Sustainability and Resiliency Task Force - Regular Meeting

so i love hearing that you guys did a bunch of events together yeah so um climate conference what they call it resilient 365 and then i went recording in progress i went just about everything i could possibly fit into the schedule other than that so i went to the cleo woman and climate thing on wednesday night and on friday night and there was um You've got to go there. Right over here in Little River. Oh my gosh. I bought three pieces of vintage clothes. Not recycled. Not revisited. Anyway, it was about upscaling and turning textiles into wonderful things. But they're the number one vintage clothing place in the country in this year's rankings. And they had a panel of three different people talking about upscaling old stuff rather than just throwing it out.

You mean upcycling?

Upcycling, yes. Thank you. That's the word. There we go. I'll get the vocabulary right one of these days. So I bought three pieces of clothing from there. And then Saturday, what did I do? I went and helped mulch at the underline, then went to Vizcaya where they did something about reef line, which was great. And then Sunday went to Art C right here at the band show. That was fun. Little kids running around paying mermaid faces and all that kind of stuff. And kids selling. I bought a nine-year-old author had a little book on sea turtles. So I bought that. I had a blast. And a couple other things I can't remember. Anyway. Upcycling. Upcycling.

So it's 632. No, it's okay. The clerk advised that the chair was going to be here, I think. But I'm not entirely sure. Frank, did you touch base with Alba about that? Otherwise, I think the vice chair would be the lead on the meeting.

No, I did not have a discussion with her today on that.

Okay. Vice Chair Dobler, do you mind running the meeting until the chair arrives?

Not at all. Maybe we can finish up before sunset. Let's take a walk. It's gorgeous out.

I just got a short walk in. I agree with you. Go right ahead.

All right, call to order. I guess we do a roll call. I see Brenda. I see Neil. I see Oliver here. I see Mayor Streitfeld as present. And then I see from staff, I see Christina. I see Frank. I see Roger. Did I miss anybody? Wonderful. Do I have a motion to approve last month's minutes? For the last meeting minutes. I see Brenda with her hand up. She makes a motion. Do I have a second? Okay. One's gone twice. Neil, thank you very much.

Excellent.

Okay. Update on the Living Sea Walls project at Vogel Park. Does anybody have any insight on the timing on when that's going to go in?

I would say given that the chair is really the owner of that project, but she's been working closely with village staff. If someone from village staff, Frank, if you could take that, advise the update and where it's located and your communications, I'd appreciate it.

Well, what I'm waiting to hear is, and I've sent to Heidi, is how do we handle this money? How do we... I mean, I know that she has raised some money for it, but the contract will be with us to do the project. We'll be with the village.

Can you maybe respond with items that are sort of more relevant to the SRTF? Like where is this?

That is the seawall. I'm talking about the seawall project.

Yeah, yeah.

Frank, maybe we can either, I don't know how this works, but two options that I can think of if this helps is that I run a nonprofit. So if we needed an in-kind to handle that transfer, the second is possibly the North Bay Village Chamber. I don't know.

We have a nonprofit as well.

Right. And I mentioned that to Heidi and I wasn't sure whether They should make the donation with the money, wherever the money is. I mean, it's been raised. I'm not sure where it's housed at the moment, but I just need to get access to it so I can enter a contract with these people and we can start to work. I understand they're ready to go.

Okay.

I'll follow up on that, but I don't have any other update on the project itself. Nothing's been done.

Christina, Roger, do you guys have anything?

I just want to echo what Frank says. So this is the same concern I had about permitting fees. And I sent an email to Alicia, but we do need to meet and just make sure we're doing things the right way.

It needs to go through the nonprofit, I think, because there's no way for an individual to give money to the village. But the nonprofit is a Friends of North Bay Village, which is able to accept donations, but it's also able to spend on behalf of the village.

Well, we can do that with our nonprofit, too.

Right. That's what I'm suggesting. Your nonprofit, not mine. It's yours.

I just need to find out who's got the money so we can make the transfer.

I'm a little bit, just I'm a little bit something that we haven't quite sort of like nailed this down and that there's no recent update. The permits are, the plans are done, but we haven't submitted for permit because of this issue.

Well, the contractor will submit for the issue. I just got into a contract with them.

Okay. I'm less focused on that and sort of more now interested in what else sort of needs to be coordinated.

I think that's it. I think once we do the contract, then Alicia will work with the contractor. She's the one that's really on top of the project where they're going to I've seen where they're going to make the installation of the tiles. I've seen where they're going to make the installation of the red mangrove. So we're all set to go. It's just making the contractor going.

Okay. Okay.

Phase... Phase 4... I'm making a note for a follow-up for me. I'll make sure that Alicia is aware of this. Great. Our next topic. Sorry, let me get to my tab. I've got a billion of them right now. Meeting agenda. Okay. New business. So the West Drive, West Treasure Drive Stormwater Park last meeting, Christina came with a with a stellar vision that we were all really impressed with that she had just kind of started putting some some high level stuff together. Christina, have you have you evolved any thoughts or uh ideas on the stormwater park or how it more in general uh you were talking about how do we keep water on the island instead of having to pump it out so um what's uh what's on your mind um so i believe now the land is officially deeded to us is that correct um okay good it's still not uh reflected yet on property appraiser

Yeah, the deeds are with Tony. There's some issues that have to be resolved, he tells me before, and he thinks it'll be by the end of the month or the beginning of April when he can take care of it. There's some outstanding issues on the property you're talking about right now.

