Youth Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome everyone to the first 2025-2026 Youth Council Meeting. Today is August 13th and it's 3.11pm. I'm going to go ahead and call the roll. Council Member Sofia Butori. Yes. Council Member Sofia Chavez. Yes. Council Member Ella Garcia. Yes. Council Member Lucila Corr. Here. Council Member Jack O'Malley. Here. Council Member Isaac Pack. Here. And Council Member Dennis Temetas. Here. You have a quorum for the meeting. The first item on the meeting will be the approval of minutes. These are the minutes that we did back in, with the prior board, we did back in April. Is anyone aware how to make a motion, a second motion, to approve this, the minutes?

Motion to approve the minutes to approve the meeting.

I second.

I'm sorry, give me one second.

All those in favor say aye to approve the minutes. Aye. Motion carries. Now the next item will be item 4A, introduction of council members. So we will go around the room. Each one of you will say your name. Give a brief introduction of yourselves so you guys can get to know one another. Anyone want to start first?

I'm a senior in high school. I'm 17 years old. I was on the youth council last year. Just give me one second.

I would like to acknowledge now that Hannah Klingmas is good to participate.

Let her introduce herself and stuff.

Isaac Pack. Hi, my name is Isaac Pack. I'm going to junior year. I'm 16 and this is my first year on Youth Council. I'm Jack O'Malley.

I'm 16 and I'm in junior high school.

Hi, I'm Lucy LaCour, I'm 17, I'm going to be a senior, and I was only in council last year.

Hi, I'm Hannah Klingman, I'm 16, I'm a junior, and I was also only in council last year. Hi, I'm Noah Garcia, I'm a rising senior at Beach High, and I was also only in council last year. Hi, I'm Sophia Chavez, I'm going to be a junior, I'm also 16, and I was only in council last year. Hi, my name is Cynthia Vitoli, I'm 16, I'm a rising junior, and this is my first year in council.

The next item on the agenda will be item 4B, the selection of chair and vice chair. If you don't know what a chair and a vice chair is, basically the chair is the person that will be conducting the meeting. You guys do not abide by sunshine, meaning that you guys can communicate outside of So you guys can talk through text message and stuff like that. Last year, the trainer we had, she was kind of like the person who would talk to the clerk's office and let us know what items you guys wanted to put on the agenda each time. But yeah, basically that person will be the one making sure that the meeting goes forward, that there's no stalling on any type of items. and everything goes on smoothly. And then the vice chair is basically, they will act as chair when the chair is not present. So now one of you will have to nominate somebody to be the chair, somebody will have to second the nomination, and then all of you will have to vote, unless somebody wants to speak on why they would like to be the chair for the council.

I can speak. I would like to be chair. I would like to be chair. I was chair last year, and I think it was a really good year. We did a lot of different things. First of all, we did Viagra Cities. We worked with the Sustainability Committee to pass that commission. We're officially members of the Viagra Cities Network, and now we've been working over the summer a little bit to like sort of see what information we want to put about Surfside on the website, start developing projects that will help us maintain our membership in the Bartholomew Students Network. Another thing we did was we put on the States of Change, which was like an environmental summit with our state senator. It was a really cool event and a lot of you guys were there. And yeah, I just want to continue like our activities into this year and have a very good year. And keep growing. And then will us would like to be chair into the season?

Can anybody make a nomination for chair? I nominate Lucila for to be chair. That would be great. Can someone second the nomination? I second the nomination. I'm going to call roll. So if I'm calling your name, you can either say yes or no. This means that either you are okay with the motion or not okay with the motion. Council member Vittori? Yes. Council member Chavez? Yes. Council member Garcia? Yes. um the court yes council member o'malley yes council member pack yes and council member tamil test motion carries congratulations now the next one will be the uh selection of vice chair

So, I like to be vice chair. I was vice chair last year, and I think that one of the main things that we wanted to do in the second year of having youth council is like really establishing the ground rule, like the groundwork to make sure that this successfully continues in the future. I think we have a perfect ratio right now. We have four previous members, four new members, who are all juniors too, so... Yeah, as I said, it's pretty perfect. Lucero already kind of just said the main things that we did last year, but I want to make sure we continue doing some, like, impactful things and start building relationships or even more expanding our network as youth council and, yeah, building on that.

