Resident Services Board - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

recording in progress hello everybody hi lydia my camera how's everybody Can you hear me?

I can hear you. Okay.

You're doing great.

What's up, Adahim? How you doing? Doing good.

I don't see Francois. I'll give him a minute and see if he gets on here.

Who else are we missing? Do we have a fifth now?

It's Claudia, but I didn't see her accepting. I don't know if she accepted today.

I think that's the third one she's missed, right? Or at least that I...

This is the second.

Oh, okay.

It's only our third for the new board.

Okay.

I thought I heard that... She was at the first one, but she didn't make the live one, and this will be her second.

Oh, okay. Gotcha.

632... Give him a minute.

Our videos, the meetings are like, um, transcripted by AI and it will create the meeting minute.

No, they actually were done by hand by the secretary, which is now Francois. I think this should be AI myself, I mean.

Well, he should be able to use the AI to at least help him put together that thing. So that's good. I saw that too. That's new, I think, because I didn't see that before.

Okay, so we're going to start. Let's bring the meeting to order at 6.33. Take the roll, Jose.

Present.

Rahim.

Yes, present.

Francois. Not present. Claudia, not present. And I'm present. So let's see. Approval of the mini-meds for March 4th. Do I have... Do we all agree to approve?

Yep. Yes. Agreed.

Okay. That's easy. There's no old business on the agenda. which I thought we did have, but there's not on here. So new business is discussion of the North Bay Village 5K race.

Yep. I can update on that. I had a call with Integrity Multisport this week and confirmed some stuff I think is going to be good news for us. So talk to Cassidy Whelan over there. And where do I start? So first of all, they are a very reputable company in terms they do a ton of their own races and they usually focus on doing their own things. But they are open to doing events for cities like ours and villages like ours. So talk to them. They're open to it. The cost for it that they've given us, and I think this is the same that they had given Julie, was $9,900. That includes in the $9,900, just so you know, give me a second, I'll tell you what it includes. But it includes the metals that come with it. The, will it come with that? And then also, let me just review the screenshots you sent me. The fee is $9,800, includes setup of registration, simple webpage for the event, course marking and measurement, finish line arch and chute, bib numbers with chips for the first 300 racers, staff to manage setup, water station management, packet pickup, awards, tables, and chairs for packet pickup and water station supplies for water station cups of water. What it does not include is T-shirts if we wanted to do T-shirts and volunteers and police for enforcement, like, you know, for shutting down roads if we need to, which I don't think we would have to do a ton of that for this based on the ones I'd seen in the past. We used to do many years ago. The causeway would be part of it. So maybe we shut down. We're talking something from like 9 to 12 or 9 to 1130. not even for the race portion. It'd be a 5K run walk. So that's good news. I think $9,900 is pretty doable. We would look to help augment that cost by getting some corporate sponsorships potentially, and then also other means, maybe some from the city, maybe some from a corporate sponsorship. We have to work that out. Potential dates that I talked about with them. Basically, their races, their slow time begins in January. So Cassidy was able to give me a couple of days. She's like, we can choose January 7th or 14th, which is Saturdays. We can do February 7th or 14th or March 7th or 14th. We just pick those dates, you know, just as a discussion point. That'd be something for us to discuss and really nail down the date. I'd like to see if that aligns with our budget cycle, right? And if those dates are open for the city, and I know that we'd have to get people involved. So those are the logistics behind it, but we've got the costs, we got what it includes, doable price, I think. And now we would just have to kind of nail down the dates. Follow up with her would be, I told her we were having a board meeting tonight. We would start discussing the dates. So I think the first discussion point on this is what dates would we want to shoot for? And we have a few options. So I'll open it up to either Julie, Vice Mayor Cook, or the board. What do you guys think?

I like February.

Yeah, I like February too, because it's after the holidays and it's still cool. And there's not a whole lot going on as far as holidays in February for interfering with other things. I don't know if it interferes with anything with the village if they have a calendar that far out. It's definitely after the budget cycle.

Yep, I would think so. So it's something we could plan for now. We're more than eight months ahead, you know, planning. So I think it's good that we get ahead of it. But I'd be excited to bring the 5K back or some 5K back towards the village because it's something that I've heard a lot from the residents. Like, why don't we do more things around sports?

When was it last held, Jose?

Oh, man. The last time one was held, I would say probably 15 years ago.

Oh, wow. And is it open to outside residents as well?

That one was, and that one back in the day, I lived in Bayview Terrace when that happened. So I want to say 2005 was the last one that I, that I remember doing somewhere around that area, that, that timeframe.

Oh, nice.

But it was a, it was a North Bay Village run, walk slash roller blade. And people were, they had like a roller blade, which I thought was kind of unique. I'd never seen that. I'm not suggesting we do that. I said, we keep it simple. you know just to get it started again you know the north bay village run walk we had two tiers for the runners the runners start first they go and then the walkers are the slower runners you know, get started on the second stage. We finish and then we finish maybe at the park or wherever we decide to finish. This company would also help with the design of the course. So I imagine if we decide to go forward here, meetings with them on, okay, where do we start? Where do we stop? But I would also think that after we're done, we have, you know, obviously an award ceremony or something where we, like a typical event where we have maybe music, maybe some food trucks. Like if you guys have done 5Ks in the past, which I'm sure some of you have, after you're done, you're usually like, we get sponsors to set up tables who could also help pay for the event. to have giveaways and to give away power bars or snacks and things like that. The larger 5Ks that I've done, I've done quite a few in my time. My knees don't hold up as much anymore, but I still do them. I just did one in November for the Turkey Trout. You know, so I love doing these events. They bring out family. They bring out community. They're around a healthy theme, sports, you know, running and things like that. So I think it's a win-win. But that's, I think, some of the other logistics on, okay, the race is one thing, but what do we plan for the future? at post race you know and we can keep it you know low key for this first one i think maybe every year we we build on it but i think it's uh it's a good thing so yeah so you say february i have a question for you as a long-time resident how was the attendance of the 5k the last time that we did at the north bay village because i wasn't around It was well attended. I remember it was right after, right after or before a hurricane. I remember because it was like, I remember it was after, right? I remember it was like after the hurricane and we still had it and a ton of people showed up like, and it started.

