Resident Services Board - Regular Meeting

Is there you on?

Present and accounted for. How are you doing everybody?

Good yourself.

Recording in progress.

How are you?

Hello, how are you Jose?

How are you? OK, there we go. So we'll call a meeting to order at 6.30 PM. I'll take the roll. Francois?

Yes.

Present. Rahim?

Present.

Jose?

Present.

Sylvia? I do not see her. I see we have some other people joining us.

We do. We have a packed agenda tonight.

Okay, so they're with you, Jose?

Yes, they are. Susanna Yareldi, Xavier Rios is on. Phillip Lillebois is on as well. We've got, like I said, a few agenda items to cover that I've added. So whenever you're ready, Lydia.

Okay. So let's approve the mini-mis from last meeting. If I could get a second on that.

Second.

Thank you. Well, Francois, you weren't here, even though you wrote them up.

Okay.

So I need a second for Farahim or Jose, please.

I'll be second.

Thank you. I'd like to move up 3C, please, because Indira needs to go. So we're going to have her present next. I did just hear, oh, there she is. Indira, are you on?

I'm here. Okay. We have a packed agenda. I will make it quick. Thank you. So last month, I was here to discuss a potential program for teens and for him. basically said that, or I think all of you basically said that you don't really have a lot of participation for teens, that you had a difficult time even getting scholarship applicants. And he suggested possibly doing it for adults instead. So I have, and I'll go ahead and share my screen and let me know if you can see the proposal for a resident services board. I can see it. Okay, great. So you can see this, right?

Yes.

All right. I see I'm offering the course on HMWism for modern adults. That's what I'm saying. Okay. Hold on one second.

Okay, so do you see the proposal for resident services?

Yes.

Okay, great. So I basically redid the course, just imagining what it would look like for adults instead of teens. And Jose, you brought up a point about possibly changing what the course would mean since most people don't know what stoic philosophy is. So I thought it could be something like ancient wisdom for modern adults, tools for a calmer, clearer life. And pretty much the same thing. I would propose that it's a 10-week course twice a month for one hour, because that's pretty much how long it takes. And each of the different weeks has topics specifically to things that we as modern adults are dealing with today. The first week is really an introduction to what stoism is. And then every week after that, it builds on that. So control what you can, let go of the rest. Week three would be emotions aren't the enemy. There's a lot that goes into that in terms of managing your emotions and emotional resiliency. turning obstacles into opportunities and just really reframing things. And for adults, that can be anything from parenting to work to even social media, for those of you that are on social media. Week five would be don't be ruled by other people's opinions. For adults, whether that's, you know, approval seeking from coworkers, from family, social media, again, judgment, gossip. Week six would be know your values and live by them. So the Stoic philosophy has... four virtues, and I would present them, but I would want the adults to come up with their own values. Values is something that a lot of people, if you ask them what are the values that you live by, they actually don't know. And if you orient all your decisions valued base, you can never make a wrong decision. Week seven, you're practicing gratitude and perspective and bringing in really doing a seven day gratitude tracker. So from the point that we would meet to the second session, they would be tracking gratitude and every day they would have to put something different so that you really become aware of all the things you actually have to be grateful for. Week eight, self-discipline and self-respect. So it's really reframing discipline as an act of self-love. For adults, it could be sticking to a budget, waking up early, working out, sticking to a nutrition that you wanted. Week nine would be prepare for life's curveballs. In Stoic philosophy, there's memento mori, which means we are all mortals and we're going to die. And so If you start seeing life as every moment counts, time is finite, you don't get any more of it. How do you live your life with that? And that particular week, we want to go ahead and create a bucket list. And then week 10 would be what's your legacy? What do you want to leave behind? How do you want to be defined your personal growth? Same thing, the program outcomes. And Jose, you had said like, okay, well, you know, come up with like a flyer, why people would want to do this. So I just came up with, again, a different title. Maybe, you know, it could be like tools for a calmer, clearer life. You know, I think everybody's looking for something to be calmer and clearer. And, you know, why would you join? Calm under pressure, clarity during chaos, confidence in your choices, emotional resiliency, what you can expect to have, like week by week highlights, what you'll receive. And, you know, me, meet your facilitator. And, you know, if you want a spot, come in. Yeah, that's it for me. I know that everybody's on a time crunch and you have a big agenda. I guess I just want to, you know, this is a volunteer program. I would be contributing my time, my expertise, facilitating it at no cost to the village. So my intention is not to convince you, but to simply make that available as an option for the residents. If you think they would benefit from it, if the village sees value in hosting it, I'd be happy to lead it. My only request is that the responsibility for marketing, outreach, promotion, that all lies with the village. I am not on social media and I have no intention of getting on it so that would be the focus would be on the village marketing it and my responsibility would be on delivering the program itself um yeah so that's it

And the most important part is that it contributes to the requirements for the honors program for school-going kids?

Oh, well, that was for the teen part. The board basically decided that they didn't think that was a good idea, that they didn't think we were going to have people, teens, participating. Yes, originally, yes, you're absolutely right, Francois. Originally, my idea was... you are required to do 10 hours volunteer hours when you're in the National Honor Society. So this would fulfill that for them. So that was kind of like my hook in how do you get things in. This course would be for adults.

Yeah.

First of all, my comments, Indira, awesome. This looks really good. And just to clarify the comments from before. Yeah, no, I think the new tagline sounds great, right? I think it's much better because I think people are going to be able to embrace that, right? And side comment, yes, we ended up getting kids for the scholarship. Proud to know that we were able to award some scholarships for that. uh, the Endera for the Endera for the, uh, Saeed family to, uh, for some very, uh, uh, good kids that, uh, deserving of it. So it was good. My only comments on the kids stuff. I think here's what we do. This is my thoughts. First of all, I'm all for it. Like, um, if we can get it out there and get some people to sign up, uh, I'll, I'll let Julian and Lily kind of work with you to, uh, to get it out there. I think it, why not? Like people in this crazy day and time, I think we talked about like my kids and trying to like some of the challenges they have on focusing. I think why don't we start with the adults and then we get some adults locked in while we're there. We're like, Hey, we could also do something for the kids later on. We get the parents that show up to maybe do the kids later. So great work, Indira. I think it looks awesome. I'm all for it. I don't, from our perspective and Lydia and team, keep me honest, you know, I say we get it out there.

So my only other request is I would want to host this at The Village. Right.

And you said October, right? Are you still wondering about October?

Well, I mean, that was for the kids. I think for adults, I mean, I obviously I can't I'm not going to do it over the summer. I'm not here during the summer. So it could be September. But even adults, Lydia, you know, as parents, September is rough. Like school just started. Things are I still think October is a good time to do it, even for adults. and to do it twice a month not every week nobody has that kind of time i don't have a time to commit every week if you guys even feel once once a month but i i don't think that's very conducive if you're stretching it out i like to teach integrate teach integrate would you like consider doing it online Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. The only thing I would say with the online is I still would want all the students to have a journal. That's really important. This entire course. One of the practices that I hope they take away with them is that they continue their journaling practice. So I would still want that physical requirement. And at some point, I would want to meet them. So maybe we can do one Zoom, one in person. But there is something to say about dialogue being in person. So I would like to do that for him. I think that's a great idea if we do like one Zoom and one in person.

It's kind of a commitment to come every 10 weeks or five weeks. But if it was online, it will be easier, I'm thinking.

Yeah.

Also every other week. Definitely not every week. That's too much.

Yeah. For everybody. If you come once a month in person, I think anybody can do once a month in person.

Yeah. If you can't do once a month, you have greater problems.

Hey, I have a question. Sorry, guys. I'm the new guy here.

Nice to meet you. Are you new to the President's Services Board?

