Village Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Full moon, how are we looking? We're good? Thumbs up from full moon. The regular council meeting for Tuesday, May 26, 2026 is called to order at 7 o'clock p.m. We're going to have a moment inside of meditation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Clerk Jacoby's not here today. I'll do the roll call. Roll call, Member Winters.

Present.

Member Lightfoot-Ward. member or council person Irvine president vice mayor Martin present and mayor Omar is here we also have for the record the village manager David Roseman is here attorney gellers on his way says he's running late and clerk Jacoby would not be here with us tonight we also have police officers in the back and we have some of the staff All right, so let's move down. So we're going to move to the approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

We have a motion. We have a second. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Hearing none. All right, we're going to go down to good and welfare. All right, before we get into good and welfare, we are going to work the clock today. Let me just say this very, very quickly. It's been a good run, people. It's been a good run for a very, very long time. I've allowed a lot of lenience when it came to good and welfare, a lot of overtime, a lot of multiple occasions of individuals coming up after one time, but we are going to bring it back to the rules and regulations. I've noticed that even individuals who want to speak for very long periods of time. Even they, after certain council meetings, will contact me and be like, Mayor, can we please stick to the rules? It's just getting too wild. And so we're going to do that from now on. I guess I'll have to be the bad guy for that, but these are rules that have always existed. As I said, I understood the importance and always understood the passion of the items that come before us, right? And so I always want to allow everybody to express themselves, especially for items that are very, very important. are very, very important. But that being said, I'm just gonna read the statement of the quorum that's always been there, just so we have that down, and we're definitely sticking to three minutes one time up per resident, okay, per speaker, all right? Statement of decorum is always at the top of your agenda. It's been there for decades. Any person making racial or slanderous remarks or becomes bolsterous while addressing the village council, staff, et cetera, shall be barred from the audience by the presiding officer. No profanity, shouting, heckling, verbal outbursts, or disruptive behavior in support of or opposition to a speaker or his or her remarks is permitted. No signs or placards shall be allowed in the village hall. A person exiting the village hall shall do so quietly. And that's the statement of decorum that's always been there. That being said, this is a time good in welfare. Anybody can speak about anything that they want to speak about. Three minutes, one time up, and let's stick to the statement of decorum. Good and Welfare, just come up, say your first and last name and the address. Your address and the floor is yours.

Oh, good evening. My name is Denise White, and I'm at 173 Northwest 88th Street. Been there since I was 12. I calculated that. That's like 42 years. That's a long time. I've heard people speak and say they've been here, you know, since 19... from 2019 and stuff like that, and 2008 and whatever. I've been here for a long time. One thing I pride myself on is I used to say I'm from Miami, but right now I'm always choosing El Portal because I'm an El Portalian, right? I don't know if you guys know, what's his name? Willie Lynch. But there's a thing with slaves and Willie Lynch, what he did was he went in and he gave this recipe on how to make sure that slaves don't fight back and that they leave you alone. And one of those ways is to divide. Because if you divide people in so many directions, then actually you conquer them. So while I've been on this ride called El Portal recently, I would like to say that this recent rough patch right here is full of getting in a chat, getting thrown out a chat, saying the wrong things, and upsetting my neighbors so that they don't even speak to me anymore. Ms. Edna speaks about people being rude. She was my girl up until the other day, and I guess I must have said something she didn't like, so she don't talk to me no more when she comes to meetings. She doesn't speak to me anywhere. And this one doesn't speak to me. I was a part of a chat, and they kicked me out. I don't even know what I did. But I do know one thing, that this mouth is mine. And I'm going to speak and say what I want. Either I'm going to be on the council or I'm going to be in the audience, but I'm always going to be Denise. She's never, ever anybody else but Denise White, always and forever. And if she says something that offends you, please let her know. She will apologize. I know I'm a crazy neighbor, and I probably annoy my neighbors. I don't know. You got to ask George. He in the back. I probably annoy the hell out of my neighbors on a regular basis. I'm not going to say no. But they're my neighbors. And I've been here for how many years? 42 years. That's how long I've been here. And whether I speak to them or not, I consider them Elportalians. And when somebody comes in and spreads all of this stuff that causes us to look at one another and not speak to one another, even if I don't like you, I'm going to say hi, because my mom taught me manners. So all I'm saying is, let's not let some person who's new come into the mix and cause us to be who we are not. Unless that's who you really are and you were, you know, and he said I can't curse, an a-hole before, and now you just showing your true colors, that's fine. As long as you are an El Portalian right here, right now, I gotta love you. And I'm gonna do my best not to offend you. But please understand that, again, one more time, this is my mouth. And I will say whatever comes to my little heart. Now, this is an issue on the agenda always. They could not put it on today, but it's still here. We still got Little Farm, and we still have this place over here, and we still don't know what's going to happen to it. But we should do it as a united front. So whatever your neighbor is mad about, when I see Edna, I'm going to be like, I'm sorry. She going to be for what? I don't know, but I'm going to be sorry. Because I would rather be an El Portalian than be anything else right now. Somebody come with the right price, I might not be an El Portale, but right now I'm an El Portalean. You know what I'm saying? So that's all I'm saying is let's be nice to one another. I don't care if they don't agree with us. Somebody asked me, why do you keep saying y'all, y'all? Because I don't want to fight. I don't come to City Hall to fight. I come to City Hall so that people can be heard. That's all I come to City Hall for, people can be heard. That's what I want. I don't want to fight with my neighbors. I want to hug and have little tree parties over here, you know, and do little things that El Portalians should be doing to embrace the fact that we are a multicultural, beautiful place to be right now, right? We don't know what's going to happen to people right now. We are beautiful.

Amen.

Thank you very much.

Good evening. Noel Pace, 206 Northwest 91st Street. Also own multiple businesses at 8661 Northeast 2nd Street. Been in El Portal since 2008. Been a resident since 2008. First, I want to mention it's still National Military Appreciation Month, and that is something that was enacted by Congress starting in 1999. It's to recognize, you know, the over one point Now over 2 million people in uniform along with their families and associated veterans. I want to say we have like 18 million veterans here in the United States now and their family members. Obviously there's Gold Star families, the most, you know, honored of our group, where their family member made the ultimate sacrifice here defending our freedom. Just to let you know, last week, Miami-Dade County set up a memorial now right at the county government office building. If you didn't know, over 3,000 Miami-Dade County residents have died in uniform in defense of the United States, and so now each one of their names is displayed at the county memorial. government office building on a very nice memorial, and then obviously we have Memorial Day, which was yesterday. I can tell you that North Miami Beach, I represent on behalf of the county, I'm part of the Military Affairs Board, District Three as a member of that board, and so North Miami Beach did a nice proclamation for Military Appreciation Month. Yesterday I attended the Miami Beach Memorial Day ceremony, remembrance ceremony. It was great, and I know that we just had a lot of things going on. I appreciate everybody's support of that. That being said, and I appreciate Denise White's comments, You know, I've mentioned to the proprietors of the potential school, you know, it's okay to disagree. I think our goal is to not be disagreeable. I do advocate and wanna be clear that, you know, myself along with a number of other residents are not anti-school. We just happen to be an anti-school at the Old Raider Church location, just like there were two other schools proposed for that area. If you look on the community plan, That future use for that property, no matter what happened, was for a park. I think it's important to look at Biscayne Park. It's historical park focus. Miami Shores has another a couple of parks right on Northeast Second, which is also known as Main Street in the community plan. And then here now, we have a cleared area, which was intended future use as a park. I think it would be great to have that green space in that area, which, I mean, the old Raider Church property is not that large, actually. Now that the building's gone, it seems even smaller than it was. That would be a great park to have on our main street as a focus sort of as a communal area that public events and everything else can be used for the benefit of the entire community. I know that a school has been proposed there. I do know that the people are associated with that also have other property in the area. I've advocated for them to locate their school at the Little River Farm property that they have. I've recommended to them on the record number of times that if they put their school there and proposed it there, that the majority of the community would probably support its construction there. But I think that, especially in my particular case, I would like to see the old Raider Church become a park I think that's the best long-term use of that. Obviously, there's other commercial development on Northeast 2nd Avenue, but that would be nicely balanced with that park there, again, as sort of a center of gravity in the middle of the town. So hopefully you guys consider doing that. Okay?

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Good evening on deserve on 460 Northeast 89th Street and I'm also on the council. I just want to remind the residents of El Portal that as we discuss things like a you know a what we're discussing tonight with the resolution as we discuss what we want to see happen with large parcels like little farm or the sanctuary. Um, as we discuss, uh, what we're going to do with the short-term rental, uh, ordinance that is yet to be, uh, ratified because of, uh, legal technicalities. Uh, there is a through line through all of these, which is how much home rule is El portal going to be allowed by Tallahassee. So just a reminder. In the county you live in, built on land that was taken by the governor under eminent domain, there is a building that exists that fits the modern current international legal definition of a modern concentration camp. There are more than 1,000 souls missing from that building unaccounted for. Home rule is under extreme threat throughout the state of Florida, but it is exacerbated right here in Miami-Dade County, where every billionaire on earth has decided, I don't have to pay 15 layers of bribes to everyone in Dubai any longer. I can just walk into the county commission offices. That's it.

Thank you very much.

Good evening. Calixto Navarro, 335 Northeast, 87th Street. I just wanted to speak on, you know, what we had been discussing, good and welfare. I just want to make – somebody had communicated to me that a lot of us who did not want the school to go over here at the old Radar Church – that they felt that the Adam Neumann and their group felt unwelcome or they weren't welcomed here in El Portal. I don't think any of us, I think we all love the idea. We all love the unique concept. We just felt that where it was placed was not the appropriate place to go. They had a beautiful site right on the river. They own all that land. I know that it's part of a greater development with other investors, but they could have swapped properties and they could have done some sort of deal where they could get five acres over there develop it do whatever they wanted to do now that apparently they have uh they don't feel welcome and they're not going to do anything um perhaps the good idea would be turned out into a beautiful Park I mean it has beautiful trees there already and it is our downtown and there are we could do other commercial buildings And by the way, Toll Real Estate LLC has been buying up all of Northeast Second Avenue. So they own the old Mary Prado's accounting office, which is directly across the street, plus they just bought the other two properties that they wanted to turn into parking lots. They're renting out now, and they're looking to buy other properties. I know this because I'm a realtor, and I believe that they're going through their rabbi to try to get people to sell their properties. And, yeah, they've been buying. So, I mean, I think that... They can move their assets around. They could still build a school over here and a little farm on the river. I think it would be very nice. And make a nice park, beautiful, with native plants, trees. And by the way, that used to be on that property, I believe, historically from Bob Carr's book. There was an old Kuntai processing plant there where they would make arrowroot back in 1859. So I'm sure that if you dig under there, there's probably parts from the old factory there. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Joni Gomes, 269 Northwest 86th Street. I'd like to quickly just recap. So the plans for the Soulful School were submitted to the Village around Q4 of 2025, and residents have come month after month to these Council in planning and zoning meetings to voice their concerns, ask hard questions, and bring facts to Council about how we are very much opposed to these proposals at this specific location for various reasons. The list is long, so I'm not going to repeat them again. We did see that the same SOFL proposal was resubmitted on May 11th of this year around 5 p.m. However, these are the same plans to us, so no adjustments have been made to accommodate the village or its residents. Council has not conducted their own traffic study or pushed back one bit to our knowledge. It's quite obvious that some of you have some personal interests and that might be swaying your decision, which is unfortunate. So please just remember that you work for us. We've put you in this position and there will be an election in November. That said, you have the opportunity to make things right with us and it's just a simple two-step process. Schedule a June planning and zoning meeting to vote no on the SOFO plans that were resubmitted on May 11th. And number two, we urge that you join the lawsuit that challenges the SB 180 with attorney Jamie Cole. It's a flat fee of $10,000 and this also includes the attorney's fees and costs. Over 25 other Florida municipalities are part of this ongoing lawsuit and we should be part of this. I know that some residents are afraid of the live local and being part of this lawsuit will eliminate this fear. Thank you.

Hello.