Oh no, it was before. I'm sorry. The hurricane was 2006.

Okay, yeah. So I remember it was like right around, I was about to say, I was pretty sure it was before the hurricane. Yeah. But we got a ton of people show up. And if I'm not mistaken, it ended at the pirate park. I remember it was Galleon was like where they had the archway and everything. Excuse me. So it was well attended by the city.

What does well attended mean? Is it 100 people, 500 people? Yeah.

I'm not sure. I can't give you, I mean, it was, you know, if I had to throw a number at it, it was a couple hundred folks. I mean, probably more. I mean, it, it was, I just remember there being a good amount of people there from the village and from, you know, outsiders just from like, so now this was like, you know, I moved here in 2001. So it was maybe four or five years after I moved here at that time. I didn't, know as many people as I do now in the community. So I couldn't give you a good gauge of how many community people, but just based on, you know, my conversations, I was just at the soccer field talking to some of the parents and they're like, Oh, that'd be a great idea. I've been talking about this for a couple of years. So like, I always bring it up. I'm always like, Hey, it wouldn't be great to have a 5k. And I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, no, that wouldn't be good. I think if marketed well and put out there, we would get a good amount of people that would do it. Especially if you just walk around the village right now at this time, you see a lot of runners, a lot of walkers. We don't make it about a... It's not a competition. It's a community event. For those who do want to compete and want to go out there and crush their 5K, fine. Go ahead. We'll have... a winner's podium for that. But for the most part, it's a run, walk families, bring your kids, you know, if you want, you know, babies to come out there with the strollers, fine. Right. Like it's, it's more of a community event. And I think the event after the event would be important as well. Right. But can't give you a number, but it was, I would say a couple hundred folks, right. It was, there was a, there was a good amount of people there.

I think you would get a few hundred as well.

I think easily we get a few hundred.

Yeah.

I think so. I think so. Yeah, and we could do an after event at Happy's or something.

Well, usually these events, like maybe like I would envision doing like in the parking lot somewhere where we have tents and tables and things like that, where typical of those 5K events, if promoted and marketed right and get some good sponsors, we could get some of the businesses from the village to set up tables, right? And, you know.

Yeah, I mean, Civic Park would be nice, like in that area by the water or Vogel.

Yeah. And that would be a good time to get some support for the run club.

Exactly. We could even be sponsored by the run club or something, right? And then at that, we'll set up a run club table and be like, hey.

Yeah, we need that.

maybe we make it part of the run club, the manual North Bay village 5k sponsored by the run club. And we set up a table at the event, you know, and then you sign up people. Hey, and if you guys want to, Hey, we have a run club here, you know, um, sign up, you know, or just here's the WhatsApp, you know, chat that we have going, we'll, we'll join you. So two birds with one stone there.

Are you getting people?

Yes, we had two new people yesterday.

Awesome.

So, yeah.

You're running two, Francois?

Yes, I'm trying to show up religiously because if you miss one time, it's very hard to run again. So it's easy to run every weekend or every week, I should say.

great i'm on the what's up chat and i get all the banter back and forth about where they're meeting and the pictures from everybody it's actually great job fire him and france ball just on maintaining it and getting people to show up because it's not easy sometimes it rains and sometimes before when i'm seeing on that whatsapp group chat we have a good core group i'd love to see it grow

Yes, exactly.

You have a good core group of runners that show up and, you know, runners are like, you know, once you get into it, this was like 10 years ago, I would be so running every Monday and I'm done with excuses. I should have shown up by now, but I would be like, you guys would be waiting on me like half hour, you know.

We're not saying anything. We're staying quiet. This is self-admissible, that's all.

Yeah. But I'll try to show up one of these days. Mondays are kind of tough. But, I mean, from what I'm seeing, it looks like it's doing great. Probably need to market it more or have a more consistent, you know, way to invite people. I think a lot of people would – maybe a lot of people don't know about it as much. But back to the 5K, yeah, there's a lot of things we can do, I think, that would open it up. Yeah. That's all I had on the 5K stuff. I think so. What I heard was February 7th, 14th, I'll get back with Cassidy and let her know. And then we'll go from there. Julie, Lily, any thoughts on kind of what I said or feedback?

Um, nope. Um, everything you mentioned was everything that I mentioned our last meeting, all the details about what it included and everything. And that was the same price point that I'd given last time. The only difference now is that since our last meeting, um, we are working on the budget. So I am going to budget for this event for us. So that'll cover everything. Um, just in case we, you know, can't have any sponsors or anything like that. And we'll try to make it annual for sure. And I think February looks good for now. Um,

Okay. I'll loop you in on all the communications that I have with her. Of course, you're on that thread.

It's okay. I already spoke with, I think it was Robert. So I've been going back and forth with him. So I'm pretty good. So yeah, I think it sounds good. We'll just kind of chat with, I guess, commission and see what looks good for a date. And you guys are from February.

You already added it to the budget?

To the proposal.

Yeah, to the proposal.

