City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. The mayor has called the meeting. Next item, Mr. Mayor, is brief comments by council. And make sure your microphones are on.

I will need to excuse myself for about five minutes. It's around 7.15, and I'll be back.

No problem. Um... Prayers are in order for this poor workman on the island that suffered a terrible fall while he was working on a house. And he was taken to Jackson. It's touch and go for the poor fellow. So prayers are in order.

Yeah.

Anything else for the good of the order here? Okay.

The next item is public comments.

Ann Tainter. And many thanks to Ann Tainter for bringing us a nice dessert tonight.

It's about time.

If you don't like it, and you don't want to eat it, and you don't hurt my feelings. Ann Tanner, 170 Ocean Lane Drive. It's that time of the year we all give thanks for our many blessings and for where we live. And I'm here to thank all of you for serving, you and your families both, because it's a toughless, thankless job. It's not just a few meetings. It's every day in your life, in the community, and at home. So thank you for you serving. And thank you for letting your families let you serve. And happy holidays. Happy New Year. And I hope everybody has a good one.

Thank you, Anne.

Same to you. Louis de la Cruz.

You're going to repeat everything that Anne just said, right? I'm sorry, sir. You're going to repeat everything that Ann just said?

Yes. He didn't bring anything. I totally agree with Ann. He didn't bring anything.

That's the way it is.

I absolutely 100% totally agree with Ann. Luis de la Cruz, 640 Allendale. Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, council members. So I went to the ad hoc committee meeting yesterday. And during the committee, meeting, it came about that the manager mentioned that he was going to be bringing another request for authority to pay Black & Veatch to oversee whatever this new engineer is doing. Guys, we have to put an end to the to the waste of our taxpayers' money. Black and Beach has been paid $2.48 million through today's date for the Village of Key Biscayne, and they have not designed one thing. All they have done is translate what the other engineers that have been paid $5 million have designed.

This is just completely absurd to everybody who's out here in the public.

I mean, you can't just accept what the manager brings in front of you and rubber stamp it anymore, OK? It may come to be that you have to make a really tough decision not to go forward with a project for which you've spent $8 million in design and oversight. I'm ready to accept that. I hope the village of Key Biscayne residents are ready to accept that. Much worse would be a mistake to go forward with a $100 million project that we don't need. Stop the bleeding. Stop spending so much money. Let this guy that you've hired for a second, for a different way to get this done. Do his work. He doesn't need another engineer overlooking his shoulder.

This guy's a professional engineer. And he's one of the top professional engineers around. He's designed the storm drainage system for most of Miami-Dade County. Let him do his work. Don't interfere. This is what I see, OK?

This is only me, OK? Just blame me on this one, right?

But what I see is the manager using Black and Veatch in order to, at the end of this whole thing, come up and say, well, we saw what the new engineer did, and we recommend that you go with what ACOM did. That's what I see happening here. Yesterday after the meeting, I saw the engineer speaking amongst, and it looked to me like a pool of piranhas. with this poor guy in the middle. Let this guy do his work. He's going to take you out of a problem. He's going to tell you how to do it right. We're making this into a much, much more complicated thing than it ever needed to be. We should have started with maintaining what we had, doing the proper maintenance, seeing how much it could possibly work, and then looking at the places where we needed to add some things to make it a little bit better, not rip it out and do a humongous project that nobody needs. Imagine the flora of Key Biscayne and what's going to happen to it. if you agree to go forward with this project. You've got to talk to your neighbors. Please, let's keep an eye on the prize here, the right thing. Let's do the right thing. Stop wasting our taxpayer dollars. Thank you.

OK. Time clerk, let's go.

Next item is the agenda, approval deferrals, additions, deletions, substitutions, withdrawals.

Okay, everybody ready? I move to approve the agenda.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries.

Special presentations. Mr. Manager.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, I appreciate this opportunity, and so tonight what I'd like to do is very quickly I know a number of you all were at our Thanksgiving and annual recognition ceremony, but one thing I'd like to do is recognize our employees who we named as Employees of the Year. And the reason why I want to do this publicly is because a number of these people aren't visible every single day to particularly us at the senior leadership level, but these are the people that interface with our public and do the customer service that we expect. and that they expect as well. So I'd like just to name them really quickly, and then ultimately I want to do the full recognition of my Employee of the Year at the end. So for Parks, and I think many of you all know her, is Shirley Cabrera for what she does every single day in our Parks front desk. I think you all also know Mariana Dominguez and what she does for Public Works. If you don't know Carlos Sanchez, you probably see him out and about, and he's responsible for all our roads, our stormwater, our landscaping, our facility maintenance. He's just fantastic between him and the team that he has. Captain Canto, you probably don't see him much because he's doing what firefighters are supposed to be out and about, but we do see him quite a bit when he's out engaging with the public. Lieutenant Santiago from our police department, if you don't see Marty yet, and you're not out and about, because this guy is one of those guys who really understands what the Village Resource Officer Program is all about. And also, Dayanata Lumpart, probably very few of you ever met her, but she really is one of the cogs that make the police department go. So please, when you get a chance to see them, please thank them. One of the things that we added last year is identifying the part-time employee of the year, because we have approximately between you know, the full year and our camp counselors, anywhere between 30 and 60 part-time employees that we have working for the village. So we named Judy, let me get this name right because I've never said her last name, Judy Shostak from the front desk. And I think many of you also see her as well. But I like to do, and Alex, if you would please stand up, if you can. And there's a joke behind that, which I won't go into. I like to recognize you as our village employee of the year. Yeah. And look, you can't, and I'm going to thank you.

We'll tell everybody what he does because a lot of people don't know.

I want to thank you for what you do. He's our management information systems manager, IT, whatever you want to call it, information systems. But he helps us communicate and be more productive every day. So whether it's from improving our software, getting the right software, whether it's the equipment, cybersecurity, we're breaking into AI, we're ready to go. He's here every night for every one of the meetings. You know, he and Mike are back here setting things up. Every event we do, he's here. So I want to thank you for your dedication, for the work that you do, and how you improve our village every day.

Thank you, guys. Thank you, everyone. Couldn't do it without your support. Appreciate it. Thanks, buddy.

All right. Thank you, Alex. Appreciate what you do. Mayor, I really appreciate that opportunity because we have an amazing staff. And I think as we do every year right before Thanksgiving is we recognize them in a group. But I think it's important to let the public know as well how much we appreciate our employees. Alex, good job.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

All right, Madam Clerk.

Next item is advisory board annual report presentations. For this meeting, there's not an advisory board presenting, but we have a schedule and spacing them out for January, February, March, and April.

Perfect.

Great.

The next item is the consent agenda.

Move it. Second. Pull 8B, please.

You would like to pull an item, sir?

Yes, 8B. 8B.

Okay. The consent agenda as amended. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. The next item, a resolution of the Village Council of the Village of Keepiscane, Florida, approving a subaward agreement with the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office relating to Operation Stone Garden, providing for authorization and providing for an effective date.

Move. Second. Second. Thank you. You want to read into the record Nancy's letter?

Oh, excuse me. I didn't.

Nancy Confier says she's in a letter regarding this particular item.

I'm glad you did that, Ed, because I was going to do the same thing.

Agenda item.

Is the chief here? He's coming down.

Since I will not be in attendance at the council meeting, I wanted to bring to your attention item 8B on the agenda, which is of concern to me. This item ostensibly deals with the village obtaining reimbursement of approximately $2,000 as cost incurred by our police department. The staff memorandum states that reimbursement is sought in connection with Operation Stone Garden, a cooperative multi-agency law enforcement operation for boating safety pursuant to a sub-award agreement between miami-dade county sheriff's office and vkb police department a reading of the sub agreement attached as an exhibit to the resolution however states that operation stone garden involves the department of homeland security among other agencies and the purpose is to secure our borders um Attached to the subaward agreement is an exhibit entitled Scope of Work, which requires VKB police participation in efforts to secure our borders and anti-terrorism endeavors. I've attached an excerpt for your quick reference. I understand that this cooperative agreement has been in place for many years. The fact is that the purposes... for which the dhs is being utilized now and the methods being employed and furtherance of those purposes may be vastly different today than when the agreement was originally entered it is critical to understand that whether the village police department has historically been called upon to assist in certain matters is not the determinative issue. What matters is what we are obligated to do under this agreement if called upon. What troubles me is the breadth of our obligations under this agreement. It is unclear to me whether the proposed agreement is merely for reimbursement of the $2,000 or if it also extends the term of the agreement. I am in favor of reimbursement, but to the extent that the term of the underlying agreement would be extended, I would object. I ask that our legal counsel provide clarification on that question. I also ask that if our legal counsel advises that by passing the resolution, we would be extending the term of the agreement, the matter be deferred so that we can more fully study the agreement. I think that's the extent of that item.