Does somebody want to make a nomination? I don't know if I know a question. So I'm on second denomination. That's it. Council Member Vittori. Yes. Council Member Chavez. Yes. Council Member Garcia. Yes. Council Member Klingman. Oh, sorry. She cannot vote today. I'm sorry. Council Member Licor. Yeah. Chair Licor. Sorry. That was Chair Licor. I changed that.

Council Member O'Malley. Yes.

Council Member Pack.

Yes. And Council Member Tomeltas. Yes. Congratulations, everyone.

Now I would give the floor to the chair to continue with the rest of the agenda.

Okay. So, item 4C, or can you skip over it for a second?

I was going to introduce item 4C. So this was a request from the Sustainability and Resiliency Committee. The chair of the committee was actually, for the last two weeks, have been discussing about having a joint meeting with you guys. uh so the resiliency committee is a committee for the town there's five members and they basically anything that has to do with resiliency for the town or sustainability they take care of that they have been in communications with some of you i believe for us 4c's agenda deadlines and meeting dates for us 4c is agenda deadlines and meeting dates is that not for D, and for C, discussion with the Sustainability Resilience Committee. Oh, really? I apologize. We can talk about the agenda deadlines, which is also my area. So, the agenda deadlines and meeting dates, these are the, sorry, If you guys look at your agenda, Angie and I have worked on these deadlines basically. So this last year, last term weren't as strict and I was kind of emailing you and reminding you of sending me items. This time around, we will not be doing so. We believe that you guys need to be responsible for the deadlines that we give you for your items. This meaning that you guys have this in advance for the whole semester, for the whole time you guys will be in school. You guys can see when the agenda will be distributed, when you guys will have a meeting, and when you guys need to give me these items by. Once you give me these items, what I'll do is either the chair will give all the items to me, or if one of you guys individually give it to me, I will still have to run it by the chair for it to be approved to be put on the agenda. I just really want to remind you guys, because I'm gonna be very strict, we're gonna try to be as strict as we can, just because this makes it easier for structure. We have a lot of other boards, and we try to make sure that they all follow the same structure that we're doing to you guys right now. So yeah, we're gonna be trying to send reminder emails if we can, but this will be 100%, not 100%, but most of it on you guys to be able to send me agenda items You guys, you know, you have good deadlines, you have bad. So take that home. Take a screenshot of it. You guys can access it online anytime. You can also email me if you want the agenda deadlines again. And if we do, for some reason, change the date of the meeting due to any kind of conflict, I will be updating the deadline so you guys do know. And then we'll be sending that reminder to you guys. But that's it. Now we can move on to the next item, which was the... The joint meeting? Yeah. So we had a couple of dates. Let me see if I have it on my phone. For that, where... I have sent it to the chair, and the chair did know that, I let the chair know from the sustainability committee that he wanted to meet next week, but that will be too much for you guys. You guys have just started school, and this is too much of a little notice. So I am suggesting the week of the 25th to the 27th, so 25, 26, and 27. That will be the three days that we're suggesting for the meeting day, and it will be at 5.30 p.m. So I think that's plenty of time for you guys to go to school and come over here and have a meeting. Regarding what you guys will be speaking about, that will be up to the chair of the sustainability committee. I also put a memo in there that he wrote himself, and you guys are more than welcome to reach out to him as well. Would the joint meeting replace our September 3rd meeting? No. It will be, unless you guys want to. But if you guys feel like it's too much to have back-to-back, that will be up to you guys. But this will be a completely different meeting.

Does anybody know any times that definitely don't work for them? I would like to do the Tuesday the 26th, if possible.

