City Council - Regular Meeting
The Village Council recognized the U16 Youth Soccer Team and received updates on the Key Biscayne Library construction. They approved several ordinances and resolutions, including changes to police/firefighter retirement, certified recovery residences, and competitive bidding thresholds. Debates occurred on institutional zoning, fixed standby generators for stormwater pumps, and the structure of the village's soccer program.
About this meeting
- Government Body
- City Council
- Meeting Type
- City Council
- Location
- Key Biscayne, FL
- Meeting Date
- January 13, 2026
Transcript
1085 sections
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. The mayor has called the meeting to order. Mayor Roscoe.
Present.
Council Member Bracken.
Here.
Council Member Kaplan.
Here.
Council Member Lunden. Here. Vice Mayor Sardinias.
Council Member Stoner. Here. Council Member Bosquez.
Present.
Mr. Mayor, we do have a quorum. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Stay standing for the invocation.
Reverend Willie Allen Feah, St. Christopher's by the Sea.
This is from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, slightly modified. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, in your word, you have given us a vision of that holy city to which the nations of the world bring their glory. Behold and visit, we pray, the cities of the earth and especially this village of Key Biscayne. renew the ties of mutual regard which form our civic life, send us honest and able leaders, enable us to eliminate poverty, prejudice, and oppression, that peace may prevail with righteousness and justice with order, and that men and women from different cultures with differing talents may find with one another the fulfillment of their humanity. In your holy name we pray, amen. Amen.
Thank you, Reverend.
Next item.
Be seated.
Special presentations. Special recognition of the Key Biscayne Boys Youth 16 Youth Soccer Team.
Todd and Marcella, you want to come forward?
Where's number 10?
You're less than 16? Okay. Yeah, can you believe it? Good evening, everybody. Thank you. Thank you all for inviting us here tonight. I'm Marcelo Ricci. I'm president of the club. I'm here, and I'm honored to be here tonight with our team, our players, our U16 2010 Academy, last year's U15 2010 team. You know, this group has exemplified what team soccer is all about. They've been playing together since the age of U9, U10. These boys grew up on this key. They had a fabulous development. Many of these kids back then, if you looked at them, you'd question whether or not they'd ever make it to this point, but they did. They've been together. They've shown the commitment, the respect, the friendship, and the teamwork. to put really our club on the map this time than any other team ever has in the past. This team has won many awards along the way, so we're very proud of them. And I'm glad we could come back tonight to share and celebrate those accomplishments. I want to thank the coach who has coached, and I'm going blank, but it's going to come back to me in a minute. Abarca, Daniel Abarca, who had took over this team when they were in transition and has put together just a fabulous team. Over the course of this last year, which we're celebrating tonight because I don't know how many of you may know, but not only did they win their league championship, E64, our championship last year, they were league champions. They were also Southern region champions in the United States. They went to qualifiers in Arizona and qualified for nationals. They ended up going all the way to the final eight and they had a A bittersweet loss in the quarterfinals, that 2-1 loss, which would have put them in the Final Four. But I think it was a great experience for all of them. Some of them have moved on and have moved on to the MLS Academies. Many of them are here. What I'm proud is that this team has reloaded. And this year, at the start of this year, not only have they gotten even stronger, they're undefeated in the National Academy League. Right now in the current standings. They're going now at the end of the year at the end of this month. Excuse me, January They've been invited one of two teams this team the u16 and the u14s have been invited to participate in the National qualifying tournament again, so we wish them well because they win that group phase. They'll make it to nationals again and And it's just, they've exemplified exactly, but everything about team sports, soccer, and Key Biscayne. So again, thank you all. I think some of the boys wanted to say, make a couple, have a few words. So let's start.
So first of all, I really wanted to thank the coaches, the parents for making everything possible. Without their help, we wouldn't be where we are at all. And honestly, I feel like this team showed a lot of great, a lot of strength, a lot of friendship. And honestly, that's what makes a good team. We showed that we can compete in these big tournaments and that we're the best in the nation.
One thing I forgot to add is that I forgot to mention that at the end of this year, we were just notified last week that our team, through the GODSport national rankings, was voted the number one team in the nation. This particular team is ranked right now number one in the nation. And they'll be broadcasting live on Friday the trophy presentation up in Philadelphia, where we'll receive the award for being the top team in the U16
Hello. I just wanted to thank the coach, Marcelo, my parents, who made this possible. I'm just really proud of what we were able to accomplish, playing nationals, winning regionals, the league. And yeah, that was, we wouldn't have been able to do that without our parents and the coach. And yeah, without our hard work throughout the season. And yes, thank you.
Well, first, thank you for everything. Thank you for the coaches, the parents. I'm really happy that we won regionals last year with a lot of effort. We made it. I'm really happy also that we got to try in National League. Thank you.
As a community, we're proud of you guys. You represent this community very well. And keep on with your great successes. And we look forward to seeing you out there on the soccer field.
You can come up. Come on. This has been 64 hours.
Well, well done, well done.
Good luck, guys. Congratulations. Let's go to Ray Baker. Yeah. Lucho.
The next item, Mr. Mayor, is presentation of Key Biscayne Library updates given by Miami-Dade Public Library System Director Ray Baker.
Ray, that's a hard act to follow.
I tell you, congratulations. So good evening, everyone. Congratulations, Ray. Thank you so much. Thank you. Ray Baker, Director of the Miami-Dade Public Library System. Great to be here tonight. I would say this is probably the most important update I've given you all yet on the Key Biscayne Library and kind of a momentous one.
Is it important because you're leaving? Is that it?
Important because we're about to get underway. And I know we've all been working on this project now for several years. A lot of people on this commission, the city manager's office, the building and zoning team, Todd, Jeremy, Katie, and many other people throughout the community who have provided so much input. But we're ready to go. And just gonna show you a couple of, we've seen the renderings before. I don't wanna spend a lot of time in the renderings. I think everybody by now knows what we're building. But just a quick recap, 20,000 square foot, two-story library. It's going to be LEED Silver certified. We'll be doing lots of improvements to the landscape, flora. The entire site plan is going to be very lush, green. I think we're going to enjoy that. The pond improved as well. We're going to have the EV chargers. I believe we're also having the golf cart parking. And we've been working on the sea level rise modifications that we've discussed earlier on in the permitting process. So that's incorporated into this as well, as well as the solar panel array. And last month in December, we awarded the construction contract to Florida Construction and Engineering. They will be our contractor throughout the project. And given that they're going to be in this community, a very visible part of this community, for the next two years, I did ask their representatives to join us tonight. And if they could stand and wave. We have Johnny Dow, who's the president of FC&E. Francisco Falou, who's the vice president of operations. And Francisco Lopez, who will be the project manager. And they, of course, will be joined by Lisa Thompson, who is our capital programs director at the library, who has done so much to get this underway, as well as our interim director of libraries beginning this coming Monday, Lydia Lopez. So we're excited to get going. And I want to share some of the major milestones. First of all, this coming Saturday will be our last day of operations at the old Key Biscayne Library. So we will be closing to the public. And just to explain a little bit, we'll be transitioning over to the temporary Key Biscayne Library location at Key Colony Plaza. So right across the street, essentially, from the old library. It's not going to be a big space. It's going to be a small, roughly 1,000 square foot space. So it'll be a service point throughout the construction. But nothing like what you have now or what's coming. But it'll keep us in business for the next two years. So we're going to spend from Saturday the 17th transitioning over to the new location, setting up all the furniture, the books, the computers. And then we plan to open the temporary location on January 26 under the same hours that we currently operate at the existing library. The effective date of the notice to proceed to the contractor is also January 26. So you're going to begin to see them mobilizing on site. You're going to see a construction fence go up. They're going to be working closely with the village on pulling permits for their method of transportation plan. So those will be some of the early steps that start to become visible around the site. And then shortly, in about a month after that, after they get the permits for the water main relocation, that'll be the first big element of this project. And that'll take about 90 days. And then once we get past that 90-day period in April is when we plan to start the demolition of the old building and to start construction of the new building.
You were able to get a Wausau permit?
We were. Yeah, good. And our plan is sometime around when we're ready to demolish the building is to perhaps have some sort of a groundbreaking to say goodbye to the old library, which has served us so faithfully over these years. So that is the short look ahead of what you're going to see over the coming months. And once again, we'll be actively working with the manager and the building and permitting team along the way. And I believe that was all I was gonna share for now. It's gonna be about two years. Like I said, Florida Construction and Engineering is gonna be in your community for the next two years. So I wanted them to be here tonight so you know who's in charge over there. And I'm sure you all will be working very closely with them as well. And that's where we are.
I guess a shout out to Katie Petros and to Frank Kaplan who've been on this project for quite some time. Absolutely. Any questions from.
Thank you for a great effort and just one thing I mean it library is going to be beautiful, it is already beautiful I know it's going to be fantastic. Now I really it's up to us to really promote and ensure that the Community uses it and just. experiences it because I think it's a, you know, libraries are hard to come by these days. Good libraries.
We're really happy to be doing this improvement and we're gonna work closely with Katie, Todd, and everybody to make sure that we're aligning our programming, maybe maximizing pain points that you have in the community center that perhaps we can do at the library. We're working with the historical society as well on some of their artifacts for inside the library. So these are things that we'll start to work on more actively now that construction's gonna be underway.
And just one quick thing, I just hope that in the future, this is just more for the future, I hope that we use these venues also to promote, you know, music and arts. So we're talking briefly with Council Member Kaplan. Hopefully, this is also a place that people can experience that as well.
Absolutely. It's a community center in addition to being all kinds of other programming activities.
Great.
That's certainly an element of it.
Great to understand that as of next week, you will no longer be involved with the library. So probably this is the last time we're going to see you for a long, long time. And if so, all I'm going to do is thank you so much for everything done to make this reality. Thank you. Thank you, Ray.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
It's been a long haul.
We got there. Thank you.
For those of you who don't know, Ray Baker will be the new budget director at Miami-Dade County, taking care of a little budget of $10, $12 billion.
Bigger than the library, I think. Just a little bit. Chump change.
Best of luck in your new position, and thank you for all of your help.
Poor guy.
The next item, Mr. Mayor, is brief comments by council.
Are the advisory board, those are just received presentations, right? Did we get one of them?
We have. You want to finish the presentations? Disability board is here. All right.
I mean, we haven't had a chance to see the report, but...
Advisory Board annual report presentations, the Disability Advisory Board.
But if you guys want to make a short presentation, that would be great.
Yes, good evening. Thank you so much for having us here. My name is Chiara Bergonzi. I'm the chair of the Disability Advisory Board. I'm very grateful for all of you that you gave us this opportunity to be the ears and eyes of our community. We have... meeting every month, and more than once a month, and inviting more than 13 member of our community and different organizations here in Key Biscayne to give us their view on what inclusion is, so we can have a wide view of inclusion, or redefining inclusion in Key Biscayne, so everyone feels welcome. You wanna give them? So we have, yeah, the three goals. So we have the wheelchairs for the beach access that last year I think we didn't have there were many reaching out to us that they wanted to include it in the activities that they have at the beach, so now we have that. We have a new position also that is gonna help the village be more inclusive and be like, the ears of the community to see if someone needs any arrangement or accommodation in the community center so they all can participate of the same event that everyone wants. The other thing is that we also invited the Moya Foundation, it's an organization that promotes work, inclusive work, so they offer this program that is incredible for free to keep this game. So we have the contact and it's in the minutes and yeah, they gave us a brief review of what they already do in other communities. We also invited many different community members that have inclusive programs in soccer, tennis, volleyball, This community is incredible because they all wanna be included in the sense that they all wanna give service to people with disability. Elise?
So the only thing I'm gonna add is that we are hoping to do what the Sustainability Board just did where you get the boards together from the county and have a summit and a meeting of the minds and just talk about best practices and how to actually get something done through governmental processes, something that we're really sort of working on. So we're hoping to do that in March, and the commissioner has said that she will speak at the symposium, and we're just getting that together. So that'll be good. That'll be great.
That's great.
Excellent. And can I just add, as your liaison, that you're working with the administration, Steve, and Juan, too, Find a person to fill the position that the council approved.
So you've been spending a lot of time working Yes Okay, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for your report.
Thank you Mr. Mayor the parks and open space board will present at a later at a later date.
That's fine. So we'll go back to brief comments. I want to On a sad note, the passing of John Gilbert, who was our village manager, fire chief, started pretty much from the beginning. So he was a prime, prime person in helping us get our feet off the ground. both in the fire department and as a village, a very well-respected man in this community. And so our condolences to the family for his passing. Want to at the last meeting I missed. Talking about chalice what is who on December 10th. She turned 100 years old so and if you know chela she is just completely at the community center all the time on the second floor. playing Canasta all the time, so her mind is really sharp, and she's in good physical shape, so sending our regards to her and her family here. Since we last met, the Hurricanes have done real well, so a shout out to all the UM fans. Anything else from...
I just wanted to follow up that, because we've Over the past year, I've gotten some comments and complaints about the lights on Crandon Boulevard. And through Steve's persistence with the county, they have now determined that there are 28 lights that are going to be repaired or replaced. So it's fantastic. I'm very excited about it. And I just want everyone who's been walking Crandon Boulevard at night to know that we're getting some light that's on the way. So thank you for that, Steve.
I just want to I sent a note to Jocelyn to talk about the separating formally separating the ability to bid out the power and from the storm water project. So to get a formal resolution or at least the consensus of council that we're going to make a separate opportunity to bid both these projects separately.
So you want to add that to the agenda?
I want to add it to the agenda for discussion. To get out of the agenda for discussion, yes, please.
Okay. Brandon? Mine was more of a general statement during the, you know, basically just in relationship to the recent events in Venezuela. I know many of our residents and neighbors, you know, have close ties to Venezuela. And just like other countries as well that have suffered from very similar things, And over the past several years, many families have gone through very difficult times. And I think we need to understand that and sympathize with that. And many have found their ways to our community, looking for safety and a chance to rebuild their lives. And I just want to recognize their resiliency. And I'm glad they're part of our village. And I really hope a peaceful and stable future for Venezuela. And I just want to leave it at that.
Amen. And then myself, just piggybacking off the incredible endeavor by the U16 team, one of the things that occurred to me is all the gentlemen that went up there to say thanks, they led off by thanking their parents. In that, I want to also thank the parents for their incredible just promotion of their children to get involved, to volunteer in our sports program and get a big shout out to Parks and Recs for another incredible event. Just this last weekend, we had another opening day for both the baseball and softball league we had. close to 250 people attending. Admittedly, Todd's and mine probably favorite day of the year, but it just goes to show you how important it is that parents just get involved. It was a wonderful community event. Congratulations to the soccer team once again, and parents, just keep doing it. You have no idea what effect it has on these children to know that their parents are there watching them and rooting them on.
Who threw a strike? Oh, oh. Come on, come on.
And the mayor threw a strike. He did. He threw an incredible strike. Well done, Mayor. Really well done. And actually, he allowed me, he bestowed me the honor to have a simultaneous first pitch, so we represented baseball and softball equally.
Very nice.
Todd dropped the ball, though. Todd dropped the pitch.
It's the village, our village turns up well for the holidays. It's a really beautiful season. Amazing. You know, the public realm is beautiful, and people are out and activated, and it's really nice.
I got great compliments about the lighting. Everybody was really very, very happy with it.
Good segue to wish everybody a good and healthy new year. And I was thinking of John. it's hard to think of someone who could ever have an equivalent duration of service. He just did so many things for such a long period of time. And in addition to being a great colleague, he was a really great friend and really supported our work. We did good things together and made me very sad to learn of his passing.
You and Ed served with them?
I served with them. It was a pleasure. Gentleman, friend, pain in the ass. I was. And still are. And he'll be sorely missed. Unfortunately, shortly after he retired from here, moved out to Lake Tahoe. Then he started developing some problems, physical, mental problems, and deteriorated fairly quickly. And he wound up in a nursing home. passing away, really not knowing where he was at this point in time. So, you know, you hate to see somebody go, but unfortunately, his time has come, and he will be sorely missed, a lovely, good human being.
He was part of the contingent that went to work at 9-11, at the... Oh, yeah. At the... At the pile, yeah, at the pile there. So... All right.
Next item, Mr. Mayor, public comments.
Luis de la Cruz. How unusual.
Sorry, I got here a little late, but I went around town to make sure that all of your houses were not flooded.
Thank you very much.
And I can report that none of the houses of the council members up here are suffering from flooding today, even though it has been raining all day long.
I'm sorry, for the record, your address.
640 Allendale Road. Thank you. I apologize. So that's what our... a clean, well-maintained system of stormwater drainage does for the village of Keebiscayne. Now, for the other 0.28 times, I mean, 0.28 hours, not hours, but time that we actually have more water coming down that our system can probably take out because sometimes that happens. That's what we're talking about here. 0.28, almost less than half of a percent of the time is what we're discussing up here about this big dig and other things. I want to point out to you an absolutely incredibly horrible structure that we have built at the end of Ocean Lane Drive, which happens to be a generator for a shallow injection well. It just makes absolutely no sense that we would spend the money. And I think that we probably got a grant for it, but it's still taxpayer money, whether that's state money or village money or wherever it's coming from. But to spend the amount of money that we spent on building such a horrendous structure for that has absolutely no logical reason to be built. And I think you'll hear from Fernando Vazquez that he agrees with that, believe it or not. So I don't know how that happened. I don't know how that got built. But it's beyond any imagination that we are thinking that if we go with the alternative to the big dig, which is what Mr. Tashiev is designing with GIT, that you guys are really thinking about putting a generator at every shallow injection well. That's absurd. Absurd. You can't do that. Please don't do that. We're talking about five hours for five days. That's 25 hours out of 8,700 hours of a year that those pumps would be working. have it so coincidental that we wouldn't have power for that particular injection? Well, it's just absurd that we're even thinking about that. I don't know whose great idea it was, but it was a horrible idea. And I just don't. I'm beside myself. Obviously, you see it. So please, guys, let's get some thought behind what we're doing up here. Make sure that whenever the management comes up to you, you realize what it is that he's proposing that he's going to do. Don't just approve it. Thank you.
Thank you. One brief thing since... I just wanna say that I do agree with that. I don't necessarily think that these, and having done this in the past in another city in South Florida, I think we need to really revisit this concept of these generators. I brought this up in the past. I brought it from an aesthetic standpoint. I brought it from a functional standpoint. I brought it up from a functional standpoint, and I just think that we really have to have a conversation about this for the future. Okay. We can have a conversation.
Yeah, we can, and I hope we do. Okay, Madam Clerk, agenda.
The next item is the agenda, approval, deferrals, additions, deletions, substitutions, withdrawals.
Addition.
Sorry.
I'd like to add a discussion on pausing purchase or installation of any standby electrical generators for storm sewer pumps. Okay, so under Mayor and Council.
Pausing the purchase of.
Purchase or installation.
Of generators.
Yeah, I second that.
That's a discussion item.
Yeah, that's fine.
Pausing the purchase or installation of.
Electrical generators, standby electrical generators for storm sewer pumps. Fixed standby. Okay, what else? Fixed. Excuse me. One moment. Fixed. Standby. Yeah. Big difference.
Fixed. Standby. Thank you.
Tell me when you're ready for me.
Always ready for you, Nance.
I would like to defer 10A, please. The amendment to the professional services contract. Just FYI, the Athletic Advisory Board has not had an opportunity to review the proposed changes, so I think they need to be able to weigh in on whether or not the proposed changes address the issues that have come up before them throughout the year, so I think that's just appropriate.
