City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, the mayor is called the council meeting to order mayor Roscoe president councilmember Bracken Councilmember Kaplan. Yeah, that's number London. Yes vice mayor Sardinia's councilmember stoner present councilmember Vasquez here Mr. Mayor we do have a quorum. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance mr. Bracken

Stay standing for the invocation, please Father father Juan Carlos Poguaga from st. Agnes Catholic Church Let us pray Gracious and loving God we got it at these village council meeting with gratitude for the community of key Biscayne and for the opportunity to serve the common good and In this season of renewal, we are reminded that hope is always possible, that new beginnings can arise even in difficult times, and that light is stronger than darkness. May this spirit inspire us to work together with wisdom, respect, and generosity, and to leave behind a lasting legacy, a legacy of hope, faith, justice, and mutual respect for the generations who are already stepping into the leadership and for those who will one day be called to serve this community. We pray in a very special way for our mayor, council members, village staff, and all who carry the responsibility of public service. Grant them clarity of mind, integrity of heart, and spirit of cooperation. Help them to listen with openness and to make decisions that promote peace, fairness, and the well-being of all. We also remember with special care the senior members of our community, those who have built and sustained what we now enjoy. As they gradually lose strength and as loneliness may touch their hearts, may we never forget them. Inspire us to honor them with presence, compassion, and dignity, ensuring that they continue to feel valued, accompanied, and loved. Bless this community of Key Biscayne. Strengthen on all spirit of unity, mutual respect, and care for one another. Guide the discussions and decisions made this evening that they may reflect wisdom and a sincere commitment to the common good. We place this meeting and this community in your care. And we ask your blessing upon all who are present. Amen. Amen.

The next item, Mr. Mayor, is brief comments by council.

Go to public comments then.

Public comments?

Thank you. Kiko Sarasua.

I thought you guys would have a chance to talk before I do. I'm here speaking on behalf of Betty the crossing rider.

Your name and address, please.

Kiko Sarasua, 442 Hampton Lane. I just want to bring to your attention, because my understanding is that there's some possible friction with her. Whether it's true or not, I can either affirm or deny. But nevertheless, if there is, I've been going through there, through the school, for years. Every time I leave the community center, I pass by. And it's usually at the time where the children are being let out. And for years, I have seen how Betty and her staff relate to the kids, the parents, and how they work with your phenomenal police department. I just wanted to say that I doubt that you would find someone who has a better reputation in the community, a better way with the children, a better way with the parents than Betty.

Sir, just come to the mic so the public can hear you. I'm sorry.

I want to be a moving target. Yes, yes.

I want them to hear.

And I just want to say that you wouldn't be able to find someone who is as caring and loving and concerned as she is. And with that, I'll leave you to your... Is she a crossing guard?

Who is Betty?

Yeah, she's in charge of the... She runs a crossing guard.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear. What?

She's in charge of... It's her company that does the...

Okay.

Thank you for your public comment.

Thank you. Okay. And with that, I'll leave you all. Thank you so much. Have a good night.

Good night. Betty Conroy.

Hi, good evening. My name is Betty Sim Conroy, 785 Crandon Boulevard, Key Biscayne. I am president of the Key Biscayne Neighbors Association. And tonight, I wanted to report on where we are with the referendum. Our proposed amendment, it's a charter amendment, requires that any large-scale stormwater or flood prevention efforts must be approved by a majority of voters if the total cost is estimated to exceed $50 million over a three-year period. This change shifts the ultimate decision-making power for major multi-million dollar drainage and flood control investments directly to the residents, ensuring taxpayer oversight on the village's most expensive infrastructure commitments. We have had our petition for about a week. And I have to tell you, the response has been amazingly, overwhelmingly positive. So we are moving ahead at full steam. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker is Steve Simon.

Steve Simon, 335 Harbor Lane, mayor, council, administration. I'm here to speak to you about your upcoming decision pertaining to Zone 1 stormwater system and the two choices before you, which are being referred to as the centralized or AECOM plan and the decentralized or GIT plan. As you prepare for the upcoming meetings, wherein you'll be asked to cast your vote, I suggest that both council and the public will benefit by reviewing and factoring in some relevant historical context. Let's go back to 1991 when meetings were held down the street in the school's old cafeteria. In the fall of that year, our election results were written with chalk on what was literally blank slate. Rasco was the name at the top of that runoff list. When Key Biscayne first became a municipality 35 years ago, you could say that from a planning perspective, this village was very much like a blank slate. We move forward together with important contributions from other volunteers, such as the master plan committee chaired by Frank Kaplan. Policy deliberations, lots of public input, and tax dollars brought us gradually from an ignored outpost of Dade County without sidewalks or street trees, other than some scattered and leftover coconut palms from the plantation, to a pedestrian-friendly community. including a fully developed Safe Routes to School network of sidewalks, which included, as recently as 2019, an $867,000 State of Florida grant, and fairly recent designation as a Tree City USA, an honor bestowed by the Arbor Day Foundation. Last night, my daughter, who is now both a horticulturalist and arborist, sent me a quote from the Arbor Day Foundation website. Trees are useful, I'm quoting from their website, Trees are useful and valuable components of city stormwater infrastructure and provide measurable reductions in runoff volume and pollutant loads. Municipalities should explore opportunities to expand tree planting programs and incorporate trees into engineered stormwater systems. Trees are not just landscaping placed on top of city infrastructure, they are city infrastructure. simply stated, thinking back about the past 35 years, we are most certainly no longer a blank slate. Yet the AECOM plan seems to prepare us for the future by erasing from that blackboard our accomplishments of the past 35 years. Their approach to construction is to, in essence, recreate that blank slate from 35 years ago. The GIT report, on the other hand, demonstrates sensitivity to our history. such as in the section titled constructability and secondary impacts under retrofit constraints. The differences between AECOM and GIT, it sure seems to me, are pretty stark. So let's display that contrasting information in an easy to grasp format. Let's turn the Black and Veatch criteria from last week's seven page analysis into a side by side comparison chart. And then build upon it in a collaborative way with both Council and residents providing input, could we prepare that chart in time for Thursday evening stormwater subcommittee meeting. someday I predict the footnote to this long chapter will read special thanks to the Council subcommittee. and whoever else in the community discovered GIT for providing us with a stormwater system that will achieve the council's desired level of service in the least disruptive and most expandable way, and almost as remarkably, simultaneously created a political off-ramp away from AECOM. Thank you.

Thank you, Steve. Luis de la Cruz.

Luis de la Cruz, 640 Allendale. Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, council members. So we had what was supposed to be the last meeting of the ad hoc committee the other day. As it turns out, it's not going to be the last meeting. We have one more meeting set up in order to try to come up with a recommendation. At that meeting, we had GIT put together a presentation of his system. And then we had a second presentation put together by Black and Beach, Mr. Huda. And he was cloaked with the definition of impartiality. owner's rep, quote unquote, that was giving you information on both and then picking one at the end. Well, let's go back and figure out what Black & Veatch's role has been for the last four years, five years in the village of Key Biscayne. Since 2022, they have been working with the manager in order to put together this huge project called, by some, the Big Dig. And I'm not sure what the village calls it. But he has been side by side. When I say him, I say Mike. Mike is a great engineer, a wonderful person. But he has been basically working as staff for the village of Key Biscayne. And he has been working as staff side by side with ACOM. in order for ACOM to build the project that they're proposing that you guys go forward with. I'll tell you right now that I think that Mike Huda is as responsible, or his company is as responsible as anyone else for us having spent almost $9 million in designing a project that should not go forward. And then we ask him the last day of the

of the ad hoc meeting, for him to come before the ad hoc members and the people in the audience, which is even more important, and stand up there as if he was the independent voice looking at everything from a very independent way. Guys, I can't believe it. and Mike, that you guys allowed that to happen in all sincerity. I was so disappointed that I couldn't possibly hold my, when I held back myself to the end of the meeting before I made my comments, but it was an insult to the intelligence of the people that were in the audience for you guys to allow that the village put up Black and Veatch to tell you guys the way that you should go with respect to choosing a proposal here. It's insulting. It's insulting to me because I worked so hard on this. And it's insulting to everybody who is sitting on that audience that we would get that treatment where a person who is not independent, who has been working hand in hand with ACOM with respect to their design, whose company has charged us almost $3 million doing this whole thing for what? For interpreting another engineer's work? It's just the most absurd setup that I think I'm like in a nightmare. And then we go to this last meeting, and then we're expected to accept that this guy This company is going to be our owner's rep. They're looking out for you. Come on, guys. Please. Just like our chief resiliency officer, I don't know if he's here, but it's clear that shallow injection wells are much better treatment for stormwater than pumping you know, what is basically polluted stormwater out into Biscayne Bay. Much better treatment.

Lewis, you want to land this?

Yes, sir. Miami-Dade County wants us to do it the other way. Let's do it the way they want. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Mike Davey.

Mike Davey, 50 Ocean Lane Drive. A couple comments on the, I spoke to the manager, I spoke to FIRE about this, but I have some concerns about the agreement that you're going to, the memorandum of agreement on the OASI. No exhibits were attached to what we got, so I couldn't review them, Ed, and I would never agree to an agreement unless I was able to read everything, okay? So happy on that one. But seriously, take a look at it. From what I understand, it's pretty benign. But I think you all need to see, as I understand, you've all been delivered the exhibits. Make sure before you approve the consent agenda that you take a look at these things and make sure they're good. Because I don't like not knowing what we're agreeing to in an agreement. There's a whole bunch of things tied to exhibit one that we are agreeing to that we didn't see as residents. And I think that's something we've got to look at. With regard to the approval of park use fees, I would advocate that that decision stays with the Council, I don't think no no disrespect to the manager, I think he's a great guy I think Todd's awesome. But I think if we're going to be making policy changes, I think those are changes that should be done up here on the diets by you. So those are those are minor items, but I would just recommend that you all talk us through and and make it happen for the community. As far as the stormwater project, I'm just going to advocate, you know, you're all passionate about this. You all want what's right for the community. I know how hard it is to sit up there. I've done it. We get a lot of hard projects that come at us. We have to make hard decisions. The fact is, get all the data and make sure you're getting all the data before you rush to judgment. I know there's a referendum out there, and that's great. I'm glad that citizens are involved and they're passionate about this. But you make the decisions. And you need all the information in order to make that decision. So get the data. Look at it. Compare apples to apples. And then you'll make your decision. And we'll all deal with it. I know where I'm leaning. And it may shock some people to learn who I agree with on this. But I think we need to move forward as a community. And you all are the ones who are going to make the decision. I don't believe that it's in the best interest of the residents for decisions like this to be made by referendum. I just don't. And that's been something I've stood against since We had the zoning ordinance, the zoning charter amendment that was put in there that screwed up our ability to change our zoning code. I think we have to be very careful when we make changes to our charter. I just don't think this is the right one. No disrespect to the people who are doing it. I think they mean very well. So those are my points. I hope you all have a great afternoon.

Thank you. Okay. That's all the public comments I have. Let's go to 7B, please.

We need to set the agenda.

Oh, I'm sorry.

That's all right, Mr. Mayor.

I have some additions and deferrals. Okay. I would like to defer Consent 8C, Tab 5, for the reasons that Mike said and for some others. I want time to go through the exhibits which were given to us now. I also have some questions about the timing of the agreement, which lasts for another year and a couple of months. I want to understand it a little bit better before we... Even though I understand that this request is for reimbursement of money we've already spent, we are signing, I believe, a new agreement, or a confirmation that we're in the agreement. As far as discussion items, I have four discussion items. I'm going to paraphrase them. I've given them to... summaries of them to the clerk so that we didn't have to waste time but on one I want as a discussion item I have a motion to reconsider the resolution that we passed on February 10th regarding authorizing the manager to advance the village-wide the utility undergrounding program I have some questions about that and I think we need to explore the issue of whether we want to underground just the power or power and communications. And I think we need to discuss that more fully instead of just rushing forward with that when we know we want to do the power. But I think there's some financial considerations that we need to go over. My second thing is I would like to have a discussion for the council to direct the manager to determine the feasibility of revising our website so that our searches are easier. There's something, we have it in laser fish, and I don't know about the expense, but I'd like to look into transferring it over to PDF so we can search it more easily. I think that might help with some of the public records requests, and I know that I have a very hard time finding things, so I want to discuss that. My third thing is I would like the, Council to direct the manager and the CFO to provide an overarching plan to deal with the possible loss of revenue on account of the possible ad valorem tax changes and discontinue the fee for service approach. And my fourth thing is the same thing as the third thing. So it's just three things. Just three things.

OK.

Are there any other changes?

Consent agenda, pull 8B for discussion.

What are we doing now? We're deferring it? No. We're taking it off. Pulling it off the consent agenda.

I'm just saying for discussion rather than consent. OK. 8B.

I want to defer it so I can look at the exhibits.

Yeah. Any consequence to delay?

Mr. Mayor, Chief Javis will give us a status of where that is. Why don't you also I'd like to tell the council to start with why are we going back to a 2024 grant, just to kind of put it in context for us. All right, good evening.

Chief Davis, Fire Rescue. Good evening, Mayor and Vice Mayor and council members. All right, so we're trying to play catch up. We're really behind in this agreement. This is a formality that we've been doing. We have gotten the 2022, 2023, which we've used to purchase, 23 we just used where you approved the purchase of the Polaris. The 2024 was never done. So we're just trying to play catch up. What it is is just something to their file to keep the relationship that we have with Miami UASI to allow us to accept reimbursements when we spend the money.