Is your agreement.

Good evening, Sir, mayor council. So I understand councilwoman stoner is concerned this is an agreement that we've had in place for a number of years I did some research I spoke to Chad this morning and I called over to the county who is the one who actually manages and operates the grant this grant. Although does have the wording that the clerk read if you go on to fema's website and and type in operation stone garden, there is an excerpt in there and it's about providing security. For our waterways and our borders and it includes things such as human trafficking counterterrorism anti terrorism efforts. Making sure that vessels are safe and secure, and that is the intent that we've always worked to grant. is to ensure that any vessels along our waterways are safe and secure. We've worked the operation to ensure that vessels are safe and secure. We've never been called upon to do any of the actions described earlier. Could we get called upon? We could. I can't stand here and say we could not. The grant has increased. It changes based on administration. As you can see, they're behind. We're trying to recuperate $2,000 for fiscal year 23. When I spoke to the administrator of the grant this year, he told me we're looking at a $9,000 reimbursement for fiscal year 24. There is language change in the agreement, obviously, because as all of you are aware, Miami-Dade Police is now Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office. And because they made their change in their language, the state extended their agreement to the year 2026. And because we're a sub-award state, grant person, our agreement gets extended to 2026 also. That's what we're asking to do.

That sounds reasonable. So, Chad, if we take the reimbursement, are we reforming the contract? Is that how you see it? I mean, that's what Nancy's concern is.

I see it that this is a reimbursement, right, from fiscal year 23. It is a renewal out till 26, but if the maximum reimbursement And I think if we get reimbursed again, we'll have to do another amendment the way it reads to include it. But this is a very standard agreement that we have been involved with for many years. do anything like the ICE agreement that you guys have previously looked at. It does not deputize officers. It does not give that authority. You're just a sub-grantee. And it's really a policy decision if you guys want to take it for the reimbursement of time that's already been occurred, right? OK.

Do you see any downside to anybody?

Oh, good question. I see 90 pages for $2,000.

Yeah, it seems so.

My question is, if we don't sign the agreement, what will happen if we do sign the agreement?

Well, I mean, if you sign the agreement, then you're eligible for the $2,115.32. If you sign the agreement... You get paid back. You get paid back for... overtime for information investigative intelligence sharing activities that already occurred in fringe benefit having to do with the marine patrol right yeah our question is this though if we don't sign the agreement what are we obligated to do we do sign the agreement what are we obligated you don't sign so if you don't sign the agreement you're not going to be eligible for grant forget the money i'm not talking the money i think so you have an obligation under the law to collaborate with federal agencies, regardless of disagreement.

So in other words, does this change anything?

That's what I'm really asking. I don't believe it changes anything.

Well, I see 91 pages for $2,000.

Yeah, I question it too.

I wonder, what are we going to provide?

A lot of this boilerplate comes from this. This is a standard federal agreement. If this was a FEMA reimbursement, by the way, it would be very similar language from 2 CFR 200. It's the same massive section out of federal law.

Are we any more obligated by signing the agreement to provide something that if we don't sign it? That's really what I'm asking. In other words, if we don't sign the agreement, do we have the option to provide stuff we want to and not provide stuff once we sign the agreement, or are we bound to? I guess that's what I'm really saying.

If you don't sign the agreement, obviously, I know if you don't care about the money, you still have an obligation to collaborate with other agencies. If you sign this agreement, it entitles you to reimbursement of funds of time that's already been incurred, and you would be – you know, there'll be some, there's contractual obligations that you need to comply with, but it would be no greater than the collaboration that you already have.

So are you saying that it doesn't make any difference? In other words, we sign it, we get 2000 up, up to 2000. If we don't sign it, we still do the same thing. We don't get the 2000.

I think that's, generally speaking, yes.

We have to make a decision, so that's what I want to know. There's 91 pages.

I mean, you'd be providing the services, whether you sign this or not, because you're going to collaborate.

We're obligated.

So under a separate law, you are obligated to collaborate.

Whether we sign it or not. Yes.

Okay, that's what I'm trying to establish.

Is there any urgency to do this now, just as a question?

That's really for the chief.

So, yeah, the county, obviously, because of the transition, is trying to catch up on squaring all the sub grantees with their reimbursements. If this is turned down, I'm going to be standing here again in the near future because I was told today that 2024 was over $9,000 that we would have to come here and accept the reimbursement.

Just to be clear, Chief, so you've already incurred that? We've already heard it. We worked it. So it's rolling is the point. Yeah.

So Do you see any downside to the sign? Let me put it that way.

This is much to do about nothing. So let's just approve it. Let's move on.

90 pages, that's why.

Reimburse the federal government for the 90 pages. Frank, you're an attorney. Do you see anything outside of Nancy's concern?

No. I think it's laudable to raise the points. That's good. And we've had a discussion, I think, to my knowledge um answers the real concern that she was expressing that's fine fine with me all right madam clerk all those in favor aye aye opposed motion carries

Next item is an ordinance on first reading, an ordinance of the Village of Keebiscayne, Florida, amending section 2-82, purchasing limitations, competitive bidding of chapter 2 of the Village Code of Ordinances relating to competitive bidding thresholds, providing for severability, providing for codification, providing for conflicts, and providing for an effective date.

Move. Second.

Thank you.

Okay, the item is properly before us. Public hearing is required on this ordinance. Public hearing is now open. Seeing no one come forward, public hearing is now closed. Any additional conversation on this? Madam Clerk, call the roll.

Council Member London? Yes. Vice Mayor Sardinas? Yes. Council Member Vazquez? Yes. Mayor Roscoe?

Yes.

Council Member Bracken?

Yes.

Council Member Kaplan?

Yes.

The ordinance is approved on first reading.

Second reading.

No, that was first reading.

It says second reading on the book. I hadn't heard it before.

We're on this memo. We just adjusted it. agenda, so make sure they're clear on what they're voting on, Councilman, because what we did...

I can reread the title. The two items that were second reading ordinances had to move to January because we moved our meeting a week, so it did not qualify for advertising.

Yeah, made a mistake, excuse me.

There are revised agendas on your desk in front of you.

I did the same thing. Can you list the number?

This is 9A, regarding the purchasing limitations competitive bidding.

This is first reading. That's why you opened up the public reading, too. Mr. Attorney, do I need to retake the vote?

Was everyone clear on what they voted on?

think everybody was clear that they were voting on the ordinance increasing the bidding thresholds okay yeah the next item is a resolution 10 a

A resolution of the Village Council of the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, authorizing the village manager to apply for a Florida Department of Transportation, FDOT, Transportation Alternative Set-Aside Program grant for the Fernwood Drive Improvements Project and providing for an effective date.

Move. Second.

Thank you.

Yes, grants manager.

Yes, this is a part of our capital program. The Fernwood Drive Improvement Project has been programmed into later years of our five-year program. As a result, we've been looking towards construction funding, which would take place later. This particular grant requires that we apply more or less five years in advance. It's an FDOT grant project. We're asking for about $1.5 million, and the remainder would be the village's responsibility, whether through state appropriations or general fund. We're going to be doing a robust planning process this coming year, and then following that, we would do a robust design process, giving us plenty of time before the grant funding from this grant would be available for construction to be able to complete everything in advance.

Colleen, is this the same $1.5 million we've been talking about for a while? No. For Fernwood? Oh, is this for, excuse me, I'm sorry.

I got the two confused.

Sorry, yeah, Fernwood, different, yes. But we have to go this far in advance because of the funding agency's timeline.

So what robust, when we speak about a robust design, what are we talking about?

Well, the planning process will, determine what that design becomes the planning process would be engaging the community i mean fernwood is a really well-traveled corridor by all kinds of mobilities the village greens there kids use it to get to school it can be it can be better designed it can be better serving the community now and into the future so we're we're anticipating that process taking place next year a concept a preferred concept will come out of that process and from then we would either go through an RFQ or RFP process to complete the full 100% construction documents and environmental permitting and things from whatever that design consists of.

And the grant is based only on baseline infrastructure? Is that what it is when they provide these grants? Anything above that?

It's based off of mobility, actually. It's a transportation alternatives grant. So they're interested in pedestrian enhancements, street lights, shade, speed tables, basically reducing conflicts between vehicle traffic and non-vehicle traffic. So we are also going to have a unique situation because golf carts use Fernwood very frequently, and that's a low-speed vehicle, but it's a part of our traffic pattern that we need to better accommodate.

In the street lights, you mentioned that. Do they cover poles? Do they cover the electrical? I know it's an FD&L issue, but does FDOT cover?

