Planning & Zoning - Regular Meeting

Thank you Buenas noches. Bienvenido a Babcock Park. No sé si ustedes saben, no estamos regalando nada, que veo que la casa está llena. Así que, no es mentira. Bienvenidos a todos. Me alegro que estén aquí hoy. Les voy a presentar al alcalde Brian Cabo.

Bueno, muy buenas noches a todos. Good evening, everyone. Muchas gracias por estar con nosotros en la noche de hoy. I want to first of all recognize, we have the councilors Luis Rodriguez and William Marrero with us also here to serve you. And I want to distinguish that we have our chief of the police, Jorge Fuentes, and members of his command, and also the chief of the firemen, Freddy Perez, and members of his command. uh uh quejas, todo tipo de cosas que les podamos ayudar. Una de las cosas que fue mi campaña o principio de mi campaña el año pasado fue tratar de ser más abierto, tener un gobierno que sea más transparente y pueda conectar directamente. Obviamente es una ciudad muy grande, hay más de 300,000 habitantes en Hialeah, pero estamos tratando lo mayor posible de tener más de estas sesiones. Ya esta es la tercera sesión que tenemos a lo largo de las diferentes okay so In the beginning of the year, it was the project on taxes for people over 65 years old. It was a project that was approved thanks also to the council of the city of Hialeah and we were able to return to more than 6,500 families these property taxes. The people who were benefited under that program, as I said, people over 65 years old with an income of less than $38,000. Those checks were sent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . in all the United States, the largest development of a football team in one of our parks. It was approximately 3.5 million that they invested and basically created a replica of the Marlin football stadium here in our own park, at no cost to the citizens of Hialeah. And also, as part of this program, they are providing free classes to our children in the city of Hialeah from the age of 4 to 17 years old, ball classes, completely free, they give them uniforms, they give them the bats, the balls, literally everything at no cost to the residents of Hialeah. We already have more than 150 children enrolled in that program and the registrations are open. If you know a child who likes the ball, you can communicate with them. They have the office here directly connected to this building. and they operate that ball academy almost every day and also on Saturdays. Now with the issue of water and sewerage, the city has officially started the pilot program for smart water meters. Basically, the problem we have had over the years is that we have 62,000 meters of water in the city. These are analog meters, many of them are in the back of the houses, especially in this area of the Isla de Jaialia. and the city at the moment only has six or seven people to read those metrics. When I entered as mayor, I said we have to increase the number of staff and we have already increased it by more than 10 people, but every time you add an employee, obviously it's the salary, the benefits, the insurance, etc., etc. It becomes very expensive. That's why I think, in my opinion, that this smart metro program will probably be the future of our city, but we wanted to start the project as a pilot, testing the technology, making sure that it works properly. We are currently working with four different companies, each company is installing 200 meters completely for free. Those meters are randomly placed in different parts of the city, different types of properties, residential, commercial, industrial, to try to test exactly the technology. Those integrations have already begun. Many people are already receiving these smart meters. And we think that at the beginning of next year we will have enough metrics, enough statistics to be able to make a conclusive decision about the future of this project. What will help is that it will be ensured that each person is only paying for the water they consume, they do not pay an estimate, they do not pay the water of the neighbor, they do not pay anything, simply what they consumed, which is how it should be. También con los pequeños negocios, hemos oído mucho sobre los pequeños negocios que a veces se dificultan al tiempo de tratar de abrir con el tema de los permisos y todo tipo de cosas. Tenemos en la ciudad más de 6,000 negocios y yo hice una iniciativa para asegurarnos que todos los negocios tengan directa comunicación con la alcaldía. Estamos todos los meses haciendo por lo menos dos o tres sesiones con los negocios pequeños, cómo tramitar permisos, cómo hacer un plan de negocio, cómo pueden tener diferentes fuentes para poder to open or expand their business. And I'm very happy that right now a publication called USA Today, a national publication, is saying that the city of Hialeah right now is number four in the whole country to open a small business, which is a great reach from where we were before last year. The next thing is that we are trying to improve the aesthetics, how the city looks. We have 370 miles of streets in our city. Many of these streets were quite abandoned over the years. So we approved a plan to basically completely paint all the streets in the city, put the new markings, the markers, the reflectors. So that program is approximately 35% already complete. The most moved arteries were made, the most moved arteries in the city. And now we are entering the neighborhoods. It is estimated that this project will end approximately in April of next year, and the 370 miles will be completed. At the same time, with the lights at night, that is, the neighbors' lights, we have approximately 5,000 lights here in the city. Many of them were not working and then I said, let's do a project to replace all the 5,000 lights and put new LED lights. that consumes much less electricity and at the same time shines brighter at night. This project is already in process, more than 2,500 lights have been installed. We estimate that probably by the end of December all 5,000 lights will be finished. We also have many street projects, infrastructure in what it is to redesign streets, redesign arteries, make them bigger, move to be able to move more traffic. So here they have some of those intersections between 8th and 10th Avenue. from the 5th to the 9th street. We also have some projects here in the southeast of Hialeah, between the 4th and the 6th avenue, between Okeechobee and the 4th street. Also the 6th to the 8th avenue of the southeast, between the 4th and the 8th street. And also some trees that are going to be planted between the 8th and the 9th avenue of the southeast. between Hialeah Drive and 8th Street. We are also working with the signage in the 4th Avenue of the East. So those are some of the projects. There are a thousand projects that we are doing in the city, but I don't want to bore you just with me talking. I just wanted to give the opportunity to the residents who are also present to talk and have a conversation between us.