Are we gonna lose the ability to get the reimbursements if we defer it until the next meeting?

Yes, we're beyond the time period here. As a matter of fact, I had already, like you mentioned earlier, we spent the money for tools and equipment, extrication tools for heavy rescue for storm, and I found out after I've submitted for reimbursement that we don't have an agreement. So as a formality, it's just to get this paperwork to their file.

But I'm asking, if we don't... make a decision on this until next month? Are we going to lose the ability to get the money? Is there a deadline?

We're beyond the deadline. The deadlines do move, but they've already extended it for me to get to this point. And they're calling me right and left, just ability to call me right and left to tell me I need this paperwork back. So I'm not sure what's going to happen if it's not approved today because I've I kind of thought that it would be approved because it's a formality. So I'm not sure what's going to happen at this point. I'd have to call them and find out. But I know it does hold up our 2025 and our 2026 funds that we have on hold. So those deadlines will have to be extended as well.

Would you mind just leaving it on so that we can continue the discussion? Because otherwise, you know, we're going to have the full discussion.

Sure. Yeah, we can have the discussion. Okay.

All right. Mr. Mayor.

Are we going to pull that for your agenda? For discussion.

For discussion. Okay. Yeah. Mr. Mayor, if I may. No, this is... Yes, thank you. Thank you. I wanted to request that... some of these discussion items be, as best as we can, forwarded a little bit to the top. The last time I had, I know I had a lot of discussion items, but they were left to last, and one of them was critical. It was about the discussion of the water quality in Biscayne Bay, and I think that's important, You know, we have the center here.

Well, we have a very short agenda. Okay. I think that we should be able to get to it. And I think we'll have the time to go over anything you want to at the end.

I would really appreciate it. Okay.

Madam Clerk.

Is that item on the discussion list? No, no, no.

Did he want to add it? About the whole agenda. We're approving the agenda.

Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any agenda changes? Opposed? Motion carries. The next item is a special presentation of a proclamation.

Let me take the state senators here first. Okay.

A special presentation, State Legislative Update to the Village by State Senator Alexis Calatayud.

Welcome, Senator.

Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, Council Members, Mr. Village Manager. It's a pleasure to be with you this evening. We have concluded the, feels like the first part, of the 2026 legislative session about three or four weeks ago. Coming back home, my number one focus in representing you all and our residents of Key Biscayne is to make sure we're focused on quality of life and cost of living, baseline. This legislative session, we have yet to pass a state budget for fiscal year 26-27, and we have in the near future a special session coming regarding the discussion of a reduction in homestead property taxes. I take very seriously the incredible services and the fiduciary responsibility of this board in the millage that you tax residents on and how you use those funds. And so as we enter into what will become both the budget period in which I'm seeking to match $1.5 million of investments that you all are already making and bring back those state dollars to move forward in an expedited manner what you have prioritized. I also want to make sure that we make wise and judicious recommendations and providing amendment language regarding property tax relief that truly, truly provides relief and is not a political gesture but a meaningful gesture to those who need it. while understanding the complexity of what reduction to your budget means to that same quality of life that's expected. So I just wanted to say that the balance is not lost on me. And I'll be working diligently with your team to make sure that we're representing that balance in the legislative discussions to come in Tallahassee. This past legislative session, my team and I were able to focus on really specific goals that I think are important to all of Miami-Dade County. One was a victory on the urban development boundary, which is very important in discussions about water quality and on continued management of overdevelopment. I personally amended out a vote threshold reduction for the county commission to move the urban development boundary, maintaining the high threshold currently in place of the supermajority of members. working with stakeholders across the county and across the state to prioritize that. I also led the initiative that provided $30 million in stopgap funding, the only budget item that has been signed by the governor to this point for HIV medication for 12,000 HIV-positive individuals across our state who otherwise would have gone without medication for four months. We're currently working on... in the upcoming budget negotiations to fully fund the program into the future after the Affordable Care Act subsidies expired on December 31st and thousands of individuals were left without life-sustaining medication. I also worked this legislative session on passing the most comprehensive update to domestic violence law in recent state history with a focus on creating a pilot system that is going to allow for victims and survivors of domestic violence to have greater distance in time between the law enforcement officials and themselves being notified when the proximity of a personal violence injunction is essentially broken. That's something I'm very proud to have worked on with Representative Tendrich herself, a survivor of domestic violence We also worked with the school district on a new provision that's going to focus on increasing the amount of housing, affordable housing available to school teachers and to leverage vacant and underutilized facilities across the county to really focus on this cost of living challenge for our public servants. We're working diligently to understand how to also leverage that for our firefighters, for our police officers, for our first responders to find ways that the people who are putting themselves on the line, the people who are sacrificing so much, whether it's their time through public service to be able to live near the communities that they serve. We passed legislation regarding that, also empowering churches to be a part of the goal of reducing the cost of living for housing construction across the state. We've worked diligently to make sure that not just the the funding priorities regarding property taxes are focused on, but those, uh, those initiatives that are most important to you all, whether that's active senior programs, stormwater programs, um, bolstering the vision of this council. And I want to just thank you for your partnership and, um, you know, it is a tremendous honor to represent you and the things that are important to you. Um, and if we should have any questions, I am here to answer them.

Thank you so much, Senator. for all the work you've done on behalf of Key Biscayne.

Questions?

Just echoing the thanks.

Thank you. Thank you.

Has the Senate come up with any bill for the reduction in Homestead or is it strictly in the House?

Thank you for the question. The Senate has been diligently working to understand what are the first, second, and third order effects of property tax reduction. whether in a complete elimination, as was originally articulated by the governor, or a reduction in different formats as the House has proposed. The Senate did not offer a legislative session bill policy recommendation because we have not yet found and publicly shared a concept that we feel has struck the important balance This is obviously not just for our county in Miami-Dade, but for the 67 incredibly unique counties and the many, many municipalities across our state. We are interested in relief for residents, not in the disruption of important systems. That has been the balance the Senate will maintain and will prioritize. There are more modest reductions that are being considered in the Senate. that could be a percentage rather than a dollar amount, that could be more responsibly managed for the different types of communities that Florida represents. And so we've yet to publicly present nor has leadership openly disclosed the strategy that they have going into a yet unannounced special session. But I have been doing my best to make clear fiscal responsibility of of this municipality and frankly. Almost all I would say all of those that I represent.

So if you're a betting person, I'm sure you're not. Do you think that we something passed as far as homestead score and the special session to be called.

Not of any woman because it's been my money on food, but I think. I think there will most certainly be a form of property tax relief offered to voters for the November ballot. But I can tell you I have personally spent, I don't know, 25 hours meeting with the policy staff on tax and finance, the president of the Senate's policy advisors, the education staff of budget and the health staff of the budget, not just to articulate the reality of this impact on our municipalities, but to articulate the impact on the Public Health Trust, in which I'm a trustee member, and the Children's Trust, which as just a advocate for low-income families and the incredible early learning and the after-school care and plus, plus, plus services that these provide uniquely through ad valorem funds, to our community and to the most vulnerable. These impacts need to be understood and considered, not just in carve-outs for law enforcement and fire and school district, but really, truly understood to all their impacts. So that's kind of been my work. It's important to provide affordability relief. It is also important to not disrupt essential institutions across our community. So I'll continue advocating as we develop our public proposal.

Can you go over the, a lot of people might not understand what the issue is with Jackson Health so that people are educated?

Absolutely, Mr. Mayor. The Jackson Public Health System, due to its standing as the only public health trust in Florida, is statutorily the recipient of a maintenance of effort, a percentage of funding required for as a part of the operating budget of the county. If there is a reduction of property taxes received by the county, an equivalent percentage reduction into the maintenance of effort would be received by Jackson. So it would be a consistent annual recurring reduction of funding that has, to this point, stabilized. Our effort is to have a world-class public system. And frankly, I'm tremendously proud of it. And so any sort of property tax relief that is layered onto the county budget will in some way affect Jackson. And it's one of my goals if that were to pass to make sure that the maintenance of effort or any sort of statutory changes required before the full implementation would be considered within the 2027 legislative session before the implementation of the policy. so that our world-class institution can continue serving Miamians across the county. Thank you for the question, Mr. Mayor.

Can you just, I know it hasn't been set, but what are the possible timelines of when you would be meeting so that people know when you're not around that you're in session?

There's likely a special session on congressional redistricting the 20th through the 24th. of April, there is two additional special sessions we're likely going to see on the Florida state budget for fiscal year 26 and 27 that's yet to be announced. There's at least a week and a half, maybe two weeks required for that process because we have what's called a cooling off period of mandatory 72 hours after we go through what could be an 113 to $115 billion budget that we have to decide every element of. And there will be the property tax special session. And all of this will likely take place within the next two months. Potentially the property tax special session later, but as of right now, I've been asked to be available April, May, and June. So it's a pleasure to serve.

Any other questions, comments?

I just wonder if you could elaborate just slightly on the... role of the churches in dealing with the squeeze on people and where they're going to live?

What a great question. Thank you. It's something I'm really passionate about. Our Legislative Senate District begins in the north of Key Biscayne, but it concludes as south as the Homestead Air Reserve Base. And so I've spent a great deal of time, particularly with some of our South Dade churches, which are on kind of that the boundary of what ends up being quite rural, large three-, four-, five-, ten-acre plots that have churches on them. This is also in a place that's experiencing a tremendous amount of growth and gentrification. I've been meeting with pastors and ministers who have these larger parcels to discuss what it would look like if their ministry was not simply there the spiritual outreach and spiritual community they built, but the consideration of a place in developing the community itself. And almost as an effort for the true spiritual heart of the community to become the physical center of the community and participate in the visioning out, not just of what is the intellectual moral core of the community, but physically. And so meeting with the provisions in the workforce housing policy have allowed a buy right entitlement similar to that that exists now for school district property for workforce housing to be developed in a style that's mixed use, mixed income, multifamily rental. That will add so much not just to the character of the community, but really invite not just new residents but maintain a place for the existing residents. We also have the opportunity with the churches to leverage the underlying property tax exemption. So we don't just provide workforce units, which is considered moderate income units, but to provide deep affordability so that we have what's considered traditional affordable housing for 40, 60, all the way up to 70% of area median income. This is something that can be possible when you leverage the different tools that we've created in property, tax exemptions for that particular type of product, leveraged with property continually owned by ministries.

What you're saying basically is to provide housing, which is great for people who need it, but you're also saying at the same time that local government has been restrictive and as a result will not permit the housing to happen but for local zoning. And so now you're taking, at least it appears to me, you're taking the decision, I'm not saying it's wrong, but you're taking the decision-making away from the local government and pushing it to the state government. So that, for instance, now we have one particular property here, a church with lots of ground down the street, and they could now build a 12-story building there, right? Because it's a church property, on the Live Local Act, within a mile, the whole thing, correct? So we have lost our ability to zone locally on government, church, what else?

It depends on the acreage.

Over three acres.

Yes, sir. That's what the code is. Yes, sir. The goal of workforce housing legislation, and we've had these conversations, the council, in the four years the policy has been in effect, we've not had a viable live local product. And I think that's what we knew going into the legislation itself. We knew that this wasn't a place that that would necessarily become a product for. But we do think that the same employees that Key Biscayne relies on every day can be people that benefit from this product from the county side, from the mainland. And so really excited, as I know so many of the employers here in Key Biscayne have challenges with the cost of living and affordability issues of their own employees. to make sure that that becomes an issue that we're tackling. We're supporting the business community on their workforce issues.

All I'm saying, I'm not disagreeing with the motive of what you're doing is not good or anything else. It's a question of you're deciding that basically we as local government haven't done our job in providing the proper zoning to encourage development for workforce housing. And so the state is now stepping in to do it. I mean, that's how I see it. Maybe I'm missing something.

I think you guys do a great job.

What a politician. Thank you very much. OK.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Let's skip to 7E and 7F.

7E. Barbecue with a Cop, Chief of Police Francis J. Sosa.

And also the annual report.

And the police department 2025 annual report.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, council members. On February 27th of this year, we had an inaugural event, Barbecue Cop. And I'd like to call up a couple of people that I'd like to take a moment and recognize real quickly. The Key Biscayne Community Church could come up. Winn-Dixie and Awamia. And Officer LaCourte, you can come up here also, please. So I was sitting at home working because that's what I like to do. And it's always good to borrow ideas. And I came across a town in the Midwest that came up with an idea to just have a random barbecue and serve their residents. And I thought it was a great idea. So I went to our VRO who, like so many things that they do here, they made it happen. But it can't happen without our nobody knows what to be our village resource officer. Mr London knows because he grilled me on it when I asked for one. So, um, we have incredible partners in this community and that's what makes keep us in a special place. Um, when Dixie Jose consistently there for us. No matter what time we call him, he always answers. And he's a huge supporter of the police department. Out with mail, since you guys have arrived here, you guys are participating in coffee with a cop. You're always there supporting not only police staff, but fire staff. And then obviously the community church. I know a lot of you didn't get to come. It was an awesome event. Over 300 hamburgers, 300 hot dogs, two hours at Village Green on a Friday night. Lots of cooking. and lots of food serving. And it was a great event. And I just want to take a moment and recognize everyone for their generosity and what will certainly be another successful event in the near future. So you can all come and have me serve you a hamburger and the community church was cooking and we were all there. And it was a great event. And it really showed why this community is so special. So I just have a plaque here for each of them and some certificates for their employees. And I just wanted to say thank you on behalf of the Evis King Police Department. Yeah, sure. I don't know if you guys want to say anything.

