Climate Resilience Committee - Regular Meeting

The moveover law was originally enacted to protect

City of Miami Climate Resilience Committee. Thank you for joining us. Let's start with a roll call from my right.

Graham Lusher.

Sarai Perez. Janine Molina.

Aaron DiMaio.

Silvio Frank Bupo-Casco.

Thank you. And now Miriam, please.

Miriam Flores, Office of Resilient Sustainability. Sonia Brubaker, Chief Resilience Officer, City of Miami.

Gigi Solomon, Office of the City Attorney.

Thank you very much. All right, before we move to item two, public comment, you know, just building off of roll call, we have a new member. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. Maybe you want to take a moment just to introduce yourself, talk about whatever you'd like related to this.

Thank you so much. I'm so honored to be here and serve alongside you. I'm very excited to just bring my expertise in communications. And I'm currently a public policy student at FIU and focusing on climate resilience. So I'm really excited to be here and serve. Thank you.

Awesome. Look forward to getting to know more about your work. And it's very helpful. We only have one empty seat as of now, which is the first time in a long time. So I really appreciate that, too. Commissioner Rosado and District 4 for that fast appointment. So item two is public comment. If anyone would like to make a public comment in person, just please state your name and address for the record, or if not, if we have any public comments online, Miriam.

None.

Okay. So item three is approval of our CRC workshop minutes for July 7th. and also the approval of our August 11th special meeting. Does anyone have questions or comments or would like to make a motion for approval of both of those minutes?

Motion.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All right. All in favor? Aye.

Aye.

None opposed or abstain? I think it was unanimous. All right. Great, so moving to the main event of the evening. We have a presentation this evening, Navigating Hurricane Season 2025 by John Morales. And I have a short bio here. I thought this was poignant giving where we are in the season. And John is a founder and chief atmospheric environmental scientist for Climate Data. His 37-year professional career began as a civil servant at NOAA's National Weather Service, followed by many decades in media as a well-known and respected weather and science communicator. Mr. Morales has won numerous awards, including the AMS Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Advance of Applied Meteorology. He was inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Silver Circle, for 25 or more years of distinguished work in broadcasting. And John is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and has attained accreditation as an AMS Board Certified Consulting Meteorologist and Certified Broadcast Meteorologist. Welcome, John.

Thank you, Chairperson, and good evening to everybody. I'm honored to be here. This is important work you all do. I think many of you know how much I care about the issue of resiliency, our changing climate, the impacts upon our society, and what's to come. But today, I am here to address other issues more in the realm of my role as an operational meteorologist. which is actually now, since you read something a little bit dated, now extends to 41 years, right? 41 years as an operational meteorologist. And what does that mean? That means that... I am not a researcher necessarily, right? I am not necessarily, at least not a full-time basis, a forensic meteorologist reconstructing past weather events. I work in operations, meaning that I deal with analyzing the weather, forecasting the weather, and warning people against potentially impactful, dangerous weather conditions. And I've done that through NOAA and the National Weather Service, which I was a part of for seven years. My role became, I was a lead meteorologist, a lead forecaster, as it's known, kind of the shift supervisor. And then my last role there, I was chief of the South American desk, very briefly, in Washington, D.C., at the biggest national, or actually biggest hemispheric weather office there. And then I pivoted to broadcast news, as many of you know, but that's also being an operational meteorologist, right? I am trying to forecast, warn for, and keep people safe from impending dangerous weather conditions. And as we've gone into this hurricane season, I've had many great concerns about some of the cuts that we've been seeing to NOAA, to the National Weather Service, And maybe we can leave for another day a much broader conversation about the sledgehammer attacks to science in this country and where that's going to leave us in the long term, which is not a good place. But I'll leave that for another day, and let's focus on this. So let's go to the next slide and kind of show some of the headlines that you've been seeing about this. And one of the more glaring ones as we headed into hurricane season This headline from CNN, U.S. weather forecasting more crippled than previously known. You know, 560 people were cut from the National Weather Service. And when you look at NOAA as a whole, we're talking many more hundreds that were cut. And many of these were, yes, through what was it called? The fork in the road, right? You were offered an early retirement if you wanted to take that. And let me tell you, and actually there's somebody in the room here that can attest to that today. You know, morale is not at its best historically at NOAA and the National Weather Service given everything that's happened. And the workload is much greater because of some of the cuts that we've seen where, you know, as a matter of fact, at the National Weather Service office in Miami, I just heard, So they've got only 50% of the number of forecasters that they normally have. They are down half of the forecasters right now as we speak at the National Weather Service here in Miami. And that is repeated across the 122 National Weather Service offices in the U.S. So given those cuts... Oh, I mentioned the fork in the road. This is the early retirement. But did you know that... If you were on probation, if you were a probationary employee, and this lasts two years, and it's not only when you're new, it's also when you get a promotion. So you could have been with NOAA for 20 years, you get a promotion to a better position, you're in probation for two years. And when doge cuts came, those people were indiscriminately fired. Because this wasn't done with a scalpel, it was done like we would say in Spanish, no? With a sledgehammer, all right? So very concerning because some of the best people from NOAA and the National Weather Service were lost. Former directors of the National Weather Service, every living former director of the National Weather Service wrote an op-ed collectively. They co-authored an op-ed indicating that these cuts could lead to unnecessary loss of life.

