City Council - Regular Meeting

Three public workshops and our survey and in the last couple of months we will finalize our report with renderings and budgets that can be evaluated. And with that is a list of deliverables that will be part of our proposal. Thank you.

Hey, thank you. Anything to add Mr. Manager before I open it up to council?

None, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Parks Director, do you have any comments?

Thank you. Council? Council Fletcher?

Yes, thank you, and I appreciate the overall product that's going to be delivered, but is there a way to fast-track or create additional efficiencies that this timeline's not so... I'm looking at the public meetings. They're like... two months, you know, in between the public meetings and people lose interest after a period of time. Can we fast track those maybe to once a month to try and keep people more engaged? Because I think you lose that touch by lengthening it up.

It's a good point and one that we've discussed internally a lot. The goal of the first meeting is to gather a lot of input, right? Ideas. a vision what's missing the other workshop is we dive in a little bit deeper right and then we get a little bit more information what are those activities where could they be what is how how can these things be connected and how can we begin to be more of a something that represents our community so in between that workshop and the final workshop we need enough time to be able to jot down concepts, ideas, frameworks, images that begin to represent what we have heard. And I think that is a little bit of the time that you see there so that we can then, when we come back, are able to visually also represent what we have heard. so that we can begin to prioritize. But I hear you. If we find that reaching out and that there is a real interest, we could potentially accelerate a month in this process, and we can certainly look into that.

No, thank you for that. And again, I'm not trying to drive your deliverable faster. I just want to make sure the community engagement doesn't lose track, especially it's like over the summer, you know, and right at the beginning of the school year, so people get distracted. I can tell you I'm going to have a lot of input. We're going to spend a lot of time together, and hopefully my colleagues will agree with the world according to Sean Fletcher. But again, I look forward to the time. We welcome that. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman. So let me ask you, and tell me, Vice Mayor, if my memory's faulty. Just prior to the time that the current manager came in, a parks master plan was prepared and months of community input took place. A lot of statistics were compiled. And I am calendar driven, OK? Are we reinventing the wheel here? Have you had access to the findings of those prior surveys and community meetings? Because I can't imagine that the needs would have changed dramatically. You have that as a resource together with the findings in the presentation just prior to you. I'm not understanding the nine month timeframe to, in my world, reinvent the wheel where we already have much of this information together.

I think anything that you have done in the past.

Let me come in here. So Mayor and Council, we hear you. Based on preliminary review of this proposal, it was our position that nine months is a little extended. This type of work needs intensity in terms of commitment, in terms of people's interest. And we made a recommendation to shorten the timeline to at least six months. and not aim at nine months. Because if you aim at nine months, there will possibly be an overlap into 12 months. So if you target six months duration in terms of engagement, that brings you closer to six or seven months, which was why you guys wrote six to nine months. But the expectation is that we're going to complete this before that.

Good evening, Mayor. I just wanted to address the comment about the master plan. So during the time of the master plan was prior to the new SPH project. So our big goal in mind was the Homestead Regional Park, former Homestead Sports Complex. So when they looked at the rest of the city parks, it was more, you know, let's refresh them. So the recommendations for Harris Field was a lot of re-turf the fields, redo the asphalt. paint job, new fencing. It was more just bringing it back to life in its current state. So now that SPH is coming along, we really need to look at our central park as Harris Field and really reimagine it.

My point was, is that in that study, didn't it identify the shortfalls or the need for Sports amenity, A, B, and C, whatever sport it is. And that is probably still valid. So we know what our shortcomings are, even after taking into account Sports Performance Hub.

So Mr. Mayor, if we had paid attention to when Mr. Jakadis was making the presentation, he identified key challenges at the Harris Field in terms of facilities, amenities, and programming. And he's also a member of this team. So there is going to be a seamless conveyance of information. What's going to happen is that this new master plan for Harris Field is going to turn it into the city's regional park. which was the original intention for the SPH area. One thing we want to make sure that needs to happen is that whatever is going to happen with this new initiative has to have a buy-in of all the stakeholders, especially the AYSOs that are going to use this place. They have to play a key role in terms of programming, in terms of facility upgrade, in terms of recommendations. And thank you, council members, for the interest you're showing this evening to be able to participate as well. So again, Ziscovich and partners have to commit to what we agreed on. Nine months is not a timeline. Aim at six months. We are willing to give you additional time, but not nine months.

All right.

Okay, Councilwoman Avila.

Thank you, Mayor. While I will reiterate what I'm hearing, that there is value in reviewing the past workshops and receiving that information and evaluating it, and I do encourage for every process to be very efficient in time and expense, but not at the expense of eliminating public input for the current proposals. So I would not support eliminating new workshops, but I would encourage you, as Councilman Fletcher said, to try to expedite the timing in between so that we can get the projects done sooner than later. And also an opportunity to meet one-on-one so that we can speak to our ideas, our experiences, our recommendations that we've received from people who may not be able to attend the workshops. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Roth.

Yeah, real quick. If I remember correctly, the real shortfalls in the last study were pickleball courts and soccer fields. Everything else seemed to be adequate for the city. So I don't understand why it's going to take nine months to figure out that we need to pickleball courts and soccer fields now. And Pedro hit on the point that it was revamping some of the other parks as well. More so beautification things and safety things versus...

uh... the amenities that we were offering so i can imagine it would take nine months to figure all that out i agree councilman roth and certainly i was not suggesting that we not take public input but suggesting that we already have input that could provide a basis and i i too really i don't understand the nine the nine months and here's here's how i come at this At the very latest, I think our goal here is to take this information and have a design for the park in front of us so that at the very latest, I think our expectation is that the rodeo will hold its last rodeo in late January, early February, 2028. So that at that very latest date, we are ready. We're not drawing plans. We have plans ready to go to bring in the construction equipment to implement the plan that starts today. I think that would be my goal, that we're ready to go at the very latest when we are ready to certainly

implement our new vision for the area that the rodeo grounds now occupy that's i think a big key of this whole whole concept councilman fletcher yeah and i just i just want to make sure that everyone understands that i'm trying to think 20 years into the future to try and again reimagine this world-class park that we we started at the sports complex years ago and now turned into SPH and now we can do it at Harris field, but I think we have an opportunity to truly create the gem of South Florida at Harris field and I always think think bigger think louder than before Get outside of the box a little bit so we can really you know put the umph and show where where homestead is That's all thank you.

Okay, so there's nothing for the issue before okay vice mayor I

Thank you, Mayor. I just had a question for Steph. Just to kind of walk us through the process of this, with this consulting group, would they be the ones doing the work on what is decided? How is this different than putting out an RFP looking for a developer who wants to help build what we agree should be there?

So Ziscovich is going to do the conceptual master plan with council input and the public participation, as well as the actual design plans. The implementation is a different issue altogether. That will come to a regular public solicitation for the actual construction work, but the design and the master planning effort will be with them and the team. If there's any need for an expansion of the design team, that will be accommodated as we move by. Right now, the city is very fortunate to have a wide pool of design consultants in place that was recently procured. You have all disciplines in the industry represented in that design pool that we don't need to go out anymore to the field to adopt new consultants. So additional task assignments that council might feel comfortable to add, if they don't have the capacity, we can always add.

So this specific call to residents to get the input is very specific only for Harris Field?

Yes.

OK. So then definitely we can look at the, but that was one of my first questions is I feel like we just did that yesterday with the park plan. But it does make sense. A lot of the pieces that the residents wanted will be part of that hub. OK, so it's just a little backwards than how we did Lozner Park, right? Lozner Park was the full piece. We put out what we wanted to see, and then one proposer came. All right, so looking forward to our one-on-ones in definitely less than nine months. I think we can iron that out. And just what a huge space with the rodeo, finding a new home, and all the potential that we have with that other huge lot. So thank you.

So the request before us by the manager is to approve this task order, the expenditure of approximately $230,000 to begin this process.

So this is a council of the whole. This is a car million. So it's going to come back again at the council agenda.