No, he's presenting. Somewhere in between. Somewhere in between. We'll get there. But I do see some familiar faces. Francois, Alferhim, Goran, Vice Mayor Goran. Hello, everybody. I just have a quick question. I'm wondering why this didn't take off with the youth. Where was the disconnect?

She just presented this last week to us, and we thought that it would be harder to get the youth to come in, because it's very hard to get teenagers to come in and do almost anything, right? So a few of us thought it would be easier to start with adults, and adults really could use this as well. And then once we introduce it to the adults, hopefully we can then introduce it to the teens, because then the adults will have a soundboard with the adults.

Yeah, so it's not that we don't think it can, Phillip. That was just our suggestion last time. We do have some times. We have successful events with the kids, but I think it's a great starting point, Indira. Okay. And for us, I think the board, I don't think unless anyone wants to chime in, I don't think we have any objections to it. So I would say, I don't know if Julie or Lily or Frank. I will write something up.

I'll write something up, Indira. Okay. and send it to you and see if that timeline and timeframe and so forth is okay. And then I'll get with the village to see what we can do. Okay.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

So just a quick comment too, I'm conflicted because I heard that we're not doing enough for the youth in the village. And then in the same breath, we dumped the youth and we put adults first.

I really wanted to do this for the youth. Even like my motivation was very much for the team because the structure for the team would be a lot about technology and social media and peer pressure. Yes. I have a teenager, so I know exactly. Yeah.

So for the record, we didn't say no to the teens. We just, it was just a suggestion that maybe we start with the adults.

What if we do food for them? Sorry.

We rephrase the title of it, that maybe is more kid-friendly. But now that what you've presented and you went that way in Dira, why don't we start with the adults and then get their parents to buy in and get the kids to follow? That could be a follow-up to this. Yeah. We're not abandoning the youth.

I can tell you that a kid is not going to follow the parent. If I go to my kid and it's like, I found this great course, you're going to want to do it.

No bueno. Exactly.

I agree. Not at all. So that's not going to be a buy-in. There's no correlation with the parent and the child. If anything... the fact that the parent is doing it might be a deterrent to the child. So we look at it as a buy-in.

That's not realistic, Lydia. Send me both, Indira, the teen and the adult. I'm going to work on it, write something up. And then at our next meeting, I'll present the idea. You don't have to come back on. And then we'll get back to you with exactly which route we think will work best.

Okay. And Jose, I definitely will make it more jazzy for the teens, the title for sure. I'll do that as well. Okay. Nice to meet you. Thank you, dear. Thank you.

Bye. Bye. Let's skip old business. Is that okay? Because the staff has to stay on with us anyway, so that we can take care of four eggs. I know, Jose, you have people pending. Is that right?

I do. Okay.

So what's for a discussion of the North Bay Village Tech Council agenda.

So I'd like to save that one for last because I do have Xavier Rios on who and I'll preface this before I hand off to him. Xavier is a trusted, esteemed, long-time colleague in the tech industry. I've known him for over 10 years, more than that, probably, Xavier. Xavier and I, Xavier's on the South Florida Tech Friends Council and also chairs the South Florida Tech Kids Initiative, an event we had a few months ago at Palm Tree Club, which was a resounding success. Xavier's very involved in not only the tech community, but also very entrepreneurial and someone who's always looking to do things to help out, right? So him and I were talking, and he has a program that he's come up with specifically geared around another big initiative that this board pushes is around initiatives for senior citizens. So I'll hand over the mic to Xavier so he can kind of go into this program. He's developed a, shall we say, a company that is geared for this. And I say, hey, this is exactly the type of things that we've been talking about on our board in past things, even this very topic. Philip, you've brought this up in our conversations on what we want to do with the tech council, which we'll talk about later. But I thought what a great way to kind of kick us off on a program that he's come up with. I'll let him walk through the steps and talk about what his ideas are. Xavier, you have the floor.

Jose, thank you so much. Can everybody hear me okay? Yes. Yes, good. It's a pleasure seeing so many people. It reminds me of the COVID times, like we're all getting together like this. Um, yes, it's, it's a passion project of mine, you know, and I'll jump into, I do have a slide deck. I promise it'll be short, um, but it might be the best way to really elucidate what, what we're looking to do here. And hopefully the goal here is hopefully it aligns with the initiatives of North Bay Village Tech and, and you start bringing value right, uh, in various ways. And this is a very, um, relevant way with, with the way things are going with modern tech and, and the landscape today. So can you see my screen? Yes. So the organization is called seniors.ai. It is AI education designed for adults or 50. So quick backstory, really, I guess I mentioned it's a passion project of mine. My mom, you know, she was, she still works. God bless her heart. She shouldn't have to, but she still works. And instead of helping me with her granddaughter, she was at my house still typing away, typing reports. And I said, mom, like, why don't you just use ChatGPT to help you with your reports? And she was struggling. Once I sat with her and helped her out, she said, no, mijito, that's not for me. That's what you young kids deal with. I'm too old for this. I sat down with her and she literally burst into tears. She was like, look, you saved me hundreds of hours. I can't imagine. I didn't know this is how it worked. And it dawned on me, right? I saw my father, he went through the smartphone era and he refused to learn. Now it's too late. Now I'm sure you all know some people who they hand you their phones and they're like, you do it for me because it's too late for me. And I feel like with this revolution, we've all seen it with this AI revolution, It's on us to get caught up, to stay up to speed. So that's why I started this. And our mission really is to empower adults 50 plus to thrive in the digital age. So we provide accessible, engaging, and jargon-free education. That's key, right? Jargon-free. It's accessible. It's easily understood in AI and modern tech. Vision is no one's left behind, right? It's only accelerating. Every month you hear about this new AI advancement, something new that AI can do. Really, we want to help build that. I won't get into read all the bullet points, but I think it's important to highlight. Pew Research has said that 48 percent of seniors have little to no confidence with modern tech. That is a vast subset of the population. That is a massive demographic. and it's on us i feel to to really help help them join in and be a part of leverage ai in this technology to stay um to improve their lives and um when it comes to our solutions we've got classroom workshop with i believe this is what would make sense for North Bay Village Tech. The idea is a classroom setting. We come in, we host it for anybody who would like to join. But we also have AI online boot camps and VIP coaching as well. What the classroom workshop would look like, two, three hour session with breaks led by a real instructor. It is not a robot. interactive with guided demos. And the topics and lessons include topics like describing and educating on what is AI. We hear the term all the time. It's just demystifying what it actually is. Then installing, accessing chat GPT, prompting everyday use cases, then cybersecurity. That's a topic we find is very valuable. You hear all the stories about scams. That demographic is targeted heavily when it comes to fraud and scams. So I include a lot of, you know, a few tips, easy tips to remember and what the dangers are of AI. And then next steps and close and Q&A. And some of the takeaways we would offer from this workshop would be confidence, real life examples, a complimentary ebook that we've written out, a prompt cheat sheet and an invitation to join the community where they can collaborate together. Some of the benefits and outcomes that we would see from this for your constituents and really the residents would be, A, more time with family, right? Make things a lot easier for them in their lives. Hopefully they don't spend too much time with manual tasks that AI can really help accelerate. Better scheduling, new recipes. Better life experiences. I mean, if you've, if any of you have tried building a travel itinerary, it is mind blowing and it is super easy. Safer online choices, online scan protection, health empowerment, leveraging AI to help with exercises, to help with their health, mental stimulation and joy. I mean, think about the prospect, the ability to use, I mean, some of our, unfortunately some of this demographic, they're, they're oftentimes lonely. and they find value in having an AI chatting companion. Somebody who actually feels like they're talking to somebody else and ultimately more confident in their tech use. And that's what I've got. And I wanna open it up to questions. I'm here to answer anything and see if maybe we can partner up. I think it'd be great, great value. And you guys tell me what you think.