Yeah, so we're not there yet. So obviously that will be dependent on the commission, of course. Of course. And if that doesn't work, then we'll go back to the drawing board or we'll work on sponsors or something. Okay.

I would hope that we would get partial funding. And when that does hit the commission, I'd love to know. So maybe I can attend that meeting or at least I'd love to speak on it and just give my two cents on why I think it'd be great for the village.

Yeah, all of our meetings, the budget workshops should be online. I think the first one is maybe June. So we have a budget workshop. We have a second workshop, and then we have a hearing, and then we have a second hearing, I believe, throughout the summer.

Okay. Well, good news is we're ahead of it. So thanks again for the support there.

Thank you. Any other questions on the 5K?

Okay.

Or the discussion on the formation. I'm sorry. Somebody say something? No.

No, sorry. I was just responding, yeah. Okay.

Discussion on the formation of a new tech council.

That's mine as well. I'll take that. So, yeah, this is something I've been talking about for some time, and it's been forming, right? And those of you who saw the event we did about a month ago at Palm Tree Club where Gorn, myself, South Florida Tech friends came, North Bay Village Chamber of Commerce was there. That was the kind of kickoff event for us to start forming what I'll call the North Bay Village Tech Council, where eventually we'd want to be looped in with Chamber of Commerce. But I think that's a step that we would take. But what I wanted to propose tonight is just the formation, much like Faraheem's Run Club. We already got a logo for it. I've already got a core group of people. North Bay Village residents who are in tech like myself and Goran. The idea would be to formally get it announced tonight so that I can work with maybe the city on using the logo that we've created and then just start promoting it on the social media stuff, on the social media sites that we have and just talking about adding it to the event calendars for the city where the idea would be to do a few things, right? And I would envision Okay. I know Gorin's got another event coming on April 9th, which I will not be able to attend due to work constraints. But I think that event is going to be around some AWS stuff, but also inviting folks to come attend who are interested in talking about technology for not only just networking the purpose of networking but also to come together and talk about what programs we can do for our residents right i'm envisioning things like um you know tech 101 seminars for kids who are looking to get in tech right helping fund scholarships for kids who want to get in tech helping uh going to the school and presenting with folks in the industry that could talk about excuse me, about technology and things like that. Coming up with a directory of services for our residents who need technology services in the village, much like say the Optimist Club does with their directory of services, but focused on tech, right? What we looked at when we double clicked on this about a year ago, was there's a lot of folks who work in tech in North Bay Village, all three islands, right? And so getting that core together, and from there, we can look at helping kids right there, you know, with internships for some of these tech companies that I have a lot of access to, Gorin has a lot of access to, right? But really just getting a focus on, you know, as our city grows, right? making sure our residents have programs around technology, mostly for our kids, but also having more of a think-take around how could we impact technology for the village? Could we do things around IoT maybe or other technologies? There's been a lot of things thrown out there. And at these monthly meetings, we would talk about this, about, hey, You know, what can we do coming up that could, you know, a good program. Once somebody threw out, we could show kids how to operate drones or stuff like that. Or, I mean, the possibilities are endless. There's so much stuff we can double tap on.

The key seems to be information literacy as well, right? Yes. How to manipulate information so that mankind or humans can benefit or young kids can benefit.

Yeah. I mean, it could be around that. We could have topics around cybersecurity, cloud, IoT, workshops for kids who want to get in tech. And we could tap into sources around – there's a guy who owns a business here who does classes on this stuff. Their business is doing – This is for corporate resources, but they also have things on tech. So I could see us doing a workshop at City Hall for kids on a various amount of topics. I mean, there's so many things. And this tech club initiative would be help us form that agenda. Right. Let's get organized and be like, what could we do? What can we do around? I mean, things like and this is not something that we'll necessarily do, but things like, you know, we have resident one particular in particular who who's very big on like, oh, we should have drones flying around the city for this. I'm like, hey, I don't know about that. Or we should have, you know, more better surveillance things for the city or gunshot detection, you know, technology and stuff like that. OK, maybe that's a little too far fetched. I think we start with more. programs for the kids and seminars. I think really helping kids focus their career on tech is something that I would like to see. If you're thinking about going that route for maybe the middle school kids or kids who are already looking at going into college and things like that, or they may want to look at tech as an industry, as a career, we could help them with that.

Where do you want to bring these people together?

So we would pick every month or so. Maybe we do a quarterly meeting at first. Maybe we move to a monthly meeting. But we could do it at our local establishments, either at Palm Tree Club, maybe the upstairs, or Osteria in the back room. But the idea would be to do it at our local establishments. you know, businesses, right? We get to rotate around. We do Petra Lunga. We could do Habib. We could do, my God, why am I drawing a blank? You just mentioned it, Gord. I can't remember.

Palm Tree Club.

Palm Tree Club, but what's the other one right here? Right next to the town hall that, the Indian, Happies, yes, but there's that Indian restaurant there.

Yeah, the Indian restaurant, yeah.

Presto A.

Yes, right? We could even do it at people's houses, wherever. We could do it at rec rooms and condos, right? There's a lot of locations we could do, but the point would be to meet up in our village to talk about tech initiatives and tech programs for our kids and for our residents. And then also do a directory. One guy reached out to me recently. He's like, hey, do you know anywhere I could go get computer repair? Um, there's gotta be, there's, I know there's a couple companies here. One of the guys who's interested in, who's going to be one of the core actually helped me do the logo. He's got his own, um, company value added resellers. We call it where they focus on VDI, right. Or they also, uh, focus on services for, uh, tech services for residents and businesses and stuff like that. So there's two or three I can think off the top of my head of business owners who live in North Bay Village who are in tech, who offer services to companies today that very well could be here in North Bay Village.