Okay. I believe we have a good vision based on my presentation and based on your feedback. I think we're ready to make a plan for that property. So demo design construction and also getting Steve to trim the tree. So those are my updates. It's kind of brief.

I have a couple of thoughts, Christina, because I know we are going to be tearing that building down. Hopefully, we are going to be contracting to send that material to a C&D recycling center, make sure that we are reclaiming that material. I had a second thought, but let's see who else has something.

Yeah, to add that to the work order for the demolition. I did at Resilience 365, Miami, I made some really great connections. and potential partners for that property. So I'm starting to identify some funding and or designers for the lot. So it should be really exciting. There were really, I networked with, Curtis and Rogers was there. The Underline is looking to expand into other types of projects. So I have different connections I'm exploring for the design of that property.

Oliver. Yeah, I just I just walked by there because it's such a nice day. I went for a walk and was looking at it. And I was. You saw me over there.

Yeah, I was like, that looks like Oliver. But this is Treasure Island. Yeah, I was doing an hour ago. Right.

Yeah, exactly. I was wearing my Pelican Harbor shirt. Yeah. I know it's mostly going to be passive, maybe some light uses. Just because of where it is, I just saw right at the end of the street there, it is an opportunity, if it makes sense, for some little kind of pocket park. I've seen them even in urban areas where just right on the street, there's just a little small area even for a bench or something. It doesn't have to be super intensive, but it's a nice place. If there's a shaded tree, eventually they're like kind of there is now to just kind of sit and rest. And I don't know, I just noticed that when I walked by. So I'm sure there's going to be lots of ideas.

That's the whole point.

Yep.

Yeah.

Okay, good. Yeah, Oliver, did you see Christina's stormwater park concept?

Yeah, yeah. I just didn't know which, you know, because as you go into the design phase, sometimes you see these ideas and just wanted to reiterate that that's one of the things I think is important because I know there's so many different things going on there.

Yeah, you know, the thing with Bayshore Park in Miami Beach, they took a part three and they developed it into a stormwater park, which during non-flooding events, it's a wonderful space for community to gather. Yeah, I just walked there this week, too. It's really nice. Right. And so it is how do we utilize this space for the public good, including... Including to retain water on land so that we don't have to pump it out into the bay. Right? Let the water percolate down. And the water will pool up there. And that's okay because that's what it's designed for. But it gives us so much opportunity to do this. Christina.

Can I comment on something real quick? Yeah. So... One thing, another opportunity that I see with this stormwater park in this particular location is in my brain, the two-way traffic at the intersection of North Treasure and West Treasure converts to one-way traffic headed southbound on West Treasure Drive, right? And so if that's gonna be a place where people are making a U-turn so that they can go eastbound on North Treasure, then we have an opportunity with the roadway design to combine some type of berm or other protective barrier in that corner because we have the right-of-way, right? If you have the right-of-way and the property on the corner, we have more flexibility now to improve both the roadway design using the additional land of the park. Christina, Roger, you guys get what I'm saying?

Yes, but that would be a separate project, I think, but we can anticipate with the stormwater park in the design what that would mean for the design of stormwater park.

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate that projects have to be separate because of timelines, but we also need to make sure that the projects are going to harmonize and align. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

And speaking of the harmonizing and aligning, we need to make sure that the design for the actual stormwater pump panels and so forth, where they're going to be located, how much space they're going to take. So, you know, hopefully with our designers on that, they're looking at that property and figuring with the pumps and where that equipment is gonna be. Is it gonna be over in one corner? Is it gonna be up by the sidewalk?

So Frank, literally a year ago, we told the designers of the pump station that because i i saw the plan and where they had the panels located um it was located on property that the village was quite literally never going to get access to it was on private property and i told them you absolutely cannot design those panels for that location we are going to eventually acquire west treasure drive 7560 you need to be designing for that location so i'm not the manager you know, of the various engineering firms, but BCC was notified. And I think the individual firms, it was EXP. I mean, they were on that call when we had that conversation. So the designs for the panels, at least for the electrical mechanical should reflect that property at West Treasure Drive.

Roger, have you seen them?

The plans don't reflect that, but they are aware, as of our most recent conversation with them, that they should relocate the panels to the property.

But, I mean, have they done any of that? Have we seen anything done, actually drawn up? No. Well, okay. Let's get together and talk about that because I don't want another Civic Park deal happening.

They were waiting on us to confirm that we were going to get the property. So we've been designing a lot of times, Frank, for things that have not been confirmed. And I'm not really comfortable doing that. So I impressed on them. Let us confirm that we are going to have that property. I know we've been telling them that we're going to get it. but- Roger, we're getting the property, it's just- No, no, so they've been notified of that and they are working on it.

Okay.

Roger, can I ask a question?

Yes, ma'am.

I have signed many checks to these engineering firms for this phase of Treasure Island and this design work. Are we paying them to design for a location that we know is not feasible and is not going to happen? Okay. Thank you. That's the right answer. Okay. Thank God.

Can I ask a quick question? Neil, yes. And the mayor would know firsthand. Mayor, when we did have the flooding in front of your buildings, The whole corner in front of your building in the street area is what really is under water and floods. I visually can't remember what it looks like on that piece of property. In other words, the front lawn back towards the house. I'm just wondering if everything is being designed to really be able to, that's where they need to capture and design most of this low point flooding, not say to put a pump way back on the property. It's not going to grab the water that it needs to grab. That's kind of my concern.