Yeah, I think we missed a step, so that's fine. Good idea.
Agreed. I also would like to add two items. I would like to add Discussion about the soccer program structure. I don't really want to have the discussion. I just want to have discussion about Tasking the advice the athletic advisory board with reviewing the soccer program structure and coming back to us on that and whether or not that needs to be revisited and Secondly, I didn't see it elsewhere on the on the agenda legal counsel was going to come back to us with some report about the special magistrate item that I brought up in November. So could we add that so he can tell us what he found? Because I think he's got some information.
Magistrate, okay. And Mike had an item separating the underground.
To put out the bid for the Zone 1. I'd like to just, a quick discussion on that, just to, to educate on how the actual bidding process works for these contracts, for these vendor contracts, and the timeframe. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to understand what you're saying.
I'm sorry. Timeframe of RFP bidding for new vendor contracts, whether it's athletics or anybody else. Gotcha.
Timeframe of new bidding.
Yep. New bidding process and timeframe.
I might as well signal my dismay now that 9C and D are back on the agenda for second reading, 101 Crandon. Which one is that? 101 Harbor. Which? And suggest that rather than deal with what I consider to be an armed torpedo in the water with the safety off, We would get a better result if we actually followed through with the scope and depth of analysis that I think we talked about getting before dealing with this at second reading when we spoke about this at first reading. to better understand the implications of allowing institutional use prospectively in the residential district and to determine whether it's better to deal with this by development order amendment.
But we're going to hear it.
I don't want to waste time, and I'm going to oppose it, so I might as well just signal it now. We had a long discussion, and we came to a conclusion. That conclusion wasn't implemented.
Okay. Well, we'll deal with it when we get there. All right. All right. Madame Clark.
My apologies. All those in favor of the agenda?
Opposed? Motion carries. The next item is the Consent Agenda.
Somebody move it? Move. Second.
All those in favor?
Opposed? Motion carries. The next item is the second reading of an ordinance of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, amending Chapter 23, Retirement Article 2, Police Officers and Firefighters Retirement Plan of the Village of Key Biscayne Code of Ordinances regarding the Retirement Plan for Police Officers and Firefighters of the Village of Key Biscayne, specifically amending Section 23, dash 47 C of the village code to permit retired police officers hired on a part-time basis to receive in service distribution, providing for conflicts, providing for severability, providing for codification and providing for an effective date.
Second.
Thank you.
Any questions to the Chief? I think we talked about it last time. It's a really great idea. Hopefully we can implement it and add somewhat of a savings to us.
I think Chief looks so good tonight, so why don't you show off your suit, if you would? Just a smile.
Off the red carpet.
Anyway, I know he's excited about this. I'll put words in his mouth, and you can just stand there and look pretty.
Better the suit than a soccer uniform. Whoa. That's a bad visual there.
I don't think you have to take that abuse, Chief.
This profession allows you to have thick skin.
Yes, sir.
Any questions? I just wanted to show off how good he looks. Oh, okay, okay. I understand.
Madam Clerk, call the question.
We need a public hearing, please.
You want a public hearing?
Okay.
On second reading, public hearing is now open. Public hearing not on his suit is now closed.
Council Member London. Yes. Vice Mayor Sardinius.
Council Member Stoner. Yes. Council Member Vazquez.
Mayor Roscoe.
Council Member Bracken.
And Council Member Kaplan.
The item is adopted on second reading.
Thank you. Thank you.
The next item is a second reading of an ordinance of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, amending section 30-11 definitions and creating section 30-39 certified recovery residences of the Village Code of Ordinances relating to review and approval procedures for certified recovery residences, providing for severability, providing for conflicts, providing for codification, and providing for an effective date.
So moved. Second. Second. Moving second. Let me open the public hearing. Public hearing is now open. Seeing no one come forward, public hearing is now closed. Okay, on the item before us, comments?
I just wanted to say that my understanding is that I discussed with council whether or not we could put in a specification of distance from public school or from schools. And perhaps council would like to expand on how we're going to approach this.
So if you may recall, we brought this forward a couple months ago. This was as a result of a mandate by the Florida legislature for us to adopt procedures regarding the certified recovery residences. These are just purely procedural at this point. If the Village Council would like to adopt a regulation that's more substantive, I think we would need to pause and wait to the extent that it was more restrictive or more burdensome because of Senate Bill 180. And we're happy to bring something forward for that at a later time. But at this point, really what this is doing is something that we were supposed to have adopted by January 1st. We got delayed because we had the meeting canceled. So we're hoping to comply with the state law and have it adopted. And this process is very similar to the reasonable accommodation process that we would implement, even if this wasn't codified, frankly. Thank you.
Okay. Madam Clerk?
Vice Mayor Sardinas?
Council Member Stoner? Yes. Council Member Vasquez?
Yes.
Mayor Roscoe? Yes. Council Member Bracken?
Yes.
Council Member Kaplan?
Yes.
Council Member Lunden?
Yes.
The ordinance is adopted on second reading. The next item is an ordinance on second reading of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, amending section 30-104, Institutional District of the Village Code of Ordinances to provide development regulations for properties that are 10,000 square feet or less, providing for severability, providing for codification, providing for conflicts, and providing for an effective date.
Move. Second. Second. Ms. Stoner, this is your item. You want to?
Well, my recollection of what happened at the previous meeting when we discussed this I thought was different than you, Frank. I thought what we had decided was that we were going to specify that the residential, any residential property had to be adjacent to an existing institutional, already institutionally zoned property.
Yeah, my memory is quite different. It includes that, but it goes beyond that. My memory is that we recognized initially that this is really drawn from a condition that affects a single property that was permitted years ago, as we discussed, by development order, not by zoning. And the conversation ensued as to studying what the implications would be, not just from the allowance prospectively of institutional use, pretty much anywhere in the West Side and Holiday Colony, but also understanding what ancillary uses go with institutional uses and what could potentially metastasize anywhere in these areas if schools, if houses of worship were allowed anywhere in those areas. In part recognizing that there's a fundamental incompatibility in nature of use if you have residences and schools daycare centers churches shuls mosques what have you second point related. There's never been to my knowledge and I've been around a long time. Any discussion about in the future land use context about expanding House of worship use it's completely new and novel, in my opinion, all to address an anomaly associated with one on one harbor. The last point that we discussed was, is it not more expedient to just fix the development order to better reflect signage and other anomalies that might restrain their use in an unfair or oppressive way, rather than open up what could be Pandora's box on including ancillary uses associated with institutional uses, which includes schools and daycare centers and you name it. I think as a side point, I am highly dissatisfied with the quality of these supporting memos. And I want to really call out what I consider to be a real deficiency. These read to me like conclusory sales jobs, not analysis. And I think we're experiencing the same thing in the variance supporting analyses, the memorandum. And it just puts too much on us. It's just not helpful. That's my criticism.
Well, I'm not criticizing this. For criticizing Jeremy, I read his comments and recommendations and his analysis on most every zoning thing that's ever come up here. And I think he does a fine job. And you're smarter than me. And if I can understand it, you certainly should.
It's not understanding it. These are check-the-box memos. all the criteria, and leading to a conclusion that yes, this checks the box. I just don't agree that the analysis supports those conclusions. Well, you don't agree with the conclusions, obviously.
I don't. That's a matter of opinion.
No, no, but there's an empirical way to analyze issues to determine compliance. And simply concluding that they comply. For example, in the realm of the compatibility of use, I don't think you can simply say that it's compatible if you're running a church or a school that's the mission of a church in a residential neighborhood simply because it's in a similar structure. And to say, too, that the land use element in the master plan permits this, everything is permitted in, well, not the local office, but schools, parks, utilities, houses of worship are all permissible anywhere in any residential district, providing for flexibility for future land use decisions, but governed by zoning. So to bootstrap in a zoning end around by justifying it by saying that the master plan
Prospectively permits this it seems to me is misleading and evasive Well, it's not misleading because he's telling you a fact and you don't I mean like you say that fact exists for everything You got to go back and analyze the master plan to analyze his own email Well, basically you don't have to because he's done it for you.
He's telling He's coming to a conclusion without any empirical support that I disagree with well
Fine.
Listen, that's certainly your choice.
Do you have a question?
Yeah. Nancy, the goal here is to basically make sure that the House of Worship is on 101 is correct right yeah so I don't know anything about these ordinances what my concern is is that I think what Frank's worried about is we're open up a big opportunity for potential abuse possibly and but we just what all you want to do is resolve the problem at that specific space right so
So it's in. Right.
But if there's a way to do it without opening up Frank's concerns, we can revisit that. And I think that's probably worthwhile because, you know, Frank's got a lot of institutional knowledge about this issue. He's obviously pretty passionate about it. And, you know, I respect your opinion because you've been here for a long time. So I think maybe we should give that a little credence and see if there is an alternative way to deal with this.
Let's let's do something here. Chad, you have any. Is there any additional information here that you can weigh in?
I mean, I think that the two sides were laid out pretty clearly. This was approved as a special exception by development order today. To address what Councilmember Stoner would like to bring forward, the only way that we can address it, aside from amending the existing development order to maybe make the removes maybe some of the conditions in that order was to change our code and do this rezoning now at the last meeting we my understanding was the instruction was to try to limit it to that area. Close to where the about is located now we drew it in the that one block area. But. There's only two options here to address this. Either you can address it through the development order, which I think Council Member Kaplan is maybe suggesting as a potential option, or you make a code change. I mean, that's really it. So those are your two options. Or do nothing. I thought the principal takeaway was not to –
punt on this, the need to address this. I want to address this for 101 Harbor. I want to address this for the Jewish Center. I don't think that the most expedient and prudent way to do that on the face of it is to amend the zoning code, particularly to permit, and I'm back to ancillary uses in institution, and also recognizing practically the churches are by and large surviving in pursuit of their missions, by operating schools. So it's not simply a house of worship. The experience not just here but in other places is that schools are supporting the church mission or the synagogue mission or the mosque mission. And second observation generally is that churches are struggling in lots of places. So the adaptive reuse of that use includes ancillary uses within institution. Right? I don't think we bargained to go down that road. And we've never thought that we were deficient in houses of worship. It's never come up.
But, Frank, what you're saying is St. Christopher's can have a school, and St. Agnes can have a school, and Presbyterian can have a school, and they're all in that area. And I'm not saying Chabad wants to have a school, because I don't know anything of the sort. But if they wanted to have a school, what they could do within that one small little property would be limited by their space that's available.
They have an educational mission that I'm personally familiar with. They perform it both there and elsewhere.
Religious Sunday school.
So where we got off to at the end was recognizing the desire and the need to do something for the Jewish center. to study the implications a little bit deeper than these memos do, in my opinion, of changing the entire West Side, in effect, to allow institutional uses, although recognizing the geographical limitation then gives rise to, we had a moment about RELUPA or the argument that this is spot zoning and we're going to get in trouble down the road, and are we going to be able to defend ourselves? in the context of a spot zoning appeal. So basically the idea was to study this before taking action on zoning. And in the meantime, look at the development order and what we can do to fix or improve it. That didn't happen, that didn't come back.
But right now, the zone that we're talking about, located within the area south of Harbor Drive, west of Fernwood, north of Buttonwood, and east of Woodcrest, Yes, you could say that's spot zoning. I don't know if that, is there anything, any other properties included in that, Jeremy, or is that the only property?
In the way it's currently written, it could potentially include some other properties.
Okay, fine, so it wouldn't be spot zoning then. So basically, your concern that this would be utilized all over the village, really under this particular ordinance, would not apply because it's a limit.
Because it's been limited. Yeah, so therefore, what are you against it for?
Chair Jeremy you did you just you did just say they could be applied to a couple other houses a couple other areas yes okay so in that in that area so question for houses so question for you so if if someone would want to possibly buy two or two houses on that street okay and they could amalgamate those two houses And then they could put a house of worship in there if they chose.
They would still need to abide by zoning regulations, which would keep them as separate structures. But yes, they could then, you know, if they wanted to have one as the house of worship and another one as the school, they could do that. It is worth noting that in our entire residential district, there are uses that are permitted as homes.
Home-based system.
Home businesses, such as daycares. These are already permitted as home businesses. So some of the ancillary uses, by the fact that you're limiting the structure to the size that it is, are sort of accounted for and considered and not as inconsistent. And I would argue that they're not as inconsistent with a single-family neighborhood as they could be because of the limitation on the size of the structure.
And I just want to add something that comes from a capital side before this this doesn't eliminate that there could be another person way down the road seeking to locate a about in a residential lease own property just like we had today with the bond because of the loop of concern someone could could make try to make those arguments so. It it's still. These could pop up potentially in other places that unrelated to this, what we're doing today.
So I'll leave it at this. My bottom line is this isn't the way to deal with this issue in my opinion. Let's look at the development order and fix it as needed in my opinion. There's never been a discussion about an interest in expanding houses of worship. I've been doing this since 1991 and I can't think of occasion. There's a lot of elements in the future land use element that are aspirations that are evergreen. Parks acquisition goes back all the way in time, all the way in time to cure concurrency initially and to reduce density, and that still is an issue. I can't find anything in my memory bank or anything I've read lately that talks about houses of worship. So I would propose to deal with this otherwise.
My last comment on this is I find it offensive that I understand how we got here, but to continue with the zoning the way it is, I find it offensive that they have to function. That institution has to function under a development order, which I believe has 23 or more restrictions on it. And none of the other houses of worship have to do that. And it's right there in the zone. So that's my motivation.
That's that Jeremy question for is there any way to limit this only to the one specific property is puzzling that would be spots on and that's you that's illegal or yeah, yes, get challenged on that.
I don't want to say would be, but it would definitely raise the it could be.
But is that so there's a risk?
There's a risk if you were to do that, yes.
All right. But there's also a risk in what Frank's expressing. So, I mean, we're sort of mitigating risk, right?
Well, yeah. I mean, I think what Councilmember Kaplan is saying that, you know, maybe it's worth a instead of dealing with this and expanding the areas in which a house worship can go, maybe the solution is to dive into the development order and try to reevaluate some of those conditions that could help resolve the issue. I think that's really where he's, I don't want to forge your mouth, but I know that's what you're saying.
No, that's exactly right. Some of those conditions came about to mollify initial objections Those objections never arose.
So Nancy, if we would take the development order and eliminate all your concerns to equalize the playing field, so to speak, would that be something that we could all work around?
You read the development order and saw all that?
I tried to read it.
No, I understand. I saw how extensive and how micromanaging they were. You would find them...
Offensive yeah, I I hear I understand your concern. I'm just Just saying if we could take that stuff out.
Is there a way to check just that exercise? I mean, we don't have to debate this anymore, but just that exercise is offensive So for this one house of worship you can do this and you can't do that and you can only do and no I mean nobody else has to function under that other than to comply with The zoning I hear you concerned.
I understand why it happened. I understand how we got to this point. But now we're here, and we see that that particular institution has been a fantastic neighbor, a fantastic community participant, and there shouldn't have to suffer under all those restrictions.
And they wouldn't, because all of those restrictions, and I'm not remembering every single detail, but I was involved in that negotiation. There were... NIMBY objections and a panoply of solutions to mollify these NIMBY objections are what you're talking about. The behaviors, the use, the functionality on that site never warranted concern about any of those objections. The concerns never arose, in fact. So this is, what, 15, 20 years ago? A fresh look would result in a different product, I believe.
that would no longer be offensive?
According to Frank. I think so. I mean, in Frank's opinion, right.
That's my, that's my. And how would we move forward on that? Would we create a subcommittee that would look at that? Would it be just the staff? Would it be maybe Frank and Nancy? Maybe I would motion to have Frank and Nancy both work on it together.
Well, I think that it's, remember, at its heart, it's a quasi-judicial determination, right? So it's, It's a faith. All of you wanted to look at it. We could put it forth on a future agenda. We could workshop it. You could look at the conditions. But ultimately, if this is going to come back, it is going to come back. It would come back to amend it. It would be a quasi-judicial hearing, which Once we choose to amend it, we don't allow ex parte communications and the like that we've talked about before.
But if we would choose just to spot zone it, we have a risk. But we have risk doing business all the time. So why is that such a big deal?
Well, those are two separate things. I mean, I think that the question of whether something is spot zoning or not, I'm not so convinced under the law of spot zoning. People use that a lot. But the word spot zoning, there are arguments against it. But we're not going to get into that today. But it's a risk. Yeah, people would argue. There's a lot of mitigation to that risk because of the historical use of this site. So also, you know, there's and maybe Council Member Kaplan doesn't agree, but To the extent that the zoning is consistent with the comprehensive plan, there's case law that says that as a matter of law, you don't have spot zoning. Now, I think Council Member Kaplan is questioning whether or not the zoning is consistent with the plan. But the question of a development order, though, is much more limited, because now you're talking about somebody's development rights. This change in zoning is not addressing somebody's development rights at this stage. This is legislative policy that you're making. When you're looking at the development order, you're addressing somebody's property rights directly. So that's why it's a little more heightened.
What about the Pandora's box risk of having opened up? This is a future argument on Westwood. Having opened up institutional zoning beyond what exists. It's hard it's harder to defend against the later it is given around it.
It's possible there's obviously mitigating arguments the other way. But yes I can understand that that someone would argue that you know why did you draw the line in the sand there right. However there is case law it says in a matter of zoning you need to draw the line somewhere so but it's it's a fair point I'm not going to argue that so. I. If the council wants to evaluate the development order so you can see it, you guys have never seen it, we obviously can be circulated. And if you want to discuss it at a public meeting, I think that's fine. Just remember that you're not looking at it from a policy perspective. You're looking at it for somebody's property rights directly.
Or we can just vote for this tonight and be done with it.
Well, yes. Yes or no?
Yes. Then we go from there. Yes. This and then you have the rezoning, which is after it.
I've said my piece. Further discussion?
I'm just wondering, Nancy, if it's worth engaging the... I mean, I know you feel some offense to this, but I wonder if it's engaging the rabbi and get his opinion to see if we can work through this, the development order, so we don't open up Pandora's box. It's just a possible suggestion.
Yeah, I don't think he needs to. Okay, that's fine. Thanks for the inquiry, but... Listen, if this is voted down tonight, we still have the opportunity to bring back a look at the development order. And we can do that anyway. Right. So I would like to take a vote on this personally.
Madam Clerk, let's call the roll.
Vice Mayor Sardinas, did you have a motion on the floor? You were just proposing. OK. And then did we open up the public hearing? And there needs a public hearing, please.
Public hearing now open.
Tom McCormick, 680 Curtis Wood. I just want to say something that should be beyond debate and not controversial, which is that all of you are smarter than me. But I'd also like to say that you know who's smarter than all of us? People with money that want to develop real estate. So when Frank says there's a Pandora's box risk here, I feel like you should run for the hills. Nancy, your concern is 100% right. But no one should be voting yes on this. unless you're sure Frank's wrong. If you're sure Frank's wrong, vote yes. But if you have any doubt whatsoever, take a month or two and figure out whether the inappropriate treatment of this one property could be completely resolved without the risk of opening Pindar's box, because that sounds pretty good to me. If you know for sure Frank's nuts and nobody's going to commercialize Westwood or whatever, then vote yes. But again, thank you for your time.
I'm not sure what Westwood has to do with this, but that's fine.
Public hearing is now closed.
Council Member Stoner? Yes. Council Member Vazquez?
Mayor Roscoe?
Council Member Bracken?
Council Member Kaplan?
Council Member Lunden?
And Vice Mayor Sardinas?