How will we go about starting it, you think?

So I think today what I wanted to do is just kind of officially get a buy-in from the board and see that, okay, it's something we could do, a new tech club council that we could start. I already have a logo designed. And then... probably by next month after this April 9th event that Gorin is doing. We promote it further there. We get more people interested in signing up. We already have a list of people who wanna sign up. We had QR codes at the event we did at Palm Tree Club. And then the next month, maybe May, June, we have our first official North Bay Village Tech Council meeting that I'd help coordinate with others. Not something I want to do or could do on my own. I will need help and I'll get people to help us. But then once we nail down that date, we put it out there. come, come join us at the first, second, you know, meeting for the North Bay village tech council. And we see how it goes and we start getting people and we start building momentum slowly, but surely, but it's going to take some work. It's not, you know, not something that's going to be just easily done overnight. So.

So we have two scholarships and I heard that there are no applications in, is that true? And so I'm thinking, are you going to have the same kind of problem with this tech council where you wanted to benefit young kids and, We've created a scholarship and no one's even applied to the scholarship.

Yeah, maybe. This wouldn't just be for kids, though. It'd be actually more suited for adults. But then in that program, if we get eventually looped in with North Bay Village Chamber of Commerce, we have programs for kids, right, where they'll be able to You know, from the adults or the people in that club, you have kids that are interested in this. But it's a good question, Francois. You don't know if you don't try. So that's what we would aim on doing is building momentum and, you know, synergy for this. But it's not going to be done easily.

Right. Well, you've got my support. Whenever the time comes, I'm there to support you and help you and set that up. Yep.

Yep.

I think it's something worth to try. It sounds interesting. It can support new people. I'm thinking if new people try to get an attack, they can come to you and you can get support from this club.

I do this now in my career now. I mentor a lot of young sales professionals looking to get into tech. I already help a lot of young people getting into tech with internships and entry-level positions at various tech companies I know. So this is something I do already. but I'd want to do it for North Bay Village. This is something I do now with just people in tech. I've been in tech in South Florida for close to 30 years. So it could be something that we, you know, but the intention here would be like, let's bring it to North Bay Village.

Yeah, I imagine it can be different topics. Sometimes it can be, oh, how to get an internship. And it targets certain people, certain age, or how to have a future career, a future in tech that's more for young kids or something for adults, how to use tech. So it can be for different topics can target different age groups.

Yeah, and the goal would be every RSAB meeting we have, I'll have an agenda. They'll be like, hey, this is what we're focusing on for this month's North Bay Village Tech Club, and we're doing this. We do a flyer, we put it out there, and we start trying to, you know, location where we're meeting, what we're going to cover. You know, people who, even people who aren't in tech, And I've had several people come up to me and say, I'm not in tech, you know, but I'd love to hear about, you know, this or that, or I'd love to be involved. So technology normally attracts people of all walks of life, right? So it's not just people in tech, but the base would be people like myself and Goran who are already in tech. helping our kids learn about tech and creating opportunities for them around technology. So there's a ton of stuff. You can go outside of cybersecurity, cloud, you can get into networking, you can get into Chat GPT or AI course on AI and machine learning and 101 for kids. I mean, that's something right now that's revolutionizing our industry. And you see all the things you can do around generative AI. We could also look at working with the city on things that maybe they, technology advancements that we could have there that get with Johnny and talk about, hey, what are things that, that, you know, we could help you guys with, or terms that we're bringing in folks that we know, and he does a fantastic job. Maybe that's not something they would need, but everything, anything and everything under tech that we could help, the possibilities are endless. So that was the intention.

We have a handout from Doris, Doris.

Hi. Hi, everyone. Hi. Thank you, Jose. I love that idea. I wanted to ask something because another neighbor asked me this. For seniors, there are people who need help with I.T., And I was wondering, actually, kind of goes a little bit with what you're saying is providing some type of service, maybe an I.T. clinic for seniors, maybe once a month or maybe once every quarter where people can bring either their concerns or questions about I.T., For free because, you know, we had a call from a senior in Coral Gables, actually. I couldn't help him because it was too far from me anyway. But Coral Gables was asking if we had some type of service through the city of Northview Village because she depended on her computer and he had an issue. And she had brought a brand new computer and didn't know how to necessarily resolve the issue she was having. I ended up connecting her with somebody in Coral Gables. But then it made me think, oh, I wonder how many people are going through this in Northview Village where they might have a tech support question. So maybe a clinic could help.

I think it's a great idea. Actually, that was one of the topics we were just discussing is not only we discussed kids and younger kids and adults, but one of the people who's in the core of what we're trying to put together actually has a business where he was like, we could do workshops for our elderly or older folks in the village. Maybe it's as simple as like, hey, iPhone 101. I don't know about you, but my mom, you know my mom.

I love Maria.

Constantly locks her phone and doesn't know how to do it. Or something happens and I have to go over there and be like, come on, let me help you with this. Or basic computer setup or trouble, things like that. That's a great idea that's definitely in scope. So there's a ton of stuff. And I think the biggest thing would be just organizing what do we want to focus on? There's so much. And you could dip into, for our senior folks, kids, middle school teenagers. And then under those three buckets, we can have an agenda of all kinds of stuff. For the middle school, high school kids, it's internships and workshops on tech careers, right? For the younger kids, it's maybe, you know, things around technology like programming, right? There's another one, like, you know, like Raspberry and all these things. I, for one, I'm already trying to get my girls into tech on the programming side, like programming 101 for kids. And then for the elderly folks, it could be basic computer, iPhone help or services for people who need help with, you know, whatever topics come up. So I think it's not who do we include? It's more of like those three buckets, but then also creating an agenda under all those buckets, right? And that's what this tech club would come together and, you know, talk about. Like, what's relevant? And we'd have residents come and say, okay, hey, you know, I'd love to do this or, you know, I'd love to know more about this. Sure, let's add that to agenda and let's start finding the resources to do that. So great idea.