I want to say something. I want to say it's a privilege working in this community. And I really like it, really, working here. Thank you.

I mean, same here, like, thank you. The mayor, the vice mayor, and the council member, like, he's a village manager. He's talking on behalf of our meal. It's great to be in this community. We're all incredibly honored to serve everyone here. And we're just so blessed that we can do this all together. So let's root. Let's do this all together. This is not a one person thing. This is all an entire community.

So thank you guys.

Working together with the community, our chief and the major. They put their gloves down, and he was grilling. They worked so hard that I was honored to work for a chief like that.

And I do want to also, before we move on, publicly thank Todd from Parks and Rec, especially his employee, David Plotkin, who came out and helped us that night. I would be remiss if I didn't recognize him.

You want to do annual report? Yes.

Okay, I know you just got this hot off the press and you haven't been able to look at it. I enjoy doing this with our staff because I think it's a good barometer for you as our representatives to be able to answer questions from constituents. And more importantly, I think it's a good opportunity for the police department to be transparent with the community and share the information of the work that the officers are doing day in and day out. I know we're going to talk about our survey, and I know that there's some concerns with traffic, but I'd like to point out that traffic enforcement continues and will continue to be our strongest priority in this police department, along with the safety and protection of our children. And each year in the last 4 years since I've been your chief, the staff at this police department has increased citations every single year and you'll see that they did it yet again in this last year. Writing a total of 1354 citations last year. Another thing that I like to highlight is our crime continues to decrease, which is a good thing. We had a 36% overall reduction last year and. You can see that we had an increase not only in traffic citations, but our parking citations increased 42% as we continue to get concerns from residents on a steady basis about traffic and parking issues along our side streets here. I'm proud of the work that the men and women do here. It's not me. It's them. And I'm just the lucky one that gets to lead them. So I'd like you to take a look at this. And if you have any questions or concerns, I'll be more than willing to answer them. It was another great year at the police department, and we look forward to having a better year this year.

Chief, before you jump, just a quick question. Do you have any idea why the traffic crashes and hit and runs have gone up so substantially?

Yeah, so a lot of our hit and runs here, just so you know, are parking lot hit and runs, where we have a vehicle parked and someone leaves and they don't leave it. We do follow up on all of our hit and runs. We're able to solve a majority of them through video technology. Crashes is just... It's a matter of paying attention, right? We're going to have traffic crashes no matter what we do. But that's why traffic enforcement, like I said, is going to continue to be a main priority for us because of the way the island's structured too, right? You know, we don't have the large, wider roads that some communities have.

So we're talking about hit and runs. We're not talking about somebody hitting someone. No. And then taking them off.

No, a hit-and-run by state statutes classified the way I explained it to you, we don't have those.

You're talking about somebody nicking somebody's car in the parking lot and not being a good citizen and waiting for them.

Correct. That is the majority of our hit-and-runs.

But the traffic crashes are 25% increases. Are those any small vehicular crash? That's not a...

We haven't had any fatalities, minor injuries.

These are little hit and run.

Yeah, minor crashes, thank God. We did have that one serious accident last year here where the car flipped. Fortunately, everybody was okay.

Thank you. What's the difference between a burglar and a larceny?

A burglary is where someone enters into a premises where there's a curtilage. A larceny is if something's stolen, like a phone.

So someone breaks into a house, no one's there, it's a larceny.

No, if someone breaks into a house and no one's there, that's a burglary.

When's it?

If I steal a purse on the sand, that's a larceny.

So it doesn't matter if they're home or not, it's a burglary.

Correct, regardless if it's occupied or not. If someone is home with that, it becomes a felony at that point. It's an increased penalty because it's occupied.

Thank you.

If I took this, this would be larceny.

Any other questions? Thank you, Chief. Thank you. We appreciate your support.

Chief, one thing on the Baker Acts. There's a number of them. Are we about proportional to other communities, do we think?

You know, that's a great question, Councilmember. That's definitely a concern of mine. We do have a high number per capita for our community. Other municipalities are seeing an increase also. I've spoken to a number of our clergy here to help us with this issue. We do have some, obviously, members of the community that we see on more than one occasion. And we are limited on what we can do, but we're also always offering services. We've gone out of our way with some citizens this year, as you're aware. to offer an extended amount of services by contacting the county and additional resources. I think it's just something we have to continue working on together and realize that we're not immune from what everyone goes on in society. You know, we look at Key Biscayne, it certainly is a beautiful and mostly affluent location, but we still have individuals who struggle and sometimes just need a helping hand or an ear for someone to listen to.

Yeah, sure. What was your question? The statistics on Baker Acts are...

Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Good job. Is there anybody here from the Special Magistrates?

Jeremy's got to give a quick update on the numbers for that.

Good evening, Council. Jeremy Carlos Garger, Director of Building, Zoning, and Planning. Also oversee code compliance, which is what handles Special Magistrates bringing cases to the Special Magistrates. We had an active year for them this year. There were eight meetings. In addition to two that are normally not scheduled around the holidays and around July 4th, there were also two other meetings which were canceled because cases were either postponed or What is very, very common for special magistrates is right before people come before the magistrate, they decide that, no, no, they actually are OK with paying the fine. So that actually happened in about 2 thirds of the cases that were scheduled before the magistrates. They heard 31 cases, the bulk of which have to do with building violations. A lot of issues with buildings that haven't come into compliance with fire codes was probably the single most common thing. A couple of cases where we've had 40-year recertifications go quite late. They also have a role in monitoring those, where Um, even if we haven't cited the property, we've had them come in and report regularly to special magistrates to make sure that there's still progress being made. Um, it's been a very, very valuable tool for getting. Reluctant folks to to comply with with that. Um, we are. Currently scouring the records to see if they had actually mitigated any fines. We've gotten through about half of the records, and they had actually not mitigated any of the fines for about 15 of the cases. So we'll get a more accurate report for that, but we actually have to go through case by case. We hadn't been keeping records specifically for that. So are there any questions?

Can we do that going forward? Would it be hard to do that?

No, I think once we are like, OK, we want to keep track of this, we'll take care of it. Because they only educated 31 cases for the whole year, because most things are just settled beforehand.

Questions? OK. Thank you. Thank you. Let's do the survey.

7C, Village of Key Biscayne Biennial Resident Survey results given by ETC Institute.

All right, Mr. Mayor, we're going to do this by Zoom, so give us a second to set this up. It should be coming up very soon.

I should be sharing my screen. Hopefully everybody can hear me okay. This is Ryan Murray with DTCN Institute.

Ryan, you're up, but it's very hard to hear you. If you could speak a little bit louder.

Yeah, let me see. I've got my laptop right next to my face here. See if I can get closer. All right. I think it's up there by my camera, so I'm going to leave my camera off so y'all don't see my mouth so closely. Is this any better? Yes, I think we can all hear you. All right, fantastic. Is everybody ready? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Alan, is there a way to get it louder?

Somebody hearing you, Joe?

I do apologize. We're working on volume on our side, Ryan. Give us just about a minute, 30 seconds.

Sounds good.

All right, now we're going to go.

Okay. All right. I'm going to stay close to my mic, so I am going to leave my camera off for now, but I can turn it up when I get to questions, if you'd like. I appreciate being here this evening. It's always a pleasure to present to the Village Key Biscayne. They've been a longtime client to ETC Institute for about the past 44 years, 40 years or so. ETC Institute has really prided itself in being an institution or an organization that really helps government organizations make better decisions through statistically valid data. And through that mission, we've really become the nation's leading provider in market research for government organizations over the last 40 years. It's really an objective assessment. We want to make sure that community leaders understand that they can really depend on this data driven exercise to really make good decisions. And so that's really our whole purpose here. And that really folds into the purpose of the survey itself, which is really an objective assessment project. We want to address or really assess objectively the resident satisfaction with the delivery of key city services or village services. Excuse me. We also want to help determine priorities for the community as part of your ongoing planning process. And so I work with staff specifically actually include design features within the survey instrument itself that helps us develop priorities or opportunities for improvement, which we'll call our important satisfaction analysis and. One of the things that I always like to tell councils when I have the opportunity to present is that even if 100% of your residents were satisfied with each and every one of the village services assessed on the survey, we still would have developed priorities or opportunities for improvement just based on the design of the survey instrument itself. And so it's really inherently built into this process to really ensure, really help make sure that the results are usable. and one of the last things that we want to ensure that we're doing is measuring trends from prior years and we'll see some of that this evening and we also want to make sure that we've got comparative benchmarks so while the surveys are relatively similar year over year we do allow staff to make adjustments and change the content of the survey to keep up with the times but etc institute is always trying to do our best to make sure that we're grounded in benchmarking and trends analysis to ensure that we've got both historical as well as regional Florida averages and national trends to help make sure that we've got a little bit of additional context to maybe where we've come or where we're at currently and what some of our ratings really look like. In addition to be able to really go over the purpose of the particular survey here, one of the greatest opportunities as the researcher is to really break down the methodology for the survey. I'm the Director of Community Research at ETC Institute. I've been here for about 20 years. This is all I've ever done here at ETC Institute is statistically valid surveys. And the one key piece of this is to ensure first that every single residential address on the island or in Key Biscayne has an equal opportunity of being selected to receive the survey in the mail we ask staff to provide us with either gis shape files or confirm that the boundaries of the village haven't changed year over year and we last administered this survey in 2024 for the village we mail out a survey packet to the randomly selected households in the community and we continue to follow up with those randomly selected households until reaching a certain number of completed surveys Now, 1 of the discussions that I frequently have with elected officials is how does 500 surveys represented a community of so large? Well, 1 of the things that I want to make sure that the village understands is that you receive a very high number of surveys for your overall population. But at the end of the day, ensuring that each respondent was randomly selected. And ensuring that we have good geographic as well as demographic distribution in the responses ensures the results are reliable to a certain degree or a margin of error on the survey results. And so I wanted to show you the map and let you know that in addition to geographic standards and random sampling, we're also ensuring that the overall results from the survey, the demographic composition of the people who responded accurately or very closely matches that of the village itself. And that provides us with a margin of error of about 4.3% at the 95% level of confidence. And what that means is if we were to conduct the survey 100 times and I were to randomly sample your community 100 times, collect 501 surveys and ensure that the results were geographically and demographically representative of the community, we would know that within our margin of error, those results should hold true plus or minus the margin of error of about 4%.

Hey, Ryan, you went backwards on your slide. You need to go two forward.

Yep, I just went back to that margin of error, so you all could just see that down there at the bottom where it says 95% level of confidence. But heading back through the map there, we can see that we got very good distribution of responses. One of the other things that I wanted to mention is I know this looks very grid-based. Patterned and that's because we're basically taking the exact home address of each respondent and technically we're rounding it to the nearest block level. And so these dots that we're seeing here on the map are approximate locations of those actual home addresses. And we had a couple of different ways of doing this, and I went with the more spread out version, so we could easily see that we got good distribution from across the village. without identifying any specific homes. So none of those dots are actually on top of any homes that actually completed the survey. You're not going to count 501 dots as well, because a lot of those surveys will take place on those same blocks. And so we'll have overlapping dots there as well. So I wanted to make sure to explain that particular process. But there's a whole GIS mapping appendix that we've provided in addition uh to the survey results and so there's a whole bunch of mapping that we can look at as well those are census block group areas that you see with the boundaries the black boundaries there and we use the mean rating within each one of those census block groups to help shade maps and i'll show you one of those in just a few moments In terms of what we know, we're kind of looking at the results at a glance. We had over 500 completed surveys, margin of error is about 4% at the 95% level of confidence, which is really great because we had over 95% of respondents tell us that the community is either an excellent or good place to raise children, place to live, and the overall quality of life in the village also received over 95% excellent and good responses. Factoring in the margin of error could be as high as 94% or excuse me, as high as 99% or potentially as low as 91%. But what the results tell us is that 90% or more of our village residents think that we live in an excellent or good place when it comes to a place to live, raise children and overall quality of life. When we look at benchmarking, the village continues to set the standard for the delivery of services. You rate more than 20 percentage points above the national and Florida averages when rating the quality of life in the village. Of the 12 perception items that were comparable from 24 to 26, you saw increases in seven of the 12 areas with significant increases in four. No item saw a significant decrease in our perception-related areas between 24 and 26. And while we developed opportunities for improvement specifically based on the design of the survey, enforcement of traffic laws, traffic conditions, overall village traffic conditions, or excuse me, traffic conditions along the Rickenbacker Causeway, and then overall traffic conditions really kind of top the mark in terms of those opportunities for us to continue to look at, try to continue to emphasize and continue to improve as we move forward. One of the things we'll touch on first are perceptions. We want to understand how residents or respondents to the survey rated the perceptions of the village. We sort these charts really from the positive ratings summed up left to right. And so you see over to the left, the blue remarks are going to be our more positive, very satisfied remarks. Stepping down all the way to the right where we see the sum of the dissatisfied and very dissatisfied responses. I'm not always able to group the dissatisfied and very dissatisfied responses together, but as you can see, some of your combined responses don't even make up nearly a full percentage point, and so we try to make sure that these are as legible as possible, understanding there's a tabular data section in the report that actually gives the full decimal point responses for each one of these particular questions.

