City Council - Regular Meeting

we have very briefly three items that we have to take care of none of them as far as I'm concerned controversial but I'd actually like to defer 7b sure Any particular reason, or you want to?

I would like to take, first I'd like to meet with the manager and make some suggestions or bring up my concerns. And second of all, I would like to do it at a time when we have an opportunity to really talk about prioritizing some of those items.

Sounds good.

Mr. Mayor, the reason why I put it here, because I thought it was good timing. Normally, we do this in October after the budget. I thought it would be good, and if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. But since it does correspond with the budget, I thought it might be a good opportunity to elicit a conversation.

Any other conversation on the motion to defer 7B? No.

Consensus of council?

Consensus of council? Yes. Deferred.

Mayor, you do have... Mean I assume we're gonna skip the call-to-order pledge, but you do have And brief comments of council you have public comments for these items On the aisles before us public comments now open Public comments is now closed Agenda as amended

Are there any other changes?

Did I? We have a proclamation that I signed about childhood cancer, so looking for your support. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Okay.

The next item is the consent agenda as amended. May I have a motion? Council Member London? Yes. It's a 7A.

Yes.

And Council Member Stoner? Yes. Thank you. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. The next item is a resolution of the Village Council of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, selecting Moffat and Nickel. Moffat and Nickel, excuse me. for the offshore feasibility and preliminary shoreline design study pursuant to request for qualifications number 2026-09 RFQ, providing for authorization and providing for an effective date.

Okay, bring on the MOFAT.

Sorry, who moved it, I'm sorry?

Moved.

Vice Mayor Sardinas and who seconded? I'll second. Thank you.

Yes, sir. So this is a recommendation to council to allow the manager to enter into negotiations with Moffitt Nickel and their team includes researchers from the University of Miami to execute the feasibility study on the offshore artificial barrier reef and its viability as an approach to shoreline protection.

Okay, can you give a brief description as to what the project is and why why we're trying to undertake it and why we are then asking these people to head up this? Sure.

So I mean essentially what we're trying to do is protect the shoreline from wave attack. We're trying to extend the time between us having to do beach re-nourishments in order to really understand whether or not this is a viable approach. There's a whole slew of tasks that need to get undertaken including data collection, and then modeling and evaluation of the environment that we would be considering doing a deployment in. what that structure would be designed like, where it would be located, what the impacts would be, and then whether or not corals could actually be grown on that structure in the area that is being considered for being effective for shoreline recession. And then also what are the regulatory and permitting hurdles that need to be overcome and whether or not they're possible. So that's the brunt of the work that would be undertaken over the two-year period. Moffitt and Nicol led a team. including University of Miami. There was another respondent to the RFQ that was put out, and that team was led by GHD, which is another ocean engineering firm. And they too had a number of other academic institutions on board on their team. And the evaluation committee went through the strengths and weaknesses of both quals packages and decided, along with the procurement manager, that Moffitt and Nicoll would be the best team for the village of Key Biscayne.

Okay, questions? Yeah, two things. Roland, is anybody else doing this, Miami Beach or Dade County, the same type of thing?

Yeah, Miami Beach has been working with the University of Miami on... So they've been doing it? Yeah. So why are we going to do it too? Because we'd like to protect our shoreline and extend the time between re-nourishments. Now, each location...

Quite simply, our location is very different than Miami Beach. There's a completely sandy floor versus ours, as you know, when you're outside the beach.

If the question is whether or not the investigations that were done for deploying a structure off of Miami Beach can be used, here on Key Biscayne, those two environments are completely different. So you have to go through all these various tasks in order to be able to. We've been struggling with the seagrass issue.

That's it? Yeah. It's the seagrass issue. My second question is, looking at the resource impact, and we say it's going to cost us a local match. I assume that's us, $412,000. Federal government's going to give $412,000, and state's going to give $250,000. Have the federal government and the state agreed to the 250 and 412 already, Colleen?

Yes.

Do you have an agreement with them on those two things? Yeah. On both of them. So then it's 412 for us, right?

Correct.

Then why, then you look at the next page, the funding sources, it says we're putting out a million, 1,075.

That's incorrect. The entire amount is $1,075,000, 412 of which is coming from us, and then the rest is coming from the federal government and from the state.

Okay, then Benjamin, when you look at the GL code, wouldn't it indicate that it's coming from us?

It'll let you go. I think as Colleen mentioned, all these grants are reimbursement-based. So we're going to have to budget for the full amount and then submit all the invoices, the pay stubs to get reimbursed for that amount.

So we're creating receivable then once we do that.

Correct. Okay, fine. But we always have to front the funds. It's just a timing issue.