What was the age range that you mentioned?

50 plus, and it's not closed off exclusively to that group. That's just the demographic that typically, you know, there's all sorts of AI courses, but that demographic is what this would be geared towards.

You're making me feel old, Xavier, because I'm in that 50 plus range. Same here. I'm like, first of all, no. And so I'll make my comments and I'll open it up to the board. I think it's awesome. I think this is something that would resonate in our village and not only in our village, but has a has a spot uh within our chamber of commerce and what we're forming with the tech council so i could see you doing something for the village and i could see it continuing with the chamber and some of the things we have going there i think uh i as someone who grew up in tech um still have challenges around ai right i know my way around it but i know that there's things like if you're online these days and you see all the things that are out there about you know all the ads like on linkedin or facebook where they're talking about um you're only using half it you know half the people are just using chappy gpt they don't really know the power of ai is real like so many cool things you can do so i think it's it look i for one would probably even not only take the class with you or try to be present because I think I could benefit from it. And I'm someone who's in technology. So I think it's a great thing. And I think it's something that we could really promote within the village. And I think a lot of people would be willing to look into it. Those are my comments. Farhim, Francois, anyone else have any comments?

I have some questions. So this would be live, right? Classroom setting live.

That's right, Lydia.

And what would be the cost of the village?

We can be flexible, but I have it slated at $1,500 per workshop, but obviously the friends and family discount is live and intact here.

And how many weeks would it be?

As many as you'd want. So if it's, you know, I'd say let's start with one. Let's see the engagement, the interest, and let's go from there, right? We have a workshop. You can even, you know, I'd say host it. Hey, come, you know, if you make it one event and we amp it up and we make sure there's interest, right? Because the last thing we want to do is invest in four straight weeks or a month and then nobody shows up. They're like, I'll just catch the next one.

Right. Can you cover all the bullet points that you had in one session?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. Okay.

And I've broken down by by minutes. And then I and I that's why I say two to three hours, because it may stretch. There may be more questions. And then I do I can cut it off and say, look, we have a community. I have the website built out. It's all real and they can join the community and start asking questions that way. So it's it's ongoing engagement. The idea is that they're not left alone. Right. They can communicate and say, hey, I have this prompt. I have these questions. I'm getting these, you know, I'm getting scammed here. Is this a scam? How do I how can I?

lever tis and um it's ongoing education about how many participants do you think what would be the top number of participants probably 20 i just keep it like an intimate setting so that we don't have an auditorium and everyone's confused yeah i love the idea i think this is fantastic i may join you as well

I mean, we all need it really. And look, the reality is there's so many courses online on YouTube, but let's be real. Nobody has like, even me, like sometimes I'm like, Oh, I'll catch you later. That's not for me. But when we take the time and it's catered and it's offered in this setting and the value to time investment, the benefits, the ROI is there significant.

Yeah. I mean, I use a lot of what you mentioned, but I'm sure not to the degree that I could.

Yeah, I like the workshop. That was a good question, Lydia, on like not only how many participants, but if we could squeeze it in all in one workshop. And I think just one power workshop, see how it resonates. If you can get through all those topics in one workshop, two to three hours, I think it's well worth it. So I think what we'll do, first of all, thanks, Xavier. That was a great presentation. Did you use AI to create that presentation, by the way?

No, that was old school manual labor.

Well, I think, and I don't know if either Vice Mayor Cook or Julie, Lily, Frank, anybody has any comments on how we would approach this with the city or with the village? Do you guys think this is something that the village would be looking at helping coordinate? What are your thoughts?

Well, we would have to get funding, number one. Yeah.

Yeah.

But budget cycle's coming up, so we could always get it budgeted.

My thoughts on it is that I love it. I think it's very valuable for, you know, we're calling it seniors, but for adults, basically, to go through this type of class. Jose, I would challenge you to see if we can raise the money for this. That way we don't have to go into village funds. That's my only takeaway from this is, you know, I raised over $5,000 for STEM scholarships with our tech partners, and it was all done almost exclusively through our tech community. So let's try and, you know, reach out to the networks that you and I have and see if we can raise the $1,500 and that way we don't have to go into village funds. Use this first class as a proof of concept to see if we have the attendance and we can move forward from there if there's value in it within the community.

I like it. Fifteen hundred is nothing, especially with some of the connections we have with reaching out to maybe some of our tech sponsors or things that we could do. And I think I have some ideas on how we could promote this within like the South Florida CIO Council or some other.

Right. That's what I'm thinking. There's definitely ways I think we can we can promote it. I'm sure I can I can raise some money, too. So, you know, that's that's the only challenge to you is help help me out. And let's let's let's just fundraise this thing.

I like it. All right. So why don't we do this, Xavier, in that sense of time. First of all, thanks again. Awesome presentation. I think it's a great idea. Let's you and I and Vice Mayor Cook take this offline and see who we can maybe get. to fund this and how we get some funding. Maybe we get some funding from the village if needed, maybe we'll see, but I think we can easily put it together. So, and then hopefully by the next meeting in a month, we raise those 1500 and then we can start talking about dates and when we can actually do this. So I'm all on board, so. Nothing else? We can move on to our next topic.

I do want to add one more thing. You would be visionaries, right? This would be leading. I've done the research. I've done the research in municipalities, and there's not a lot of this going on at all, if any, right? So you'd be leading the charge in this space, and I think it's very valuable for the modern world.

Right. I agree with you. I don't think other communities do this. They're not doing this at all. To Goran's point, is I could see us ruling this out. And if we roll it out like seniors AI or something, it could be like people could turn adults off. I think there's probably enough of a demographic where we could, maybe we named the course something else or marketing something else, right? Because like I could see like myself, I'm like, oh, seniors.ai, like that's not for me. It could intimidate. I was like, will you call me a senior?

Can we like change that name? We don't have to use the name at all.

Absolutely not. The idea is just the workshop.

But we could change the name of the workshop, right? So when we market it, it's like, okay, you know, AI for adults. I don't know. We can think of something, but we'll take that offline. I appreciate it. And then hopefully by the next board meeting, we'll have funded this and be talking about how we roll it out.

Thank you. Nice to meet everybody. By the way, thank you for your time. Thank you for the questions. Hopefully we get to work on this together and it'll be great. Next time I see you in person, we'll shake hands.

Yes. Thank you, Xavier.

Appreciate the time.

Jose, do you also have people for the community garden?

I do, I do.

I see a lot of faces, I don't know. So this is why I'm asking.

I brought a party today. I see.

Okay, so let's take 4B next then.

All right, so I'll give a little background on this because it's pretty funny. I was, you know... For those who don't know, I live at Home Depot. I'm there every other weekend, if not every weekend, for my garden. This is something we brought up, Lydia, a couple years ago. We've always been talking about how do we put together a community garden. I'm an avid gardener. If you come to my house, you would see that. I have... Planted things everywhere. Right. And so I'm always in line. I happen to be in line one particular Saturday or Sunday afternoon. And I was talking, I looked over at Susana and we're just like talking about the type of dirt needed for whatever I was planting. I think I was planting tomatoes and, and I don't know how we got on the subject, but I was like, yeah, she's like, yeah, no, I actually run the Miami beach. community garden. And I work with things like with cities all the time. I'm like, well, this is so coincidental because I'm on the resident service advisory board for North Bay Village. And we were been talking about this on two fronts. Right. One, having classes like I think that that meeting before we were talking about If we can't find an area for community garden, why don't we see if we can't do classes for, you know, because look, I downloaded the app on my phone that when you take a picture of the plant, it tells you this is what's wrong with it. And my kids are into it. Every weekend we're out in the garden trying to figure out what's wrong and making home remedies for fertilizer to try and you know, revive our plants or whatever we're planning. So it was just really coincidental and awesome that I ran into Susana because she does this for the city of Miami Beach, right? So I think on two fronts, I'd love to hear from Susana and Euraldi on what they're doing at Miami Beach today. One is on the community garden. And I started thinking about, look, we don't have space. But then I also thought, and this is probably more, needs more conversation, but what about our dog park, right? What about maybe making a little area there somewhere where we can start a community garden? It's already there, just a thought, right? And then secondly, if we can't do that, which is probably the longer term initiative, how do we at least get some motivation or some momentum within the village around how do you garden, right? Because, I mean, I can go walk down my street right now. I can talk to my neighbors and almost a vast majority of them plant stuff and have their own gardens, right? So that's how this came about. Sorry for the long intro. Susana Ureldi, thank you for joining. I will hand over to you.