Kathy Emery, I own property at 169 Northeast 87th Street. And what I have to say about the proposal for the school is the traffic will be horrendous no matter what you do. And the area between Northeast 2nd Avenue, I've been here time and time again, and nothing has happened to improve it. The area between Northeast 2nd Avenue and Miami Avenue on 87th Street is like living on a freeway. The speed of the traffic is between 40 and 60 miles an hour every day I'm there. And I've seen it. I begged the police to monitor it. I've seen them there twice. They routinely monitor Northeast 2nd Avenue and give plenty of tickets. I hear them day in, day out. But between Northeast 2nd and Miami Avenue, there is no traffic monitoring. There are no sidewalks. There's uneven grass, and you see people trying to wheel their baby carriages through dirt and potholes and muck along the side of the road. The other day I tried to help a lady with her baby carriage, and there's a big lip on 87th Street, the road, and her cat ran out in the street, and I was trying to rescue her cat from an oncoming car that was coming about 50 miles an hour, and I fell in the street myself. So they need to put either sidewalks or level the street. They tore the street up a couple years ago. They cut all the driveways off. And now there's big potholes along there. It's dangerous. Somebody's going to get killed, if not badly hurt there. And you need to do something. And I don't know how many times we have to come and ask for this. So I hope one of you will take the initiative to have something done. And the school is only going to invite huge amounts of traffic. If you look at the Presbyterian Church, where they have just daycare and kindergarten, the traffic is horrible there alone, and they don't have about a tenth of the amount of students that you're planning. So you need to consider that people have lived here for many years and own property and do something about it. Thanks.

Thank you.

Hi everyone, my name is Kelly Gomes, 269 Northwest 86th Street. I came to the last few meetings. I intend to keep coming to each of these meetings to just continue to voice my opinion about this proposed school that wants to be put there. I know last meeting Mr. Winters was like, why are we bringing this up when it's not on the agenda? i keep coming and i hope more people keep coming because this is the only time where you guys get to hear from us and i don't want to seem like i've warmed up to the idea and that it's okay whenever it does come time for you guys to vote uh... so again i'm here to voice my opinion about I don't think this school makes sense for us to have a school that doesn't contribute taxes to our village. I don't think we can sustain the traffic and safely operate in our community with the traffic that would come. If you lined up right here on 87th Street 100 cars tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. this would be mayhem. So to the extent of what we discussed last meeting with SB 182 and the importance of understanding the traffic impact that this would have in our community, I think the responsibility is on, I would say, us as a community, but really on you guys as a council to commission your own traffic study, not something that a developer goes and does and pays somebody to give their point of view on what they're trying to accomplish. But instead, that you guys take the lead with the time that we do have until SB 182 gets into, whatever, into effect so that you guys have the facts and the ability to make the right decision for the community. And it's not an arbitrary decision at that point because, again, you can't park 100 cars on the street like the police department would freak out. Everybody would freak out. So I think it's on you guys to take that step and say, hey, let's come together as a council, get our own traffic study, and understand what that would mean to us as a community. So that's it. Thank you again for all your hard work. Appreciate what you guys do for us. And that's it for today.

Thank you very much.

Hi everybody. I wanna request four minutes as this is tied to the agenda. Will that be okay? I have a whole thing written out. I don't know how to shorten it.

The part that's tied to the agenda, the historic preservation part, we're gonna go over that part. Okay. Can that part wait till we get to that? You want me to wait? Well, the part about the historic preservation part, is that tied into the first part you're gonna be talking about or is it all tied together?

So that's what I'm talking about is the preservation board.

Oh, if you can wait till we get to that agenda item.

Can I do it before you guys vote, though? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. 100%. Yes.

Good evening. I'm George Alvarez. I live at 165 Northwest 88th Street. I appreciate the instruction and guidelines from the dais. Sometimes civility is the way we get through things, and sometimes we need... conventional reminders of it. So, and to that end, I'm gonna say a couple things about the proposed school at the former Rader Methodist Church, and a couple other things. I know that when all said and done, whether or not that property becomes some version of a school or some version of whatever, we're all gonna live together, we're all gonna get Over this, we are all each and every one of us residents of Alpertel and a couple of friends of Alpertel, and there will be another day. We will figure things out, especially interpersonally among friends and neighbors. That does not, however, abdicate our responsibility to take a serious look at any of this. I think when a developer proposes his development and a body politic listens to it, It is an act of faith, a very dynamic act of faith. Because we have to take it on faith that they are doing things the right way, and they have to take it on faith that we are listening to them the right way. So faith is a very dynamic concept in and of itself. I happen to know that this body, this council, has over years and decades fine-pointed our code. Some people may embrace the fact that we have form-based code. Some people may not love it as much and point out some of the supercilious aspects thereof. But I think when it all comes down to it, We are putting faith in a developer to become partners with us. And a developer would likely be doing the same. So if that developer seeks aims that require special exceptions, administrative exceptions, that requires changes to our comprehensive plan, then that's where we lose a little bit of faith. That's no longer seeking partnership. That is seeking to do what they want to do irrespective of the faith that we so desperately want to have. mirror what one of my other neighbors said. I'm not against a school. I'm not against any school being there. I am against a school of that size with those dimensionalities, with that impact, with those question marks, and those objectively countervening points about their design, capacity, and lots of question marks about infrastructure. So as my time is nearly up and civility shall run the day, I will bow out at this point. And I might be able to continue something else in one of the agenda points that I want to talk about that. Either that or I'll have enough time to try to figure out a way logically to make it work. It pains me to hear that we are in some way burdensome when we come here and repeat what we say over and over again. I get it. But this is truly, truly important. The stakes are exceptionally high. And between things that we know, dimensionality, size, contraventions of our ordinances, Things that we have learned recently, oh, that there's been a new, May 11th it has been resubmitted, so I'm eager to see if any changes have been made to that proposal. Let's see how that gets written in the transcript. And then there's the things that we don't know. As have been alluded to, we have multiple properties being purchased by the same owner across the street, two and three blocks away. So we have to protect ourselves. So to that end, and until I see something terribly different, I'm urging you guys to oppose anything that's remotely like the proposal that was originally dated in whatever date it was originally dated, October or December or whenever. And to that end, I'm gonna echo, I'm glad somebody else said this, The lawsuit that has been filed, I don't quite know whether they are separate lawsuits. I believe in some cases they are, and in some cases they are joint lawsuits. Towns close to us, like Miami Shores, Weston, in order to get some common sense on live local. Because live local may not have the same impact, may be actually desperately needed in Miami. Here, if the owner of 10, let's say, live local buildings on the east side of El Pertel and any number of other tax exempt buildings throughout El Pertel should have that much tax exemption then think about the disproportionality with which our infrastructure, our roads, our very old water mains, our non-existing sewer system, think about the impacts that that will have on us and the lack of tax base that we will get, even if these buildings are only 50% or 40%. We will be receiving short shrift and we will be accepting much greater tax burden and a burden in the form of our way of life. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for indulging me. Thank you, council, for your work. Appreciate it.

Daniel Rojas, 60 Northeast 86th Street. So not to be a broken record, I also agree with my neighbors. I think a project of that scope and size is not what's best for El Portal. It just doesn't bring enough benefits to the community and the village. That being said, I had the privilege of going to the Biscayne Bay Marine Health Summit last week. It was actually really interesting and pretty much everybody that did any research on the health of the bay, which is like economy driving force, economic driving force for our area, states that the bay is in danger, it's a threat, and we all need to do as much as possible to help it out. That being said, This ties into things that the city can do to improve things for the community as parks, trees, all these things that help absorb and mitigate the damage done by flooding and sea level rise. To echo the sentiment of some of my neighbors as well, if we look at this parcel of land as a possible park, it could actually bring a lot more benefits I guess climate resiliency planning like infrastructure and any other possible pocket parts could be used to that as well. And it actually costs a lot less to do something like this and to have to do a whole like breaking into the ground and creating sewage and all these things. So we can actually help our village be more resilient if we can plan out things like this. So I think we should make an effort to consider that when we bring in projects to the village. And then and I'm pretty sure there's plenty of grants because of that economic driving force. It's a billions dollars of economic funds that come into South Florida due to the bay. There's lots of grants and lots of research that can be done that we can try to bring into our village being that Another thing that was a common point brought by most researchers is that the Little River is the biggest polluter to the bay out of every canal out here. So we're constantly the one that brings the most nutrients to the bay and brings the most pollution to the bay. And I would love to see our village do something about that. I had a couple of points. Tagalong, I'm glad we brought about the lawsuit by our neighbors to SB 180. I would really like to see our village join that lawsuit. There's power in unity with our neighbors, and we need this to protect our village. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.

Hi. So, you guys all know me now at this point. I feel like I'm the only one that ever comes at this point to... Oh, I'm Erin Mara. I live directly across the street from the church on 88th Street. So I'm not really coming to address anyone else here. I'm really only here to talk to you guys. So I am a supporter of the school, but I have learned a lot from other people because Like I'm feeling a little disrespected right now.

Oh, just, just for the record, just say your full name.

Oh, sorry. I didn't know that that was a thing. Um, I live at one 44 Northeast 88th street. So the corner of 88th and second Avenue across the street from the church.

I'm Erin Mara. Thank you very much. Yeah.

Okay. So I do like the idea of having a park in that area. I think that would be amazing. I guess my question is do we have $15 million to buy it from a privately owned person? Do we have $15 million plus $15 million to put in? And I assume it's not so easy to get grants, but maybe it is, but it would be nice to know that. I am indeed a supporter of the school, and the last time I was here about two months ago, I listed my reasonings why. I'm not gonna elaborate on such reasonings in trying to keep things short. I do come... on behalf also of a silent group of my neighbors who don't want to come. They don't feel like they can come. They also have kids, busy careers, and as we all know, two working parents and kids at 6.30 p.m. is literally crisis time. So that's why I'm late. In general, the last time I stated that I felt like the developers seemed generally interested in being good neighbors and have addressed every single concern that was brought to them. Every issue and payment in lieu of taxes, traffic mitigation strategies, making the walls surrounding the school beautiful, bringing in sewers, trying to open up Second Avenue as a corridor for commerce. These are all things that they're trying to do. They are deep-pocketed developers who've come in and taken an interest, and our Second Avenue has nothing on it, really. So... You know, I think it's worth it to work with them. So in listing some of the other things that I wanted to mention, number one, schools are definitely a problem here. To pretend that we don't have an issue with school choice is naive. In fact, it's my number one concern as a parent is where I'm gonna send my kid to school. We now have 28 kids in my kid's second grade class at St. Rose because the list is that long that they just feel like they need to open more spots because they need to address the demand for private school. There's a Cushman, Country Day, and Heritage, all full. Forget about it. Waiting list, super long. And if this school comes in and funnels some of those kids from the other private schools, those benefits might come to other parents who maybe wouldn't send their kid there, but might send them to Country Day or Cushman. So the argument that the school is too expensive for the neighborhood never made a lot of sense to me. The tuition I heard is around 40,000. I can't actually confirm it online, but that's what I heard. This is pretty normal for a private school. Cushman is somewhere from 38 to 50 American heritage same thing country day. So this is kind of all pretty similar. The idea that we have a population of people here that can't afford to go to that school is also a little strange because when I look at the last three months of home sales in El Portal, they all range from 650 at the low end to 1.93. So the families moving in can definitely afford this school. Number three, I heard there were extensive zoning changes happening, but when discussing when Scarlett Hammond was here, she was hired by El Portal to review this. And it seems like the only zoning change was that little tiny lot, which was going to go from a house to be incorporated to the big lot. And that did not seem like a big deal to me. And I feel like they could probably function without that zoning change. The other thing that I wanted to bring up is Crystal Ray, because I think it is actually important to think back on that. So I went to all those meetings between 2019 and 2020 pre-COVID to every Crystal Ray meeting. I even sat with you.

We talked about Crystal Ray.

