Village Commission - Special Meeting

All set. Great. All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll for us?

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Can we please do the Pledge of Allegiance? All right. So let's go on to our public comment. We'll start with folks here in the log cabin, and we will move on to Zoom after that. Just a reminder for everyone, please, public comment is limited to three minutes, and just provide us with your name and address before you address the commission. Thank you very much. Doesn't sound it.

Any others here in the log cabin before we move over to Zoom?

All right. If there's no others here in the log cabin, we'll move over to Zoom. One more chance. Going once, going twice. Okay. All right. Let's move over to Zoom. Do we have anyone on Zoom that would like to provide public comment at this time? Please raise your hand, and the clerk will unmute you to provide comment at that time. Once. Make sure everyone can hear me. Okay. Seeing none. Okay. All right. You got one? Okay, medical. Can you unmute, please.

If you could just try to maybe speak up just a little bit, but yes, we can hear you.

Thank you. Are there any other commenters on Zoom? Give it another second to see if someone's trying to get the hand raised. Okay, I don't think so. Okay, great. All right, so... That will close public comment at this time. I very much appreciate everyone sharing your comments with us this evening on the issue. I will go ahead and I'll move on to our commission reply and ask the commission if they have any reply to the comments at this time.

Thank you for pointing that out. What do we have, Madam Clerk? Okay, great.

We just into the mic. Yeah. Yeah, please.

Okay, great. Thanks very much. Thanks for pointing that out. All right, so let's get back to our reply. Does the rest of the commission have any reply to comments before we move to resolutions?

Just like to say thank you to all the residents to come out they got me hear your voice is always great to hear and we'll talk more on the item when we get to it.

So it's great to see a lot of new faces and a lot of you hear me now hello there that's better. Oh, yeah, I can hear myself loud. All right. So thank you. Thank you for coming. A lot of new faces, a lot of usual faces. All of this is very welcome to to help us vote conscious of your thoughts. um especially to the senior community i don't think you need to be here again i agree with you the vote does that for you when you voted for us we're here to represent in the best opportunity that we have and on that note and some questions i got on this I found out about last meeting that happened on Tue

Okay. I just will repeat what I said already. Thanks for everyone for coming out and talking with us about this issue. We have a few folks here to provide some additional information for us this evening. I know Freebie is with us. Appreciate you being here. I know we have Paul. with our finance group department. He's with us as well. So they'll be here to answer any questions the commission has. So let's jump into our resolutions. The first resolution, 2026-49. John, could you read it onto the record for us? And after you've done so, could you just give us a quick reminder about the need for t

OK. I thought I saw Pedro. He's here. OK, great. Yeah, please, if you could. So Pedro, in addition to what John has just told us, is there anything that you'd like to provide us with before we go forward on the resolution?

Okay. All right, Pedro. Very quickly for you, John, is there any provision or portion of this that would require us to decide on freebie before we pass the fee schedule? Or is this, they're independent?

Okay. All right, great. Do I have a motion and a second from the Commission to discuss?

Okay. Is there any, any point or any discussion? Is there any questions for Pedro or John that the Commission would like to lead with? No.

Pedro, I have one. So do we have a comparison about what we currently had up to this point of what sort of impact is going to be there? I don't know why you can I can hear myself loud, but you guys don't know. So what's going to be the impact of this fee changing starting today versus what we had until yesterday, we're going to make it neutral. So be no change in effect for residents, they're going to come forward and pull permits on any of these items. For them, it will be

Okay. Okay. So, and why is it, and maybe this is for John, why is it that it has to happen now?

All right, so I don't feel comfortable approving stuff without seeing the impact that it reflects. There is no comparison of what this looks like versus prior. That would be my only comment. I'm going to take you on your word that this is no impact for residents moving forward. But then you and I can just sit down. I would like to see that comparison, especially if the idea is it's not going to come to the commission. It's just going to be updated on a CPI on an annual basis, right?

That's a good point. And I think it's a good idea to do a check in maybe somewhere in the middle to see where that lands. And again, I wonder, you know, you made some examples of, you know, there's specific permitting fees and what's it going to look like for for everybody. So

Thanks, Pedro. All right. So if there's no further questions from the commission, then I will ask all in favor of approving the resolution.

John, thank you for the guidance. All right. So let's move on to our next resolution, 2026-45. John, if you wouldn't mind reading it on the record for us.

Thank you, John. Do I have a motion a second to move to this session?

