Climate Resilience Committee - Regular Meeting

609. All right, we'll start off with a roll call. From my right, please.

Thank you. All right, we'll go to item two, which is public comment. Anyone from the public would like to make a comment? Welcome.

Thank you, Lizney, for your comments and your efforts. And we'll talk more about park expansion and trees later on in the meeting. Any other public comments or any submitted online?

All right. Let's move on to item three, which is the approval of the... June 1st, regular meeting minutes, as well as the June 18th budget workshop minutes. Do I have a motion to approve both of those together?

And a second. All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstain? All right. Those both pass. Thank you. So we'll move to item four, which is presentations. We have a status update on the implementation of the 2024 stormwater master plan. This is something that came before the CRC and I think possibly the sea level rise committee many moons ago, a number of times during its creation. Mirela requested this at your first meeting, and I'm glad that we were able to get this on the agenda. So thank you all so much for joining us, and really appreciate you being here.

That was fantastic. I appreciate the detail and the technical analysis. the thought that you guys put into this. So thanks so much for being here. I'm going to start it with just like two high level questions. But there were a few things you said that I think were important that I kind of want to just double tap on for a second. You said it's just not feasible to meet that level of service in some areas. I think that that's something that we need to remember. And I don't think everyone realizes that. You said goal of not getting trapped for days and meeting crown of road. level of service, tha

It's a, hold on, give me one second. Edge water is 40.

And again, we are... And that number that you just referenced is... The stormwater master plan said something like five $50 million projects a year to get to the level of service.

Yeah, when you showed that chart, it seemed like progress is being made, but that's just on the first round of priority projects, and there's many phases. I think that you showed us also Brickell Bay Drive, which is $26 million, I think, and it's a seawall raising, protects those neighbors. And, you know, we heard directly from staff and the consultants when they presented that project to us, there was concerns of residents of views, you know, looking at the amount of expenses and the timeline and just getting the priority projects off the ground, I think that it's important we keep in mind wh

Yeah, it's right at like a wedge in the bay. Yeah. Aurelia, go ahead. Do you have questions?

Some comments. First, thank you very much for coming out and providing us with this update. Full disclosure, I was part of the CDM team back in the day when we kicked off the stormwater master plan. I had to step off when I joined the county to deal with Biscayne Bay so I just want to put that out there in public so that there's no but I I just want to say that you guys have done such an amazing job in such a short amount of time because we have projects in construction infrastructure and costs money, we know that. Especially this type of infrastructure. And it's just gonna keep going up. And

As far as this goes, budgeting, design teams, permitting, construction, where is the pinch point at the moment? Funding, grants, what if you had more of, would more get done?

Or just what thing, if you could wave a wand, is limiting your, like making it harder for you to implement?

I think that that really, again, when we hear projects come before us, we're keeping this financial aspect at the top of our mind. It has to be critical. And also, as we're hearing from Clara, that private development is so critical as part of the puzzle, which is what we somewhat addressed with the green roof ordinance, when if they add a purple roof, for instance, they could hold water. With the Flora proposal, there's more on-site water retention on sites. I think us coming up with bringing in best practices that other cities are doing on the private sector to incorporate is definitely goin

Yeah, I have a few questions. Thank you all so much for presenting. To follow up on Aurelia's question, is there a plan in place for when some of these

So is it similar to the smart covers, Clara? Yeah, very similar. Similar to that? Could those be retrofitted? Because I know we have those in the city. For sure.

We already have them in parts of the city of Miami because they measure, they really measure SSO sanitaries who are overflows. but they could probably, you know, flooding is flooding. When you have an SSO, that's basically your flooding. So, I mean, I wonder if,

I think it's, you know, from a tracking perspective, you know, after the ribbon cutting, everybody forgets. But it would be good to find out, well, yeah, it did alleviate flooding to this point.

I have another question for you. You have brought up the stormwater fee, and I know you mentioned like it would be absurd to raise it to like $100, but was there ever consideration to like adjust the stormwater policy, the stormwater fee policy at all, like maybe based on impervious surfaces?