I was opposed to Crystal Ray. This was Mayor Claudia's big idea. She fully supported the school. There was like a Peacock Express I remember in 2020 that said the Crystal Ray Miami organization came before planning and zoning to present their site plan and special exception, special exception was granted unanimously for the school. And that was at the time to make it a school. The school has a beautiful mission statement, but it didn't seem particularly pertinent to the demographic of the recent moving people into El Portal. But what was surprising to me is that there really wasn't any opposition to Crystal Ray. And I don't understand why, because I went to all those meetings. I mean, maybe someone can tell me what the difference is, because I don't see it. In fact, I've seen what Crystal Ray offered in terms of concessions, and it's not nearly what Soulful is offering. So again, where was everyone for Crystal Ray? I don't understand. It didn't end up passing, but it went through like four different passings. Anyway, it was moved quite far along. Um, and many Peacock expresses and stuff showed that mayor Claudia thought it was a really good idea. It was her thing to bring in. So number six, are we hoping that something better will come along? I mean, it's been years of waiting and I'm going to reiterate, which is my number seven. I don't want to live across the street from a four story building. Even if it's four stories and can only have 72 units or 36 per acre, like that's a lot of people in a small area. And I do think we should probably join the lawsuit against whatever the live local is. I think that live local is the big scary gorilla. And I think it would be really helpful if someone could tell us exactly what, like it seems like if live local comes in, we have no say in what happens. Correct? Correct. There's truth in my statement. They don't have to go by our planning and zoning. But anyway, that's what I had to say. Just so you guys know that I am in favor.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Who's next? Mr. Pace, I can't. Mr. Pace. I know, but I can't do it. I know, I apologize. I can't do it. Because the rule is, is one time up per, that's what it is.

Hi, Ian McKenzie, 8950 Northeast 4th Avenue. Welcome back, Dr. Ward. I'm so glad you're here. I really am. And greetings to all the rest of the council. Sorry, my head's like still at 34,000 feet. I just arrived off a plane from the great state of Maine. I just want to say something. You know, sometimes we have to think outside the box and not fear being caught with a live local or a school if we don't really want it. What about, and I'm proposing this to everybody, I mean, if we're going to be paying taxes anyhow and it's the will of the people who live here and the voting rights, we could do more like a referendum or something like that. and have eminent domain and take over it. And it can either be filed at the state level or it can be filed here. I'm now asking the attorney for input on that. Is that true?

We have certain powers to file eminent domain, but that doesn't mean we get it free.

No, it doesn't mean. No, we would have to pay for it. But I checked into it. To make a park proposal, it would benefit everybody. I mean, you know, we'd have a nice park. We could call it Tequesta Park or something else. I mean, I'm just thinking outside the box, throwing this out in the air because I don't like gray buildings, okay? Nobody does, and nobody wants that. And you're going to be taxes on it anyhow. So you might as well be paying taxes on a park that you could use. So if we go that route or something, and that would require some legwork and making sure that things are proceeded on properly, The council could do that, and that could be an option that benefits everybody living here for a park. Think of that. You could take, we could call it Tequesta Park, like I said, and have funding from the state or the federal government. I checked into it. There are grants for that. There are matching grants. There are other kinds of grants available. And some of them go up to $5 million and so forth like that. So I mean, there's funding available. We just need to dig and look into it and not be blocked in or intimidated by a developer that we have to make a decision what we want and pit each other against us. That's not Alpertel. You know, El Patel was warm and walking. I've lived here 23 years. You know, we've gotten this far. We need more trees. We need more things like that. We could have a band shell there or something like that for performances. We could have a little ice cream stand or something like that, like in France where they have parks with fountains and people can come and, you know, walk their dogs, sit around in a park and it would benefit everybody. So I'm just throwing that out there as a thought process. So don't give up hope and, you know, hopefully everybody will be, can benefit and come to some amicable resolution. But that is a possibility then. Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. McKay.

Hello, Elida 12 Northeast 19th Street. I'm very surprised and disappointed that we changed the rules to limit even or censor even more our conversations. You know, we don't have town halls, we don't have workshops, we have discussed many times that this format is not working. We're asking the questions. We don't get answers. The only person that answers is probably Mayor Omar. The others, they don't answer questions. We've asked for you to give us a little bit more details through the attorney, through the planning and zoning. We never have those individuals here. to speak and answer the questions. So now we're also being limited to literally three minutes. Very disappointing. And we have expressed several times, can we please have a conversation when we ask a question? For example, if I want to direct a question directly to you, I would prefer to be answered immediately. So that way we can have a conversation, not repeat ourselves and talking about the same topic, all the citizens, you know, for all the citizens. So, I mean, I hope we can take in consideration other council members can also like say something about this because this is not right. We really don't have any conversations in El Portal. They are very limited. And during these times, we need it more than ever. My first question was that what it would take to El Portal to join the lawsuit that Miami Shores has joined regarding the leave local. I think it's going to be more costly for us later on if we have to do it on our own than actually join all the other municipalities. The second point that I wanted to make is that what it would take for El Portal to actually start planting trees on the swells. The reason is because, as we can see very clearly, many developers come in. They do cut the trees. The replacing has been done by palm trees, which is really embarrassing. The project across the street has been a beautiful demonstration of they came in. It was opposed by many residents here. And what happened? They relocated the trees. It was an insult to all of us because we all know that oak trees, you cannot relocate them. It was a waste of money for the developer. It was a waste of time and effort and voice from the villagers or from the neighbors here in El Portal. And the trees are dried. I don't know if they removed them or something. And I can guarantee you that inside their property, they're probably replacing them with the smallest tree or probably with a palm tree, which again, it's an embarrassment. And what's embarrassing is because these new neighbors, they do not understand. Either we are not expressing clearly to them, but they have not understood that that's what makes us special as a village, the trees. You can go on the west side of I-95 and you see the houses are the same, the architecture is the same, there's no trees. That's what makes this neighborhood, I believe, but one of the few. And the third question will be the school capacity, the school project capacity. It was spread as a rumor in our neighborhood that the developer has withdrawn the idea of building a school. That is not true. They are moving forward. HAVE YOU RECEIVED ANY INFORMATION, ANY NOTIFICATION? THIS INFORMATION IS PUBLIC AND PROBABLY YOUR PLANNING AND ZONING REPRESENTATIVE SHOULD KNOW THAT VERY WELL. THEY PROBABLY HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED OR PROBABLY THE CITY MANAGER. HAVE YOU DISCUSSED AT LEAST THE PLANNING AND ZONING AS TO WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE CAPACITY? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT CHANGED THEIR PLANS. with the idea that this school should be a capacity of 390 people, including 350 students plus the staff, and to the point that the lady made that she feels that we are enabling her from speaking up and disrespecting her, It's very disrespectful when you say there are 72 units. Oh, you know, let's say this unit has 72 times three people per unit. Oh, that's 210 people, right, compared to a school that is 400 people. So, it's very insulting when people say, you know, like, everything is on the El Portal, Village Minutes, and everything else on the record that Christopher Ray was not passed, was discussed, and maybe the mayor, you know, I think you were present during that. Maybe you can give us a little bit more what exactly was discussed, because as per my understanding in the meetings that I have seen, which they are on YouTube as well for anyone that wants to see, everything is very clear that that school was absolutely rejected by the council members. So that was the... But... School capacity is something that concerns me and I hope that you get a detailed information and as how the planning and zoning came to that decision to actually you know approve a project like that, you would say, well, we don't have anything in front of us. I understand that. But can you please have that information hypothetically? Because we know that this developer is not going to stop. They're going to pursue it. They're coming. And you need to be prepared. And it will be nice to have all that information. So thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

good evening my name is warner dreyer 486 northeast 87th street so i have pretty much three items here first uh is a tree ordinance as we know we don't have a tree ordinance here in el portal about a year ago i had submitted one to both uh mayor nickerson uh and also anders right so a few maybe months ago one of our neighbors scott said uh there was a new ordinance cre or draft proposed or created by an organization that you are running right now on trees, right? Councilperson Urban. So now I'm working with Mayor Nickerson and Scott to consolidate that version one that we had submitted originally to you and to Mayor Nickerson. And I just feel this is taking, you know, And I appreciate all the help with Mayor Nickerson, but it's taking a long time. So I just want to make sure our council person, Urban, are you speaking with Mayor Nickerson as far as what we're going to do to finalize? You know, now we have two versions, right? We have your version, the one I had submitted, even though Mayor Nickerson and I and Scott are working together to consolidate it. but it's already been already a year, right? So we have an area of 16 acres, right, that's lush in trees. So that's the first item. I just want to see how you, Mayor Nickerson, and Councilperson Urban are talking about just to move this tree ordinance here to the council and to an upcoming agenda. And that's the first point. Second point is the prior resident here, Ms. Alida, she spoke about the development across the street. What is El Portal doing as far as monitoring the observations she brought up about the three trees, right, that were... moved, removed. Now we have maybe two out of the three, perhaps in not the base state, right? They probably brought in some new trees. Maybe what's the status on the new trees? Is anybody here from the village monitoring that? process with the trees, and third is pretty much to Mayor Nickerson. I know we've been working on the drainage solution to here and 4th Avenue Road, so I just want to follow up with you. Those are the three points. I would appreciate it. Yeah, we could discuss. Thank you very much.

Anyone else good in welfare? Good and welfare going once. Good and welfare going twice. Okay, we're gonna close for good and, okay, we're gonna close for good and welfare. I'm gonna bring it back to the council. All right, before we move on, I just wanna say a couple of things. I'll get to that part and then you can, we'll join in on that, Councilperson Dreher. All right, so as far as the school not being on the agenda, The school's not on the agenda. The school understand, I said it a few times, but the school has to go through two readings, almost three readings, before it even gets to the council. So this is a council meeting, so it hasn't even had one approval through the committee level yet. So it hasn't gotten any votes, hasn't gotten any approval through the committee level. So it has a long way to go, at least two meetings, before it even gets to this level, the council level. So it's not gonna be on the council agenda anytime soon. It has to get through two committee meetings. But that being said, the last thing, and so I'm looking, I see nothing, maybe they have it, but I see nothing for May 11th of a resubmission. Hasn't been sent to us yet, so I know nothing of that. The last thing we received was at the beginning of this month, this was on May So on May, well, we received it May 5th. So on May 4th, the Planning and Zoning Committee wrote, hi, I had a brief call with Ben today, Ben Fernandez, which is the attorney of the developers. He said that the client is currently putting the application on hold. That was May 4th. May 5th, the clerk sent that to us and said, good afternoon, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. Please read below. So that's the last we got of them, that they're putting the whole application on hold. And so I don't know where it goes from here, so let me just say, kind of answer this question or whatever before I move on. Normally what that means with developers is that, especially in government, and I've been doing this for such a long time, When they put an application on hold for a site plan, that normally means that they're going to try to either dump the property. That's usually what it means is they're going to try to get rid of the property. And the reason why they put the application on hold is because they're not going to abandon the application just in case something, anything crazy, miraculous happens down the road. So they're not going to abandon the application because then they have to start from scratch. So what they usually do is they'll table or put the application on hold they'll table or put the application on hold and that way while that's going on, they usually try to find a buyer for the property. That's usually how it works. Now, this time may be different, and the reason why this time may be different is because previously, SB 182 didn't exist. That's going to kick in in July. That says that private schools up to 150 students can come and they can, for whatever reason, whatever, bypass the commission, the council. So they have that, so, I'm not sure, but as far as we, the information we've received, is that it's on hold in this table as of May 4th. So I'm not sure if we'll know, from where I sit, I think that we'll have more clarity after July 1st. Because then we can really see what they're going to do. Now prior to July 1st, and I told you guys last month and even a couple of meetings back that I've been looking to get some local act specialists from Tallahassee to come in here. Actually one of them is the president of the zoning for the state, of the zoning commission for the state. And so we're looking at either June 25th, it's a Thursday, or June 29th. We were supposed to have it this past month, but he had to go fly to Europe for a family emergency, so he had to cancel, so that's the reason why we didn't have it. But so that will be happening either June 25th or June 29th, which is a Thursday or a Monday, the Monday right before our, well, it's after, the week after our meeting. So that will be coming as far as us getting clarity on exactly, for El Pertal, this is gonna be about El Pertal, exactly what rights does Live Local have, how does it affect us, what rights do we have, what power do we have to fight back, and things like that. So all those type of Live Local questions will be answered there at that event.