Thank you so much, Jose. Thank you, Resident Service Board. I am here with Yaredli Hernandez. My name is Susana Peñaranda, and we're going to show you some details with Ready, Set, Grow. And just for clarification purposes, I started doing this with the City of Miami. I hope to do it in Miami Beach because I was born and raised in Miami Beach, and I live in Miami Shores now. And if you'll have a moment with us, we love to tell you about our edible gardening program, Fridays That Grow. You can go ahead on the next slide here, Bradley. So we, um, Yaredli and I, um, during COVID when we were all working from home, I was in grad school taking care of three kids. Um, and I got a little bit fatigued from being online and I decided I want to go outside and just get a little bit of breath of fresh air. So Yaredli and I on our own personal journey started spending a little bit more time outside. And, uh, we knew that we enjoyed gardening. and at the time I'm with the city of Miami Department of Human Services, I oversaw three child learning centers and I thought it would be a really good opportunity to teach children from toddler ages to five years old nutrition through gardening. So we have this really great idea that we wanted to not only introduce it, But we know that we wanted to increase and cultivate healthier lifestyles. Three of those child learning centers are located in food deserts. And we knew that we wanted to tie in a comprehensive educational program and definitely a sense of community engagement. We can go to the next slide, and we'll go through this really easily. So we had a vision, and we knew that we wanted to develop a program, and we definitely knew that we wanted to engage not only the students and incorporate that into curriculum, we wanted the staff to be hands-on with it, and of course, we wanted the parents to be involved because we really do believe in the importance of intergenerational education. So Yaretli and I underwent this Master Gardener training program on a volunteer basis. And so we graduated with University of Florida in, I think, 2021, where we went through this like 12-week agricultural journey in Homestead, at the Hub, just learning more about everything that we were already experimenting at home, but on a more educational, professional environment. So we learned about soil health, plant biology, practical and sustainable gardening practices. And we knew that this would help us by not only furthering our education, but we knew that we had to figure out a way to justify incorporating this in a municipal setting. and at the time I was also over going what's called an educational accreditation program where I had to tie in this gardening nutrition educational program and meet Florida standards. So I knew that I wanted to improve accessibility to nutrition food and outdoor activity. I wanted to partner with University of Florida IFAS Extension which is the certification program where both Yaredli and I graduated from to promote wellness and eco-conscious practices. And then through our journey, we started learning. There's so much for us to continue learning. So we'll talk about a little bit later on about another program that we have called Happy Seeds, which is a seed library where we're experimenting with that. We have been really grateful to have been successful with that, but we're also learning and teaching composting and environmental stewardships. These three programs essentially became a blueprint of what we wanted to do. We incorporated pillars of scientific inquiry, nutrition education, eco-conscious practices, commute engagement. Yaredli has a wonderful art journey herself, and I'll let her touch up on that with her garden concepts that she branded Gardistry. And we knew when all of these pillars and all these great ideas that we were on a great journey of developing something not only educational, but something on a community engagement and community programming standpoint would essentially have essential buy-in from our stakeholders. I'm Susanna. That's just a quick intro. I have a background in public health initiatives and community partnerships with the city of Miami. Before that, I was with Miami-Dade County Community Action Human Services Department. I'm a former Head Start, early Head Start administrator. And I'll let you readily chime in.

Nice. Very interesting. Thank you.

I'm sorry, I have a crying baby in the background here. Oh, I'll help. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for inviting us. So yeah, I have a background in health and human services as well, and art and eco-conscious practices. I am a kidney recipient. Just fun fact, I work with the National Kidney Registry now, and we also do the Ready, Set, Grow program. So yeah, we're happy to be here. Susana, I'll let you continue.

Thank you. If you could maybe get to the next slide. Your brother is the tech one of all of us. I'll encourage all the North Bay Village constituents to sign up for the AI because if I qualified, I would definitely be there because I struggle a little bit with technology. Really quickly, we wanted to include educational activities, gardening and art, nutrition programs. We partner again with University of Florida, IFAS Extension. They have a family nutrition program where they have professors in our child learning centers in the city of Miami that fall under our department that are not only helping us teach nutrition through gardening, but we incorporate the intergenerational component where through another program called FNAP, they are educating our students parents, our guardians, the abuelos, the tios, and anyone who may be living in the household or in the community to help support those educational and gardening practices. we can go to the next one. Um, what we do is obviously we call these garden reactivations, obviously during spring and fall, um, through a series of workshops and community engagement components. Um, we activate the gardens, hence as to why I bumped into Jose at the Home Depot. I was reactivating my own home garden. Um, and through these garden reactivations, um, On a daily basis, we encourage the children of these child learning centers and their families to take ownership of those garden tasks. So at the end of these harvests, once everything matures, we wanted to make sure that we wanted to increase nutrition education, but also accessibility to fresh foods. Everything that we plant is edible and everything that we harvest goes directly to the residents and the families at no cost. We do seasonal garden reactivations during spring and fall, planting, pruning, refreshing soil, intergenerational learning. And we have been really fortunate enough to not only have started this about two or three years ago, and we are harvesting 15 pounds of produce per center. And I wanted to say all of this to say that we essentially started with the City of Miami Child Learning Centers as kind of like a pilot project, but we have expanded out on a county-wide basis. And we're working with different organizations, nonprofits, local schools to kind of collaborate with them and, you know, combine gardening and all of the art and nutrition education component to these communities.

Do you want to go to the next slide here, Bradley, if you can?

We partnered, for example, with leadership Miami Trailblazers, Everdee Gardens. It's a public housing unit that is run by not only Camila's House, but Miami-Dade County Community Development. And we wanted to make sure that when we implemented the program, which was about a year ago, that we wanted to not only provide and assist with reactivating the garden, we wanted to increase not only nutrition education but accessibility to gardening workshops so that we could encourage residents to not only experiment in their garden but champion their own gardens. So we've basically, we have also partnered with Ms. Claudia's Village Academy and El Portal with different age groups during last summer garden reactivation, where we introduced them to gardening tools, herbs, sensory activities, transplanted herbs, soil preparation, and lucky enough that my children were camp recipients at Ms. Claudia's Village Academy, and we were able to work closely with Ms. Claudia, the director of the Village Academy, to incorporate this during the summer culinary connection. So they harvested fresh herbs, basil, oregano, and they created pizza from using the garden. So that was really exciting and very personal for us. Yeah, and these are some photos of that amazing garden reactivation, which we had tons of fun with that. Yeah. Okay. We also worked with Miami Bridge, which is a local organization that works with at-risk youth, and just kind of give a therapeutic approach of little introductions to not only gardening, we were able to help with their garden reactivations, but Yaredli really championed what's called our Gardistry program. If you have a moment to maybe touch up on that, Yaredli?