To put this on the council agenda. So do we have that motion? The motion to put this on the council agenda. Yeah. All right. Moved by Councilwoman Avila, second by Councilman Canabal.

All in favor? Any opposed?

Thank you. Look forward to it. All right. Moving on to tab six. Mr. Pearl, would you like to read the proposed resolution by title, please?

Certainly, Mr. Mayor. Tab 6 is a resolution of the City Council of the City of Homestead, Florida, providing for submission to the city electors' proposed amendments to the city charter in accordance with Section 6.03 of the Miami-Dade County Charter, providing requisite ballot language for submission to the electorate, calling an election for the proposed amendments to the city charter to be held on November 3, 2026, providing notice of the election, providing for balloting, providing for inclusion in the charter, providing for severability, and providing for an effective date.

Thank you, Mr. Pearl. Councilwoman, this is your item. Councilwoman Avila.

Thank you, Mayor. So I brought this item forward with a lot of time ahead. If we were to want to proceed and have these items on this November's ballot, or any items, for example, on this November's ballot, we would have to turn that to the county. mid to late july so we have plenty of time to chew this over review additional charter amendments that council would like for us to consider and these are just three of the items that i'm bringing forward as a result of having gone through a recent election and hearing the voters and and various stakeholders wanting to see change come forward And my main goal tonight would be to just ask for some more information, for example, on the single member voting district item. It's very important to me that we have balance with regards to representation for east and west voter blocks to feel that there's balance with the way the lines are drawn. And that's going to take evaluation. It's going to require a potential procurement for a population study. So these are the kinds of things that we should know before we proceed and approve something. And if that were to pass and go on to the November's ballot for the voters to decide and they pass, it would get adopted and transitioned in the 27th election. Again, there is time to consider these and others. With regards to the calculating term limit, while it does impact me, it does also satisfy the issues that future appointees would experience with being penalized for stepping up and serving their district in the event of a vacancy and having that time in appointment taken into consideration, essentially blocking them from being able to serve a full third term. AND THE LAST ITEM WOULD BE FOR THE REDUCTION OF THE MAYOR'S TERM LIMIT FROM FOUR TO TWO. ESSENTIALLY WHY SHOULDN'T THE VOTERS HAVE THE ABILITY TO TURN OVER THE MAJORITY OF COUNCIL IF THEY SO CHOSE TO DO SO. SO WITH EACH OF THESE ITEMS, MY GOAL IS TO JUST HAVE IT FOR A PRELIMINARY REVIEW AND DISCUSSION, HAVE IT COME BACK POTENTIALLY FOR THE June council to decide to approve the resolution or not, and essentially leave it to the voters to decide. I put it in the packet for us to review and discuss and to invite other council members to bring up items for review and consideration, not necessarily to ask for a vote on the resolution. So that would be at a future council meeting. I'll rest there. Thank you.

Thank you council would like to kick off the discussion vice mayor Bailey.

Thank you So obviously charter amendments require a lot of a lot of discussion and there are always pros and cons to all so appreciate all the time that we have to Consider it as you said Obviously some of these are a little easier than others I think I think the pros and cons start with some of the easier. The appointment, I do feel like that is a call to action when you weren't planning on running or being in that seat specifically. especially now that we just recently changed that it would require a special election if it was more than one year left for the term, right? So for that one, I'm curious to hear what any of the cons would be because I don't see many, if any, with that specific one. As far as the mayor's term being two to four years, again, pros and cons. The pros to it being every two years is each one of us would have a mayor's... Um, the mayor's vote on the ballot. I think that, you know, we have seen a lot more of our community coming out to vote, but that's still is not where it should be. Um, and again, you just start off, you're getting your feet wet. You're starting to gain traction. Now you need to spend basically a year. in running and not running the city, running for mayor. So there again, some pros and cons. Was it two years ago that it changed from two to four?

It was adopted in 21 to be effective in 23. So this is the first four-year term.

So with that one, I think... in all government we've seen that we hope for the best we just three did some lines for the school board uh... only time is going to tell how that affected whether positively or negatively for the mayoral term one i would say let's give it another couple cycles and see what we what we find it to be an issue and before we make any changes i think with the The appointment piece, we saw what the issue is because of it running its course. That's why I'm comfortable with that. And then as far as the single member districts, again, some big pros and some big cons. and both of each so Making sure that each representative up here has spent their time Going into each one of our neighborhoods. I think that's one of the pros of it not being a single-member district But then again a single-member district where each district does feel like they have The say and who is physically representing them again another big another big pro So those are my main thoughts for now.

Of course. Thank you. She's got a response.

It's just an item for consideration with regards to the mayor's term limit. Not only does having a mayor on the ballot draw more voters, which there are other ways also that we can draw more voters too under the single member district as well as even changing the election cycle to a presidential year, right? So there are other ways to bring in more voters. But also, having a four-year mayoral term, it essentially requires three out of the six other council members here to force themselves to vacate their seat in order to run for a mayoral election. So for not wanting to risk a vacancy situation, you permanently foreclose half of the city from being able to run as a mayor. to represent the district. And as you can see, with a vacancy, what's all involved, the extra special elections, an appointment, a shift in dynamic that maybe even the voters don't get to opine on, it's like a snowball effect. And I think these are things that unforeseen circumstances that council at the time didn't recognize when they were making the choice to essentially say, yeah, let the voters decide. And I believe, based on the feedback that I've received, that that was an unintended consequence that they did not realize was happening either. So this does allow the voters to essentially correct a grave mistake. It's not us making the decision. It could very well be left as is. So just keeping that into consideration. But if any of the three other off-cycle council members wanted to run, they would have to vacate. To me, that's not fair and balanced government. Thank you.

So that's one piece that never came up. We had a sunshine meeting. But speaking of the off cycle, I think there's a very big gap in the community understanding when a council member is also running for vice mayor. So maybe one thing for us to consider is that only on your off cycle can you run for vice mayor. That way you're not risking your council seat if somebody thinks oh let me vote for them as vice mayor but not council member not understanding that if you don't make it on council the vice mayor pieces me it so something for us to consider as well thank you and that that's an additional question and you know there are a lot when you begin to open this can of worms they crawl out everywhere and that's that's an interesting thought that you had the other day that maybe only those who are not up for election

can be on the vice mayoral ballot. And that could suppress a lot of election time horse trading, and that's something that certainly merits further discussion. Councilman Canabal. Okay. All right. Did you have? Yes.

Thank you, yes. And so, again, one of my goals tonight is to be able to go back into our districts and to be able to participate in fellow council meetings district discussions about what these impacts on some of the harder questions would be and to be able to have that perspective. As someone who came into office appointed and favoring the current election model, publicly, I do see the pros and the benefits of both sides. But I also see that, you know, if you were to look at the election votes from the most recent election and to compare, oh, you know, if you just look at my votes, if I was a single member voting district, I would be here with just 600 votes or whatever the vote number is. 400. 400, thank you. And for Konski, you know,

Less than 250.

But the reality is that that could be very well the case that we are burdened with having to run citywide. And so whereas we might feel comfortable in our own district and have to put in the time and effort in other districts if we had single member voting only, you could have more candidates which then push from harder campaigning within your district which then can bring out more voters and therefore at the end of the day more focus on homestead because guess what people are coming out to vote so i i see both sides and i think that it's it's worth giving us the due diligence It's worth having the due diligence and time to discuss that with people and essentially not rush into deciding, oh, we're going to take the feedback we got from voters in the recent election and say it's not worth discussing. Let's kill it tonight or let's just take our time. That's all I'm asking. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to say something.

Yes. So I think that once you run for mayor, While you are running to that, thinking of the representative to help the people in the city, you have a vision of what you're going to do. And things in the city were so slow. That takes time. Two years is not going to be enough for nothing to be done. About the council district elections, the thing is, you help people outside your district. You help people in your district, because we're like homestead councilmen and councilwomen. So I don't think that, with me, it's not going to fly, because I don't think that we have to serve like everybody. We're public servants. That's what we are. OK?