Yes. My understanding is that I think what they're looking for is if We do a light analysis, a gap analysis, and there's some dark spots, which I know we've probably all experienced late at night on Fernwood. We would go through the effort of illuminating those dark spots, and that would all happen within the right-of-way within the project area, so the grant would potentially cover that.

Okay. All right. One of the things I've talked to Colleen and to Mr. Miranda about, there's Especially during the high usage of the village green, there comes an impasse at some points on Fernwood where you can't get through because people are pulling over to let their child out to go to soccer practice or volleyball practice or whatever. And so that might be a good opportunity to look and see if there's like a drop off that could be that could be worked out of there so that we can do a better job of that traffic on Fernwood. So it's a good idea to see if we can improve that roadway. And that roadway is becoming our secondary, or for some people, our primary roadway so you can get off of Crandon.

Right, right. And so she mentions before and I know we're going to consider if not definitely apply for planning grant as well so that's that's the next thing you'll see. But because of this five year timeline for this F dot grant you know if we don't meet this now I think this is targeted for 2031 32 yeah 3132 3132.

So yeah. Just wanted to quickly elaborate without.

Too much into the issue, but we on the underground and i'm looking at the streetlights and i'm wondering if we're thinking in the future how we're going to marry those should we end up underground. we're still going to have streetlight polls. Sure, I think the. How would that work.

Well, the timing to make those decisions will align well with the decision to underground in that area. The concept is just going to identify where light should be. The actual design process would go more into the detail you're referring to, and that's a couple years out.

Okay. On the item before us, Madam Clerk?

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, approving the purchase of Microsoft licenses and support services in an amount not to exceed $81,750.24, providing for authorization, providing for implementation, and providing for an effective date. So moved.

Second.

Thank you.

Hey, you got to earn that award now, Alex.

Good evening, Mayor, good evening, Council. This is for an enhanced license for a renewal for the police department of Microsoft. This is going to help us move to the next stage where all the tablets that we just recently deployed with the Oracle project will be able to be secured. It gives us the ability to remotely monitor the tablets and remotely wipe them if they were lost or stolen. With this also, we are renewing for another three years. with a term of $81,000 for this Microsoft.

What's the last thing?

I'm sorry?

I need the last word.

It's $81,000 for the term of three years. Yearly, it will be $27,000. Thank you.

And it's a license, right?

It's a renewal for the Microsoft license.

Renewal.

The renewal. This gives us the ability to, like I said, lock the additional tablets, and it answers their emails and Word, Excel, PowerPoints.

Okay, any questions? Comments?

I don't know what license fees are like. Is this, this is the right amount of money?

Yes, it's for 61 users.

It's called Monopoly. You're dealing with Microsoft, I tell you.

It's 60, Alex, you said 61 users.

It's 61 users total. No, that's cheap.

Okay, Madam Clerk.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. The next item, Village Manager's Report.

Yeah, let's do a couple important things here. Why don't we do the analysis of the state proposals? Is Benjamin here?

He is, but I'm sorely disappointed that you don't think the naming of the theater is important.

Well, I don't want to get into the Ed London Theater problem.

Anyway, so come on up, Benjamin. Let's talk through what I have here. I'll make sure I give a copy also to the clerk. This has been a moving target. Otherwise, we would have given We talked to you, we've met with Mayor Cava yesterday, Senator Cava to you today. But as you can imagine, day by day, as the house is in session, about to be in session, this has been in flux. So we're gonna capture what we know now. And in fact, what you have on paper, there is one additional bill that I've asked Benjamin to analyze as well.

Yeah, just to lay the foundation, All of us sitting up here and everyone in the public to our need to get educated, these are proposals that are in Tallahassee some of them have already passed some committees. So we need to educate our public about what this potentially could do to us and that's why we're we're talking about it and getting.

As quickly up to date as possible Benjamin Sure, so as the mayor said I've been following this ever since about a year ago the Governor came out and said we need to have property tax relief and let's eliminate property taxes since then the house there was a select committee of 37 house members they convened as early as May of this year and then again in the fall, and then again recently. So I've been watching all those meetings that were happening in Tallahassee to get a feel for what the proposals are. So they finally, as a resolution of those meetings, came out with eight House joint resolution bills. This is all from the House side. So what we wanted to do was look at the impact of each one of these items on specifically to Key Biscayne. So that's looking at our exact, on our 7,200 parcels, our data based on homestead exemptions, our data based on, depending on the summary of the bill. So just to go quickly over the bills, we have HJR 201 by Representative Steele. This is probably the most significant impact, because this would eliminate all non-school ad valorem property taxes on homestead properties. The second one, HJR 203, Representative Miller, creates a new 100,000 homestead exemption each year for 10 years, up to $1 million. This is one of those that's interesting to look at Key Biscayne demographics versus maybe the rest of the state and what other representatives are feeling, because when they discussed this one in Tallahassee, they said, well, after 10 years, it'll eliminate property taxes. I go back and look at our demographics, and of our homestead properties, over a quarter of them already have a homestead exemption to save our homes, assessment reduction, over a million dollars today. So even after giving a million dollars, it still will not eliminate the full tax base here. The third, HJR 205, exempts homestead owned by residents aged 65 and older from non-school property taxes. We have HJR 207, which establishes a new 25% non-school homestead exemption. Representative Busata introduced HJR 209, which adds a $200,000 exemption for homesteads with active property insurance. This was originally a $100,000 exemption. In the last session, it increased to double that amount of $200,000. Then there's H.R. 211, which has to do with the portability cap. If you guys are aware, the current rules allow for a maximum $500,000 of portability, which means if, let's say, your market value is $1 million, your taxable value is $300,000, so there's a $700,000 difference. If you were to leave and port over, you can only bring $500,000, not the full $700,000 difference. So that's the current rule. This would eliminate that cap and say whatever the the assessment reduction is, you can take the full amount with you to the new property. And lastly, a House Bill 215. This has to do more with the trim, the truth in millage voting requirements, which says any increase in millage would require a 2 thirds vote of the elected body.

So before we go to that next step, I may say, so one thing that obviously we're going to do the analysis on the impact on Key Biscayne, because that's who we are and what we are. This is for every taxing authority That we have whether it's the county whether it's something like South water management water management district find the children's test the only one it doesn't account for is the school district. So it's just not us everyone else who has that taxing ability is being is looking at their budgets as well and will be impacted similarly whatever comes through as a senator for any of these up yet no.

Steve is supply fees as well as if he's fees and taxes are just taxed just taxes. Just just not.

Not just add taxes and it's not.

You want to mention a little bit of how that's one size doesn't fit all.

Yeah, so when I'm watching these videos and you see some representatives that represent fiscally constrained counties, they're very low income areas. And we talk about, for instance, a $500,000 exemption. And one of them said, there's only three properties in my entire district with a house over $500,000. So we left with only three taxpayers. They floated ideas about to mitigate the property tax effect about sales tax. And then you had representatives at the North Florida border saying, well, all my small business will be ruined because all the customers will cross borders to Alabama or Georgia and buy their goods. So the issues that were happening, representatives of the South were very different than some of the more rural or fiscally constrained areas as well. I sense the difficulty in trying to give relief, because when you affect one group, there's obviously unintended winners and losers across the board. So obviously, we're looking at this from a key risk gain perspective. We're also cognizant of the state of a whole and how this will play out for everybody. So if you look at the second page, this dives into how does this look for Key Biscayne? So some interesting facts about Key Biscayne. We have, of our total parcels, 37.5% of our parcels are homesteaded. If we look at the county average, that's slightly below the county average, is about mid-40s, probably upwards to 50s. And if you look at all municipalities, about a third of the way when you look at some municipalities on the high side are about 72% or 73% of homesteaded property. So we actually have less than the average. If you look at how much of our ad valorem comes from homestead properties, it's 32.9%. So looking at the bills individually, we have HDR 201, which would be the most significant, which says eliminate all homestead property taxes. This would have an immediate impact in Key Biscayne in year one of $10.6 million. So we look at the percentage of our general fund budget. It's about a quarter of our budget and about a third of the ad valorem taxes. So definitely a significant impact. And we'll get into what that means and what would be impacted later. HCR 203, this one's interesting because I wanted to give the year one impact, but obviously because this one grows over time, it starts at 100,000 and 200,000 all the way up to a million. In year one, it's only a $1.7 million impact, but this obviously grows over time. It could be a $17 million impact by the time it's fully phased in in year 10. HDR 205, a little bit harder to price out only because the property appraiser does not have data on which of the property parcels have owners over 65 years old. I tried to use census data to just give an estimate based on Key Biscayne demographics to say, okay, the assumption is 30% of our homestead properties would be eligible, and that has about a $3 million impact in year one and grows over time as property values increase. HR 207, the 25% exemption, grows with the assessed base. That 25% number is going to grow as your values grow as well. It's percentage based. So about two and three quarters million year one, 5.4 when fully phased in. HR 209, another difficult item to score only because we don't have, or the property appraiser doesn't have the data on which homes carry homeowner's insurance. This was the bill that has relief that says a $200,000 extra exemption for those properties that have insurance on them. So I made the assumption that it would be all properties to kind of come up with a score of what that would cost.