The ordinance is adopted on second reading. The next item. is an ordinance on second reading, an ordinance of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida rezoning the property located at 101 Harbor Drive, property folio number 24-4232-006-0230 from the Village Residential VR District to the Institutional I District, providing for severability, providing for conflicts, and providing for an effective date.
Somebody move it? Move. Second. Moved and seconded. Public hearing on this is now open. Seeing no one come forward, public hearing is now closed. Council Member Stoner.
Well, I don't think there's any more discussion. This is simply to change the zoning of that particular property that we were talking about in the ordinance previous.
So question, if we chose not to support this, that property would therefore not be approved and not fit into this?
We would have made the change in the ordinance in the zoning code, but we wouldn't have made the change as to that property.
Yeah, so the legislation was adopted, but it wouldn't be applied to anything. It's not being applied to anything at this point until this rezoning were to occur.
So voting no is just
is keeps the status quo until somebody comes in and wants to rezone the property.
Okay, further conversation, discussion on the item? Seeing none, Madam Glirk.
Councilmember Vasquez?
Mayor Roscoe?
Councilmember Bracken?
Councilmember Kaplan?
Council Member Kaplan, is this a yes?
Thank you. Council Member Lunden?
And Vice Mayor Sardinas?
Council Member Stoner? Yes. The ordinance is adopted on second reading.
Jocelyn, can I, I know it's inappropriate, I'd prefer to change my vote to yes. You can. To yes, please. I was confused a little bit about what we were doing, so yeah, there's no reason not to approve it. Just being obstructive.
All right, the ordinance is adopted on second reading. The next item is an ordinance on second reading, an ordinance of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, amending section 2-82, purchasing limitations, competitive bidding of chapter 2 of the Village Code of Ordinances relating to competitive bidding thresholds, providing for severability, providing for codification, providing for conflicts, and providing for an effective date.
Move. Second. Move. Seconded.
Thank you.
Public hearing is now open. Seeing no one come forward, public hearing is now closed. Joe? Yes, sir?
I have one suggestion. I didn't think about this before. I have no problem with the change of limits or anything else. And obviously, this was originally done. We didn't have a purchasing manager or purchasing agent, whatever you're going to call Darren. But we have a good man here. And the fact that you get only one quote Instead of three, one quote instead of three quotes, I understand three is a lot, one's less, but since we have somebody here, what would the problem be of getting two prices? They can do it verbally on the phone, but at least have two prices because somehow contractors know that if they're the only ones, they take advantage of people. Not that I, as a contractor, would do that. Never? I've heard other contractors do that. So therefore, I would suggest we make a modification to that. And we have two people. That's all. Two people. It doesn't have to be a big formal bidding or anything else. Darren makes a couple phone calls.
Is it a practical question, or is this a legal question?
Is it proposed?
Yeah. Yes. Mr. Chadd? Can we do this?
So can you propose exactly what your amendment would be?
You speak much better than I do, Chad, and you know how to do it.
Can we talk? I'm sorry. I just want to hear the limits so the public can hear the limits.
Yeah, I want to be clear on the ordinance language here. So this would move from the $5,000 to $6,000 to where you would require three bids. That's fine. No problem. But you do require three bids.
As far as the numbers go, I'm just saying just change it instead of one to two. That's all.
You're saying for under the $6,000? Yeah.
Then we open up the process, and that's what I think they're trying to avoid is just to streamline it with one vendor. I think that defeats the purpose, perhaps. It's just really keeping it singular.
Just keeping the contractors honest.
Right. Listen, I was just going to say I always believe in three bids minimum. I'm not, but on something like that, when they need to move quickly and do stuff on the fly, I think it gives them a nimbleness to do what they need to do. And so I kind of agree that one, you know, a decision for one contractor under 6,611, is that what the number is? 6,000. 6,611, right? Yeah, it's just 6,000. Oh, 6,000, period. I don't know what that is.
No, the numbers, the CPI number, we did round it down for just a flat, even number for the ordinance.
So, yeah, no, for that level, I think it's important for our business to, and not to lose time, because time is money, to really allow, you know, a selection under 5,000. That's it, no second bid, nothing like that, just go straight out.
So you just do one?
No, I'm not. You know, I mean, it's just two is. So two is okay, fine. I mean, no, I'm not for two, I'm for one. Okay. That's it, that's it. You want to call me a wimp, call me a wimp.
That's my proposed amendment, I guess. Do we vote on the amendment, Joe? We got a second to it? Yeah.
Can you clarify your amendment? I'm sorry, Council Member.
Let me put it in where the tab to the actual language.
I think that the language, it's under for purchases less than 6,000, you're requiring the manager to obtain two quotes, right?
Exactly. When I say manager, I mean purchasing department, isn't it?
Well, the manager or designee.
Okay, fine. That's all.
I think they do that. I mean, at the end of the day, you look for the best price. I think that that's kind of part of common practice.
So the amendment would be to amend 2-82A to state that the manager would obtain a minimum of two quotes prior to purchasing something less than $6,000. Yes. Okay.
Is there a second for this motion?
Second. Discussion on the amendment. Any issues, guys? Speak now or hold your peace.
I just want to talk about the impact. So this ordinance is brought forth for operational efficiencies. What we did was we looked at the 2021 thresholds, brought them forward for CPI. The amendment is kind of working counteracting that to go... less efficient because we're talking about contracts or quotes for goods and services under $6,000 to now get the second, which is good practice, but it is not as efficient as obviously one for that lower threshold.
So the idea and the nature of this was to bring efficiency, so that does kind of counteract with- But Ben, it's much more efficient not to get any prices at all and tell the guy just to do it and bill you, isn't it?
We would never do that.
Why not? It's the same thing as getting one bid, isn't it? No, because we issue- Why not? You're not comparing it to anything. If you want to talk about being efficient-
Benjamin, is there some formality in getting the biddings? Or can you, like Ed suggested, just get informal quotes and that would satisfy that requirement?
They can be informal on that. Yeah.
So Benjamin, just a question for you. So previously, at the $5,000 limit, there was no requirement for that? Correct. So we're just adding, we're just putting a tighter, tightening it up, basically.
Exactly, yeah, exactly. We're responsible for the money, remember?
Yeah, and I agree with that 100%. I just think that there's some operational nimbleness that staff needs to have in order to run the operation smoothly, and I think that by us, by trying to be, this may be us erring more on the side of being over-effective, and on a number as such, I would trust that the manager and the CFO and whoever's involved in that would make the right decision. huge number, it is a number that is used to move the operation, so for that to get two quotes, it just seems like a little bit too, we're hamstringing staff.
Under emergency situations, that would be waived, right? Of course.
Yeah, of course.
Okay.
So we're voting on the amendment.
On the amendment.
All those in favor?
Aye. opposed no here motion carries okay uh on the uh ordinance as amended did you guys open up the public hearing yes they did that in the beginning on the ordinance as amended
Mayor Roscoe? Yes. Council Member Bracken?
Council Member Kaplan?
Council Member Lunden? Yes. Vice Mayor Sardinas? Yes. Council Member Stoner? Yes. And Council Member Vasquez? Yes. Excuse me. The next item.
10A was deferred, right?
Yes, it was deferred.
Okay.
The next item is a capital project authorizing resolution of the village council of the village of Key Biscayne, Florida, authorizing the village manager to issue a work order to the Stout Group LLC for village-wide roadway improvements, street resurfacing in an amount not to exceed $483,082.67 and providing for an effective date. Move. Second.
Okay, let's see. This is Arezzo. This is Chris. Mr. Miranda.
Good evening, Mayor, Council. This item is the continuation of our roadway improvements projects I have a small presentation for you on some some of the work that we've done some of the work that we're planning to do and Some of the work that this project actually encompasses in your package you have What you see on the map here the orange? Streets are the ones that would be paved repaved under this project
It would be like this already.
It's got a visual the marsh the island The no wood street which would complete everything in the southern end of the island and then we have Cranwood and Excuse me Cranwood and Cypress Drive which would be repaid this is in an effort again to elevate our payment condition index Uh, and as we continue in future years, it will continue to raise that index. Taking care of all of the streets within the village. Uh, my as my map has a. Uh, schedule of how we would continue in, uh. The latter part of this year, we will do what you see in blue. which are the future roads. Harbor Drive is separate and apart. As you all know, we have a JPA with the county for it, and we're working on a project right now with the TPO for Fernwood, which is lined in purple. 2728 we would do the roads that you see up here in in yellow and then 2829 carries out the eastern side of the island so by the end of 29 by actually by the end of 33 because of Fernwood we would have all of the roads Repaved with the exception of the zone one area So this ordinance again going back to it would repave North Marshall Drive, Norwood, South Marshall Drive, Cypress, and Cranwood Drive.
Okay, questions on the resolution before us?
Is there a competitive bidding on this? This is using our competitively bid contract. The previous contract. Yes, the previous contract, which we have two contractors on. Good. No question.
Chris, just as the SAV is requested, is there any way, since this is resurfacing, there's really no way to put impervious material forth in this project? Is there or not?
So your question would be more to put pervious material. Correct. Correct. No, it would not. To put pervious material in, we would need to actually strip out the base and recreate a base.
We're basically grading and resurfacing.
This is strictly milling and resurfacing. Okay.
Yes, I appreciate you guys you guys so so your assessment on this is just basically looking at the pci as you said right we looking. Looking at the cracks looking at that but, but are there any areas in your observation that you've seen that could be further you know more low more troublesome and relates with the sub grade. I mean, these are all roads, let's face it. I mean, we know that the water goes up and down, it goes in the subgrade, and one of the things that happens right at the base where the Coquina Rock is, That all those sentiments that are there to stabilize the load they eventually weather out so now you got the rock and i'm wondering if we're looking at that. More comprehensively I know we were hoping to do that with a lot of these drainage projects, but in the process of moving forward, should we be looking at the roadway substructure.
So what we have seen, my observation, where we have more critical failures is where we have brick pavers, where we've installed brick pavers and that sub-base affected quicker both from the top and the bottom so when we have rain it seeps through and the Sub base and the base are washing out in the areas that we have asphalt. I haven't seen that serious of a Deterioration in the base. Okay, there is spider cracking in the asphalt. Yeah, so there is signs of you know base weakening but Proper protocol would be just to mill and resurface. If we find an area that does have a deficiency in the base, we have the ability to go in at that time and remove the base and reconstruct it.
Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's fine. For this type of approach is fine. Okay.
On this.
Today we had two reports on flooding. one by our chief flood watcher and other by our chief executive officer of our council. And looking at both of them, I went out driving around myself and seeing the concerns of both concerns. And I realized one thing, and maybe with this can, when you're doing this now, a contemporary help this thing, and that is when someone's paving a driveway, they're bringing the driveway down You're basically going to crown the road. The road is going down to the driveway, and you form a little valley there. And as a result, water is laying there. And also, obviously, excuse me, same problem you have when the lawn is a little bit higher. So my question is this. How difficult or how expensive would it be to regrade the perimeters of these streets as we're doing them? so the elevation is raised so the water is not coming into the street, but rather going the opposite direction.
to lawsuit right there.
In other words, eliminating a lot of the pockets, for lack of a better word, where water is going to accumulate. Because no matter what storm system we put in, it's not going to make a damn bit of difference if the water doesn't get to the inlets. And the water is not going to get the inlets if there's places where it's not going to drain properly. So to me, possibly either making sure the grading now was done when you're repaving the streets to get the water basically better to the inlets, Also, where you have the dirt or the soil, or whatever you want to call it, this well, having the blacktop a little bit higher there, so the water basically is not, you know, it saves in the grass.
Isn't that what we did in the immediate mitigation? Right.
It's just a thought. And is that too difficult to do on these streets right now, and we just think about doing it in the future?
It's a little more complicated than that.
Obviously.
Yes, they did. One of the features they put in was curbing to direct that water flow to the structures in the corners, but they didn't run them all the way down the street. And if you did, it would change the character of the neighborhood.
But they did okay thing with the great in other words yes and what was previously more flat roads it costs pockets and.
Correct will raise the center of the road to create more of a crown if the road is flatter we did that. On Cape Florida.
We also, you did that on West Mashta as well. That's correct.
Yes, right. That was before I got here, but yes, correct.
And the reason, Chris, the reason why I bring this up, just to come back to what Ed's point is, is that when they did it on West Mashta, there was a... observationally, I live on that street, so I mean, I definitely saw an improvement, a dramatic improvement on the flooding on our streets. Correct.
And as we're repaving these roads, they are stringlining The edge of the roads to make sure that they're catching that flow and make the water flow where it needs to go It may need to go to the corners. It may need to come to the centers is wherever the catch bases are We are taking that into account. Okay.
Yes, there is no curving here.
No, there's no curving here But this so that as far as that so just to confirm Chris that is part of the scope of war What is it to doing the region? Yes.
Yes, that is part of the scope of work. Yes, okay Thank you
Madam Clerk.
10B, all those in favor?
Opposed? Motion carries. The next item is a capital project authorizing resolution of the Village Council of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, authorizing the village manager to issue a work order to the Stout Group LLC for the replacement of traffic calming devices in an amount not to exceed $248,385 and providing for an effective date. Move.
second thank you okay questions on traffic calming devices one quick one Chris I noticed that there's the West the West Westwood section where Fernwood is meeting the roundabout there is not being addressed in this particular scope of work
No, because it's being addressed in the Fernwood project that's being taken into account under the Fernwood project with the TPO. But we're going to make some temporary repairs to that intersection.
Because we've been talking about that for a while. Right. It's getting worse and worse.
Yes. I was there today.
And it also floods there pretty good as well.
Right. What are we actually going to do to these calming devices? You told me the calming devices are circles?
No, we're talking about the speed tables. The speed tables, okay. Speed humps are speed, these are actually speed tables. So the speed tables that we currently have, and these are actually the brick pavered speed tables, were not constructed per the current code. So the slopes on them are incorrect and vehicles are traveling over them and bottoming out. They're also starting to show a lot of deterioration on Island Drive We removed three speed tables and we reinstalled them three of the brick paper speed tables and we reinstalled them with the asphalt brick the asphalt paved Tables if you drive by there now, you'll see a much smoother transition It still is effective in traffic calming, but it is a much smoother transition for vehicles to travel over. I
Going then to Mike's comment about using pervious material, and I understood before the streets are not going to raise everything. We're just milling and repaving. But here, if we're actually ripping up the brick and everything else, might not this be a good area to use pervious materials to pitch? to pave this over, and if we did that, how much more cost are we talking about?
We're not removing the base on these. We're removing the brick pavers and leveling them out with the road and then building them back up with asphalt. So in order to do a pervious material, yes, we would have to go down approximately 24 inches, take out that material, and then construct it back. I don't have an exact quote on it, but it has actually...
The only reason I'm bringing that up, I mean, we're talking about... No.
I had it.
I took it out. Chris, we're talking about basically having a new storm source system, which basically will include either the AECOM system or the Georgia system. But in any event, we want as much percolation as possible for natural disposal of the water. And this might be a good place to start with these calming places to use that. So I would like to defer the motion, I guess, at this point in time, since we don't have a number, and come back with us and tell us You know, it might be a good idea, but it's ridiculously over-expensive, and the cost-benefit ratio is not there. But before I vote on it, I'd like to know what the alternative is to that, if that's acceptable to Council.
So, Councilmember, no, and obviously, if that's the will of the Council, we'll do that. But we did have a consultant come in and do an analysis on one of our intersections. It was actually, you know, a very, very interesting approach. And we'll be happy to have him give the presentation to the full Council. I know some of the Councilmembers have seen it. It's pretty extensive.
No, I'm not with him. Yeah, it's pretty extensive. His is not just pervious. His is down to the river, so to speak.
His philosophy is that you find the previous flows of water, and you can either believe that or not, but obviously that's his belief, and that you use the sub-base to move water.
And you bring all the stones in from Georgia at a cost of fortune.
Yeah, and that comes in somewhere between 10 to 12 times as much as normal.
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just basically, like Chris is talking about, maybe go down a couple feet with perfect material, not going down.
So right now we've got the Cadillac analysis and we have what we do now.
What you're saying is somewhere in between exactly come back with it and also once you put that in there what will be the absorption what would be the percolation through that so I'll just even makes any good sense that's what you have to see what it cost us you have more to take into account than just a percolation for example speed tables where you have vehicles coming to a stop and you're going to have that.
friction force pushing on those brick papers that open surface area.
It has to be done properly. It has to be the right material to be a speed table. That's all I'm saying. Right. I'm not telling you how to do it. But it's not a good candidate is what I'm saying.
It's not a good candidate for a pervious area to take a speed table and turn it into a pervious area because you're going to have that friction force and it's loose material.
It's not well, so then of course before the concrete curving around the perimeter you wouldn't have that would you you still have it?
Why because this the material underneath it you have to build it to support that traffic in that friction of cars coming to a stop Pushing down on it Chris or coming off.
There's there's a possibility of using pervious in pervious concrete though So just using a pervious concrete material versus using a paver type system, which is I think would yeah
You could use a pervious concrete. My past looks at pervious concrete is approximately five, six times more expensive than just plain concrete. Well, I'm saying come back to this.
Let's take a look. Let's look at it. Yes. But also realize, too, that when you do put something like a speed hump in is the thickness – of the material is not just your road. Now you're putting another six inches in.
Listen, I'm not saying we're going to vote for it.
We'll find out.
I just want to know what it is and does it make sense.
No, no. We'll do it. I just want to make sure that we're not talking this amount of people.
No, I listened to the guy from down to the river. Yeah, perfect.
Chris, did you have a chance to revisit the concerns I had about a couple of? Yes. Yes, I did.
Yes, I did. I actually went out and visited those locations. Some of the speed tables that you'll see throughout the island have already been reconstructed in asphalt or were originally constructed in asphalt and meet current code. Those all that you mentioned, I went and looked at each location in particular, and they're all asphalt already into the proper design. All right. Thank you. Yes.
I have one little question, Chris. the red speed table that's in the center and then the southernmost portion here, south of the school? Is that just that little bump, it's not even a table, it's just a little tiny?
It's a little bump, it's probably.
So you're gonna make that into a table?
Correct, correct. We're not reconstructing a speed bump. If there's a speed bump, we will remove it and create an actual speed table.
So no more bumps.
No more bumps. Bumps actually technically are not accepted by the county for traffic.
And they cause more damage to cars. So Chris, I know between Westwood and West Mash to all this, the roads that are leading north-south, they all have some type of control system there? Yes. And you're only showing one red dot.
Correct. And as Vice Mayor Sardinius pointed out earlier, he brought this up in discussions earlier. A lot of those roads already have speed tables on them. They are already constructed out of asphalt and properly designed. So we're not reconstructing. These are only the ones that are made out of brick pavers that were improperly designed. and have a very quick rise and fall, so the elevations are incorrect.
Okay, so just to make sure I understand this, I apologize. On a couple of those streets, they basically just have a line that they built up with asphalt like this. It's literally that big, and you hit that thing in your golf cart or your car, and you bounce all over the place. Obviously, the intent is to get people to slow down, but as you said... It doesn't appear that those ones on the chart are being taken into consideration. If that's incorrect on my part, I apologize. Just notice that there's only one red dot.
I can go and look at all the other ones, but these are what we had in our inventory.
I think you'll find if you drive those streets, you'll find that there are very unusual methods.
And the idea is to go through the village and make sure that we have continuity with all the speed tables, that they all meet the current county design for speed tables. So if there's something out there that I didn't capture here, we certainly can go back and look at it and replace it.