Thank you, Councilman. Mr. Pearl, let me ask you, and I know prior councils and charter review committees have had these presentations and have entertained the question of single-member districts. And although we do have more or less 60 days to put something on the ballot, is it really feasible that the analysis could be done and all of the legal hurdles met to create proposed maps in time. And to my colleagues, my point is, is that I think you have to have the districts drawn at the same time you vote to put it on the ballot. Because if you put it on, if you vote on prior to July 15th to put it on the ballot, without having maps. You're asking the public to vote on a concept rather than an actual map. And you could get into a situation where lines are going to be drawn, and in the words of one of the consultants, when they're drawn right, no incumbent is happy. You could be pitting a couple of incumbents against each other and breaking up neighborhoods. So let's dispense with the practicality of having the analysis done and a proposed new map drawn in time to vote on it by July 14.

May I have a clarification? Sure. The maps would be for the voters to know what they're voting on come November. So we don't have to, and I did ask regarding what do we have to turn into the county? We have to turn in the question to the county by July. And then we would, if it's on the ballot, similar to how we do other things on the ballot, we could do workshops to educate the public and have an education campaign with regards to the maps. But that's not necessarily an obligation. I would support doing that so that the people are educated, the voters are educated. But the actual information for ballot time mapping would be July of 27. But, Matt, you can confirm.

Well, no, because if you put the single-member district concept on the ballot this coming November and it is approved, It's incumbent on us then to, if we haven't done so already, and my point is you may find that neither the public nor the incumbents are really happy with the maps that we are now obligated to adopt post-November

of twenty six in the run-up to the twenty seven election right what what i said was that we could and if we could do the education campaign with the maps prior to the november twenty six election so that the voters know and understand what they're voting on but you were your initial your initial comment was to turn into the county the maps come july that's not the case no it was not it was to

for us to have a map that would be approved, I guess, by ordinance in conjunction with putting this question on the ballot. I think it would be very, and look, I under no circumstances support single-member districts in Homestead, but if we were going to go forward with this, I think the the best fiduciary way to do this is to have an adopted map. Because if you don't, and you put that on the ballot, you're stuck. Once you tell the supervisor of elections to put it on the ballot, it's going. And in that interim, you may find that single-member districts, by virtue of new districts being drawn, maybe wasn't such a great idea. So my point is, in order to have a potential map and the legal and demographic analysis done, is there really enough time to have that provided prior to July 15th?

I can agree that that is essential and it would be very beneficial for us to have. And I think that it definitely gives an opportunity for staff to look into what that would cost the city. I think we should do it either way to see the lines to how they would look for That type of election style, but if they're able to you know get The information to us come June to vote on the matter than we then we vote based on that information So I do agree with that would be very important to have well in that regard I think it would be incumbent on us not to take action tonight on

with respect to the single member districts.

Staff can't work on providing information for us to be able to discuss? No, no, no.

They can for discussion, but not acting on directing for this to go on the ballot.

Well, agreed, and I believe I opened with that, that my goal tonight was not to take action on it, but rather for discussion, to hear what other charter items, like Vice Mayor mentioned, and to...

her and to give staff direction on being able to provide the information thank you mister for i know you work with other cities ballpark figure on what this third-party cost would be to look at everything and do this yet not only do it ballpark figure uh... the clerk reached out to miami and pulled some of the documents from their last coaches and can there'll be some inflation from the time period but i believe the pair of people that they engaged was about a hundred and fifty thousand between the two all right so 150 150 grand to do that study that may or may not uh... may or may not go forward and i'll go ahead now you know i think that single member districts in this community they insulate the seat holder from any accountability to the rest of the city You can be a lazy campaigner. You never have to know the nooks and crannies and corners of your community. I do. Mr. Cannonball does. Mr. Fletcher does. I know Mr. Roth does, because he and I have worked opposite sides of the same street many, many, many times. And I think when you have to campaign citywide, riding around is one thing. But when you're on the pavement or on the sidewalk, It's entirely different. So again, I think just assuming the line, I don't think there would be a lot of variation, but based on the results last year, if we had single member districts, Councilwoman Avila would be representing and making decisions for the entire city of Homestead with about 400 votes.

You can't compare last election's vote count based on a situation that's not the same.

Your district gave you 400 votes out of the 1,800 you received.

I didn't campaign 100% in that district. And even if it was a single-member district, I am not that kind of candidate. I take care of the city citywide. But I don't need to be forced to run a campaign citywide to show my constituents that I care about the whole city.

But when you make a bad vote, you are totally insulated. Let's just say it. look at the dysfunctional county commission that is a gerrymandered system of districts who make terrible zoning decisions out in the redlands and they are wholly unaccountable to the people of homestead and and deep south dade at large i don't think there's any place for single member districts in homestead but if y'all want to have that that discussion go ahead you know and and to my point Councilwoman Konski would be sitting in office with less than 250 votes. For me, that's just not representative. Miami Beach and Hialeah are similar in size to us. They don't have single-member districts. I think it really disenfranchises voters and insulates officeholders from being held accountable to the entire city. But if this council wants to make that, we can authorize staff to go out and do a solicitation and get proposals for someone to do that map. With respect to not including the time frame for appointment, while there's pros and cons there, I think that This demonstrates that this proposal is purely selfish and self-serving. Because had it been really thought through, it would have included those who stood for a special election, such as Councilman Davis. He actually had to go out and campaign to win his two years. But as proposed here, appointees who do whatever they do with whatever council members to get appointed get a free ride, but this doesn't take into account those who went by special election. And certainly, this item in its retroactivity will only ever apply to one person. And I really find that really, again, selfish and self-serving. I have no other way to put that. Going forward, I think it's probably a good idea And this is kind of tied into the resign to run, and I think it demonstrates, the comments earlier demonstrate a fundamental failure of understanding of how the charter works and how it's tied into the mayoral two-year term versus four-year term. If someone on council wishes to run for mayor midterm, they do so. And that then triggers what we legally call a special election, but it is an election that is held with the regular election. And the winner of that election then accedes to the balance of that two-year term. So we're not creating new elections. We're not creating new confusion. You spoke in terms, Councilwoman, of election fairness. Well, how is it fair that since, I don't know, about 2005 or six, council members have had a 12-year term limit and have a four-year term when the mayor has had to get himself or herself reelected every two years up to 2021 and only has eight years. In our Sunshine meeting, you talked about that you really wanted to see a weakened mayor. that you thought that a mayor then placed for four years got too close to management and became a, in effect, a strong mayor and that you felt that making a mayor run every two years kept that mayor out of other council races. I don't know if it will or it won't, certainly In this past council election, incumbents did involve themselves. Incumbent council members got involved in other races. So I really don't see the logic in having the elected face and voice of the city the figurehead, the mayor doesn't have a lot of power in addition to council members. I'm not a super member of this council. I have the same one vote as everybody else. But it really, it puts the mayor at a disadvantage. And I lived that during my first four years where I had council members who were in the middle of four-year terms or the beginning of four-year terms who had derangement syndrome and just sat by and said i'm gonna outweigh you out wait you and hope that you're gone in the next election councilwoman that's what's not fair i think this needs to go to a committee quite frankly at the last council meeting that went very very late it was my intention to ask for the council to to form the the the Five-Year Citizens Charter Committee, which we are now due for, to vet all of these questions, as well as others. Really, the Vice Mayor's proposal of reversing how the Vice Mayor race works really piques my interest. I happen to believe that council members' terms for those who have not yet been elected should be reduced from 12 to 8. I think there's only one other city that has term limits in Miami-Dade County that is as generous as we are. uh... whatever happens here tonight with respect to to these three questions uh... i'm gonna be bringing forward and asking for council to approve a resolution to form that committee to fully vet a lot of charter questions and a lot of the times you know when you get into charter issues you're you're sort of playing whack-a-mole there's nothing really clean one way or the other when you tweak something here it creates other changes. And I just don't see that even this is something that we can do on the fly. So that's where I am with these. I think that if council is going to take any action on this tonight, it ought to be three separate questions to go forward. Councilwoman?