As far as the next question, yeah, so as far as a part,

I think that'd be a wonderful idea. Part of the reason why, last month, you all who were here, we finally officially named that park the Little Peacock Park that's behind us, right? Because the Tot Lot was never the official name of the park, it was just a name that our predecessors were calling that area. So now we have the official name, and part of the reason why I named it the Little Peacock Park is because, you know, in my vision, one day we will have a large El Portal Central Park, and hopefully that park will be the Peacock Park, right? And so this is the little Peacock Park. I also stuck with that little because it was, you know, we were calling it a tot lot, so it kind of sticks with the small or little tot type of like theme of the park. Okay, so yeah, I'm 100% for that. I think a central park, a Peacock centralized Albertow Park is something that we should definitely have and it's something that would be good. As far as, so I spoke about how we didn't receive anything about May 11th for a resubmission. As far as the lawsuit, so I heard when you all were talking about the lawsuit and you were saying that there's a lawsuit, which I've heard of various lawsuits on this, on SB 180. Now SB 180 is not SB 182, right? SB 180 is about code amendments. That's SB 180. And so there's a lot of lawsuits out about that, and I heard that number mentioned, so I'm not sure what number you all were referring to, but when the lawsuit came up twice, both individuals said SB 180. That's about code amendments. So SB 180 says that no municipality can update or amend their code in any type of way. like add permanent amendments to their code. That's SB 180. I have a way around that. We can talk about that offline. But SB 182 is the one that kicks in July 1st. SB 182 is the one that talks about If you're a private school up to 150 students, you can, you know, if you own land, you can come and put that private school on that land up to 150 students. That's SB 182. So I just want to make sure that we have that type of clarity so we're not confused about SB 180 and SB 182. Ms. Gomes is always on point.

Thank you very much.

Along with Mr. Kelly Gomes.

But on that, do we have any information on SB 180 as far as any other municipalities that would be...

So... don't have it in front but i know just from you know just from the stuff that i do as mayor and president of the cities i know that there are numerous um municipalities that are in lawsuit against for sb 180 because they're fighting back on that you know tooth and nail because to not be allowed to update your code or amend your code in any type of way is a problem for every municipality

That is the one we should probably, that is the one we should be joining something to that effect on.

Absolutely, I agree with you. Absolutely. The next thing is, okay, so I did put a watch order twice on 87th Street between Northeast 2nd and North Miami Avenue. It's difficult because, yes, it doesn't have any sidewalks. That's a larger project, and that's not something that we're not looking into. Trust me, as a matter of fact, I think it was my second year as mayor, I brought in, it was $837,000. to put sidewalks west of Northeast 2nd Avenue. And what ended up happening was that for some reason, I don't know what it was, but for some reason in not only the 11th hour, like we were actually, The money came, the money showed up, and then for whatever reason, Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, she pulled the money a week after we received it, and she dedicated it to somewhere else. And so it's difficult to get the money, and that's what it is. It's always resources. But that's what it's going to take for full safety on 87th Street when you start to go west of Northeast 2nd Avenue. Now, that being said, I'll continue to put watch orders on that street. Also, though, and what helps out with the watch orders is if we know, and I think I even asked it the first time, and the two times I put watch orders on the street, they were throughout random times throughout the day. If I know exactly when the height of the traffic or the speeding is that really helps out with those watch orders. I can really like zone in on those watch orders if I get that information. But that being said, one thing that we all have to agree to with this funding that we continuously go for, if it comes in, the residents have to be okay with When sidewalks go in, you will lose a significant amount of that right-of-way encroachment into what might be a foot or two of your front yard. Because when you have these driveways that go out to the street, and now when you're implementing sidewalks, there has to be a certain amount of clearance, there has to be things like that. But that conversation we could have in like a town hall, you know, once the funding comes in, understand with that funding does come that type of change when you have that type of thing. Next, yes, Mr. Kelly, I think a traffic study. I think, so the policy has always been for the applicant to pay for the traffic study, right? Because traffic studies, especially detailed traffic studies, they can get costly and we just try to look, you know, as El Pertal, you know, we're small, so we try to look for ways not to have El Pertal, you know, spend money for a traffic study for an applicant. I understand this is a different situation, right? Because this would be us kind of like protecting ourselves more instead of like a regular traffic study from a regular applicant. So I do agree with that and we'll look into that and see what we can do about that. I appreciate it.

just one point on traffic studies so one thing that was surprising to me of the traffic studies that we've done over the years for different things for example trying to lower the speed limits was there's no recommendations in a traffic study it's just raw data so for example what we learned on 87th Street when we were making the effort to try and lower the speed limits was that we really did not have a speeding problem on 87th. It sounds insane because we all know there's a speeding problem. It was a speed limit problem. So it showed us very clearly that with the speed limits where they were, which was at 35 at the time um it was uh you know the nine over rule and you know uh things like this the data actually showed that that people were not you know out of control or or you know redlining it down 87th street it really was an issue that the speed limit was too excessive and allowed people too much beyond that. And so and so the true issue on 87th Street right now is very much the lack of sidewalks on or any type of usable swale where even emergency vehicle coming through an ambulance, for example, there's nowhere for anybody to get off of the road without going into a ditch or otherwise risking damaging somebody's property or their own property. So not to mention, obviously, the risk to life as well. So I just want to say that when we talk about traffic studies, I do think that there is a risk to having a developer be able to dictate the parameters of a traffic study, because much like skewing statistics, I could definitely see the scenario where if the developer is outlining the full parameters of the traffic study, that they would be able to do that in a way to kind of get the answer they want, right? Or at least be able to paint it that way. Personally, I'm certainly aware of those, but overall traffic studies are pretty mundane and standard, and honestly, As someone sitting on the dais, I do wish that there would be something like recommendations or things to that effect within the traffic study, but it's not necessarily that way. So on the face of it, there's not really much risk, honestly, of a developer being able to manipulate a traffic study, unless I believe that developer would be allowed to outline the parameters of the study, because each study is prescribed.

Thank you very much, Councilperson Erbaum. As far as, oh, I wanna thank Mr. Rojas for the Marine Health Summit that you attended, Mr. Rojas, he was there, I appreciate that. You know, you attended Wednesday, on Tuesday is the municipal day, and on Tuesday, I pass by in the morning, and then who was left there on Tuesday to represent for El Portal, even though she doesn't live here anymore, but she's always wanted to be involved, is Elizabeth Plata-Carpenter, the executive director for the Everglades Law Center. So she stayed there when I had to leave and go to another meeting on Tuesday, which was the municipal information day. So we're joining up, my brother. But next year, we'll go together. We'll go together. And we'll bring some other people with us, because that's a great, great, great event. You brought up great points about that. Yeah, I think, Miss Mara, I think Once we find some type of land that we're able to purchase for a park, and we have the funds to purchase it, that would be good. I think also, you know, we're always looking for green space funding, right, or green space grants, and that just continues on a daily and weekly and monthly basis, but those grants, are out there, it's just everybody, you know, there's a certain number of grants, scarcity, everybody's going for the same grants, and it just so happens, you know, we can get those grants. But usually what they like to do is, which comes from the resources that we all know about in life, usually what they like to do is for things like that, Normally, and depending on, of course, who's in power at the state level, at the federal level, depends on what they kind of like prioritize, but normally they like to, for green spaces, either find match grants, normally, because they don't look at it, so a lot of times in government, at the higher levels, they look at money as the issue that's driving things. So if it was something like, oh, we want money for the development of some financial corridor, and it's going to bring whatever, whatever in tax dollars, that this amount will go back to the county, and da, da, da, then you'll find people to start helping us out. And you'll find that there's more money for that. But when it comes to green space and green space development, it depends on, just quite frankly, who's in power at the state level and at the federal level and how much they care about environmentalism, green space, and things like that. And that'll tell you how much is available when it comes to that. So it's difficult, but that's something that we continue to work on. Mr. Lyda, all right, so prior to you walking in, I understand your frustration, prior to you walking in, I gave a speech about how up to this time, I was really lenient and I understood the emotion, I understood the importance of everything we were talking about, but that we were going back to the rules that have always been there. The rules have always been there for decades. I actually also read at the top of the agenda, the statement of the quorum, I read that out aloud at the beginning of this meeting. So those are the rules. The rules aren't changing. Those rules always have been there. I just have always allowed everyone to break those rules in the favor of the residents. So those rules are just being enforced now. That's all that is. As far as school capacity, I think that's something that you've asked before. I've asked before to our planning and zoning. I'm still awaiting that answer and response so we can get that information. And we'll still look into that, and hopefully I can get that response that I've asked for, even though, like I said, the last information we got is that the school is on hold, the site plan is tabled. That's the last information that we received. When it comes to the tree ordinance for Councilperson Dreyer, yes, so Councilperson Dreyer, former Councilperson Dreyer, Scott Colbrick, or once Councilperson, not always a Councilperson, Councilperson Dreyer, Scott Colbrick, and myself, because myself and Irvine, because of sunshine, can't be on the same meetings too much, if it's not a public meeting or whatever, a public forum, or open to the public at the very least. So Councilperson Dreyer, Scott Kovrig and myself have been working on the tree ordinance. So a long time ago, as Councilperson Dreyer said, he reached out and sent us a tree ordinance sample. Since that time, Councilperson Erbom has reignited the tree board and Scott Colbrick is part of the tree board and part of the architectural landscape and environmental mayoral board. So he's able to float between the boards. So we're almost down to the end. But what it is is that and we're going to meet probably next week because my schedule this week is really busy. And so we're pretty much going all the way through it and we we've kind of compiled all of them. That's pretty much done. The only thing that's left is that I'm going through it and I started to do this in our last meeting. I'm going through it and just kind of pointing out certain things like procedurally for the Village of El Pertal to make sure like they, you know, kind of fall in line. I mean the last couple of things we discussed was is there gonna be an appeal process or a variance process. We discussed things like that. So that's where we're at. So once that's done next week, then, Scott Colbert will bring it back to the tree board. And you guys will discuss and then we'll have it at the, you know, at the, the ALE, the architectural and environmental board. And then from there, once that is subbed out, then we'll bring it to the council. Yeah.

Even at that time, I mean, it's going to require a town hall at some point because the proposed tree ordinance is already at a it's pretty aggressive. So what is working its way towards being considered is really quite aggressive, honestly. And so there's going to need to be something on the level of a town hall as it does get close to finality because it is comprehensive. It is technical and it is detailed. And so it is going to need a fair amount of outreach and interaction with the community because if it were to go into place in its present state right now, it would be quite shocking. It would be something far beyond what probably anything else exists, certainly within the county. And we hope that we can get it there, because it's got teeth in it too. So the Venn diagram of people working on it kind of got close to being a circle, which is not a bad thing at all. And it was great to see it come from different angles as well. So there's definitely a community effort behind it, and we should get to a place where we have a strong tree ordinance with teeth.

Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments from the council? What do you wanna talk about? What do you wanna talk about? I mean, you can talk, do it now.

Mr. Geller, I'm gonna call on you in a second. For those of you who don't know, there was a House bill that was signed by the governor this last week, House Bill 803, which is a new law that It states that any resident that is not in a flood zone will be able to do a construction building on their property without a permit under $7,500. And I've asked the attorney if he would have some information for it to let all the residents know how that will impact El Portal.

And I just want to say a shout out to Mr. Tom Pulliam. He was up on that also, that that was coming down the pipe.

Amen.

What we'll do is, what we'll do is.

Here it is, Mayor, I got it. Okay.

I'm just having a, for some reason. Do you want to speak about doing your attorney report?

It's your pleasure, Mayor.

Or do you want to, if you have it right in front of you, we can go ahead and knock it out.

If I can get this to open, just give me a second, I have it right here. Are you able to answer any questions like from, you know, that we asked?

Oh, they're open to answer any questions that were asked.

well let me let me let me take a minute i one One second, we're answering. I do think that every single time we have this exchange, I at least can speak for myself. I think I go through painstaking efforts to let you guys know what it is that I think. Whatever those thoughts were that were expressed in former council meetings, they remain. And I'm still listening to what you guys are saying. The May 11th mention baffled me as well because I haven't received any new submissions to review. So I guess if you want a better exposition of what it is I think on the topic, I think you can look at some of the meetings previously and see what I think. As far as the format change, I do support that. limiting these conversations to three minutes isn't in any way meant to limit your speech, but it is to give everyone an opportunity to comment. And that's exactly what it is. It is an opportunity to sit and to comment, not debate. I think once we get into the territory of questioning and back and forth, I think there's But now you are being rude. Now this is rude. It is.