Okay.
Is that consensus to defer?
Oh, okay.
And bring back alternate proposals with prices and performance so we know what we're voting on.
Okay. I guess this is a good moment to try to remind us all, next time CVS parking lot goes to resurface, it's a good time to remember permeable surface at that point. This is a conversation about a little bang for the spark.
The spark is pretty bad, too.
Yeah. All of them. It was all flooded up today. All of them. I think, Councilmember, this is also where, you know, the charge that we gave the ZORC in coming up with solutions like that. Yes. And, you know, right now we're stuck with SB 180. That doesn't mean that we can't be thinking about what we want to put in place if and hopefully when those restrictions on SB 180 are lifted. Yes. And so that's something I know you, me, and Jeremy, and Brett are going to meet in a week or so, and I think it's time to really look at that.
Past time, yes. Okay, so there's a motion to defer 10C.
Was it consensus of council to defer or is there a second?
Consensus to defer?
Yes. I would have thought the Porsche and Corvette people would have been happy with that one. What can I say? 10D.
The next item is a resolution of the Village Council of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, authorizing the village manager to issue a work order to BCC Engineering LLC for professional engineering services relating to the street lighting conversion and transfer project in an amount not to exceed $360,074.30 and providing for an effective date.
Move. Okay. Mr. Miranda, you want to take that on too?
Sure. Go for it. So. We've come up with a sort of a flow chart of how this process will look. It is a complicated project from the sense of understanding our streetlights and who owns them and who manages them, what we own, and what is actually owned by special taxing districts. We currently have four special taxing districts. That from our understanding cover almost the entire island. So we don't control special tax industry. Those are controlled by the county. So we are looking to for bcc to come in and do a comprehensive analysis of feasibility study of taking those lights and. reacquiring them from the special taxing districts from the county So then we would take ownership we would do an assessment of all the lights in collaboration with FPL and then we would Sell them in effect to FPL they would give us a credit for all of those fixtures and then they would take ownership maintenance responsibility for all those existing lights and At the same time, this project looks at those areas that we do not have any street lights. So all the dark spots, all the dark zones. And we are asking BCC to come up with a design for us of where we need all that lighting, which then we would go back to FPL, give them the designs, and have them install all the missing lights. The flow chart. The way the contract, I set up the contract with BCC, it is a time and materials contract per task. So we could actually have a task and say we're not moving forward and we could stop at any point with a task. The first step with the due diligence and the feasibility study, if we look at it and we cannot dissolve these special taxing districts, which we're pretty confident that we can, but if we couldn't, then that would stop that process right there. And we would continue with the photometric study so that we could look at the dark zones and continue trying to get lighting in the dark zones. So the contract altogether flows from the decision of no, we stop, or if we are able to, we continue, and you can see that both paths, the upper in green would flow through to the transference agreement with FPL, and then the bottom one would continue at all time moving forward. So can I ask a question?
Yes. Chad. My understanding, I've only done one tax improvement district myself, and basically all voted on it, and you agreed to be taxed as a special taxing district. The tax collector collected the money, then the developer, or whoever in this case, the county, went ahead and bought lights and installed lights. That basically might have incurred debt or incurred expense or whatever. And I assume these lights have been installed probably, what, 30, 40 years ago? Been inside my house forever, so I don't know how long it's been. I have one right there. And my point is I'm paying each year for that light. And if there is, in fact, no debt on this thing, but rather what they're charging is operational costs, And if the people in the special taxing district at this point in time do not object or are in favor of not having a special taxing district, which what I would think would be really unbelievable why somebody would wanna keep paying when they don't have to, what is the feasibility? Why are we gonna spend $50,000 to go find out that you can't do that? Can't legally you find out, your office, determine whether we can do away with these tax districts and how much it's gonna cost, if anything?
Well, I think that we could definitely... The county should have an accounting and we can inquire as to what are the costs of operations of the taxing districts. I mean, that's something that we should... Maybe Chris has. If he doesn't, we can inquire. But the answer would be to just... vote, they would probably ask, I believe I'd have to check the county code, but ask for a vote of the people to dissolve it. And then it would be dissolved.
Yeah, so what are we going to spend $50,000 with some consultant to do that?
Councilman, remember, it's time and materials. If it only takes them a period of time, it'd only take them a period of time. I'm looking to Black and Veatch bills, so don't put time and material. There... things just don't dissolve. Ordinances have to go in place. BCCs have to approve it. Interlocal agreements have to be put in place. We're going to have to bring forward an ordinance. So there will be a step-by-step process to dissolve a special taxing district and to transfer these, if we choose to do it, transfer the light to the village. Yeah. All that will be a very detailed process.
But basically, we could prepare a document. Chad could prepare a document to transfer. They could accept it or reject it. We can go from there, too, right?
Well, I think... You've got to go to the county.
I'm talking about the county, exactly. It's not that simple. There's no advantage to them to have a taxing district. It's a pain in the ass for them. But there's a process to dissolve a taxing district.
Pass it on.
Okay, keep going, that's obviously.
Okay, what else?
And there's one thing, and I apologize, Chris, we didn't talk about this afternoon when we put it together. There's still, and if you would imagine, if you go to, I guess that would be the, oh, disappeared on my screen, to the right of the first green box, there would also be a decision point in there as well, because the final question would be, do we want to retain the lights ourselves?
and use FPL as our service provider, or do we want to transfer the lights to FPL completely, and that would be the transfer of ownership. So, Chris, there's also another decision point in there as well on that last green arrow that goes out. So those are two more decisions that we can make as we go forward. One more decision.
But the majority of the expense is actually on the blue line because that's where the 100K and the 150K is.
Correct. That's the design for the replaced or not the new lights.
Right. But that's not including the lights. That's just the engineering.
That is the engineering. For designing where to put lights up?
I mean, that's what I'm reading, Ed. Yeah, that's what I'm reading, too. It just sounds like a lot of money. I don't know what the comparables are, so I have no idea. That seems like where the bulk of the decision is. It's not the upper blue box, not the green.
So are you thinking of an answer, or is it my turn?
Your turn, baby.
Go for it. So I just want to confirm, number one, that if we vote yes on this, we are still not voting on whether or not to transfer ownership of the assets. Right. That's number one. Number two, would you please confirm that FPNL does not have a program under which they would complete, at their expense, the photometric design?
Yes, I can confirm that. We did meet with FPL. We met with the specialist under the streetlight divisions. And where all these assets will be transferred, it's his division. We asked them specifically if they do not do a photometric study for an entire area. They might come out and do a photometric study of one location. If they had a light there and they had a complaint that it wasn't... Sufficient in some way or deficient in some way they would come out and do a photometric study of that one area, but they won't do a full analysis of the island and say you're deficient here there.
Yes. And just to fully understand the timing here when we talk about the design since all the streets that are covered or standardizing. we're if we move forward with this and we're transferring this stuff you know we are transferring them a full package of what we want the island to look and feel and the standardization of those lights or are we then beholden to what they decide they want to do to our island that that's part of the agreement that we would we would make a decision we'll protect that in our agreement so in essence there are almost three future decisions one is do we want to absorb special taxing districts first decision and that's going to have to be in ordinance so that'll be
That'll come in front of council. The second one would be, do we accept the new plan and design for the additional blue lights? And that would be the blue arrow down at the bottom. I got it. And then the third decision, if the answer is yes to both of those, would be, do we want to put it all together into a package, working with FPL, that sets an agreement, which would be, you have this pole, we'll buy it, we'll upgrade it, we'll put LED into it, and then we'll operate it, maintain it going into the future. That's what we currently believe we're going to go, but we're going to determine how much that's going to cost, whether that's feasible, whether we want to do it, and that'll be the final cost as to whether we want to approve that agreement. So three additional opportunities for the council to see this as it goes forward.
But Steve, just a question. Are we coming at just what if we did move forward with this design and assuming that the design move forward, what's the cost of all the lights, the new lights that we have to buy? We don't know right now. Okay, but don't you think we should start from the concept of what it's going to cost us at the end result versus spending the money to do the design before we know roughly what the budget would be for the ultimate lights where the lights are $1 million or $2 million, I just think it would be good to know what that number looked like before we started spending money on designing things.
They're saying they don't know how many lights we need until we do a study, because you can't have somebody just walking around the street and saying, it's dark here, you need a light.
But once we know how many lights we have, there's a delta between the type of light, right? There's a cost differential between one light and a second light, a different type of light.
Assuming we standardize on something that we like. Right. Don't we have a rough one?
They owe us a 30, 60, 90 design criteria as we go through. Correct. So at 30%, they'll have a pretty good understanding of how many lights we need and what that cost estimate would be.
I just think it would be a good idea, prudent idea, to know that if, I mean, we should have some general understanding. Do we need 100 lights or do we need 200 lights? And we should know generally what that cost structure would be before we spent money designing something. I'm just kind of just thinking we're going at this a little bit.
That's what a 30% planning design is, is to...
But so, Steve, we have no idea. The photometric study... and see where dark spots are and count the number of dark spots.
I get it. We don't have an idea of where and how would we get an idea. What would be the process to get the idea?
What does that cost? It costs, right?
I mean, I'm just trying to walk the dog here, basically. Because I hear, and I appreciate that, because obviously we're trying to be responsive with money, but I hear this a lot. It's very expensive. We don't know what it's going to cost. But I hear staff saying, well, this is what we have to do to find out what's going to cost. So I appreciate the question. And I understand it's a very important question because we're all very fiscally responsible for everything. But we have to also understand that there's a process to get to understanding what the cost would be. It's like taking your car to the mechanic and figuring out what the cost is going to be to repair your engine. You've got to pay him a few hundred bucks to figure. But you know what your car costs.
This is a huge good conversation, but right now it says the photoelectric study is $1,500. So at that point, Chris, do we know how many lights that were deficient?
We'll know how many areas were deficient in lighting, correct? But I won't know how many lights until he starts looking at it in his design study.
But can't you make a general, not you, but can't they make a general educated ballpark? Estimate with the photometric study.
So we were only $15,000 engine We have an idea if it's gonna be a five million dollar project or five hundred thousand dollars And that's why I set up the contract as a time and material So if we get into this and he's 30% into design he comes back to me and he says look I'm looking at this and it's a possibility that we're gonna need 500 lights to throw a number That state basically that that is a 30% design correct
Well, you know, there's two ways of looking at it. One way you look at it is government. You spend $360,000, and somebody tells you, it gets all done, it's going to cost you another million dollars. And you look at a developer who's doing a subdivision, and he sends a guy around at night, and he knows that a light covers an area of 15 or 20 or 30 or 40 or whatever number of feet it is, and he says, okay, well, we're missing one here, and he counts them all up and says, approximately we need 240 lights. Maybe it's 220, maybe it's 260. And then we have some idea for a ballpark price, what Mike was talking about, before you spend 300 and some thousand dollars. I think that's what you're talking about, aren't you, Mike?
Councilmember, I think you're missing what the director is saying. This is a time and material. I understand what he's saying. But we've got a step-by-step process. This is no different than a developer does this. They ask someone to do something. They ask them to come back and say, can you do an initial estimate? Can you give me an initial sketch as to where you think your lights are? And what would that cost? And that's exactly what we're doing here.
When you do that with a contractor, and he comes back and gives you a price, you don't give him $300,000 upfront to give him the price. We're not giving him $300,000. This is time and materials.
I guess, Chris.
I've said enough. We're just asking for you to approve the entire project, because this is the estimate to do it. I guess I'm misunderstanding your question, council member.
Go ahead. Go ahead. So Steve, just maybe make it a little easier. How much money do we have to spend approximately to know how many lights that we are deficient? Do we have an idea of what that is? Because right now it says $15,000 for the photo mix study. Do we have to spend another $150,000 to get the design, to get a number, or not? It's $50,000.
I'll stop talking. But if it's $150,000, we should talk about it.
We have in the packet BCC's proposal.
I'm sorry.
I looked for that work order. I couldn't see it. It doesn't have a cost associated with it.
His proposal doesn't have pages, but it's fee and billing. 30% design is $47,000. Yes, 30% design is $47,000. If he takes it to 90%, it's another $50,000 on top of that. So for roughly $50,000, we'll know how many lights we need. Approximately how many lights? 65. 15 plus. Right.
Ed, $65,000 to know how many lights we need.
Correct. To know how many lights we need and then to give you an estimate of what it might cost.
$360,000, whatever it is.
It's an amount not to exceed $360,000. Correct. The entire project. Okay. But I have a question on the deliverables.
The order of the deliverables is... Okay, number one is the street light ownership. I get that because that's the basis of all this But why are we as the second deliverable? doing the financial ownership of the transfer And not doing the photometric analysis until we get to deliverable there no they're running concurrently It just gives you the duration per task I
If you look at this slide, that's the implementation schedule. So the photometric analysis is running pretty much at the same time as almost the 30% design. As that moves forward, then the implementation moves forward. But the due diligence they're looking at and then the analysis of ownership and transfer, that's the first step.
And I would even say we could move the photometric study back to the left.
It could move to the left and begin in February. So this timeline, by the way, I apologize, it says January. This was provided to us, but this was from when we first brought this to council back in November.
But the principal goal is to address the deficiency of the lights on the island. Correct. Okay. It's not transferring the asset. I appreciate that that's it. But the real business decision we have to make is what it's going to cost us to deal with the deficiency of the light, right, Joe? Right. That's what our customers are looking to get to, right?
And just to give a little bit of background, this has shown up on two of the surveys that we have done, and it was a high priority at both times that it came up. I agree. People wanted us to address streetlights.
Right. Okay, and Nancy's expressed his concern many times about walking down, walking in the neighborhood and feeling that it's not safe because there's not appropriate lights. So wouldn't it make sense, Chris, to look at this from a standpoint of what's going to get us to get a photometric study, basic study, and how many lights we need so then we can make a business decision on what that's going to cost the village to provide that lighting, and then we can make that decision. But right now, it seems like we're going through a lot of work not to really address what our constituents are really looking for, which is good lighting on the streets.
Well, we are addressing that, and that is the major component of this. You have two major components. You have addressing those deficient area or the dark zones and looking at how we're going to brighten those up, bring lighting into them.
But we don't have to do it in the phases of the way. We could start from the, let's find out what the light deficiency is.
Go to the next slide.
And do the analysis.
Complete the photo. That's what that is. The photo.
Right, right. Timeline is confusing.
Metric study first.
I mean, I'm not opposed to spending $60,000 to figure out how many lights we need. Correct. I think it's a lot of money, but. If that's what it costs, that's what it costs. But I would like to know if we have 250 lights and the light costs $50,000 each, which, you know, that's a lot of money. So I would like to know what that number was. And I think that's reasonable.
And you'll find that out. So these are parallel efforts here. So there's two things that we need to address the lighting deficiency. One is a physical, do we have the lights, do we not have the lights? And that's the photometric study, and do we need to put them in there? The other one is an operations and maintenance situation where our lights are very, very old, and obviously they continue to get older, and it's also who's responsible to maintain it. Right now in the special taxing district, the money goes to Miami-Dade County and then directly to FPL to maintain it. There is no entity that has a responsibility to push it besides us. And so in essence, we're double paying. This community is double paying for what they do. the special taxing district, and they pay us, Chris's folks, to go out and do the same thing because nobody from the special taxing district of the county is coming down and looking at our lights. I will guarantee you there's no one doing that. And then when it goes out, they come to us, you know, the village, to replace it. Sometimes we do it ourselves. Sometimes we go to FPL and do it. And so there's two parts. One is the capital part, which is the new lights. The other one is the operations and maintenance.
in order to get better lighting capability.
I just think, Steve, that I understand how this is being presented. I just think it would make more sense to break it out as two individual projects, one being what's the cost of the lights deficiency, which you're doing in this scope, but it's being amalgamated as one work order. It's just a little confusing, that's all.
but that's why we put it as a time and material so we can stop any one of those components at any time. I can ask them to come out and do a photometric study and stop it right there and go, okay, I have my photometric study on my data in my hand.
You have the design 30% design having been completed before the photometric study is completed.
That's what I'm saying.
The photometric study is going on through October. 100% design is done.
Now, the photometric study is all the way from doing the study to the completion of the design. That's what I'm saying.
I think that's maybe what our confusion is.
But that's a full task. But the first part of a photometric study is to go out and do your illuminations assessment. That has to happen first. You can't do a 30% design unless you know what the shortfall is. You need that data.
So if you're telling us that the photometric study is going to be completed before the design even begins.
They're not saying that. But that's what he.
Yes, it will. Yes. So that's what he's saying. That's not what's being. But that's not what this. Well, that's a. Graphic shows. But it's a categorical. Okay. Categorical. For the visual guide, it's not what it shows here. That's all we're saying. But if you're telling me that the photometric design is going to be done before any part of the design, then you're basically giving council members what to ask for. It has to be.
It has to be. To kind of expand on the bar chart here. Yes, they're doing the photometric study in the beginning, and they're going to have all the data up in the beginning. As they do their designs, it carries through because they're using that photometric study through the entire design. That's why you see it at the 30s.
90 you haven't started designing correct You can't you can't start it without a photometric Yes, it's a little confusing but guys we get we're running two Simultaneous projects is what you're doing and you just and you're presenting them as as one which is confusing so if you would break this out as two separate projects the photos the photo study is 13 grand and 13K plus the 47K for the 30% design set, that's what it's going to cost us to know how much money we're going to have to spend on lights. Yes or no? Yes. Okay. Then you have another project, which is what is this going to cost to maintain or transfer the assets and do all this other stuff, and that's going to cost XYZ amount of money, right? Yes. But we should know those two basic pieces of information approximately how much it's going to cost us to understand the asset transfer, which is approximately $50,000 based on the front slide, right?
$50,000 to understand whether we can actually even do this transfer or not, correct? And then about $65,000 to find out how many lights we need with a basic design. Correct. Okay, so that's the decision we have to make.
If you go to the next slide, first slide right before it. I guess that's what we're trying to show right there.
One last thing. If we were to call FPNL tomorrow and say to them, listen, go put a light in every dark spot on Village of Key Biscayne. Could they do that for us? No. They wouldn't put their lights on? No.
Not if you told them like that. What? Not telling them like that. Go put a light in every dark spot. They would come and tell you, you need to bring us... They would tell you, you need to bring us... the photometric study that shows where, and tell us exactly where you want those lights placed.
So you need to do the design for me. If the place is dark, you have a problem. So we have a problem all over the island.
You're taking that way out of proportion. But I think there's a good point here. I think what we're missing, you provided the solution or a diagram to get to a solution. But I think you should walk people to how the problem is. How is it, how can you get FPNL? To put up lights, what steps you have to go through, and what are the bureaucratic constraints that you have for this? People can understand that. You don't have that, and I think that that's important. You come in with a great solution, but people are asking how much is it going to cost, but people don't have a real sense of the effort that it takes for this to happen. Correct. Perhaps maybe explaining that a little bit better would help, don't you think?
So to go down that road, if you wanted a light and you called FPL and you said, I want a light, as a municipality, I have an area that needs lighting. FPL is going to tell you, you need to bring us the information of where these lights are going to go, where you want these lights. Then they're going to go look and say, do we have power? Don't we have power? We need to draw power. Tell us where we're getting the power. So you're going to have to come up with a design, give it to them, and tell them, we want to cover this entire area. It's not a matter of walking out and saying, oh, this is dark. It doesn't exactly work that way. How far these lights are spaced. It's more than just, you know, this is a dark spot. It's do I get from here to there? Do I get from there to there? Is it covering enough of the area? That's where the photometric study comes in.