The pump station itself is going underground in the right of way. Oh, okay. The property today, when it floods, when it's bad, like the worst that I've seen it, the water makes its way up to the garage. And there's no garage. It's not a garage. It's the front room. It comes up to sort of that front base building. And then... it's like halfway up the front yard. I mean, it's, it's, and that's, that's today. I mean, that's five years ago. That's, that's what it was. So, yeah, I mean, it is, it, we've, we've obviously done and looked at the elevations. It's the lowest corner in the whole village.

All right. No, I just want to make sure that we're putting the right equipment to grab the water in the right place. That's all.

Mm-hmm.

So Christina, throughout the multiple Biscayne Bay Marine Health Coalition summits, we have seen a number of nature-based design companies who have done, like Curtis Rogers and others, like Walter Meyer, who just do some amazing work. And I would love to see kind of like the creativity from some of these folks and figure out how we can leverage this project to advance this kind of creativity. And I wonder almost, so I have two comments. One is that we might wanna figure out how to hear some pitches, so to speak. I don't know if we need to put out an RFP or a bid or if we hear pitches, but I believe that if we specify the general vision that we have and the things that we think are important and then put that out and then receive responses, we can gauge based on the different designers and not just the Not just some connections that we have maybe individually. There's a lot of really good talent out there in Miami here. The second thing that I'll say is that one of the things that the Underline did that was really great during the design process was the community engagement where they had stellar charrettes. where they would go through their vision, their plan, whatever. And then they had poster boards with all kinds of 50 different ideas that could be integrated within the underline, right? And people voted based on what was important to them. The value of this is it becomes a community project and becomes kind of collaborative. And then people will also understand this is an opportunity for us to help people understand the challenges within Biscayne Bay and what we are doing and what they can do. So I think it starts an interesting conversation. If the underline is getting into other things about this designing, boy, they did a heck of a job.

So I want to piggyback off of Dave's two points that support one another very nicely. Community engagement on this is of paramount importance. I would like for, and I love the pitch idea. I love it. I mean, I actually would really love to organize a sort of urban stormwater park event. competition pitch night you know and and have the community attend that um and then obviously we can pick a team however we decide we're going to pick a team and then once we get going absolutely i envision two back-to-back you know two charrettes at two different times so that two groups of people can can attend yeah i think Yeah, I mean, I also think that we need to be really clear about the basic parameters of the park. It's a passive park and it's a stormwater park, right? And so we really need to be at every step of public engagement. We need to be really clear about that so that people don't think that there's going to be a tot lot or, you know, a head-up court or something going on this park.

Yeah, and with the underline, that's the thing that stood out with me is The amount of how their engagement with the community, that really stood out to me. Of course, there's no guarantee that they'll choose to do a project with us, but I would love to do a charrette. We can definitely create some door hangers and pass them out on Treasure Island and then you know, social media, I mean, put it in the Islander for the other islands. I don't think we should, you might necessarily do door hangers for the other island. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be a great idea. We could do it ourselves so that the designers don't charge us for it. And then we just give us, give them our results. There are different ways to go about it.

I think there's, aren't there also like architecture schools or design schools that would revel in the opportunity to design a design?

Yes, but the problem, look, I love involving our universities. This is not to say that our universities are not exceptional assets, but we, incorporated a little bit of that when we were working on the very, very early iterations of the village hall. And it ended up that, I mean, and this was obviously for a multi-story building, very different, but it just, nothing was really feasible. So I would actually prefer to have accredited, licensed landscape architects and engineers and planners, you know, working on this.

And Brazaga also, they were eager to work on this. And they were on the North Miami Stormwater Park. And they did suggest some sort of competition between schools or something for this. So it could fill the idea of the pitch part, but not the design portion, the official design portion.

I will say when the mayor said something to me a while back or said something and I was a little surprised by how many consultants and different vendors that we had. And I really do like the idea of having whoever's dealing with our stormwater. also involved in this the the same park like having like one of one one set of people working on this project all entirely i think there's a lot of value in that and getting like you know just you can just get input from the community you know like different ideas yeah stellar anything else on this topic Wonderful. Okay. Next topic is discussion on Treasure Island drainage and roads. Anything? I don't know what this topic is. It was not mine.

Yeah, I'm not sure who created this item. I guess we could give our perspective in the...

I have a sneaking suspicion that this agenda was populated by the clerk who knows that I want us to keep talking about Treasure Island and roads unless the village manager or Roger Christina requested it. I don't know. But we should talk about it. I mean, I think, yeah.

What's happening?

Everybody should be aware.

What's happening? I do not know.

Well, the latest update, as some of you may know, is that we dissolved our work order with BCC because we found it to be an impediment. BCC had kind of an advisory role, so there was a lot of interaction between BCC and the different other consultants, EXP and Chenmore.

it just seemed to be holding us back roger i don't know if you want to add anything to that but yeah yeah just just that just you know to um piggyback on what you were saying the bcc's rules becoming increasingly adversarial and created a lot of friction and advancing the um treasure ones treasure island phase one in particular but also phase two um they were getting into the weeds and really spending most of their time defending their modeling on the master plan and it really didn't really it didn't really help our designers um and at the end of the day the designers exp they're not subs to the bcc they're you know on contract directly with the village and they are ultimately going to be responsible for sanding and sealing their drawings and design so um bcc was more of a friction point than anything else and you know we thought it was best to move on from that scope of work. It really wasn't serving any purpose from an administrative standpoint or from a technical standpoint.