Now, what are the results of some of the cuts?

Well, many of the offices in the U.S., the National Weather Service offices, they no longer have the personnel to be able to release the twice-daily weather balloon that carries an important instrument that measures conditions as it goes up into the atmosphere. And we'll talk a little bit about how that impacts the quality of the forecast. I am not here going to make the leap from the cuts to what happened in Texas with the floods, because I think that would be irresponsible, and I don't think I'm prepared to tell you that there is a direct correlation between the tragedy on July 4th in Texas and some of these cuts. But I can tell you that this could easily happen with greater frequency. We could see repeat occurrences of this if Weather Service and the NOAA continue to be at the level of staffing that they are right now, And with cuts to everything else that's being cut from those services. Let's go to the next slide. We know we are just past the peak of hurricane season, which was September 10th. But did you know that 60% of hurricane activity happens after the peak date of hurricane season? And did you remember that last year's hurricane season was backloaded? So even though we are in a remarkable lull right now in hurricane activity, truly remarkable that not much is going on at this moment in the Atlantic, we cannot guarantee that the second half of this hurricane season is going to be this quiet. So we'll talk more about that. Let's go to the next slide. Now, when you look at the left side of this slide, it's very complicated, and I don't want you to dwell on this, but I just want you to realize that a lot of elements go into being able to deliver a proper, accurate, timely weather forecast and weather warnings. you know, from satellite observations to buoys to surface aviation observations done at the different airports. Those could be in the Windward Islands, they could be here in the U.S., they could be in Mexico, they could be anywhere all over the world. We have aircraft reconnaissance, we have those radio songs I mentioned just a little while ago. But when you look at the right-hand side of this, and you think of everything that's supposed to feed... Our ability to warn for and keep people safe, to be able to forecast, many of those things are in danger. So, for example, I already told you about the radio signs. They're that thing at the bottom. It looks like a little balloon with a box hanging under it, right? Those have been cut down across the country and were not reported. getting the data with the density that we used to, both spatially and geographically, okay? I mean, both temporally and spatially. The NOAA P3 hurricane hunters, according to Robert Atlas, Director Emeritus of the Atmospheric, Oceanographic, and Marine Lab here in Virginia Key, their hurricane research division and the branch of that services the P3s with personnel to fly in them, with people to maintain them, they're down 40 to 50%. And this year, we've only had one storm at a time. So there have been no issues in terms of being able to keep these aircraft flying. But what if we have two storms at once? What if we have three storms at once? Can we keep those planes flying with 40 to 50% down on the staffing over here at AOML and the people that support that program? A coastal radar could go on the fritz. Radars help us track the hurricanes when they're close to the coast. Radar goes out. Do we still have an employee that's the electronic services technician that can go and fix that radar? Not every weather office can say that we have that still. Next slide, please. My biggest concern here is that we might be caught by surprise. And we have recent examples of this. Now, Otis, Hurricane Otis in the Eastern Pacific precedes these cuts that we've seen since January in this country to NOAA and the National Weather Service. So why, therefore, am I talking about Otis if it precedes these cuts that I'm so concerned about? I'm talking about Otis because for reasons that have nothing to do with Doge, that have nothing to do with the Trump administration, okay? is a perfect example of what happens when you don't have data, when you're flying blind, because the National Hurricane Center, frankly, botched this forecast. How is it possible that the top hurricane specialists on this planet could be wrong about the Otis forecast when they thought it was a low-end category one and the one plane that was flying because in the Eastern Pacific, Hurricane Hunter planes barely fly. Again, it has nothing to do with DOGE, just the way it is.

You can infer why the U.S. does not have as many planes flying in the Eastern Pacific as they do in the Atlantic.