Did they define what insurance they're looking at? Liability, flood, windstorm? They don't define, they just say insurance? Correct.

Yeah. Well, that's also, and we had the conversation with Senator Kalatiu today, is, you know, there is no implementing instructions on this at all, right? And this is really just conceptual, very high-level conceptual. They've done some modeling on this, but not a whole lot of modeling. And that's also one of the reasons why the Senate is holding back, because they want to see how this, you know, the conversation, particularly between the House and the governor, proceeds.

HDR 211, that has to do with the lifting of the portability cap. This was also difficult to score because Not that we don't have the data, but it's hard. Most families don't come from somewhere else in Florida and port in. It's mostly all that assessment differential happens because you are in Key Biscayne. And our market values have increased much faster than the 3% limitation. So a lot of that Save Our Homes assessment reduction is actually created in Key Biscayne. And it would affect, if you left to another community, it would kind of affect if you were leaving or if you moved or downsized within Miami-Dade County or within Key Biscayne. One home would open up and be at market value, but you would bring that portability over to another property. So harder to score in terms of financial impact. H-share 213, this limits the growth of property assessment. So right now the rule is if you're homesteaded, it increases at the lesser of 3% or CPI. But for a non-homesteaded, the limit is 10%. What this one tries to do is bring for the non-homestead down to only 5% a year. And when I watch a lot of the videos, a lot of business owners said this is a real challenge when they're trying to plan for the future or to know that over three years, your property taxes go up 30%. This would bring that down to half. 555 would be 15% after three years. And on the homestead side, it would be 3% after three years. So much more like more of a soft glide path. Yeah. Easier for the municipalities to budget as well, because we've seen here in Key Biscayne over the last five years, tremendous increase in property values. But obviously 2017, 18, 19, we had big decreases. So we've been on this roller coaster as well, because we only have about a third of our properties, which are homesteaded. And then lastly, there was no financial impact. HP 215 had to do with those voting requirements to say, we need this super majority of the council if we were to increase millage rates. Right now, just to compare that with the rules now, trim rules already exist right now, which guide the voting requirements for increasing millage. So they allow you rollback rate plus a reasonable CPI, which they define, and you would need just a regular majority. If you go certain levels beyond that, you would need a supermajority. And if you go much beyond that, you need a unanimous decision of council. In all the budgets we provide you, we're usually decreasing the millage rate, where we hear we just need a simple majority to get it done. This would be a two-thirds requirement for any increase over the rollback rate, so much more, even more safeguards than what are currently in place.

Benjamin, you want to talk about the potential impact for commercial properties from this? I see my friend DeZugla there from the Chamber of Commerce.

Yeah, obviously when you look at giving an exemption to one group, there could be a tax increase to another group.

Because it has to come from somewhere.

So they haven't defined if this allows city to then raise millage to make up for the lost revenue, then you're hitting commercial entities. You're hitting... non-homesteaded properties where I assume we're hinting renters because no doubt landlords will try to pass this bill on to folks that are renting as well. So we're trying to look at what are the impacts if any of one of these items get on to the ballot or if all eight of them get on, some of them kind of compete with each other because if HJR 201, which eliminates all goes, then kind of the other ones don't really matter. So we're definitely looking at the impact and which groups would be hit hardest.

Have they talked about Increasing sales tax and then distributing money to the various counties. That would be too logical. I'm sorry.

Right now, there are no other alternatives on the table. This is all they're looking at.

No, this is to reduce the taxes.

But I'm talking about funding. All they're looking at is to reduce the taxes. No replacement.

The discussion came up. in these committees, and that was when all the representatives north of the border shot down that sales tax idea real quick because they thought it would hurt their small business. But it was briefly discussed, but it never came out in any of the joint resolutions.

And another one is, obviously, the session hasn't started, but we would imagine this is going to go relatively quickly. There is no discussion as to how many will go on the ballot, if they go, likely will go, and then how or if they contradict each other So this is something we're going to have to follow day by day by day.

But it also could be cumulative.

It could turn out to be cumulative, right, because they may stack. They may stack. Some might be cumulative. The other one just might stack on top.

Yeah. Do you have any sense of which one is being preferred or not preferred, or is there anything?

So we went with our state senator today. And remember, these have to go to the Senate. And they haven't given any indication yet if it's all of these, one of these. So it's almost stay tuned. And we're going to keep monitoring and watching because we don't have any insider knowledge of which one of these is going to go.

I asked that same question yesterday at another forum that we were at. And the Senate is holding it very close to the vest. The two by four that they have on both of the houses is that the governor can keep calling them back into special session. So, you know, if he doesn't like what they come up with, then, you know, and all these people have to go to election this year. So it would create a little bit of chaos for everybody.

And just to be clear, the governor's proposal is elimination of all Avalon taxes.

Well, that's just a popular idea. Right. Everybody would vote for that.

Yeah. It just sounds like the 65 and older one would be the one that would resonate with the population.

One other thing that... mention mention Benjamin didn't mention was for all of these the initial language was that police would be held harmless and they would not be impacted they are now moving to put language in there that fire rescue would not be at all impacted so you can understand you begin to see contradictions particularly if the first one is selected because that will begin to impact our police and fire so we're stuck well so they got good lobbyists Well, they had the union guy there yesterday. Yes.

But no, I mean, but seriously. And the school system is also. Yeah.

Yeah. They're already outside of this. Municipalities could turn into little nodes overseeing police and fire departments.

And that's really forgetting the numbers for a minute. I think this is one of the things that we want to fixate on is. This will destroy small local governments like us, OK? Because we will stop having the ability to do the things that we hear. with the public's input decide to do. So we would then be either beholden to Tallahassee or unable to do things or they would wanna consolidate us and take away maybe our fire department or take away some of the unique things that we do here. So that's really, forget the numbers for a second. That's what control. Control is the big problem, that we would then be beholden to them, and you've got to go up there and grovel to get your money.

But Joe, couldn't we move to a fee-based society where we set up special taxing situations?

We're starting to think about those kind of things, yeah.

We're going to have two-thirds... the ability to tax. One third would be exempt, assuming the governor put the thing in. So what we would have to do is obviously tax those people who are paying taxes much higher, which they wouldn't be happy about, obviously. I mean, that would be the alternative, basically, wouldn't it?

We do have some recommendations for mitigation towards the end. But one of the things that I want Benjamin to go over is we broke our functions into three categories. So that you understand obviously the stuff that we need to either legally and or essential services must continue to do as a municipality and we have those that are very much at risk for any of these and then we have others that are kind of on the edge and so if you Just one quick qualifier in there if I may I wanted to ask a question because I wanted to understand in the upcoming budget because we're obviously gonna enter a budget season and We can fairly predict

and go through a common exercise to determine our budget based on the homestead that we have right now, the cap. But what are the approximate pressure points that we're looking at for this year? Because really, I think we have such a cone of uncertainty that to predict out there, I also don't want to create a sense of, you know, to the public that we're going to eliminate all these services. This is something that is in flux. We don't know which way the hurricane is going to move, which track is going to follow, but we certainly know in upcoming, maybe in the next seven months or so, what are the key pressure points that we should be thinking about budget-wise and the stuff that we can actually handle. And that's what these functions do, exactly. And I know, but you've got a big list here, and that's what I'm more concerned about. Yeah, well- Because I don't want to create panic with the public. that we are gonna be affected by all this. I get the issue, I get it, that's gonna affect us, but I think we should be a little bit, try to understand and be a little bit more, fine-tuning into what we need to keep our salaries.

If you hear what the mayor just said, that, you know, we really need to educate folks.

We're not here to create fear. But I also don't want to create, I also don't want to create, this is being debated. I'm sure every municipality has a point of view. We are being affected by it critically. We have to understand what the whole picture is, but I think we also, the public deserves to understand what the immediate impacts are going to be or what we project the key pressure points are going to be on our services in the first year as we develop this budget. This council is going to have to create that budget. And I don't want to go out there establishing a budget with the public thinking that we're going to eliminate every single service. And we will do that. So we just have to be cautious that we don't establish a certain rhetoric that, you know, I get the narrative. I get it.