What was BCC doing for us?

Their work order, which was created back when the village staff, we were heavily, seriously understaffed. Their work order was basically to manage the implementation and the design of the stormwater improvements across the village. And some of the things that they were doing were not in that scope. The scope of work that was written was very broad and vague. And ultimately, you know, it just wasn't, really serving its intended purpose.

Were they the ones who designed the new pump stations without injection wells?

No, no, they did not design. The only project that they directly have responsibility for designing was North Bay Island Phase 1. But they did not. I mean, what they submitted in the master plan is not a design, it's just a guide.

Okay. Because whoever designed those without pump stations, we should put them on the list of looking deep down into them. Okay. Anything on the community grand center opening?

Yeah, that's going to be a really magnificent community event. And we are very actively looking for Spartaners. That's a sponsor and a partner is a Spartaner. We're actively looking for sponsors and partners to amplify the event. So I would, if anyone has sponsor ideas, I would say please reach out to me directly. One thing, FIU has a mobile sort of like science lab, and we were thinking about maybe bringing that to Galleon Street. And it's going to be on Galleon Street. It's also going to be on the community center property. North Bay Village put together an ad hoc committee of residents who are planning the grand opening ceremony. There are seven residents. um it's it's great they've been meeting already um and so i'm just reaching out to you guys because a sponsorships and partnerships and b we would love for the sustainability and resilience task force to do a whole thing to have a table and to use that table as an opportunity to teach people about recycling or whatever it is you guys want to do i wanted to make sure that that event and the offer and the opportunity is communicated to you all. So I will open up the floor.

When is this? When's the date?

That's a great question. Yeah. So we are, Frank, do you have an answer on that yet or no?

Well, there you are. The contractor is saying he's going to be finished with the project by the end of May, first week of June, it will be done. So we're out there again today. They're making, every time I get there, there's a lot more progress that has taken place. They're finished the framing inside now and they're starting the drywall. It's starting to go up.

So the answer is very soon. We're going to need to make a decision about whether we're having this event in early June before people leave for the summer. or waiting until the end of the summer and having the event in the early fall. Because we're not gonna do it over the summer.

Is there gonna be programming throughout the summer? Activation in the space?

Well, the space, the fields are sort of spoken for, the pickleball and pedal courts. I mean, operationally, there's a lot of things that need to happen. Frank is probably better advised to sort of talk about that, but we're sort of just now into the operational phase of the conversation. I'm we have all of the agreements and everything. Now it's just bringing all of them to life, right? Who are they going to have on site? Who are we going to have on site? What platform are we using to book fields? I mean, all kinds of stuff.

I have a quick question on that. Number one, All of those students that gave their presentations at that meeting several months ago, I think all those presentations were excellent. I'm wondering, in other words, they had computer rooms and all kinds of other things. Are all those ideas really seriously being incorporated into how the space is going to be utilized?

The short answer is we're looking at everything, Neil. Okay, looking to have activities that are structured. And we're looking to have rooms that are unstructured, where children can come with their parents and do different things. I mean, there's a lot to, there's a lot of potential in there for different, trying different things. And we want to have programs for some of our seniors that are there that can come during the daytime. So, you know, while the kids are in school and we're looking at a seven day operation, it's a, you know, you're not going to have a community centers close on a weekend.

Right.

So, um, I've asked the, uh, our partners with this PFL, uh, that I want to have a meeting here very shortly to start talking about the actual operations of the site, what they envision, what they're planning on staffing, what their levels are going to be. And we will, you know, work off of that so that we can get something together. But it's not too early to be doing that.

Well, that's the second half of my question. You used the word staffing. What is our vision for, you know, what type of staff and from front desk to people? Are we hiring salaried staff? Employees, are we having residents, volunteers say at the front desk, reception, janitorial, all those type of things. Is there a budget for all of this?

Number one, there isn't a budget that's been created at this point. And we're looking at all of those things that you mentioned. There are going to have to be some people that are employees. You're going to have to have probably two shifts of people to be able to keep it open in the evenings too, in the weekends. You're going to have to have either a janitorial service or we have a full-time janitor there that is keeping the place tidy. And we're also with the city hall, we're looking at with the village hall, we're looking at maybe we can combine some things that work at both places on the janitorial maintenance side. So we just haven't, we've been building and we haven't been planning operational, but we're getting into the operations now.

Okay, I think there's a wonderful opportunity. You know, everybody shines in different ways. And I think there's probably a bunch of residents in the village that would love to, I envision when you first come in, you're going to have a reception desk and things of that, that people would really enjoy that type of volunteering. Again, I'm just throwing out my two cents.

No, Neil, you're right. We are looking at that.

Yeah, it's a wonderful, wonderful idea. Absolutely.

Yeah, I teach a local senior Tai Chi class over at Elite, and I'd be happy to move it over. Not Elite, it's Conviva now. I'd be happy to move it over to the center there.

Um, that's amazing, Oliver. I can't tell you guys. I mean, you can probably imagine I get stopped every single time I walk this dog with somebody who has an idea for the community center and wants to contribute in some way. A guy the other day, I thought he was Goron. So I yelled at him as he was jogging past and it turns out it wasn't Goron. So in any case, he was like, oh, I teach not Tai Chi. and not MMA, there's a big gap there. I know, but he teaches something and he was like, I would love to do a free weekly class at the community center when it gets built. And so there are so many people out there who wanna volunteer. And we're, like Frank said, like getting the mechanisms in place to be able to solicit those volunteers, to aggregate them, to reach out to them. And same thing with all of the other staffing and operational needs that we're going to have there.