Can I ask you a question? Please. Is it okay to interrupt here?

Sure.

What kind of questions do you ask, for example, to determine the village's efforts to plan for the future, the village's efforts to, there was another one here, something about, oh, the flood reduction efforts. They're interesting numbers relative to all the work we're doing to address those issues.

Yeah, yeah. So the village efforts to plan for the future is down towards the bottom. About 56% of respondents are generally satisfied. Another one in three households indicated that neutral position and about one or 15% or less than one in five were dissatisfied. These are perception related responses. We know not every village resident is an expert in village planning and zoning. We know not every village resident is an expert per se in efforts to reduce sea level rise or storm water management. And so what we're doing in these surveys is really trying to get a better understanding of how respondents or residents within the village feel, perceive, really a snapshot in time of how they view or perceive the delivery of those village services. So one of the things that I always tell elected officials, myself included, when I sit behind the dais, is that these are responses from a group of respondents in the community. that do demographically accurately match the makeup of the community and can be held constant over the entire village. But at the end of the day, you've got subject matter experts internally who can really help put these results into practice. And sometimes, and while this is not likely the case for everything here, sometimes it's either just a perceptions issue that we're not sure what we're doing to plan for the future, or we're not sure what that looks like as it relates to me specifically as the respondent in the evening that I'm completing the survey. But at the end of the day, the survey can really help us guide some decision making, but it won't tell us, you know, it's not a referendum on our performance. And nor should this particular 56% level of satisfaction be a key performance indicator for how you're planning for the future. So it's a great thing to keep in touch with respondents and residents throughout the community. Overall quality of life is super strong, but we do see heavy levels of neutral for some of those areas where respondents maybe just aren't sure about what we're doing to plan for the future.

So do you have benchmarks with other communities? So you have a bar chart for, say, Bal Harbor or Sunny Isles or? Pinecrest that you would could run beside these so that we could sort of get a statistical variant of how we rate against other communities of similar financial status.

So, because yeah, the full report is in the packet. I think it's in that tab to there in the packet this evening. There is some benchmarking, but we don't divulge the specific responses from our clients. We could create a performance range average, but we do have national benchmarking and Florida state averages for those areas that we do have comparisons for.

Would you have any benchmarks from day county? Like, other other municipalities within our, you know, like, for just example, pinecrest or someone I appreciate that. You can't give the exact name, but you have. Other communities that you can throw statistical numbers out.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we work with a number of communities in the South Florida region. Pinecrest, it's been a while. The county doesn't do surveys regularly. Miami Beach is a client, you know, a lot of non-geographically interesting clients, I think is the best way to put it, where it's like Plantation and Margate. Some of those landlocked communities are also clients, as well as Fort Lauderdale. Our Florida average is a community survey that we administer to the state of Florida. We do a lot of work in the area, and so we use a Florida state average, or we could work with staff to develop some additional benchmarking from Florida communities that we've surveyed within the last couple of years.

Okay, thank you. I just think it would be interesting to know where some of these questions rank to other municipalities so we can get a sort of understanding of what that means.

Sure, sure. And I would never recommend to an elected official or staff, for that matter, that you look at Key Biscayne as a place to shop. And because it's at the bottom here, we look down on our offerings or our shopping offerings. These are really just perceptions of those items here. And the core ones that really tell you that you're on the right track are the three at the top. And it's quality of life, place to raise children, place to live. As I mentioned, you know, the average resident in Key Biscayne is probably not that planner at heart, right? And they're not professionally trained planners like you have on staff. And so the efforts to plan for the future is less about your performance and more about understanding general perceptions in the community, which are actually relatively high, given how... diabolically low, these particular responses for planning for the future can be sometimes. Thank you.

It's impossible not to draw an interesting conclusion from what you were saying a moment ago about perception and expertise and knowledge and the notion of plebiscite.

Yeah, yeah. And there's just a lot to be said. And, you know, some of these items, you know, are just that, you know, the number of trees in the village is a great example. 76% of respondents are generally satisfied with that item, but it's very much in the eye of the beholder. In larger communities, I frequently use an example for the village efforts to plan for the future. And the reason that I use this example is because of all our focus groups on these areas sometimes. And one of the things that continually pops up is this idea that, you know, their volume is dropping off. okay i'm moving back closer sorry one of the major things that we talk about in focus groups around planning for the future or development types or things like that is you know you brought in the big box retailer that i don't prefer you know and i would have rather it had been x y or z and so there's just a lot of personal feelings and preferences in these perception questions and when we get to some of the ratings of the actual service levels where we know respondents are frequently driving on streets or constantly walking on sidewalks. That's where we can begin to take away a little bit more insight in terms of, hey, residents really are telling us that there may be a problem with some of these things. When it comes to perceptions, we should just kind of look at those as that snapshot in time. Generally, how do you feel about the village's efforts currently to plan for the future, understanding that there was no education provided to the respondent before answering that question? So, moving forward, I'm going to take a look at that map. This is the overall quality of life in the village of Key Biscayne. There's a whole mapping appendix. What I really wanted to push the idea up here was that generally, regardless of where you live in the village, your overall perception of the quality of life in the village is very high. The census block groups are shaded. That's what those boundaries show. Those are based on the mean ratings within each one of those areas. And you can see that there are no discrepancies based on the area of the community in which you live for the overall quality of life in the village of Key Biscayne. There is some differences or variations in some of the maps. We're not going to show all of those today, but I do like to make sure to provide at least one so I can go over kind of the way to review those. In terms of the overall ratings of the village of Key Biscayne, These are our primary or core service areas. So everything from fire rescue services and police at the top where Florida will frequently or very often rate those services towards the tops of these charts. We also see high levels of satisfaction with communication, community center maintenance, and some of the areas that have the highest levels of dissatisfaction are also among some of the top opportunities for improvement in 2025. And the important satisfaction analysis, which the full findings are in your report, and we'll go over some of the major takeaways from that later on in the presentation, is meant to derive priorities or opportunities for improvement based on higher levels of dissatisfaction and lower levels of, excuse me, higher levels of importance and lower levels of satisfaction. And so you can see here, power liability, flood reduction efforts, traffic flow and safety, still lower than average levels of satisfaction based on these other items that are rated, and they also received relatively high emphasis ratings. When we talk about trends and how the 2026 results compared to 2024, there were 31 questions that used that five-point positive scale, so either excellent and good all the way down to poor or very satisfied and satisfied all the way down to dissatisfied. Of the areas that were directly comparable, we only saw 10 significant changes that exceeded our surveys margin of error. There were seven significant increases and three significant decreases. And most of the areas are about 70% of them did not see any significant change in positive satisfaction. The results suggest, comparing 2026 to 2024, that the village of Key Biscayne has provided very consistent levels of service and provided a consistent overall overview to respondents, making sure that the overall quality of these service areas remain very high when we talk about overall satisfaction. When we look at the significant decreases in satisfaction, these are only surrounding, for some reason, the programs and events for children, community center maintenance, and programs and events for seniors. So it seems to be kind of Directed towards some of those programming items currently, but over to the left, we can see that the village efforts to plan for the future actually went up 7 percentage points from 2024. so a significant increase that drastically outweighs our surveys margin of error. In addition, police engagement presence in the community, even keep us gain as a place to work and overall sense of community saw significant increases as did the police efforts to prevent crime. So overall, we can see some significant increases over to the left, significant decreases in satisfaction over to the right. But at the end of the day, consistency is key. High performing organizations like the village of Key Biscayne, we've been doing your survey for a very long time. High performing organizations always see consistency, even when some of our other clients across the country are seeing major downturns in areas that are well beyond just a couple of our parks and recreation or a couple of our programming specific items as we see here. In terms of the comparisons, the national and regional benchmarking and council members, I'll work with staff to develop some kind of additional heightened look at regional benchmarking for us. There were 33 items comparable to our national and Florida averages. We administer a national survey every other year as well as a Florida survey. The only other state we do this for is Texas because we do a lot of work in Texas as well. and so we're able to provide florida specific averages now this is going to come from both sides of the states top and bottom so it's not a south florida specific it's not based on income but we can develop or derive some of those additional comparisons for you in terms of overall did i have a question no Okay, so we rated above the Florida average in 76% of the areas and the national average in 85% of the areas. Items determined to be top priorities in the important satisfaction analysis are areas where we performed very much in line or just slightly below maybe the US or Florida average. But you can see throughout most of these areas, Effectiveness of communication, ensuring we're prepared for disasters, enforcement of local codes and ordinances, and even solid waste services are well above national and regional benchmarking. There are a lot of comparisons within the report. I tried to pull out some of the most pertinent areas where the village rates significantly above the national average. And again, that would be a difference of 4 percentage points or more. And that's everything down there on the bottom right to adult recreation programs, the village is a place to work, and some very core items like the village is a place to live, it's a place to raise children, overall quality of life in the community, 20 percentage points above the national average. And one of the big ones here, when we talk about sea level change or sea level rise, efforts to ensure your community is prepared for emergencies or disasters, you're 31 percentage points above our national average. When we look at those Florida benchmarks, it's a very similar story. We see a lot of quality of EMS, police services. Again, we see the efforts to ensure your community is prepared for emergencies. We see the community as a place to live, raise children, and overall quality of life in the community, 24 percentage points above our Florida benchmarking. When we look at a few of the areas where we rate significantly below the national or Florida averages, we see a few key areas that are really related to our opportunities for improvement. We see stormwater management, we see flow of traffic, keeping informed about local issues. And then over to the right, we see, again, a little bit more about efforts to keep us informed, usefulness of the website, and then again, stormwater management and timeliness of information provided by local governments. When we look at opportunities for improvement, we've got multiple important satisfaction tables within the reporting. We tried to distill that down for you all the highest opportunities for improvement from our safe and secure village section of the surveys, the enforcement of traffic laws. I've studied this a lot in additional focus groups and follow up surveys. Where it used to be more and more respondents telling us that they want additional enforcement, that is really balanced out to kind of an even blend where folks are saying, hey, there's either too much or there's too little enforcement. And it really is community dependent on where we're at there. The best example is to kind of think about if you got a speeding ticket and then the survey was in your mailbox when you got home, would you rate this enforcement of traffic laws as low? The other kind of switch on that is if you sit outside on your front porch a lot and you think that people are speeding, you're that human radar gun, you would think that maybe the enforcement of traffic laws is too low and you're also going to rate that down. And so there's kind of this mixed opinion very much along the lines of codes where one person might feel like somebody's out of compliance when really they're not. When we talk about accessible connected to mobile transportation in the village, traffic conditions along the causeway and overall village traffic conditions, kind of our primary areas. And I was listening to some of the speakers before and I noticed the police chief said our roadways aren't super wide. It is a unique community. And so one of those things to always consider is, you know, how do we want to address traffic and how we do that? Do we address it with traffic calming, slowing things down a little bit further? Or do we look at expansion and try to speed things up, which is going to really contradict some of our enforcement of traffic laws areas? One of the other key areas in the survey that really were highlighted as opportunities for improvement based on lower levels of satisfaction and higher levels of emphasis responses was the resilient and sustainable environment and infrastructure where respondents were very much adamant that stormwater drainage improvements, flood control efforts, and electrical power reliability topped the list. Now, these aren't always issues where satisfaction is extremely low and emphasis is always very high, but it's one of those areas where satisfaction is relatively mixed And the emphasis there is very high on those three items. So if we're able to focus in and really make movements or really change overall levels of satisfactions in some of these six areas that are listed, we should see other ripple effects across our survey. But one of the things about the village of Key Biscayne is that you've been doing this for a very long time. And at 95% level of satisfaction with the community as a place to live, raise children, Those are going to be hard numbers to beat and hard numbers to increase, especially given that 4% margin of error. So in summary, the village of Key Biscayne continues to deliver, deliver exceptionally high levels of services, really setting the standard both nationally and against Florida benchmarks. Your perceptions remain strong, but most importantly, in my opinion, stable. The majority of key indicators improved since 2024, and only a few significant declines were observed. You outperform benchmarking comparisons. I know I mentioned that on the first bullet, but it's worth noting again. You outperform national benchmarks in 85% of our comparable areas and 76% of the areas that we're able to compare to Florida. Core village strengths continue to include public safety services, emergency response, communication, parks and rec, and overall community livability. And opportunities exist, but are common among high-performing organizations. And what I always say is that Traffic flow problems or traffic enforcement problems are way better than police or fire or ambulance or even parks and recreation problems. So when we talk about opportunities for improvement, these are opportunities that maybe aren't necessarily low-hanging fruit, but they're not core quality of life items that will continue to have our perception levels fluctuate. These are opportunities that exist in high performing communities across the country. And as a consultant, we're happy to see things like traffic flow or even traffic enforcement, like I said, versus public safety or versus some of our parks and rec, which are really quality of life issues at a whole. In summary, I'll take any questions that I can tonight. Thank you, Ryan. I'll read the report.

I thank everyone here on the dais. Take a bow. We have a good news story here. We, both from a state and national level, we far exceed what other communities are doing. So congratulations. And yeah, can we always improve? Absolutely. But this ratifies and lets us know that we're on the right track and you guys are all doing a great job. Frank, you wanted to add?