For non-residential is based on the equivalent of the impervious divided by the are you which is like a thousand Yeah, I mean that I was thinking about is Like for condo buildings, they're paying like significantly more Because they have so many more units like each individual property But they're they have less impervious surface proportionally and i wonder if that is something that we could dig into like if there's a way to adjust the policy i don't know if that sounds crazy it i mean it depends on the on the um

I think that's a complex one. One of my questions was tracking the costs like on a per unit basis because per linear foot and it's costs more maybe in an urban setting because of the complex underground utilities, but there's definitely a division where certain dollars of the stormwater fee are translated to the whole city, which is part of what I think the Resilience Trust Fund and Edgewater is going to help do is keep funds for that area that's very low-lying and maintain them there. So again, I think that those types of kind of innovative policy mechanisms we're going to see more of.

Yeah. I know, because just to stay on time, are there any other pressing questions for tonight? But I think that we'll definitely need to keep following up afterward.

Yeah, I have two quick ones based on some budget recommendations that we're going to be proposing. I just want to confirm. So a conceptual ERP was brought to a permitting agency, and it was determined that They'd no longer do them or this project was not?

Okay, great. And then one on the stormwater design standards manual and design standards updates. I just wanted to confirm, is there a plan to have a completed manual for the city of Miami? a stormwater design standards manual. It was recommended in one of the immediate action items.

Jenny Lee or Silvio, any pressing questions?

Yeah, thank you so much for this, and also, Irela, for recommending that we prepare the questions ahead of time so that we can make the most of our time here together. And my question, I have a number of them, and I'll try to just go through them quickly. How are you, if at all, incorporating IC change data from the former plan into maybe since the original master plan? How are you incorporating continuous data like the 311 in the IC change data sources and inputs?

And are the current models accessible for research purposes by researchers, like the different integrated models that have been produced?

Right, that makes sense. And in the beginning, and one of you mentioned this on the CDM side, that some of the models, and this answers one of the questions we had earlier, are accessible with like open source tools or other more accessible tools so that staff or others are able to take a look or take a peek at that. I'd be very curious to learn more about what those tools and that looks like, just to be able to tinker and explore with that to understand, you know, any other potential improvements or suggestions that we could make going forward. Doctor, you wanted to comment on that?

All right, thank you so much. That answers that. And I think you already mentioned this, the digital monitoring, reporting, and verification. I know that that's one of, to Chairman's point and my colleague, it is something that I want to support going forward. My question to you is, especially with some of the, I saw for D1 and Alapata, my area, that there's some funding gaps, $20, $30 million. How do you fill some of those gaps, or do you need to access, for example, could you access the new Alapata CRA to help supplement some of those so that we can move the project beyond design? How can we

I was talking to a real estate developer that's developing something across the street from my house, and they said that they would love to learn more about some of the things like, for example, Chairman, you mentioned the purple roofs, these types of incentives. I'm not sure if we have something like that anywhere on the websites or right now, but they're like, hey, if we could, because they have flooding across going on, if we could adopt these on our side, we'd love to be able to explore what that looks like. And even the consultants were not very clear on like, where to go and how to refer

I think you're talking about the sponge proposal. Sponge, excuse me, yeah. That's what's going to be done in the next 175 days, yep.

How do we do that right now, if at all, to be able to kind of make sure we're looking at all these options? And I think this kind of goes back to your point on dovetailing processes to make sure we maximize ROI from once these projects get done.

We're going to need to move to the next item pretty soon. Sure.

Awesome, thanks. Jenny Lee, was there anything pressing?

Nothing pressing, but thank you so much for this super informative presentation. I can't wait to see some of these projects come to life and really help mitigate stormwater flooding. So thank you.

Thanks. I saw you raise your hand, and normally I might offer that opportunity, but we're pretty far behind schedule at this point. We do have a public comment at the end. Or if there was a question about what we just heard, I'd welcome you to maybe speak with them while they're here. But I thank you so much for the presentation and all the detail. And thanks for all the hard work. Appreciate it, guys.

Absolutely. All right. So a lot of detail. You know, I'd encourage you guys to follow up if there was more questions you had, and we can hopefully keep the conversation ongoing. All right, so we'll move to the next item, which was item five, old business, budget workshop, recommendations, update. So we already had, you know, the approval of minutes at the beginning of the meeting of our workshop minutes. We had a workshop. Arella, Silvio, Allison, and myself were present. Appreciate you guys showing up. And we discussed the items that had been submitted And we talked through them, and then I w

Mr. Chair, I think that there are two, and if Allison's okay, that we can strike off.