When the plane finally got to the hurricane, it was a Category 3 already, on its way to a Category 5, The Hurricane Center had told Acapulco and surrounding regions that they should prepare for a Category 1 hurricane, and they got a Category 5 hurricane. Now, many on this committee are too young to remember what Andrew did to Miami as a Category 5. But let me tell you, there is a humongous difference between what a Cat 1 can do and what a Cat 5 can do. And Acapulco was not prepared. And there was unnecessary loss of life in the Acapulco region because they were surprised by a botched forecast because the National Hurricane Center, all they had to be able to determine how strong the hurricane was, was visual pictures from satellites. Using a technique that I know and Robert Garcia knows the Dvorak technique where you look at the spiral of clouds on the hurricane and you infer what the strength of the hurricane might be that way. But let me tell you, it's imperfect. That was the only way they knew, that they thought they knew what the strength of the system was. And of course, feeding off insanely warm waters off the coast of Mexico, driven of course by, yes, global warming and climate change, We ended up with a supercharged hurricane that really impacted these folks in a very bad way. I am afraid that we could have the same thing happen here because a plane doesn't fly, because a balloon wasn't released, because an overstressed, tired, and demoralized staff at National Weather Service misses something. And I know that's unlikely, but not impossible. Next slide, please. So here's an example of what I'm talking about. This is just a couple of months ago. Early morning balloon releases across the U.S. You know, you immediately notice something there. There are gaps. So every star is where a balloon was released. If there's no star, no balloon was released. The idea is to have these spread out geographically as evenly as possible. And in the upper Midwest and the intermountain west, there were many balloon releases missing. And not that I know for a fact, because this would be unscientific, that a short-term trend means that that's going to translate to a long-term trend, but I can tell you that there has been a significant downturn in the accuracy of global forecast models since the beginning of this year. Now, these are linear regressions that I eyeballed, all right? So they're not mathematically calculated, but when you look at this whether it's the European model, the AI model out of the European Center, or the American GFS, every single one of them shows a decrease in accuracy heading into the spring, transitioning into summer. So let's go to the next slide. Go ahead and run that. While she sets it up, this is from Hurricane Dorian. This was six years ago. Some of you probably saw this online already, but it's worth rerunning here. Because you don't see it turning. Listen, I've been... Listen, I've been on this since 8 o'clock this morning on social media, and there is a lot of anxiety out there because you don't see it turning. When is it going to turn? John, it's not turning. It's coming straight to us. It's going to turn. The turn was never forecast to be on Sunday. The turn isn't even on Monday morning. The turn will come Monday afternoon, Monday evening, into Tuesday. And as you saw me do this live, well, not the 2019 version, when you saw me do what I'm presenting to you in person today, live on June 2nd of this year on Channel 6 here in Miami, where I ran this clip and I told people, I'm not sure I can do that this year. I still mean it. And what is it about that clip that I'm not sure I can do? It's the confidence that I'm showing in this clip. It's where I'm telling, you know, Dorian was a cat five. It was very, very scary as it was over the Northwest Bahamas, Abacos and Great Grand Bahama, heading straight west very slowly. Folks in Florida were truly, truly scared. I got on TV and I said, It's going to turn. It's going to turn. I don't think I would dare say that categorically, as I said it in 2019, this year, because of the degraded ability of the forecast models, because of the missing radio signs that we have, or perhaps because of a missing Hurricane Hunter aircraft that may not fly because personnel are missing elsewhere.

Let's go to the next slide, please.

you know, since 8 o'clock this morning. Listen, I've been on this, you know, since 8 o'clock this morning on social media, and there is a lot of anxiety out there. There's more. Because you don't see it turning.

You need to figure out how to get past that slide.

When is it going to turn? John, it's not turning. It's coming straight to us.

If you want to exit out of it.