And this all came out before it was widely known about the barbecue with a cop event.

It's disheartening. Sometimes you hear people talk and they don't really look at the information, but ETC is a very reputable provider of these kinds of surveys and they do a lot of work in Florida. So this is a good statistically sound survey that lets us know that we're on the right track.

Can I ask a question? Yes. Is he still on?

Yes, he's still on.

Sir, how is this thing stratified? Is it stratified by age, by families, by children, by gender, or is it just a general survey?

Yeah, thankfully, we've got these years of experience that have really helped us sample communities. The other benefit in our favor is that we've sampled and surveyed Key Biscayne many, many times. When we set out to conduct statistically valid research, our goal is not to have to wait the results. So I spend a lot more time talking here, especially about waiting, which is everybody's favorite topic. At the end of the day, just so Council and Mayor are aware, we want to continue to follow up with the randomly selected households in your community until reaching the proper demographic composition in the sample. And that avoids us having to wait the results or discuss that waiting or worrying about us being out of line in any demographic factor. We continue to follow up. and work towards our goal of 500 completed surveys with that goal in mind. And in this year's survey, we were able to collect 501 surveys that did accurately match the village population. Great question.

So my question again is, it is stratified, and what is the sample size within each strata?

Yeah, it was not necessarily stratified across the city. It was a pure random sample.

Okay, thank you. The other thing, the questions, which I'm sure are all good, and some of them I understand is very easy for anybody to answer. But if somebody says, are you satisfied with the time it takes for a fire emergency to come to your house? How many people have had fire emergencies come to their house of the fire department? So my question is, how do they know if it's a good amount of time or not a good amount of time? In other words, I understand when they say, hey, is it traffic? Everybody knows about that. A lot of the other questions, everybody knows by observation. But I notice a number of your questions really need specialized, or you might not have that experience, and yet you put it into your survey. So I'm just curious how you go about that.

Yeah, yeah. And those are very much perception related items. Fire and rescue response to emergencies. About 24.8% of respondents provided a don't know response to that question. So luckily there was about one in four households that told us we're just not sure. The idea is, is the contextual benchmarking, which we have benchmarking for this question can help us better understand if perceptions are in line. What we know for a fact is that fire and police services in your area of the country are top notch well above national and regional benchmarks in many key areas. We also know that your fire and police services are tracking their own response times. Comparing those to national benchmarks that are actually key performance indicators for actual service level indicators, and that this survey, while a great opportunity to again, touch base with respondents to get a better understanding of perceptions is by no means a reflection of the performance. in terms of the fire and rescue response time to emergencies. And so there's a big, I always as the researcher wanna be completely in agreement with that particular statement, you're right. Not every respondent has that firsthand knowledge, but most folks will provide an opinion. And that's where the contextual comparisons and the benchmarking come in handy because that way we're able to understand, well, these perceptions are very similar to these other perceptions, really helping to standardize the overall question itself. So you're 100% right. It's a very specialized question only for those folks that have really used or utilized those services themselves, unfortunately. But at the end of the day, they are kind of a core question that we and other surveyors nationwide will ask.

But you just said 75% of people had an opinion. Only 24% didn't. And I would guess no more than 5% of the people actually have the actual experience. So, I mean, I'm very happy with the time that I see, and I know that they keep trying to improve, and they're excellent, outstanding, but that's my question. I'm not criticizing. I'm just saying, how meaningful is your answers to a question like that in a survey?

Well, there's another source of perception, and that is word of mouth.

Perception becomes reality for me.

People talk to each other. If I had a heart attack and my neighbor knows about it, that information travels.

How many surveys did you send out? I know you got 501 back.

Yeah, it's about 5,000 surveys are sent. It might be less than that, and I apologize. I don't have that right on top of my fingertips.

Can you speak up?

Yeah, if you give me just two seconds here. I had this information pulled up earlier. Just generalize. I just want a general idea. It was 3200 surveys were mailed and out of that we collected 501 completed surveys.

Do you check that against year to year to see if it's the same people sending them back or they're all new people?

That will differ now, the random sampling process is purely random to ensure that we don't run into any kind of bias in our rate of selection. We expect some people to move from year to year, but we do know that some people are selected at higher rates than others. This happens mostly in communities where we do this quarterly, where we get somebody that shows up and says, hey, I've gotten a survey twice this year, which is very unusual. But no, it shouldn't be happening where everybody or a large group of people are receiving the survey in 24 and 26. It should happen occasionally, but it shouldn't be pervasive given the population of the community.

So do you check to see if the same people are sending the same survey back year after year?

Because we're using address-based sampling, no. We do not have personal identifiers on these survey responses.

It's just the address. It's truly random. Okay. We've got to keep moving. Thank you, Mr. Murray, for the survey results and to be continued.

Have a great meeting. Thank you.

Thank you.

There's a special presentation of a proclamation recognizing April 2026 as Paralyzed Veterans of America Awareness Month.

Okay, I issued this proclamation that encourages the people of the Village of Key Biscayne to observe and participate in the activities associated with Paralyzed Veterans of America Awareness Month and reflect upon the sacrifice endured by our community's veterans who are paralyzed. So, I share this with you. Thank you very much. for providing consensus on that. Thank you.

Thank you. The next item, Mr. Mayor, is the consent agenda, which only contains 8A and 8D.

Move. Second.

Thank you. All those in favor? Aye. At only 8A and 8D are the only items on the consent agenda. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries. The next item is a resolution of the village council, the village of Key Biscayne, Florida, approving park use fees for the use of the village green I'm sorry?

I thought you just said that 8B was pulled.

From consent. No. No, we're discussing.

Okay, sorry. Yes. Approving park use fees for the use of the Village Green by non-public educational facilities authorizing the village manager to negotiate non-exclusive licenses with non-public schools for use of the Village Green subject to approval by the Florida Communities Trust, FCT, providing for implementation and providing for an effective date.

Move. Second.

Yeah.

OK. The item is properly before us. Gentleman?

Good evening. So this is a combination for Todd and I, Jeremy Karras-Gallagher, building zoning planning director. This is in response to certain businesses that have opened in the key that our educational use either Some examples would be a tutorial institution that keeps kids longer than just an hour or so, day cares, anything like that. They're all required to have outdoor space for children. There's a formula that the county law provides that they need to provide outdoor space. So in an effort to be flexible and make sure that these things can be happening here, we've got an opportunity to have them have an agreement to use the public green space per terms and conditions that would be outlined in individual letters of agreement. So that's what is before you from the planning perspective. And then Todd's available for questions about how that impacts parks and our use.

We'll start on this side now.

So we reviewed a couple things, but just for everybody's understanding, how are we making sure this doesn't start to impact regular park usage? So how are we planning around this? I want you to walk us through your plan on how you're going to manage this. Sure.

I would say it's much how we manage the commercial use of the Village Green currently through our trainer program. where we've identified space and time and location for each trainer to ensure we don't have conflicts, to ensure that the park remains substantially available to the general public at key times. So we would use the same approach here. I would state that all of this use is currently happening. And I haven't seen any conflict arise from this use that has been taking place for some period of time. But if there was, we have an agreement. We can amend an agreement. We have insurance. This really codifies some stuff that has been taking place that should be codified.

So, Todd, just a question. So what you're saying is that this is currently going on and it's theoretically not programmed in your time schedules, but it is happening organically, for lack of a better term?

Yes. These uses are currently taking place inside the park. I haven't heard of any conflicts.

So just why do we feel that it's our responsibility to provide park and recreation space for a for-profit business? I don't understand the idea. The schools. You use the school as an example.

Yeah, so it's not our responsibility. It is a service that we can offer and that should be formalized. Like for my, where I'm coming from, I need to make sure that before we give these folks a business tax receipt that they're saying that we need to make sure they're following all the rules for operating that business. So we want to see a formal arrangement to have open space available somewhere.

But just a question, how could these companies be operating if they don't have a formal relationship in the first place?

So there's a couple places where I know one of the examples is St. Christopher's. They actually do have their own space, but then they're using, and I think since COVID have been using village facilities as well. There's another one that they had been operating for a long time as they expanded and they had students on site for longer periods of time and they moved premises. We were like, oh, hey, this came to light rather than sort of shut them down. We're saying continue to operate as long as we're moving through this process and we are going to formalize it.

So these are mostly non-profit school type structure businesses?

No, no, they could be profit. They could be for profit.

I don't understand why it's in our best interest to provide any usage of the village green for this purpose, just as a question.

Okay. Because of demand. Why are we allowing the private trainers? Because they're popular. It's a good question.

Are we going? We have more. Fernando, are you going next?

I'm chomping at the bit here.

OK. First of all, there are restrictions on the use of the park. I'm just going over this for the general information of everybody. Because it was acquired. with the Florida Communities Trust funds, or at least partially acquired with that. So we don't even know at this moment whether or not this use would be a permissible use. I know in the language of the executive explanation, it talked about public park purposes, but that's not the term that the Trust uses its resource-based recreation. So I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but for the benefit of everybody else, we have to see if this use would be approved by the Trust. And my understanding is that they even want to see a draft agreement before they'll even do that. So it seems to me that we're putting the cart before the horse with respect to that issue. But as far as the other things are concerned, For me, this is really a policy question on how we want our parks to be used and who we want to serve. And right now, from approximately 3 o'clock to 10 o'clock almost every day, The bulk of the park is used for athletic activities. So the rest of us who want to go with their families and throw a Frisbee or just sit there and have a little oasis of peace in our very, very densely populated neighborhood don't have that opportunity. And the point that there may be only two facilities right now, one is a school and one not, who are making use of the park to satisfy their permit requirements doesn't mean that that's all that would happen once we pass this. Because even by the executive explanation, it says that we're going, by doing this, by making the public park space available to non-public school, which is not the appropriate term, allows flexibility for more commercial space to be utilized for educational purposes. And why do we want to do that? That park is our gem. And everybody is allowed the right to use that park, even just to go and sit for half an hour or walk around it and have peace in the middle of the day. So I really have a very serious problem with doing this. And I think that the uses that the two companies or schools, whatever they are right now, are making of it can be resolved in another manner there's another way to do it other than to open the door here for the floodgates of monetizing the public the the village green i'm so i am totally against this mr london thank you very much

I guess for the last 12 or 14 years, all I've ever heard of is not enough space for the teams, for everybody to play. We've got to find more fields, more fields, more fields. I have no problem with other people using our parks when they're not being used by our own people. like I say, the teams, the various athletics you have, how do you reconcile these people coming when we don't have enough space for the various activities and sports that we have now? That's where I'm coming from.

I think it goes to what Council Member Stoner mentioned earlier. All those take place after school. These uses are during school. So this wouldn't conflict with anything? It doesn't conflict with our existing athletic programs, no, sir.

But it doesn't conflict with anything besides our athletic programs or anything else that would conflict with these things during the day?

Like I previously stated, this use is taking place, and I have not received any complaints. To councilmember stoner earlier comments, yes, maybe if you went out and wanted to use a swing. There could be a kid from a school. Or kids on those swings so they're the there could be a conflict I haven't but nobody's called it's my anyway is to keep this game resident right yeah so the difference is he's coming with the school.

Yeah, and I think that goes back to your comment about demand and why these things exist and why these. groups are existing is because of demand. And I understand what you're saying, Council Member Stoner. I also am fearful that we grow this into something bigger than what we ever intended. And I did ask the question about people that want to peacefully sit at the park. What I don't have necessarily is data to suggest that there is a problem today on whether or not people can use the park for just free use. And I know there's a demand because I see the trainers out there. I just want to make sure that we're capping and that we have a good process on understanding what that schedule looks like. So you depicted that just now by mentioning school hours versus non-school hours. That's a good example of you having a good pulse of the situation. But when we open this up and we start to codify this, there's a possibility that this now opens up much greater demand than what you've currently ever experienced. And so I want to make sure that there's a system in place to cap that. We talked about permits, for example. There's a certain amount of permits. It's first come, first serve. You expire those or those permits are ended. There's no other permit to give until somebody gives back that permit or no longer uses it. So I want you to kind of, that's what I was meaning by the question of explain to us how it is that you're going to keep this manageable. Because certainly there are times where people like even myself want to walk out and just hang out with my kid or be on the park. And I can't because there's a bunch of soccer going on or flag football. And understandingly, they are residents, to your point, Councilman London, they are residents that are using these. I want you to also clarify that as well.

Before Todd answers that question, we can't say no. This is not opening up to anybody and everybody. This gives us the ability to control who will be on there by an actual agreement. So, in fact, this gives us the ability to understand who's going to be there, how many are going to be there, when they're going to be there, so we can gain more control by this. So talk to us about that control. Number two, also, it allows us to have a firm agreement, which also transfers liability, and also it allows us to get a cost to cover some maintenance as well. That's the bigger picture. I'll let Todd talk about the specifics on how he would tactically manage that.

Can I just interrupt for one second? Sure.

Okay.

The costs, I don't even know how those numbers were achieved, but $30 an hour, $50 an hour, I'm not sure how that really addresses the real potential increased maintenance, okay? And this also opens the door for, for example, A soccer academy. It has nothing to do with Key Biscayne to come and open up a tutoring site on the Key and have soccer in the mornings. I'm just picking on soccer.

You could technically say there are no more permits available, so they couldn't technically then operate.