So because this is a meeting, just so you guys know, because this is a meeting that is outside of your regular meeting time, I just want you guys to know that anything that is not a regular meeting, so let's say you guys meet first Wednesday of every month. Today we did it a little bit differently because some of you guys were out of town. But you set times to meet as the first once every month at 5, 5.30. I believe you guys prefer 5.30. And those are considered your regular meetings. If you do miss per calendar year, three regular meetings, then you are subject to be removed from the board. But because this is a joint meeting and it's outside of your regular scheduling, it will not count towards your meetings. your accesses. So any special meeting, joint meetings, anything that's outside of that regular schedule that I had just mentioned, that doesn't count. So it's okay if you are not able to come. We also post the audios after the meeting. We have the minutes. You're more than welcome to talk to your members. That's a good thing about this board, you guys are outside of the sunshine, so you guys can communicate with each other about anything that happens.

So it's the 26th at 5.30? Is that what it is?

Is that okay for most of you? The 26th? Okay. At 5.30. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and let the chair of the sustainability now, and then we'll see if the rest of the board members are okay with meeting at this time.

Does anybody have any topics they think they might want to discuss during that meeting? Like anything just top of mind now? If not, we can, we'll discuss it later, like in between the meetings, but does anyone have anything sustainability related?

I mean, I'm assuming you're going to talk about, like, how, like, the body filler, which is, like, what's, like, what's going on in the middle of your nose.

If I may, Madam Chair, I apologize. If you guys can, if you guys want to, you are more than welcome to look at what was discussed in the last sustainability meeting and look over at those minutes. We actually posted the new agenda tomorrow. So if you guys can look at it, it's going to be on our website. And from there, you guys can kind of brainstorm. And then I assume you guys will have a group chat in there from there. Come up with items and then send it to me so I can discuss them with the chair of the sustainability committee.

Maybe, I know it's kind of far away, I'm not sure if we're going to do it again this year, the Florida League of Cities, and if we're going to go talk to any senators, but if we're planning on kind of lobbying anyone in Washington, we can, I guess, talk to them about what would be good topics and how to convey that message to them, so maybe, I guess, we can start planning that.

So the Sustainability and Resiliency Committee, I don't know, it's just an open question, do they work on sustainability specifically within Surfside or both Surfside and MS Surfside can support surrounding communities?

I would say that They're mainly working on initiatives within Surfside, but I don't think that their scope is limited to, like, in terms of what they can suggest passes a resolution or whatever, it's within Surfside, but I'm sure they've done collaborations with other cities and surrounding areas. Are there also any questions about the Sinaloa committee, or like, the meeting?

Oh, the university, yeah? For the upcoming meeting. Item 5A, you want to move to that? We can move to item 5A. Alla Garcia, for the upcoming meeting, or just, I guess, also an open statement, does anyone have any ideas? They don't have to be well planned out or anything, but that they want to do with the council, like any events they want to plan, just anything in mind?

I don't know, but since I was in April, so maybe it's the last environmental summit, it would be so awesome to have another one. I don't know. From what I heard and stuff, it went very well. So it would be cool to do something like that.

Kai, who's like the legislative aide or whatever, and Senator Jones and them, they were texting us and they had given us some environmental films. There was a film that they had watched. And they were like, oh, you guys should watch it and even potentially have a screening of it at the town and have a space for discussion. It was about urban heat and overheating in these towns. And they were like, we really found this interesting. What if you guys had a screening about it? We could talk to the sustainability committee. Yeah. And we can share the specifics about the... like training in the group chat once we make it after this meeting so that everyone's like caught up and does anyone have any like conflicts for september 3rd i'll fight 30. okay

Hello, Garcia. Also, kind of relating it back to the Florida League of Cities thing when we went to Tallahassee, or just maintaining, relating to the Florida Senator, I think that, I remember when you were planning for the field trip, the Surfside lobbyist was talking about date days, or like, yeah, something like that, and I think he said that that would be this year, like sometime this year, from now to December, I think it was in October or something. So maybe we could look into that, if that's anything that we want to do. It's also kind of just lobbying for interest, but you actually would have more of a time to be given before everything is over. Because when we went to our senator, it was kind of at the end of the legislative session,

Lucila Court. Okay, we can probably just move on to item 6. Does anyone have a motion to adjourn the meeting?