Please, we're trying to keep the quorum here. Please. Please. We can't have the cross conversation.

I think that is the problem, right? I think there are certain actors who want the conversation to devolve into a back and forth. And I think that that is what deteriorates the fabric of these relationships that we're hearing about on the mic, where neighbors aren't talking to neighbors because of something that is occurring in this room. And I think to preserve the sanctity of what it is this is that we're doing, which is not just off-handed conversations and back and forths and rumors and all of these things. We are really taking this information and trying to make a serious decision. So I think we do need to treat our chamber seriously. There is no other municipality that you can go into and just have this laissez-faire questioning with the elected officials. If you want a conversation, which I think everyone on the dais is open to a conversation, the conversation doesn't need to happen with microphones. And I actually think the microphones sometimes cloud people's civility, their appreciation of the fact that we share space and we are neighbors before all. I think this has become a bit problematic when we see how it has impacted the day-to-day relationships for people. I have sat here on this dais and I have said on numerous occasions what it is that I will look for when I am asked to vet application I have called for there to be town halls I've attended the town halls and listened to what it was that were the sticking points for the residents I hear all those things I have running notes on all of those things and And all of those things will inform my decision when the time comes where I have to vote on it. There's never been anything said on this dais and on my end that precludes you or says that you are not welcome from coming to every single meeting. and telling me how you feel about this topic, because it's your village, it's our village, it's our house. Show up as many times as you want to, but wherever you show up, whether it be your job, your church, your synagogue, there are rules in which you engage. The rules here are that you will come in here, you will not scream from the back of the room, otherwise you will not be acknowledged. There will be three minutes where you can say whatever it is that you would like to say and know that I am listening. And that, if you require additional times, there are other ways in which you can engage. Us doing anything outside of those parameters lends itself to being an uncivil discourse. And it is really a disservice to our position up here, to you as residents, for us to be engaged in this discourse. the types of back and forths that I've seen happen when it comes to having someone shouting messages from the dais. And if you don't understand that, I'm sorry. I do. And I think that other civil people who have interest in making sure that we protect our relationships, I think they understand as well. So I'm speaking to those folks, and if you don't understand it, then there's really not much I can do.

Thank you very much, Madam Vice Mayor. Attorney Geller, if you want to jump back in. Yes, sir.

This will be fairly brief. There is an 803. It's a new bill. It's another bill signed by the governor. We've talked about this before. and I say this with all humility to everybody in this audience, you could talk for 100 hours to the people on the dais here, and it's not gonna change the state law. As one of the council members, I think Councilman Erbom was the one who commented, there is a concerted assault on home rule by the state legislature. I was up there. I was in that body. I fought it. A lot of people fought it, but the people running things do not respect home rule. They don't want this council to be able to decide to do what they want to do so that they can do what you want to do. They are rigging it in favor of powerful people and companies that get these laws passed, fight it, argue against it, and I'll take, before I get to 803, Mayor, let me just take the opportunity to comment to the council as some members have done. There is a well-respected law firm that is gathering municipalities to sign up and be part of their lawsuit against these laws. Now unfortunately, I don't have as much confidence in our state courts as I used to because our state Supreme Court in particular has been packed by the same people who are telling the legislature what to do. Nonetheless, the courts, are the only refuge unless we elect a whole new legislature with very different priorities and that's not that close to happening. The representatives that serve this community in the House and Senate happen to be among the people fighting the assault on home rule. With all that said, it is my recommendation to the council, I know that our funds are tight. I know that you are dedicated to not trying to raise more money because typically that means the residents are the ones who pay it in taxes. But for a very relatively low sum of $10,000, we could be a participant in that lawsuit instead of just saying, well, the bigger, richer cities will do it. Now, $10,000 does mean a lot more to El Portal than it does to the city of Miami or Hialeah or Miami Beach. But I want to be on record as saying it is my recommendation that we should join that lawsuit and at least take our chances in court with other cities to strike down these ridiculous laws that are passing that say, like Live Local, that in a lot of circles, it's not quite across the board and it's not black and white, it's not absolute, it's not no limit, but it's not what these citizens want. I know you hear it, I hear it. There is a law. And my recommendation is for that relatively low price. We should step up and participate in that lawsuit and hope that it brings the results that we would like to see. House Bill 803 is inexplicable. I don't begin to understand what this means or how they're gonna do it. It's one thing to say that people can use private inspectors instead of the ones paid by the public, where they pay them. And what they pay them is between them and they do what they wanna do. That's one thing, that's been happening for years. The people who are private inspectors do have licenses, and if they sign off on something without doing the job and something bad happens, they can lose their license, and they can be pursued in lawsuits, both, you know, to hold them accountable civilly and possibly criminally and certainly in a regulatory fashion. This just expands it. It puts very strict limits. It says for most permits, you've got to look at them and analyze them in five business days. We don't have staff to do that. how we're gonna comply with another unfunded mandate. I mean, I'm sure if you're the one applying for the permit, that's great because it happens quicker, but everybody else wants to be sure it's done right, that these things are done and inspected the way they're supposed to be. You don't wanna be buying the house from the person who got through that and there wasn't a proper inspection. There are some other provisions. There's some things about basically like pre-built homes that are built off-site that it's better for them. They can use out-of-state inspectors. in so-called emergencies, it just generally affects the permitting process. Yes, there's an exemption when necessary to meet federal floodplain requirements and be able to participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, but it's only to the extent, I believe, that that is required and that's not gonna apply in a whole bunch of other things. There's gonna be a new building application that will be standard statewide that the Florida Building Commission has to write and they have to adopt those standards not by this July 1st, but by July 1st, 27. I hope and pray that by the time that happens, another legislature next year may look at this and say, whoa, we went kind of too far because there's one really Just, I cannot wrap my head around it. It says if you're doing residential construction, certain kinds of work, under $7,500, you don't need a permit. Now, that may sound great if you're gonna do it, but who's gonna make sure that the people out there doing it aren't setting something up that's going to collapse or aren't signing off just doing electrical work that nobody has inspected that can start a fire and burn down a house and maybe catches the one next door. The councilman asked me to explain it. I can't explain that. I have no idea what they're thinking. How does that work? You don't care? I mean, reforming the process is always a good idea, just the word reform. People hear that, they're for it. But you're not gonna inspect anything. And by the way, who decides if it's $7,500? If they say, oh yeah, that's under 7,500, and maybe it's double or triple that, who's gonna know? So, no, I can't explain that law. I have no idea what they were thinking of. Another stupid law out of Tallahassee. If you want to be angry, please be angry at them and ask them what the heck they are doing that puts basic safety at risk. That's the law, Councilman. That's what it says. I don't know how it's going to work.

Thank you so much. I did speak with the code enforcement officer today, and I went through House Bill 803 as well. Can you hear me now? Thank you. Other than being outside of a flood zone, which means if you are in a flood zone, you're not allowed to use 803. The thing was, The law appears to only affect residential, so this is not going to affect any commercial properties. It's not going to affect any people that are coming in to create businesses. And I think it's supposed to take effect July 1st. And I believe they also told me that the properties that are going to be doing work still need to come to the building department and state they are doing work. They can submit a contractor payment invoice estimate, something like that, because the code officer still needs to drive around and find people who are doing work without a permit that are above $7,500. Of course, hopefully next meeting the attorney will be able to confirm that as we learn more about the bill. One thing I wanted to say, not regarding the bill, is I was informed about the flyer that was passed around about May 11th submission for a SOFL application. I went to the building department, I spoke with Franco, he called Scarlett from Corradino Group. The whole thing was that the last submission was in February. I have a screenshot of the actual submission. So I don't know why anyone's saying a May submission was submitted by SOFL. The last thing I heard was the email from their attorney stating that the whole project was on hold. Other than that, I very much appreciate what the Vice Mayor said earlier. It's very important we keep the quorum in here. And if you go to other municipalities, not only are they not allowed to yell out from the crowds, but some of them are being told that if someone already came to the stand and said something, they don't want you to repeat it multiple times. I know I've stated and I'm sure all the rest of the people on the council are the same. We're always open for questions. We're willing to talk with you after hours, before, after, whenever you need to do it. I mean, I'll take you out for a drink and we'll talk. But we don't need to yell, chastise, call for the crowd. This is basically a state where we have to have a very good decorum so that everyone's time is not wasted. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council President Urbaugh.

Let's see if I can regain my train of thought here. I just wanted to say that I definitely think that the Village of Belle Portelle should join whatever effort there is among other municipalities regarding SB 180. This sounds like the first thing I think of is Lennar Home Builders, for example, if there's a cutout for prefab homes and things like this. I mean, in addition to that, it seems like there's a lot of open-ended questions on, okay, so if it's under $7,500, I don't have to get a permit. However, does that mean I can build something that goes against the code? So if someone could put a, you know, whatever I mean fence by the fence immediately comes in mind as the first thing as far as what somebody might build build a section even just a section of fence fencing that uh that might fit under those parameters and so I certainly think El Portal should be going to the mats in protection of our codes whatever that looks like so that raises a lot of concerns guys uh i work in retail and so uh since january of 2025 uh the middle class uh retail uh market has disappeared okay january 2025 is when the middle class stopped shopping the middle of the shelves all right the entirety of the entire everyone who considers themselves middle class in this country started diving for the bottom shelves january 2025, okay? I'm a sales rep in the stores all day long. I've lived in Miami for 25 years, worked in hospitality almost the entire time. Last five years I've been in retail. Billionaires are not upset about the middle class disappearing. You are witnessing consolidation, mergers, and acquisitions. So what this bill, 803, seems to benefit would be an extremely large company with a whole bunch of lawyers. When people say small business in this country, Your average functionally illiterate adult thinks mom and pop. Small business is not mom and pop. Those businesses don't even make the roster as far as business is concerned when making laws. Small business in this country could be $500 million a year annual revenue. Welcome to Florida.

Thank you very much. Any last questions or comments from the counsel before we move on?

Just one last question. Go ahead. Attorney Geller, I appreciate your guidance and your counsel about joining in to the lawsuit. I want us to kind of just take a look at this moment and kind of breathe it in. It is important for us to get information from the experts. And in this situation, our lawyer is giving us legal advice that is based on his extensive years of knowledge. on the city's real financial position. And these types of decisions or guidance based on facts and intimate knowledge with the municipality, I find very persuasive. And I would love for our residents to really take heed that there are experts at the wheel who are looking at these matters. And though there are tons of rumors, and I know chat GBT is king on lots of things. real life legal advice and legal experience and real world experience and these types of things are very persuasive and we should rely on and we should give credence to so thank you I appreciate it and let me just say if I might the thing is this I mean I think this lawsuit is well founded I've looked at it I've seen what they're looking to do I don't

candidly have as much confidence in our courts as I had 10 or even five years ago. It goes to the Supreme Court, like with the Supreme Court of the United States these days, the Supreme Court of Florida has just allowed things that I just never imagined a court would or could do. the consideration is this i work very hard to try to keep this village out of litigation simply because we don't have the money i mean you know i'm not going to weigh into whether we have some way to get millions to buy a park if there are grants to do it that's great i'm not the budget guy here but i i do try to make sure we don't spend our funds 10 grand Relatively speaking, is it a lot of money compared to lawsuits? It is not. But it is much more significant to us than it is to the city of Miami, Hialeah, or Miami Beach. So I'd love to see us in the lawsuit, but it is also true that that lawsuit's going forward with or without us. If it's successful and strikes down the law, it would strike down the law as to everybody, not just the municipalities who participated. So I want to be clear. The law, I'm sorry that I can't come up with another word. not just the one law. I mean, I get live local. If you're interested in workforce and affordable housing, live local's a good thing, but it's being done in a bad way. They could do it more sensitively and have some room for local governments. The Senate Bill 182, the other House bill we were talking about, and now this insult. The only word I'm sorry that I can give you is it outrages me. I know this stuff, I understand it, and it makes no sense. It's wrong, legally, ethically, and if I can dare use this word, morally. But I don't pay the bills here. You guys have to do that, and this very capable, excellent, hard-headed manager of yours has to pay the bills. And $10,000 just means more to him than it does in bigger cities, and I get that. So let me be clear. I'd love us to be in this lawsuit, but I understand if we've got to let some of the big dogs have this fight, too, because... I know that none of you sitting up there wants to raise the taxes that our citizens are paying. You voted last year under difficult circumstances. You voted last year to cut the millage rate.