And the other thing is I'm afraid that we also open up the door to saying we're discriminating or being unfair because we let this one, we didn't let that one. I just think it's too broad.

So I wanted to address a question about potential expansion uses. There is a practical element to this too, right? Some of the examples that we've cited are you have to be within pretty close proximity to bring folks there, get them back within sort of typical school setting. So there is that element to it, right, that there's going to be a practical limit on being able to move people around.

Let's set an example so we understand. So there's a a small school with 15 or 20 kids that need a place to play. So are these kids being escorted from their building by an instructor or some type, brought over to the playground and said, here you go, play for an hour or half or whatever, and then they go back to their facility? Is that basically what's happening structurally? That's exactly what's happening. Okay, so we have... These kids are coming on whether they're residents or non-residents. We're taking on a certain level of liability by their playing under some level of instruction. But how are we taking on liability, Chad? Because if they're out there and they get hurt, why is that our problem? How would it be any different than a kid gets hurt on the jungle gym?

Yeah, I mean, we often get sued, but people get hurt on our playgrounds. It's the same risk. However, we have sovereign immunity. So on tort actions, there is a cap on that liability. So, I mean, there's obviously liability if people are using our facility, but it's no different than what you're saying.

So there's no real benefit from a liability standpoint.

Well, I think that what the manager is saying is that when someone gets hurt on the playground, they get hurt on the playground. Here, if we have a formalized agreement, we're shifting the liability to that entity by agreement.

So we shift the liability, but there's no real, you just said, if I heard you correctly.

There's a sovereign immunity cap. So there's still a limit that we are subject to liability, but it's not millions of dollars, for example.

The agreement that they would sign, they would assume the liability. Correct.

So this would effectively reduce our current situation, the current liability today, because there are people operating without these agreements.

But we could still require certificates of insurance. I mean, there's other ways to deal with it.

What do we, we're not, I mean, when you go with the trainer and you work with one of the trainers on the key and you go to the Village Green, you don't sign a, I've never signed a release with the trainer and I don't, we don't sign.

No, but the trainer, we, and I don't know if, the trainer exactly, but I know that Todd's working on it with independent contractor agreements that all of our contractors in the community center are supposed to have, which does require them to have not only the general liability insurance, but also workers' comp and shifts and shifts to risk. I believe they all have indemnification hold harmless provisions with shifts to risk to them.

I would be surprised if the trainer that I'm working with has any financial wherewithal to be able to do that. Look, I don't want to put the guy in any trouble. I'm not going to put him on the spot.

We've been actually implementing that for every contractor on our facilities. For a variety of reasons one is we need to establish the independent contractor Relationship and make it clear so from an IRS perspective. They don't consider these individuals employees of the village And another is to protect the village from liability not only from an indemnity in a whole harmless But also to make sure there's proper insurance requirements, you know in place so Mr. Lundin, you had a question?

Let's say for argument's sake, a school brings over some kids, whoever does, and they set an agreement with us saying that they assume the liability in the park. And unfortunately, something happens. Can they sign away that parent's right? In other words, that parent still has a right to sue us. We're supposedly indemnified by the agreement, I guess.

Correct.

So if they don't pay, we're still responsible for it.

Yes, and then we will be sued, and then we will then put the company, the school, on notice that we've been sued and that they have to indemnify us and provide a defense.

These schools don't have any financial value. I mean, the relative value of that school is so insignificant that the amount of insurance that they're going to be able to afford is probably...

Well then they're not going to be able to enter into an agreement with us right we're going to have we wonder I mean look just just so the council knows even at the community center and again we've been doing this. Recently our insurance broker has told the as advised the village staff that we need to maintain a certain amount of insurance limits and those limits vary depending on the activity. So If they can't accept them, then we won't contract with them. And over the years, the village has refused to contract with certain companies that could not provide the necessary insurance. We have done that.

So I do think it's worth mentioning the business implications as well. Having something like this could allow for additional daycare facilities as sort of the market demands, right? Places that don't necessarily have space on site would be able to function. And if we don't do this, then there are places that are operating now that we won't, they won't be able to continue to operate in the way they've had as educational facilities. They'll need to be shut down in their current form at least.

Is that?

They wouldn't be in compliance with county law.

Well, I think there may be other ways to skin the cat.

I don't. We did this when I was at the city of Miami, and we looked for ways to operate with charter schools, and this was sort of the path forward. If there is another way, I am open to suggestions. I don't know of any other ways.

Is there any guarantee that the The overwhelming majority of these users would be residents?

I mean, we don't limit where their student population comes from for like a private educational use.

And they're not just schools. Just so you know, they're not just schools. This is businesses also.

Well, schools, yeah. They're for-profit schools or for-profit educational uses.

As well as nonprofit, I would assume.

Yeah, they could be nonprofit as well.

As to the other question, Chad, that could be something that would be sorted out as FTC would give us the approval and we would sign it. How do you see that working out?

We need to send to FTC our proposed agreement and we're pretty close to finalizing that and we can't proceed until we get their approval because the covenant that's recorded against this property as a result of funding that we received requires us to obtain their consent when we're taking certain actions and this is one of those actions.

Okay, Frank. Father JC earlier invoked wisdom for us. Always good. This feels to me like we are thinking very hard to forestall something very benign. I don't understand these insights, really. A park is a palette. It's for the recreation and enjoyment use of the community. I see no conflict ever between the open space enjoyment. I see conflict all the time for field use, but nobody's, in my experience, ever been able to, not been able to throw a Frisbee in the park or sit under a tree and enjoy peace and quiet. So if a park is a pallet and we, invest in these things to create community opportunities to enjoy outside. This constituency is that constituency.

I can't think of why we wouldn't allow this.

The only thing I don't understand is the increment for maintenance. The money either seems inequitable to me to impose an additional fee for this type of use. And in any event, it doesn't seem to correlate with an actual burden that requires additional maintenance. But that's just a guess.

I know it's been asked before. We did research what other municipalities are charging for similar organizations, and that's where we came with the fees.

How many of your kids from St. Christopher's use this thing? I really don't know.

I've seen just walking up Fernwood, little clusters of kids, you know, being led to the park. I think it's 40 minutes or something, whatever.

Do they have another park they can use besides this?

They have a little rec area, yeah, and they use that.

Yeah, they, you know, without going through their student roster, I know that they have enough space on site for a number of students.

Okay, anything else?

All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Nay.

Motion carries.

The next item is a resolution of the Village Council of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, approving a memorandum of agreement with the City of Miami for the Urban Area Security Initiative, UASI, 2024 grant program, providing for authorization and providing for an effective date.

Move. Second. Thank you. Just as background, What's called a, this is called a UAC program. And the UAC program has been around since the end, after the 9-11. And it's, this is what I recall working with the county. It was something that every city went after to try to get funding. from this, and this is a way that those funds are distributed, and they come to us through the federal government, and you are then, you solicit to the different, to the UASI program through the city of Miami, and I think this is more geared towards cyber issues than before, before, The county went after funding to take care of the cruise port and all these different things that became vulnerable as we saw them after 9-11. Can you shed some further light on this?

Yes, you're correct. Again, Chief Davis, Fire Department. You are correct. It was initially for cyber, but now it is to help us on our preparedness for any kind of threats. So beyond just the cyber, it gives us equipment, tools, vehicles if we need it, high water vehicles, anything to help us in times of a terrorist threat or a natural disaster. So that's what these funds are. And just to let you know, this is the same agreement we've signed over and over again. It's just that this one was not done in time.

It fell through the cracks. It fell through the cracks.

And exhibit, I know that Councilman Stoner had questions about exhibit one and exhibit two. Those were financial exhibits. Exhibit one states the amount of money that the federal government gives the city, which is the city of Miami, who's the gatekeeper. And exhibit two is the distribution list of how much we get per municipality.

But that's not what this memorandum of agreement says. So let me just, what tab is that?

Can someone tell me what tab that is? Five.

Five. So first of all, this memorandum of agreement says that tab 1, compliance with requirements or statutory objectives of federal law as stipulated in exhibit 1. I still don't think that I have the exhibit 1 that this refers to. There is an exhibit 1 in the document that was provided when we got here tonight, but that's exhibit one to the actual sub-award and grant agreement.

You mean exhibit A you had before, but exhibit one and two was sent to you today. I'm sorry? You had exhibit A that came along with the package. But exhibit one and two was sent through the manager's office earlier today.

That's the one that the clerk provided to this. Well, I haven't seen it.

It was provided sometime today. I have not seen that.

That is what I was given is printed. I was asked just to print it for Council Member Stoner. So that's what I did.

As I said, we were given this when we walked in today. It's just you. Or just me. I haven't read it. And from what I can see, just looking at the cover of it, I don't think that this is the exhibit one and exhibit two that this memorandum of agreement is referring to. I think it's different.

CD and I. No, C and D seem to be simply reporting.

Yes, sir.

H talks about objectives of law. I talks about goals and objectives.

What are you reading from, Frank?

The memo itself. And Article 5 refers in these subsections to the exhibit. So I'm just trying to interpolate what the exhibit speaks to. Two of them are plainly reporting.

They're all reporting most of them are reporting in the objectives the things we have to follow mainly This is for obviously for reimbursement purposes. So all the dates you mentioned earlier all those dates There was their dates a bill made for expending the money It's not incumbent funds is when we spend the money and sometimes those dates have to be extended Okay, I know we're getting in the weeds here, but let me just tell you what my problem is here.

My problem is That I don't see And I know that we are applying to get reimbursement for money we have already spent. But the problem is that this reimbursement is pursuant to an agreement that's in place that may even have been amended. So we don't even know what the agreement is yet. Over time, because I read something that says it can be amended. So it's an agreement that's a couple of years old that we don't even know what the agreement is. We are now functioning, I believe, a new agreement that we haven't even read, that we haven't signed yet because we applied for the money retroactively. And my biggest problem with it is we are agreeing without knowing what we are agreeing to be obligated to do. This isn't just doesn't say, you can buy this equipment or get this training and we'll reimburse you for it. That's not what it says. It's much broader than that, and it says, in Section 4D, ensuring participation of the following critical players in the assessment strategy development process, including law enforcement, emergency medical services, some other things, hazardous materials, governmental, administrative, and public safety communications. I have very grave concerns about what that means for us. What is that obligating us to do? I know you don't know the answer, but I don't know the answer, and no one up here knows the answer, which is why I think we should defer it until we can find out what that really means.

I think you're looking at something general, and this is specifically for tools and equipment. I think that the peer reading is going to generalize for everyone.

I'm told that by everybody, but I don't see that anywhere. And the other thing that I think is kind of interesting is, This was signed even the date on the agreement that it was signed. Let me see where I can't find it right now. It was signed like the date is off. It says it was signed in 2027, February of 2027. It's really, it's not right.

I think you're referring to the elections one. Okay, okay.

I did that this morning, too. Sorry. Okay. Anyway, that is my concern, and I really don't like to agree to be bound by something when I don't understand what it is or have any idea what it is we're agreeing to. And the devil is always in the details. Money is money, and no money is free. So there's got to be... some details and some obligations that we've undertaken. And even if this is money that we've already spent that we're getting reimbursed for, we are still functioning under some kind of agreement now and maybe going to spend some money now

We don't have any agreement. This is your agreement.

But we're getting the agreement after the fact. So that's going to happen again next year. We're going to get the agreement after the fact.

We should be covered. I'm cleaning up. What we're doing is cleaning up that fell through the cracks. So we should not be in this position again.

We should be current. Chief, may I? So, Councilwoman, so what this does require us to do, I think we mentioned this today, is we are using our underneath, we are a sub-grantee to the City of Miami. We are also a satellite EOC to the city of Miami. And we are pledged to work with them during any emergency operation, during any natural disaster. So that is our agreement. Not only is it an agreement with UACI, it's also part of our automatic aid agreement with the city. So that's what we're agreeing to. These, obviously, federal money comes through the city of Miami. It requires us to work as a team during any emergency situation.

I really would like to know what that means.

Can I ask a question, Chad? What's our risk situation here? As our village attorney, what should our concerns be? I mean, Nancy feels very strongly about this, and I can see that's important to her. So from your standpoint, what would you recommend that we do?

Well, I think first off, I think this is just an equipment purchase. Um, and it's already occurred, correct? That is correct. And it's just a grant reimbursement. Um, I don't know if, um, the, you said you have a timing issue. Um, if maybe it can help, you know, we have a meeting on the 22nd, you know, for example, mayor, if you want to get those extra documents, you could. might be worthy to help, but from a risk perspective, I don't really see a lot of risk. I've seen these agreements for 20 years over and over again. They always come late. It's always after the fact. It's been going on year after year after year, and every city does it, and it's all run through the city of Miami. Now, the question on timing, I don't really know the urgency because, again, we're late. In fact, the agreement itself, Council Member Stoner is correct. I mean, it says that it's to expire February of 2026. Now, it says with extension, that's because the fire department has spoken with the city of Miami, and they understand that it's going to be updated once it's signed. So I don't know if maybe we could. obtain those extra dock where we I guess you have them now but you received I don't know if I have them because it doesn't seem to but I don't I don't see risk legally it's just a matter of comfort and whether we have a timing issue I mean are we going to be a non-compliant for any reason. You know, what is the timing factor?