Yeah, I was a little bit confused on the response for the design standards manual because I'm not quite sure that that exactly is what is... I think there's a miscommunication on what a stormwater design standards manual is and then a drainage standards for the city. Because when I went to Publix Works, I don't know, Miriam, did you send the document that I had sent after our workshop to the chair? Yes. Okay. So there's a drainage standards document that the city has, but it's not the same as like a design standards manual, which is more holistic. And I'm not 100% sure if... Clara's still here

maybe more, maybe, maybe, yeah, I didn't realize, thank you, make it more clear, I just, because I could see her from here, so I was like, no, I, I, thank you so much, I only, I started paying attention when you said drainage, thank you so much, yeah, so I reached out to Public Works and asked for the design standards manual, and they sent me a drainage standards document that had, like, 10 to 20 different like standard drainage and piping types that was like standardized across the city. But I didn't know if there was like a holistic stormwater design standards manual that kind of came out of

And they're all updated based on the, okay.

Okay, yeah. Okay. Okay. So then I would agree that we can probably remove items one and two. Thank you so much.

We'll strike one and two, and then we'll move to item three.

So item three is to incorporate the NOAA Atlas 15 when it is available into projects that continue from the stormwater design standards master plan. And then I believe also any additional capital CIP projects in the future.

Yeah, my only question on that one, I keep bothering Clara. Would that trigger an update to the stormwater master plan using the updated NOAA 15, was it Atlas?

So as it reads, maybe read it so that she understands what we're... Because right now, we're trying to determine budget requests, budget recommendations, and right now it doesn't seem like it's going to trigger direct budget costs, but maybe in the future it might.

I think as it is, it's good. Yeah. Because we're not really asking for it. You're making a recommendation that once it comes online, to Gladys' point, they'll look at it and determine whether they're going to need budget or not.

Yeah. And I think like we talked about a lot today, it's important to ensure that anything that we're spending money on, we're doing it right the first time. Okay.

Okay. So item four is dollars for sponge program implementation. And essentially just saying, you know, this sponge just passed. There's tasks being done to evaluate the feasibility and maybe dollars should be earmarked for making that happen. And it may be new dollars or it may be existing forever bond dollars that are still remaining. It may be existing parks or public works dollars, we're not sure, but just kind of earmarking dollars for the program that we already endorsed. And then item five is inland street pilot implementation of the Southwest Streetscape master plan. So there's a great

I'd like to make a motion, yeah, for the committee to consider allowing the review of the other proposals. I can get a second. We can keep it short and maybe circulate it and just get written comment.

Which is why it's important things are in the agenda.

And thank you, Chairman, for the consideration.

I don't feel comfortable, you know, doing something like that, but if you can give us a summary, a quick summary.

Well, we have to have a vote, and then he'll give us a summary, and we'll see it, if we agree to see it. Because it was provided after the agenda packet.

But you didn't bring those to the workshop.

Yeah, I did, I brought some of those comments to the work.

This Overtown thing, relief, yes, you did, I remember we discussed that, and that's fine with me.

Right, and right, exactly, the two proposals I had for budget kind of relate to that recommendation on citizen science, and we can even dovetail it to, for example, here in the budget recommendations on.

I mean, if it's related to this Overtown Relief Program that you're recommending, If you want to add on to that, that's fine if it's related. But if it's unrelated, we don't have, we haven't had time.

I don't know. Let's, how about we cover what we can and what we can't. You know, we sort of limit it to this, you know, let's put a time box.

Well, I'm going to let there be a vote. Sure. And again, I really think you should have submitted it beforehand, but it is, you know, So if anyone's gonna second it, but to allow a vote, but it doesn't.

I just wanted to say that I'm not going to second because we do have policies in place for how to deal with this and it's frustrating to try to meet those deadlines and then have others not and then them just get to provide their input anyway. So that's why I'm not voting in favor.