It's going to turn. Exit out of it, and there you go. So let me transition then to what I'm calling a combustible mix, right? So we all know, particularly in this room, we all know that we are in an era of more extreme weather events. You know, when drought develops, it develops faster. It becomes more intense. It can lead to stronger and more widespread wildfires. When it finally does rain, it rains harder at rain rates that our 20th century infrastructure can no longer handle because this infrastructure isn't built for this climate, right? So it's truly incendiary to mix cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service and cripple our ability to monitor, observe, forecast for, warn for, increasingly extreme weather events in an era like this. That mix of climate change driven extreme weather with cuts to our ability to do those things to keep people safe is truly, truly alarming. Next slide, please. So hurricanes are getting stronger, warmer waters are driving that. There are attribution studies that indicate how Hurricanes like Helene, Beryl, and Milton jumped a whole category based solely on how incredibly hot the water was in the Gulf of Mexico for these systems. Next slide, please. And of course, the stronger the storm, the higher the cost. This city has been extremely lucky in recent years. Yeah, we've, you know, just about every corner of the state of Florida, with the exception of that one corner that rarely sees hurricanes, I'm talking about Jacksonville and places north of St. Augustine, right? But every other corner of the state has been impacted by strong hurricanes, and we've missed out. But it will happen again. And given the way that sea surface temperatures are driving rapid intensification cycles in hurricanes... where we're seeing events like Erin this year, like Barrow last year. Even Helene went through that. And I can name many others, Maria and Dorian and Harvey and Irma. I mean, it's just an incredible number of storms in recent years that have gone through these, not just rapid intensification, extreme rapid intensification cycles. Well, one of these years, we're going to have a mundane tropical storm in Eleuthera, really specific now, because I know people in Miami know they're behind Bahamian islands, okay, we're going to have a mundane tropical storm in Eleuthera that 36 hours later is going to make landfall here as a category 4 hurricane. That will happen someday, and it's much more likely to happen because of climate change. Next slide, please. I mean, sea surface temperatures, you know, it's funny, at the beginning of this hurricane season, or just preceding this hurricane season, oh, you know, this hurricane season might be slow, sea surface temperatures are cooler. Well, the season has been slow, but it's not because of this. Sea surface temperatures are third hottest on record, only behind 2023 and 2024. So, I mean, we're right up there with global sea surface temperatures, with Gulf of Mexico temperatures. I think I've got the Gulf next, maybe, maybe not. Next slide. No, we don't. But again, hurricanes, flash floods, urban floods, you know, heat waves, which kill the most people, as you all know, right? All those disasters are increasing. The U.S. government will stop counting these now, because if you can't count them, if you don't count them, it's not increasing, right? But at least through 2024, we have the numbers. And we know that billion-dollar disasters are indeed increasing. Next slide, please. So the bottom line is that these cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service are alarming. They're coming at a very, very bad time, given the increases in weather extremes that we're seeing driven by the changing climate. And I think the city needs to be ready for that, needs to be aware of it, needs to be ready for the gaps in data that we might have, and ensure that it keeps its population safe, well-informed, resilient, ready for the worst, because sometimes, as to borrow from my colleague Brian Norcross, sometimes the worst does happen. Thank you very much.

Any questions? Thank you very much. I really appreciate the thorough presentation today and also just all the work you've done to prepare us year in and year out. I'm sure it's difficult sometimes making those calls and, you know, as you said, being confident in what you have to say. This topic is really poignant. It directly relates to number one of our mission statement of recommending changes to the city to adapt, prepare for, and thrive in stresses. You know, having the necessary data directly relates to that aspect of our mission statement we even have a required. Member of the emergency management team as as part of our as part of our committee membership. and You know, I think that in general, you know, it's important that we have this data to protect all of us. Right now, we feel okay because we're not seeing any things, and this is a difficult conversation to have, but we need to have it. Do you have any thoughts or questions as related to the city and the work that you do day in and day out to help prepare us?

So as far as emergency management is concerned, we rely on the same science and data that you're talking about here now. I'm understanding is going to be affected. And we rely on our relationship with the National Weather Service, Robert Garcia, Robert Molleda, to provide us the information in a timely manner. And that kind of drives the decision-making that we have here in the city of Miami to prepare not only the infrastructure, but the citizens of Miami themselves and the employees. And that affects the timing. When do we activate the EEOC? When do we start evacuations? When do we set up sandbag distribution sites? All those things are reliant on the data from NOAA and the National Weather Service. So you bring up a great point, and I appreciate you coming here today to inform us. The question I have is, what do you suggest that we can do as a city to prepare for what you believe is coming down? And what are some steps we can do? Is there technology that we can look into so that we can better prepare ourselves as far as the city of Miami and emergency management?

Yeah, it's a good question. And I think the first thing I'd like to do is to back up people like Robert Molleda and Robert Garcia who are here. Because for example, and you're familiar with this product, but everybody else needs to be familiar with it too. The hurricane impact graphics that the National Weather Service produces locally, the great thing about those is that they give you the reasonable worst case scenario, right? So it always allows the city to prepare perhaps for something worse than what's actually being forecast or looked at at the moment. And I think out of all years in which these graphics, the hurricane impact graphics are important, I think this year might be the most important year of all. Because to be able to prepare for a condition that might be even worse than forecast is something you need to have in your head just in case some of these things are described, that I described, come into play.