The timing factor just comes in as far as getting the time to get reimbursed. Once you spent the funds, which we didn't know we didn't have an agreement, once we spend the funds, there is a time factor as far as getting the paperwork in to be reimbursed on time.

And when does that run?

Usually about six months or so after you spent the money.

So when did we spend the money?

So I now have to, if we have a signed agreement, I can go and ask for an extension so I can do the reimbursement, but we don't have a signed agreement, so I can't ask for an extension.

So you haven't submitted the reimbursement? I have not. Because you need the agreement to send, I understand.

Yeah, I have everything prepared, but we didn't have an agreement. Once I went to submit the reimbursement, I found that we did not have an agreement in file.

So if we wait a week, is that going to cause a problem? I don't know, but I hope not.

I can only talk to them. They were hoping that everything would be signed so we could move on. Yeah, so we could move forward because we're already behind in the game.

So in your informal conversations with them, you kind of said, hey, look, I've got a council meeting coming up. Most likely I'll be able to get this document signed.

Yes, sir. That was last month. I spoke with them because I submitted and I got rejected because I didn't have an agreement on file. So I mentioned to them that the council meeting was tonight. And hopefully everything, I thought that it would be just a formality. Right. So I figured it would just go through and we can go ahead and submit for the reimbursement.

Are we functioning under, are we going to get... Another grant this year? I mean, we've been functioning under this agreement now for a bunch of years, so this is my problem. Everything's retroactive, and we're all acting in the dark. We don't know. So we're going to go for another year, and this is going to happen next year. We'll have an agreement. We'll be on time. Well, we already have an agreement, but we'll be on time. We should have the agreement. But meanwhile, we are in the dark about what we're obligated to do.

And again, I won't spit. Again, I did not know we had an agreement. I assume we did. So moving forward, I know that we'll have agreements in place before I spend any money on it.

So we're gonna sign the agreement and we don't know what it says, but.

My question is, would we go buy this equipment without this grant? Would we spend money on training without this grant? Or are we only doing this because we're getting a grant? That's my question. And I guess Archie's not here.

Well, it's because we get this money, we can buy this equipment. It's because that.

In the past, we've seen this around for 20 years. So we've been buying equipment for 20 years. Approximately, is that correct?

That would be correct.

That's the city of Miami. I mean, the question is, I'm just saying I have no idea.

So let me jump into your specific question because we've benefited from the WASI grant also. So to answer your question, we need ballistic helmets. We need ballistic shields. God forbid in the event we ever have to enter into a school shooting atmosphere here. If we didn't purchase that through the grant, which didn't cost our taxpayers any money, I would have been standing here asking you for a lot of money to purchase that equipment. Good answer. Thank you, Brian.

And the second one also, last year the fire department bought the Polaris, the high-water vehicle that just came in, what, about two, three months ago? Yes, sir. So we also made that purchase through UIC as well.

So basically we have to go buy the stuff one way or the other. Is that correct?

Well, it's a combination of both. I mean, it gives us the ability to do it. Is it something that we... Well, is it required?

Is it really a necessity to have these ballistic things?

Well, the purpose, again, remember what this is. This is for emergency operations. It's intended to allow us to enhance our capability when we have to come together first, you know, whether it's natural or man-made incidents. And so, you know, Chief just talked through, you know, the God forbid it happens, an active... shooter, we now have the equipment to be able to go in and do that.

But is this on a regular basis for buying stuff? Every year.

Every year it's different equipment.

So this helps defer our costs.

And the fire department maintains the list and We go back and forth with it to prioritize it and determine what we wanna do year over year over year.

Do we have to assist other municipalities? Do we have to provide manpower or do anything with any other municipalities?

No.

Do you have any idea what performance obligations we have?

As I stated earlier today, I know we had a conversation about this earlier today. In my experience from my previous agency and being here, where we utilize this grant every single year, we were never called upon to assist any other place. Look, we always help our neighbors in need when they call in times of emergency. But to go along with your answer and Councilman London, I think This is an opportunity for us to enhance our equipment, enhance our staff, and be up to speed with the latest practices and emerging technologies in our fields, whether it be police or fire. And as the manager indicated, there are stringent audit processes that City of Miami does to ensure that we're complying with the equipment, we're keeping it up to date. And even before we dispose it, we have to speak to them before we dispose the equipment to account for it. So there is strict auditing purposes. I've always seen it done in an equipment and training atmosphere. In my almost 27 years doing this, I've never seen it He's been doing this longer than I have. I understand your concerns.

He looks longer than you.

I don't know how that works. I know. He's fire. Less stress, they sleep. Sorry.

Let me try this, guys, while you're standing there. We're missing a document. We don't have this exhibit. As I'm reading through this material, this is pure interpolation, but you've lived with these agreements for a long time. Exhibit one is all about reporting. plainly until you get to one of these items which talks about policies. That same language used a little bit differently appears in the prior article. This is in Article 5 and Article 4, similar language, speaking about policies. Are the policies that these exhibits are talking about the very purpose of this program, emergency response?

Yeah, it it enhances emergency response management and as the mayor indicated when we started it was born after 9.11 to equip police departments and fire departments with equipment that they normally cannot have.

The other exhibit is is seems pretty self evidently from my reading to relate to whatever equipment be purchased.

I'll just add the exhibit one you're referring to is really the It's the same two CFR 200 that we agree to those terms routinely for any public assistant provisions when we receive federal funding. It's the same federal requirements for reporting, for auditing, for bidding, all the purchasing. It's the same thing. So you're correct. It's not before you. I don't know if the time would really hurt this or not, but I'm not, me personally, as the village attorney, was concerned about entering into this grant agreement.

I'm not either.

All right, Madam Clerk, let's take a vote on it.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. Motion carries.

Thank you. Next item.

The next item is an ordinance of the village of keep us a first reading an ordinance of the village of Key Biscayne, Florida, amending ordinance number 2025 dash 15, which adopted the budget for fiscal year 2025 dash 2026 by revising the 2025 dash 2026 fiscal year budget budget amendment number two, providing for implementation and providing for an effective date.

Move second.

I would like to, I need to move to amend. I don't know if now is the time to do it.

Sure. It's on first reading, so you can also amend it on the second reading.

Well, I move to amend it so that the budgetary allowance of six hundred thousand for the utility undergrounding planning and design fees is Removed because without that in in there. I'm okay with this, but with that in there. I'm not okay with it Is that I have no idea? How we got to that number what it's going to be spent for exactly and there's too many questions about that If telecom is not included ultimately it won't be spent I Well, I have another item to come up for discussion later about what we really are going to be doing, whether we're going to do telecom or not. But that's my motion to amend it.

Is there a second for the motion?

So second.

Thank you.

Okay, so we're in discussion of an amendment.

Let's make one comment. I do want to make clear what this is. This is just the movement of money. This is not the expenditure of money.

this is the ability to move it from into the operating ability, right?

Some going to operating, most of it's going to capital, but yes, it's moving it from reserve into those accounts.

Okay, on the amendment.

All those in favor?

No, this is an ordinance.

I'm taking a vote just for the motion to remove the Councilmember Stoner's motion.

I vote no.

So, I'm sorry. So this is the vote for Councilmember Stoner's motion to remove the 600,000.

I vote in favor.

So all those in favor? Aye. Sorry, can you raise your hand please? I'm sorry. Councilmember Linden, Councilmember Stoner are in favor. All those opposed?

No. Hold on, Madam Clerk. I think you might have missed.

Yeah, I'm not clear what we're voting on. Okay. Okay, so I think we need a little bit more discussion. Nancy, I'm not 100% sure what you're trying to do. So if you could just go through again.

If I could frame it, I think Council Member Stoner is trying to remove the $600,000 from this item. Is that correct? Yes. At this time. At this time. Right. And there was a second for that.

Yes, Council Member London.

So if you were to remove it from this time on first reading, then the budget amendment would drop accordingly.

Because we're just basically removing the budget amendment.

Correct.

We're removing that amount from the budget amendment. But then the budget amendment is not doing anything. No, it's going, it's other monies that's going.

There's still 600 in, there's 600 in, oh, sorry.

It would sit in reserve. Bending the amendment.

Right. Until we figure out what we're doing with that exactly. That's because...

But the question is, I guess, you're implying that by doing so, it's a certain policy decision that's made. And I think what is... being talked about is just simply moving the funds. I think that we can absolutely have that discussion about where we want to go next on undergrounding. That's your focus, right?

Well, I think we already have a resolution authorizing the manager to go ahead. Now, we may be presented with an actual request to spend the dollars, which is not what this is. I understand that we're moving it from one account to another account. But at this point, since I think we need a lot more clarity on what we're going to do, I don't think we should move it yet.

You don't want to move the money at all?

Yes, and I'm not trying to delay the undergrounding. It's not what it's about. Okay.

Okay.

So my motion is to remove the $600,000 for the utility undergrounding from this budget amendment, and otherwise to go forward with the amendment, less that $600,000.

Rather than discuss it tonight.

Rather than discuss it tonight, which I'm going to bring it up as a discussion item about that later.

Mr. Mayor, if I may. You know, I think we were, I think it was last month, maybe the month before, we received the resolution to move forward. Obviously, that guidance, we took that, and we took it to heart, and we said we need to move money to get moving, and that's what this money is. This will continue to delay the project to move forward, but it sounds like the council wants to talk about it tonight, but we're just following council guidance with this.

We're going to talk about it tonight. I don't see any reason not to move the money. It'll sit there if it's not allocated.

I agree. That's great.

On the other hand, if we drop it now, what happens second reading if we.

If you drop it now. We would you would not be able to add it back on second reading.

Can we delay voting on this until we have the other discussion?

Well, alternatively, what you could do is you could pass it tonight, and then you can remove it on second reading. You could do that, too, and you have the discussion. You're going to have the discussion.

Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. That works. Okay. I'll withdraw my motion. I'll withdraw my motion. Okay.

Steve, just. On the issue? Yeah. Oh, good. All right. Okay. All right, roll call on first reading.

Council Member Lunden.

Excuse me, now the actual thing.

We're going to have a discussion on this or not? Yeah, later today.

So what happened was the motion ended up being withdrawn, okay?

She withdrew it.

And there's going to be a discussion, Council Member Lunden, there's going to be a discussion later on this topic. So the motion on the floor now is to pass this on first reading. With the 600,000 okay in it there'll be a discussion later and then on second reading if you want to take it out you take it out then.

I'm sorry but I'm not concerned about what Nancy's talking about. Other items that was all. We're not going to discuss anything.

Oh on the other items on. Yeah they're up for discussion. That's what I'm asking.

Let's go. So basically just passing it now without discussion with the idea that you would discuss in the second reading. Yeah. Is that the idea. Usually, that's your choice. That's what we do.

You can discuss it now. What would you like to discuss? I mean, you know.

If everybody's happy, fine. Maybe quickly to do a quick rundown. Benjamin can do it. You can probably do it in less than 40 seconds. I want to hit the first one quick, and I think you all know the incident that we had and the need to put the rubber safety around the concrete borders of the fields. And so that one's that we like to move as quickly as possible. But I'll let Benjamin take it.

That's not one of the others I'm discussing.

He'll take the rest, and I'll follow up on it as necessary. So quickly, just procedurally, the budget amendment, what we're using is fiscal year 25 surplus funds, approximately $2.3 million. I will say they are not audited, but they are projected to be that amount. We're using about half of that to fund these projects. So the first one, as Steve mentioned, was the rubber safety item. We've already discussed the $600,000 for the utility, undergrounding, planning, and design. $110,000 for MAST Academy projects. Uh, this is for the package. Survey and subsurface utility engineering required and the last item. Sorry, 2 more items. Offshore barrier reef feasibility study. This is our, the villages portion for a federal match. So we've already agreed. We've. Got to receive the match for 12,500 not just putting the villages money because it's a 5050 match and the last item is the America to 50 initiative that's the only item here that's not going is capital item to our operating budget for the event later this year to celebrate America to 50 if we can keep it.

Questions. It says replacement of the turf, the artificial turf at Mass. Is artificial turf there now? Yeah. Yes. So then you have a boundary survey, and you have a topographic survey. To me, topographic surveys usually indicate an area that's hillier up and down, not a flat playing field. So I have no idea why you'd be doing a topographic survey, number one. Number two, a boundary survey of an existing area. I can't. I'm just talking, I'm nothing against doing it. The price looks absolutely absurd. That's the only reason I'm coming from. I mean, if anybody here who's hired surveyors to do something so deep like this, it just seems crazy. Did you get prices on this?

Yes, we did. Before I turn it over to Todd, just to be clear, this is approximately a $2.4, $2.5 million field, which we will split the cost with Mast Academy, public school district. This is the design criteria package. which includes a survey. So most of the work is a design criteria package. One of the reasons why we have to do such significant surveys is there's been flood damage to the field. And if you've been out there and saw the way the field is and the seams are coming disconnected is because we've lost a lot of the base because of the flooding issue. So there's a lot of survey that needs to be done before we can move forward with the design criteria package. And if I missed anything, Todd, please add it.

