City Council - Regular Meeting

Call this City Council regular meeting on May 26th to order at 7 p.m. Call the roll, please.

Mayor Fahad.

Here.

Vice Mayor Llamas. Here. Councilman Santin.

Here.

Councilman Dion.

Here.

Councilman Perez-Crespo.

Here.

There is a quorum present.

Okay, thank you. Let's please rise for the invocation led by Councilman Joseph Dion.

Lord, thank you for your many and abundant blessings. Thank you for the ability to be involved in this useful work and for the honor of bearing appropriate responsibilities. Today, I pray for our mayor, all levels of city officials in Miami Springs, and in particular for this assembled council. I am asking... that you would graciously grant us the wisdom to govern with the true needs of our residents. I ask all in this, your name, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thank you, and please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag, to the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation,

Thank you. You may be seated. Okay. So we move on to four agenda and order of business. Are there any items that you guys wish to move up? We have nothing on the consent agenda. So if you guys are okay with that, I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda.

Okay.

So move.

Okay. So we have a motion and we have a second. So we can do that with the voice vote. All in favor of the agenda as printed here, say aye. No. Okay. So the agenda is set. We'll move on to presentations and we'll be recognizing James Dean, Aquatic Supervisor for his 10 years of dedicated service to the city of Miami Springs. And we would like to call up Caitlin Steele. this to James. And James, why don't you come on up also?

Mary, you have the wireless mic? Yeah, here.

I'm so excited.

I know.

Yeah, go to that one. Or here you go, if you want to.

That's one too.

This award is for James for recognition of 10 years of service. James has been part of the backbone of our aquatics department. And honestly, without him there, we would not have come as far as we have. So it's my honor to give this to you and the cities. So here's your pin.

James, tell us something about your 10 years.

Say a few words. I've been with the city since 2008 with the old pool part-time. And then thanks to Omar giving me a call back in 2016 and Caitlin, I came back to help Caitlin open up the pool. And... I don't know. The rest is history. I guess it's just a matter of working with everybody that comes through. I can't do it on my own. I've moved four city managers, Omar the whole time, Caitlin the whole time. But I've seen people come through as students in our swim classes and now they work for us and then work for the city ultimately down the road in different capacities. So it's fun. It's cool. It's definitely giving back to the community and seeing the rewards of your labor.

Awesome. All right. Thank you, James. Let's go up there.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Mayor, if you don't mind, James, before you leave, I do want to recognize James also. I was the director there for 15 to 16 years, and nobody understands how important James Dean's job is to the city. It's one of the few jobs that life safety is highly important. involved and and he takes it very serious and and i respect him for that uh there are times where i would meet with him and and and stress how important it was to continue training the staff and he was already ahead of the game and ahead of that with me so i want to commend A lot of people don't realize James isn't just running a pool. It's just fun and games. There could be serious catastrophic injury there. And there are many times that James and his staff have saved people's lives that goes unnoticed. And I just want to commend you for that and your staff and everything you've done. When I was there, I actually would go home on weekends and I'd sleep comfortable knowing that James Dean was our aquatic supervisor. And that means a lot to me. And I thank you so much for your service.

Okay, congratulations, James. All right, so we move on to open forum. Nobody signed up for open forum. We have nobody. So we will move on to approval of the council minutes. We have the May 11th council minutes. I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the council minutes.

Do I have a second? Second that motion. Okay, we have a second for Santin.

So call the vote on that, please.

It's Mayor Lamas. Yes. Councilman Santin. Yes. Councilman Dion. Yes. Councilman Perez-Crespo. Yes. Mayor Pahut. Yes. The motion carries.

All right. We have no reports from boards and commissions, no public hearings, nothing on the consent agenda, no previous or unfinished business. We do have one item of new business, 12A, an ordinance on first reading.