And granted, I recognize that

I mean, some of this is, yes, speculation. I don't know if the NOAA hurricane hunters will not fly as often, but man, if they're down 50% of personnel, there sure is a better chance that they won't, right? I don't know that these guys are going to, you know, miss something because they're tired and down 50% of forecasting staff, but it could happen. So just, you know, not be as confident about, In the forecast, prepare for at least one category worse. Think of rapid intensification. Think that if there's no hindrance to the storm, if the water is warm and there's no wind shear, it's got a shot. It's got a shot to run up that number to Lord knows what, because that's happening a lot more often these days, and you see how scary it can become. When Milton... Milton was a Category 1 that morning. Remember that morning that I almost lost it on TV, right? It was a Category 1 that morning. By noon, it was a Category 5. Seven hours it took it to go from a 1 to a 5.

Seven hours! How does the city prepare for that, right? How do we forecast for that, right?

So... Just kind of be ready for a worst-case scenario. That's what would be my recommendation. Good question.

I have a question. What was the budget? If you had to assign a value to the budget cut, I'd like to know how much less funds you are getting because I'm trying to understand because I think the consequences are in the billions. Do you have a rough estimate as to what the budget cut was?

In terms of the radio songs?

Yeah.

Yeah, for the radio songs, on June 2nd, when I did my thing on TV where I presented this kind of live, 17%. We were down 17% of the U.S.-based weather balloons.

Which is an estimated cost. I have no idea what the cost, what the budget cut actually, numbers. I'm just curious. How much money are they not giving to you all to risk?

So the lack of balloon releases is more of a direct consequence of the firings and or early retirements that occurred during the doge cuts. Because the forecasters are not just responsible for writing forecasts for aviation, marine, and public stakeholders. They also have to actually go to the balloon housing area, fill the thing up, release it, and that takes time. So they simply didn't have the man hours because people had been fired. So I don't know how much it means in terms of money, but it was a lack of personnel that led to that. I just had a conversation with Robert Garcia about some of the things that they're doing, which is interesting. So, for example, the Miami office... I'm just going to go ahead and say what you just told me. The Miami office... instead of releasing the balloon at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., or I guess you do it an hour before, right? So synoptic times, 12 Greenwich Mean Time and 12 Greenwich Mean Time. They're doing it at 2 p.m. local time, or 1 to 2 p.m. local time, and then again, at 6 to 7 p.m. local time. So they do two balloon releases within six hours instead of spreading it out over the 24 hours. Well, because as Robert informs me, they've been told that the models, what the models need is two balloon releases a day. Doesn't matter if you release them within six hours of each other or spread out over 12 hours of each other. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know. Scientifically, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But that's what they're doing to resolve their staffing issue because they're down 50%. And they can't have, you know, they probably have a one-man show overnight. Do you? Do you have a single forecaster on shift in the midnights? Correct, right? So they have a one-man band running everything at night during the overnight shift, and that person who's supposed to be there to go release the balloon can't leave the office unstaffed. What if the phone rings? I mean, you just can't do two things at once. So they're not releasing the 7 a.m. balloon They're waiting until there's more people in the office to release it at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. There's national weather service offices in the U.S. that have had to shut their midnight shift. They lock the door. These used to be 24-hour operations. Now they're not, right? And granted, when severe weather is threatening and you know that it's going to threaten, they do everything possible to have the proper staffing in place. That did happen in San Antonio, Texas, before the July 4th tragedy in Texas. They brought extra people. They held some people over from the previous shift. The next shift, some people came in early. They'll do that. But you can only do that for so long. You can only forecast severe weather events so much. I mean, we didn't forecast the rain bomb at the Fort Lauderdale Airport two years ago. It was not forecast. It just happened.

I have another question for you. And I'm curious, I think, just from the numbers perspective, from an economics perspective, back to Grant's question as well. We also have models like the Nvidia Earth 2 model that have come out and they're increasing predictions and leveraging AI technology for especially hurricane typhoons. Have you looked into those tools and how that could benefit and is there any way, also back to Grant's point, that we can invest either as a county or as a city something or a number of different data points, hardware, software to be able to be better prepared. I'm looking for a very tangible kind of response here in terms of what does a new toolkit look like for communities to prepare in the light of less data and less coverage from the national government, if at all. We can't buy our own plane, that's for sure. But maybe there is a drone service we might be able to use that can. So that's kind of what I'm looking for.