Sounds great. And I came in, unfortunately, I wasn't able to log in earlier, but I heard something about the college scholarships. I didn't know if you guys had any questions from the Optimist Club side that in any way can help, let me know.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah. So we can go to that. Are we going to talk about the society stuff?

I'm going to ask Julie as soon as we're done with new business.

All right. Well, I'm done with the tech council. What I'd like to do is, um, is, you know, we have the logo ready and Julie Lilly commissioners, um,

I just have a question, Jose. I remember initially we wanted to launch this as part of the Chamber of Commerce. Do you intend to just do like through both channels?

I think that what we do is once we get the council rolling and we have a couple successful meetings under our belt, eventually we get Kristen and the North Bay Village Chamber of Commerce to attend one of those meetings and say, okay, maybe North Bay Village Tech Council now becomes part of the Chamber of Commerce. In my conversations with Kristen, her thought was, okay, we get the members of the North Bay Village Tech Council as we start to build it, officially become like a part of the chamber, but where we're charging fees and dues like you would if you're a North Bay Village Chamber member. And I think we'd be a little ahead of that. But the intention going, yeah, I think that would be a great idea to eventually formalize it more as we grow and put it under the Chamber of Commerce. But I think as we start, we want to make sure we build it first, right?

I think it's also important to define the charter of the organization, its goals, its objective, because When you're talking about assisting someone, isn't there some legal liability involved if you're assisting someone or giving advice about their technology and you happen to wipe out all their information versus educating someone and providing educational material and they do it on their own?

The tech council wouldn't be the ones providing. We'd be facilitating, let's say, you know, service that they come. So, you know, anybody who would sign up or use the tech council to get through a service, it wouldn't be, I don't think liability would point back to the... To us, that would be a, okay, hey, so-and-so wants to know if we can connect him with a company that does this. Oh, sure. Here in our directory of North Bay Village Tech Council focus on tech services, there's a company that can help you with that. Reach out to so-and-so. And they would, and they would do their thing with that. with that company or with that service wouldn't be anything that would come back and point to the tech council. But it's a good thought. And then your comment on the charter and the mission, you're spot on because I think we make the charter or the mission statement something along the lines of, You know, the intention or the goal of the North Bay Village Tech Council is to help facilitate, you know, technology careers and goals for kids as well as provide, you know, knowledge base around technology for our residents, something like that. I'll work on that mission statement and I'll present it maybe at a next meeting. Or once we already have official, when's our next meeting going to be and when's our first meeting going to be? But there's work to be done there for sure.

What do you need from the board to support you in this?

Once I get the official, you know, logo done, which we already have and stuff like that. Just like we supported the Run Club. All of us making sure we put out there. I'd like to work with Julie in the city and everyone to get it on the event calendar, get it on, be able to post it on Facebook and all these social mediums that we use today. for our village and say, hey, so just that I think is all we would need to do. The members of the tech council would also help coordinate agenda, help set up the meetings, and then we all spread the word. Awesome. Not a heavy lift, but, but I think it's, it's also something that would be good to say, you know, under the resident service advisory board, this is something that is valid. It's valuable, right? Like it's, I'm glad it would come from like the RSA B board as a, as another value added service, like the run club, like some of the other things we're doing, like the 5k, all of that. Right. So.

Yes.

There's definitely a lot of value in doing this. I mean, even advisory sessions with Johnny, I know he would appreciate that, especially if we have a community of tech professionals that can help even potentially find better deals on our Microsoft licensing or other software providers that we buy at the city level. Um, there's all kinds of ways we could help provide guidance to him. We can provide mentorship, coaching, uh, clinics, all kinds of stuff. But we, we do need the mission statement, a charter, and we need to get a little more granular, um, with, you know, if we're going to do a clinic, like when, when is that going to be held? How, where, um, who's going to be invited what's the outreach strategy so um that's what i'd like to see is more details uh more specifics around these things and um and making sure that we we understand the outcome that we're trying to drive out of those two uh because yeah otherwise we i can see this just keep spinning in circles and i just don't want to want us to spin our wheels on this thing so let's try and get um get those details and specifics and i think that'll help uh help guide us the rest of the way in the next steps.

Agreed. For the next RSAB meeting, I'll have a more formal presentation on this with logo, charter mission statement. We can discuss it and tweak it if needed. And then I'll also have a date for our first planned meeting on it. So I'll have more. I just wanted to get it in front of, you know, on the agenda for tonight and get feedback. So valuable feedback. Thanks for the feedback. When's our next meeting? Do we know?

The first Tuesday of every month.

Okay.

So it's the 6th.

6th of May?

Yeah.

Okay. Nice logo, though. I like it.

Thanks. I can't take credit for it. Philip did. So I'm in Tampa on May 6th, but I'll be able to join remote, so I should be fine.

Okay, great. Any other questions on this before I move forward?

No, we're good.

Thank you, Jose. No. Discussion on the benefits of a community garden. Whose is that?