Definitely, I think this is a good segue into the second portion, is whether or not the city manager could come back with a couple of proposals as to if and how we could possibly come up with that amount. And we can, as a body, look at it and see what that looks like.

Thank you very much, Madam Vice Mayor, appreciate that. Before we move on, you guys, just for clarification on my side, I'm not sure about Councilperson Winters, you know, I appreciate what he was saying about the submission. This doesn't change that, you know, as we have it, the last thing that we have is the May 4th from the staffing and then the May 5th to us about them putting it on hold or putting it, putting it on hold and tabling the site plan. but i just want to be clear um because we are on the record the last submission that i see i received for the site plan was november 2nd 2025 at 901 am that's the last submission i received now council person winters brought up february But the last thing I see there for February, and this might be what he's looking at, is for the plumbing. So there was a plumbing submission on February 2nd, right? Okay, I just wanted to make sure so that, you know, because we're on the record, so that people don't say, oh, you guys said it was February. So the last site plan we got submitted was November 2nd, 2025 at 9 or 1 a.m. But they did do a submission for plumbing. in February, so that's what that was, just to be clear. All right, so we're good. You were right.

All right, thank you very much.

All right, you guys, let's move on. I had a meeting today.

Mayor, just for the record, I apologize for interrupting, but two clarifications and conferring briefly with the manager. As the clerk had unavoidable personal obligations tonight, I do want the record to reflect that we have a full council. It was not a full roll call taken, but all five members of the council are present tonight, along with the village manager and Greenspoon Martyr village attorneys represented by me. So let the record be clear on that point. And then in conferring briefly with the manager, neither of us has seen any kind of submission dated May 11th. I have only seen what was referenced, I think by you, that an email from the attorney for the developer says that they had not resubmitted and they were on hold right now. If there was any kind of resubmission on May 11th, Neither the manager nor I have seen that. I can't swear somebody didn't come to Village Hall and hand something to somebody because I don't sit there and I'm not a fly on the wall and there aren't cameras to record it. But neither the manager nor the attorney's office has been notified that any such thing has been submitted May 11th or otherwise.

you very much i appreciate it um moving on to f we're gonna have to table that again i'm not sure what we're gonna do i had lunch earlier today um with a couple of uh county commissioners and uh commissioner regalado was there and she was like i apologize mayor but i had this thing i have to do tonight so um so she couldn't be here again consent agenda do i have a motion to approve consent agenda Move by Councilperson Lightfoot-Ward. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Vice Mayor Martin. All in favor say aye. Aye. Moving right along. The next is the resolution. Attorney Geller, I just handed the manager the resolution for you to read into the record.

Yes, sir.

We've done item G, the consent agenda, which was just the minutes. OF A PREVIOUS COUNCIL MEETING. WE'RE NOW ON ITEM H, RESOLUTIONS. THERE IS ONLY ONE. IT IS H1, AND IT IS A RESOLUTION OF THE VILLAGE COUNCIL OF THE VILLAGE OF EL PERTAL, FLORIDA, PROCLAIMING THE INTENT TO CREATE and El Portal Historic Preservation Board, and now acknowledging the forthcoming adoption of a village ordinance to formally establish said board, providing for directions, implementation, and an effective date. That's the resolution, Mayor.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. All right, you all. Ms. Lucio, you can come on up now if you want to. So this right here, you guys, is a resolution. So this board has to be officially created through an ordinance, all right? What this resolution is saying is, it's saying that the Village of El Portal, that we have full intention on creating a historic preservation board. So what this resolution right here does is, with that intention, it begins to open us up to funding and things like that that we could start to work on to be brought in for that. The details of this, if you look at your one, two, three, four, five, six, seventh whereas, it says whereas the Village Council further acknowledges that a forthcoming ordinance of the village of El Portal will formally establish the historic preservation board and shall comprehensively define its official wording and language as well as its processes, policies, procedures, systems, protocols, guidelines and rules and regulations. That's all done within the ordinance. okay this is the resolution that says that we have full intention on creating historic board ordinance or a historic preservation board how that board is going to be set up that is in the ordinance just to be clear with everybody all right i'm gonna let you come in right now and then i'm gonna come with you guys on the council go ahead okay

First I want to thank Mayor Nickerson for putting forth tonight's resolution proposing the formation of an El Portal preservation board. And I encourage the council to vote in favor of this resolution. As you've heard tonight we have a recurring issue in our village. Historic homes and landmarks like Raider Church are being demolished without proper oversight review or consideration. In the case of Raider Church it was demolished before a built plan was even approved. Now instead of an iconic gateway into El Portal we have an empty lot. I personally don't want to see that happen here ever again. This is an opportunity for the village to commit to what makes this place truly special. That our homeowners, civic administrators and business owners have retained the unique characteristics and charm of this village by gently restoring and maintaining their properties in a way that respects their original design, environmental impact and scale of their neighborhoods. This will be an opportunity to formally recognize those who keep our village beautiful and healthy and will provide a much needed extra layer of protection to keeping El Portal, El Portal. We are the last holdout of original Miami. In fact, it's rumored that our area was the capital of the ancient Tequesta Nation. And where the little river bends was once Boiling Springs, potentially sought after as the fountain of youth, long before Florida's oldest city, St. Augustine, came into the picture for European explorers. At the turn of the 19th century, pineapple in Kuntai was abundant, driving the establishment of commerce right in the area where this village hall stands. We continue to be what remains of original Biscayne country, first owned by Arva Woods, Julia Tuttle, and Fernie McVey, and later platted by D.C. Clark and Lee T. Cooper. We haven't changed much since those notables laid down stakes here, and we should be proud of that. It's what gives us our signature vibe that is part untamed and part sanctuary. I believe El Portal can carve out a future to be even more of a remarkable place, and this is the first step towards that. I think our mayor understands understands that and sees the most valuable residential neighborhoods are those that are sustainably preserved. Coconut Grove Coral Gables Miami Beach's Art Deco District Miami Springs Miami Shores and hopefully next El Portal. I hope that Mayor Nickerson will continue to push against the strong forces to overdevelop El Portal and instead invest in retaining our timeless archaeology, healthy ecosystem, and significant architectural history. I also want to ensure homeowners and the council that this board is not intended to be a quasi-HOA for the city. It's not designed to make your renovations more difficult, and that's, you know, sometimes people think that that's what's going to happen with preservation boards. In fact, it's simply to recognize how El Portal has contributed to Florida history, to recognize the homeowners behind the hard work of preservation, and to provide guardrails against careless and unsustainable development in our village. The Preservation Board will be a resource to homeowners who are interested in getting their homes designated historic as well and will ideally serve as a vehicle to gaining national historic district designation in El Portal. That national piece is very important because it gives us leverage over the state. We are at a junction right now where we need to choose a direction. One that will irreversibly alter what remains of El Portal and destroy our quality of life and our charming aesthetic. or one that allows our history to inform our future and respects the respite that our village provides its residents against the raucous and diabolical developments in the city of Miami next door. I encourage you to choose the latter to approve this resolution for the good of the village and to ensure better planning and current, better planning for current and future generations of El Portal. Thank you.

Thank you very much, appreciate it. So this is what we're going to do. I'm going to get comments and questions from you all, and then I'm going to open it up to you all as residents, and then we'll close it there. We'll come back over here, and Ms. Lucio might come back if she has anything she would want to add before we vote. All right, so up here, you guys, I don't know who wants to jump in. You guys go ahead and jump in.

Mr. Attorney, can I borrow your mind again? I think it's the six whereas, it states that it will create a historic preservation board as an advisory and regulatory body. Can you define for me what the regulatory body would mean for the village?

Yes sir, it would impose certain regulations.

So they will be voting and imposing laws or they will be creating something that's sent to the council?

The council is a policy setting body. The council will determine what the ordinance says, what the extent of review is permitted, and what they are allowed to look at and what they are not. That's a province of the council. But the board would be there to investigate and enforce the policy regulations that the council sets.

So the actual body of this advisory board will therefore come up with ideas, they will vote on it, and they will then present it, or they will, what is, how does that work?

No sir, no sir.

Okay.

You come up with the ideas. You adopt an ordinance that sets out what the parameters are. They're not there to come up with ideas. They're there to get specific, get your fingers dirty information to see if the policy that is set by the council in the ordinance is being complied with or not.

But as you just stated, we come up with the policy, but it says there is also advisory, so they're advising us, correct?

If they determine that there is a... a part of the ordinance that could be better. They are empowered to make suggestions to the council. That's what makes them an advisory body as opposed to simply enforcing regulations. But they have no power or authority to enforce those ideas. That belongs to you because you are elected by the people and this is an unelected body so their power must be so that power resides with the elected representatives of the people. Okay, thank you.

Before I go out to the residents, anyone else? You good? Okay, all right, so we're gonna open it up to the residents. You guys come up, say your name and address for the record, and the floor is yours to speak about the Historic Preservation Board. All right. Okay, we got one.

Noel Pace, 206 Northwest 91st Street, also on property 8661 Northeast 2nd Avenue. I support this initiative. I also support reasonable development. I also support reasonable consideration of the rules that are in place. And so, at the same time, I think it's important to represent and recognize history, I think we also have to reinforce the rules we already have in place here. okay we have a community plan we have ordinances we have things i mean any exceptions that are made to any of those rules should only benefit the entire community uh that's why they were put in place i think the historic board and i think ashley's work is excellent um i do want to talk about you know she did mention that hey that it was done before there was even a a community, I mean a property proposal or plan that was even put in place and they already knocked down that historic building. At the same time, we still don't have any real plan for all their comprehensive development they have here. It was mentioned before by a nice woman. She's like, well, hey, how do we have the money to buy that as a park? Well, remember, this council is very powerful, very seasoned, and knows that it could use that property as a negotiation chip for probably some exceptions that they want at their other little river property, including height restriction removal and so on. They could donate that park basically as an exaction to get some concessions for their other development that I'm sure they have plans for but they haven't shared yet. And so I think all of this ties together. I think historic preservation is very important. I also think our current rules are also just as important. I think, you know, your combining forces here I think is the right move here, especially in light of what's happened recently. But I do think this council should consider that. I mean, that part, I mean, we talk about a future park or whatever, where, right? So things are getting built out. Obviously, a whole bunch of properties have been bought in terms of commercial development right on Northeast 2nd. You have the clear land now. Hey, you know... If they want what they want and it benefits the whole community by giving us a park in return where it is, I think that's a great thing. And I think that what Ashley's doing as well, yes, I have a 100-year-old house here. It would be great to see those houses recognized with a placard or something. uh you know for the history that's here and you know not only was there a pineapple and and that other item but there was there was lemon trees around here as well there was a whole bunch of things so so thanks for your consideration of all this thank you very much mr manager you have people behind you that people behind you trying to get by

Calixto Navarro, 335 Northeast 87th Street. I support the creation of the Preservation Board of El Portal. I think there are many homes. Actually, I know that there's one historic home that was moved from downtown Miami over here to Miami Avenue. I believe it was the wood frame home, and I think, Dr. Ward, you know that one. It was Back in the days, it was a boarding house for black people that weren't allowed to stay at hotels back in the 20s. And it's in El Portal. And I think there's so much history here, and we go back and forth. of not just an Indian mound, I have found artifacts in my backyard. And I guarantee you in the empty lot where the church used to be, I guarantee you there are artifacts under there. Guaranteed. From the Tequestas and probably from the old Kuntai factory that was there back in the 1800s. And I know there was not a whole lot here, but I think the little bit that we do have, we are a very young city, and I'm speaking in Miami in general, but I think that the little bit that we have, we need to preserve or at least be respectful and be respectful of what we do have. We don't have a whole lot. I mean, our village is not very big. But I think that if all the other municipalities like Biscayne Park, Miami Shores, Coral Gables, all these, they do have preservation. And Coral Gables, I think, and Coconut Grove are one of the ones that have really been very, very active with that. So I do support it. And I do feel that we should respect the Charette and all the other decisions that have been done in the past. Maybe we should revisit some, make modifications. And I think that, you know, having an open conversation about this and working on these things as a community is very important and it is crucial. So I do support it. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Navarro.