You just, I believe you asked a question. You might have intended it to be rhetorical, but I'd like to rebuttal. But with regards to the fairness, I never mentioned a weak mayor. In fact, we should have- Let's play the tape. We should-

But go ahead.

Yes, that's fine. I don't believe we said we. I said that we're a strong.

We didn't. You did.

We should have a strong. We are a strong council and that we should not have a strong mayor form of government. So please don't twist my words.

Explain to me how a four-year mayor to be co-equal with each one of you creates a strong mayor.

the voters will have the opportunity to select a mayor that compliments the council members that they would be electing in that election. It would be a compliment to the new council that the voters are selecting. And in addition to that, the Overall, as I mentioned, the issues with having to vacate to run for mayor, that's not fair. That's political life.

Those were the rules in effect when you were appointed.

Period. Again, it's a matter of having questions on a ballot for voters to decide. The voters at the last election gifted mayors the blessing of having a four-year term. And it did not occur in this last election where the sitting mayor focused on the city and didn't run a campaign. In fact, three campaigns were ran. Your choice, your prerogative. And I think that was insulting to the voters and that they should have an opportunity to reconsider. That's all.

Insulting to amazing. You're Your conniving never ceases to amaze me. The voters approved it in 21. I had to obtain re-election. And I will tell you, every time I've been out on the street, our new residents had No real disbelief that the mayor had to run every two years. We're a big city. We're a dynamic city. Things are happening, and we need to have as little turnover as possible and consistency in the mayor's seat. But we can argue that all night. Vice Mayor?

So shall we move some things and clarify some discussion points? With all the growth, and I understand that the reason we would need to redraw some things considering the potential of putting the single-member districts on the ballot is because many of our districts are off by 10% or more. Is that correct?

That work needs to be done.

That's what we need to look at? Okay. That's two separate issues. Correct, but that would have to be done if it was placed on the ballot. That's the map you were referring to?

No, you're drawing entirely new districts.

So why, I don't understand that.

There are special rules that apply. I'll let Mr. Pearl explain the difference between our kind of at-large and the single-member district. Sorry.

No, I couldn't see the Vice Mayor because of this mic. The differences that we discussed during the briefings amount to this. When you have members who you have residential districts who are elected at large, then the population proportion is not as significant because there's no dilution of voting power to any individual voter living in any resident because they all vote for all of you. When you when elected council people are representing single-member districts, the courts have required that there not be too great a population variance from district to district in order to not dilute the voting power. So you're asking, are we within generally the 10% is like the rule, because obviously there's going to be some variance, and those things are reevaluated with each census. I can't answer whether or not we're in 10% today. And that's why I'm saying that's part of the work that would need to be done to draw the lines. Because you'd look at where the populations lie, and then would there need to be movement? Perhaps there would need to be movement. I can't say without seeing those lines. And you have consultants who specialize in that very thing. That's not something that I would be doing.

So let me ask real quick. If we keep the current system of election, we are required to make changes to the lines one year in advance, no later than one year in advance of the first day to qualify, which means if we did a population study which could be used for either system and we found that the current districts and the current system was out of whack, we only have until sometime in August to redraw the lines for the current system. And that study could also be used for a conversion to single-member districts as one of the basis of...

I imagine that we could do that with the consultants to find a scope in that fashion. With respect to the timing on implementation, it would depend on the transition provisions that you chose to adopt. Because what you could do for the first year, I think you're referring to the year residency requirement before. Because you need to reside.

I think to redraw the current lines, it has to be done not less than a year in advance.

Yes, but.

to not intentionally draw people out to meet the residents here. For example, the new development in Keys Gate is adding 1,300 new rooftops, mostly to Councilman Fletcher's district. We're gonna have to look at that someday. And the interplay with the villages. And Sandero as well. Well, those couple hundred units aren't gonna make a big difference.

so the point i was trying to get to was if the council wanted to move forward then you try to address those one-off abnormalities in terms of the timing through the transition provisions and the amendment of the charter to say that no one will be precluded um from running if they're if the lines have been moved in this process like there are ways to work around that but The timing of getting that information, I think staff would have to go out, would have to see how quickly those things could be turned around. I can't answer that tonight.

Vice Mayor, if I may, I am really interested in having the homework done, whether we approve this in June to go on the ballot or not, because it's important for me to know why I support the current election process, too, which I have in the past. But I can't ignore the feedback that I received. It's my responsibility. It's my responsibility to bring it forward to council and for us to consider both sides. And that's what I'm asking for you tonight is to just continue to chew on it, speak with staff, speak with our council, speak with your constituents, and let's bring it back for further discussion.

I was going to suggest before getting any consultants involved, could we ask for some big-picture pieces to be discussed at the following meeting? And I think just a population number, are we able to find the populations within each one of the districts to at least see how many are off?

I think clearly rooftops you can figure out. And you can impute those averages, but I think we probably want a little more fine-tuned than that.

I think our managers' spending threshold, it wouldn't have to come back to us in terms of, if you were saying to hire a consultant, that would be, I think, on them.

It depends on what the proposal for price is.

For me, I think that's my big ask, is to find out a little more information.

My district, my current district. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Councilman Fletcher.

Yes, thank you. I'd like to give my 14.2587%. That's each of our percentage if you go down the math, dividing by seven.

And divided by six.

Well, you're the seventh vote, so it's one of seven. But there's a lot of information to unpack in these three little questions. There's nuances to every one of them. Having been a member of a charter review committee previously, I think the opportunity there to get a representative from each of our districts engaged to see what the community has to say I think is very important. So I'm very supportive of the charter review committee, and I think it's the time threshold to do so. But there's a lot to unrack here, and I think I've stated this before. There's other questions that I think ought to be answered and added to this. You alluded to the eight-year term limits, and I'm a proponent of that. For years, I was a proponent for single-member districts. And as I learn more about it, it starts to turn me off a little bit. But again, that decision would not be up to me. That would be up to my constituents and your constituents as well. But throwing that into the overall, what do we want to call this, meat grinder to ensure that we get everybody's input I think is important. I don't think the timeline to produce some of these Documents is going to be in time to go for this year to be able to put on 2026 again That's just me thinking out loud the staff can tell us differently But there's a lot of nuances that I think we need to get more input. I'm happy to have the discussion But there's more to this than just these three and and I Believe the people spoke loudly when they did approve before your mayor start I And I was a proponent of that as well. And I'll tell you why. Having served on the council in 2009 to 2001, I only had two years. My first six months to a year were drinking from a fire hose trying to learn everything I could learn. My next six to nine months was trying to get re-elected to do it again for two more years. uh... and i think that's the condition you're putting the mayor and uh... as well and that's why overwhelmingly i think it was uh... sixty four percentage point approval when the mayor's term dot extended to to the uh... four-year terms so i think it's very important to ensure that we we listen to the community then our community has also changed we need to do this uh... What's the word I'm looking for? The population study has to be done. Because I personally believe I'm going to lose sections of my district to the villages of Homestead. I think you could possibly lose some members of yours to the Oasis side. Northwest and Southwest lines are going to be redistricting and that could all open up avenues for other people to run for the seats that we currently hold. And I'm happy to bring them on. Let's do what's got to be done. But I believe that this needs to be discussed more and it needs to go to the Charter. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Roth, I think I owe you an apology. I think you signaled some time ago you wanted to weigh in and in the heat of the battle,

So here we are. The floor is yours. I'm not going to enter the debate now. My vote would be in favor of three of the five items tonight. Three of the five. Okay. The two good ones you brought up, right?

The vice mayor brought up.

The vice mayor brought up. How we do the vice mayor. The vice mayor part, right? And the eight years for council members.

Mm-hmm.