We'll run scenarios on each one, and particularly the worst-case scenario. But understanding timing, I think the timing is really important. If these do go through the House, they will go on referendum on November of 2026 next year. Okay. If they are passed, they would impact the 27 budget. So for us, it would be impacted on October 21st of 2027. 28 budget. 27 would be the budget. Yeah, I got it, 27 to 28, yes. So this year would be fine... But if we believe things are going to go in a certain direction, we may choose to do a certain type of budget this year. Now, obviously, I don't want to say what that would be. But I understand. We would have to take that in consideration on the likelihood of what might be passed. Because there may be, maybe do we start to reduce or do we actually raise money and put it in reserves? I mean, those are all strategies that we have to think about.

And I would agree with you, Fernando, But just let me give you a scenario having nothing to do with us. The president of Jackson Memorial spoke recently, and it could be an impact of millions and millions of dollars to that health system that provides in-jig care throughout the whole county. And he's already working to make changes in his very large budget of $3 billion. So people are concerned about this and starting to think about which way they're gonna have to go.

And that's where when I said before, this is a collective cumulative thing because all taxing authorities, imagine if 13%, and it is 13% of Jackson Morrill's hospital revenues go away. So where are our fire departments going to bring our folks to trauma care?

But what we're providing here, is it fair to say that it's a worst-case scenario?

No, no. We'll now analyze each one of the bills as we have here, obviously showing the worst case and showing the range to the best case.

All right, so the manager mentioned at the bottom of page two we divided our current budget into those three areas, the first one is what's legally mandated or essential holding public safety. harmless and description of what those items are then we get to the next group, which is probably at risk or discretionary. I use the word discretionary loosely because I know in Key Biscayne, we are very adamant about providing these services, but in the grand scheme, they are not public safety and they're not legally mandated. These are things like our parks, recreation, open spaces, additional public work services, landscaping, professional organization memberships, our staff recruiting and retention, school, village resource officers, and community programming and public education. If some of these more significant bills were to pass, this is the at-risk group that we would have to If you look at the dollar amount, $8.4 million, that's less than the impact of HJR 201 in the first year. So say goodbye to all of these.

Why public education? How public education?

Well, these are added programs that are public safety, but it's not legally mandated from police and fire to do these educational classes.

Oh, I see what you're saying. You're saying augmentations to the already public.

Correct. So we really deep dived into our budget. And if it was core legally required services, we left it. But anything we do beyond the outside norm will be open and at risk if some of these reductions were to go. And we have to make the numbers match.

Anything related to emergency management, we'll be continuing to do. We've got to collect the other classes that we do

And then the last group was under review, functions that enhance our core services, but may be deferred or reduced. And that totaled about 1.4. So we're maritime safety, the police department, additional crossing, the school crossing guards that we pay for, joint development and compliance, grants management, HR training, strategy development, and resident customer services and stakeholder comps. Then after that, we go down looking at each one of these bills, what the impact would be. So most significant bill, that first one, H.J.R. 201, say goodbye to all the at-risk category, say goodbye to all the under-reviewed category, and we start infringing a little bit on the core essential services. That's how big of an impact that first one has. where it would take $800,000 of the essential services. So this one, even though all the talking points are hold public safety harmless, this encroaches where we'd have to make some tough decisions where it goes beyond just the items we could give up that are at risk. Obviously, the other items have less of an impact, at least in year one. wanted to say where those savings would come from. If these weren't mitigated with, I know Council Member Bracken brought up, could we move to another revenue source such as fees instead? This is just looking at if our tax base stayed the same, but we lost that one third homestead, these would be impacted.

All right, let's try to wrap it up. We got shared.

It's the only other thing I got to consider how much the ad valorem is going to increase in general. The ratables, in other words, are the value of the house is going to go by X percent versus what's going down. So to find out what the net decrease is going to be. So you just got to guess.

So use a historical assumption based on the growth that obviously would be different and impacted by by these types of items jumping to page 6 quickly we have some recommendations we're going to continue obviously monitor the legislative developments. The mayor also mentioned we attended the many county. meeting with Daniel Levincava, assembled a bunch. We had Carlos Mayorga from Jackson, the Children's Trust, and a lot of municipality mayors and managers were there as well discussing how the different impacts to each of those municipalities and to get a collective voice kind of.

By the way, their number was 515 million or something. County, yeah.

Um, and then lastly on, or sorry, two other things on page eight, we talk about some of those potential mitigation to address these issue, revenue diversification and cost recovery. Uh, we talk about moving to a fee based system instead of a tax based system. If we would have to go there to pay for our essential services, those are more common in Broward County where we see fire assessment districts that are based on fees instead of the value of the, of the house. Um, The other one is service reductions on the expenditure side. Those are kind of the ones we already talked about, which areas would have to be cut to make this work. And then lastly, on page 9, I thought this would be really beneficial. I really want to focus the attention here to say, we analyze these eight bills, and we understand what they are trying to do in accomplishing relief. We've tried to take, not in supporting any of the eight items, but concepts from those eight items that we could get behind. Maybe not the exact bill, but why don't we start discussing these, and maybe there's another way to do it. The first one is insurance cost relief. There's a bill in here that discusses a $200,000 exemption if you have insurance. Your question was great. Is it flood? Is it windstorm? Is it homeowners? We do think that's the crux of the problem. We do have a system already that curtails property taxes. For homestead owners, it cannot go up by more than 3% a year. What we've seen in the last 5, 10 years is the insurance costs increase significantly. So we do think there needs to be relief, whether it's for homeowners or on the commercial side. We hear from the condo owners as well what their property insurances look like. So we think something tied to insurance is a good concept. Let's explore a better way to do that. The second one, the bill on portability, I think here we've all seen the example of people feeling tied to their home. Perhaps they're staying in their home, it's bigger than they need, kids have left, but they're stuck on low taxes and even if they were to downsize to a one-bedroom or two-bedroom condo, their tax bill actually goes up even though they're consuming less. So I think this kind of frees up homeowners, frees up housing stock and could actually be a boon for municipalities as those homes are sold and now they're reassessed at market values. The third is millage controls, that House bill that talked about a two-thirds vote. We think there could be tweaking of the language in the truth and millage guidelines, which wouldn't exactly impact tax collections. But you could make it harder or put more safeguards in there if you were concerned about tax increases in the long term. And lastly, the stability in annual assessments. There was a bill in here that limited the long-term growth, the one I discussed about for non-homestead, 5% each year rather than 10% to help business owners plan for the future and obviously The better planning and I'll see for on the municipality side to have a better forecasting and projections if we're not having these wild swings So those are four concepts we kind of pulled out to say let's dive deeper and have those discussions with our Representative with our state senator and see if they can take those back to Tallahassee and try to look for for a clever Alternatives that help address these issues Benjamin I have a question are there is there any discussion right now happening to offset from an infrastructure Perspective because obviously this is going first thing.

It'll probably be effective will be infrastructure Are there any discussions or is there any current lobbying or is there anything that's happening right now to offset this discussion that we should be aware of? Or should we be engaged? Or should we be talking with other municipalities or some coalition on it? Because at the end of the day, I think you're talking about significant losses on our revenue. So obviously infrastructure would be probably one of the key pressure points on it.

There's been no discussion about mitigating that in fact we are and a little more about that next time you come back and let us know if there's anything happening I think for us it's one of the areas we left at risk to say the village obviously invest in their infrastructure but that's not legally mandated required so it's one of the items that we would be impacted on and I think when we discuss with the other municipalities they said the same thing. In fact it took a step further and said you know if we weren't able to have the same collections are bond ratings. Our credit ratings would go down as well, which would make any infrastructure project that much more expensive if we were to invest in it. So it is something that we're all looking at, and it would be affected, but there hasn't been discussion on any mitigation factors.

And there would have to be the entire restructuring of the grant program at the state, because right now it's a requirement of a match. In the future, we won't have the ability to match. It goes back to what the mayor said before. We'd be having to go open-handed back to the state completely and totally if we want to do anything major at all in a municipality.

I'm surprised there's no discussion happening on that, knowing perfectly well that infrastructure is key. I mean, what are you going to do?

Well, it's like we said before, it's not a finished product yet, but I can tell you this is the number one issue for the Florida League of Cities, the number one issue for Florida Association of Counties, Florida League of Mayors, on down, all these different organizations are focused as are police and fire unions because of the potential damage they could do. But, you know, we'll have to wait and see what comes out. We're just trying to give you a little preview of what's coming up.

Joe, is there any sense of why that Santos is pushing this in what direction? I mean, politically? No comment. I'm a hero. I did away with your taxes. I mean, what could be better?

I didn't reduce them. I did away with them. Consider elect me.

It's strange that they protect.

Sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up.

It's strange that they protect all of these protect schools.

It doesn't make any sense.

Where many of the public policies in Florida. That's because one of those different direction. That's right.