I know you understand that part. We're going to have lights because the people who keep us clean have just as much right to have a street light as a storm sewer as a road or anything else. So whether it's going to cost us, Mike, in all due respect, whether it's going to cost us $100,000 or $1 million or whatever it's going to cost us, we can't basically do all these other things. Maybe we can't have to do it for stages. We can't afford it. But the people that you say are one of the priority items, it's going to be done and it should be done. And we tell people to walk and everything else. But don't tell them to walk down dark streets. So I don't think there's a question. We want to know how much it's going to cost, but no matter what it's going to cost, we've got to do it. Maybe we'll have alternative different ways, whether it's a fancy light pole, not such a fancy light pole, whether it's this kind of light or that kind of light. But we're going to have to do something one way or the other. Just a question of when and how much, but we've got to do it. We've got to budget it and tell people what it's going to cost.
Well, I'm not saying we're not going to budget it, but...
I'm just saying, to me, these engineering things, what bothers me, not spending the millions of dollars for the lights.
And yes, this is a multifaceted project where we are looking at not only the dark spots and where we need to add these lights, but we're also looking at all these special taxing districts and how to take them over so that we have one complete coverage of the entire island all under one umbrella. So yes, it's multiple projects, but we're trying to get them all under one umbrella.
In the end, I think there's three things we're trying to do. One, we're trying to fill the gaps, which I think is laudable. That's the big one. That's easy. The two is we're trying to gain control of lights so that we can control their destiny going into the future. And then three, we're then going to find out what is the best operations and maintenance solution. structure that we want to put ourselves in so i think if you really just would you know summarize it those are the three big things that we're trying to do i mean each one of them are going to operate separately but to separate it and have different people do it would then come up with a disconnected fragmented approach because in the end they all have to come together and then we have to have a a single way in which we've structured how we operate our lights right now we have you know four different taxing districts we own lights that we maintain County own lights as well, but that's not going to change because the lights are different We got spots, but you know, we want to make it to where we have a single way that we Maintain our life.
Okay folks.
We got a long way to go here as long as you have to come back to council before we make a decision and on what we're doing, on transfer of ownership? I don't think anyone here has.
Those are, that's, the ordinances would have to come back to the council for transfers.
There's three steps on here we'll have to come back to. Correct.
Okay. Resolution 10D.
There were no amendments, okay. All those in favor?
Opposed? Aye. I'm sorry, opposed? I'm opposed, yes. Okay, thank you.
His ayes are nays.
Motion carries. The next item is a resolution of the Village Council of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, authorizing the village manager to issue a work order to Black and Veatch Corporation for program management, delivery, and pre-construction services for the Resilient Infrastructure and Adaptation Program, RIP, in an amount not to exceed $308,532 and providing for an effective date. Second. Thank you.
Questions?
Yeah. Question, Roland. The program management function for the $188,000, is there any detail on that at all? Because I looked for it in the scope of work. I looked at it in the back page. I looked for it in the work order. It says there's a laundry list of stuff.
There is a description on page two, task 1.1, program management, that describes various elements.
But it doesn't have a breakout of that 186.
Actually, there is a breakdown of every task and subtask on page 10 that shows the hourly rates, the hours, and then the total budget for that particular line item.
All the blue, right, which is really difficult to read if you've got the one that looks like I got it. The ones in light blue rolling on this chart right here? Yeah, I see it. These light blue ones right up here, that makes up the 186, correct? The top nine.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, the blue part.
Correct. The light blue.
You can make it big. Look at that. So Mike, walk us through a little bit about what cash program management means. It's a big number, and it's kind of a, I'd like a little bit more detail if you could, please. Thank you.
Absolutely, and Mr. Mayor, Councilman, always a pleasure to be up here, and thank you for taking the time to review this. Yeah, so the program management is all of your monitoring, controlling, reporting. I know we consolidated the specific tasks because the specific tasks literally scheduling budgets, facilitating stakeholders for all seven active projects that are in the resilience program right now. It's the coordination, the sync meetings, it's making sure the village staff is managing the tasks that are directed towards village staff. It's updating some of the communication tools, it's maintaining the document control. It's relaying all of that information and coordinating together. So it is a bit of a catch-all for all of the things that I do on a weekly basis. If you look at the hours, I think for me it's about 32 hours a month. So it's me being dedicated to the village about one day a week, which is spread over five days. I have multiple meetings throughout the year with everybody regarding the resilience program.
So Mike, this is just more about meetings. So this is about you coordinating with things like FPL, coordinating with AT&T, coordinating with Comcast, WASDE, coordinating with all these different entities that are integrated into the projects. Yes, it's not like Clarify what it is.
It's not just you sitting on your butt doing me know and it's exactly so it's there's a people on your team So, I mean you have 100 you're not that doesn't add up to 186,000 your billable hours So there's other people within the network that are at adding to that. Correct.
So we have engineering managers. We have project support we have Was the support we have our Telecommunication support or utility underground support. They're all involved in that as well.
These are the guys that do cost estimates. These guys do talk technical analysis.
We have design oversight. We have construction, constructability, procurement.
We're looking at Are we on we're on hold currently for the current? Does undergrounding project excuse me the current stormwater projects is effectively on hold right? So what would you be doing on that project right now for zone one for a calm?
Well currently that's correct We do not have any active work order for the zone one a calm project So we don't have anything that we're doing today right what works still has to be done for that so right there is still some water and sewer coordination that a comm is doing so we're not actively engaged with them but I know that's still outstanding comcast as of. I know as of last week as I did see an email has not delivered their final extension for zone one because remember we extended. uh, just the underground portion zone one. So that still needs to be received and consolidated into the overall design. Um, so we still have some funding.
This is primarily not zone one related.
No, I think there's 5% of the entire total time allotment. 6% would be allotted towards his own one continuation, which would be,
Michael, the reason why I'm asking the question is because it's right on the list of stuff that's being procured. So it's Garden District Zone 8, alternative stormwater Zone 1 integrated stormwater plant.
But all of that needs to be touched still moving forward because you still can't just let it sit. Because if you let it sit, then if that decision does come up, then it'll be completely...
It has to be ready to launch.
Right.
We want to make sure that it's still viable.
And same thing with garden district that's being done through a benefit cost analysis right now with HMGP So we assist with your staff to make sure those numbers are correct Are you on construction oversight on that? Well, there's construction will not begin until HMGP allows for the design to be approved but then we would be following up with Procuring a contractor for construction and moving forward So the next step would be procuring a construction contractor. But right now, we're still going back and forth with FDAP and making sure that it gets approved.
Are these fees included in our understanding or the estimate that we got of what the garden district project is going to cost the village? Or is this in addition to that? I don't know if you know the answer to that.
What's that, Nancy? What's your question?
She's asking if these fees are included in the Garden District. I'm sorry? These fees are not included in the Garden District budget.
No. Okay, so when we're talking about the Garden District project and that it's, if I'm correct, 90% funded and then we have to just make up the 10% difference, these charges that we're paying to Black & Veatch for participation in that project are in addition to the 10%. I just want to make sure everyone's aware of that. That's correct.
So if you had if you had us for construction management during the construction of the garden district Which is in the contingent services not included in this work order, but and that might be a year from now So we're not concerned about that right now, but those fees would presumably be correct So with the garden district budget, we have different line items for CEI construction management and
If we get that construction budget approved, then we can procure a contractor or vendor like Black and Beach to do that work within that budget. So that would be reimbursable. The work they're doing under this work order, though, is pre that agreement with the state. So this particular work order is in addition to the construction dollars for Garden District.
Okay. One last question. The funding source on funding sources says line item budget was $308,053. So $352,000. So we're $80,000 over that number. Where's that number come from? I don't know.
I'm not sure.
Look on page four. It says funding sources, GL code 301, 41531, 31155. That's 308, right? This work order is not for 308.
This work order is for $308,532. Oh, excuse me. I thought it was $380.
I apologize. That's me. I made a mistake. Excuse me.
Okay question and it is time and material and just for the record we did come in, I think $50,000 under the previous work order.
Extended it 2 months so the question is who you're going to build tonight for your time. Tonight is a job you're going to bill tonight, $1,000 for being here tonight. Which job do you bill for that tonight? In other words, does that go to the alternate plan? Does it go to job one, ACOM? He's not billing us for tonight. Sorry? He's not billing us. We have a, he comes for free?
Yeah. Or for business development offices. It's a business development. This is not a cost.
This is overhead. For tonight, yes. Normally, my question is, how do you determine when you come here, who you're billing? That's all. In other words, you're doing all these various projects, all these various things. How do you allocate the cost between the various tasks, for lack of a better word, that you work on?
So if I was coming to next month's council meeting, or let's just say one of the multiple council workshops, those council workshops would either be part of that program management task, or if it's a specific for... utility undergrounding, it would be under that utility undergrounding budget, or if it was for the alternative. But in other words, it's in here. Yes.
It's in the 308.
And those dollars are funded.
How is it determined for which different task it happens? I mean, he might come here and sit there while meeting and say nothing, which is fine. There's nothing to say. But we're going to cost us 800 or 900 bucks for him to do that. Which task does that get allocated to? That's all I'm asking. How do you determine which task your time gets allocated to? I mean, normally, that's all I'm saying to you.
Not to speak for you, but it's based on the work that he's doing. So if it's more associated with program management, it would go under that task. If it's more associated with the alternative tasks, it goes under that task.
He comes to a meeting, Roland, and nothing happens. He's here. He's going to get paid for his time. How do we allocate the thing between different tasks? That's all. But it's already here.
Two items on that is, one, if I go to a meeting and I don't say anything to that meeting, I'm going to adjust my time appropriately. But there's also the information that I'm gathering from that meeting that then I later use to speak with, let's just say for the alternative stormwater, with the engineer as we do oversight for the engineer. So that's still a valuable part of the time. Secondly, we provide our timesheets and our invoices on a monthly basis to be reviewed by village staff. So if there's something that looks out of whack, then we would obviously have that discussion and we can revise it before
No, he's not saying that there's anything out of whack.
He's just saying that... How do you, you know, how do we help? I mean, obviously I'm concerned when I'm looking at the alternate bids, not the alternate bids, the alternate costs for Black & Veatch so far, which you're charging to the alternate plan. You charge $11,000 before, I guess, October 1st. So, on October 31st, you charge another $8,000. As of the end of the thing, you have $28,000 left from November 1st on. And I think it ends somewhere around April. But based on what you're spending so far, it doesn't look like that money is going to go that far. So that's where my concern is, so you understand. Does anybody understand what I'm talking about? Yeah. I do. Because the council approved, I think, $49,777, I think, was your contract for that. And I'm telling you, what you spent so far, that's left as of October 1st. November 1st, excuse me. And my question is based on the way the money was being spent to this date. Will that last for the end of the thing? Or what do we have to do at this point? That's where I'm coming from. we're gonna come back and say, it's not enough. Although, I thought it was too much to start with. That's where we'll go.
I'm just gonna give them more money.
This contract goes for 12 months. But this is not for that phase, is it? That's specifically.
No, but this is, this has some alternative analysis plan. They have a 3977. Is that included in this? On the GIT. Yeah, is that included in this?
Yeah, it's part of it.
No, no.
That was separate. If you recall, in the last Ad Hoc Committee meeting, you all gave us the approval to go ahead and create a separate work order with Black Lives Matter.
That's what I'm saying. Okay, I understand. So my question is,
It doesn't appear to me, based on your initial thing of the $49,977 or whatever the hell it was, dollars for the alternate, based on the way the money is being expended, that there's enough money left going at that rate to finish the thing in April. That's where I'm coming from.
No, we just started on that work order as of December 20th.
No, you built, no. That work order you built before October, $11,000. In October, you built 8,000. I've seen the invoice. $8,000. You have $28,000 left. No, no.
That's a different work order.
That's a different work order. So that would have been on the previous work order. That was on the previous work order. Yes, that was the previous work order.
You applied that to the 49,000. Believe me, I saw your invoice.
No, Councilman.
Listen, I have my glasses. I read it. I'm brain dead. My memory's really bad. When it comes to numbers and money, I remember everything, okay? And believe me, it was $49,000.
The current work order, I believe it's 5A, is $49,000, but we haven't invoiced anything on that.
$49,777. Yes. Okay. And you have $28,000 in change left. No. Your last bill, which is due this month, is $8,000 in change. Believe me, I read the whole thing. And you have all this money that you said before, which is not part of the work order. What did you charge us for? I saw it.
No, our last invoice for November is submitted today, and that was for work order four.
Well the last thing I saw was through October 31st.
How about we do this council member Mike will you be with us all the way through the end of the GIT project without charging us more money.
Yes. Unless there's additional scope. And my job is to manage our budget.
The answer is going to be yes. Unless you ask them to do more things.
Well, I don't ask them to do anything, really. Okay. I'm not asking them to do anything.
But that's how it works. You ask them for more, you got to charge them.
I'm not asking them to do anything.
But that's all it is talking about here, Ed.
I understand that. Believe me, I'm not going to ask them for anything. What we've asked you to date, is that better? Yes. Joe, what we've contracted to date, not changing anything, answer Steve that no matter how much more time or effort you're gonna spend, you're not gonna charge us more than that. Is that correct? That's what he just said. I'm not sure he just said that.
For the alternative analysis, we have a scope of $49,000 and that's what I'm spending for that scope. No matter what.
And we just today issued that or submitted that purchase order request in the system. So he hasn't even gotten that to be able to bill to it. I couldn't sign off an invoice of his against that. I don't have a PO in hand.
I saw your initials. All right.
On the matter before us.
All those in favor?
Opposed?
Aye. Nay. Thank you. Motion carries. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
A capital project authorizing resolution of the Village Council of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, approving the purchase of upgrades to the Village Community Center closed circuit television system security system from ER Tech Systems Incorporated, doing business as broadcast systems in an amount not to exceed $42,108.74, providing for authorization, providing for implementation, and providing for an effective date.
Move. Questions? Have been moved.
And the second? Second. Thank you.
Moved and seconded. Any bids on this? Yes. Alex question for you. The question is was there this project was bid out or not.
Yes, so phase one of the project we went out for bids we have 3 competitive quotes this was a selective vendor.
Okay, while I have you up there, I know it's not Scope of this but Could any of this be helpful that if we ever want to go forward with doing? The ability to televise in that upper room and at the community center Could this be any help for that or not?
No, this is a separate project Security camera systems. Yeah, that's a separate project itself Okay, mr. Mayor that that projects moving forward
forward separately, but this is just intended for the security cameras, that's it.
Because when we do stuff over there, nobody can see it, it's difficult, so that would be great that we could have that other option. Okay, any questions on 10F?
All those in favor?
Opposed? Motion carries.
Okay, let's go to Mayor and Council real quick here, because we added some things up. A lot of people added a lot of stuff.
Potential for recreational space at Presbyterian Church and possible improvements. Mayor Roscoe, your item.
So I put this on there is to see if the council wants to give the manager direction to look at that a little bit further. And there's the issue of a bathroom. And The Presbyterian Church has a bathroom out there that could be, that already exists, that maybe we could convert that. So I'd like to see if we can, you know, authorize a manager, start this conversation, see what the possibility is of eking out some recreational space and to see if it's possible to do the bathroom and It's not an easy thing. It's complicated because you have to figure out who's going to own it and who's going to operate it and who's going to clean it and all that stuff. But based on we were there for an opening. Were you there? No. But those people are moving. They're up to second grade, and they're going to continue going up. So it might be a good thing.
Sounds good to me. We've been trying to get this done for a very long time. Well, they've changed. Very much like St. Agnes. It's new ownership. It's new ownership. Yeah. If it's possible to align something along the line of Bayfront access, because they've got that little area behind, which is very nice, with the ballpark, that would be nice.
You know where they built that tiki hut? If you're facing that way to the right, there's some space there that they're really not using, and up to where the basketball courts are. So, you know, maybe we could get, you know, girls volleyball in there. Maybe get a beachfront park there. That would be the ideal.
And before we talk to them and everything else, and we volunteer because it needs a lot of improvements and everything else and back and forth. I didn't want to do it, but again... The things have changed there twice since then. So I think maybe Steve would even talk about a beachfront park. Whatever you can do, just talk to them, see if you can get out of them. That might be interesting to both of us. It might be a great opportunity. It's the best piece of land on Key Biscayne available.
Absolutely. One other idea that was trying to gain traction a long time ago was if Presbyterian Church North Park could be secured, could it be aligned... in better space planning with St. Agnes Field.
Remove the fence.
Remove the fence and make a better use of kind of a unified tract that included Presbyterians and St. Agnes both.
Yeah, we'll have to get the Presbyterians and Catholics together on that one. But yes, I think there's some space in that parking lot that I think we could discuss with the church.
Yeah, I think the board also wants you to look at the big picture, but also the smaller pieces. Okay, that's direction. On the next item, Mr. Miranda, I'm getting very impatient about Harbor Drive.
Move it right along. Mayor, I apologize on behalf of Miami-Dade County's public works review. They have our plans. They are reviewing them. We just submitted new comments back to them, and we're waiting for them to give them back to us.
Okay, give me a timeline.
We're meeting with Miguel Soria tomorrow. Why don't we give him a timeline after that? Can we do that, Mr. Mayor?
Yes. Can you get Commissioner Regalado involved in this?
Let's hear what he has to say.
This is obscene that it's taken so long.
I completely agree, which is why we're meeting with him tomorrow. And if we don't get an adequate answer tomorrow, I'll inform you, and then if we need to go to Commissioner Regalado, we will. But this has taken a long time.
Yes. I get beat up on this all the time.
But Chris can't say any more than he's saying now. Miguel's going to tell us tomorrow.
Okay, so... Be things as they may, okay. What are the steps involved to get to getting that roadway built?
Once the county approves the designs, we take that back to them, to the full commission for approval of the joint partnership agreement, which is the funding for the project. So once we have that in place, and they also have to approve our bidding process, we'll present that to them. They'll approve all that, and then we can put the project out on the street. We, on our side, are... pretty much ready to go.
We just March, April, May, June, July.
The very latest, I would think, would be no later than June. But we have to go to the commission.
So now the plans are in their hands. They are they are reviewing them. They haven't given you a final K. Once they give you a final K, you got to go to the BCC.
Yes. for the joint partnership agreement to be approved by them.
Okay, so not because of anything technical, but because... That's the agreement, the grant money, the joint partnership agreement money to be approved. Okay.
And then we'll have to confirm it with council.
And that is in the order of how much?
$1.9 million.
1.9. So it's taking us forever, but it's 1.9 million of somebody else's money that we're going to use. Correct.
And we put out the bid after that? Correct. And then, I guess, what's the time frame to complete the project at that point? Just approximately. Yeah.
The project approximately is a nine-month project. Okay.
Thank you.
After the after the put out to bid after after the notice to proceed is issued. So once we issue that notice to proceed to the contractor approximately nine months.
Yes. So the. All together Joe and figure. All right.
Let's do.
Nancy soccer.
The next item was the, well, are you?
No, no, let me do it this way, yeah.
Okay.
Soccer.
Soccer program structure, asking the advisory board. Okay.
As we all know, there have been lots of, there have been issues that have arisen throughout the year, and last year, actually, with the soccer program, and I think right now, because the current Contract is up in August, if I'm not sure, or September. If we want to make any changes at all, the time to think about that and start the process would be now. So I would like to task the Athletic Advisory Board with reviewing the structure of their program right now and seeing if they would advise that any changes be made to the structure of the program and report back to us at the next council meeting so that we can decide whether we want to make any changes.