Definitely. Yes. So we love art and we love gardening and we wanted to merge both together. And when we were at Miami Bridge, we found out like the youth, they don't love to be outdoors, especially during the summer. And this was a summer program. It was a two week program. And they were they were loving the gardening activities, but at the same time, they were like, okay, we're ready to be, we're ready to be enduring the AC. So we came up with this idea of doing art and gardening. This photo shows you an activity that we did. They were playing fashion designers, creating models and using elements from the garden in their activity. We also did, I don't know if we have photos here, but we did the clay activity where they did different things clay shapes using leaves and leaves imprints. And it was very healing for them. We went around the table. They each had the chance to tell their story. And it was a very, very meaningful experience. project with Miami Bridge. It was two weeks that I think was very transformational, not only for them, but for us as well as facilitators. We were able to expand our program and learn more about the needs of different ages, group age, you know, and it was very, very, very rewarding.

Thank you, Remli. Of course. And pretty much really quickly, because I know we're really limited on time, what we learned, Jose and the board, is through our Ready, Set, Grow program, once we harvested and we gave everything back to the community, we realized that a lot of these plants were continuing to mature. And what happens when a plant matures, it essentially bolts, the flowers will bolt, and they'll turn into seeds. And we had an abundance of seeds. So one thing we really wanted to champion was not only teaching these young children or community participants gardening in these social settings, but how do we expand learning outside of the classrooms and outside of these municipal spaces? The best way to do that is through our homes. So what we ended up doing was extracting an abundance of edible gardening seeds from these gardens, all of them that we've kind of mentioned, and we started giving it back. So we built a community seed library at pretty much 90% of all of these locations we kind of mentioned to you and more, and we continue to expand it. So yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

Wow. So that's it. First of all, I got to say, this is a lot more than I thought when we were just talking online. You have a full-blown program here that looks like you just had great success. The more I see this, I'm like, this is awesome, right? This is something that not only I think could be a vehicle to go through the Resident Service Advisory Board, But also even maybe, Vice Mayor Cook, keep me honest, something that maybe could make a commission meeting for the city one time just to kind of like let them know this program. Because it sounds like you guys are already working at that level, right? So that's my first thought. Second thought is this is exactly something I think the village would embrace, right? I think that the program you have to give back and the harvest is something that this is a very family-oriented village. And I think even now as summer comes into play, I don't know how the timing would work there, would be something that could even be put in conjunction with our summer camp stuff. There's so many ways we could market this to the village. So this is awesome. I can tell you right now, the art and garden thing, my daughter is big into art. She signed up for the summer camp, the art program here that we're doing with the YMCA. I think this would be so awesome for kids. It's just a different thing that I don't think we've ever had on this board or in the village that I've seen before in the 25 years that I've been here. So those are my comments. Francois, I know you are an avid gardener. I know you probably have some questions.

So how many centers do you have?

So right now, I have three in the city of Miami. We also have Miss Claudia's. We have Miami Bridge. We have 30 Gardens. And just to kind of piggyback off of something you said really quickly, Jose, not only do we assist youth, but the city of Miami is also part of an age-friendly initiative, which is another initiative that I assist closely with. And we are working closely with seniors to not only... maybe introduce them or maybe reintroduce them to gardening to, you know, assist with like mental health, social services, comprehensive services, but also just overall wellness. So we're, Francois, to answer your question, we have a set amount of centers, but we're also working maybe with like other like nonprofits or community agencies where we work with different age groups.

And how is the land purposed? I mean, how did you go about claiming the land to make a garden on there?

So the department, I work full time with the City of Miami Department of Human Services. And one of our divisions is like a daycare educational centers. So they utilize Miami City parks. They have subsections that are tailored and zoned for daycares. So with those daycares, not only did I see the opportunity to do something with it, I have three of them, I realized through my Apple accreditation and Gold Seal designation journey that I had to not only meet metrics, specifically you know, external and, you know, perimeters or green spaces with relatively at that time, no agricultural background. I had to learn how to maximize it, but I also wanted to use it, make it fun and make it educational and also make it accessible.

And what about watering? Was watering an issue or a problem?

Well, yes. Initially it was, but we were able to incorporate in the education and obviously through like staff routines, everybody had a water like designation day at a time. So that helped. The rainy seasons help. There's also irrigation like practices and we're not experts. We don't claim to know everything. I learn every single day and we continue to do so. But we work closely with UF IFAS Extension to who has like an irrigation division that helps kind of provide a little bit of like insight on how we can use irrigation in like, you know, public spaces.

Well, I'd like as much contact information about you as possible, and I'd like to attend one of your garden events and see the seed, perhaps to bring it to North Bay Village. But in the meantime, I'd be the person to go around and with you and learn.

Susanna, can you drop your LinkedIn in the chat, please?

Yes, I can. Thank you, Philip.

And Francois, you just nailed it because I was thinking, I'm the one who met Susanna, but I'm like, I think this would be a project or something that you could help spearhead for us because- Definitely.

I'll be her sidekick.

I would love for you to just take to help, you know, kind of champion this with us. I guess, Susanna, question. I have some questions as well. I'm sorry, go ahead, Lydia. My only question was going to be, is there a cost associated to the village or how does that work? I'm sure you have this business for a reason. Yes, there is.

Absolutely, there is. And it really depends on what your expected outcomes and what you're looking to fulfill, the workshops. Jose, gardening is expensive. It can get a little bit expensive, especially like when you're using like municipal spaces and you may not be able to do like in-ground gardening, like albinized beds and stuff like that. So, but it's mostly for like the garden reactivations and like the supplies for the workshops. So it really depends on what your expected outcomes is, but we'd be more than happy to work with you to, you know, kind of discuss and define like those outcomes so we can like better.

Is there a relative range you could give us?

Sure. So, I mean, if you're starting with a new garden on the ground and including like community engagement component and the nutrition education and the workshops, supplies is probably the most expensive. You're looking at maybe like starting vice mayor cook, like maybe five or six, five to $7,000. It just, again, depends on the space. If you want something relatively smaller, we can also tailor it to that as well.

So that's where we kind of go back to the very first problem we always have is the space. Because we are a small village and we don't have a lot of land. That's kind of where we always get stuck. Where can we do this? Where can we put a community garden? Because that's where we got stuck the first time we thought about it. We couldn't come to... an agreement with the village as to where we could put a community garden where they would agree.

Sure. Is there a way that maybe Redlee and I can work to learn more about what type of spaces may be accessible to the village? I mean, again, I'm so sorry. I'm not so detailed with North Bay Village, but in the city of Miami, what helped us was we were not only looking at the child learning centers, but we were looking at municipal spaces. right like municipal parks you know yes like an opportunity for like vertical gardening that might be a component so it really depends on you know i mean with gardening i feel like it's pretty feasible it just has to be just kind of well defined because at the end of the day we want to make sure that we are consistent with like meeting your needs and those of the constituents

This is definitely a great program. I just think that is the main hurdle to get over because funds we can always come up with. We can budget for them. We can fundraise for them. Definitely a community involvement. People keep asking for this, but the problem is land. We need to find the land. So that I think we'd have to work maybe with a village manager to see where he might think. It might not be immediate, maybe in the future or in the near future. I don't know if there's any space in that new space that they're building, the new community center and so forth. That would have to, we would have to have more talks about that. But I definitely think this is a great program. And thank you for presenting. Thank you, Jose, for finding them. Thank you.

My only other thought was...

To kind of put it out there, I think your idea on the community center area, I'm sure that's already set and planned for. Maybe Frank can speak to that a little bit and his thoughts on how this can maybe fit in. It is something I constantly hear from the community about, hey, why don't we have a community garden? Farmer's market comes up a lot. This could be connected to that somehow. My thoughts go to, I know the dog park we have over there. Why couldn't we make a little space over there? That was my thought.

We thought about that one, Jose. And there were plans for that front piece where Civic Park is right behind the, between the street and the dog park. So I don't know if those plans have changed. We can revisit that maybe. Because that is a spot that we thought about.