Good evening again Ian McKenzie 8950 Northeast 4th Avenue. Board members just like to say that I do support the idea. I think it's a great idea. I was just visiting again a town one of the top five towns in Maine. And it's known because it has its charm and its uniqueness. And for instance, there are no chain restaurants, no McDonald's, no nothing like that. They will never have it. The only thing, the old pharmacy closed years ago, so they had to put in one, but they put in such, I mean, you would never know it's a CVS or a Walgreens. I don't even know which one it is, but it's a pharmacy. So these are really good things but I think what we need to do is see some kind of a mission statement kind of a plan what the whole scope of the preservation board is going to do. It shouldn't be infringing on the people But what we would like probably to see is something that helps preserve things, helps people maybe even, you know, source, you know, abilities to help finance preservations of their homes, you know. We have beautiful homes here. And I know, I mean, I was just Ubering back here and the Uber driver said, wow, these are really nice homes. And they are. They really are charming. And, you know, I mean, I like modern architecture too, but, you know, sometimes they look out of place if they're not well landscaped and sort of hidden and softened a little bit. So we need to definitely look at that. And I think, you know, I support it. So take it away.

Thank you very much, Ms. McKenzie. Appreciate it. Who's behind?

Hi, good evening, my name is Ramona, 136 Northwest 88th Street. I support the historical preservation, and by saying that, I was just gonna read a little piece of David Walters. He's a professor emeritus from the urban design in UNC Charlotte. And he talks about actually the form of base coat, which is something that I think El Portal should be understanding a little better and following to try to preserve our historical sites, such as our ancient oak trees, Tequesta Mount. We might have artifacts actually buried under the church that was destroyed. So he says the form-based goals are tools communities and developers can use to create the kind of walkable urban neighborhoods that we all like to have, but at the same time preserve our historical neighborhoods. A plan is a vision, a code is the legal mechanism to implement that vision. So I know that we all have a vision for what we want for our El Portal, but we have a code. So that code is our legal mechanism to preserve and save our community. Sometimes communities make plans. but the zoning is never altered to match that plan. What gets billed conforms to the code because it has to legally, but not to the plan. So we do, can change our plans, but we shouldn't change our codes. And that goes to the developer that is trying to change our codes to build something that he's probably going to be the only one benefiting from it. Thank you again.

Thank you Ms. Pervin. Thank you. Mr. Rojas.

Daniel Rojas 60 Northeast 86th Street. I am in favor of a creation of this board. I think it's very important to have balance in our in our village and I think that that there's a there's a great push from developers and that they're then in due process and development that fits our village is OK. But I think conservation board can help bring balance I think this can help bring balance to our whole process. That being said I also think that it should also work in coordination with our trees and our tree board considering that there's some historic trees in our village that we should protect and I'm sure they've been here as long or longer than some of our homes. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hi, Kathy Emory again, 169 Northeast 87th. I have a beautiful home that I consider an historic home. And there is no doubt that the developers, these developers have had their eye on it and made enormous offers on the property. But it has like 15 beautiful oak trees. that I wouldn't let anybody have for any amount of money if I thought it was going to be destroyed. And I was on the community council for 10 years on the other side of the boulevard. and uh... community council seven and unincorporated date and our main focus was historic preservation of that area over there we had the canal front uh... on eighty ninth street deemed historic to preserve the coral rock walls seawalls we have the uh... the street eighty seventh street is already deemed historic across from phyllis miller from the boulevard to eighth court So I'm in favor of a board if it's done properly and with good intent. So that's all I have to say.

Thank you very much.

Good evening again, I'm Denise, 173 Northwest 88th Street. I have some questions. So number one, there was a man and his family that came here once and they had an older house. I think it was a historical monument maybe in 1918 or something like that built and he came with a variance. So if we have a committee and my committee says, oh yes, that's a nice beautiful old house, we gonna put it on the list. and then somebody comes and buys him and then wants to destroy him to put up something new, because you know, lots of people here just keep putting up things new, then how does that work? But Mr. Mayor, I know he gonna answer me later, so let's move on, right? Okay, then I have another question. What if the people say, okay, well, because it's historic, we're gonna leave this, this, and this, and they get approved by the council And like the two houses that are in front of my house, they chop down everything and they don't give a damn about anything. That's another question, right? Then, since we have old trees, do you guys get to say, well, this is an old tree and it shouldn't be removed too? Or is it just houses? These are all my questions, right? And then I want to know, if we disagree with this thing about one good and welfare and then y'all shut up and listen to us, if we disagree with that, do we email? And who we email if we do email? Amen? Amen.

George Alvarez 165 Northwest 88th Street never wishing to ever again follow Mrs. White on a stage of any sort.

I.

I support the formation of this advisory committee. I applaud the mayor for getting it on the agenda so darned fast. To maintain decorum, I'll say darned fast. And thank you to whomever, Ms. Lucio and whomever else was part of it. Obviously, there's going to be the devils in the details. There's going to be a lot of things to think about. The extent to which any of this is illegal, the extent to which any of this may be too much of an imposition on property rights and property owners. I believe in carrots rather than sticks. And since the state of Florida has decided to squeeze a little bit of our home rule away from us in the name of dealing with an affordability crisis, May we not use an opportunity like this to incentivize people to build ADUs that's accessory dwelling units in their backyard. In other words, you can rent out a small apartment, perhaps your converted garage. Some people, I know that plenty of people do the Airbnb thing. The state of Florida says that El Pertel cannot put the kibosh on it. I say we use that environment, that legislative reality and incentivize people to number one, maybe hold on to their older homes as they get older in their older homes and can no longer afford both maintenance, insurance, taxes rising, and taxes will rise as El Pertel grows. Maybe people... who have the space, even people who are in irregularly shaped yards, can build an ADU, and if we incentivize them to price it in such a way that meets somewhere between 80% and 120% of AGI, then we are helping to do our part role in dealing with an affordable housing crisis in Florida, but we're getting ahead of the developers who are going to steal our second avenue or other parts or who are undoubtedly going to try to take different parcels, put them together, and as you know, you can build many, many more apartment units on two or three parcels that were put together than you could on one parcel and then one parcel and then one parcel. If 20% of El Pratel were incentivized, whether it's by some bill like the one Attorney Geller mentioned, the $7,500, I forget what it was.

HB 803.

Perhaps each and every one of us could be earning money to keep us in our homes as we age, Perhaps we could be giving El Pertel some of that rent. Perhaps we could be being a part of the solution to a housing crisis. And then it will be much easier for us to maintain our zoning and not allow things like Second Avenue to blow up to six stories or eight stories. I know there's a lot of details in that devil as well. But any such opportunity is an opportunity. What I meant to say is any such dilemma is an opportunity. And this is one that could help give El Pertel some tax base, could help El Pertel residents earn some extra money. There's ways to do this that are... regular to normal kind of housing policy there's ways to do this that are normal and not excessive and hopefully this can help if you guys feel that this is true uh... can help current and future citizens to be invested in El Pertel historic homes and in El Pertel and their future. So if I may suggest that you perhaps, as you instruct manager Roseman to look into some of these details as you guys consider them yourselves if that could be brought in and examined I'm sure I did not think of everything but I think this is a great way to marry ideas about earning money as a capitalist, about property rights as a property owner, and in a way getting ahead of a boom that could steamroll El Pertel if we already have enough housing. So it's an idea. I'm certainly open to talking to any member in the dais about it and vice versa. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much, Mr. Alvarez. Thank you.

Ms. Alida.

12 Northeast 90th Street. My name is Alida. Thank you so much for putting this resolution in place. That's exactly what we were talking about, action steps, actually something in concrete. And thank you, Ashley, for making this happen. It's exactly what I was asking. Although we're not allowed to speak or have the questions being answered immediately, But this is exactly what I was asking. Please, let's have action steps instead of council member expressing their emotions. We are trying as much as we can as residents not to do that, but to come here with facts, to come here with things that we have researched regarding the projects coming into El Portal. And we are sharing those with you, but we expect you to do the same thing and not call us disrespectful and not call us, you know, like we're heckling with you. We're not heckling with you This is exactly an example how something came to Mayor Omar and was actually put in place. When you don't answer the emails, when you don't answer any, you haven't created any town hall for this conversation, I don't know how can you call the residents disrespectful. So again, thank you, and I approve this because this will help you, the council members, to have more research in place, to have more people look into that, to have more ideas. And there's nothing wrong to open these conversations to the residents. That's what we have been asking for for months. I think it's about two years now. And we always sound like we're hackling with you and we're against you. We're not against you. We're just saying... Listen to us. Open the conversations to us. Don't censor us with three-minute conversations. So thank you. Have a good night.

Thank you, Ms. Alito.

Joni Gomes 269 Northwest 86th Street. I'm in favor of creating the board to preserve El Portal. And since it was discussed previously I have the link for the Miami-Dade.gov website where you can track where the developer is submitting all the paperwork. So I know that you might be waiting for them to submit it directly to you, but since it's been ongoing for six months, it might be a good idea for you to be tracking it as well as we are. And I'm happy to share this with you guys via email. Hopefully it won't end up in your junk like it did last time. But just for the record, it's here, May 11th, 2026. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Stone. Anyone else good in welfare or a public comment? No, hearing none, seeing none, let's go back to the council. Do I have any final comments or questions about the resolution? Go ahead.

So I appreciate what everyone had to say. There was a lot of really great information. Ian McKenzie, I agree with you, and I think that we should also find out what the mission statement is for this board, because I do support the idea of preserving El Portal's history, especially after what we've seen recently. My concern, though, is making sure that whatever we create does not unintentionally create a burden or uncertainty for homeowners. So creating a board without framework with the best of intentions, what could possibly go wrong? There's going to be a lot of questions for what the board is going to do or where they're framed at. Some of these questions include, what will the board actually do when a homeowner wants to renovate, expand, or demolish a property? Will this create additional steps or delays when residents before they can move forward with permitted work? How will the board determine historic significance for properties that have been heavily modified over time? And I say that because I do live in one of the older areas here in El Portal. And I can tell you that there used to be a pump house, there used to be a boathouse. And these were some of the original buildings in the 1920s, 30s. And they are now completely converted to actual residence. So that's not a boathouse anymore. And the interior of it is not a boathouse. It's a beautiful resident. residents. And same with the pump house. The pump house is now a residence as well. So are we considering those historic because their exteriors are historic? Or are we considering the interior as 90% made up by new developers? And of course, I'm not in favor of tearing any of this stuff down. This is not what I'm trying to get at. how will we ensure homeowners clearly understand whether their property is affected and what their rights are so if this is about developers i believe the board should be focused on the developers on the companies and we should make sure we're not attacking homeowners i mean if it's the llc's and the companies and that are tearing down our beautiful properties maybe that is something that should be addressed but if we're going to put chains on our homeowners and suddenly create regulations that are going to choke them and starve them from any kind of financial, create financial burdens for them. That is something that would actually make me a little worried. One neighbor here said that they were in favor of the board if done properly and with good intent, and I think that's the most important thing. Because it's a great idea to have a historic board, and it's a great idea to get all of the neighbors, the residents together to jump on the board and help out, because it's always great to have this advisory for the council. But I think we all agree El Portal has a unique history worth preserving. We just wanna make sure that we move forward correctly. We wanna do so where it's clear, balanced, and does not unintentionally create burdens for residents. So personally, I would like to give this my vote, but I would like one word removed from the entire thing. And that's the six whereas where it's defined as an advisory body, leave that there, but remove the word regulatory body from the resolution. Or the other option would be to further make this board about historical board and protecting us from developers or taking over properties that are actual non-residents. I see a smile on your face. I'll step back.