Well, first and foremost, it is great to be aware of some of these new tools that are coming out. I mean, think of Google DeepMind AI forecast. It's doing very well in track forecasts, right? It's free, right? I mean, all you have to go is their website. It's right there. You can look at it. Now, some municipalities... have weather consultants. They have companies that they pay to monitor and warn early about impending severe weather. Not that the National Weather Service doesn't do a good job. They do. But it's generally pretty broad-brushed. The interests of a specific client, right, are not necessarily attended to because, you know, they can only spread them so thin, right? Not every municipality does that. Not every emergency management office does that, but there are several in the country that do that. That is one option. I've done that for, not in the U.S., I've done that for the government of the Dominican Republic. I was the consultant for El Palacio Nacional, their White House, the name of their White House down there, during the Fernandez administration several years ago. And they have their own national meteorological service just like we do, but this particular administration wanted more in-depth knowledge, more hand-holding, which is really important. And yeah, we use the same tools that are out there, but we just give you the more personalized attention that sometimes is required.

And the question, I guess, for Sonia and for Grand Chair, which is what are those tools that are currently being used? What do we have access to in the city? And what do you think would be helpful to be able to have this centralized dashboard that helps you make more informed decisions in light of all the recent changes at the federal level?

So what I'm understanding from today's conversation is it's more of an awareness that there is less employees. There may be lapse in coverage. I can tell you from what I've noticed in the very recent past is that we were getting timely flood notifications from the National Weather Service. We're in constant communication with them. So we haven't felt that impact here. A lot of what John is talking about would be what I would categorize as a no notice events, flash floodings, earthquakes, you know, severe thunderstorms where that if they're only throwing up a balloon, you know, twice a day can impact the data that we're receiving. But if there is a. noticed event like a hurricane or storm out there, I'm very confident that they're going to be upstaffed and ready to give us that information here in Miami. I can put some ease back into your minds. When we have special events like Ultra Fest, we have three points coming up. Robert Garcia, Robert Molleta are always there in the command post. They're the entire event, giving us real-time weather updates. If we had a hurricane coming, I guarantee you, if they're not with us, they'll be in the county EOC. with direct access to us. So we have that capability. We haven't felt that impact yet, but this is important information for us to be aware of in case we do start to feel it. And what we can do as a city, something like the storm initiative that Erin's going to bring up, those are things that we can do to start preparing and making everybody aware. And to your point, there are a lot of tools out there. There's flood cameras that we can do to watch the surge come up. There are weather balloons. We have drones. We have some of those capabilities, but all of that comes at a cost, not just for the equipment, but you need somebody to interpret that data in real time. And we're spoiled here because we do have access to the National Weather Service, but what happens if that access goes away, right? So I think that's the intent of this conversation for the awareness, and we need to start planning for that. So I would like to, you know, reach more back out with Robert Garcia, Moyeta, John, kind of do some brainstorming. What can we do? What things can we implement here to fill some of those gaps? But I don't have a direct answer to your question at this time, but I need to get further information.