In ordinance of the City Council of the City of Miami Springs, Florida, revising the employee's retirement system and police and fire pension plan, amending code of ordinances section 35-47 to permit members of the general employee's retirement system to purchase permissive service credit, amending code of ordinance section 35-61 of the police and fire pension plan to permit the purchase of prior law enforcement service or permissive service credit, providing for conflicts and providing for an effective date.

JC, would you like to?

This came about as a recommendation from the pension board for both general employees and the police. It's a practice that's you see this in other cities and other pensions where the employee has an option of purchasing time at the city. So up to five years is what they can buy. There's no cost to the city because the employee must bear the cost. They have to you know, contribute what they would have contributed for those five years or two years, whatever they want to buy. So this is just another recruiting tool that we can use here in the city to attract people.

Okay. All right. I give it over to my colleagues. Does anybody have any questions or discussion other than what was discussed in your briefings?

Through the chair. Just a more in-depth explanation. When you said that they could buy time, what do you mean by that?

Right now, let's say I have 10 years of service, right? Or an employee has 10 years of service and they want to buy an extra five to get credit for 15 years of service, right? Like if they were here for 15 years, they can buy five years of service, but they have to pay for those years, like in their contributions that they would have to make throughout those five years. So it's not like a freebie. So they go into their pension having 15 years of service.

So they pay back what they'll pay.

Whatever their contribution is, whatever their contribution is supposed to be on a regular, like on a whatever monthly basis or on a per paycheck basis, they have to pay that in full or whatever, depending on how many years they want to purchase.

What a great idea. Yeah. Okay.

All right.

Any further discussion?

To the chair?

Yep. I mean, I brought it up and I just want to be transparent. I asked the question was obviously, even though it helps accelerate the possibilities, but at the same time, I said, well, then we start to paint on the pension side of it earlier than later. Right. uh so how do we offset that he goes well and that was a great point when he brought up was then you get the chance to hire a different pay scale so it gets more than offset right you know so so the point is somebody retires and then you bring that in so initially it was my concern not concerned just something i brought up and then i always have to explain it made sense that uh you know would be offset with a lower pay scale

And this is first reading, second reading. I'll make sure the pension attorney's here if any additional questions come up.

Yep. Okay, if there's no further discussion, I'd like to entertain a motion to approve 12A and pass the ordinance on first reading.

So move.

We have a motion. Do we have a second? A second. We have a second. Call the vote, please.

Vice Mayor Llamas? Yes. Councilman Santin? Yes. Councilman Dion? Yes. Councilman Perez-Crespo? Yes. Mayor Fahad? Yes. The motion carries.

Okay. Moving on to 13, other business. We have A, a discussion regarding the proposed special election and ballot question on Northwest 36th Street and possible direction to staff. Who's going to start us off?

this jc would you like me to or you so after the the last after we decided the council decided to put it on to the august council meeting there's been some discussion as far as whether november would be better or or is um do we keep it in august do we have more time there's been i've been getting calls from a bunch of you so i think it's better if we just talk it out um there's some seems to be some um some of you that would like to see it move to november So that's why it's on.

Okay. Through the chair? Sure. You know, initially, obviously, like everything else, we want to get it on the table as soon as we can so that people can, you know, make a decision on, but information is super crucial. We don't want misinformation out there. We want information that's going to help them make the right decision. And, you know, here we are. August is around the corner. Our town, as much as a lot of people always complain they don't have any money, but this town, usually everybody takes off. So here we are thinking about workshops and all this stuff that we're going to do to try to get this information out to the public. We're going right into the summer. And also the most important thing too is that, well, one of the most important things is that the state, Tallahassee, they're going to do a June session about the property taxes. So we're not going to have a clear picture, the exact ballot question, nowhere near probably when we have the date that we had suggested initially. Look, we're doing this because what the public has asked us for before. They want something done on 36th Street. We're trying to be as practical as we can in reference to that big step that we're making for this community. uh but one thing for sure we want is to everybody to be well informed and with however the vaults votes come back we of course we live with it the public has spoken but at this point we need to give the information correctly and with due time and i don't see it here in the summers considering that we're already in late may right