So basically since they've agreed, we have an agreement with them, it's just receivable, right?

As long as we submit everything correctly.

Okay, that was it.

I have three questions.

Go ahead.

When this is done, what's the final product going to be? Is it going to be that we know that this is a permittable project, or are we going to know that we need to do more studying, or do you not know now?

No, you're going to know that it is permittable. You're going to know that it's permittable. You're going to know what the regulatory challenges are moving forward. You're going to know basically what sort of design structure would be most effective. You're going to know where that structure needs to be, how big it's going to be. You're going to know the cost of the structure if you want to move forward with this project. You're going to know if it's actually a viable approach to reducing the shoreline recession?

So at the end of the day, when this is done, we're not going to find out we need to do another study?

No, you're going to decide whether or not you move forward with this. And then if you choose to move forward, then that turns into a whole other thing in terms of the full design.

Question number two is, so that I understand, this says that... under personnel, we're gonna work with a consultant and it's gonna be managed by you.

Correct.

Right, so what does that mean? What does that really mean?

Overseeing all the tasks that they're doing, all the modeling that they're doing, all the data collection that they're doing, making sure that it's a meaningful, robust approach, making sure that they're collecting the data that they're supposed to be collecting, managing the project.

And I am not being disrespectful. I am truly asking this question because I need the information. I want to understand. You're an expert. You're our in-house expert. But we're hiring them because they are the experts and they are so highly regarded. And so the question is, I don't understand why we have to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Well, I can answer that.

Okay.

Any contract we do, any time we're going to commit village money, we have a project manager. And that has to do with whether it's a small project, large project, or a complex project. And since Roland has the best knowledge and expertise in this area, he's the one I've chosen to be our project manager.

Okay, well, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Okay. And then my last question is... there's public outreach, a public outreach aspect of this project. What does that really mean?

Well, that would be working with the community foundation to try and engage students and parents in the project itself. It would be engaging with the school. It would be teaching people about what shoreline recession is about, why we're doing the project, what the values of artificial reefs are, how they benefit the community, why we do it to extend the time between re-nourishments. Why do we even care about extending re-nourishments? At the end of the day, people have to understand why you're doing it to care that it be done. And so that involves public engagement. So does stormwater. So does utility underground.

So does roadways. So in every project that we do, do we have a portion that we pay? for public outreach? I thought we did that. The village would do public outreach for our village. We wouldn't pay additional for that with these outside providers.

It's part of a grant-funded project. And we work with others to then do a full-blown, holistic public engagement and community engagement education program. That's something that we do collaboratively. in order to make it as effective as possible and reach out to as many people as possible in a way that gets them to understand very complex things.

In our community?

In the community, correct.

OK, those are my three questions.

Thank you.

Yes. I have a couple concerns. One, the funds, the $400,000 does concern me somewhat, but I'm really concerned about is are we going to get this project backwards? So do we know roughly that this is a $20 million project and that we're going to have to spend $20 million to reduce the effects of wind, water, storms on the beach, and we're going to have to spend this money to verify that? Or do we have any idea what that number is?

We do not know what the design would look like at this point, how big it would be, and how much it would cost. That's why we're doing this.

I understand. So there's no number out there that we could even put on the the possibility of this project?

We took a wild guess when we once put together a proposal to try and do the whole thing soup to nuts. And we had just randomly guessed maybe $20 million. That's where you're getting that $20 million from. There was nothing very concrete or specific about that. It was not based on any kind of design or anything like that.

So if we have to spend $20 million on that and we have to spend another potential $100 million water prevention issues, stormwater, undergrounding. Do we have a cash flow analysis on how we're going to pay for this over the next 20 years?

Well, Council Member Bracken, at this point, you don't have to spend $20 million or $25 million. You can choose to not do it. But at this point, you don't even know, we don't even know, whether or not this is a viable thing to do. We don't. That's why we're doing the feasibility study. Now, if you do the feasibility study and you determine that there is a viable way forward with this and what the size of it would be and what it would look like and how much it would cost, then at that point you can choose to decide to move forward and figure out what kind of funding sources can be tapped in order to execute the project or not.

And I think one of the things, the reason why we're putting a little more attention, not that we didn't take attention off it, but even more emphasis on that is because the Corps is pausing our project, right? And so, you know, we know that we need some sort of protection on our ocean side. But that project, you know, in its limbo stage right now. This is the berm? This is something, yeah, the reinforced dune system, yes. So this is an opportunity just to look at another possible option

To protect our shoreline. You don't feel like we're stressing our capacity to manage all these multiple projects that we have going on with an additional project like this?