All right, so I read this before, but in whereas number seven, it says, the village council further acknowledges that a forthcoming ordinance, this is the resolution, a forthcoming ordinance of the village of El Patel will formally establish the historic preservation board and shall comprehensively define, I read this before, its official wording and language as well as its processes, policies, procedures, systems, protocols, guidelines, rules, and regulations. So all those questions, will be in what? The ordinance that it says right here. The forthcoming ordinance. All of those questions will be answered in the ordinance. Further, the final whereas says it is the desire of the village council to formally declare its commitment to historic preservation. That's what we're doing here. Every question in detail is answered through the ordinance. Also understand ordinances have two readings before they become law. Resolutions have one, ordinances have two. So even after the first reading, changes can still be made and adjustments can still be made for the second reading. We're not even at the first reading of an ordinance yet. So all, and I apologize, Ms. White, even your question with the house, right? That would be, so those type of things will be defined in the ordinance, but I can quickly kind of just say, so for a property that, if it would be under like historic preservation or go through historic preservation board, it makes it more difficult for then, you know, what you're talking about. That's what it does. Yeah, it's another like, you know, it's another step that we have for oversight and overview that for, to make it more difficult for people to like ruin those type of things. So to your point, Ms. White. um and as far as trees and things like that we could possibly put that in the ordinance right we can speak to the tree board speak to the ali mayoral board and we can put those type of things uh in the order as far as the good and welfare that would have to be changed through a resolution um that's in there i believe It's not in our charter. I know our charter front to back. I'll check the code, but those type of things usually don't go into code. So I think just a resolution would be able to change that. But you would have to at least have three votes from individuals up here to be able to change that. So that's how that goes. Madam Vice Mayor, I saw you want to jump in.

I do, I just have a question for you. First of all, love the idea, but I also understand the devil is in the details. So I understand your trepidation, Councilman Winters. I wanted some more guidance on the process from getting us to kind of this really great idea to the final ordinance. What type of engagement and from whom are you anticipating?

So it's not only with Ms. Lucio, but also we're gonna be bringing in residents who want to kind of like overlook it and go through it and things like that. Also understand that when it comes to whatever's created, so any ordinance that's created, when it comes before us, we can look at it and we can say I don't like this, I don't like that, I think this should be changed, that should be changed. And we can even table it on the first reading before it goes to a second reading. But even in between a first reading and a second reading, things can be adjusted and changed in ordinances. So there's going to be steps along the way.

I love that. I just know that we have a very involved citizenry. And there definitely should be some input before we kind of have even that first blush at it. just to really get everyone's opinion on what their sticking point may be or the parts that they're particularly interested in. But yeah, I love the idea and also am keenly locked in on how it's executed because it can go a lot of ways, but I think it'll go good.

absolutely madam vice mayor I appreciate you any other questions or comments yes I was I wanted to make the clarifying point as well that this resolution gets us to the process of forming the board under an ordinance and then additionally So I grew up in an exceptionally strict environment as a youth. I think I have a kind of natural tendency towards a bit of a rebellious nature, and that certainly was exacerbated by growing up in such an incredibly strict environment. Having said that, at 15 I started working in food service. By 19, I was very involved in food production, working in a restaurant. And what 25 years of working in hospitality taught me was that as annoyed as I ever may be by rules, A great many rules are made for a reason. I'll give you an example. Everyone's freaking out about a hantavirus. As someone who has conducted source tracking of material for the purposes of identifying when someone became sick with a foodborne illness, my guess on the hantavirus outbreak is the following. Dry food storage in Argentina has been infested with rats for an exceptionally long time. A significant number of food that was on that cruise ship was already contaminated. because what it requires for that specific virus to go from animal transmission to human to human transmission is prolonged exposure of feces and urine from rodents. So how that happens in humans is food. Food sources are contaminated. My understanding of how this story developed for this hantavirus outbreak specifically, it seems very obvious to me as someone who's worked, I've had a job in the past where my job was to review the FDA food code and update training for hospitality workers based on the FDA updates that come in theory every three years. We are going backwards fast right now in our current state, I'll tell you this. So I just want to say that I have a background of being someone who is suspicious of almost every single rule ever created, okay? But I'm telling you that what I've learned in life is that regulations save lives every single day. And so, In that vein, I'll just say that the fear of regulation is misplaced. I'm far more afraid of an unregulated food store where rodents would have access.

Thank you very much. Just for point of clarification, Ms. White back there, for the good and welfare thing, it's in our charter, the process, which our charter's like our constitution, right? We have our code and we have our charter. The process is in the charter, which follows Robert rules, so we can't change that, but what we can change is the three minutes. We can do that by resolution. So the three minutes, we can change to five or whatever, we can do that, but as far as the process, you know, you guys, we close it, you guys speak, then it comes back to us and things like that, that process, we can't change, but the amount of time that we give you to speak, we can change via resolution. So I just got that, all right, just to let you know. Any last comments or questions before I ask for a motion? We're good? All right, do we have a motion to approve, Attorney Geller, I believe you have the roll call sheet, right, with the voting sheet? Okay. We can take that, yes, sir. Yes, so do we have a motion to approve the resolution for the Historic Preservation Board, Elbertshire Historic Preservation Board? I'll move it. Move it, moved by Councilperson Erbom, second?

Second.

Second by Vice Mayor Martin. Attorney Geller, if you would please do the roll call.

Yes, sir. I'm just getting down to sponsorship in one moment. No problem.

By the way, Clerk Jacoby just texted me and said hello to everybody.

Said what?

She just texted me. She's at her event. Well, she's at her event. She had a lot to do today, you know, personally, something very important to do. But she's, like, kind of tuning in on the Zoom, the virtual meeting. So she said.

All right. In favor of the resolution, we'll begin with Councilperson Ward. That was EA. And Councilperson Urban. Yes. Councilperson Lenders? Sorry, I couldn't hear you, sir.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Martin?

Yes.

Mayor.

Yes.

Five-zero.

Thank you, I appreciate that, you guys. Congratulations, Ms. Lewis. Congratulations to Alfred Tile and Ms. Lucia. I really appreciate you, Madam Chair. Next is the Village Manager Report. Madam Manager, Mr. Manager, do you have any reports?

Can you find a microphone for us please?

Your microphone on.

Can you hear me now? The fraternal order of police agreed to our terms. They accepted an increase of 5% on their budget, on their salaries. It was unanimously approved. It was a wonderful experience. Everyone understood exactly the kind of difficulties that we are going through. Everyone acquiesced so I want to thank you. I thank them and I want to thank Harry for being my savior in terms of doing the calculations, et cetera, and everyone else, all of the administration of the police department, they were all supportive of what we are trying to do, and we are looking forward to next year being a little better, but for now, we have come to an agreement that we are pretty happy with.

Manager Rosemond, this is much more phenomenal, I think, than people realize. This is three years in the making. We started with a different organization in negotiations, and then landed with the FOP, and then accomplishing this gives our police force confidence and a boost of morale to know what they can expect. day after day coming in here. What they were asking for was not unreasonable and I'm exceptionally satisfied that we were able to get to a conclusion on that because it was really a sticking point for us being able to just feel confident and stable about what we have going forward and so this I mean this is a super super massive uh uh deal and and thank you and the CFOs most sincerely for uh getting getting us across the finish line attorney Geller as well and um uh this is this is big time like it's really big deal that this got done and I just can't thank you enough so thank you sincerely

thank you thank you very much you guys um you all see my report there if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me um attorney geller do we have any reports for you the only thing i'll report mayor is that uh we are got some hearings finally coming up on the scott coburg case oh excuse me his mom against the village so that's been dormant for a while other than that nobody sued us lately we like that

Thank you very much. Appreciate that.

Do we have a motion to adjourn?

I have a quick question. Go ahead.

Uh, last year before or during budget season, we actually had a vote that we're going to start earlier talking about the budget. Do you remember when that was supposed to take place? Yeah, we've, I think we voted on it. Yeah. Council person Irvine remembers too.

No, I can go back and look at the minutes.

Okay. Yeah. I think we were supposed to start in May or June, start talking about budget items so we're not last minute on October.

Yeah. Again, again, which we can, but again, always remember, you all, that El Portal, our budget being small, if we start too early, what you see there in June is not going to be what you see in August or September. because our budget's so small, things fluctuate that much. So if you look at something in May or June, and you say, okay, this is this, this is this. Remember, the fiscal year doesn't end until the end of September. October 1st starts the new fiscal year. So up until the last day of September, we're in the current budget year. So if you start to say, I'm gonna budget for the next fiscal year in May, Now if we were North Miami Beach with a budget of, you know, a hundred and I think they have 180 something million dollars. I know Sunny Isles Beach is like 230 million dollars. Even our sister, you know, city up north to the northwest, Miami Shores, I believe there, it's an even number, it's either 48 or 46 million. So if we have that and we have that cushion, yes, then you can start to budget early because then you can say, well, if something happens here, you guys, we haven't even gone through hurricane season yet. You think as a mayor, I'm going crazy thinking about what we have left over in our budget for if we get hit by a hurricane or a tough storm. So in a place like El Portal, it's more difficult, you all, because we don't have that cushion of a large budget. So what you see in May and June and July is not gonna be what you see in September. So we just have to be careful about that because what could happen, and I'm not against starting early, but what could happen is, what I don't want to happen is we start and we say in June, hey everybody, this is what we have, and then something happens at the end of August and people are like, but what happened to this? You guys said you had this. So we just have to be careful about that so that everybody kind of understands the transparency around what we exactly have in El Pertal, how we have a $4 million budget, which is by far the smallest budget in El Pertal, I mean in Miami-Dade County, out of the 34 municipalities. Remember Medley may be a smaller community by population, but Medley is all commercial. So Medley has a strong mayor, the mayor of Medley gets paid like 200 something million, 200 something thousand dollars a year, $205,000 I think the mayor of Medley gets paid. So Biscayne Park is also small, but Biscayne Park has the highest millage rate in the county. The millage rate is like 9.8 or 9.6. right and they do that to give themselves a little bit of cushion a little bit of leeway so so yeah we're going to get it on um as soon as possible but we really want to make sure that we have everything as down to the dollar that we possibly can have so that we give you guys the most current information um i do just want to

after all that I do just want to echo council person winners concern on this because of the way that the budget for this fiscal year was passed was passed in a way that this year's budget was going to be redressed around the mid-year which was already a couple months ago and so uh and so for that reason it was established that the council needed to be ahead on the next budget review as opposed to behind and so to council person winter's point october is going to be here unbelievably uh rapidly and this council should be now regardless of how things will shake out we should be turning our focus to the budget at this time absolutely so for example the the uh the police um

That kicks in when?

The budget is, you know, like all the budgets, October 1st.

but that kicks in October 1st coming up or that has kicked in already retroactively?

That has kicked in already retroactively.

That's my perfect example. Things come up in our budget that we really need to keep an eye on. You see what I mean? Things like that come up in our budget. We still have, and like I said, just because it's keeping me up at night, We have to try to find a way to set aside some stuff for flooding, for hurricane disaster relief, or even hard storm disaster relief. You guys, we don't need a hurricane. If we have hard rains, The residents that are, you know, Shorewood Forest is a little bit higher. The residents, once you go west of Northeast 2nd and then west of North Miami Avenue, especially the residents that are on the river over there, west of North Miami Avenue, they all get flooded out. Right, it's horrible. So I don't disagree with both of you, but I'm just saying that we need to do this, and once we do this, we need to make sure that we're transparent to the residents and really give them this is what it is right now, this is what we're looking forward to, but this possibly could change if things change throughout the summer or anything like comes up, like the CBA for the police contract that just came in, that hits and just hit and it's retroactive.

But it was also built into the budget already, is that correct? That is correct. So we didn't go over the last year's budget when we did the police.

But the thing about it is, for the police budget and for that to be retroactive, until you guys decided and agreed on the percentage, How do we know what the percentage is going to be? So those type of things are just things you have to kind of just keep in mind as we move forward. I had a motion to adjourn by Councilperson Lightfoot Ward. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

We have a second by Councilperson Urban. I'm going to say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. Hearing none, the regular council meeting for Tuesday, May 26, 2026 is adjourned at, what is this? It is 9.46 PM. Thank you, everybody. Good job, everyone.