So we purposely left this long because we want to give you everything. So please, please read it, right? Because there's a lot of good information in there. And then, you know, over time, what we're going to do is look at each one of the scenarios individually as they become more likely, right? So we're going to look at it, watch it. Obviously, we want to educate our population. Truth of the matter is our 7,500 are really not going to have an influence across the state on the votes. But I think we owe it to our residents to understand what this is all about. And so they can make an informed decision. But this is something that's, this is serious. This is not something that they're just thinking about. This is something they're putting a lot of time and effort into.

All right. While we have you up there, do you want to do the artificial intelligence?

Sure. So I'll preface this with thank you for some of you guys sending all the AI articles. We, just like many other businesses, are obviously looking at artificial intelligence to increase efficiency. So I just want to give an update as to where we are at this time frame. So we have... a few stages. So we've consulted with advisors and resource engagement advisors who are experts in AI because we do not have any AI experts on staff. I'm leading this charge. I do use AI myself. I wouldn't call myself an expert, but we're looking at creating those efficiencies and department-wise looking at certain pilots where we can, we've identified certain areas, whether they be in my office in finance, and I'll give you an example. One of the things we're looking at right now is When we get invoices, our accounts payable clerks spend a lot of time manually entering invoices, getting them into our ERP system. One of the solutions we're looking at right now would automate that process. It'll be able to read the vendor, the description, the quantity, and the dollar amount to skip that manual entry step. So there's little wins like that where we can use AI. But our advisor kind of walking us through, do we develop an enterprise-wide AI solution? And then there's a lot of different products out here. There's also a lot of calls we're fielding. Everyone's trying, it's the hot buzz item right now. And everyone's trying to sell us every AI product in the sun. So I'm trying to take a very, Slow down educated look to make sure we're only selecting where there's actual quality in the product, the other side of is creating both a guidelines and education for. Our users for our staff and also policies in place when it comes to security when you're using as well. There's differences in, for instance, in AI when using a sandbox and it's local versus information is getting out and shared. In a government, fortunately, most information is public anyway, but we still want to make sure we have security controls in place as we're delving into AI. And lastly, looking at some of our internal controls and conditioning. While we're going through this process, we're going to be working internally on creating better file management. So when we do select an AI product, it's going to be able to be that much better by knowing how our files are saved, handled, to help us save time. So we saw some really great demos, but we're still trying to make a really wise educated decision before we bring someone in and start spending money on this. So I want to report back maybe in a couple months and see at that point we'll probably have an enterprise-wide AI solution and we'll start showing you actual pilot programs of where we found different areas within the village that we've already improved on.

Okay. One of the things I had to say, and Benjamin mentioned a little bit, but what we're realizing is that Information, data, and files are really important, and where they're put so that you can create that sandbox he talks about so that you can direct your agent to those locations to pull that information out. So that's something we'll be working with IT and the rest of the staff. It's also understanding the software that you have and what it can and cannot do. I'm going to talk some technical terms, but AI has the ability to create its own API, which means it can go and go cross software from one to the other. Some softwares that'll work, some won't. So we have to understand what those softwares can do. And then thirdly, we have to understand the physical infrastructure that we have. What equipment do we have in place and how much it can handle this type of technology as well. So that's something that our IT folks are gonna be working on. That'll be the backbone of where we wanna go before we actually start investing into some of these products. What's API mean? I don't know exactly what it means, but it's the interface. What does it mean, Alex? Nobody knows what it is because it's basically how two softwares interface with each other and share data.

Why don't we call it Alex's personal intervention?

Application programming interface. That's how the software is going to react.

It's one of those things that the business knows. But it's basically how you do those connections between softwares.

It's an automated plugin. It basically pulls the data from a software.

I think one of the challenges we see is when we see and get pitched from a lot of these AI companies, they're able to write one solution for a commercial business that does this one. They're in this one service line or does this one product and it does it really well. I think when we look at a municipal government, we're in way too many service lines in different businesses. So what works for police or fire, or they may have restrictions based on for legality reasons versus an admin department versus our permitting department, we think it would be great, or even for the clerk to do minutes and formulate minutes automatically. So everyone's a different business use case. So it's something we're looking at which would be the best ones to start and start those little pilot programs to increase efficiency.

Thank you. Jeremy, when you start coming up, let me do one in between. Education Advisory Board needs to fill a slot, and I am asking for your approval for Robert DeZuglu to be on the Education Advisory Board.

I would definitely like that one.

Consensus? Yeah, consensus. Consensus of council.

Okay, Jeremy, come on up. Congratulations, Robert. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your service. You got to work with Oscar. That's a good day.

Good evening. Jeremy Kraus-Gager, Building Zoning Planning Director, also overseeing code compliance. So this is our quarterly report, bringing everybody up to speed on where we are with code compliance. First and foremost, I'd like to highlight how much proactive code compliance we've been doing. So the difference between proactive and reactive is where one reactive you're responding to complaints and you deal with most of your violations through that and proactive is when we have folks going out and doing inspections and proactively finding things and handling it that way and we have a 96 proactive rate which is amongst the highest in the state. We have our staff going to the state conferences and when we're we're very much near the top of the stats for that and that represents basically you know preventing problems instead of reacting to citizen complaints and where citizens find the problems. Overall, numbers have held pretty steady in terms of notices of violations. We are tracking a new stat, which is number of red tags issued. So that is literally when we slap the tag on a construction site that says you have to stop work. This has been ultimately the most effective tool when a fine can be seen as just the cost of doing business. You know, $250 a day for a construction site where they are spending, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars to stay, keep people moving and move the project along. the work is a really effective but also last resort means of enforcement. So we had you know for work without permit for unsafe or non-compliant construction that's when we've issued red tags and failure to comply with the stop work order. So the other notable actions we've been collecting revenue from BTR As of December, we're at 63,000 collected with another roughly 17,000 pending. We've continued with weekend patrols and noise ordinance. So we make sure we always have, not every weekend, but most weekends we have one of our three compliance officers visit and make sure... There's no noise at the construction sites. We've also did a lot of lighting surveys over the course of the summer for sea turtle compliance. And again, we're considered an exemplary community for that from Miami-Dade County, who we work with closely on there. And that's...

I had wanted you to walk us through the dashboard that we're working on. It's at the end of tab 10.

Yeah, so that is separate that's for our building construction we've been working on. Let me pull up actually believe we have presentation. We have an example of what we've been working on. Which I think is here. Let me see. Yeah, so we have a dashboard that we've been able to produce that has basically the counting stats, total number of permits. Thank you. I've been working on with Mike, and he's been doing all the work, really. You've been working out with Mike, is that what you're saying? Working on this document with Mike. And so this is things right now we can pull from our system. You know, just how many permits we've applied for, permits issued, permits finaled, and then the number, certain information about the number of records and addresses for major construction. which is all useful and interesting. I think we're a couple steps away from getting this to be really something that would tell us a lot of information, which is, for instance, how long does it take to get a permit on a large construction project? So not a AC replacement, not a window replacement. That's a single tray that you would expect to be turned over very, very quickly. How long is it taking for a major renovation or Brand new construction and so then that's where we could start to find, you know, weaknesses and. Strengths in the department and really get to process improvement. Um, but this is a good start. I think and so we're, we're looking at. Different ways and easier ways we can make this public facing. I think it's also we're looking at, you know, putting these right now. These are sort of one snapshot of a month. This will be a lot more interesting once we back pull data from previous months and we can start to see trends. But, you know, the bottom line is we have a lot of active construction sites. We're still at around 70 active major construction sites. Do you think you think you've seen a slowdown or or we've We've seen a we've seen a decrease in the rate of increase. I would say like we're still we're still having new permits come in the rate at which they're coming in has has slowed down. Now it's still going. We're still getting more in in than we're finally like we're before you know in the sort of grand scheme of the pipeline. We're still getting more applications per month than we are closing out construction sites. So it's still coming in, but the rate of increase is definitely slow. Yeah, so in this case, we have about a month in average days in order to get from permit application to an approved permit where they're allowed to begin work. And this is comprehensive. So we we've got messy data in here. So this is the sort of thing I'd like to drill down on and get more more useful.

Yeah, I think the council would definitely want to see that so that, you know, as a body that we can work policy based on that. And also because this is the kind of thing that that's come up in Tallahassee over the last few years where because of something happening in some city to some uh legislators friend uh you know you got to come up with a five-day turnaround on a full set of permits and things like that so um so having that ability to understand those numbers is uh is very important and i think it's also parsing it as well because that 31 i would imagine jeremy is the total time from submission to done

And there's probably back and forth in between, I would imagine.

There's back and forth. There's all scales of permits, right? That's from very small permits to large permits. It would be much more useful to then say, OK, if it's a single trade permit, let's not count that. If it's maybe two trades even, we want to delete those if those are simpler permits and really find the problem areas. And also understand, OK, is this because we're having too many back and forths with the contract, which maybe means there's a communication issue? Or is it sitting in our shop for too long? Is it sitting in their shop for too long? And maybe we're doing as good a job as I think we are.