So I think those need to be explored too. I don't want to enter the debate at this point. Sure. There's going to be a lot more time for that later. There'll be more time for that. But, and I think there's going to be a lot more added to it as well as we go through that process. Now I remember we were actually trying to redraw the lines, was it last year or the year before? I don't remember.

We made some adjustments prior to, it had to have been in August of 24.

Yeah, so we talked about doing it again in 2026.

Right, because some of OASIS went to the Councilwoman as well as some of the strip of Speedway was moved into your district to do some equalization.

Yeah, and, you know, like I said, I don't want to enter the debate, but there's some information with the single-member district as well. And a lot of times the single-member districts are put into – uh... an area because one block the entire districts whether it's five or seven can control the entire council with the number of votes that they have so when you go to single-member districts that takes that formula out of the election Keys Gate, I think, is always the strongest coming out, and with the addition of 1,300 homes you start to look at, could they, as a community, essentially control at least three members of council during an election period? And that's why I think, instead of the single-member district, we need to look at the population of each district and reallocate those lines to create a more even spread of votes The Sendero property going in with 1,100 units is actually in the southwest section right now. So when you think about additional population coming into areas, there is no real growth in the northwest or the southwest, except for a few single family homes that we've approved over the time. And there's really nowhere else to build in those areas. The east side is where it's at right now. It's going to kind of be like east meets west as we begin to rethink and draw lines when it comes to that. And both, I think, the southwest and the northwest encroach all the way into the east side with Sky Vista. Sky Vista.

Which we made a slight adjustment there as well.

Yeah. That area could be slid into the Waterstone, you know, Malibu area. So, I mean, there's a lot to look at. But if I had to vote tonight, I would be voting for three of the five.

Gotcha. Well, and it's interesting, and another thought, you know, now that the moratorium is lifted on the west side or that folks can come in and pull permits, we've got the Tower Commons, which I think is about 400 more units in your district. as well as Touching Miami with Love, Homestead Gardens with a doubling of those units there. And I think, you know, while it may not be an absolute basis for the population study, I think that's something we all need to be cognizant of. Now, let me ask Mr. Pearl, and it's just, I know it's off the top of your head and you may have to go do some other research. With respect to the title of vice mayor, Do you, can you think of any issues right now off the top of your head that would preclude the implementation suggested by the vice mayor? That those council members who are midterm are the ones who are on the vice mayor ballot. Something to think about before we get too far down that road.

I'll have an answer for you for the next discussion. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but that's something I'm going to have to look into a little bit.

I think that's a really novel idea that came up in the Sunshine meeting, which demonstrates the value, I think, of a Sunshine meeting. But, you know, there's always those nuances. But if nothing else, I think that one really has legs. Can go somewhere. So what would be- Mayor, real quick.

This is maybe a good question or a bad question, I don't know, maybe dumb, but couldn't the mayor and council run in the same year, every four years? Why is it set up where it's- Where everything's wiped out every four years, potentially.

I mean, that would be chaos.

That would be one process.

I think the public would love it. It would be internal chaos.

I'm just wondering.

And it's something for the attorneys to come back with. Exactly.

It's just a thought. It's something we can think of and discuss at the next meeting. And with the interest of time, only because I'm missing my daughter's spring show at school right now, which I am prioritizing this meeting over that, and I appreciate the healthy discussions when it was healthy, not so much the rude parts. And I haven't heard from my fellow councilwoman, if you'd like to add anything now or later. I'm not forcing you to speak now, but...

I agree with Larry. I think I'm with you on that same vote. There's a lot here that I do support, and there's a lot that I have questions on. A lot of questions. A lot of questions.

So my question to our attorney would be, what would be the appropriate action on this item to not take action at this point. It would be a motion to defer.

At this point, I don't know if you have enough information to make a decision on individual questions. Historically, what we would do is there'd be multiple proposals. I would take votes on each question individually to determine what should move forward, prepare the appropriate resolution for council to address only the things that the consensus wanted to move forward. You can do that tonight, or I just want to lay out a timeframe for you. We will have until the first meeting in July to adopt whatever it is that you would like to adopt. We have to submit to the county, the absolute drop-dead date is July 24th. I don't want to cut it quite that close, so to the extent we can do it the first meeting in July is where I'd like to set our timeframe. So if you'd like more information, if you could give me a little bit... I understand you're looking for more information about the member districts and interested in learning about the population, and I'll have to work with staff to see how we can aggregate that particular information for you. I will look into the vice mayor, and I heard the council running full-time. The entire council. Those would require difficult... The council running together would require some... in-depth discussions about what that transition looks like, which I imagine would get lively. So we can work through those issues. People would get shorted, potentially. Potentially. So depends on how you would like to approach that. What I would appreciate is if we're not willing to, we're not ready to make any decision now, if I could get a timeline from when you would like the information with that end date for the first meeting in July as the goal, as understanding that that's when whatever we want to move forward with needs to, we need to have a final decision. If I may step in.

As the proposer or the resolution, I'm just seeking to defer this to the council, the CAL meeting in June. And between now and then, have more one-on-ones, have staff look into the information about the mapping, and be able to continue to reach out to our constituents and bring that back in CAL.

I think we all need to understand that we may not have all of the information we need to adopt maps in time for this cycle.

Right, and so if by Cal meeting of June, we would still have the opportunity to move it to council meeting in June and potentially last ditch up for July meeting. So again, I intended for this to come early, not to push this down anybody's throats and just be able to chew on it, discuss it, evaluate it, and put aside any initial criticisms or concerns and just be open minded to bring a fresh perspective and we can vote on it at that time.

Do you have what you need, Mr. Pearl? I will. So I'll take a motion.

You're looking for a population study, and we need a proposal on a third-party expert to give advice on the drawing of lines for single-member districts.

OK. And we would like to see the first meeting in June. Is that what I heard?

As soon as possible. Oh, OK.

We have to set the agenda for that we've got a cow in early early June We're gonna talk about a a separate council a council meeting co-equal that night as well I don't see an issue with it staying on as a standing item and it being deferred if necessary to give staff more time We're looking at June 2nd June 2nd. Okay. All right. So we have a motion to defer by the proposer. We have a second a second by All in favor? Any opposed? Thank you, everyone. And moving on to tab seven for discussion. Pardon? Wait on seven? Yeah, tab seven, correct? Mr. Manager? Or is this police chief? He's going to be the chief.

He's going to take this one. Good evening, Mayor and Council.

I'm sorry we put you in this position after the last discussion. No problem.