No.

Okay.

Now, look, one of the things it's, and I can imagine as the evaluation committee went through this, Moffitt and Nickel has been working on our beach for 25 years. And so, you know, it says for Rowan as a project manager, he's just going to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to do. This is a strong team. University of Miami, right up the road, they understand this environment extremely well. I know we have a good comfort zone with you. Managing the project is basically making sure they're doing it, moving in the direction we want to go, getting updates that they're really answering the questions. Roland's not going to be standing on the beach every day looking out and figuring out what they're doing. Some projects you do.

Some projects you are on the project site.

Others, you're getting weekly updates. I would imagine this is closer to a weekly or biweekly update.

I think I've been working on this project for the last four years, and I can tell you that it's a plus if we can continue to slow down the way that our beaches are built, okay? If there's a way that we can, in a cost-effective way, to your point, to do that, then that's something that we ought to look at. And I've been to Tallahassee and I've been to D.C., and it was difficult over the last four years to try to get an answer from somebody saying, Can you touch the seagrass or not? Because that would be the impediment. We know artificial reefs work in general, but this issue of the ecological aspect of putting an artificial barrier reef of some kind in the seagrass area is a question that isn't settled. And so anything that we can do, what is one of our prime assets? It's our beach, right? So if we can do something to continue to keep it without having to lose it every three or four years or after we get a north storm, then. I think that we should try and at least figure out whether it's doable or not. To your point, Mayor.

So you've been trying to find out if this would be designed in the seagrass, whether we're permitted to go in the seagrass? Yeah. So we don't even know if we can do that, right? We are not there yet, no. Well, don't we have at least mitigation where you can, if you screw up something, you go somewhere else and either donate money or seagrass somewhere else? No? No.

Yes, that is... Mitigation is tricky. There's nothing simple about it. You have to have mitigation sites to mitigate, which there aren't that many. And or you might enter into an agreement with the state to just pay into a mitigation bank. But it's yet to be determined as to how much mitigation you'd need to do. Because at the end of the day... you're doing an ecological enhancement as well. So you're not just impacting seagrasses, you're also enhancing the ecology by building an ecosystem as well. So then how do you square that relative to mitigation? That's part of this. That's part of this. That's part of this.

Where's Miami Beach on this at this point? How they progressed?

They have structures put out.

So they've done this. They just don't have seagrass. They have zero seagrass. Completely different environment. It's a different environment. Don't forget about the seagrass. But they put the structures out.

But don't they do it, did they do it for the same reason? Because I just read about on the West Coast where they deployed a bunch of similar looking structures, but it wasn't for... erosion, it was for wave action, or not wave action, it was something totally different.

They were 14-foot things. If you're dampening the wave energy, it ultimately speaks to how much energy the beach sees and how much erosion you have on the beach.

So we're concerned about the scouring of the seagrass, right? We will, yes.

Amongst other things.

All right, we're still on the item.

Yes, all those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries.

A couple of small things. There's, we talked about it before, there's a meeting on November 10th that our Madam Clerk wants to move to November 17th, and the installation would be on November 12th. Is that correct, Madam Clerk?

I didn't know you were gonna bring that up, so let me double check for you.

That's the Marine Corps birthday.

Yes. Thursday, November 12th.

That's the installation.

Just to coincide with the installation, yes, we would need the regular council meeting to move. So November 17th was the proposed date. to move it.

We have it right now. We have it as a tent.

The new council would sit on that thing.

So instead of the 10th, we're moving the 10th to the 17th?

Correct. Right, and I'm letting you know about the 12th because then, so that you are also able to be there.

So we're...

motion is what the request is to move it to the 17th yes and talking a little bit about that today you know maybe that could be a very simple meeting where you guys get organized and and decide what what you know when you want to meet and that kind of thing and get the new mayor working right away and and figure out what your new priorities are gonna be and all that kind of stuff. So it could be a light meeting that isn't full of the manager's stuff.

Mr. Mayor, I told you what I promised. Just a few simple ones. Do you need a motion to do that?

No, consensus of council.

Yeah, I'm good with it. I'm good.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're gonna send out a cancellation and then a new meeting?

Yes, I will.

Thank you. Thank you.

What else did we have? We're good, right?

Jennifer, did you have something? She's giving a thumbs up. Okay.

Madam Clerk, anything else? Oh, by the way, you're all asked to sit with the clerk, talk about her budget. so that you could also. So that if you have any questions and she responds to us, that you might want to bring it back on the second budget hearing. Anything else for the good of the order? Seeing none, a motion to adjourn is in order.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. We're adjourned.