maintenance and the security, the cost of the lighting, right? All of that, the landscaping, the park furniture, it's all here in the Covenant. I personally feel like that's a gift. This is a win in the situation. And it's not just for Lakes by the Bay, it's for all the residents of Cutler Bay. So if we can add more parks, I'm all for that. As a former member of our Parks and Rec Committee, I'm like, let's do that. I also wanted to point out, which I loved in the covenant, that the workforce, unit housing, senior housing, military housing, and the other housing, That has to be complied with by annual reports every year to the town. And I think that's important because I know that the naysayers out there and there are a few may say, oh, yeah, well, that's what they say, but they're not going to do it. They're not going to comply. Well, you're required to comply with that. And I think that that is an important thing that we should point out to the residents. But I wanted to ask about the priority leasing, if I may. It's not just firefighters and law enforcement or health care. It's not doctors. It's actually the staff, if I'm not mistaken, that are also on these priority leasing lists that they can go. So the lunch lady from Cutler Bay Senior can get priority leasing here. And I think that's significant for everyone to understand. I like that very much because a lot of times the officers, the firefighters, they're all taken care of, but maybe not their support staff. That is so critical. And by the way, while we do have a lot of police officers and firefighters that live in town, we also have a great deal of the supporting employees for the healthcare providers and those entities. to speak to that public comment public educational institutions are included in the priority leasing which does include teachers and and like I said other school personnel the the only thing I'm really left to touch on I was honestly a little on the fence about this as well although you know my committee loved it and I love the intergenerational it just seemed like a big hit but like Councilmember Ramirez was saying, this is getting developed, right? And I love the fact that you guys have worked so well with our HOAs. That's not always done here. And having come to my age-friendly community committee that speaks volumes, not doing the full Monty with the Live Local, thank you for that as a community. The history of Cutler Ridge and Cutler Bay is that we are a military town. That's why I'm here. My father retired after a career in the Army over 22 years, and we ended up here so we could be near Homestead Air Force Base. Both our mayor and vice mayor had family members who were in the military. Cutler Ridge, which is now Cutler Bay, started as military housing. my whole heart goes to these 20 units that you guys have for the active duty and also support personnel out at homestead air force base we don't see a lot of that and i i loved mr perez's comment about the 18 year old enlisted who may be coming to homestead air force base with a young bride and maybe expecting a child what What a gift we are offering to them to potentially live off base in a beautiful development using the military rental program and all those schools. We have amazing schools in that area that they would then be afforded to. I can't say enough about that. I grew up in military housing. Every opportunity my parents could take to have us live off base in a more normal environment, they took. And so I really appreciate that we're going to be able to offer that. And the last thing I'm going to say about the military is that in the next couple of years, we're going to have F-35s coming to Homestead Air Force Base. It's a reserve base, so the housing is not as plentiful as it was when it wasn't a reserve base. And once these F-35s come there, i would expect that more and more of these enlisted are going to need to live off base so i that part of this i i really appreciate and i commend you guys for that thank you thank you mr mayor um for those who know me and have followed me since my very first meeting i hate

when applicants come back before us requesting changes to something that we've already approved. For me, over the years, it's really been a bait and switch type of thing. Hey, this is a great idea and we approve it. And then six months later, the applicant comes back and just kidding, we wanna do this. And usually at these meetings, I have a legal pad filled with comments and notes But I must say this is the first time in six and a half years that I've had an applicant come back for a modification that's actually better what the original plan was and we loved the original plan i remember i i tell you i got word that from the town manager that the applicant was coming uh back before us for a modification and i went oh god here we go again right what what what is it going to end up looking like and after i sat down with him and we went through the uh the covenant modifications that the that you guys were had come up with it was just so much of a much of a better plan i mean julian fantastic job i mean just really working with the african this is this is really what our process is about and a lot of municipalities don't have this type of relationship between the council and town staff that have the best interest of our residents normally for uh modifications like this this place is filled and and the comments go on forever and today we had you know our residents who stepped up and really supported this and it really it really shows you know how this council and how this town works uh for the betterment of of our residents and and thank you so much for for doing what you've done to modify the covenant to make this a better place and working with our town staff. I mean, this is a, this is a first, so I'll remember this for the rest of my term. You know, make them just change their pants after you start off.

So, uh, So again, you know, that property's been sitting vacant for a long, long time. It's quite honestly, it's an eyesore because waste just kind of roped off and overgrown. I like the component of, you know, cleaning it up with the arsenic as a brownfield. When I first became mayor, I sat down with the base commander, Colonel Piferero, who's now General Piferero. and you said you know i know we're not uh right next to you but how can we support you and he said he goes i'm a colonel i can afford when i move i can afford first last in security he goes but my enlisted men can't and they can they find it very very hard to find a place to live so when i was discussing this with the town manager but you know when these projects come forward the uh The component of having housing for our enlisted is very, very important. And thank you for coming forward with that. Also for all the other housing for the heroes and teachers. My son just got hired as a teacher this week. I'm like, woohoo. i'm telling you got a place to live now anyway but it's uh overall i think it's a it's a great project because the retail component is something that's real real important um and that's what we need is more retail we need more restaurants and places to go for entertainment in our town so with that i'm going to wrap up our discussion and ask for a motion on this item

Mayor, members, council, there were a couple minor changes that were in the covenant that was proffered by the developer. We negotiated in the wee hours. And if I can have our town attorney, Roger Poe, come up because he was instrumental in finalizing negotiations last night.

Thank you, Mr. Manager, Mayor, members of the Council. It's a pleasure to see you. I almost hate to say this, but there's more, right? In terms of the good news, we were able to negotiate as of almost three hours ago, two hours ago, a further clarification as to the essential workers and military housing components. That's 6D and 6E3. um just to clarify that in the event that one of those individuals that's given priority and then in the leasing as a priority unit for essential workers or for military housing and then they lose that qualification those leases aren't going to be renewed and you know create a loophole so just additional protection so okay great thank you thank you so again and again it was section it's the mayor it was section 6d and section 6e3

All right. Anything else, sir? All right. I'm looking for a motion. So moved. We have a motion by the Vice Mayor Callahan. Looking for a second.

Second.

We have a second by Councilman Lord. Call the roll. Call the roll call vote, please.

Councilmember Lord?

Yes.

Councilmember Duncan? Yes. Councilmember Ramirez? Yes. Vice Mayor Callahan? In the words of one of our council members, absolutely.

Mayor Mayerbot?

Yes. Motion passes. All right. Thank you. All right.

Thank you very much. Have a wonderful evening, everyone.

That concludes our meeting. This meeting is adjourned.

I'm never going to let that down.