Yeah. I mean, and then my other thought was when I met Susana was even if we just do, we start out by doing classes or something. I don't know if that's, I think you've covered that you do, but like a workshop where we do like a portable workshop and we set it up somewhere and we bring the community out like a farmer's market, but for gardening. Right. And we do like every other Sunday or something like that, where we say, come, come join, you know, ready, set, grow for a workshop on how to garden so that people could go home and, do their own gardening at home, right? So while we can't maybe have a community garden, we can teach you how to garden and teach our youth about the value in nutritional gardening, right? This is something I'm teaching my kids right now. So I think there's room for this somehow. I would hope that we would be able to find some way to partner up with Ready, Set, Grow. It sounds like this is way more than I thought you had when we were just talking about

you know our first conversation so i love it i love it um thank you so much do you have do you do workshops like that like jose was saying because that would be great i do i do i do a lot of it for the city of miami but i also do a lot again like through our we are in full transparency we are required to at least do, I think, like a minimum of 30 hours through University of Florida IFAS Extension so that we can, you know, hold on to the Master Gardener certification. But with gardenings, and this has turned into such a greater project that kind of expands more than 30 hours a year, and it's become a full-time project on a professional municipal standpoint that, yeah, I would love to hang out and just – i'm always open for conversation so definitely i'm always meeting everyone and we're more than welcome to tailor it again any workshops that you guys would like we're gonna maybe partner with the school yeah can you do adults as well so it's children and adults i do yeah i do um youth adults and seniors we've done individually we've done like a variation of them Our big thing, again, I come from a public health initiative standpoint, I think really do deeply about intergenerational learning. And I think it's really imperative to have mom, dad, abuela, siblings. And I just do think that children, in my opinion, having three of my own, My children will go outside and they have their own gardening journey. And I do feel that I played a pivotal role in that because I'm teaching them, but they're engaging in their own curiosities. And I do think that gardening has something for every age group. I think every age group can benefit from it. And there's scientific research that will sustain that.

Do you have anything that you can send us about like a series of workshops possibly? Yes, of course. Like maybe different ages or I don't know if you would do like children one workshop, then maybe adults, then maybe seniors, something like that. Because that might be a good, you know, diving off point for, for this program. Absolutely.

Yeah. Another thing that I would suggest, um, cause I realized that like finding land could like pose an issue is, um, from my experience, um, what we do is either we'll like partner with like a nonprofit organization that may have accessibility through land and they would collaborate with NBV. Um, or if you guys are already having maybe like earthy activations or earth, week discussions for sustainability, resilience, that seems to play kind of hand in hand. So if you don't have a dedicated space for it, you may have a public forum for it where you're introducing the concept. Maybe it's through a public meeting, maybe it's a cohort that is learning more about resiliency and sustainability, and we can roll it out through there. So there's a lot of ways that we can kind of play with this.

Wow, that's another great point, because we do have Sustainability and Resiliency Board as well. They could probably get in on this, and maybe we could find joint funding. Absolutely. Look, I've heard enough and seen enough to know that this is something we've got to try to figure out somehow. I think it's a great idea. So this won't be the last time you're probably on this board meeting at some point, Susana. I want to thank you and Eurality for the time. We'll one-off this, and I think I'll get with Francois. to get with you later into, I think maybe we start, we have to have a starting point. Maybe we do the workshops first. And then as a lot of growth happens here in the village, maybe we can work with some of the developers or something to pitch this idea. Absolutely. You know, where there's a will, there's a way. I think it's a great way you can build community. And I love the Earth Day concept as well.

Yeah.

I mean, but I think we start with the workshop. So thank you for a great presentation. We'll let you guys jump. Thank you so much for having us. I'll be in touch.

Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you so much, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Okay. 3B. Well, 3As. Do you have people for the 5K run also? No.

I don't know. We can table that one. Let's get to the tech council.

I brought up the 5K. We can talk about it now or we can discuss it later.

Why don't we table that for a second? Goran and Kevin and Philip have patiently been waiting to talk about the Tech Council. I'll preface it, and I'm going to hand off to Philip and Kevin. And Goran, this is for you as well, something that you and I have been working on for quite some time and been discussing, and we've had even pushed off on this on a couple of the board meetings because we weren't really fully baked. So just to give everyone some background, this is something that Look, we're already doing this to a certain extent through Vice Mayor's tech measures that we've been doing. We've had three successful events in the village. That was always meant to be like a starting point for what we're calling the North Bay Village Tech Council, where Through the help of Vice Mayor Cook and through Kristin Menahart from the North Bay Village Chamber of Commerce, we've come up with a plan to have the North Bay Village Tech Council become a part of the North Bay Village Chamber of Commerce, where we would have a separate division within the chamber that is focused around a few things. And I'll let Philip elaborate on this with the intention of, look, as cities like North Bay Village grow, We know that tech awareness, we know that tech itself has to grow with it, right? And with the growth that we've got coming in North Bay Village, what better time to do this than now, right? So this is the beginning of what we feel will be a good think tank or a, there's so many different ways we can go with this from providing a director of services for our tech, you know, owners in the village to bringing tech workers in the village together that we know are here to coming up with different workshops, like the one we saw with Xavier earlier around, a number of things, right? So we partnered with the Chamber of Commerce to really get this going. And I foresee other meetings where we can discuss this further with them, but we're going to go ahead and start moving forward with them to really start outlining some good initiatives and meetings for technology in the village. So I'll stop there, fill up. Thank you so much for taking the time and the partnership here on this. You put a lot of work into this. First of all, coming up with the snazzy MBB Tech logo and then, you know, everything you put together today. So I'll hand off to you.