Oh, you know. I might like to suggest just a couple of things. One is that any of the outdoor furniture that we get, we can actually get that made out of ocean bound plastic. So instead of buying benches and picnic tables that are made of new stuff, that is an option. So I'd love to explore that. I do have some contacts.

Send Frank the info, 100%. Send Frank the info.

I would love to see this venue be plastic-free to the greatest extent possible, including the vending. Any vending machine should be aluminum and not plastic. If we have any food or concessionaires or we rent out as party space, the people renting out the space and the catering should also be strictly plastic free to the greatest extent possible. We have to live by that and make sure, I probably don't need to say this, but make sure that we have access to water bottle refill stations, cold filtered water, even outside as people are walking by. to where they can get some cold refreshing water. Those are just a couple of my things. Let's lean in on sustainability. I don't know if there's space around the outside, but I think for a future topic I would love to talk about Yeah, just like some of the other things that we can be doing with the space. But I know that we were just at a mayor. We were just at in Bell Harbor and they had a beautiful space. I'm curious to see what they're doing. And, you know, the Scott Rakehouse Center in Miami Beach is just amazing. always got activations and so maybe maybe we want to get some ideas also maybe we just want to go take a field trip visit a couple of these places and see what their see what their programming looks like see what we like what we don't like fun um i think the only other thing is it should we should have the grand opening before we activate the space, ideally, if we can make that work. But I'm leaving like the second week of June, so I will not be able to table, but I think we can, I would love to, you know, maybe we can give out the recycling label stickers, you know, to people and they can just go Gorilla Stick them on their recycle bins.

Yeah. Why don't we... during our April SRTF meeting, because I feel like a month is probably enough for you guys to get it together about what you want to do for the tabling-wise. Why don't we have a discussion at the April meeting about what it is that SRTF wants to do? In the meantime, please email me or call me directly about partnerships or ideas. I promise that I will follow up on these things. Maggie was here from Kind Designs, but she probably had something to go do. But I think there are a lot of people who would love to participate. So just send me those ideas. If you want to reach out to somebody, just keep me in the loop. But yeah, so for the April meeting, I think we'll dedicate a discussion item to this. And by then, we'll be able to confirm that we're doing it. you know, in early June. I think, Dave, your point that you want to be there, but you're leaving the second week of June is really just sort of reflective of many people's situations. So the timing is going to be important.

Question, you've mentioned sponsors, you're looking for financial sponsors?

Yeah. Yeah. Financial sponsors, as well as, you know, people who like have a thing or a booth that is, you know, relevant, um, and, and good, you know, I don't think we want like sponsors and sponsors.

One of the it is it is it is not likely that this is going to be of interest to you but I can suggest that we just did a trash-a-thon with the school group along the JFK causeway we picked up 300 over 300 pounds and raised over thirty five hundred dollars for the um for pelican harbor seabird station and so this model can be used maybe we collect pledges from individual community members uh for other people who are going out and cleaning up trash and we build a community thing so not enough capacity but good idea all right perfect anything else on this topic great green infrastructure policy discussion

So I added this one, because I know Mayor Streiffel, we spoke about this in our last meeting. So I just wanted to... to inform the task force that I am working on a green infrastructure policy. It's inspired by different cities, including the city of Miami. And I've started with a draft. And thanks to the mayor's wonderful notes, I am updating the drafts. So basically, the policy will mandate for public project, for CIP project or projects in the public right-of-way, green infrastructure. So whether that be bioswales or, you know, so different green infrastructure. So that would include our parks also and any CIP projects. any CIP project that we would get. So that will be reflected in the work order. And I also want to add that we recently had our Harbor Island work order pass in commission and included a lot of sustainability forward items like a construction demolition impact memo, So we are going through that right now because we have the CRO in the CIP department, but this is our way of formalizing it in our policies. So I would love to hear your feedback on that so that I can incorporate it in my living document. And I'm also happy to share a more official, a closer to final version of that document at the next meeting.

I'd love to see exactly what you're referring to and then have a chance to chew on it. Whenever that's ready, I would be happy to take a look at it. I don't have any immediate thoughts except for the fact that I love that we're doing this. Oliver, Neil, any thoughts on this?

No, I look forward to reading it. I think it's great.

Stellar. Okay. Staff liaison, staff commission liaison updates. Anybody have anything to update us on?

Does staff have anything? Otherwise I'll jump in.

I hear a negative.

I don't know. Roger. Roger.

Oh, no, nothing from me. Nothing from me. Oh.

