City Council - Regular Meeting

initiatives for 2026. Now I'll call Councilwoman O'Connor. Councilwoman O'Connor is not. Vice Mayor Torres. Mayor Christy Fraga. Present. Mayor, you have quorum. All right. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Vice Mayor Torres.

OK, everyone, good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. We called this meeting to have a quick discussion about our legislative priorities in an effort to catch up with the legislative session, make sure that things get to our Miami-Dade delegation with time. There is an agenda that was circulated and a backup that was part of this agenda, which is 2026 legislative priorities that has been prepared not just by my office and staff and with input from our lobbyists in Tallahassee. But today, and I think it's going to be circulated right now, In a very timely manner, the Florida House members hav

Yes. Okay. Well, thank you, Mary, for doing this. This is actually, I think, a really great idea to just kind of combine all of our legislative priorities and legislative ideas and just send them all at once. Obviously, you know, we're each going to have some you know, diverse opinions about it. I think what has been proposed is pretty solid. I just want to also reiterate, you know, last month, and this is in regards to the property tax relief and the sales tax reform. Last month, I did underscore the importance of providing much needed property tax relief to our residents. And of course, in f

We can address them a lot in a minute. Anyone else?

So just to kind of go over the bills that were filed today, there's basically three categories. There's eliminations. House Bill 201, which was proposed by Rep. Steele, eliminates non-school non-school homestead property taxes. That basically means that there would be no property taxes on homes for the exception for school boards, which is, I think, the biggest portion of the bill for homeowners right now. The problem with that, and I think we have a presentation. Yes? Do you have it? Do you want to put it up? I think it'll be easier to look at it. We created this in the last hour or so to try

Home improvements and property insurance?

I'll just mention one last thing. I'm very in support of the language that's here. I was just noting that I think the memo from the speaker says that they're probably not going to limit it to just one type of relief. Again, this is just based on the memo that was submitted. it's likely that they're going to have kind of like a multiple choice on the ballot is what it sounds like to me. So it may be giving voters multiple options and then obviously voters deciding. So I just wanted to mention that because it may be a lot wider than what we're putting here, but this is absolutely something I can

Okay. Yeah, I just don't want to cast, I don't want our city to stand behind something as an official position that's more wide net. Because I do think it would be detrimental, not just to, less to us than to other cities. But I think it sends the wrong message. Because say something like that does go on the ballot, I think it would be irresponsible of us to go out and advocate openly for something that we know will affect services to a community that needs it. And what I've been telling people when I'm asked about it is I do think there needs to be reform, but a total elimination of property

So I would agree with maintaining a unified message whenever we do talk about the changes that may come along and What I'm concerned about is relocating essentially the impact of taking taxes or fees from Let's say our property taxes and figuring out a different way to essentially implement the same and So that's my overall concern. And I am concerned about the future of seeing a lot of our programs be in jeopardy because of these cuts, especially since it's taken a really long time and through the courses of the years to curate the programs that we have for our seniors, for our special needs,

So if it's homesteaded properties, Fernando, you want to come up? What we ran was, and I believe none of the proposals completely eliminates property taxes, which is a good thing. But it would eliminate homesteaded properties? Correct. And so when we ran the numbers on homesteaded properties, Fernando?

Thank you. Just to clarify, the $5.6 to $6 million is only homestead property in Doral? Correct.

Actually, I'm going to see if we can, can you put me in my office?

Fire would take a devastating hit, waste. I mean, there's a lot of.

By the way, the other thing we haven't addressed in any of this is the bonded.

Yes. The other thing that hasn't been addressed by the state is the bonded. the bond, you know, the debt, bonded debt, right? You can't.

Yeah. I think the most important thing as this moves forward is our communication needs to be very clear because this has horrible implications if it goes to an extreme. And so while I think we advocate responsibly for the reform, we do need to understand the impacts of it, because it is detrimental. And people voted to have a municipality make a copy of this. This is everything.

OK, perfect. People voted to have a municipality because of the services that we offer. It's having the response time we have with police. And there's been a lot of different discussions. I've talked to a lot of legislators. And I think it's important that they understand, as much as we want to say that it's not going to impact the essential services, cuts like this would absolutely impact on cities like ours that would survive, would impact the services. Or what's going to end up happening is some municipalities will have to increase their millage rates so that the income-producing properties

You're right. That does include the debt millage. So the total for, you're absolutely right. The total for the non-bonded is 5.4. You were right on the money. I was looking at the wrong number. Thank you. I think Marion's making copies of this. So here we have total value of senior homesteaded properties. So of just senior homesteaded properties, every single household with senior homestead was exempt from paying municipal taxes, it would be $61,000. So about the same amount of money we budgeted for our grants this year to senior homesteaded properties. So we're returning that money to our vul

So I'm going to have this shared with all of you because I think it's an important document to look at. And thank you, finance, for preparing this. Very helpful.

I will be using that in Tallahassee. Appreciate it.

And we're going to circulate that. Anybody else have any comments from the administration? OK.

Yes, I do have one more I want to add. After conversations with State Representative Juan Carlos Porras at our HOA information session, he talked about requesting some funding for fraud investigations for police department. He was very particular about not calling it homeowner association investigations, but focusing on fraud prevention for police. So I would like to add that in there as well. We've been in communication with his office, and they were going to send us some suggestions of funding amounts. And I have been in conversation with Representative Rizzo. I haven't been able to talk to

Any other comments? I have a quick question on form. So once we... We submit this. How are we submitting it? Is it a resolution per thing? I'm going to bring one resolution that will have this as part of the backup.

Okay. So then this resolution for property taxes. I'm going to incorporate it into the resolution. So I'll work with Lorenzo. We'll work on a resolution that will encompass all of this. And then my idea is to write a letter on behalf of all of us with all of our names on the letterhead. and send it to our entire delegation, make sure our lobbyists receive it, and move forward on making sure. And then when we go up to Tallahassee, that we all are kind of communicating the same message. Yeah, very important.

Yes. Thank you. That's good. Yep. All right.

Any other comments? I don't know if staff or any of the department directors want to add anything. I know everybody had input on this. Nothing else? OK. If there is nothing else, and everybody is good with this, we will proceed on creating the resolution and bringing it forward in November. Regardless, I'm having Mario make. I should have made copies. I'm sorry. I forgot about it. But it's been on my desk now for like two months. So I will have this get received to each of your offices in just a couple of minutes so you have it, because I think it's great information. Anything else? Good job,

Thank you very much. I just need a motion to adjourn. Motion. Motion to adjourn by Councilman Pinedo, second by Councilman Reynoso. All in favor say aye. Aye. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you.