So as you know, when I got here, part of what I did was what I refer to as a three-dimensional audit of the entire department. So I basically looked at every drawer, looked in every office, and figured out how we were looking as far as our operations. And one of the things that we discovered was, and I'm going to try to be brief or just as brief as I can and not get overly technical. And if that happens, then I'm bringing in Captain Cruz to answer all the really, really technical questions. But what I can tell you is that our existing RMS right now that we have, and by RMS I mean our records management system, is very, very deficient. And I think all of you have heard that we haven't been, for a very long time, we haven't been able to report CEGIS I'm sorry, NIBRS and FIBRS. So we used to use something called the Uniform Crime Reporting through the DOJ and NIJ, and now we use something called FIBRS and NIBRS. And it's just a more detailed, you know, the information within the information. and we haven't been really able to report when i first got here we got with the crime analyst we sat with everyone and we actually started a committee in parallel to fixing the reporting problem and we started a committee and i brought in not only the dispatchers but i brought in some members of command staff some members of i t detectives uh... analysts and everyone and we sat down and we my my instructions to them where we were going to look at every single vendor out there and figure out what was going to be the best one based on our needs. And so what I'll start by is I want to explain what a CAT is. It's the Computer Aided Dispatch and that piece you can almost think of Think of what the dispatcher is using on her computer with the headpiece, and that's the part that sends the calls to the police officer. Within that, then there's the mobile solution, which is the laptop that the officer receives the call in. And they interact obviously seamlessly through internet connection and everything. And then eventually when that report is written, that has to live in a records management system where all of our records live. we were finally able to report fibers and neighbors only because they're uh... they change the protocol they change their process and how they're going to search and i'll give you tell tell you that it's like the equivalent of looking at the bottom of a toy box and trying to find the smallest lego and that's what they have to do monthly to stay uh... consistent with uh... with uh... reporting requirements but they have been doing that uh... what we're doing is we're trying to to stay with our FDLE reporting requirements, but we're trying to obviously improve accountability, we're trying to improve transparency, and we're gonna increase the operational effectiveness of the agency by solving or by saving a lot of time when these guys go to write reports and everything else. And we're gonna do this in three layers. So the first layer I'm gonna describe as the operations layer and that is the actual cat it's a it's a it's a platform called mark forty three and within that lives the computer aided dispatch and the uh... intertwined ecosystem of the the records management system that's where the reports are going to live after that uh... and what that does is it gives us a it's what they call a sass which is a software as a as a uh... Software as a service. So what that means is that whenever we have software updates, that seamlessly goes in. We don't have to buy a new product as new updates arrive. It's just like Windows and everything else. We always have the latest version It's secure, it's compliant with all of FDLE requirements, so that's where we're trying to move. As far as MARC 43 goes, I have also there in the next slide, let me start moving because I forgot to go here. These are the agencies that are using MARC 43. We have Coral Gables, we have Miami Gardens, we have Bay Harbor, Miami Springs, North Miami, and these are really the only ones in South Florida. There's a lot more in the upstate and more north of us. The second piece is the second layer that I'm referring to is a, think of it as our intelligence layer. And so this is these are three different products and what this is what force metrics is think of a it's a database aggravator aggregator and what that means is, if you can think of a planet. The planet is the RMS system. The planet is where we are. And outside of the planet, there's a bunch of other ancillary planets that have all of our other systems. So if you can imagine our traffic crashes, our FI, our evidence.com, our field interviews, all of those things get sucked into this platform called Force Metrics, and all of that information lives there. So everything from the CAD and RMS, everything from every other piece of software, including our evidence and property and evidence software, all goes into this database. And what that does is it offers our police officers, it offers our police officers something really, really simple. It looks like a Google keyword search. And so, for example, if you look at the image up there, if you look at the top right, we can put in there any incident that ever lived in our database that involved, for example, a red Honda Civic with a military person involving a Glock 9 millimeter. And if those three things live there, or if we search those three keywords, every single case that ever was stored in our data is going to come up. So this is a really, really powerful tool that's going to be in the fingertips of every police officer, not just crime analysts, but every officer that's on the road. It also aids in the investigative process, as I said. This is not something that's going to be limited to detectives. This is going to be something that's to every single police officer, but another thing that it does is there's regional data sharing, and what that means is any other agency that uses this product has the ability to share that product with us, so even if we have or we confront a subject in Homestead that might have been arrested in, say, Orlando, we still keep that information, we still have it, we have access to that information. So this is really powerful and not something that we have right now. The other thing it does is it's very easy to use. You can use it anywhere. You can use it from your cell phone. And it has universal integration. So what that means is it's not specific to any piece of software. You can use anything, any software that we use in our ecosystem can be imported into force metrics. The agencies that use force metrics is captured up here. and that is Tampa PD, North Miami PD, FAU, Miramar, other people that are looking at it right now that are going to buy it and in the process of it is Fort Lauderdale, us if approved, Miami Gardens and Lauderhill. The last thing, or the last layer, this is what I refer to as the accountability layer. One of the things that we've done is we've also revamped, as part of the accreditation process, we've revamped all of our use of force policies and implemented new things. For example, a force avoidance framework and an early identification system. And what an early identification system is, for example, is for the sake of transparency, if an officer, for example, has two crashes, three use of forces, and two complaints, it automatically triggers to their supervisor and to our Professional Compliance Bureau the fact that, okay, we need to look at this officer, he might be having issues and we try to identify that troublesome behavior before it actually turns into something serious. So what IAPRO does is it tracks internal affairs investigations from start to finish. It gives us a receptacle for all of our use of force, all of our force avoidance, all of our complaints, and it allows us to obviously implement that early identification system in a way that's seamless. OUR INTERNAL AFFAIRS DOESN'T HAVE TO DO IT MANUALLY, IT'S AUTOMATICALLY SET UP. IF YOU LOOK AT BLUE TEAM AND IAPRO, IT SETS UP AN ENVIRONMENT FOR US TO BE ABLE TO MONITOR ALL OF THAT. AGAIN, I TALK ABOUT USE OF FORCES, FORCE AVOIDANCE REPORTS, I TALK ABOUT COMPLAINTS, CRASHES, ANYTHING THAT WOULD TRIGGER THE EARLY IDENTIFICATION PROCESS. The clients that use IAPRO are Coral Gables, Miami Beach, Aventura, Opelika, City of Miami, Hialeah PD, Miami Gardens, Doral Police Department, and Sweetwater. And so really what we're doing is we're trying to buy under one purchase We're trying to buy an ecosystem that complements each other in a unified system. That's going to make it much easier for us. It's going to improve day-to-day analytics. It's going to provide scale for any other technology that we adopt, like plate readers and everything else, will be read by CAD and by, I'm sorry, by Mark 43. And it strengthens our compliance. And what it also does is it gets us to the year 2026 because we're a little bit antiquated right now in regard to our. Processes.

IT? Yes, I can take this one, Chief. Thank you. Just to go over the technical requirements really quick of these three systems, the MAR43, which is the CAD RMS system that the Chief was mentioning, it is a cloud-native system. It lives on Amazon Web Services and is hosted in the government cloud. So it stays within the US. It doesn't leave the US. But it is going to require three local virtual servers. That is required for integrations and also for CJIS compliance, which is the criminal justice information services compliance. As you're going to see in the car item, there's going to be an ask for hardware. And it's for us to be able to do all these virtual servers that we need for these three systems. I think the chief mentioned a little bit about compliance, but just to mention as well, the MAR 43 is compliant with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, which is kind of like the highest security authorization from the federal government, and also a state ramp. They score high. And there are compliance with the FBI criminal justice information services as well, and with Fiverr, which is a Florida incident-based reporting system. Moving on to the next one, the force metric, the database aggregator. That one is also hosted in the Amazon Web Services government cloud, and it does require one local virtual server, which is the one that is going to gather all the data to then transfer it and upload it to the cloud, to the system. This system is also CJIS compliant, and is also SOC 2, which is System and Organization Controls 2 certified. Now, the third one, it is pure cloud. This one is fully cloud. It's also hosted on the Amazon Web Services Government Cloud. Know how we're required for that one. And it's CJIS compliant as well. Oh, sorry. Sorry.