Okay, then we, as of now, we don't have a second. So we won't, we won't take up those items. And I do think what we what we came out of the workshop saying was we were going to do a blanket item on item, item six, tree related funding. And then some of the things you mentioned were, again, very specific to trees. But I think that that item kind of groups the overall idea of making sure that there's dollars allocated to results of the tree committee. So I do think we're generally covering that and that was the consensus of the workshop that you attended.

Okay, so yeah, to comment on point six, I just want to make sure that we add that the budget recommendation is there for the funding readiness inventory, tree inventory was one of it. And I just want to make sure that the detail is we want to incorporate citizen science entries and everything with stormwater management, data verification, et cetera, to incorporate citizen science in our budget and in the way that we take inventories, digitally monitor, report, and verify, and obviously not just take it at face value, but work with our local universities and institutions to verify and validate

I think that we made a motion or you asked for a motion to introduce these other ideas and we didn't take it up. To not review them. You're trying to introduce them now.

I'm talking about the budget. Yeah, just a budget recommendation detail, Chair. But I mean, we have another.

Is it specific to one of the items you're

specific to the conversation the presentation we just had that it would be helpful i think to map out processes not within resilience and public works and buildings to understand where those processes overlap whether it's storm water or whether it's tree permitting knowing that process i think might might hear you but at the same time i want to respect the will of the committee yeah and you know mr chair i move the budget recommendations as as as

I was going to go to item seven. We didn't talk about it. Okay. Go ahead. So I just want to make sure that if we spend money on something like this, that the city is also not going to be simultaneously spending money on the consultants as well. Like they already do it that way. Are they going to do it the same way they always do it? And then we're also adding this additional like budget item or like is it redundant, I guess? Or are we suggesting that they get rid of the historical way of doing the cost estimating and that they only implement this? And it saves a lot of money because they no lo

I mean, I'm reading the item here right in the middle. If they do not, the committee recommends the city build capacity in-house by allocating budgets to train existing staff in a skill or hire for it so the expertise is retained within the city and can serve many projects over time. If neither option is feasible, the city should retain a qualified consultant to perform the analysis I mean, I think the response we received actually says that this is being done. I think we should strike item seven. I think we should be more concise with X number of things that we've already agreed to, and we sh

All right, so then it's going to be item one and two are stricken. Item three remains as is. Item four remains as is. Item five remains as is. Item six remains as is. Item seven is stricken, and we will update the order of items to start at item one, because we've stricken item one and two, and would you like to remake your motion based on that?

I move to move on the items you've just listed with the strikes.

And a second from Allison. All right, all in favor? Aye. Aye. That was Jenny Lee. Was anyone else?

Any oppose or abstain? Nay. I would only feel comfortable recommending item five, if we incorporate the Feeley Lab research for the right heat and saltwater-related species selection of the trees. And for point number six, if we're clear that part of the goal of the tree-related funding readiness be focused on enabling citizen-led...

Okay, it already passed. So, and again, you know, you've said in the past, I don't give you time, but I even tried to today. And as you can see that the will of the board wants things to be done in the process. And it was also stated at a previous meeting a couple of months ago to have things printed and ahead of time. So, you know, I just encourage you, please. All right, so let's move to the next item.

All right, item five old business on sponge program commission approval update. So the last commission meeting, the item, the item did get expedited forward, which was fantastic. Commissioner Pardo sponsored it, as well as Commissioner Rosado. And then those are the formal initial sponsors. I don't know if there's a technical term. But then afterward, there was additional sponsors by Mayor Higgins, and by Commissioner Escalona and by Chairwoman King. Commissioner Gabella was not present at the meeting, but of all present members, they all voted to sponsor it, which I thought was a really, real

I just wanted to congratulate you, Mr. Chair, because you followed the process, you brought presentations that were related to this item so that we can workshop it here together, and then you developed the policy with staff, I'm assuming, and you were able to move it onto the agenda so quickly, so congratulations, and I think we should all feel very proud of the work we're doing up here. But when it comes to process, that's how we're supposed to be working here. You have an initiative, you bring it, we workshop it together, and then we move it on as a recommendation. That's how committees work