Thank you. Thank you, Jose. And yes, the Chamber of Commerce, Kristen, they've been great. We've been working over the past few months and just trying to figure out a game plan, whether we would align with them or not, or be cousins or what. I just got off the phone with them. They're very excited that we definitely have our goals aligned in terms of serving the village in a way that's outside of the way Villages are normally serviced, providing business services, tech services, insight, groups, workshops, et cetera, for residents, kids, elders, et cetera. So it was definitely a great call, but I'll jump into it. So NBB Tech, I'll be at Village Tech Council, Our mission, to bring residents and technology together to support learning, sustainability, and a more connected community. So Xavier kind of hit this on the head. The previous presentation hit this on the nose as well. Where can we fill in certain gaps to align residents and services, which is literally the purpose of this board, and let them feel the inclusion of it, learn from it, feel connected, et cetera. So our initiatives, education, innovation, and sustainability, the education part again this is where xavier comes in um but we don't want to limit limit it to just seniors uh we want to speak to the kids uh we want to speak to the middle age we want to speak to the elders for the kids it's hey how do you use technology in a safe way a responsible way um for the elders it's hey how do we catch up again um i think somebody said it earlier in the uh presentation is nobody gets left behind um I had a very similar experience with my parents where they wanted to slow step technology to the point where they got left behind and my father to this day he's still a young guy but he still struggles with technology so how do we bridge that gap in terms of innovation there's so many things going on with miami right now um for the past four or five years really where you have literally millions of dollars in there's an influx of millions of dollars and you know i've been here two years i don't see any of those dollars coming here and the latest i've seen um has been from the past two or three events at the Palm Tree Club, right? Which they're new to us, right? So how do we make it so that there's an influx of emerging tech, of young minds, middle-aged minds, whatever, creating from here, from the heart of the Bay. So that's gonna be another focus. And then of course, sustainability. So I'm actually gonna go back a slide real quick and I wanna show you guys this. This right here is a seawall and it's a coral, it's a full coral wall. And it's meant to build wildlife on the seawalls that, you know, like we're taking their space to be honest, right? And this is a very personal situation because literally last night, I'm on South Treasure Drive in Treasure Island, and my seawall collapsed last night. So when you talk about green tech, blue tech, these are the types of initiatives we're looking for. And the inventor of this, this is by a company called Kind Designs. She's a local to Miami. not North Bay Village, but she's a local to Miami. She's 28 years old. And she created a way to sustainably create a seawall that reinforces the structure while promoting wildlife, right? And marine life. So these are things that our kids can grow up to learn that that's possible, but it starts with a seed. So that's another initiative that we have here. And that's basically crossing the bridge between innovation and sustainability. So why now? I basically just said it. We have our kids, our young superstar soccer team right here. We can prime our youth for the rapidly changing world. I touched on the fact that there's an influx of funding and innovation. And then also with all this new development that's happening, we can actually benefit from the new development that's coming into our village versus being upset that, hey, look at all this construction. Oh my gosh, traffic. Oh my gosh, more residents. It's a small island. How do we embrace that? Because it's happening already. And just to touch on the influx of funding and innovation, that's another reason why I brought Kevin on the call, who's a very close colleague of mine, and he moves millions of dollars throughout Miami in the grant space. So it was very important for me to include him in what we have going on right now. As far as the team, Not limited to, but Mr. Parada and I have, you know, we discussed this, of course, with Vice Mayor Garan as well. And over Super Bowl, we kind of just dove into this initiative a little bit more and decided, hey, this is something that's doable. So we discussed it. Mr. Parada, technologist, proven sales leader, cloud and cybersecurity specialist, genius, if I may say so. Myself, 14 years in the tech space, software development, architecture, solution architecting. I program, I manage products, and I always have to throw in that I'm a veteran. I did go to Afghanistan in 2013 and 14. And our ask is that everybody spread the word about what we're doing. We would love to be impactful past this meeting because this initiative can't just die here. It can't just be a discussion of Let's talk about it. Sounds good. Cool. Talk about the next meeting. Anything that we are going to put our name on and put our strength behind, has to have legs, it has to grow, it has to scale. So our ask of you guys is that we spread the word. Our ask is that you join us, tell your grandma about us, tell your mom about us, tell your kids about us, so that we can have that participation and involvement, so that we can learn from that feedback and build better programs. And all in all, let's help No Bay Village tech up because what the last thing I want to see in this beautiful little village of ours is for us to get left behind. Everything around us is moving and growing and scaling. Literally everything. And I just want to at least be on par. And that's all I have.

Fantastic work, Phil, putting this together. I think, look, from what our discussions have been, this is, like you said, we can't just be complacent when the growth is happening around us, whether it's development, real estate. From a tech perspective, we've got to keep up. And then, so I think for us, this has been a good, you know, build up to what we were thinking. It took a little longer for us to kind of get there, but we can do so many things. The agenda behind this, working with the schools, working with different workshops between myself, Philip, and Goran, and you put just you and I on there, Philip, I think it's going to grow, right? We're going to have, we probably should add... Vice Mayor Cook on there as well. And we also have some other folks on there. But right now, you and I are driving this because we feel like it is definitely something that's going to be needed. And I think our efforts are going to be really well received when we combine our efforts with the chamber. So more to come on this. We wanted just to make sure and get it out on this meeting. And then there'll be more updates as we go. We know that we can march with this, march forward with this, with just what we're gonna be doing with the Chamber. So I'm excited to partner with them because it's gonna be structure and visibility that will help us, right? And I think we can do a lot of things just through the contacts I have alone in the tech industry. I can see us doing workshops, different things, different initiatives to help us. And I love what you did there. MBV tech up. I think that's going to be one of our new taglines. Let's tech up MBV. I like that too.

Kevin had his hand raised.

Yep. Sorry. Go ahead, Kevin.

Hello, good evening, everyone. I just wanted to formally introduce myself to you all. This is a great meeting. Thank you, Philip, for bringing me on. Jose, I can see why you're in your position. You're very, you're encouraging. And so like, that's respectable and commendable. So I guess I just wanted to, in a sense, research and talk about some of the things that I've worked on, just to piggyback with Phil. So Francois, I even love that you really wanted to focus on the youth. So I have a STEAM Academy. I have worked with Amazon. Actually, if you all know Salinas from AWS, that's a really good friend of mine. But I've worked on some robotics projects with my kids. They've also participated in competitions. So that's a program with Amazon CoderZ that you would love if you have students or kids that are into music. Amazon also has an EarSketch program, which is really good. The goal is to teach them Python. And kids really learn when they work in a cross-functional environment. So, you know, every kid is not going to be the developer. You know, some are going to be, they're going to be better at managing. Some are going to be the ones that wants to hold their phone and document everything. Okay, great. That's your marketing. You know, some are going to want to, you know, maybe look into the business analytics aspect. Some are going to have all different kinds of roles. So the goal is when they work on these projects to find out what they're naturally good at, just what they naturally gravitate to and help enhance that. Because that's what a collaborative tech team looks like. And you enhance that when they compete in competitions. So as they learn, they compete in competitions and those type of things is what creates the environment and really gets the kids to buy in and work as a group. Because I always say, you know, you have to, you know, you can't work by yourself. And so you need them to be in that atmosphere. So I just wanted to drop that in there for y'all as far as tech programs, AI programs from all ages. I've worked with all ages. The kids have done really well. They win the competitions and all. So whatever you want to do, whatever the students want to do with the adults, we can definitely provide a curriculum literally that day and onboard it as soon as possible.

Kevin, thank you for joining. And Philip, thanks for bringing Kevin. My first thought is you need to be on the MBV Tech Council, right? I think we could benefit from your expertise. Did I hear Philip say that you help with grants and things like that around technology?

Oh, yeah, yeah. So I manage a lot of workforce development grants. So it's so funny that you brought up the seawalls because Miami-Dade actually received almost $20 million and climate it's called the risk and resiliency tech hub it could be climate change but you know just with the new administration you have to be very careful about your language Same initiative, same, everything is the same. We just altered, we just changed how it sounds. So the Risk and Resiliency Tech Hub, literally, they are building seawalls. So like this is something where you speak to FIU, you speak to Miami Tech Works and Miami Dade College, and you could just sit in some of those meetings and find out how you can get acclimated. They're still looking for their lead right now, the lead transition. They're in their first year, they'll be going into their second year. But they need these. When these grants get these $10, $20 million initiatives, they need a community aspect. You're not going to get an EDA grant or NSF grant if you don't have these things. So it's more so about timing. Are we around them at the right time when they're ready to make a deal? And then when they want to make a deal, are we telling them, are we aware of the scope of their grant, of the scope of the funding, so that when we have the conversation, we're literally letting them know that we have something that they need. So as long as they can justify the funding, especially with the climate tech, which I know for sure that there's funding for that, but they're working on it just with the new administration, that's a great conversation that you can have with the tech hub and You know, it's actually a need based on some things that have happened in North Bay Village. So these are the things that are that the big grants, they need these things. It's just more so alignment, being in the right groups and knowing and making sure that we fall within the scope of their grant.

I love it. And I think, Philip, you bringing up that part around, we didn't even think about tech spreading into the environmental aspect of this, which is something that is near and dear to the commission today. I can tell you right now, it's something that we've taken great strides here in the village to do things around sustainability and environment that would also resonate. So there's so many things we could do here. I think our biggest task going forward is going to be like, Where do we start? What's our agenda? What categories do we focus on? So I'm talking, I want to open up to the board. Lydia, Francois, Farahim, Vice Mayor Cook, any additional comments or questions?

I think it's definitely a great idea. And I love the slogan that Philip came up with. That's fantastic. That's great. No, I don't have, I'm all for it.

Okay. Well, I know we've had a long commissioning. I think this is probably, Lydia, at least since I've been on the board, the longest commissioning you've ever had.

Yeah. And staff is probably ready to go. I'm sure they're tired. Yep.