Yeah, I think my item was similar or maybe adds on to that. I wanted to confirm when is the contract over and when is the right time to put these changes in the contract so that the RFP goes out and the bid goes out to would-be bidders. Maybe, Todd, if you can just kind of walk us through the process, the time frame, the timelines that are required.
There are different, just to give a little background, there are different ideas out there floating around about... And one of the ideas, and it hasn't been discussed yet, but one of the ideas is to keep the current subcontractor doing the club level and giving the intramural to another service provider. That would be one way of handling it so that people could decide how they want to go. Another idea would be to have someone do the intramural level and to have, like Pinecrest does, who has more space than we do, let other service providers offer club level and that the parents who want to put their kids in that level have their own agreements with these people and let them rent out independent contractor space and have their programs independent of the village. And there's a whole discussion that could be had about that. But I think that it should go through the athletic advisory board first and let them come to us with what they think.
Nancy, that's not a contract modification. That's an entire...
I'm not talking about a contract. I'm talking about a modification of the whole structure of the program. Right now, we have one subcontractor who's doing the whole program. And I think that there should be a discussion about whether or not that's a good way to go.
And you want the advisory board to give you that information?
Yeah, I want them to explore it. They can have meetings and have the public come and see if they can get some consensus about what...
I can support that. Do other sports fall within the same ambit of analysis?
We don't have one subcontractor who's doing a whole other program that's really out of the village's control. He's running the whole program.
Does this ultimately go to the question of whether What we call a rec league ought to be separate and apart from a competitive travel league. That's where this goes.
It's not just a travel league. It's an elite, it's an academy level. And all I can compare it to is when you want to learn tennis, you go and you take a tennis class with a clinic or something. But if you want your child to become a professional tennis player, you send them to Bola Terry, right? Or the same with hockey and the same with others. And that's the way it's been with soccer here for many years until relatively recently. And everyone has their own approach. My own feeling is, philosophically, the villages is responsible for providing intramural level for everybody. And if parents choose to have their children to go to the academy level and that higher level, they should
But at the basis, I think the discussion is we should have the athletic board kind of look at this and explore this. And I think they have been exploring it and they have been looking at it. And I wanted Todd to kind of help us understand the process today. When is the right time to do that in order to capture what we're looking at so that we can do it in time for this bidding process or this RFP process?
Previously, we've timed it to start in September. with the goal of awarding in December and having whichever organization is selected to be on board in March and prepared to do tryouts in May. So they're setting the team for the- But that's for club level, isn't it?
I mean, why would you do tryouts in May for Intramura for the next season?
Right now it's combined, so that's why it has to follow this timeline. Um, intramural has multiple seasons. Um, but in my tenure, we've always had somebody managing the soccer program, not the village.
Right.
Um, different groups, different people, but it's never been run by the village directly. Um, but we're open to suggestions. We're open to improvements and we're open to feedback. And, um, um, I'll get with the athletics advisory board. We're working to schedule their next meeting, and I'll add this to their agenda if that's the direction of council. And we'll get their feedback, and they will advise the council as is their mission.
And can you confirm when the contract is up? September. It is. This one.
It's not up. The renewal period.
Right. The renewal period. If nothing is done, it would be up for renewal. There wouldn't be an alternative, really, right?
Exactly. There wouldn't be time for this one-year renewal. What we do is we do an evaluation internally of every contract when it comes up for renewal.
And I think what's important, Todd, if you could, and you just mentioned it before, is because the way in which the seasons, because we have multiple seasons, go, there could be a way that we would go from month to month. Is that the current contractor would be? continuing to go, and if we choose to go in a different direction, we would overlap, and that's what we've done previously. What we don't want is we don't want a break in service, right? Because you don't want, there's just not a point in time you can say, stop, and someone else takes over.
Right, but there is the beginning of the school year, so from an intramural standpoint, I may be wrong, but it seems to me that from an intramural standpoint, people come back for summer, they start school, they start soccer, And if there's going to be change in any of it, that would be a good time to make that change as to that level.
But like we said, it's like a 60-40 sweat combined. And that wouldn't work for the 60%. It would obviously work for the 40%, but it wouldn't work for the 60%. That would have to be factored into however we proceeded.
And this combined structure, does this combined structure cause the intramural to also operate practically 13 months out of the year?
They have seasons that, and no, and... Um, we do have other programs that operate as long as they do and have elite groups. Field hockey is an elite program that has kids go off to college and they, but they don't have both combined.
They do combine meaning intramural and elite.
Yeah. They do all ages, um, for, for the same duration. And, um, it's, it's, it's great program. Uh, Florence, he does a great field hockey program and it's, Well received, but like I said, we're open to the suggestions of this body and the Athletics Advisory Board.
I think it's important that for the Advisory Board to have the support of our communications department to make sure that the public knows that they should come and weigh in to the meeting so they can have a very full discussion.
We'll encourage people to do that.
There's one other thing I'd like to suggest. Just because I read the newspapers, they're having the same discussion in Rhode Island and New Jersey and California and in different places. And they're struggling with the same fulcrum between relaxed recreation and high achieving athletics at a competitive level. My impression is that municipalities and counties are making these decisions in real time intending to maintain status quo, but I'm not sure that that's right. I mentioned this. Maybe you could do a little research and we can take into account what other people are thinking and why they're making the decisions they're making.
I mean, I think to what Nancy stated earlier, we do have some geographic issues that make it more challenging for parents to opt for different options. If you're in Pinecrest... Yes, if you're in Pinecrest, there's a lot of regional options that could provide you different levels of service, where in Key Biscayne, We know most of our residents would prefer to have their needs met here in Key Biscayne if at all possible. That's not always going to be possible, but that's the desire of our population.
Wait, wait, wait. Just excuse me for just one second. How many children are we talking about roughly?
1,050. 1,050.
Compared to all the other sports that we provide, what's the next closest one as far as population?
Volleyballs in the 250, 220.
So this is astronomically bigger than all the other ones?
Yeah, absolutely. Ed, you were going to say? To me, I think it really comes down to what is the village's role? As I think you brought up, is it intramural? Or is it academy level? What should we provide? What should we provide everything? And I think that's the decision the council makes. And you go from there. And that's the main thing. And I guess you might need more information in order to determine how you can separate that, where you can't separate it, why it makes sense to combine it. Again, I don't know the answers. But I think these are the questions. And I think the questions have to be answered.
I think there's pros and cons to all formats.
I'm sorry. Go ahead. You also have the whole issue, just the fact that we have two fields, basically, right? So we'd have to program the elite kids into our fields if we choose to provide that program. Is that what you're saying?
If the model, you were kind of referring to where other entities, multiple other entries, yes, that would be a scheduling challenge. Because that you would have to be constantly evaluating how many students have enrolled versus them versus the other group to see who gets the allocation per capita because you don't want to say, hey, this group, we're going to give you the Village Green North and you get the Village Green South, but then you have 100 kids and you have 500 kids. That doesn't, you know.
But preliminarily, Mike, it could be just a bifurcation with the, maybe we have our current operator do all the club level as he's doing now, but not do the intramural. And there's a lot involved in this more than just numbers of players. There's community spirit. There's division that's being caused. There's feelings all over the place on both sides. I agree.
I'm just thinking logistically that the challenge is a lot of just the resource of the field that becomes real.
There's significant logistical challenges. Some of the kids that were here before you tonight were in intramural. We're intramural for a while, and then a coach said, you know what? You've gotten to a level. I think you're ready to move up. And since it's an internal program, they just pass them on up.
But they could do that anyway. I mean, it doesn't mean they couldn't do it. We've done that. We've had so many soccer players come out of this island, and we didn't have the club level on the island over the years. So I'm not saying it would be easy. I'm just saying it is doable. It is doable.
I will. But my 2 cents worth and I'm all for looking at this very closely. I don't think it's going to be solved. That quickly I think that this is a very complex issue I don't think that will be ready for what is this September to say yes or no I mean.
But I think the ask for the September is at the very least to have the VAB look at the changes.
Oh, yeah, but I'm saying I think that the VAB is going to have to think about it long and hard. They're going to have to look at all these options, the issues that Mike was just mentioning, the issues that Nancy was mentioning. So let's try to be realistic. You know, I think it's a worthwhile goal to start, but I think this is a major undertaking And it's going to probably take us more time than we think.
So can we give a direction and give maybe three months? Give some kind of time limit so we come back with a report and have the opportunity to have many meetings with different people and workshops.
Yes. OK. I like that idea because, yeah, let's be realistic.
It'd be good to have not just a recommendation, but a rationale for the recommendation, pros and cons.
Mr. Mayor, are we giving the task to the VAB, or are we giving the task to the administration?
Well, I think it's got to be a dual thing, because you just can't be absent from it either. But it's directed to the VAB. Okay, but you all have to, you all have to weigh in.
We'll fully support it, no doubt, but I just want to make sure, you know, is it their ultimate responsibility? We provide, obviously.
No, no, I think it's their ultimate responsibility to come back with some rationale. Oh, that's what I'm asking, yes, sir. Yeah, and then you guys can evaluate it and, you know, say a piece on it, too.
Yeah, we'll move along.
When it comes to council, yeah.
Okay, I think we're clear.
Can we just bifurcate two? One is the grand plan. Right? The other one is to, at the minimum, review the language that we deferred today.
No, we already were. We're already doing it.
I just want to make sure that it's clear that it's two different parts. Right.
Right. Two assignments.
Yes. I mean, just generally while we're here, I thought the language was pretty good. Does anybody have serious questions?
But the advisory board.
I'm not in it day to day. No, no, no. That's not. I'm just saying after reading it.
It looked good. It addressed a lot of the concerns. I might suggest that it does address many things, but I'm not in the day-to-day.
One of the shortcomings of it is everything was self-analysis and evaluation by the operator. And even the review committee for complaints was going to be composed of people that he selected. So I'm not sure where the balance is. I don't know. I'm just saying those are my
Well, here's a devil's advocate observation. My first reading, I thought it crept surprisingly into what I consider to be traditional coach discretion. We played sports. I never heard of anything like what I read in that thing today.
That's why those things came up, because there were problems.
So the question of whether there were problems or allegations of problems is also a question. And the idea of reacting to, I don't know what you would call it, a witch hunt, let's say, just for sake of, you know, that may be germane. That was my first reading.
For the record, Frank, the complaints weren't limited to one person.
I appreciate it.
Okay.
I mean, we're not an adjudicative body here on that. There are questions. I don't know the truth underneath all of those questions.
Okay. The main question, what is our responsibility and to whom in your academy as well? Or both.
Just because I'd like to know how much the math is, what is the total budget for this program?
Over a million.
Over a million dollars.
That doesn't come to us.
We don't... How much does the village contribute?
Nothing they contribute to the village in addition in excess of 200,000 there's been no there's been no We the not accounting, but what do you call it?
There is accounting
They have a software system where they run their operation. I have administration access to it I can monitor everything they do all their communications all their fine financial trans transactions They make a current 10% contribution That's our last contract
Okay, so just make sure I clearly understand. We as the village do not contribute any money to the program. Is that the answer? Yes or no?
We facilitate resources, but not financial.
Okay, so we provide the field. And we maintain the field. And we maintain the field. Okay. Outside of that and your time and energy and the staff's energy, there's no direct. No.
That's important, yeah. Yeah.
And just to be clear, so in part of what comes back to us, Councilmember, is we get a 10% field maintenance back to us with the ability to go to 15% after the second year, right?
On gross revenue? Yes.
But I'm getting, just so you know, I'm getting complaints about the fees being charged and how things are going, and people have questions about And we don't have answers because we're not running that program. And you may have access, but we don't.
The fees went to the advisory board. The fees did go to the advisory board. They do annually. And I'm not saying that there's not issues with the fees. But I'm saying there was a public process for the fees. I just want to make sure that's reflected.
You get a P&L for this thing? Yes. So you know exactly what they charge, what their expenses are, and what their net profit is?
They presented their entire budget to the Athletics Advisory Board.
Was that expense just passed on to the resident?
It's never been audited.
If it wasn't passed on to the resident, they weren't doing a good job. If they had 10% fat in their program, and they could absorb a 10% increase in cost, then I would be alarmed.
I guess the question is, did they raise their fees alongside our raising our fees?
Because as did field hockey. And we're going to follow that example.
We raised the fees to our residents.
We did.
Do we have a right to get a P&L from them?
Yes, we do, in the contract. Sorry?
It's not just fees.
It's not a budget, a P&L. I know we have a, what's that?
The profit and loss is not just the budget.
I don't you'd have to look it has to look at the contract the exact language in other words what you really want to find out I think Mike will answer your question you look at the P&O you see what they're making from the thing it's a reasonable amount that it's fine it's an outlandish amount but it's not fine if they're not making enough then they have to charge more or be more efficient that's all does that profit would the profit and loss reflect all the fees that are paid on the side for all the tournaments and things no is that standard practice with all the
If you went to Pinecrest Pannier, it's the- George Cost Plus.
But in Pinecrest, it's not run by the village. It's between you and the subcontractor. Here, this is really a village program.
It's a contracted out village program.
Right. That's different. That's different, I think.
A real P&L would include everything.
Yeah.
It'd be a balance sheet of P&L.
Okay.
So those are two assignments to the advisory board, two separate assignments.
Understood. You got it? Yep. Magistrate.
special magistrates legal review council member stoner your item i'm just gonna i'll take it um so council member stoner had brought this up um and we conducted a survey of of cities in dade county on whether or not they had a magistrate board or a magistrate officer um key biscayne today as you guys know has a magistrate board um out of the we had we Our survey, we have 29 of the cities here. And out of the 29 cities, 23 of them have hearing officers or magistrates, not the boards. So the majority in Miami-Dade County is for there to be a magistrate as opposed to a board. And the magistrate typically is a lawyer or a retired lawyer who sits and hears cases. And they're typically compensated. Sometimes they're not, but usually they are. Again, today in Key Biscayne, we have a board that's non-compensated. We do have certain requirements sit on the board. But there's been a question posed, should we shift to a magistrate or stick with the board? If the council wants to proceed with this change, we would have to amend our code.
What do you recommend?
You know, I think that it's purely a policy decision. I think that the magistrate system works well with a hearing officer who understands the rules of, you know, is typically a lawyer that's trained and understands how to rule. I mean, we work in both systems. I do think that having a magistrate who's a lawyer is helpful at times. So I mean, on balance, I think we are most comfortable with the magistrates, but that's what I would say. I wouldn't give a pure recommendation, but we're really more comfortable with magistrates because we work with them the most.
Have we had problems with the magistrate board over the years?
Over the years, the magistrate board has operated fine. I think that Council Member Stoner was on the board. I think that recently we had a situation where the board made a determination that was appealed, and the court was not happy with that. the way the board conducted the hearing. And I think that's what prompted Council Member Stoner to bring this up. And we do do training with the board. But again, not all the board members are attorneys. They're all intelligent people. And they follow, you know, they rule maybe they don't follow the law to a T. You know, maybe Council Member Stoner can give her experience. But overall, we've had a positive experience over the years.
That's the first time in 30 years we had a problem?
I wouldn't say it's the first time, but it's been the exception. I mean, we've generally not had any issues. I mean, we've been appealed to court on a number of occasions, and we've been affirmed. I mean, this was unique that we got reversed, and it was truly the exception.
But we got slammed.
We did. The court was not happy that the board did not allow the violator really to present their case. And my partner, Jose, who sits as the board attorney, said, please let them, and this is in the transcript of the hearing, please let them present the case. The board said no, kind of just dismissed it and just said, we just want to proceed.
So you provided an attorney for each hearing?
So we provide an attorney for each hearing. And there's two different models with that, by the way. When you have a magistrate board, you typically have an attorney that sits with the board. When you have a magistrate officer, usually either the attorney will prosecute the case in front of the magistrate, So, like, my office would prosecute. Or you could have them advise the magistrate, but that's unusual. So usually when you have a board, you have the attorney sit with the board, like me sitting here. When you have a magistrate, you have the attorney actually presenting the case instead of the staff. It's a little bit different.
The error that occurred was simply an error, an egregious error. I don't know that a shift in the form of the function would alter... would prevent that error.
Yeah, I mean, if there was a magistrate that didn't allow it to happen, the court probably equally would have slammed the magistrate on it.
That's true. But this is my problem with it. The error was for a lack of understanding. It appeared to me from reading the case, the opinion, a lack of understanding of what the function was. of that board sitting there at that time. Because I believe that the result, if they had let them put on their case and made a finding of fact, there could have been an entirely different result. And it had to do with our code and the type of things that we have lots of issues with. I'm not sure what we're accomplishing by having a board other than people want to participate and it's an honor to participate. I mean, I did it for 13 years. I loved it. But...
But are you saying it's a procedural issue?
Yes, yes. And I think if you have a lawyer up there, a retired lawyer, an administrative lawyer, a trial lawyer, someone with some understanding of what the point is, which is finding the facts so that if someone disputes or doesn't like the outcome and they appeal, there's the proper record for the appellate court to say whether they applied the law correctly or not.
I think we talked about this last time. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think it was a $50,000 number that you sort of budgeted to have a magistrate from be appointed and operated if we went to a law firm and said, hey, we want to hire somebody to do this?
No, it's typically not that high. For a magistrate, it varies. And I can tell you, for example, some just charge $165 per hearing. Okay? Some charge as much as $750 per hour. I mean, so it really varies. Depends on who you negotiate with. So, yes.
But I do think we have in the community plenty of retired lawyers. Trial lawyers who would be, and we could have two magistrates. They can alternate, so it didn't always have to be one person, who would be more than happy to do a little bit of work and have something to do.
And get paid.
And get paid.
Yeah. And those same people could serve on a board as well. It seems to me that the selection of who sits on the board is key.
You could also change that. In looking at the code, our magistrates are residents that possess outstanding reputations for civic pride, interest, integrity, responsibility, and business or professional ability. I mean, you could be more specific as to the criteria.
One thing that sometimes arises where there's more than one person and also supported by a staff attorney, That may be a point of better professionalism, better judgment, because more people are sharing the decision, and they're supported by a professional who's there to advise. That's not necessarily the only way to get to the right result, but that does happen. On the other hand, the nature of these questions are purely fact questions. There's not a lot of equity associated with these decisions. That's your experience, right?
There isn't a lot of equity, but my experience is that's not how those decisions are made. I think equity plays a big part in it in the way decisions are made.
What's the real issue? Are we taking on risk or liability by not operating this in a manner? Are we going to get sued?
Generally speaking, on a liability perspective, there is a way that people can challenge it code enforcement actions that were considered to be inordinately burdening one's property. That doesn't happen very often. In this particular case, we did receive a threat, actually. It's called a Byrd-Harris Act, through that. Generally speaking, when they appeal, there's no attorney's fees or damages in those types of appeals. What happens is if the court finds that the board was incorrect, like in this case, they remand the matter back to the board for another hearing. That's what typically happens.
What I hear you saying, Chad, is that our real risk here is having to hire your firm to come in and represent us because we got sued or our case was appealed. So I think there's two. And there's a cost structure.
Yeah, now there's two. Number one is, yes, you have to pay for the appeal, right? Number two is, if the violation is not upheld, then the person keeps to continue to do the violation if it's not handled correctly, even though we think there was a violation. I think that's...
Okay, so when we got, so to speak, slammed, what did that cost us? I don't know offhand what the number was. $10,000?
