City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. The mayor has called this special council meeting to order. Mayor Roscoe?

Present.

Council Member Bracken?

Here.

Council Member Kaplan?

Here.

Council Member Lunden? Okay. Vice Mayor Sardinius?

Here.

Council Member Stoner? Here. And Council Member Vasquez? Present. Mr. Mayor, we do have a quorum. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. The next item, Mr. Mayor, is public comments.

Julio Diaz, come forward, please.

Mr. Mayor, council member, 201 Crandon Boulevard. Let me get my glasses so I can proceed.

And your name, I'm sorry.

Also, Mr. Williamson and Friedman, and you too.

Sorry, your name again, I'm sorry.

Julio Diaz, I guess that my name was pronounced, and 201 Crandon Boulevard.

Thank you.

Good. I hope this is working. I'm here to speak about the proposed stormwater referendum. I am a member of the petitioner's committee behind the referendum, and I was also asked by Betty Sim Conroy to speak on behalf of the Key Biscayne Neighbors Association. Betty is out of town. This referendum provides the basis for a proposed charter amendment that could be submitted to the voters in November of this year. Getting the referendum on the November ballot was not an easy task. Our committee went out and collected 1,151 signatures in 44 days. Signatures needed to be verified individually and then notarized. No professional help, we did it ourselves. We just contacted our fellow Key Biscayne citizens and explained to them our rationale. They readily agree with establishing reasonable financial limitations with respect to proposed stormwater and or flood prevention projects. 913 signatures were certified by the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections exceeding the required 839. We're asking tonight for the council to incorporate the proposed referendum in the November 3rd ballot. Our attorney has spoken to Mr. Friedman And we understand that no change will be necessary to the wording in the referendum. This is important because the ballot should reflect exactly the language that was presented to residents in gathering their approval. To summarize, trying to get into my three minutes. The proposed Chartered Amendment requires that any large-scale stormwater or flood prevention efforts must be approved by a majority of the voters if the total cost is estimated to exceed $50 million over a three-year period. We believe that this Chartered Amendment does not impair the execution of any capital project that could improve the well-being of our village. And most importantly, it allows residents of Key Biscayne to have a say in the financial decisions that could affect our pocketbooks. Thank you.

Thank you. Chad, you want to walk us through what we're doing here? Sure, a couple of things first.

Can we just have a quick motion to allow, I guess, Council Member Sardinas and is Council Member London to?

I don't see Council Member London on. I move.

Second. All those in favor? Aye. And then. Opposed? Motion carries. If the clerk can read the title of the resolution and then I'll walk you guys through it.

A resolution of the village council of the village of Key Biscayne, Florida, providing for the submission to the village electors for approval or rejection, a proposed amendment as submitted by petition in accordance with section 6.02 of the village charter, creating a new section 4.16 entitled voter approval required for certain stormwater and or flood prevention projects exceeding $50 million. providing requisite ballot language for submission to the electorate, calling a special election on the proposed charter amendment to be held on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026, in conjunction with the general election being held on such date, providing for voting at the polls, providing for notice of election, providing for inclusion in the charter, providing for severability, and providing for an effective date.

I move it.

second thank you okay so as the clerk read there was a group of residents electors that got together and created a petition petitions committee pursuant to our charter to commence a procedure that allows

I can't see.

Yes. That allows residents to propose an amendment to our charter. The affidavit, they received the 10 electors necessary to commence that process, which they did. They had 60 days to then collect the requisite signatures, which were 839. the Supervisors of Elections certified last month that they did collect the necessary amount of signatures. So your charge under the Charter 6.02b is upon the certification of the petition to put this amendment to the voters the earlier of the next regularly scheduled mayor or council member position election, which is not a primary or excuse me, or the next regularly scheduled countywide general election, which is not a primary. So your charge is to put this on to the November election.

Just stay, stay.

So what this resolution is doing is calling for a special election in conjunction with the general election for this charter amendment. So this will be on the ballot with the remainder of the constitutional amendments, if it's on there, or the the vacant seats for council that are on there, this amendment will show up on the November ballot. The language is the petitioner committee's language, and it simply provides that, which was said earlier, that a referendum would be required for any stormwater and or flood prevention projects whether separated into separate projects and or phases that are estimated to collectively cost over $50 million within a three-year fiscal year period. So that's for tonight, is really for you to approve the form of ballot and calling for this election in November pursuant to the charter. That's your charge tonight.

But really, we don't have any choice. This is the process that's laid out in the charter, and we just need to follow it.

This is the process laid out in the charter. You need to follow it. The only thing that I would say is if the charter question itself, you had a question about. However, we've kept the charter question, the ballot question, verbatim to the petition language intentionally, because it was their language. The only thing that we drafted was the title, which is above it, which you can see on page three. But we believe that's consistent with the ballot question. And we're also limited in the amount of words that we can use. So this was drafted very carefully to be consistent with the 15-word limitation of the title and the 75-word limitation of the ballot question.