I mean, I did have one idea. So, one thing I was thinking about is, like, this summer, one thing I took advantage of in Surfside, like, one of our time amenities, we kind of ties it to Parks and Rec, is the pickleball courts on the tennis courts. Like, that was something that me and my family used a lot this summer. And I was thinking maybe an interesting thing that we might want to organize within Youth Council is possibly having maybe a tournament or a get-together around pickleball. It doesn't necessarily have to be sort of formal, but maybe something that the Youth Council puts on, like a community pickleball tournament or something like that. Because I also noticed there are a lot of other kids from the neighborhood or even surrounding neighborhoods who have friends in the neighborhood and they play. But there's also no universal meetup, and there also isn't really a universal way for us to communicate. There isn't really a group chat or anything like that. Or even working with Parsec Rect to develop some kind of messaging service, or getting the approval of Parsec Rect to put up some QR codes for a WhatsApp group chat, just so it's more aligned. And I think it could be interesting for people to get together and communicate with each other. I mean, I don't have, like, a specific emotion for this one.

No, no, no. I love that idea. I love playing pickleball. I think it's really fun, and I think that's a good idea. I feel like a lot of people would go to that. It's, like, a round-robin. And, wait, actually, then, before we adjourn, can everyone just go, can we just go around and everyone say, like, one or two things that they're sort of, like, interested in? Like, is it sustainability? Is it, like... lobbying, I don't know, whatever it is you're interested about that is sort of related to the council for this coming year.

Denise?

Okay, I'll start again. I guess sustainability and just, I guess, event planning as well.

Isaac, I would actually say the same thing. Similar things. I mean, yeah, like also finding a way to plan events so the community becomes more aligned with each other.

I think event planning is probably...

I like sustainability and hosting challenges and stuff like that. I like sustainability and civic engagement.

I'd say, like, for me, oh, something to try is, like, sustainability, environment, and also more sports and stuff that, like, kids can, like, meet and just do more community activities.

So, for Victoria, definitely sustainability. And I actually have an idea. Do you know the bay areas? Like... I don't know how to explain it, but the area is that the houses open up to the canal. That exact area. I've noticed that we don't really do much with that unless there's like little benches or people use it to fish. And I was thinking maybe we could start little pollination areas there. Because it'd definitely be pretty. Let's start off with that. So it's definitely, it's nice for people to see. And yet again, pollination to save the building. I heard that is, yeah, so you guys can also put her data if you want to. Okay, I love these ideas. I think we should, they're definitely going to be on the agenda for our next meeting so we can start discussing them and put them in action. Okay, final time. Does anyone else have any ideas? Anything you want to say? Nothing? Questions?

I'm going to go to Sia. When we were, also again, when we were at the Florida League of Cities thing, we had this activity where we wrote down like ground rules that we would want to set for our youth council and we can solidify this later but we kind of just had like throughout the term throughout the year we think that everyone should introduce at least one long-term idea and a short-term idea they don't have to be all executed obviously because last year we had three major things that were already successful so we can keep it to that number but Just to foster participation. We already have ideas coming in, so that's really great. But just that, and then at the same time, for leadership, have people leading a certain event or idea.

Like, yeah, if you guys are proposing a project, then you can be the person overseeing that. You can be, like, the person spearheading that project. And the goal is to have, like, different projects going on at the same time, and everyone's doing something that they actually care about. Everyone's actually pursuing a project that is, like, that connects to them. Um, and yeah, so I think Ella's point about the ground rules is, or not ground rules, but, like, I don't know how to call it, but, like, that's, I don't, like, I don't know. But, um, is good, and I think we can go over them next meeting. It's something like, everyone speaks every meeting, or something like that, just to make sure that no one's voice is being crowded out, or no people are too afraid to speak or say something, because any idea is a good idea. We want everyone to be happy with what they're doing this term, and yeah. Okay, so, if no one has anything else, we can move on to the six, and I would welcome a motion to adjourn. So I can...

The chair kind of, like, the middle.

Oh, yeah. Oh.

All right. I think we'll have to take our listening in. Second.

Who's in favor? I'm in favor.