I will say that we all had individual briefings about the plan for how to now that we've decided on the ballot language, the plan for how to communicate. you know, what's on the ballot for people to vote for because people have questions. And when we sat in those briefings and I'm listening to the plan and, you know, it's like trying to do workshops, town hall, having people come out during the dog days of summer is going to be rough. And then we come back in August and we got the election right there. And I think the point of they're going to be meeting in late June or in July up at the state in order to talk. It has been signaled to us that something will be on the ballot for property tax relief in November. There's a lot of momentum behind that. And that's going to be decided. They're going to convene on that in July. But that language doesn't have to be in for the November ballot. And again, it's been signaled to us that there's going to be something on the ballot. That doesn't have to be in until August 20th, which is 75 days before the November midterms. So I think that, coupled with just trying to paint a picture for people about what's at stake with what we're proposing here, Because there's pros and cons to everything, and it's a big step, and we're asking for a change in our charter, and that needs to be properly communicated. And I do not think that from here to August or in the dog days of summer that we're going to get a dent in the message. People come back. I mean, I could tell you I work on a school calendar and people take advantage of the summer right up until it all starts. And like mid-August is when people really start to come back. And by then... Like it's all right. It's going to be really difficult, I think, to to communicate that. So we do have November to fall back on. We will have a clearer picture of what of how the city is going to be affected by any property tax relief packages that that are put on the ballot, which are likely to pass because I think it's property tax relief is important, but it is going to have consequences for us. but I think that it gives us, we've decided on the ballot language. It's not going to change. Uh, but I, uh, the more I thought about it when we had our briefings about how to get the word out sounded like a good plan. I just was like, how are we going? How is that going to get done? You know, in the next two months, like in June, basically, you know, a lot of people check out. So, uh, that's my sentiment on it, but I welcome the opinions of the other, my colleagues on the council.

I mean, when we first started discussing this, I saw November as the target date. I always thought April was a little bit too rushed. And then I settled on August because we were like, okay, we can make it work for August. But I think you're right. I don't see it happening. I don't feel it. And I think every time that we put something out there in the public, it's we get a whole barrage of comments. So I think we need to properly process what the residents are saying, deal with the misinformation or disinformation that's out there, and proceed from there. I feel better having this in November. I'm pretty sure we'll be guaranteed a larger turnout. I mean, our average is like 20%, I think, of turnout.

Higher this time around.

Yeah, last year's elections were pretty good. And I remind people, get out there and vote. You have to vote. It's important people notice the amount of percentage of people vote in the different municipalities. It says a lot about your community. So if we can get more people out there voting, for this, or just voting in general. So at least for me, I'm comfortable having this in November. And then we can line up our ducks in a row and have those. I'm really, I can't wait for the workshops. Let's engage with people. Let's talk to people. So what are you concerned about? Is it density? Let's talk about density. Is it people walking around? Let's talk about that. But let's talk. So I'm looking forward for those workshops. Thank you.

I agree. I think we need more time. Just because I'm not 100% in agreement with the verbiage, with the wording. I think we need more input, like you mentioned. In particular, I've met with a few developers and architects that deal in this kind of field. And I think we need some of their input as well. Because I hate to go through this whole exercise and then it doesn't work for anybody. I think that's a real landmine. So I agree we need more input. or processing with the public and the intended developers anywhere else.

Yeah, I would caution us against changing the verbiage at this point. I mean, I don't know what could change that would make me want to change it. But I feel like we're at the stage, I mean, at least as far as I'm concerned, we're pushing it back to give us more runway to be able to communicate to folks. You know, if we... We all come get out of the summer, you know, back to school. Got August and September, October for a November election. Everybody's going into a November. It's a big midterm election. Everybody's going to be looking at what's what's on the ballot and, you know, and getting as informed as they get. But I feel like communicating that if we start like changing the verbiage, I think is going to. dilute the message. So I just caution us against that. I feel like we found the verbiage. We, you know, we passed it. All we're doing here is just pushing it back, you know, to give us a little bit more runway. So, but do you have anything you want to add, Councilman?