Sorry, can you hear me? So for the procurement executive summary, we selected multi-vendor procurement strategy. It's a combination of sole source, cooperative contracts, and professional service agreement. The sole source was applied where specific technology and compatibility requirements were limited to viable vendors. And the cooperative contracts allowed us to leverage pre-competed prices AND ACCELERATED PROCUREMENT TIMELINES. AND ALSO THE USE OF A PROFESSIONAL SERVICE AGREEMENT OFFER OUR CONTINUING CONTRACT FOR THE GIS INTEGRATION FOR WORK THAT HAS ALREADY BEGUN BUT IS ALSO NEEDED FOR THIS PROJECT. SO THE BLENDED APPROACH HERE IS OR ACHIEVES THREE OUTCOMES, RIGHT? SO IT'S COMPLIANCE WITH PROCUREMENT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES, THE INTEROPERABILITY WITH ACROSS THE SYSTEMS LIKE CAD, RMS AND SUPPORTING TECHNOLOGIES and for the operational readiness, meaning the system's not just purchased, but it's also fully functional and deployable. The total five-year investment is approximately $1.91 million, which is built, the CPI increases and contingency is built into that total dollar amount, which reflects a long-term commitment to the system's sustainability, licensing, and support. the initial fiscal year 26 or year one cost is 621 353.49 covering core system acquisition implementation and startup components this slide here is just the financial overview which again goes over those costs AND IT IS BROKEN UP INTO FIVE DIFFERENT VENDORS THAT CHIEF HAS ALREADY SPOKEN OF. THE REMAINING COSTS ARE DISTRIBUTED ACROSS THE REMAINING FISCAL YEARS, SO FISCAL YEAR 27 THROUGH FISCAL YEAR 30. AND, AGAIN, IT INCLUDES THE SOFTWARE LICENSING, SUBSCRIPTIONS, HARDWARE ACQUISITION, GIS IMPLEMENTATION SERVICES, AND THIS STRUCTURE WOULD SUPPORT THE PREDICTABLE ANNUAL BUDGETING FOR THIS PROJECT. SO THE SOURCING STRATEGY THAT WE CHOSE INTENTIONALLY STRUCTURED ACROSS THREE PROCUREMENT PATHWAYS TO ENSURE THAT WE SECURED ALL THE COMPONENTS THAT WERE NEEDED FOR THE PD WHILE MAINTAINING COMPLIANCE. AND WE ARE UTILIZING A SOLE SOURCE PROCUREMENT FOR THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED SYSTEMS WHERE COMPATIBILITY AND FUNCTIONALITY ARE CRITICAL SUCH AS MARK 43 WHICH SERVES AS THE CORE CAD RMS PLATFORM. THEN FORCE METRICS WHICH PROVIDES ADVANCED CROSS SYSTEM ANALYTICS, ENABLING FEDERATED SEARCHES, ALERTS, MOBILE ACCESS AND CONSOLIDATED REPORTING ACROSS MULTIPLE PUBLIC SAFETY PLATFORMS. For cooperative contracts, we leverage competitively awarded agreements to streamline the procurement and reduce timeliness, or timelines, I'm sorry. VersaTerm or IAPRO, as we're referring to, is using the North Carolina Sheriff's Association cooperative contract, which supports professional standards, early intervention, and public transparency through dedicated accountability modules. THE HARDWARE OR SERVER THAT IS ALSO NEEDED IS OR WILL BE PROCURED THROUGH NASPO WHICH IS ALSO ANOTHER COOPERATIVE. AND THEN FINALLY WE HAVE THE for use of the continuing contract, the older continuing contract, because we've already procured or started procuring for GIS, we would be amending the task order for this additional piece for this project. So overall, the blended sourcing approach ensures that we're delivering a fully integrated data-driven public safety solution. That's it. Any questions?

OKAY. THANK YOU. SO IT'S BEEN MOVED AND SECONDED. IS THIS JUST A DISCUSSION ITEM, THEN? JUST FOR DISCUSSION.

THIS IS A DISCUSSION ITEM, AND IF COUNCIL WISHES TO MOVE IT TO THE COUNCIL MEETING FOR THE ACTUAL PROCUREMENT ITEM, THAT'S WHAT THIS IS GOING TO BE.

THAT WOULD BE THE MOTION TO MOVE IT TO THE COUNCIL MEETING.

THAT'S FINE.

ALL RIGHT. ALL IN FAVOR? YES. GO AHEAD. Councilman Roth.

Great. As a huge supporter of the Homestead Police Department, we want to give you all the best equipment, technology, all these things. You mentioned other agencies that are already using the Mark 43. And we can see if somebody's passing through our city that got issues over there, we kind of cooperate with the other agencies. So as new agencies come on, and the one agency I would be really happy to see that subscribes to this particular program would be our sister station in Florida City because of all the stuff we do and the interaction between our two cities and our cities are connected with Lucy Street. So as new agencies come on, I would assume we're going to get to, they're going to be a part of the program. We're going to be having access to their information and whatnot as well. Is that the case?

Yeah, so, I mean, obviously I can't guarantee where they're going to go, but I did have a meeting with Chief Taylor. We've met about this twice. I know that the last conversation we had, he was asking me for the information for force metrics because he was impressed with the capability. So I think there's a possibility that they might adopt it.

And I understand that they've got financial constraints as well as we do. But I think it would be really kind of cool. Does this program reach down into Monroe County at all?

So it reaches everywhere because it's online.

So are any of the agencies or is Monroe County Sheriff's Office a part of this program at this point or no?

You got to check.

Because I think a lot of our residents travel from here to there for work every day. And obviously, a lot of their people come up here and shop because of some of the stores we have up here that they don't have down there. So I think it'd be an interesting thought to bring them into the mix as well.

So I think remember that it doesn't limit us. It doesn't isolate us from the traditional NCIC, NFCIC that the entire country has. What this does is within their framework or within their environment, they can share information with all of us and that's in the force matrix piece. But remember, traditional FCIC and NCIC is still available to us.

Got it. And do you think having technology like this will help us get the calls quicker and start to help limit calls holding. Because obviously there's calls holding from time to time. And those are non-emergency type calls. I listen all the time and I hear calls holding, but if priority goes out, man, everybody's right there. So the response time is there. But I think some residents may get you know, concerned with calls holding, especially if it's a minor thing. And I know we have some of the community service aides that go out there and help answer some of those non-emergency type calls, maybe little fender benders and things like that. But I think the whole thing, when you start to look at spending this kind of money on this technology is, is it's truly going to be a benefit to what the officers can do and what the citizens' rate of service is going to be, and it's going to improve that tremendously. So I'm going to jump on board with all of you guys and say, yeah, let's move this thing forward.

Yes, thank you. After having just conducted a ride along with the police department, I can, you know, and not my first ride along, but I can attest at how important a CAD system is. It's like an appendage, an extra, very valuable appendage. And it needs to be state of the art. It needs to function and work efficiently. It can, as Councilman Roth was saying, add minutes to a very dangerous situation. So I support this item. I do have some concerns about a test phase and what new policies we're going to have in place to ensure the program is meeting benchmarks and goal achievements. And how are we measuring THE BALANCE BETWEEN GROWING PAINS AND ACTUAL VALUES. SO BETWEEN NOW AND NEXT COUNCIL MEETING IF YOU WANT TO SPEAK TO THOSE ITEMS AND I ALSO WANT TO JUST CONFIRM WITH REGARDS TO BUDGETING THAT TAKING ON THIS NEW TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM IS THIS GOING TO HINDER THE DEPARTMENT'S ABILITY TO HIRE MORE OFFICERS? I really would like to also see the department be able to form the SWAT team again and for us to have our own hostage negotiation experts for cases like we experienced on Friday night with a very unfortunate SWATing situation. I also would like to see improvements around the police department, such as a fence securing the property line, which is for our police officer safety. So, you know, with the passage of things like this, I want to also be mindful of how the other departmental needs and improvements can be affected. i'll rest there but thank you very much for understanding the the needs of the department bringing the item forward educating us on this great presentation and giving these officers excellent technology so they can do the best job they can in the vehicle and also with the data data driven component which is very important and one more thing i do want to also ask after doing the the site visit with the wastewater treatment plant. There was a comment that there's actual measurements of drug usage within a community that can be identified through wastewater. So I also would like to ask our police department through the manager to try to find ways to gather data and inform us as well so we can kind of see the trends of our community when it comes to drug use. I'll rest there. Thank you.

Thank you.

One more. I'm making an assumption that this will be compatible with the mobile command center too, right?

Yes, yeah.

Okay, good, thank you.

Councilman Fletcher?

Yes, thank you. And this is something that's long been needed in the city. You know, as you know, we had some issues with crime reporting stats for a while, and a lot of our homeowners associations rely on this information to help them, you know, provide data to the homeowners and potential new homeowners who might want to move into that section of city, but it will help us all in developing that data for them. One question I did not ask, and I'm sorry to throw this on you at the last minute, but code enforcement calls, will they be captured in

this system as well yes so we that was really important to us we we now assign per shift we have one quality of life officer on every shift that looks for quality of life issues and that could be anything from graffiti illegal dumping and everything else so what we did early on at the managers request and the DCM was we found a workaround to be able to log and and maintain records within the force metrics ecosystem. So that's going to be done.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. I think we have a motion and a second to move this to the agenda. All in favor? Any opposed? Mr. Manager, anything further for this?