But I know there's, I know also- Roughly speaking, would you say from, let's say, an empty lot or, no, let's say demolition permit all the way to a final CO on, you know, a 75 by 100 lot?

Well, final CO, then we're in the realm of being dependent on the contractor's schedule for construction.

Right, but just roughly speaking.

Well, you're probably- Three years total?

Three?

Yeah. Yeah, you can be around three years total if it's a motivated contractor to get through the process. Yeah. And, you know, probably 20 months of that is full bore construction.

That would be a great thing, Mr. Manager, to benchmark with other municipalities to see how we're doing.

Look, I think generally speaking we're faster than others, but I think we also have seen our trends, right? And I think there are places we can improve, and I think as we begin to parse the data better, we can identify where those issues are.

You might want to talk about the experience with the RITs.

Yes. So the RITs, as most of you know, if you don't all know, they did do their soft opening last week, which was record time. seven months to do $100 million renovation. And thanks to Jeremy's team and also the fire team for supporting that. We made it difficult for them up to the last minute, not because we were making it difficult. We made it difficult because we were ensuring that they were meeting the standard. And I really appreciate what the fire did all the way up to the end because we want to make sure when a building is open, it is safe. But more than anything, this was a true partnership from the beginning. jeremy working with gencom and also the writ staff uh we were with them from the beginning and it was their schedule it was their schedule and i still don't believe they got it done in seven months but they did um they have tco and tco of most of the building there's still some parts that still need to be completed uh they intend to have a full grand opening in january and everything should be done so Exciting. Good news for them, good news for the community, and also good news for our team working very closely with them.

I didn't even feel that. It went quickly, very fast.

No, it kind of had the guests didn't come, so those guys went away, and the replacement was the workers. So I think from a traffic perspective, I don't think you really noticed. And plus they were working 24-7. They were working 24-7, which was really impressive to see what these guys were doing at 10 o'clock at night on a Saturday. They were working just as hard as they were at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on Thursday. So they took this seriously, and they needed to be open by whatever last Monday was, Monday the 5th of December.

And they made it. And I think our restaurants and retail will be very happy to have the guests back.

Yes. So they're running about 50% right now, and then come January they're going to get up to their normal occupancy.

All right. Thank you, Jeremy. Sometime in this century, Harvard Drive will be done.

Yes, sir. I do. All right. Timelines for Harbor Drive. We are currently under review with Miami-Dade County. As you know, that is a joint partnership agreement with Miami-Dade County. So we're kind of at their mercy at the moment to get approvals for our designs. It did take a while to get the designs. We're through that. We have received some requests for information from them, some RFIs, which we are working to get answered. We are on... The Board of County Commissioners agenda for February tentatively to get the project approved by them. Once that occurs, we'll come back to us and we'll go through the procurement process and put the project out for bid.

Why don't you give the public an overview? Because I know it, but a lot of you may not.

I apologize. We kind of skipped through that and jumped forward. Harbor Drive is... The entire extent from Crandon Boulevard all the way down to the southern tip is gonna be milled and repaved. And the brick paver intersections are not gonna be restored with brick paver, they're gonna be restored with asphalt at the moment because the county does not fund brick pavers. But it is in essence a milling and paving project. at its core. We're going to remove one inch of asphalt and restore one inch of asphalt. Harbor Drive is in pretty poor condition in many spots. We have done a lot of patch paving and pothole filling throughout. So we're looking to get a complete road there. On our payment condition indexing plan, it showed Harbor Drive as one of the most critical severe roads in poor condition. So we're going to bring it up to standard.

So when do we start?

We're hopefully if we can get through everything we can get the county to approve us in February we go out to bid The bidding process takes approximately three months ish we hope to have the project a contractor on board by September it is a four month. We anticipate projects all together. So by yes, sir by December of 2026 The end of December the project should be completed to Chris an example of that work would be similar to what you did and I an island drive for example that is correct Island drive Cape Florida and Mariner we milled out the asphalt and restored the the asshole back with a fresh coat of that so that's a similar type of work so the public can understand yes, sir, that is that would be. Practically identical to what they would notice going on there. With some additional work where the brick pavers are.

So Harbor Drive is how big a project, dollar-wise?

The entire project is 2 point, I believe it's 2.8 million dollars.

And how much is the county contributing?

The county's contributing 1.9 million.

So it's been extremely slow, but it's the county holding us back. That's just part of their bureaucracy.

Part of it, excuse me, they did want full designs for that entire corridor. So we did have to go out and get an engineering firm to design it. That's what took a good portion of the time right now. Preparing us to get there.

Is it stuck in traffic design, traffic engineering?

It did take into account traffic design, yes.

That's usually the neck and the bottom.

Yes, and especially with the roundabouts and getting around those areas.

obstacles and and you know to what we're going to talk about with Mike's ideas about about our infrastructure projects. This this might be something that we have to consider is is sometimes a project because of the funding true of the garden district same way it. Sometimes we just ought to fund it from ourselves and forget that, you know, which is nice to get somebody else's money, but, you know, we've got to figure out what that happy medium is. Is it, you know, a year and a half, two years, three years, or?

And quantify that some some way so once the county reviews it it always has to go to the county for traffic correct and they're the traffic engineers of the county so they will they will usually hold it up if they have any issues they surprisingly there they've.

It seems like they've approved almost all of it. We do have, like I said, some RFIs. They seem to be minor in nature. We're trying to get them the information they're asking for. I don't see it as a substantial obstacle. We did make the revisions on the designs with our engineer that they requested. So that all moved forward pretty quickly. but we're finishing up with them right now.

That number you projected, the 2.3, does that include the engineering fees?

That... 2.9 does 2.6.

Yes, 2.6 construction, 2.9 total, correct.

So again, best case scenario, you're breaking ground in... September. September.

And completion for the end of December 2026.

Any way you speed that up.

We can control we can control once once the county gets it to us we will move it as well as possible right.

We could shave some time in the procurement process and then get the contract on board quicker we certainly will.

All right, talk soil management and sidelines.

Mr. Mayor, before we get into that, because this is going to be painful, I just want to, and you know this, I just want to make sure that council knows that today the BCC approved the lights for Colusa Park for us to install lights at the multi-purpose courts. In the master plan of Crandon Park, we are still working our way through it. Two more checkpoints. One is the amendment committee at the end of January. If the Amendment Committee, which includes Bruce Matheson, Mike Davey, Raquel Regalado, and the fourth person, I do not remember her name, if that gets approved, it goes back to the BCC for final approval, and then we can move forward with installing those lights.

What is Matheson's...

He's for it. He's okay with it. It's just this is the process, and they make the process hard on purpose so that Those who don't want to do it and are lazy, don't do it, but we're dedicated to do this. Good news, moving forward.

Okay. Swell management. I have prepared some slides with some pictures here for you guys. We were asked about swell management and how... the village has done as far as code enforcement, reviewing the swales and some of the issues we have seen throughout the swales. I work closely with Jeremy on this and going through our code and looking at what is permitted and what is not permitted. You guys might be surprised to hear that there is very little of what's out there is actually permitted. The code has very specific guidelines on the swale. As you know, the swale is intended to be an area for water runoff and absorption before it creates the flooding effect. Many of our swales are not currently meeting those conditions. Here are some examples of swales that do meet the ordinances. Large open swales. I'm not saying that you cannot have certain vegetation in swales. You absolutely can. You can have some trees that meet our tree ordinances. But what you cannot have or as examples bushes that grow all the way out to the edge of payment and the red dotted lines are. Approximately the property line as you can see from there forward most of the vegetation is extended out right to the edge of payment. We have large obstacles such as these boulders all the way out into the swale. I believe many residents don't understand right where their property line is and where the swales actually are. And they place these obstacles. It's very dangerous for traveling public. A car, beers off the road could hit that or even, you know, A kid on a bicycle could veer off and run into one of these rocks and be thrown and injured seriously. We have areas where there are vehicles that are parked out into the swale blocking the traffic, the lane of traffic. The safe site violations where their hedges and bushes have grown so tall that you come up to an intersection and you stop behind the stop bar and you cannot see oncoming traffic, that is the safe site triangle. There's an exact dimensions that must be met as far as how far back that vegetation has to be cut and how tall it can be. We find many areas where the vegetation, you're allowed to put small shrubbery around tree plantings, but you have to maintain it below 30 inches. Once it grows above 30 inches, you're blocking that line of sight. So we have that in many areas. The picture over here with the white stakes in the ground and the rope across them, they're not set far. They're not permitted in the first place. The code doesn't permit that. they're not giving you, the code specifically says that you must have a six foot step off area, so six foot clear space from the edge of pavement in towards the swale before anything can be placed in that area. Let me correct that. The code actually has two definitions for the step off area. There's a... a case or scenario in which you can have three feet, but you have to have enough parking on your property for, I believe it's six vehicles. If you don't have enough parking on your property for six vehicles, you have to have six feet of step off area because they anticipate that you're going to have vehicles parked out there in the swale. Um, So this is an indication of something that's not permitted. The code also does not permit rocks, gravel, swale. There's very specific items that are not permitted in the swale area. These are some of the examples of code violations that we have found out there. And I know we're going to discuss some more of what you'd like to see. We're just looking for clear guidance how we're gonna approach this. If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say that we're probably gonna find approximately 80% of the properties out there have some form of violation of the code. So this is a very complex and large, heavy lift to take on. Let's start educating the public. Yes, sir.