Questions over here.

I'm sorry. May I have a motion to allow Councilmember London to participate via phone? Okay. Thank you. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you.

Question not on the charter language. Section 9, where we talk about intent. In the second line, is that? Is that necessary? Is it really if approved by a majority of the electors? That's subject to Section 8. Second line. The wording, it seemed to me, should be if approved.

Well, it says subject to Section 8. But I mean, if you want to tweet that language, I have no objection to that.

I don't know that that accurately reflects our sentiment. We're doing this because we have to.

Okay, so if you would like to propose some alternative language, I'm not tied to that language.

Subject to the requirements of Section 8 above, it is hereby provided that the charter amendment shall be affected, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, I have no objection to that.

And then the question that I also wanted to focus you on real briefly is Section 8 where we talk about conflicting amendments.

Yes.

Is that formulaic language?

That language, I believe, comes out of the charter itself. We do have a provision in our charter that has very similar language to that. Okay.

Just an observation from our conversation at our workshop today, our strategy session. It's conceivable that flood prevention will include beach re-nourishment.

Go ahead. Is flood prevention specifically outlined? Because there's a lot of elements.

No, there are no definitions. There are no definitions in this language.

Flood prevention is a seawall.

So flood prevention could be a seawall. There's no definitions in this language.

that residents have their absolute right to issue a referendum to appeal that and to gather the proper voting, and I think the process is very clear and evident. I do have a couple of specific concerns about unintended consequences. I think it's very noble, and I think it's very right to do so in the case of spending this amount of money, and I brought up the issue of flood prevention because I believe that that constitutes other elements that have, I'm wondering if they have been thought, you know, the issues related to flood prevention. Flood prevention could be a seawall, and a city seawall, or a village seawall, say, and I don't know what that cost would be. I have no idea, and the other question I have is also a question of logistics. Should their project be needed, because the village requires it, who is going to initiate the process? If it's just the council and the people, how do we advise the people that they need to go out there and we have a critical issue that needs to be resolved and it exceeds a certain amount? I don't know. I mean, the reason is I'm speaking like this because I truly don't know what a hurricane can do to us. I don't know what the forgiving flood waters and storm events can do to us. I'm for the referendum in the sense that I feel and I believe that everybody has a right to issue a referendum, should they think they should, and they gather the proper voting. I'm just wondering if there's some unintended consequences here, and I have no problem if they are. I'm just saying how we're gonna manage them if they come up. It's just a question of how do we manage it, should they arise.

That's not really for tonight. No. We have time to ask, but okay. That's not. We have one task today.

That's all we have. Oh, I just don't. I'm okay. Yeah.

I don't see it that way. I'm sorry. I truly don't see it that way. I respect council's position, but I truly don't see it that way.

I mean, I'm, I'm for it, but maybe I'll make one comment though, Mr. Mayor. And I, I, I understand you don't want to bring that up tonight, but, um, I do want to follow up, but, uh, council member Vasquez says, I think we define definitions of flood prevention and shoreline protection in the bond, and I think that's distinctly defined. I want to make sure that maybe that's what we want to put on the record as what they are and what you all are voting for.

Well, I think that that's something that can be looked at if this were to go into the charter. I think that... Remember, the charter is... similar to the Constitution, and there are, just like statutes, there's ordinances that amend it and implement it and not amend it but interpret it. So I think that there's time, if this were to pass, that this council can discuss these different options on how to implement this provision.

I'd just like to make one comment, and if you could confirm that I'm correct in my understanding, and that is that By calling this special meeting tonight, we weren't supposed to have a meeting this month. Our next meeting wasn't going to be until August, and if we had waited until August to move on this, it would have been too late to get it on the ballot. And the fact that we brought it up tonight and that the mayor called this special meeting was an indication of our good faith in pursuing the... the avenues available to the public that they took advantage of. And I just want to put that on the record, if that's correct.

That's correct. The deadline from the rise of elections is July 24th, and we did not have a meeting before that deadline.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Scheduled meeting.

Yeah.

Okay. So with the deletion of Section 9.

So consensus of council to delete. It is the intention of the village council and under Section 9.

Any problems with that?

Lawyers do their jobs.

That's good.

Yes, for me.

Consensus, okay. Yes.

Thank you.

All those in favor of the resolution as amended?

Aye.

Yes. Yes.

And Council, Vice Mayor Sardinas? Yes. Just one moment.

Yes, I'm here.

Okay, and your vote, please, sir.

Yes.

Thank you. Motion carries.

Okay, we've done our business here, and I know you all don't think we're trustworthy, but apparently we are. Thank you. Have a good night. Meeting's adjourned.