Yep. They've been awful quiet throughout this whole thing. Yes. They're like, keep talking. We'll wrap this up, Parada. So we're done. Phillip, we'll take this offline. Great work.

Thank you, Phillip and Kevin. Thank you very much.

We're going to go ahead and get this going. So if you want to call the meeting to order, we can go from there.

Yes, so we still have two things to go over. Let's go 3A, update on the 4th of July event. Whoever's sharing, can you stop sharing the screen? Hi, Julie. Is that Julie? Lily. Oh, hi, Lily.

How are you? I'm sorry, I couldn't see you. No worries. Let me pull up the flyer. So we actually decided to go a little bit of a different route this year. We are branding it as our Independence Day celebration due to the long weekend. And the 4th of July is usually the event where I get the least amount of turnout. Um, so I wanted everyone to be able to spend time with their families and enjoy the long weekend if they wanted. Um, so we actually are doing it on the 3rd of July, um, from 6 to 8 p.m. Um, we're going to do free barbecue dinner. There will be a live band, a water slide, the dunk tank, of course, um, and fun for the whole family. So it's really exciting. I'm excited. I think it'll be a good event.

Love it. Great timing too.

So it's on a Thursday?

Yes. Hopefully you'll get more of a turnout. I hope so.

It's a good idea.

I think a lot of people will be off that thing or like the day before, usually a lot of people take off. So, um, I like the whole theme to it. You know, I love the dunking. I like the flyer. Thanks. Great work. I think it looks good.

Yeah, it looks great.

Barbecue will be a hit. Can we, small suggestion, can we dunk the police for a donation to a cause?

We can just dunk the police in general. No need for a donation.

Love it. They usually volunteer. Stop sign.

Jose said he's going to go in the dunk tank this year, right? I went last year. Yeah, he went in last year.

He was like my personal dunk tank attendant. Not only was I in the dunk tank, but I helped run the dunk tank.

Yeah, he was like my personal dunk tank attendant.

It's refreshing. We're going to get you on there, Lydia.

I'm not here. I'm gone the 27th through the 9th.

Oh, sure.

Sorry.

He's like, yeah, right. Sure, yeah.

It sounds good. It sounds great, Lily. I have no questions. It sounds good. Great. No questions from anybody on this? No. Okay, 3B, update on the North Bay Village 5K event. Thank you, Lily. You're welcome.

All right, so I put this one on the agenda. And short discussion, I want to get the board's feedback on this. But I was talking to Janice, who gave us a great recommendation for the 5K. She gave us the same organization that planned it in Bay Harbor Island, Surfside. And I think they're gonna be great to help organize this whole thing. But I actually had an idea to maybe think bigger with this 5K. I know our options of doing the 5K would probably be running around Treasure Island in a couple circles. It's gonna be a little tough close down the causeway to do a true 5K around the village, which can be done. There is an added cost to that. But my idea was in the spirit of partnership with Miami Beach, with our neighbors in that municipality and their elected officials, I thought it would be an interesting idea to do a 5K from North Bay Village all the way down to North Beach. The benefit of that is a couple things. One, I think that I feel pretty confident that we'd be able to get the whole thing sponsored by corporate sponsors, outside vendors, because there's more of an attraction if we have a greater crowd and more people there. Also, Miami Beach would, at the very least, split the cost with us. The other thing is that we could end it in North Beach over there at the beach and finish up with a concert at the band show over there. That's something I've already reached out to the band shell organizers and they've signed off. They love the idea. It would be a free concert for everybody from North Bay Village and North Beach and Normandy. So that's my thought. That's my idea. It's to think bigger, get this thing done for free, basically at hopefully no cost to the village, partner with our neighbors, our neighboring municipality. and have a whole day of 5k celebration and then a concert to top it all off genius sounds perfect to me I like it have you presented it to them yet? Yeah, I have spoken to some of the Miami Beach commissioners and they like the idea. They've never done a or they haven't done a 5K up in North Beach in Normandy in years. So they would like it. All the local businesses there, they would appreciate it. I spoke to the chief about it already. He was supportive of it. He said we have the right contacts there. at fdot to help close down a lane or two of the causeway uh early in the morning um so you know already based on the early early conversations with everybody including the bandshell including the the normandy fountain uh chamber of commerce or business council that they have there they're all very excited and supportive about it um so overall yeah very positive feedback

My only question, would it have our name on it as well? Would it be that North Bay Village, Miami Beach 5K? Yeah, exactly. North Bay Village being first on that number. Sure. I love it. It's a great creative way, Vice Mayor, to bring some fitness back into the village in an event that I think that we've been trying to get done for the year. So I'm all for it. Love it. Let us know if we can help in any way.

And it's a good start with a partnership with Miami beach, which we've been trying to do for years.

Exactly. And we've already made a lot of good progress there with, with the trolley. We had our first trolley run last month. Very successful. We have another one in two weeks. You know, I, I, we had some events at the band show that were free for North Bay village residents. We've got other things coming up. In fact, tomorrow there's a, a meeting with their economic board. We're going to talk about deeper discounts at their facilities, including Normandy Pool for our residents.

That's going to be my next question to you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're talking about, it's on the agenda tomorrow, one of their meetings, and it's going to be discussed. I've just, I've requested, you know, again, out of the spirit of partnership and collaboration, deeper discounts for North Bay Village residents. They said maybe even they would offer free access for North Bay Village residents during off-peak hours. So they're going to discuss that tomorrow, and I'll have more updates to share on that soon. Some of the discounts, we may have to do a little pilot program where we chip in a little bit, but we're going to explore all the different options. Some of the things they're going to be willing to do just out of goodwill, out of the positive partnership that we've had so far with them. We want that to continue. We'll have more updates tomorrow.

One thing that if you could mention that I found important when my son was younger was the swim lessons at the Normandy pool.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's a big one. Yeah, that would be a big one if we could get a discount on that or even get like, you know, second dibs after their residence because they fill up really quick. And there's only that pool that gives lessons.

Normandy, right?

Normandy pool, yeah. That pool and the one in Miami Shores that gives lessons. That one's more pricey.

Absolutely. Yep, I've already got that on there. That's also going to be part of their agenda. They have a special program around that. Yeah, they'd be willing to, it looks like, include North Bay Village families in their toddler and child, let me just read it. Yeah, infant and toddler water safety initiative, which would include training at Normandy Pool.

Oh, that would be great. That would definitely be. I know we've tried that before and they shut us down. So if you can accomplish that, that would be fantastic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one of my goals.

Awesome. Thank you.

Of course.

We definitely had a full meeting full of ideas. Yes, we did.

Thanks, everybody, for the patience as we got there.

So, all right. Let me go through this real quick. Oh, one thing. July 1st is our next meeting. Last year, we did not meet in July, but we have a lot of things going on. So I think we should meet. Will everybody be available July 1st?

Yes.

Okay, I'm out of town, but I'm not 100% sure if I could join. But as long as there's three of you, you can still join. I'll know when it comes closer to that time, whether I'll be available or not. All right. Okay. And then August, we're off because all of staff takes vacation and so forth in August. So August, there'll be no meeting.

Okay. Okay.

Okay. So Staff Commission leaves on updates. Is there anyone else with anything? No, they're ready to go.

Nothing else. I'm sure.

Public comment? Nothing? Okay. So make sure we send agenda items in on time so it can be added. Ferahim, please send the dance academy thing that you sent for the next agenda and maybe have someone on that could talk on the July meeting in case we have any questions from the school.

Okay, I'll ask them.

Okay, that would be great. And with that, no questions. We're good. All right. See everybody in July, hopefully. Adjournment at 7.59 p.m.

Thank you.

Thank you, staff. Thank you so much. Bye, everyone.

Have a good night.

Bye.