The boat is still there.
Oh, the boat's still there, okay. Yeah, I don't know the number offhand, but it's... These things can get expensive because eventually they go up to the appellate courts. There's briefing, there's oral argument. But again, let me just finish. It hasn't happened. Out of all the times, I would say we've only had a handful of these over the years that I can think of. We actually just had a recent, another one. We'll see if the... Because a lot of times what happens is... People file an appeal just to preserve the issue, but then they don't proceed with the brief. Actually, I think Mr. London maybe did that many years ago. So we do get that. Did he pay you, though?
I don't know.
I know he didn't proceed with the briefing of it. So we get that often. So this was one which was unique that we actually went to court. Another one was that I can think of the helipad case that we've heard about. That was one that stemmed through a code enforcement violation that went up and was litigated up to the third DCA. But those are rare. What I'm driving at is if
We think that the world is getting more litigious, which it probably is. Would it make financial sense for us to hire somebody, put them there so we don't have to get lawyers involved?
Well, I think you can't control it, but I think what you're suggesting is maybe a magistrate would make a cleaner ruling and would prevent future litigation. Would mitigate a risk.
Let me give you another, Mike, which you might appreciate.
Yeah.
So let's say, for argument's sake, this would never happen. Let's say code violation came to your house and said, you know what? You got stones in front of this well. Yeah. And here's a violation. Yep. And you went to the appeals board and said, listen, I got a problem. I mean, if I put dirt down like you're supposed to, It becomes mud. So I got to have this thing here. The magistrates can say, hey, the law says you got to, stones aren't good there. I'm sorry, but you're in violation. The three people sitting in the magistrate board say, no, we understand that, Mike. You know what? We'll defer this thing and hopefully we can change the thing and not fine you because they understand they're not just strictly a magistrate saying this is the law or not the law. So I think that's part of the pros and cons that you're going to get in the thing. So I think it's much more neighborly and much more civil to have a magistrate board than a magistrate. A magistrate might be more official, might be more legal, might be more accurate. But as far as a community getting together and trying to live together, compatible with our neighbors, and work together, I think a magistrate board works. And you loved it for 13 years. Get back on, baby.
I just want to say but you know, sometimes you can't control the appeals like we had one recently. We'll see if they brief it where there was a they were found in violation of erecting a fence without a permit. And the board found that they were in violation, and they appealed it to court. Can't control that. I mean, I don't know if they'll brief it. We'll see. We're in that period. But this happens. So it sounds like the selection committee is the most important part of this, Frank, right?
Getting the right people to do the right jobs.
You need a lawyer from their firm either way.
Right.
But that already happens, right?
Yeah. And at the hearing, there's court costs effectively, right? So the costs are recouped at that hearing on those violations.
Okay. What do we want to do, if anything?
Go ahead and vote.
No, it's not a vote. You brought it up as a suggestion. Do we want to continue to pursue it in a formal manner? You want to bring back a resolution?
My sense is that no one's really interested in that for the reasons stated, so we can drop it.
I think what comes out of this is proper selection of magistrates. They've got to be the right people.
And we have an attorney from your firm there all the time. Who sits to advise the board, correct.
Yeah, but what he said was they ignored him. They ignored him the last time.
He or she and maybe it's worth you guys seeing a report of the cases from the board and then and you know just so you get a nice feel for what they do I mean that's in my recollection I don't ever remember you know the staff presenting hey we've had X amount of code compliance complaints we resolve these these ones to the board so you can kind of get a flavor and then we can even say this was appealed not I mean just you have an idea to study it could could we to Nancy's point can we.
Just, you know, put into our code or whatever that you have to have these qualifications in order to be selected.
Yes, we can do that.
We do. We.
That makes sense.
OK. We can change our qualifications. One of you work and look at that, and that's the first step.
OK. Would it make sense that the person's a lawyer? Reference to the fact that due process and rules of procedure apply, a reminder.
You have to understand what due process is.
If they're not the right people, they've got to be the right people. I think, too, when you're dealing with neighbors, My instinct is is that it's easier if it's more than one person to deliver bad news Mike Bracken your item.
Yes, sir I just wanted to bring up the concept that we are gonna go out to have these the to prod Excuse me to bifurcate the project as we discussed previously to make sure that we have the ability to bid out the undergrounding process as a separate entity and from the stormwater process as a separate entity and make sure that it's clear to staff that they know that we can do this and that we're set up with all the documents and all the rest of the procedural requirements to be able to do this.
We are. Are you saying, Mike, to go out and bid it today?
I'm suggesting that we get all our ducks in a row and be able to prepare to go and bid yes.
So you're not saying to bid today?
The undergrounding.
You are saying to bid? Yes, sir. On phase one?
You're talking about phase one right now?
Phase one, yeah, to make sure that we're prepared to go out and bid there. Prepared to do it? Prepared and I think the council should discuss bidding it, yes.
No, no problem. But you're talking about the same place where supposedly these pipes would go.
I just want to know a number. I think we need to get a very good handle on the number.
I'm just asking if it's going to be in the same place. Yes.
And I think that's a fair question, and I think we need to move forward because otherwise we'll just be stuck. Can I add a friendly amendment to that?
Yeah, and Fernando, I also know that there are potentially... just just this conversation there's there's there are some potential issues that we GIT does to say hey do we want to do XYZ right that we may have to modify our drawings but we should know where we are relatively in but in a budget number and I think Steve's probably gonna make some comments we can put together
project if that is the choice we want to do obviously there's work to do we would have to pull it out of the existing integrated design and prepare it to go forward as you and I spoke before I recommend we don't do that as we're going through the process of making decision about what stormwater system we would put in there this design has been developed with the current plan as we know it This plan that as we're going through, Grant, we had just initially got the modeling completed. We're not anywhere near developing a concept. I mean, he's got a concept in mind, but he's got to put it on paper. That'll likely modify what we currently have because the stormwater pipes, the pumps, the wells would be in a different location. Potentially. So, yes, it can be done. My recommendation is that it's not done that we focus our efforts on Zone 8 and also on the other portions of the island. And we will be bringing that forward on January 2nd at the workshop to do that. I think that we take a risk by creating a separate project and trying to do that separately as we're trying to weigh how we want to address the stormwater.
So, but Steve, just to be clear, we could at this time separate the documents and be in the position where we could bid it if we chose.
We could. It would take some time to untangle it. All right. But we could. Okay.
So if the will.
Go ahead.
Does the GIT analysis have any involvement with the underground news?
It could, and what Steve's pointing out is that the drawings may have to change to deal with where they would decide to put additional power or additional pumps or things.
But what they're coming to with us now in terms of deliverables does not include- No.
Okay.
But the concept they've delivered so far would show a very minimum interference with the electric or the undergrounding compared to the AECOM system. Right.
Complete difference. But not, can I just, can I just offer.
Which is important is how much is this AECOM, the AECOM, the. GIT system going to cost? Why don't we get a cost from them as we go along rather than waiting to the end? I'm sure they can give us a ballpark cost either now or very near future rather than going, why?
Isn't the risk of that exactly what happened with ACON?
Yes, by not getting prices.
No, but what happened, this is, I came into it late because I came onto council late, but it seems to me that we asked ACOM for a solution to our problem. They gave us a solution to our problem. We asked them how much it was going to be, and we said, whoa, that's a lot of money. And now, and no, we asked them how much it's going to be. They gave us a number, and then it didn't turn out to be close to that number, and then everyone's all upset. And my concern is that if we ask GIT for a number before they're ready to give us a number, they're going to give us a ballpark, and it's going to be way off, and we're going to be in the same.
They're not ready for it. They won't give it to us. My question is just ask them. How tough is it?
Well, we did ask him.
I don't think we have, if not yet.
I thought at the last workshop we asked him. It's part of the deliverables.
The deliverable is that he's supposed to provide a high-level cost estimate in April.
Right. It's part of the deliverables, and it's going to be due very soon.
All right. Okay.
So the purpose— Excuse me, Nancy. Just to reiterate so you understand, ACOM came back with a 3.2-inch— Stop me if I'm wrong, Steve. 3.2-inch system of water removal. We said the price was crazy, et cetera, et cetera, and the amount of water they can remove is crazy. They came back with a two-inch system, and basically we then had a vote, five to two, and that went forward with that, obviously, and that's where we are today. So then the prices, they gave us a price then, and obviously they're estimating, or whoever's ever estimated, was a little bit off.
I think the issue, may I just say one thing? I think the issue here has been an issue of sequence. It's not that it doesn't wanna be done, nobody wants to do it, or we just can't. I think we can always do everything, anything we need to do, but it's an issue of sequencing. It's like, let's say you build a house, right? You have your foundation, you have your everything, but you decide to build your electrical first before you put up the walls, before you put up the kitchen, And I think that by us saying let's go into that hot zone that we are still trying to figure out whether it's gonna be A or B, or a mixture of A and B, and start putting the electrical work right there right now, I just think, I just don't see it as, I just don't see it as effective as it would be if maybe we picked another area, that could be a hot zone for electricity and power, and build that there. But if we work on the hot zone right now, we got a lot of activity going on there right now. I got one guy thinking that he's probably gonna do pumps and do pipes, and we got another one that's coming in saying they're gonna lay out this massive pipe And in the meantime, we're trying to figure out to put the electrical work above. I would say let's stay away from the conflicted area. Maybe you look at another area where we have a hot zone where people need power and we have less reliability on the electrical system. Let's do it there.
And let's do it. What's wrong with getting the bid for Section 8, what you're talking about, Mike, Steve, and what Mike is talking about for Phase 1 or Zone 1? Why can't we do both?
For the reason I just explained, you have... Getting a bid is... No, no, but we can always get a bid. That's what he's been talking about. Okay, so what's going to happen with a bid is that you'll get a contractor that's going to bid that. I'm not worried about that bid. I'm worried about the following bid that comes in once we resolve what's going on in that drainage hot zone because the contractor that's going to bill that He's going to have to build the pipe after you put the electrical system. So guess what? Guess who owns the electrical system? That contractor doesn't own it. We own it. So if he nicks it and if he hits it, which likely they will with a backhoe because they got to open up the road and they got to put a very big pipe. then we got a problem. So I'm just trying to help.
I'm really just trying to help. I wanted to have this discussion. So the only way to have this discussion was to put this motion forward. And I'm so glad you did. And I wanted to have the discussion. I agree with your position that we don't want to really price out something that we potentially get a fight. I just want to feel comfortable that we know Steve what the current electrical budget is for undergrounding in zone one? Do we feel that we have a comfortable, that the number that we've been supplied is a reasonable number, plus or minus five to 7%, so that if we go to bid, that we're not gonna come in at 25 or 30% high, okay?
So we don't look like a bunch of- We have a cost estimate. We have to analyze, it just came in recently.
But it is, the power cost estimate, it is not a full with AT&T and Comcast. Remember, that's a part of the underground as well.
But we're just providing raceway. We're not providing the wire. Providing what? We're providing the raceway or the conduit. They're providing their own wire, AT&T and Comcast. We don't provide the wire. We just provide the raceway.
We're doing it all. We're choosing to do this.
No. We're, yeah, correct, but you're saying to me that we're gonna have to provide the wire for Comcast in the conduit.
Because we're going underground.
And because we're choosing to do it. Right now, as far as they're concerned right now, they have adequate services.
Because they have easements. On their pulse.
Yes, okay.
Steve, can we pick a location in that, when you come back with that, can you tell us a place where we can safely engage in building the underground? Zone eight. Zone eight. And has that been, I have not had that, maybe I don't remember, but I have not had that discussion specific on Zone 8, because we need to move with the underground. Let's face it, we had a committee, we talked about this, there's already been two or three councils that have gone through this, and they have not seen their project for what they ran for, and I can name a council member that was here, and he wanted to get this done, and that was his purpose, and that didn't get done. Let's get it done. Let's get the underground done. Let's work on the other stuff. While that gets done, let's work on maybe Zone A, but let's move it. Let's move it.
I just want to develop the urgency. I agree. And get the council to focus on the urgency to get this moved.
Mike, would you be happy just getting at least the plans in a biddable fashion without a bid?
Yeah, that's what we're supposed to have. That's one of AECOM's deliverables.
No, no. AECOM's deliverable is to do an integrated project. I'm talking about biddable so that you would have to untangle that. Okay, and then put it into bid documents. And again, going back to the conversation that I said before, and I think I heard Council Member Vasquez said, as we look and evaluate what a potential alternative is, you know, we should hesitate about doing something that was designed for one structure stormwater system.
before we understand which one we would still- Steve, I don't think that's unreasonable. But could you come back and at least say to us at the workshop, the coming workshop, what the undergrounding price will be With the Comcast and all the bells and whistles that we have to roll out.
That is our hope to be able to do that. Obviously, we can't compel AT&T and Comcast to do it, but we are asking them to do it.
Can we come back with Zone 8 next?
Yes. We are actually in the middle of design on Zone 8.
Can we do that, please? Yes. So we probably won't have a full cost estimate, but I do believe we have a high-level cost estimate.
With undergrounding and zoning?
That we are comfortable on, yeah. So we do have a cost estimate that we would be comfortable and present on January 22nd. For Zone 8. For Zone 8, correct.
Okay. That'll get the ball rolling. Yeah, I'm good.
Thank you for, thank you for, yeah, getting the conversation moving.
Appreciate it. Generators. Me. Basically, before you start, yeah. One of these things I really, as we start a new year, we need people to not shoot from the hip all the time. We need people to be able to access our administration, call you, call me, call and ask about these. But all of a sudden everything is, you know, uh, corruption and there's problems in this. No, these are, these things have some institutional memory. Okay. Two public works directors ago, we started working on these generators. So it's not like, you know, uh, it's not something like you came up with yesterday or I came up with it. It, it, it has a life of its own. Okay. It's fine if we want to change things for the future and do what we have, but please, talk to the administration. They're very open. They will take your phone call. All your council people will take your phone calls so that you can get answers and not speculate about why the manager is in love with generators.
Generator lover.
So with that.
Obviously, what triggered this whole thing is the little construction that's been going on. And so my point is that in order to make a reasonable decision, an intelligent decision, I should say, an educated decision, whether we should have standby fixed generators or not, we should be looking at and saying, what is the probability of having I guess it's our level of service exceeded over the next 10 years, and we look at it, what happened over the past 10 years, and it gives you pretty much a probability of that occurring. So then the next thing you look at is what's the probability of the electric going out during that same 10-year period from the feeders, the underground feeders, the substation, or the in Colusa Park transformers everything to do but nothing to do with the lights when the electric go out with our aerial system because the assumption is we will have an underground system. So my question is once you can look at that by getting the data from FP&L, then you know how many times they've had these problems. You probably can get some information from Miami, what do you call it, water and sewer, for their sewer lift pumps and stuff over the years. And then you have a probability of these two things happening. Now they're not completely independent events, but they're mostly independent events. So when these two events are multiplied together, it gives you a probability of all these things happening. Then once we have that information, we can say, fine, this is the probability of it happening. This is the cost to take care of that probability. Does it make sense? Is it worth it or not? And then you make a decision, not emotional, not I'm not going to have it and it's no good, blah, blah, blah, but with an educated thing rather than saying, hey, we want to have it. And I understand also that if we're doing a heart transplant surgery, it's critical. It's very critical that you have power, especially when a hard pump machine's going on. It's more critical when you have a sewer lift station pumping manure than when you try and flush the toilets. This is not that critical, but it is critical to a certain degree. So my point is, once we have the proper information, then we can make an educated decision going forward, do we want to have it. So I'm saying what I'd like to do is pause any further installation or purchase of these things, that's all, until we get the information.
Let's have a high-level conversation about this. Before you go, can we set the table as to the ones that we're doing and why we're doing it and how they came about a little bit so that we're all on the same page?
So I'm going to ask Chris to come up, but I think the mayor mentioned earlier, and I'll just enter into it and then let Chris take it over. This was something that was decided on back in 2020. We identified that we had two injection wells that needed backup power. That was the decision at the time.
And those are the only two injection wells that we have, right? We have four injection wells.
We have two more, I believe. Two more? So this was something that was made back in 2020, but I'll let Chris take it from here because I think you know the back of it.
I was consistent. I didn't want it back then either. Yeah.
I have most of the background. It is two pump stations. There are four wells, but it's two pump stations, to be clear. The backup generators are for those two pump stations. Yes, this was something that was applied to back after the 2017 hurricanes. This is COVID money. COVID money, I'm sorry, 2020 COVID money, that's right, for an HMGP grant to provide backup power. There was a need because the two pump stations, we saw, we the village saw that we were losing power quite often. As a matter of fact, I had a conversation earlier with Nada about how many times the Ocean Lane Drive pump station ran out of power and we had to get portable power brought in. And he recollects approximately 10 to 12 times in the past 10 years that that has occurred. Now, every time that that occurs, we have to go out and rent the generator. And we're renting it through a subcontractor that brings it in. We have to wait for the water to recede to be able to get the generators even to the pump stations. So there's an operational component to it there. We couldn't get power to them right away, backup power.
But the grants were applied for.
The generators are, as some of you may have seen, the platforms are pretty tall. But this was presented by the previous public works director to you guys, I believe it was June of 2024. And there was even a discussion about how tall it would be and what they would look like. And he presented that information.
And they're that tall because that's our code.
Yes, the platform itself has to be at BFE plus one per zoning code. So they had to be constructed to that elevation. And then the structure itself has to be constructed to meet the storm surge requirements. So they had to be set on pilings, but not only that. It was very complicated because there's a lot of utilities. FPL has some main lines and some trunk lines that run right through the middle of our islands, and there's a change in direction. There's a manhole with multiple lines running through there, so the platforms have to be adjusted to fit there.
Chris, I would imagine those generators get activated when there's no power.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you. I would imagine that those, that generator gets activated when there is no power, no electricity. Okay, so when there is no power and no electricity, what would be the priority? I mean, are we talking about using them during a massive blackout or just because we just got hit by a major rainfall event? I mean, what takes a priority for that thing to work and why? I guess I live there. Look, I know I live there. I'm one of the ones that I want a dry street. But the problem is that I just don't see the I guess what's the right word in the context of what constitutes an emergency to have and to worry about a generator in a street that's flooded. I think maybe that's what Council Member London is getting to. We're just adding too many contingencies, too many costly contingencies to handle the situation that would technically, in the context of a major storm event, would not be at the highest priority. And I'm not saying that my street being flooded is not a high priority. It would be for me. But for the village, as a public purpose project, Is it a high priority to have a generator of that size, that magnitude, stuck in there? Yes, that's just my question. And I think it's a fair question.
Because if the thrust of this whole inquiry depends on how long the power's out. Because the real thrust of Ed's point is, what would be the worsened flood condition if there was no pumping for how long? What it is now.
What it is now. I go there all the time. I come out of my condo and...
So the generators, to answer your question, the generators were sized to the pump station.
Yeah, I know, I know, I know.
Right, so they were sized, that's why you see... I'm not questioning the size. Let him finish. So they were sized, so that's why they're the size they are. You know... What I could come back and say is we have to have fire rescue get in there. We have police. We have safety to get through. If we have a storm event and we have six inches of water in the road. That's fair.
Look, I'm the one that will go for it.
Which we have seen, right. And we just, in an effort, cleaned those wells. Went beyond just a cleaning, but actually did a rehab of the wells to try and get more drain is going on in that area.
And everything you say is absolutely acceptable and it's the way it should be. It's just a question of Well, I think the aesthetics are driving it pretty much. The aesthetics are brutal. Unless we have a, we should, if we plan on doing stuff like that, we should have a strong landscaping plan.