No, something just personal. I'm running out of my vacation pool because over the past 15 months I've not taken any vacation. So I'll be taking off a day here and there, beginning next week, so that HR director can let me off the hook. She's been warning me, you've gotten to your maximum. You need to start taking time off. So I appreciate council's understanding if you call, and I'm out that day. And I believe on the 7th, we'll have one final community outreach meeting for the Chrome and Flagler Avenue project. It's going to be at the CRA building. on the fourteenth and tomorrow our finance and budget director is going to roll out an initiative which is city budget community feedback which is a survey asking our community residents what do you want to see as part of the new budget cycle so this is something that we need to be doing on a yearly basis so to make sure that both council and the residents have an input in budget process he's going to roll out the the survey platform tomorrow. I think a memo has gone out today to council and mayor, and I think that's all I have for today.

Thank you. Mr. Attorney, have we set the workshop on those items?

Yes, we're working on it. I think it's on Tuesday next week.

I'd like to speak to that. I did ask to relay the message to separate the workshop on my item into a separate item.

Sure, we'll do that.

Maybe perhaps join that with the discussion on, what was the other, it was the three workshops and then there was a review.

So the three workshops, the CU process. the boats and parking, unsolicited proposals, and also there'll be a status update from us on Charette's study.

I'll provide that one. Perhaps join my resolution item with the Charette study.

And there will be a briefing as well from the city attorney's office and us on the PBA collective bargaining agreement.

Okay, Mr. Fletcher, Vice Mayor.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week. If you have teachers in your life or children, we work very hard. So give us some lotions and some body scrubs and a small little gift card and show your appreciation. because it's one of the toughest jobs, maybe even tougher than this up here. Thank you to all the teachers up here.

Councilman Roth, anything? Councilwoman Alvarez.

Thank you, and happy Cinco de Mayo to all of you as well. Just a few closing comments. I touched briefly on my ride-along and, you know, phenomenal job that these officers are doing. It was impressive to me how young they are. God bless them. I mean, I could be... maybe a very young mom for some of them, but It really was impressive to see how their training in action was phenomenal no doubt that our city is very safe and sound and The dispatch team as well. I mean the communication flawless from Lieutenants and captains and and everyone on the ground and the technology. I saw the drone in action, too So it was pretty cool ONE THING I DID WANT TO ASK FOR PERHAPS DEVELOPMENT SERVICES WHEN IT COMES TO ACCESSING THESE GATED COMMUNITIES, MY UNDERSTANDING IS THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO HAVE A YELP SIREN LIKE ALARM THAT RECOGNIZES THE ALARM. SOME COMMUNITIES, MY UNDERSTANDING IS THAT IT DOESN'T WORK. SO IS THERE AN ANNUAL OR BI-ANNUAL RECERTIFICATION PROCESS THAT WE CAN JUST MAKE IT TOP OF MIND THAT THIS IS IMPORTANT AND MAKE SURE THAT OUR OFFICERS CAN QUICKLY ENTER THESE COMMUNITIES. ALSO, FRIDAY NIGHT IT WAS VERY BUSY AND SHOWBIZ WAS OFF THE CHAIN. WHATEVER IT'S CALLED NOW. HOOKY. HOOKY. HOOKY. LOTS OF UNACCOMPANIED MINORS CAUSING DISTURBANCES. God bless them. May they have somewhere to spend time in safe environments soon. But in the meantime, perhaps a summer curfew might be in order so that these parents have some kind of way to control their minors. A lot of these kids are just going out and doing what they want to do, and there's no real legal action. And then having an officer on duty there, too, would be very helpful from just kids being nuisances, but also to even some, you know, entering, breaking, entering into vehicles. So it really is active, and it's very busy downtown. The Christmas lights, or let's not say Christmas lights, the downtown lighting. The accent lights. The accent lighting in downtown was very, you know, very welcoming and warming and lots of people. OUT THERE LOOKING TO HAVE A GOOD TIME, BUT WE NEED TO HAVE SOME SUPPORT FOR OUR POLICE DEPARTMENT WHEN IT COMES TO THE YOUTH. AND ALSO WHEN WE'RE LOOKING FORWARD TO HIRING NEW OFFICERS, CAN WE PUSH POLICE TO HIRE LOCALLY? IT'S VERY IMPORTANT AT LEAST I THINK FOR THE RESIDENTS TO KNOW THAT OFFICERS ARE ALSO COMING IN LOCALLY, NOT JUST FROM THE OUTSIDE. And speaking to hiring locally, I want to take the opportunity to reiterate some of my previous recommendations to city manager's office when it comes to our direct council assistance. So pre-COVID, we had three assistants. since covid we have toggled between two jasmine's doing a phenomenal job trying to serve seven elected officials by herself never perfect situation there's always room for improvement but she is doing one of the most important jobs that she can and having someone assist her with trivial activities although important like picking up mail simple correspondence or you know, taking down notes. Those are things that she could have additional assistance in the room doing. And elevating her and promoting her to a leadership position, I think, is in order. She has a lot of historical knowledge. She has a lot of EXPERTISE WHEN IT COMES TO PLANNING AND DOING A LOT OF OUR PUBLIC FACING AND LEGISLATIVE MATTERS. SO I WOULD SUPPORT HER BEING PROMOTED TO PERHAPS MAYBE NOT A CHIEF OF STAFF OR MAYBE IT IS, BUT GETTING SOME ADDITIONAL TRAINING AND RESPONSIBILITY IN THAT TYPE OF GRANDER POSITION. SO WHILE I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT HUMAN RESOURCES FILTERED THROUGH 137 APPLICATIONS, I BELIEVE, which is a feat, no less. I think that it's disappointing that we were not able to have as top three candidates coming from local or from in-house. And there were at least two applications for employees that are in the city of Homestead. So I would ask for staff to reconsider what they're calling as final candidates before we do any meet and greets. And I do appreciate the opportunity to do the meet and greet. I'm not sure if that's been usual in the past, but it definitely is something that I have been wanting to have as well. So I'll rest there, but thank you for the time.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

Councilwoman, you didn't touch base on the National Day of Prayer.

Oh, thank you for the reminder. There is National Day of Prayer on Thursday at 10 a.m. here in the chambers. I appreciate the opportunity to have it once again. I think this is year... four or five, but essentially hosting it on the 250th anniversary of the United States of America is also a more beautiful sentiment. And I think we'll be also unveiling a proclamation for that sentiment. So please join us and pray with us. Thank you.

Change of heart. Wow. Mr. Manager, I fully support the candidates that you have brought forward. We have been without a council assistant it seems like a lot longer than we really have. And a lot that was wrong with this city when you came on board was that we hired people from inside because it was the easy thing to do. And I fully support the merit and qualification process that has been implemented here and I hope that without delay you will go ahead and hire from among those who have been identified as the top three and not go back to square one. That's my hope. I recognize that we are not involved in personnel decisions to any extent, but as someone who has been without an assistant Let's move forward and not find any further excuses for any delay. So I discovered today that due to some client issues, I will not be able to attend the National Day of Prayer. I really regret that. But I wanted to touch on some of the comments that I was beginning to mull around, and I think they're particularly important in light of some of the conversation we've had tonight. And certainly... It's a national day of prayer where we pray for our nation. And there's such division and controversy and acrimony from the top down. But I'm a believer that things change from the bottom up, right here at the city. And I would just ask that we set aside this perception of past transgressions, not be fueled and motivated by hate, vengeance, or retribution. We need to look forward in this city and bring forward items that are in the best interest, not of ourselves, but in the good of this city that has truly and finally turned the corner from being a second-rate city to a city that is really admired and complimented throughout this this county at the very least. With that, we have a motion to adjourn. All in favor? Good night, everyone. Thank you.