Oh, that's mine. So I'm doing everything I can to try to make North Bay Village look a lot nicer. And I see a lot of weeds and I see a lot of unkept parts of the village. The other thing is a garden is going to bring young people, make young people involved or engaged in the community, and I don't see enough young people involved. So I think that's important to reach out to the school, perhaps, to get young kids involved in gardening and the benefits of gardening and putting effort in in order to get something back at a later date. So investing time and effort, teaching them that life skill to invest time and effort into something before you can reap something you know, the harvest or a reward. So a lot of people have mentioned a farmer's market as well. So that would be a nice way that you could perhaps, you know, sell the crop to benefit the local community at a nice, decent price so that they could participate and buy fresh produce that's locally grown. It would be nice. Do we have a community garden?

No, we've tried to get a community garden in the past. I think it was three or four years ago now. And the problem is we have limited property that the village owns. So it's very hard to find a space that we can use for a community garden that the commission would also let us use because obviously the spaces are allocated for other uses. And also it takes a program. Like Miami Beach has a very robust community garden program. They have several community gardens. But it takes residents to keep that up. That's not something staff would do. So you would have to have a very robust program in place and the land on top of it. So it's very complicated. It's a fantastic idea, but it's a complicated one when you try to get down to the specifics of it. We did think about the school. And at that time, the school did have a small garden. I don't know if they still do. But that, again, is only for the students because then you can't have outsiders go on there because of security, which is what we came across.

But I think the biggest security threat is from the iguanas, right?

Yeah.

From devastating the whole crop.

It's a great idea, but it's hard to actually work all the details of that out.

Yeah, I think that, and this has come up before, and I remember like maybe a year ago, this came up and it was the same thing. Like if you could find a location, Francois, I think that's, that's point one. Like if you could find someplace where, you know, and maybe it's not even city property, maybe if we can, I'm just thinking outside the box, if we could find like a condo or someplace that is willing to, you know, help us, you know, find a little plot of land where we could do it, which I just don't think, I'm just thinking about it. Like, where would it be? And I don't think we have anywhere that we could do it.

We got a hand up from Doris. Doris?

Yeah, I was just letting Jose finish.

Sorry. So in the past, what we've done, we had the Optimist Club donated, I believe in conjunction with the city of Northview Village, boxes, like those big wooden planter boxes at the Paul Bogle Park, right on the, alongside the fence that is parallel to the road, right behind the bathrooms. There's a space there. And they started with the butterfly garden and they did it like a, The minimum requirement maintenance, right? The plants first. But Lydia hit it right on the head. That's exactly the issue we ran into was the community involvement part. Because these areas need irrigation, maintenance on a daily basis. Where Miami Beach has a very strong calendar of volunteers who take ownership of these planters. It's almost like a backyard to them. And they're regularly there because of either accessibility pedestrian-wise or condos that live adjacent to those spots or those plots. But that's what happened in the past. I just wanted to make sure. The location that the city used before.

That's another thing that, you know, maybe we think outside the box. One of the things that I've been seeing, one of my big clients is Fresh Del Monte. And they're leading the... the trend in vertical farms. Have you heard about these where they're not planting using soil, they're planting using these glass-like looking structures where they're water and they're filled with water.

Yeah, that's a hydroponic system.

Hydroponic system.

Yeah.

You know, where, you know, maybe that's something we do because maybe we could put that, like at one of our parks where it's not like, you know, we don't need additional land, but maybe, maybe we, we lead the packet where, you know, maybe it's something new that North Bay Village does like, Hey, we, we've got the first hydroponic vertical farm or something.

Most, most hydroponic, most hydroponic gardens are indoor gardens because of pest control issues when it's a very problematic and light, light control for hydroponics. So it tends to be a great system for indoors. The resilience with hydroponics is the irrigation system that is the component of the hydroponics. The problem with it and the reason why most of the agricultural hydroponics companies have to be indoors to contain light and pests, basically to control light and pests. Yeah.

Yeah, they're usually self-irrigated too, so that's the cool thing about them, right? So just a thought, Francois, like if this is something you want to...

So I have the perfect location already, and that's on the causeway that joins Treasure Island to North Bay Island. There's 14 planters that are sitting there empty. Very deserted, like a desert. That's perfect. No one would get to them because of the traffic on both sides.

There is no irrigation there. There's no irrigation. That's why we don't have plants there.

I'm the irrigation. I would be there every day watering these plants. So I think I need to just go out there and start planting and then you'll see the beauty that it creates and then people will come and join. Do it. Can I do that? Can I start using those planters? There's 14 of them there. And it's a lot of soil that's just standing there. Nothing's growing there. It's empty. Where is it? On the causeway that joins North Bay with Treasure Island.

The flat bridge.

The flat bridge, yes. Where it's actually on the causeway.

Yeah. Those are the decorative planters that we have where the Jeff F. Kennedy post is.

Exactly. John Kennedy overlooks the 14 planters.

And I think those planters were donated at some point, right, to the city?

They're beautiful. At one point, there were plants in there.

Yeah, because I thought there were plants in there. But my only concern there would be like safety on crossing the causeway to get to that.

Yeah, we can't open that to the public. That's a safety issue. I mean, let's walk and water it.

I think I'll just start claiming those 14 plants and I'll start planting something there and give it about two or three months and watch the flowers start growing on those plants.

It'll look good. I've got jalapenos, squash, strawberry, scotch bonnet. What else am I missing? Eggplant growing in my garden here. So I'm fully for it because I've got- Chili, hot stuff.

Maybe in the future, you know, as we develop more, someone will open a little land to us and we can have a community garden then because it's definitely something that we should have.

Right, safety first, of course, yeah.