and letting them know that these things are not allowed, and then figure out how to

to do that within a reasonable period of time so we can get compliance yes what else is it just joe that some of our code as they brought up last week doesn't actually make a lot of sense right in the sense that uh you put this grass down in the soil and people it becomes mud so then you put stone down the stone is violation and then you well you want to put down artificial turf and that you don't like the looks of it, but that might work fine. So maybe you should be, I don't know, who you appoint to go look at the code now and come back with some recommendations, because the code probably needs some updating.

Well, I think that we are set for a February workshop on this. Okay, good. And so those are marching orders, is figuring out which things make sense and which don't.

One of the things that I just wanted to caution on on this one I mean it's an extremely complex undertaking for a lot of reasons because first of all what is the baseline what are you trying what's the end game you want to get rid of all the vegetation now you're getting into impacting not just the what what council member London was saying you know creating a situation that wasn't there before but also at times affecting the character of the community and the way the community sees the streets and how they are. I'm not saying that's, I'm not necessarily saying that it's not safe or it's safe, but I'm saying that it does have an impact to the residents and to what our community is. I also think that it's difficult to be removing stuff like this that's been there forever. It's grandfathered in. You do it to one, you gotta do it to another one. Excuse me, I'm just trying to catch my, I was getting called at the wrong time. Anyway, that's what I wanted to say. And I think that at the end of the day, you have so many different variables of swales. And also another thing too, what capacity do these swales really have? Yesterday we had a presentation about how groundwater is and how it fluctuates up and down. Do these swales really have storage capacity? What's the end game here? What are we trying to achieve? Are we trying to achieve storage capacity? I tell you that's really not gonna happen. because we saw it yesterday modeled. We saw the groundwater, how it rises and how it floods all this grass. So we're gonna remove all the streets for it to be wet and then a truck comes in and leaves the tire marks. It's uglier than it was before. See what I'm saying? Then you've got a sentimental value added by residents on those particular swales. try to remove that.

I think the thing that John was most interested in was these pickets that are, that he was, I think John Thester was the major complaint, and I tend to agree, these basically barriers to the ability for people to park on people's grass, which I totally understand, because I'm one of the guys that has gravel in their front yard, because I could never get grass to grow, but so I just gave up and said I put gravel there and I think I did it 20 years ago when I actually talked to John about it and it was like that was fine back then. But this ability for people to not be able to pull off onto the median off the road I think is the big concern. We've had lots of talks about this, Jeremy, and I know you have opinions, and I think I agree with that. We need to look at this again and figure out what the best way to proceed is. But definitely we need to make an ability for people to pull their cars off onto this well.

And that's where I started, as you said, Mayor, the educational side, informing residents where the property lines actually are. Many people think that they're all the way out to the edge of payment, and they're not. There is... For the most part, the majority of our right-of-ways, we have a 50-foot right-of-way, so 25 feet from the center line of payment into your property will give you an idea. If you need a visual approximately where your water meter is, you'll know that's your property line. And in many cases, it's pretty far into the property. And yes, they planted...

Some sentimental trees and objects and whatnot have been placed there.

But the intent of the swales originally was for stormwater management. And yes, many of our swales have been regraded or over time have been elevated above the edge of the road where there's supposed to be an inverted dip. that does take that rainwater and does provide that storage area. Are we going to go around and ask people to regrade things down? I'm not sure. We'll work on that in the workshop. But yeah, many of these objects do force vehicles to out into the street. For example, the picture here to the right, those boulders, if you were to park in front of that property, you're all the way out into the street.

And Chris, I'm sure you've seen that where people have their hedges that are like literally on the street where they've sort of said, okay, they're going to take over that property and make it theirs and use it for their kids' playground, which I totally understand. Yes. But it's not okay.

I would suggest one thing before the workshop. The one thing that's dangerous is the line of sight on the intersections. So I would suggest, I guess, Jeremy, your code compliance department, forget about, I mean, sure, these little vegetation in the middle of the street is not code or anything else, but no one's going to have an accident because of that. But these line of sights on the corners are terrible. Not all corners. And I think that maybe code compliant and then give the people an idea that, hey, you're going to have to change this somehow.

No, that we've actually already, staff has already been issuing warnings on, and people have been complying. So that should be getting visibly better.

Good, thank you. Okay, but I'm glad you made Michael Bracken happy by having visuals here. Thank you.

Mayor, that's actually what my guidance to Chris was, to make sure that Council Member Bracken was happy.

Hey, being dyslexic, I like to see stuff. Everybody wants to make Mikey happy.

So I think what I hear tonight, Mayor, I think we can begin to put these into categories of safety, obviously being the most important one. Parking might be another one. Maybe, for lack of a better word, low-hanging fruit. Let us go through that. We'll start to identify that, come up with an education packet, and then come back. I think it's February 25th, Mayor, with some recommendations, and then we can have a conversation with the entire council at that time.

All right. Okay, let's... We need to approve the 2026 meeting schedule. I know all of you have looked at it and studied it carefully, but it is what it is. So don't tell me later on that you didn't have a chance to look at it. I think anything that, Madam Clark, that we haven't?

Consensus of council to approve the proposed 2026 meeting schedule.

Yes.

Yes. Thank you.

Anything else we need to cover that we haven't before we go on to infrastructure?

Please undo the naming of the theater.

Oh, yes. Thank you very much. We don't want to leave without that.

Ed couldn't go home without that.

He's got specific directions. So if you want to get up there. So the great news is we got 82 submissions. So that means people are interested in this. The difficulty is we had to narrow this down to a couple of choices. And we think And Jennifer will talk through how we did that, that we have some good recommendations for you all to consider.

Good evening, council.

Thank you.

So yes, like the manager mentioned, we received 82 submissions from village residents. We narrowed it down with a panel of village staff down to three choices. We currently have Cinema Paradiso, Island Real House, and Paradise Cinema as the three options and three names up for you to choose. Once the council selects the final name, the winner will be announced in the Village Connect and then also on social media. The winner will then be given the opportunity to choose an upcoming movie to be played at the theater. You guys would choose of those three. Can you repeat the names? Of course. Cinema Paradiso, Island Real House, and Paradise Cinema.

Paradise Cinema. That's a little cliche. I like Island Real House. I'm a little more old-fashioned, old-school. Watch a movie. I'm good with that one. Oscar, do you have an opinion? I vote for Island Real House. Which one? Island Real House. The second one, Island Real House. I go for Cinema Paradiso.

He's got a survey going on.

He's got a survey going on. He's asking his wife. I'm good. I like Paradise Cinema. Paradise Cinema is good for me.

I agree.

Fernando's hard on Island Real House. I can support either two. I don't care. You can't support two. I said I can support either one. You can't support two. You have to vote on one. Okay. Is this a super majority vote, or is this a majority vote? How would you like us? We lost Joe, and we lost Frank. Oh, so we still won two votes.

So we can do it. Joe, what are your thoughts?

Joe, we're down to two.

Ed and I are Paradise Cinema, it seems. Okay. Michael can't make a decision.

Yeah, I can't make a decision.

Fernando's on Island Real House.

Paradise Cinema.

That's three for Paradise Cinema. Where's Frank?

Frank had a family situation. We'll be back.

Yeah, so even if you go with Fernando, you lose. I lose.

I'm going to side with Fernando on one thing.

Do it. There you go. So three to two. All right. Paradise Cinema, it looks like. Do you like it? What's that? Do you like it? My submission to make the final cuts. Paradise.

Thank you very much.

Council Member London, did you check in? Sorry? Did you check in? She didn't answer. Too bad for her.

I tried. I tell you, back in the 80s, this would have been called a real shackle.

We're not in the 80s.

We could live back in the 80s. For some of us. Okay. Do we...

All she wrote Anything else I need a motion to adjourn this meeting to go to the workshop second All right