All right. So I want to update you guys on the villages solid waste privatization conversation. We had a very well attended commission meeting on the subject in February. Oliver, thank you for coming. Dave, thank you for coming. Neil, were you there? No. Okay. So, and then Commissioner Acosta held follow-up in-person information sessions the week of March 7th and 8th. She did a North Bay Island community meeting and a Treasure Island community meeting. We've got some really good feedback. We have a lot of questions. At the commission meeting this month, we decided that we were going to double down on communication, double down on answering the questions that have been posed by residents, and continue to evaluate. So I think the item will definitely be We'll have an update in April. I don't think we're going to be ready to vote until May. There's been some discussion about potentially putting this on the ballot. I don't support that. I don't think putting this on the ballot is the right answer for many reasons. but a lot of questions have been raised people still want to see sort of better clearer numbers people have asked a lot of really good questions about well what would it take to permit a waste hauler parking at our facility in Little River. So we're going to answer that question. And there's also the suggestion that what if we keep North Bay Village sanitation for single family areas, North Bay Island and Treasure Island, but we privatize commercial and multifamily sanitation. So that's also something that we're looking at. Anyway, it's still a lot of questions to be answered. The village, you know, Steve Buckland has been a champ. He keeps being directed to go back and get more answers and better answers. And we're definitely making him hustle for his pension. But, you know, we need we need more answers and we need to be communicating with our neighbors. So that's where things stand right now. Okay, so that's sanitation.

I actually have a thought on this, Mayor. If we are opening up this idea about what our sanitation looks like, Um, I think that we should be, uh, working on a plan that can incorporate the potential for, uh, composting pickup, um, and organic separation. I think we can be looking at this from a completely different framework. It seems like we're just trying to do what everybody else is doing, but like with a twist and, and, and, and, but I don't think any of it.

Let me, let me interrupt you. Um, cause it's 718 Frank. I agree with Dave. Do you need commission direction for Christina to be working with Steve in this conversation of solid waste privatization to be also now proactively creating, you know, these alternative sort of waste diversion plans so that our solid waste management is that much more comprehensive. I mean, I see where you're going with this, Dave. And like, I am a kindred spirit. And I think if we're gonna go through a transition of some sort, we should be completely holistic about it and do it as sustainably as possible. And I mean, I support that. Obviously, I think composting is great. And same with yard waste. Because with yard waste, we are still gonna be doing that. North Bay Village is still going to be responsible for yard waste across the village. Frank, do you need commission direction for that to happen?

No. I mean, listen, we can work on anything like that. And it's not an issue to be, you know, to get official, you know, direction from the commission to do it. We can do it just on the recommendation of the task force would like to look into that. I'll talk to Steve and Christina. I mean, we've now got Just internally, we now have Public Works and CIP are together in the same offices. So now they're able to really work together as a team, whereas before they were on separate floors and made it a little bit awkward. But right now they're together, which is good from many aspects. And so, you know, Christina, you understand it and get with Dave and you want to try to incorporate something in. It may not be in contracts that are out there. It may mean that we put something together and go out to bid all together for a different model of how we want to do this. And I think we would also have to get the feedback from the community on how much they really want to get involved in this, because I've got a couple of neighbors that are into the composting. It's not as easy as just going out and dumping some stuff in the pile. There's some maintenance that has to take place and so forth.

No, no, no. There are local businesses that provide compost pickup, and they do so at scale.

Understood.

Okay.

Understood.

And it was the licensing of it in the county just got a whole lot easier six months ago. So there are many, many more providers for composting services.

And I'll even suggest that one of the things that, you know, if we just... If we kind of start this as if we were doing this brand new, like what if, what would happen if, right? What would we design? I think we would even look for like tool stream recycling, right? Only to eliminate the contamination. or drastically different looking bins. There's so many things that if I was rebuilding this system from scratch that I would think we could take a look at and just get very clever about how we manage waste. We can eliminate 50% of our waste that we send to landfills by doing nothing even major and that hasn't already been done somewhere else.

And to follow up on what you're saying, Dave, I just wanted to put out there, people know my opinion, most of you on the issue, but I think it's important for us as a resiliency, as part of our name of our task force, to keep some hand the city, not to turn over 100% of the waste services in the city to a private organization. i think having our own even if it's just for single family or whatever i think it's really important for our city because it's going to keep active employees who work for north bay village knowing about where how how the trash works as opposed to just a private contractor and i think we sort of give that up if we just say oh you know what privatization is going to be completely handed over to waste management or somebody so that's that's just a point i wanted to make on record here um

Oliver, I'm going to support your statement with a little clarification. I think that the real value is if our staff is handling recycling, not handling landfill. Anybody can handle landfill. There's 30 companies across this county who will handle landfill and they will take it all to the same place. They are literally just dudes driving trucks.

Well, those dudes driving trucks drive through single family home communities. And to know those people is a very different conversation than just, it's just trash. No, it's people, it's human beings that come into our yards and grab our stuff. And we see them, we know them. And if it's a third party private contractor, it just changes the whole dynamics. And we also lose the ability to understand people. about how difficult the issues are with landfills if we're not actively involved.

But right now the county is handling this at residential.

No, it's not. Is it?

You're missing the point. Oliver is speaking on behalf of single family homeowners who have a sense of privacy and security in the system that they have had and known for 80 years.

And so- Who picks up? Sure, I get that. Who picks up?

Our staff picks up.

Your staff picks up both recycling and landfill from single family residences? No, just trash.

Trash.

Ah, who picks up the recycling? The county, I think. Does the county go back into somebody's backyard and do this backdoor service?

Nope, we bring our recycling bins to the curb.

Okay, if we're doing one, I don't know why, I'm not gonna argue why we do one versus like, why do we want white glove service for our landfill trash, but we are perfectly fine pulling out those wheelie carts on recycling day? i'll let you guys figure that out i'm coming at it oliver i appreciate the fact that you're that that you know your your your your guys hauling away the the trash and the safety and security you see no value in having a city employee i don't have an opinion i don't have an opinion okay okay that's not my opinion at all i don't live in a single family home no i'm saying just in terms of if even if we were even if who was picking up the trash if we brought it out for the city employee

You don't think it's important for the city to have awareness? I don't care.