I agree. Just not to repeat the same points you guys hit. I mean, I'm on the same page with everybody. I think November would be better. It'll give us a chance to get the message out there a little bit better. So, yeah, I agree with you guys.

Right. So that that sounds what do we need to do?

We need to give us give us direction after this meeting, since I hear that there's consensus to move it to November.

So you can put it on on the next agenda to vote on changing the date again.

Right.

Is there any cost to the city for changing it?

At this point, no. So I'll call the supervisor of election tomorrow. I'll do the cancellations. I had already submitted the paperwork for August. So I'll cancel that and we'll prepare the resolution for November.

Can we please act like it's still in August? We had a meeting earlier today.

There's nothing after November.

That's the Alamo.

We're marching to that.

All right. Okay. All right. So thank you for that discussion. And I'm glad that we were able to seek consensus on that. Okay. So moving on to 13B, request by Councilman Santin to discuss the temporary full circle road closures associated with the city's centennial celebration scheduled for the... 22nd and then from 9 to 12 and that's it there were two on it originally right it was going to be that and the motorcycle show but we're just going to discuss yeah it's a city event so just okay we're telling just we're gonna oh because i saw a copy of the agenda that had that and the motorcycle no no that that motorcycle since it's a city event it doesn't need to we already budget for those those um road closures and everything

So this is just for the centennial, what do you want to call it? Celebration.

On the 22nd.

Her birthday.

Okay. So on that date, it was obviously with conversations with the city manager and assistant city manager and rec and police and everybody. Because obviously this is the date that we're going to celebrate our 100 years anniversary. We're going to start off with the unveiling of the Glenn Curtis statue and monument.

I believe we have, what, 11 o'clock is the scheduled time? 11 o'clock.

And that'll have his typical dignitaries and everyone there for the ribbon cutting. And then the idea that we have and we've been discussing is from 3 o'clock in the afternoon... all the way to midnight or a little bit before midnight, we're just going to give back to the community and celebrate our 100 years in a celebratory way. We're going to have music out there for eight hours. We're also going to have amusement for all our residents, kids rides and stuff that the kids can enjoy and food and vendors. But that's the idea. We're going to celebrate, give back to the community that day.

Is there any way to make it a little earlier in the morning? The 11 o'clock is going to be on August 22nd. 11 o'clock a.m. is going to be hot, right? Because I'm assuming we're going to be where the memorial is. But I don't know. I mean, if you're closing it off, I'm not trying to. I'm just throwing it out there. Because everybody's going to be it's going to be again. Yeah.

We might be able to, I believe there was, I don't know if it was scheduling conflict when we were trying to, we're inviting obviously Congressman Diaz-Balart or senators or state rep. So I'll see if I can push it up a little earlier, I'll do it.

Okay.

Just save the people that are going to be out there because it is.

Okay. All right. That's exciting. That's exciting news. We're looking forward to it. August 22nd, we turn 100. Okay. So what do we need to do for this?

Give direction to staff to... Basically, the request for the circle closure for that event. Okay. As far as we're still putting together some of the quotes to bring back to the council. But for this, this is just the request for this.

So do we vote on it to get it to approve?

Yeah, just make a motion to approve.

Okay, I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the temporary full circle road closure associated with the centennial celebration. So move. Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a first and a second. Call the vote, please.

Vice Mayor Llamas. Yes. Councilman Santin. Yes. Councilman Dion. Yes. Councilman Perez-Crespo. Yes. Mayor Fahad. Yes. The motion carries.

Okay. Wonderful. Thank you for bringing that up and getting that ball, you know, continuing to roll, Councilman Santin. Okay. So we move on to reports and recommendations from our esteemed city attorney.