Yeah, sure. There's been drainage modifications that have taken place on the campus since this was originally built we need to go back and see exactly how that's going to impact the design of the field and and uh design the field correctly I did mention in some of our meetings that we talk about surplus some of the surplus is all of the contingency from the Saint Agnes project that we never needed to use because we did a great design criteria package we hired a good contractor and we had no field changes, and we never used any of our contingency for that project, so that's how it came back to the surplus. We're trying to follow that same process again with this, with the quality design criteria package, knowing the existing conditions so we don't run into anything while the project's taking place that requires a field change and is very expensive, especially since we're working with the school board, which anything that changes and needs to go back to the school board would take a significant amount of time delay that project. And it's another timeline where we want to have this project done over the summer so we don't impact ours and their athletic operations.

I have no problem with the project. I have no problem doing it right. I just have a problem with the absurd number that you put here. That's all. Have you got prices or you just threw a number out?

I have an estimate for the survey, and I based the design criteria.

How much was the estimate for the survey?

I don't know off the top of my head, but I did the design criteria package based on St. Agnes on a square foot basis. But again, we're going to use our continuing services agreement, and we'll get... You're not approving for us to spend this now. You're giving it to us, and we're going to come back with an agreement.

There you go. Sounds good. Okay. It doesn't mean it's going to happen. It means that usually the money just, when people find out how much you got allocated, somehow their bids come up.

There's two trades involved in here, so it's not going to be one person.

Okay.

Yeah, we have existing contracts with hourly rates.

Yeah, Council Member London, we're going to be using existing contracts with hourly rates, so the price here shouldn't determine The budget amount shouldn't determine what the quota is, since we already have a negotiated rate with them.

GARY GENSLER- Benjamin, normally, the server comes out and tells you, we'll charge you so much to do this thing. Forget the hourly rates. Then they send us two-man crew, three-man crew, whatever they're going to do. So basically, that's nonsense. That's what you, you know, don't subcontract it out to somebody else to do it. You double the price.

When we bring the contract forward, I want to have a discussion with you so you can see exactly the part you're discussing we can't talk about now, but this is just to move the money, but we can have that conversation. We'll gladly have it.

We already have existing negotiated rates. These are architect and engineering rates that we've already negotiated in an RFQ.

Okay. What have I bothered? Okay.

We...

On the ordinance.

On the ordinance. On first reading.

On first reading.

Get another crack at it in another month, Ed.

Council Member London.

What's the difference?

I need a vote, please. Is it a yes or a no? Yes. Thank you. Vice Mayor Sardinius. Yes. Yes. Council Member Stoner? Yes. Council Member Vazquez? Yes. Mayor Roscoe?

Yes.

Council Member Bracken? Yes. Council Member Kaplan?

Yes.

The ordinance is approved on first reading. The next item?

Oh, a second. Let's do, we'll get to you, Mr. Vasquez, don't worry. But it's important, let's do this conversation about undergrounding.

Okay.

So that we are.

This is my discussion item.

We're on discussion item.

Okay. 13-1. No, this is the one that we added. Yeah, the one in 13. Okay. So I would like to make a motion to reconsider the resolution that we passed on February 10th of this year authorizing the manager to advance the village-wide utility undergrounding program for power and communications facilities. I think that we need to explore and discuss whether it's prudent to only underground the power and save the cost of undergrounding the communications portion of that in light of the fact that the technology is quickly advancing toward wireless and that it may be just a waste of money at the end of the day to underground The communications.

Nancy, I'm in 100% agreement with the concept. However, I believe that we have easement rights that we have to provide. So what's going to end up happening is we're going to have poles up with wires in the back with all the cable up, right? That's going to stay up. Now, granted, people can probably landscape around it and keep it down. But at the end of the day, from what I've had conversations I've had with Chad, is that Now there will be a day possibly when those assets ie those easements become a liability because that wires no longer is redundant no longer usable but the question really is this is how long is that going to be and who will ultimately have to take those wires down so. I think we're kind of in a regulatory pickle with this, and I would like our village attorney to give us a comment about this, but I feel your pain, okay, a lot, because it's three times the price. From what I recall, it was $10 million to do the power and another $20 million to do the communication.

I have a question. When the electric company takes their underground, they take the transformers, take the insulators, take the switches, take their wires, and take the guy wires, et cetera. Do they also then cut the pole back? They top the pole, yes. Is that part of their responsibility? Do they cut that or do we have to cut it?

No, from what we've been told, and Steve can correct me, is FPL's spokesperson the last time they were here said that they will top the pole.

So once that's done, we then have one black insulated cable.

Well, we have multiple black insulated cables. Two? Two. Probably three because they're at least behind my home. There are three levels. There are two levels of black cable There's there's one that's probably at 15 feet. Why is mine more as one? Well, okay. Anyway, you're special. Yeah, we're you're lucky like me I but from what I from it from what I've seen in surveyed and I've walked around the neighborhood there tends to be one upper black cable cable which appears to be some type of telecommunications cable and and then another group of telecommunication cable slightly below that.

So that's what will remain?

That's what will stay up there, yeah.

And then cut back to what, you say 15 feet?

They'll top them to what appears to be right above the easement.

Council Member, they'll cut the poles that are theirs.

Correct.

They can't cut the...

Correct, and that's another conversation. We don't know exactly who owns all the poles. Gotcha. No, I mean, we literally have to survey each pole to find out.

We're doing that, though.

Yeah, we are doing it.

So you guys are not, the village isn't alone. Your sister cities are having similar discussions and issues. I know that the manager has spoken with Coral Gables, for example, which is having a similar issue. Pinecrest has a similar issue. The issue becomes is exactly what customer Bracken said they cut the pole and then and then FPNL is undergrounded but these telecommunication facilities are left there and right now we are in a regulatory pickle and. Ours might be a little different than other communities because from what I understand and Steve can elaborate but. A lot of the polls are actually owned by the telecommunication companies and not FPNL, whereas in other circumstances, in other communities, a lot of them are owned by FPNL. It's an issue that cities are, I know the cities are speaking, and I think there may need to be a legislative change to help address this. But I'll talk, I'll defer to Steve, because I know he has met with Coral Gables, who has requested to have some discussion at the state level on this issue. So I don't know if you want to talk about it.

Sure, sure, yeah. So let's start back to the skipping generation in California. Generation of technology. We have reached out. The primary company that does this in South Florida is Verizon. We have spoken to them. And at this point, they have no plans for any project on Key Biscayne. That's the best we got. So we know that means it's not going to happen anytime soon.

That's an avenue we- For them to go wireless? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, Verizon going to the wireless. Sorry, I didn't explain that. Skipping the generation to Wi-Fi. now that's something we could push further and harder and I know Council Member Bracken brought it up a couple months ago to say well we could maybe help you have a plan and that might be something we want to talk about that may require obviously some funding to do that Hotwire has reached out to me Steve the Hotwire people and we've talked to them and they're stuck between I want to extend my fiber network they're just kind of The ground guys are fighting ground and the air guys are fighting air. So I think maybe the direction ought to be find out, like really, really find out whether this is something that companies will do instead of just, not that we haven't done the work, we've done the work, but now take it to the next level perhaps. Maybe that's the thing to see. Ask that question first before we throw in the towel.

Can the village select? A telecom provider? And then everyone has to use that or not? Oh, we can provide it. There has to be a network.

It's a legitimate question. So why can't we franchise our own? So So previously, I would say about 1516 years ago, each local government in Florida negotiated franchise agreements with the telecommunication providers. That upset a lot of telecommunication providers because it was cumbersome because they had to negotiate an agreement with every single city and county across the state every three years. It was like a rolling thing. So they changed the law to say that at the time you could either choose to, I believe, execute a franchise agreement or you can choose to accept the telecommunication tax. which, so most governments that I'm not aware, almost every government that I'm aware of accepted the tax because it was a recurring revenue stream that in Franklin, a lot of circumstances have been pledged for bonds and other improvements. So the village took that option and accepted the tax. So that discussion. So at one point, yes, you could select who was in here, who was not in here. Part of it was negotiations, how you got them, The public access channel that we have here today was all part of those negotiations, but under today's law, it's a free market. It's a free market, yeah.

And also, Swan, he mentioned it, and I hope you were able to infer that we also get, and Benjamin just showed up here.

I think he did.

How much do we get from telecom and electrical taxes? What do we get per year?

Just telecom, not electrical. We don't care, but that's not part of it.

Yeah, so the communication services tax, approximately $700,000 to $800,000 annually. Okay, so it's not insignificant.

Well, and also, how much is that pledged, do you think? As non-advalorum revenues.

Yeah, so all of our existing debt, we pledge, which Chad is asking, we pledge all of our We don't have any general obligation debt. We pledge all our non-advalorum revenues to secure the debt. I'd have to go back and look.

But it is pledged, a portion of it. A portion is pledged, yeah. So it's encumbered. It's encumbered, yeah.

So there's other administration, legal, and financial implications of this as well. Not things that we can't figure out, but just to understand that the bigger part of this discussion

But the question really is, Nancy, is if we proceed with undergrounding, let's just say phase one for lack of a current, and we decide to put the utilities underground, that doesn't mean we have to continue that same procedure. We don't have to do the next phase with that. Because that's going to take two and a half years before that's completed. So the technology, we may get to that threshold period where that Current what they call an asset becomes more of a liability to them because they maintain it no one's using it Which is what I'm hoping happens faster than I think but I we don't know when that magic threshold is gonna be so the question is, you know Do we proceed and go underground or do we have? Those wires in the back and I think the wires in the back become an aesthetic issue. They're not really a liability issue They're not a safety issue. They're an aesthetic issue And the power, in my opinion, is a actual... A major issue. Major issue, yeah.

Agreed.

But I think there's a lot of people in the village that feel the aesthetic issue is important to them.

Does it make any sense to do the electric and then throw an empty conduit in the ground?

I think that's really what you're doing anyway.

Well, I mean, the reason I'm saying that is that Going forward, in case we have another carrier wants two different kinds of service, we've mentioned about hot wire. I think they're doing what fiber optic cable or whatever else might be something that they might be interested in. I don't know. I'm just throwing something out there.

I mean, Ed, I think the challenge is that what's been explained to me is that AT&T and Comcast won't run their lines in the same pipe. They want their own separate raceway.

They have two sides.

Yeah, so we have two pipes. So what we're really doing is, for all intents and purposes, one pipe for power, one pipe for AT&T, and one pipe for Comcast. What size conduit do you need for that? Two inch? I don't know.

Do we have to do it for Hotwire, too, and any other Verizon, everybody else?

Hotwire has fiber, though. No, we don't have to do it for Hotwire because Hotwire is not in the single-family home neighborhood. Hotwire is only in the commercial neighborhood. And condo.

Well, we could. If we could, if we choose to. They do want to extend their service, but that's obviously, you know, this is all stuff that we're building and would come back for.

For our wires offered to to to to joint venture and put some wire in. I mean, they made that they approached me with the concept that they're doing this in other municipalities.

So I believe they're currently servicing the condos.

They're servicing kind of the condos, but I believe they're also in in in communications with. I believe it's, shoot, what's the name? It's a small village north of Sunny Isles. Okay, that's Golden Beach. So I think they're doing, Golden Beach is obviously a much smaller place, but Golden Beach is going through a similar problem and they're hot wires working with them from a legal standpoint. And Chad, you probably should take the lead on this because I'm not aware.

So are you saying that it's impractical to separate them and only underground the power. It's not impractical.

It's not impractical, Nancy. You're just going to end up with...

Still poles.

Poles. And the problem is we don't actually know if it's not an FPL pole, you're going to still end up with the whole pole, and the FPL will take the wire off the top of it. Now, maybe we can negotiate with them to cut those poles down ourselves, but they own that pole, and we don't know exactly who owns what poles.

Right. All right. Look, if you drive around Pinecrest, which I know you go to, you'll see it. And people are very upset about it because part of the selling of underground was not just hardening, it was the aesthetics. So those communities are trying to find solutions. But it's, at this point, not easy. So they're evaluating all options, really, I think, legislative options as well as others.

And that was a question you asked me earlier.

Yeah, and like I said, Steve might be able to shed some light on what Coral Gables is doing, because I know that they're a little step further on this. But at this point, you can proceed with the undergrounding, but you're going to have to leave up those polls, unless we find another solution.

So we did meet with Coral Gables. Coral Gables is doing the SSUP program, which is the FPL undergrounds the laterals and hardens the overhead feeders. The same byproduct exists is the poles go down when they can, and when telecom doesn't want to come down, they don't come down. And so that city is going through the same process. Pinecrest is seeing something similar. Not exactly the same thing, but very similar. There's about three or four other municipalities in Miami-Dade County that we talked to Carl Gables about that we want to get together because none of us can do this alone. This is likely going to have to take some sort of legislation at the state level. The state has been very progressive about doing power, as we know. The PSC regulates that and is directing FPL to do that. Nobody is doing that with telecommunication. So there is no legislation on the table, but there's a lot of people who want to move it. but that's just going to take a group of people to push that legislation. That is what we committed to do.

As you can imagine, AT&T is a very, very powerful lobby.

They likely push back. They're a big dog. Unless there is a benefit to them.

Nancy, I think you have pretty good consensus that everybody agrees with what you're thinking, but message-wise, if we undo the reso, I think that that would not be a good thing. I think that it would confuse people. Oh, you guys said you were going to do undergrounding, now you're not. I think we figure ways to improve it, but I think if we take out the reso, it would be a wrong message to send.

Why don't we, Mayor, we'll go through the costs of what it is to design and implement each one. And I will tell you that each telecom is different. And that's one of the things that's frustrating is they all have their own rules. They all have their own costs.