But right now with the land that we have and the restrictions that we have, there's nowhere to put it. Even at Vogel Park, our community garden has to be gated off. You can't just have it open because anyone will go in there and It doesn't work. Right. You have to have it.

You know, you get people who like, you know, Hey, like you see what happens to the mango trees here when, when mango season comes around, people will come to my yard and start trying to grab mangoes. If you have a community garden, I can imagine some of that would happen too, but Hey, like that's a whole other case, but as a gardener, Francois, I'm all for it, man. Like I. Yeah.

Maybe gardening, maybe like a gardening and, If it's just adults doing that middle area, I don't know what the logistics that that would be, the village would allow us to do that. Because they are ugly, like you say, there's nothing in them, right?

Yeah, so I think there's more work to be done. But maybe, Francois, check with what Miami Beach does, like Lydia. I'd be curious to see how they regulate it, like what hours it's open to. I've seen this before. There's usually one person that has the keys and opens it up every day and then closes it every day. But I just don't think we have the land for it. But other options would be maybe the hydroponic vertical garden or something. But I would say do some more research and come back to us. And I would support it all day long if it's something that we could do.

Yeah. Miami Beach's regulations are actually online. They have a good program. They have more than one community garden.

I know this is off topic, but is that the same thing that happened to City Bike? I understand that North Bay Village was involved with City Bike at one time. And I don't see any City Bikes here.

Last thing I remember about City Bike is they were just kind of strewn all over the place in the middle of the sidewalks and it became a hazard. So that's why the village.

I don't even remember seeing City Bikes. I remember we had the little smart car thing that one time, like, you know, they would leave these little, remember when that was something back in the day where those little small cars, they would just park everywhere. I don't think that business went too well.

I would love to bring City Bike back here. What do you guys think about that? I would love that.

I think if you had a station for it, right? Not strewn all over the village, it would be great.

I mean, I don't know how it was left all over the village because you have to pay for it if you don't return it.

Maybe it was a city bike. Maybe it was another company.

But it was a bike. It was Lime. Was it the scooters? It was Lime.

Lime bike way back. But listen, let me tell you about those pots on the causeway. This is Frank.

Oh, yes. I'm happy to listen to you, Frank.

Hi, Frank.

Frank, thanks for being on.

You're welcome. FDOT has ordered us to get them off. Oh. We're in the middle of that process. Number one, they're going to be doing some extensive work on rebuilding those two bridges. That's right. Probably in 27, but it's coming. And there's a safety issue now that they've claimed with those pots being there if a car were to come up over that curb and oncoming traffic and so forth. So we have dug up way back permission from FDOT to put those there. So it's kind of cooled off a little bit. And the district secretary is moving out and taking a job with the county. And a new secretary is coming in. They may have already announced him. I'm not sure. But anyway, she said that that would be on the list for that individual to revisit as to how we're going to do that. Now, in the meantime, I know that Public Works is planning on putting some palms or something in those so they're not sitting there vacant, but something that will be salt tolerant and won't take a lot of maintenance. So we don't like them sitting there empty either. But most of the flowering stuff that you'd want to put in there is going to take some regular watering. And we're just not going to have somebody out there and get clipped by a car. You know, it's just dangerous out on that causeway. Anyway, that's where we are on the pots.

Nice. Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Back to square one then, Francois. Looks like you have some...

You've got to find the land. Because that's a good place to start, at least. You just need a good place to put them, I guess.

You need to mix friends with a developer, so they'll give us a little bit of land.

That's what I was going to say. Maybe we work a deal with these developers and they give us a little community garden instead of... But that's above our pay grade. But all right, it's a good initiative, Francois. I think that I'd fully support it. Like I said, I'm an avid gardener myself, but I don't know how we get it done, so...

But speaking of the bicycles, Goran, I just wanted to let you know, too, that there's an ordinance on North Bay Village, and I ride my bike in the village, that speaks about registering or getting a license plate on your bike, and the ordinance is from 1966? Well, we can change that ordinance. Right, but that's what I'm referring to now, because it's like hopelessly outdated, right? Do you have a license plate on your bicycle?

Yeah, that sounds like something from the 60s. I'm sure that's something the commission could vote on to change. Awesome. Yeah, I'm not too worried about that. But I will look into City Bike and putting them here somewhere. That would be great.

That would be great.

Speaking of City Bike, I know it's not related much, but can we talk the trolley? So trolley can come to our village? I know it's in my page.

The mayor just worked on that. Yeah, we're working on that.

Yeah, we're working on that. Cool. We basically got approval for a pilot program. We're deciding on which route we're going to take, whether we're going to do it a couple times a month for when there's programming on the beach, culture and arts programming, like things at the band show, etc., which probably makes sense. It's not too expensive to operate. We'll do a pilot for six months to a year. And we're going to be able to use CITT funds for that, which we have not fully used yet. So it's actually not going to cost us, the taxpayers, anything. It's going to be pretty cool. So we're looking into that. We'll have next steps shared with that pretty soon. Cool. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay.

The idea is to offer a diverse set of transportation options for residents. So, you know, we've obviously, we've already got a bus. A trolley would be a nice addition. We've got freebie, you know, it'd be great if we could bring something like city bike here as well. And then, and I also have spoken to Frank about, he told me in the past, like we used to have our own city, a bus, just North Bay village bus. Um, and that's something we actually could also tap into CITT money for. So that's another option that, uh, that I'm talking to Frank about that we're looking into.

Yeah.

Yeah. We had a bus that, um, you know, we've hired a one or no two full-time drivers and they would drive all over the village and they would also drive, uh, outside the village too, to, uh, to drop kids off at school, pick them up, all kinds of stuff like that. And, um, And it can be done pretty inexpensively.