Thank you. And, Avra, there's a link, there are live links to all of the statements in the proposed resolution, including the House and Senate Appropriations Committee and President's proposed 2026 budget on paragraph three. So it states the proposed budgets for each of those three amounts. And as we just heard, Equipment and interpretation comes at a cost. Is it capable? Is it possible? But there's also certain data points that are far more efficient when coming top down and the This I guess we can kind of transition to item Item six items to be voted on So this storm initiative science-based tracking and operational resilience for Miami is prepared in in the spirit of what we just heard as far as a commitment to science for tracking these storms, which is what we just heard is what's done during events currently at the EOC, and just basically ensuring that we do our role as the CRC, maybe not necessarily coming up with exactly what those solutions may be, but just bringing it to the attention of the administration who is going to have to be making those difficult choices alongside the people, you know, John and the other meteorologists that are giving that data and those having, making sure that they're prepared and are just, you know, more acutely aware of this, I think, is what this resolution may help to bring attention to. So... Maybe we just read it out loud and then we can ask questions and see if anyone has specific comments on this resolution. A resolution of the Climate Resilience Committee recommending to the City of Miami Commission to reaffirm the city's commitment to science-based weather tracking as the foundation for emergency preparedness and to advocate for the preservation of federal funding to mitigate local risks, to coordinate with regional partners to address potential federal budget cuts to NOAA, and to adopt the science-based tracking and operational resilience for Miami storm initiative. Whereas the city of Miami's resilience and public safety are critically dependent on science-based forecasts and data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, and the National Weather Service, NWS, whose primary mission is the protection of life and property and enhancement of the national economy, quote. And whereas the Miami metropolitan area is home to over 6.4 million people and has a regional economy exceeding $533 billion, with more than 85,000 residents in Miami-Dade County living in low-lying land below three feet of elevation. making reliable preparedness information essential to protect the significant population and economic hub. And whereas the President's fiscal year 2026 budget request proposes a 27% reduction to NOAA's budget, and while the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have rejected the most severe cuts, expert hurricane meteorologists, including Miami's John Morales, Dr. John Cortines, Dr. Robert Atlas, and James Franklin, warned that even potential decreases could lead to a loss of essential observational systems and a 20% to 40% reduction in staffing in South Florida forecast monitoring and research offices, leaving the city potentially flying blind, quote, with the greater ability to determine a hurricane's true strength before landfall. And whereas the immense economic value of NOAA services is well documented, with multiple studies from sources, including the American Meteorological Society and the Internet of Water Coalition, estimating that the benefit-to-cost ratio of federal weather forecasting is up to 15 to 1, which enables a thriving private weather sector and that a 2022 study estimated that forecast improvements since 2009 alone have generated savings of $7 billion, which is 20 times the agency's hurricane forecasting system budget during that period. And whereas the increasing frequency of extremely rapid intensification events, such as Hurricane Milton in October 2024, which intensified from a Category 1 to a Category 5 hurricane in just over seven hours, drastically reduces the lead time for public preparation and safe evacuation. And whereas this compressed timeline, combined with the potential degradation of federal forecasting, creates problematic situation for decision makers and a heightened risk of warning fatigue, a phenomenon where residents may disregard alerts after repeated, less precise warnings, leaving them dangerously unprepared for catastrophic events. And whereas the increasing intensity of rainfall is seen during Hurricane Ian in 2022, where some areas of Florida received over 20 inches of rain, there was unprecedented storm surge, 12 to 18 feet reported along the southwestern Florida coast, and approximately 2.7 million customers in Florida lost power. It has demonstrated that water-related damage from inland flooding and storm surge is a serious cause of life and property. And whereas the city's emergency management hierarchy from municipal departments, Miami-Dade County, the South Florida Regional Planning Council, and the Florida Division of Emergency Management relies on a coordinated regional approach to ensure consistent and reliable information is available for all of South Florida, which ultimately depends on data from NOAA and NWS as established by Florida Statutes 252.38. Now, therefore, be it resolved, the City of Miami Climate Resilience Committee strongly recommends that the City Commission direct the City Manager to work with all necessary departments to adopt science-based tracking and operational resilience for Miami Storm Initiative 2 Number one, advocate for federal funding and capacity to formally advocate at the federal level for the preservation of NOAA and NWS funding and capacity, which are vital for protecting the public safety of Miami and other coastal communities. Two, to mitigate local dependencies to audit the city's reliance on NOAA data to proactively identify potential shortcomings and prepare for contingencies. This includes integrating supplemental data from state academic and private providers, including FEMA, USGS, and University of Miami and Florida International University. Number three, to coordinate with regional partners to lead a strengthened regional effort to coordinate emergency data resources and public messaging with Miami-Dade County, neighboring municipalities, and the Southeast Florida Climate Compact, ensuring a unified and science-based approach to preparedness and response. And finally, number four, to reaffirm commitment to science, announce that the city of Miami's commitment to science-based weather tracking as the foundation of emergency preparedness. So this resolution is prepared in a way of trying to tell the story of what we've heard tonight, of the primary mission of NOAA and NWS to protect life and property and the national economy, the immense value of the population and the economy that it's protecting, including potential loss of life, just The economic benefit of the ratio of the investment to the outcome that has been seen over the years and to ensure that we have the data we need to protect ourselves from these strong storms that we've seen. So that's kind of the idea behind it.

I just have one comment, and I'll first say that both of my parents have their PhDs, masters, and my father's a fellow at Cambridge University. I will make the suggestion, though, on number four, to ask the city to reaffirm commitment to science as a broad term, and politically, not always as popular as it should be. I would suggest that the city of Miami Announces commitment to science-based weather tracking as a foundation of emergency preparedness Rather than just reaffirm their commitment to science as a general term and that's Just due to the political environment not my personal opinion which I Don't I'm not following where you're saying. It's missing that number four you're asking the city to reaffirm commitment to science and

Oh, in the initial part to add the full line.

Just don't.

Or just don't even write it.

Don't write the beginning of that. Just have the city confirm its commitment to science-based weather tracking.

So you're suggesting remove the first four words.

That's just my opinion, given the political environment.

It makes sense. That's all. But it's not construed out of context.

Yeah, so we're not asking them to commit to it generally, even though I feel strongly about it.

No, it's for this specific purpose, and resolutions are supposed to be very targeted. So that's, yep, that makes sense.