I want to jump in here and respond to what you just said, Oliver. You are still going to see our Public Works employees in your yard and in the street. They're going to be focusing now on clearing those storm drains, managing our infrastructure, and clearing your roads. You're still going to see them. They are going to be incredibly visible. The same guys who are driving our trash trucks today, if we do privatize in single family, which we are not, we haven't made that decision again, right? I'm just saying. I really am uncomfortable with this sort of idea that is percolating throughout certain parts of North Bay Village right now that we're just not going to see our staff and that our public works employees are not going to be visible. They are going to be visible. You're going to see them with rakes and with trash cans and with their trucks, and they're going to be all over.

Yeah, I don't think anybody's saying that that's not going to happen. Nobody's... It's just the... The giving up of the knowledge of how, because currently we have staff that drive the trucks to the landfill. And as a city, I think that's kind of an important thing for us to know how to do. For sustainability reasons, I just think it is. Resiliency in storms and things like that. And you call up a private company and where are they after the storm when there's two weeks of no power and they're busy dealing with other things. I think we're going to regret that at some point. If we privatize everything, I do.

I'll let you guys go back and forth on that, but I want to play off of what you just said, Oliver.

I just wanted to respond to one thing that Oliver pointed out. If I remember correctly, and Frank, you can correct me here, with the proposal to privatize emergency waste services, like after a storm, would still remain under the purview of the city. So we would still be responsible for that. Is that right?

So what happens is we are, there's several things happening. The county is now coming out with another ordinance where they're requiring municipalities to have a place to deposit trash within their municipality. And there's an option out of that to engage the county with the location. So that's another, like a... a point of like we do after hurricanes where we have a certain place that we go where trash is dumped, where everybody's not going to the landfill. And then they bring in these contractors who use these tub grinders and that type of thing to reduce the material down. A hurricane or a major storm is a different issue than we're talking about day-to-day operations. And we will go out for a contractor You have to have two contractors who qualify for reimbursements through the FEMA process. You have to have a contractor for the debris hauling, and you have to have a contractor for the people that watch the haulers or the monitors to see that the theme is not being ripped off by trucks that are not filled to the capacity or that type of thing. So you got to have two different sets of people that are involved in that. And the last storm we had with Irma, which was the significant storm that we had, that really it was not even a hurricane for us. It was a tropical storm. Most of our debris was, uh, of the making of the trees and the limbs and that type of stuff. And, uh, And we had a contract with an outfit, but Hurricane Harvey hit in Texas at the same time. And our contractor went to Texas because that's where they make the money. And so we ended up with the county. The county gave us a contractor that worked very well with us. And within a week or so, we had a place pretty well cleaned up. But that's different than what we're talking about with the day-to-day handling of trash and picking up the stuff that's on the street. And we'll still be able to handle that with the people we have and the truck that we have.

Right. And then we still have the same responsibility for the village as far as picking up yard waste and white goods on request.

Yes, that's correct.

Can I just add one thing? Whether we go private or we stay with the village, I would love to see some metrics built into our trash and slash recycling system, especially if we plan to add composting. So we could see what that's going to do to the weight, the tonnage that goes to the landfill or the recycling plant every month.

I think that what you might be referring to, Christina, is a waste composition audit, where we sample the kind of materials that we have and then identify the biggest contributors of that waste, the biggest categories. And then we figure out how to eliminate the biggest volume of waste from the landfills in the most responsible way. I think that's exactly what you're talking about. The zero waste consultant for Miami-Dade County is now setting up one-on-one interviews with municipalities to understand their needs and how we're trying to address. I think what they're going to find is that everybody is doing something completely different. And I don't know that nobody's doing a great job at it right now. And I think this is just a tremendous opportunity because we're almost restarting from scratch. So we can then establish targets and goals. And if we engage the community in a way, in the right way on this, and they are active participants, then we can succeed. Now, one of the things that we have to build into this system that is failing right now, not North Bay Village, but the entire system, is trust in recycling. How many people doubt whether the recycling actually goes to the recycling facilities, right? And so when I say that if we're going to maintain a public service offering, if we're going to have our staff in trucks doing whatever, I personally believe that the best way to instill trust is knowing that our staff who we trust to go into our backyards and pull our carts out is responsibly taking that material to the material sorting facilities. Anybody can haul trash. No, none of them care about delivering high value, high quality recyclables that are not having contamination. If we have our own staff, We can do the container audits. We can reject loads much easier than a private waste hauler would. And I'll bet you we can get our contamination. Coral Gables contamination rate is, I think he said 12%. And that's really important to know because the waste management contract that Coral Gables has, the Coral Gables contract with waste management charges a contamination fee. So when they pick up recycling and it's 50% contaminated, we get double charged. We get charged for the hauling to the recycling facility. Then we get charged for hauling it to the landfill. We get charged twice. The incentive is not there for them to actually decrease contamination. So if we are in control of contamination, we can reduce our overall spend on landfill and recycling.

I can reach out to Coral Gables for language on their contamination fee because that one I wasn't aware of. I know they're stellar with recycling. It's in there. And I have done a waste audit in my past life. It's relatively inexpensive. I did it with just the City Hall at Pompano. And two other facilities, a parks facility, a community center. So I think that's definitely something we can do. Us having the community center being our property, I think is going to put us in an even better place to do it because we can...