I have no report for you tonight, Mayor, members of the council. Just happy to be here. Thank you.

All right. Kicking over to our city manager, JC.

Mayor, earlier today, as you know, and I'll share with the public, we received some great news out of Tallahassee. Believe it or not, great news out of Tallahassee. We, Brian, I mean, Senator Avila, I mean, what can I say about him? He's just amazing. We in the budget go far, obviously subject to governor's veto. We have $1.5 million for Oakwood Drive roadway for the rest of Oakwood, 800,000 for roadway project here on Westward Drive. we have 500 000 for for police radios and we have 350 000 for um for the lsp funding for the senior center i mean again this is unbelievable so now what the strategy is i'm going to work with our lobbyist team to come up with a campaign or whatever we need to do to lobby the executive office of the governor to encourage him not to veto our projects. So, yeah, I'm very encouraged by that.

I'd like to add that. Because you're kind of conveying that that's an amount of money that isn't typical to receive. I mean, these are lean times. And it is thanks to our state representative, Alex Rizzo, and to our state senator, Brian Avila of Miami Springs' own, Brian Avila. They really came through for us with our requests during lean times, and we owe it to them.

Yes, we are sure. Again, I know we've got to make a knock on for Micah, we still needed to get their job. And yeah, you know, we need to we need a lot of people didn't make it this far. Yes, you're correct. And I'm not going to lie, at the very beginning of this, I thought every single one of our requests was dead. And considering the budget was in chaos just a week ago. And I kept getting notifications, oh, they put this one in, they put this one in. Before I knew it, all of them were in to a certain amount. I'm like, this is unbelievable. So much credit to them. Yes. And that's all I have, sir.

All right. Wonderful. Omar?

Oh, I'm sorry. You know what? Absolutely right. There she is. The Fair Havens. I spoke with, well, texted and emailed with their attorney. They received approval from, I'll tell you right now. The ACHA, I guess the state agency for health centers, nursing homes, they received approval. They're organizing all of their permits. He's going to provide me with a construction schedule. So once I have that construction schedule, I will share it with all of you.

I have a question about that because we agreed that he would come in after 90 days to give us an update. It's time for the update.

Thank you.

All right.

Omar. Yeah, I just want to take a second to recognize our staff, our parks, public works, police, and our city clerk's office, our PIO, for covering the events this weekend. It is a long weekend, obviously, and we still have staff out there covering the event at the library and obviously the event for Memorial. And I just want to recognize them in public as they, you know, they sacrificed their weekend to be here, and it's important for that. And our PIO does an amazing job of covering the events and posting pictures, and it shows what we're doing in the city, and I think we can all appreciate that. Absolutely.

I have to just to add on to what Omar said. Miami Springs. I would say per capita has the most events of any city. I mean, every weekend there's something else. And especially in the Centennial, I mean, that's just multiplied by 10. So it's been event after event after event. And every single one of those events, you see a city staff smiling, always happy to help, you know, willing to serve and providing great customer service and providing an environment that makes this truly a community. So Again, to every single department, from Parks and Rec to the clerk's office, the PIO, police, public works, to pick up the trash and make sure everything is clean. It's unbelievable. I haven't seen anything like it, and I'm extremely proud of the team.

Awesome. Thank you, guys. All right, so moving on to our city clerk.

No report tonight, sir.