Yeah, the bus broke down, I remember. We used to use that bus. My mom used to use that bus a lot.

But I know some people in Hialeah that can maintain it.

Cool. All right. Do we want to keep going?

Okay, staff and commission liaison updates? Julie, Lily, have anything for us? Julie, do you have anything on the scholarship? Any applications?

No, still nothing. No applicants.

Meaning no one has applied?

Correct.

Oh, my God.

Yeah. It's funny. It's not that odd. So many scholarships every year go unapplied.

So I'll help. I'm offering my help to help a kid write an essay to get them the scholarship as well. Is there some way I can contribute toward helping a kid get a scholarship? We just need applicants. We need people to apply.

Yeah, but maybe they... You can go hand some flyers out to kids and see if they'll apply.

I blasted it out to my whole network. I got a couple people. I got some thumbs up and stuff like that, but no... You know, I had some questions on it that I answered, but it's perplexing to see. You know, I think it has to do with our population here. I just think the demographic doesn't hit a lot of, if I had to guess, what that scholarship entails, right? So I'm just, I'm racking my brain as to why we don't have more applicants. Yeah.

Oh, sorry. And I was going to say, I had a contact at... Miami beach senior high school, which is, would, would be our public school that our kids would go to. Um, you know, obviously a lot go to private and charter, um, and he sent it around. Um, so I don't know if it's because it's the criteria that we have or, but I know he said he only has about a handful of North Bay village students. So a handful of North Bay village seniors. And then once you, we throw through those, not all of them want to apply or, you know, they don't fit the criteria, et cetera.

And then Nautilus PTA is putting it out in their newsletter that went out this week too. So we'll have that as well. Thank you. Thank you.

Doris has her hand up. Go ahead, Doris.

Hi again. So just want to give you a little suggestions that maybe could help when it comes to finding these applicants. With the North Village Optimist Club, we have been running college scholarships for over 25 years. I have been with the board specifically that runs the college scholarships for the past... 16 years working with them?

You're part of the Optimist Club? I didn't know that.

You didn't know that? So when we run the program, one of the reasons why, I mean, to begin with, back in the day, I would say when I first started with them, we used to get over 100 applications for this college scholarships. Today, we're probably getting, we're lucky if we get 20 applications, okay? But it also, it's, 25 years of relationships with different high schools, different counseling members, different CAP advisors. One of the things that works is going in person to the school and going directly to Miami Beach High, like we do every year. We go to Miami Beach High, we meet with the CAP counselor, we tell them the parameters of the application process. And obviously, our application process is not as subject specific as this scholarship is. But we do get every year we get three to five people who are really into arts, you know, professional dancers, artists, opera singers. I mean, within the high school community, what I can do is as we get these applications this year, I mean, I don't think the Optimist Club will have an issue to add on and give you guys those kits that we believe that could apply to you. We just started the application process. You guys can go to the website, MBBOptimistClub.com, review the application there. What we do is that we put out these applications, we send them out through the Miami. So Miami-Dade schools have a portal. And that portal is sent directly through the school board. We meet with them in person again. We meet with each school that we're interested in capturing students from. And then once the application comes in, we review them, select the people that we want to interview in person, and we meet them in person. And a lot of times that's when we discover they're aptitude or personal you know passions could be art like I said you know and then we can share that with you guys and say hey we know from this year's applicants we got maybe five people who would definitely follow in through that you know curriculum of what you're looking for and and help that way thank you Doris Julie what's the deadline

I said it for May 1st. You know, I can always extend it, worst case. I do know that I connected with the father, Mr. Sadie, and he will be in town during our May commission meeting. So, you know, in a perfect world, we'd have two candidates selected by then to present. But I don't know if that will be the case.

Did we reach out to the schools that the girls went to?

I did. Yeah. And I never heard back.

Can we try again? Or I can try if you want to share the information.

Yeah, let me see if I can find it. One was a charter school. I think they both were, actually.

Yeah, a lot of the kids in the village go to charters.

My only other thought would be, do we need to tweak it somehow to make it more you know, available to students. I'm just thinking out loud and I'm not sure if that's the right way to go, but it just, maybe it's too limiting or I'm not sure, but.

Well, why don't we all look at it and see what we think and we can always email out on it.

Yeah. I was trying to remember what it is. Like, I don't know if we like, cause I read it obviously, but I'm just trying to think of like, but they have to write an essay. Right. And it's one's for a middle school and then two for high school, I think. Right.

Yeah.

So that'd be my only other thought is how do we make it more inclusive? But I think that's, yeah.

We thought of that when we were writing it as well, but I mean, we can always look at it again and see if there's something anyone thinks we can do to cast a wider net.

Only girls can apply. Is that correct?

No.

No.

But it's boys and girls.

Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Yeah. Last year we had a boy and a girl win.

Yeah. Okay. Julie, do you have anything else for us? Nope. Thank you. Lily, do you have anything for us?

Nope. Nothing? Okay. Nothing.

April 12th is coming.

Yep. I'm all set for Spring Fling. We have Poop Free coming the weekend right after. Or two weekends after. Sorry. So really just focused on those right now. Okay. Thank you.

Do we have any public comment?

We have a soccer tournament. Is that correct? Thursday. That's this Thursday. Thursday, yeah.

Vice Mayor, do you have anything for us?

Nope, nothing.

Okay. So all we have is agenda items for the next meeting. If we can get them to Isabel early. And with that, it's 7.36 and we're adjourned.

Time to go, right? Have a great night.

Have a good night. Recording stopped.