Second. Okay. So, Paul, are you still with us?

Paul, so I know you've spent some time with this. I'm wondering if you can give us the rundown of the current status of the CITT with Biscayne Park for the benefit of the commission as we discuss. Can you do that for us?

Okay. Thanks, Paul. Just one point of clarification. You said audit. I want to just make sure that you agree that this is not a bad audit. This is a five-year standard audit, correct?

Okay, and once we clear that audit, the expectation is that CITT will release the funds that they've been hanging on to for us, correct?

Thanks, Paul. So can I give a very high-level understanding, and can you confirm for me if I'm correct, just because I'd like it to come from you, from finance, from the person who really understands this stuff. So the CITT, and I'm going to use approximations. That's fine. So approximations, approximately CITT granting to Biscayne Park annually about $200,000, approximately, correct? Correct.

And 80% of that money is freely used by Biscayne Park for things like capital projects, things like road paving, infrastructure, things of that nature, correct? Correct. And 20% of that money, approximately $40,000, needs to be allocated to transit, which freebie would fall under, correct? Okay. So that's just a high-level breakdown of how... those numbers shake out without considering what other revenues are coming in, what other grants are coming in, just that money and the two allocations that we need to make. All right?

Sorry, yes. That covers kind of a high-level understanding of the money that comes in through CITT and the two buckets that we need to fill with those funds. And is it also correct that if we don't spend the 20% on one of these kind of qualifying transit style projects that we are in danger of losing all of our CITT funding, is that right?

Okay. All right. Helpful, Paul. Thank you. And I know you mentioned this already, but without any additional funding, without any additional grant funding, if we were to just, and Claudia, I know you're here with us too, so you can feel free to jump in if you need to, if I'm stepping outside the bounds here. But I think what you'd said, Paul, was approximately the total annual spend on freebie is about $120,000. Is that right? Correct. That's not considering where the money's coming from. That's just straight cost.

Okay. Got it. All right. And. One last thing, and I think you already mentioned it, so please forgive me if you had, but assuming that we're successful, that we have no issues with this five-year audit that sounds like it's going along as it should, and we continue to pledge and spend that 20% on a transit-related project, we would anticipate Freebee releasing those funds that they had on hold for us for some time.

We need you up here, though, just because we need you on the mic. Go ahead, Paul.

All right. Great. Claudia, thanks for the clarification. All right. So I want to give the commission certainly time to to ask any questions to Paul about the numbers. before I provide my comments on my understanding of all this. So go ahead. If someone has questions or you don't want to talk to Paul about the numbers, please go ahead.

We're doing questions for Paul first. I'm going to go to questions for Paul, and then I'll make my comments. Paul, what's the current balance approximately in the CITT fund? Is it positive or is it negative?

But is that money in the bank currently right now or is that money?

So current on hand funds to be expended tomorrow because this service continues tomorrow. What's that on hand funds in the CITT fund? Zero. So we have no money in CITT. So every dollar we spend would come out of which fund?

And what's the current O from CIT to the general fund? How much does the CIT owe the general fund right now?

And what's the number that is projected if we continue freebies through the rest of the year to be owed by the end of this fiscal?

We're going to round out about $250,000 in the whole for CITT, correct? Correct. We're going to end up about $250,000 negative in that balance by the end of the year, correct?

Okay. So it's already in the budget to budget it from the.

I understand, but right now, I'll quote you here and say that last week when we talked about this, you said it's a long uphill battle to get the county to release the funds. Yes. What would be the projected O from CITT to the general fund at the end of the fiscal?

So, Paul, you touched on my main thing. I think I wanted to clarify with you is, and with staff, is what's the deadline? I don't know why.

Thank you. I'm glad. So the question for you, Paul, was going to be about the FDOT money. So we have 60 grand. When's the deadline for that?

I figure you didn't, but I just want to make sure. So that's a $60,000. I believe that there, Isa, you might be able to answer this one or someone from staff. What's our deadline for FDOT 60 grand attached? Currently we're paying freebie portion comes from this money, the $60,000. Yes.

All right. So I know the deadline. I did call FDOT. I just wanted to confirm. I don't know what the process is, and that's why I need clearance from you guys. What's the next step is my question, because if we do decide this and we move forward, do we have the money? Do we have 60 grand to move forward? That's been paying half the bill.

Yeah. But the difference is if we do move forward.