All right. OK, so we'll go to our city council. We'll start from left to right. My left. Thank you, Councilman.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And to echo my city manager and city manager sentiments, I want to thank Parks and Rec for yesterday's Memorial Day ceremony. And I want to, you know, remember all our fallen servicemen and women who I appreciate the Girl Scouts, the Cub Scouts, and the Troop Scouts for being there. And they had a flag retirement ceremony. We are very unique because I don't know of any flag retirement pit anywhere else in South Florida. So we have something very unique here in this city. And I've been talking with the Scouts to do something when the weather gets cooler later this year to do a nighttime flag retirement ceremony and invite the community to come out. It's really impressive to see, and it's something that you don't generally see anywhere else. We do it when we go camping, and it's a very solemn ceremony. So thank you again for your team, JC, for the library event and for yesterday's event as well. Thanks to the clerk's office, you have a great team also putting out, keeping our residents informed with the events on the calendar. I'm directing residents go to the city's calendar. You want to know what's going on. Oh, I didn't know about the library event. Go to the city's calendar. Sign up for their social media posting, their newsletters. We're doing our job communicating what's going on in the city. We just need people to just look for it and receive it. And finally, I just want to congratulate our local high school seniors who are graduating and going on to college, work, and just life. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman or Vice Mayor?

Just quickly want to say thank you. Just to echo everybody else's sentiments. You guys did a great job yesterday with the Memorial Day event, as with every event. It's special. I stopped by the one in Hialeah on the way out because it was an hour after hours. Ours is better. Yeah, it's just a different feeling. The community feel really comes through in ours. So thank you for all you guys did.

Thank you. Councilman Dion.

I'd like to send a heartfelt thank you to our senator for working hard on getting us this funding. I truly appreciate it and for him taking the time and explaining everything to me in detail earlier today. Also, I want to thank you guys. It's an honor to serve with all of you. Definitely, I see a great working relationship and You know, we don't always agree, but I think at the end, our goal is to leave this a better place than what we found it. So just thank you.

All right. Thank you. Councilman Santino.

Well, as well, I thank the great city administration and staff that we have. And we're definitely lucky and fortunate to have them on our side. The library event, Glenn Curtis' B-Day, was a success for a long weekend, considering that if not, you would expect a lot more people to show up.

Enough people showed up, but they had a good time. And so that was... Magician brought them in.

Magician brought them in.

Magician did it. Yeah.

And so as well, we have on June 5th, we also have another Centennial event, the golf tournament. I believe it's almost sold out. So if you're still thinking about getting a foursome, I think T-signs are available. But the foursomes, I think you need to go in there as quick as possible. But, you know, they picked up steam in the last couple weeks. It's going to be a great event. It's sponsored by many people, but it also – We have tailor-made gift bags and so forth. It's just going to be a little event that we normally don't give as a golf tournament in Miami Springs. So we're hoping to get as many participants as we can. As well, our Senator Brian Avila, great, I talked to him today and I said, should I start fundraising for a statue next to Glenn Curtis? And he's like, he's so humble, he's like, I don't need a statue, just a thank you, that would be enough. And I said, well, okay, you know what, actually statues cost a lot of money. I don't really have the money to fundraise for that, but maybe a vigil candle stand would So every time before you head up to Tallahassee, you know, residents can come by, put their offerings and prayers and hope that everything works out because anything we can do to make sure you keep coming back with money will work. So he says, maybe I'll take you up on that one.

And I'll just continue by just saying that obviously Representative Rizzo and Senator Avila carried this through for us as far as it's gotten. But in particular, Senator Avila, who is Homegrown has always been good to our city. I know you say it facetiously, but he is a humble guy who not only that, he's in a high-level command position in the Army at the same time that he has to spend all that time in Tallahassee, and he has young children here. And that guy is the epitome of service to our country, to the state, and most definitely

This community. So kudos to them.

And it was great to listen to people talk about like all the great events. Like I think like we had a composting event and we're talking about nighttime flag burnings. And something that's interesting that happens when you join the council, you're compelled to go to more city events and you'll go to an event. You'll be like, this is so cool. When did you guys start doing this? Like 40 years ago. Like, I didn't know you've been doing this. This is awesome. So it's a great thing about our city that we have all these wonderful events.

I agree with JC per capita, probably more than any other.

So, all right, so that being said, thank you all we call we this meeting is adjourned at 736. Thank you very much.