I do not think that we're going to have the votes to spend money on a waste hauling audit.

We can also take the counties. The county has done a waste composition audit. They've already done it. There's already a pie chart. It's not going to be much different from us than it would be for Miami Beach.

Will you connect Christina to Mr. Russell? I followed up with him a couple weeks ago. I haven't heard back. I'm kind of done, so he can meet with Christina. That would be good.

Yeah, but I just wanted to say when I met the metrics, it wasn't so much for the audit. That's something we could do down the line. It's more something to build into... our contract if we go private, because I do hear it's a little easier to track private, or to build into our administrative habits here.

I think my highlight point in this, regardless, and I'm not talking about private versus public, there has to be a layer of transparency and what's called a chain of custody of this material so that we know that the truck that goes around and picks up the recycling actually is delivered to waste management Smurf out in Pepperc Pines. We have to have tracking. It should be electronic. It should be delivered to us automatically. Right now, they're gonna hand you a paper receipt and they're gonna fax it in and they're gonna wait for you to ask for it. And it's unacceptable because the whole game is just dodging so that nobody does any follow up. And if we really want, if we expect our residents to recycle and to divert waste, then we need to expect that the waste hauler who picks it up goes through the trouble of taking it to the murph and unless you're unless we are eyeballing these people we never have that trust that's my point and and if we are going to have city staff we should be having them do the recycling not landfill

All right. So that was the one thing that I wanted to update you on. The other is more, let's see, general news, I guess. We did receive the deeds to the North Treasure Drive and West Treasure Drive sites. The North Treasure Drive site is in the process of being designed for grading drainage um we're gonna install electrical and it will be sort of an open green space for sort of like very laid back um informal recreation so that's probably frank what would you say like three months out four months out we're gonna hustle it where we can to uh you know

our objective is is that our contract with the soccer place runs out at the end of the school year and uh we we want to get out from under this terribly expensive going out there and the kids we don't have as many participating because the parents not having a way to get out there and that type of thing they've some of them complained that they can't if it was here in the neighborhood you know and within the city their child could still participate So there are some advantages and we're trying to shoot for the early summer to be on that field. And it's gonna take some hustle and some work and we're partnering with... Right, so we're... I mean, that's our objective is to get it to where it is a functional field without any major installation work that was going to slow us down with the permitting and the going out to bid and that type of thing. We're trying to get it graded, get it sodded, get it irrigated, get some lights up so we can play in the evening times. So that's what Steve is working on now.

That's all I have. um actually the related group project was approved by miami-dade county shoreline development review on friday and if you guys recall uh that entire seawall is going to be um a a quote-unquote living seawall i don't know if they're going with kind designs or what but that's going to be like 1300 linear feet of biophilic living seawall on the tip of um east drive so that's really exciting and You know, we couldn't have done that without the pressure from you guys.

So kudos to you. Also, Mr. Eichner has reached out to me. He says, I want to know something about these living seawalls and see if we can do something along our project. Oh, good. So we're getting him connected to it.

good may i may i also uh request and suggest that we try to identify if we're partnering with both either kind designs or refarches or whoever i would really like to see some long-term monitoring where they go and do an assessment every year with a diver maybe associated with fiu or an independent to understand uh the value of these and you know um just like they sound awesome They sound absolutely awesome, and I'm probably pretty sure that they are going to work really well. But that research and study would benefit both us knowing that when we are pushing the developers for something that we're not making them do something that's not going to work. But also this is really valuable for whoever is doing these living seawalls. I would like for other cities to come and say, oh, well, like just like I do with the Stormwater Park, with Bayshore Park and Miami Beach, I would love for other people to be referencing and pointing to us and what we're doing as case studies and as success studies.

As part of the project going in at Vogel Park, there's a marine biologist that will be doing just that after it's installed. In fact, that team will be doing the actual installations of the organisms that are going to be in these tiles. It's not the contractor who installs the tiles.

Stellar. That's so great.

All right. Unless anyone has any questions for me about anything else going on in the village, I'm done with my update.

Excellent. Frank, Roger, Christina, you guys have anything? Sir?

Oh, thank you.

No? Okay. Motion to adjourn?

Motion.

Excellent. Everybody, like two weeks before, start thinking of your agenda items. Oh, I'm sorry. Does somebody have an agenda item or do we just want to let Alba email us for agenda items and we put anything on if we think of something?

Well, we have the mayor mentioned the opening at the table if we want to start thinking about that. Great.

Thank you, Oliver. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Have a wonderful evening. It's still beautiful outside.

Wait, wait, wait. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yes, ma'am. Hoop Free NBV is Saturday, April 25th from 10 to 12. I'm going to have the clerk follow up with you guys. But Saturday, April 25th, are there folks who would want to table at that event?

Saturday, April 25th, I think I can. But let me double check at work tomorrow.

Okay. All right. I'll have the clerk send an email.

Can we give away poop flags?

If you want, babe. Eat your heart out. Sure.

Poop flags. And can Frank's cute dog show up?

All right.

Bring your dog, Frank. Bring your dog.

No, no. That dog, that was Chip, and he is being dog-sitted right now while my daughter's out of town. And he likes to look out the window at the squirrels, so that's what he was doing.

Well, bring Chip.

Okay.

Me too. Meeting adjourned. Good night, everybody.

Thank you.

Thanks, everybody. Good night.

Good night.

Why can't we get in?

Thank you. Record.