Correct. So that's the impact I see, and that's the clarification between the deadlines you're referring to, what the process is, which I still have questions about, is how do we make sure that whatever we pass today, we are going to cover it the way we've been covering it So far, because that money, $60,000 came from FDOT for us. If we pass a deadline and that doesn't happen now, how much, Paul, are we subsidizing? So I'm guessing between the 60 plus the extra 22,000 or so then.

Okay, so that's where I'm going. We are essentially telling FDOT, no, thank you for your grand money. We have a deadline that we told them we don't need it. That's what I'm trying to verify because we passed the deadline and we had a money coming in 60 grand that was coming from FDOT, not our general fund, not, right? So the question is- if we move forward which i think majority will agree tonight that we we want to do this i know my vote is a yes who pays what and you know how do we solve the issue of procedurally that starting the next contract um claudia were able to have the money from fdo

Correct. And that's my concern. So for me, it's not so much like the percentages. To your point, I think that we've figured out Paul has a very good idea of the 80-20. We control that. The key point is if we don't have that money, which is what I understood in the meeting we all voted for, is that you had a deadline. And that was the reason why we needed to pass this resolution. And the deadline was attached to the fact that we're receiving free money. My question is, where is the money going to go? Because I am upset now that if we can provide the service for 60 grand out of our pocket, that'

Not even. We're going to start in a month. But yeah.

So two things for me. The first one would be the CITT. The first call for FDOT for me was to understand, I didn't know the name of the grant itself. So I was trying to understand how this works. And the deadlines being for F, I mean, what it was told is that if we do apply, it will be like 2028, I think, because of the deadline on their fiscal. Again, I don't understand that. You know, that's what you guys do. So what's your problem, Judy? Okay.

All right. Look, I'm going to answer the question on the funding thing. I think there are multiple sources from which we can fund if there's a shortfall. Yeah. We can still get the grant. A grant can be pulled at any time. So we could have lost that money today because FDOT said, sorry, we're not going to fund it. So we can fund it from CIT. And if we fund it from CIT, in theory, we still have money for capital projects on top of a full $120,000 fund from CITT. And we have Al already shared with me an early plan to claw the money back from CITT to finish the five-year audit to bring that money

But there are other ways to use these funds.

Sorry, he's in a discussion with Claudia. She said they're open to expanding it even further and helping us with marketing and advertising.

So it's on the resolution we have today or no.

Well, this is a discussion that we have as we continue to partner with them. But, you know, the fact that this came up and the fact that you're you're willing to work with us and that we're renewing a partnership, if there's a full vote for it. I don't know. From all sides of this, I see this as a positive development that we found that there's additional funds that we can pull down for the projects that we want to do, and we can continue to provide freebie out of the CITT. I'm very happy with this development, guys. Yeah.

Thank you, Claudia. So listen, I, yeah, go ahead.

I haven't got a chance to speak and I see my breath here because I'm a no vote, but I want it to be on the record why I'm a no vote before we vote. So ridership, 2023, we're at 6,205 riders. In 2024, that dropped to 5,337. That represents a 13% decrease. 2025, that dropped to 4,183, a 21% increase, or decrease, excuse me, from 2024 to 2025. In 2026, we don't have a complete year, but in the first quarter, we have 840 riders. That's a 12% decrease. That shows from 2023 to 2025, our completed years, a 34% decrease over three years. I tried to compare this to our neighboring municipalities. I pul

I understand. Ryan, I can tell you put a lot of time and effort into the research. I appreciate it. You know, well understood. Well heard. Listen, I don't know if there's any other discussion or anyone else wants to speak or ask questions. I'm ready to call for a vote.

I'm going to finish my points, if I may. I'll take, and at any time, if you feel I'm talking too much, please utilize the five-minute rule we have in our procedures. And allow me to just direct some of the comments from the audience, please. My two points, $60,000 from FDOT. I'm hoping we can continue to fund it. That was my first point. And the second one, I do believe this service does not have a one-to-one evaluation on the money, okay? We are not talking how many seniors are actually using dividing by $120,000. The same way we're not doing that when we talk about kids playing in the park o

Thank you. Okay. Anyone else? No? All right. All in favor of approving the resolution?

Got it, Madam Clerk. Okay, great. All right. So having no other business for tonight's meeting, I will ask for a motion to adjourn. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Thanks, everyone, for coming this evening.

Paul, if you can still hear me, he's still there. He's not. Sorry. I'm sorry. Thanks.