We have a very strong landscaping plan going back in there. We're still in the middle of it. The contractors, as a matter of fact, today set the second generator over on East Heather. The other one on Ocean Lane Drive, they are doing some restoration work for some of the curb that they damaged. So the job's not done.
Okay, because you see this contraption and it does not, I mean, when people see it, they say, I don't want that on my street. But if you offer something that says, this is what's going to, this is the final product. Right, a rendering. This is the final product. It's actually going to look better than what it looks like. Maybe that is something that people can buy a little more into. Because right now you're going to hear costs, you're going to hear electricity, you're going to hear, you know, why are we doing this? But at the end of the day, it's just somebody walking their dog and seeing that thing and saying, oh, my God, it looks like a trailer.
you know and that's that's that's the way i said before i was very concerned because it looked like a container okay but guys we do have the same situation getting ready to go in the garden district because we we have exactly the same situation so we have in fact it's going right in front of the beach club and it's going to go yeah we don't need it well just just that's why we're having the conversation but just so we we saw jeremy made jeremy made a presentation showing what this potentially could look like um talk about the the the Yeah, and it's a substantial piece of hardware, right? Correct. Yeah, I think it's 20 feet. It's very similar to what we have out there. Yeah, 20 feet. Well, it's actually going to be bigger because it's two generators.
No, it's one generator. It might be a little bit longer, the generator.
Actually, it was like 20 by 10, I think, maybe 30 by 10. It was a pretty big piece of hardware.
And it's approximately 14 feet high in the air to the top of the generator itself. But in that project, we did bring a full...
landscape landscape design that you guys were able to see in these other projects i i don't have that but i can go back to the records so there's going to be much more coverage than what we see just just saying we're getting ready to do something similar so we actually if i could add chris here on this um firstly i'm going to say construction is ugly i'm just going to say that council member and you know that Never pretty. So why do we do this? It is industry standard to do this. That doesn't mean we have to do that. Keep this game placed by its own rules, and you guys can choose to do it how you want to. Our recommendation in most cases are going to be to use it, but we can do a risk assessment, Ed, as you mentioned. Now, however, talking about the Garden District, because we are using FEMA money, FEMA requires us to put in a backup generator, so that case we would have to do it. Other ones, we would have a choice to do that, and then we could run a risk assessment on that to determine
So, Steve, I think when we talked about the GIT project, okay, he showed a subgrade pump station without a generator, I think, in the presentation. Fernando, do you remember? Because you made a comment.
I don't think, yeah, I think you're right. I don't think he's shown a generator, but the pump stations are, yeah, they're submerged pump stations.
Right, and the ones in Miami Beach that you've done before were submerged pump stations.
Yeah, they were, and we had this talk about large generators, and, you know, 13 feet up high.
And you chose not to do those?
Yeah, I mean, in North Bay Road, imagine, I mean, or LaGorce. Everybody was freaking out.
But you have underground power in LaGorce.
Yeah, some areas have underground power, some areas. I don't remember. But I understand. Look, I understand it's something that is, it's a balance between FEMA, what is required, make sure that we have access for life safety, and it's also an aesthetic issue. And really, well, a functional issue, that's manageable. But both need to be, we need to strike a balance between that. If it's going to be accepted or proposed to the community, it has to have a community flavor to it. It just can't be just that.
So let me add just on that little point there. We almost have this conversation weekly on the island because a new house pops up next there, and when you first see it, you go, oh, my God, call Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy. This can't be the scale, right? This can't be right. No, they have violated something, right? So, you know. that's part of us getting used to something that unfortunately we can't get around, right? It, it, it happens to be, uh, the, uh, being in a low lying barrier Island. This is part of, of what may have to happen. Okay. That doesn't mean that you have to like, it doesn't mean that we have to do every single one of them. I, I think that, that there, there should be a little bit of discretion. Uh, but, but, but, Folks, I mean, that's exactly what happens out here all the time. And, you know, after the house gets finished and the landscape gets put in, well, you know, that's a nice house.
Joe, one thing to add. Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Company, what they do is they have a generator on a trailer. So when there's a problem, they come in, plug it in, and use the generator. Here's a good picture of Miami Beach of an underground pump station between two $30 million houses. And you see nothing, basically. That's the equipment, but they have it all shelved it in. That's it. No generator.
That's in Star Island. No, he showed us this one.
No, you sent that to us.
Yeah, I sent it to you. Look at the one on, what's it, right around the corner from near Maurice Gig Park. I sent it. That whole area where there's, I forgot the name. Same thing.
Sunset Harbor.
Look at the one in Sunset Harbor where they put it right in the middle of the street. And they raised the roof three feet.
You know, the pump stations, for example, the Garden District Pump Station, the pumps themselves are all underground. Right. Those stations are all, the pumps, the wet wells, everything is underground.
I understand.
What's above ground is the control panel.
How obstructive it is to have the underground pumps. It's not a big deal. Correct. It's fine. It's not a problem. That's what I'm saying.
Correct. So how do we avoid the monstrosity factor?
You heard it today. The fear was carbon copying that five, six times potentially in zone one alone.
Exactly. That's it.
Could be up to 12, but yes. Okay. Thank you.
Depending on what he comes up with. But look, I think we have two that are under construction that we just have to deal with. And we do have landscaping plans. And I think, you know, when we're ready and have them done, we can present them to the council. And I think we should have them done. if you want to do that, right?
The one on East Heather is less obtrusive. Yeah, we're not putting that one. Faces a parking lot.
But the one on Ocean Lane Plaza? Drive. Drive, that's...
It's in the media.
Honestly, if we could publish some kind of rendering of what it might look like, it might calm people down because it could at least... Once the landscape is in, you mean? Yeah.
I would... I agree.
Sooner the better.
I would say that by the time I got you a rendering, I'd already have the landscaping in.
You have the landscaping.
The landscaping is going in within. It's going to take time for it to grow in well. It's going in within the next two or three weeks.
But have you seen how the landscaping already is around the pump station? So that's how it's going to end up. You've got your pump station.
You've got the one end of it. at Ocean Lane Drive. I thank you guys for accelerating. It's right in front of your house. It's right in front of my house. And the residents in that area, thank you.
I don't know about accelerating. It's been a challenge. We've extended the schedule.
So going back to the conversation, Does, do we have the ability to have the information about on that street when the feeders are down or when the laterals are down?
I have to go back to FPL and get an exact of how many times things have gone down.
We had asked them that during the workshop. They didn't have that data.
Yeah. Yeah.
They never yeah so so I mean. July 24 we had a severe situation where an underground feeder went down and everybody was wanting to to murder us because we we weren't fixing the problem fast enough. Always. So get the big bucks. So I mean, I mean, I like ID. I like its idea of being able to figure out what that risk is of having underground. But if we don't have that data, we're kind of like.
We'd have to go back to FPL and get that data.
So the data is more than outages. It's duration of outage. Right, a combination. It's a combination, yeah. And then what happens to flooding during the outage? And does it surpass a tolerable level of service? That's the whole thing.
How many times do we go past the level of service in a year? So that's the first probability.
So I think where we are right now, obviously these two are going in, and then we'll get the landscaping around it. When we do get the final approval from FEMA to go forward with the Garden District, because it's FEMA money, we will have to put it in. So the next choice we will have, and we'll have that choice, is as we're presented on the Zone 1 solution. And so we can choose at that point based on whether we go with the current one or whether we go with the one by GIT, how we want to go forward.
Okay.
And we'll need to do some analysis with that and present to you the risk assessment in order to make that decision. Okay.
And in the meantime, you want to get the rendering for garden districts so we have that okay we do have that it was presented in the we saw the site plan review we need to do more of it yeah as much as possible That is the intent, to try and... Can we call the, on Ocean Line Drive, we can call it Fernando's Landscaping?
Mr. Mayor? Yes, sir? When it comes time to educate the public and occasionally have to persuade the public,
Aesthetics isn't enough. There has to be an ability to explain why we need to do what we think we need to do, based on efficacy of the result. If the result doesn't work, there's no point in pursuing the project. So I think just by way of reminder of helpful analysis, feeding our ability to communicate effectively, it all comes back to effectiveness.
Well said. Yes. And with that, Mr. Manager, do you have anything pressing?
I've got two things. One, please read the manager report. There's some good information on some progress in there. So please take a look at that. We also have a list of the scheduled workshops and those that are tentative. And the mayor and I will work on those tentative ones. And obviously the clerk will reach out to you to see which dates work. But what I would like to do before we go, I'd like CFOs back. If you could just talk real quickly about the five steps we want to move forward for revenue diversification. Sure. And set the context as to why we're going.
Say what? Revenue diversification. Revenue diversification.
Yes, during the the budget cycle we pose a lot of different revenue diversifications items we're looking at obviously with the intention to reduce our over reliability on ad valorem or property taxes, which is about 71% of our revenue. So all this is going on well before all the property tax reform ideas came out, but even now even more of a reason to look at alternative revenue sources so. There was probably a list of 15 to 20 items that we had originally presented to you, but I think the manager and I wanted to be realistic and talk about what do we actually want to focus on for fiscal year 26, which was both measured in realistic, what could we get done, and also ROI, bang for the buck to actually get them done. So the ones I want to focus on now is with business tax receipts. We initially brought an ordinance to increase the VTR fees by 5%. It's restricted by Florida. law in terms of how many years every other year we can raise by 5% was originally rejected by the board with the caveat that this is just as the ritz-carlton was going under their renovations so now that they've come back online we'd like to bring that back. Soon to get the ball rolling they're not a ton of money in this one, but something that if we keep neglecting over the years like it had been many years since we did the last one. We keep falling behind kind of with the ordinary btr fees are when looking at comparisons to other municipalities so. we'll be bringing that one soon, along with I guess widening the scope of businesses that fall under the btr requirements right now we're very good at assessing btr with a brick and mortars. We're trying to think outside the box and say there's a lot of other businesses that may operate here that don't have a physical presence. So those two items related to BTR. Alternately, looking at a resort fee with the Ritz-Carlton, bring them back into it now that they're back online. The manager and I had some original discussions before they had their renovations about adding to their nightly resort fee, which would be earmarked towards future beach renourishment. So they were on board with it. Obviously, they have to go through the Marriott and their hierarchy, but the manager and I will continue those discussions with the Ritz now that they are back and are open. Additionally Todd and I met with the athletic trainers and we agreed to a new monthly athletic new monthly training fee for use of our public facilities they're out in the fields, making money. This guy became very, very popular post-pandemic. Everyone kind of moved outside of the gym and wanted to do outside workouts. So originally, we had tried to work with them. We had a lot of discussion, negotiations with them. But ultimately, we finally agreed on a deal that was mutually beneficial. So that fee goes into effect on February 1. And they'll have to apply with all their background tests with the Parks and Rec Creation Department as well. So I think those were the highlights.
You say recreation fee to the Ritz-Carlton. Do we have a resort tax like Miami Beach does?
Not a tax. Not a tax. This would be a... Other cities do have a resort tax.
Those are carved out by state law. They're grandfathered in.
They were grandfathered in. No other cities can do it right now.
Yeah.
Was it Gables and Miami Beach?
Miami Beach, Bal Harbor. I think there's maybe five maybe around. No, not that many. Definitely three. Miami Beach, Bal Harbor, and Surfside. Is that what it is? That's three.
So what's the difference between a resort fee and a tax?
So what a resort fee is, and we're also calling it a volunteer resort fee because we want to stay everything away from the word tax because we have to. So it would have to be something that they would come to us and propose that we want to put an additional $5 into our resort fee that we would then go into an agreement with the village to use this money for re-nourishment. Before they did the renovation, their resort fee was $49. Their current resort fee now is $85 a night. So we're hoping that out of the goodness of their hearts, and the current management would like to do it. It just so happens they fall under the Marriott brand, and so they have to get approval from buying Marriott to do that.
So that fee is what they just charge and retain for themselves, and we're asking for them to give a portion of that.
We're suggesting it might be a good idea to help us to re-nourish the beach voluntarily to support. Which is actually, ironically, the worst part. The skinniest part. The words are important. We've got to be very careful about using any word of compelling or tax or required. This is a volunteer fee that would assist us in re-nourishing our beach. And we can't say just in front of their beach either. No, no. The entire beach. The entire beach, yeah.
What about the other properties that have short-term rentals?
That's where we start getting into the tax conversation because I don't think they're going to voluntarily come forward and do that. And so we gotta be very careful about compelling anyone to do this.
And all the numbers you just gave us, all the things you're working on, how does that as a percentage come to the, what would be, we'll say the homestead of taxpayers? would not have to pay tax.
Yeah, so even collectively, if all those were to happen, it wouldn't make up for House Joint Resolution 201, which would eliminate the homestead taxes. Even if you combine all these provisions together, it wouldn't come close to making up for the loss of revenue. How much are we talking about? A couple million bucks. A million to a two million? One to two million?
And what are we collecting from the Homesteaders who might not pay taxes.
About $11 million. How much? $11 million.
So you're talking one and two versus 11. It helps, but it's a long way to go.
Yeah, I don't want to discount these to say we shouldn't do these because they don't, but collectively, and these were just five of the about 20 items we had that we think we'd get across and get them implemented now. There's obviously others, but we're still looking at to help us. So yeah, little by little, we'll chip away.
It's still a big number, okay.
And then philosophically, and you've heard Benjamin and I Making the thought that fee-for-service is a good way to go, and as we do transfer those things that are legitimately fee-for-service, that gives us more flexibility in the way in which we can set our millage. I'm not saying we necessarily would go down, but we would be able to make better decisions. If somebody needs a service, they pay for that service. That's not a cost to the entire community. Then we choose what the entire community pays for and we have better flexibility on millage.
Okay, what else you got, Mr. Manager?
That's all. I think that's all I've got. Let me just quickly take a look. It's been a long night. Take a look at our fields. Exciting news. Last week, I think I sent it out to you, but I'd like to say it publicly. The city of Miami did approve the first step to move in the direction to establish an interlocal agreement to do the planning and design for a field on Virginia Key.
I've got a question on that one. Are they agreeing that we will get 50% of the usage of it? Is that going to be part of the deal before we give them any money? That'll be the interlocal agreement. Before we give them the money, we're going to get 50% of it.
Well, the interlocal agreement comes back to the council, and we'll make sure the terms that we want will be in that interlocal agreement, or we won't vote for it.
I mean, you're talking about 50-50, you said, right? That's what we want. So my question is, if we're going to give them 50% of the money, are we going to get 50% of the time?
I can't tell you until we negotiate the agreement, but that's the idea.
Well, we haven't given them anything yet. They agreed to that then, but they didn't pass it.
What is agreed to right now is that we will share 50-50 the cost of planning and design, and then we would go into an interlocal agreement for construction.
Why don't we share planning and design 50% and not know where we're going to get it? Because it's the way to get there. Oh, come on. You just don't know. You're going to give somebody money, and the guy says, you know, it's a really good idea. He gave me 50%. You get 10%. What's your plan Z? Plan Z is how much can we get? We're going to give you the money. We'll make a deal.
We negotiated the last time around.
You got new management now in the city of Miami.
They agreed to it with the worst commission, and they didn't pass it by a two-to-two tie vote.
When? Last week?
No, seven years ago.
I'm talking about now. Council member. And give them any money.
So they're going to give away their land just because Ed London wants 50%?
No, I'm not saying give away anything, Joe. I'm saying negotiate a deal and saying, fine, we're willing to contribute X amount of dollars or percentage of dollars. What are we going to get for doing that?
That's all.
Council member.
That would be the goal, yes.
What's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with that. Okay. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about giving them money to go do planning and design for something we don't know what we're going to get, but we're going to pay 50%.
Okay, so you're going to get a field.
We don't know that. That's what I want to find.
You're going to get a field. That's the purpose of planning and design.
The point being is how long are we going to use the versus they use the council member London.
I think the interlocal agreement that I think the manager is talking about is going to provide for the 50% payment and provide for usage. It's one document. So you're not going to authorize. the expenditure of funds until you understand the usage of the fields.
And I'm 100% for it. So we would bring you back an interlocal agreement for you to agree those terms. In those terms, we'll have planning, design, operation, maintenance, and usage. Before we give them the money.
before we move forward. Correct. That'll be the agreement. I didn't understand that. That's what I'm trying to say. That's fine. You didn't let me finish. I'm 100% for it.
Let's consider this a win. This is a good win. 100% for it. Thank you. Congratulations. Terrific.
By the way, one last thing. There's a dog park on there, Todd. Can we talk about that before we dismiss?
Okay, sure. In regards to this field thing, Todd and the manager, let's make sure that we start putting that through the VAB. Okay. Cause I don't want to have that field built. And then all of a sudden, Oh, but this is too far for Johnny to come, you know? So, so we, we need to have that conversation and the, you know, the people that are the users of potential fields need to, to understand that, you know, it's going to be at this place and, And we need to start getting them talking about the idea and making sure that they understand how critical this is, but that they'll be okay with it.
Yeah, I mean, with Mast Academy, we've broken through to you have to get in your car sometimes and drive your kid to practice, which wasn't always the case, but now it's good to get it.
Do you have some programming ideas of what would go there anyway?
Yeah.
Preliminarily? Yeah.
Mr. London. Mr. Alphabers. Dog Park, where we have a beard out. Yes, I know. We have a bid out on the street that comes back February 3rd for artificial turf repair and poured in place in all the tree circles that are now kind of just rocks. That's the last element. We have one more bid to get on replacing the entrance gates, the four entrance gates. And when we have all the pricing together, I'm working with Katie. we're going to we've got prices for everything else replacing the water fountains replacing uh all the different elements we're going to meet prioritize and present to the village manager our recommendation for the refurbishment of the dog park so that way you're looking for my dogs um in in that
Could you look at the issue of flying soccer balls and how to stop from going in there?
Well, we've spoken with that person. They have to go east and west. It's when they move that goal north and south. A pass is a pass. A shot on goal is a shot on goal. Everybody who's not up to speed on this, on Fridays, we have one of our athletic trainers who will soon be paying a new fee Switches and goes north and south resulting in Shots missing the goal and going into the dog park into the dog park So we've advised them that they must maintain east and west is there is there a netting? Solution that could look that you could always do netting I wouldn't aesthetically think that would be for the village green for one day for one program As long as they go East and west we shouldn't have a we shouldn't have an issue anymore
It shrinks by how much east-west?
I mean, that's how they go all week. I guess they get a bigger group on Fridays, but they're just going to have to work with us on this, and we're going to advise them that it's permit contingent that they maintain playing in that direction. Okay.
Just to let everybody know, I'm getting some calls about the field at St. Agnes that some... events they want to have there. They can't do what they want because the restrictions on their usage are so onerous. So I'm looking into that further. I'm going to talk to you about it. I'm going to see what documents they're getting. But they're saying they can't use ketchup. They can't do different things because of the dye and this whatever. And I know it's nothing that we ever discussed or anticipated. We did. Ketchup?
No, we discussed. what couldn't take place there prior to building the field.
Okay, well, I'll report back when I find out more about it. Yeah, something about the dye and the artificial turf. We don't want to stain the field. I know we discussed not being able to use equipment there that was going to rip up the field, but I don't remember talking about it.
And there's a point load issue with some of the stuff, but...
Okay.
Okay. Never a dull moment here. Anything else for the good of the order? Nope, to adjourn. If not, I move to adjourn. Second. Do I have a second? All those in favor, say aye.
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