Yep, exactly. And I have more items I'm going to bring later this year, and I'm going to try to even bring things even earlier in the process so that you all have them even earlier than the agenda packet timeline. And just as far as what the next steps are on this sponge item, there's how many sections? One, two, there's five items. The main thing is to evaluate and prioritize candidate sites for the city manager to formalize knowledge sharing. the city manager to report back to the Commission on an assessment on candidate sites on coordinating with the county acquisition of parcels acquisitio

Fantastic. Very exciting to see the leadership and the grants. So if no other comments, we'll move to item nine, open discussion. We don't have anything listed today. Oh, I do have an update, actually. So I almost forgot. So on the the tree committee, the tree Advisory Committee, I have a message from Melissa Fernandez steers that they have confirmed that the first tree Advisory Committee meeting is on Monday, July 13, from 9am to 12pm at City Hall chambers. And there is another update as well. that there is during the June 25th city commission meeting commission directed the city manager to b

Speaking on sponge that she did indicate that she wanted us to be aware of what they came up with and an opine Question I know that we had Voted previously to share all of the public comments that have come before us to the committee So now that they're gonna meet I mean, I'm assuming they already have it or I don't know I just want to make sure that they get it Those comments were shared right Miriam Yes Thank you very much for piling those

had a lot of comments last year in our meetings thank you um i also have been collecting on social media several comments from the public because there's also comments from the public that are made that are not necessarily submitted and i'm happy to submit that for the tree advisory committee so i think it'll be helpful to get some of that information absolutely there'll be i'm assuming staff

liaisons on that committee and I'll be sure that there'll be a process for ensuring, or maybe Miriam could assist with that,

Yeah, I'll share it with her. I've just been monitoring on social media some of the comments. I wanted to just make one quick comment, and I apologize that I couldn't make the workshop, but I also wanted to request, is there an opportunity for us to attend workshops via Zoom? Being that it's at noon, it's really hard for me to get downtown during work hours, but I would love to participate, and I just haven't been able to. So I just wanted to see if that was an option for future workshops, if there was a Zoom opportunity or doing it after hours.

We usually plan them kind of case by case. We've always kind of done them at noon. But, I mean, I think it would be up to Nick and Miriam as far as the capabilities of alternative methods of attendance.

All right, so then we'll move to item 10, future agenda topics. We don't have anything listed here, but we have an ongoing list of all the various ideas that you all have submitted. And our next meeting is not for quite a while. It's September 21. So in that time, I'll be planning hopefully multiple meetings for the rest of Q4 and be ready for Q4 to keep it moving. If there's no other comments, let's move to public comment. All right, so item 11 is public comment. Did you have something you wanted? Welcome.

Thank you, Gabriel. I appreciate you being here and taking the time to come up with those ideas for us. And I can't speak on behalf of staff, but he can reach out to the departments for his questions, right? Yeah. And as far as your second question of Things we've done, you can go on our webpage, and there's a whole section of legislative items, and we should be very proud. It's getting quite built out. There's a lot of things we've done in the last couple years, and the committee's been around for about a decade now. So there's been a number of proposals and legislation and memorandums that h

Yeah, I think that'll be very apparent in the in the budget documents that the city prepares Thanks so much Yeah, welcome. Thank you

Well, it's my understanding, maybe you can check, Mr. Attorney, that it's under workshop. The public does not have public comment, but they can listen in to our meeting.

It doesn't have the same procedural requirements. Or our discussion, because we don't take action at workshops.

So I want to congratulate you, Chair, on the stormwater and the sponge resolution. I think this very much aligns with our nature-based thinking for how we can solve some of our issues and where we can make a lot of money and save a lot of money. Also, on the new tree task force conversation, especially since we've been wanting to invite, particularly me, the New York City Parks team to talk about some of the things that they've done in New York. So I want to see if I could liaise that and maybe circulate. The leaf and canopy documents I've written so you could all review them at your own leisu

sharing the items that you shared the other day. I think that, yeah, now that the meeting's passed, I think that we would share them in anticipation of future meetings, but I feel like those two resolutions, like, you should just direct them to the tree committee in the time being, and when we have time for a New York Parks presentation, I'll look to add it to the agenda, but it's also based on when I think that it's appropriate and all their documents are available online. So, you know, I'll have it on the list of potential items for Q4.

Yes, motion to adjourn. Second. All right, thank you all so much. See you guys in September.