I think, I see the direction you're going in, and I think this is something that needs to be talked about. I appreciate you making space to have this conversation. I believe that states are gonna need to step up, and maybe the county. The county is going through a major budget cut, so I don't know how much we can ask of them. But I do believe that it's, I would add that we should look, we should explore, at exploring new options, right? So as our guest speaker was saying earlier, John that you know there's existing services so maybe there's best practices from other cities having individual consultants I'd love to know what that is what cities are using it I'd love for the city manager and others to also look at what technologies could they adopt I know that our resilience office has access to Google Environmental Insights Explorer, which has been pretty helpful. I just requested, by the way, a high-resolution data set for a tree canopy. So I want to circle up with you on that. But maybe there's other things like the Google DeepMind that just came out, which is also something we can leverage for being able to make more accurate predictions. NVIDIA. to leverage to make more accurate decisions. So I think we should explore what that looks like and coordinate on the basis of that. I could also add that the Office of Emergency Management for the state is something, and maybe Grant could shed a light on that, is something we should explore. advocating towards not just at the federal level, but maybe adding to the federal on part one to the state as well, so that we can plug have more direct interconnect with the state emergency management system. And I would add, lastly, a cert, you know, if we're looking at emergency preparedness, the best the best emergency preparedness program I've seen at the city is the cert program from the fire department. maybe there's a way to also weave that in in terms of coordinating with regional partners, making sure that CERT, the Civilian Emergency Response Team, is adequately prepared and resourced and at the center of that conversation so that whatever comes out of that, it gets into the community so people get trained on those best practices, those tools, those insights, at least know what to do and how to get activated in case they're also needed. And ditto.

So I think a lot of the things you mentioned of, like, different technologies, I think it's just part of number two for them to look into. And I feel like we shouldn't get too detailed into listing them out.

Well, you only mentioned data. So I'd like to think about, you know, integrating supplemental data. It's not just integrating, but really researching what other technologies in general maybe come up.

I mean, I think that's just implied by... coordinating with regional partners and coordinating emergency data resources like that's I don't think we need to define you know a dozen a dozen things but the adding Florida division of emergency management to perhaps number two again this is kind of focused number point number one is focused on the budget that

I would, on number one, advocate for state and federal funding and capacity. State, yeah. And not just limited to federal. I would say state and federal because if the federal is not going to pick up the tab, maybe the state will. They just got a big increase in Homeland Security grant funding. You didn't hear that from me. As far as implementing the certainness, I like it. I always love to promote our services, especially in emergency management, but I don't see, because that's more of like a... preparedness and response type thing. This is preparedness, but it's more towards weather data, information collected. So I don't think it's the right fit for the cert here, but it is a good point. In paragraph three of whereas, I have a little bit of heartache when we go down to, after James Franklin warned that he, that even potential decreases could lead to a loss of essential observational systems and a 20 to 40% reduction in staffing in South Florida forecast monitoring and research offices. I almost kind of want to leave a period there. I don't think we'll ever be left flying blind. Yeah. There is going to be some form of NOAA, some form of National Weather Service. There may be some gaps there, but we won't be flying blind. And, you know, degraded ability to determine a hurricane's true strength before landfall, I don't know if that's 100% true or accurate, and I don't know if it's needed. I know, you know, the intent of why you put it there, but it kind of, like, leads everyone to believe that without them, we'll be flying blind, and there's other tools and things that we can utilize within emergency management. I don't want to kind of, like, leave it out there, like, hey, we're not prepared at all. So... I'm just saying maybe period there, the point was made. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot.

Yeah. I mean, we probably don't want to have a hyperbole in anything that we're writing out of here anyway. And to your point on science, I think it was well taken on the CERT. I would add maybe that's an opportunity for citizen science. I mean, we're talking about state. Atmospheric science is usually very much climate data. It's very specific, but I don't know if there's a chance for in our commitment to science to emphasize, which I keep championing, uh, the citizen science component. I think we should keep it focused.

All right.

So are you looking for a motion?

Yeah, I would, I would look for a motion, uh, on this item with an edit as amended the third. Yeah. As amended with the third paragraph, removing the, uh, Leaving to landfall with the first point after the resolved statements to include at the federal and state levels, plural. And number four, to remove the first four words of that.

And I'd like to add, Chair, an inclusion on mitigate local dependencies to include exploring technology solutions, specifically solutions that allow us to make simulations on future predictions. If you want to be more specific, we could include NVIDIA Earth 2 and the Google DeepMind. But I think those are...

What did you, I'm sorry, you said digital, you had a word that like captured all of those.

Yeah, I don't think we want to get specific about digital, deep mind, all that. I don't think we want to.

So predict simulation, I could do prediction and simulations or simulations of predictions of forecast models.

Simulation predictions.

I feel like integrating supplemental data from state, academic, and private providers encompasses exactly that.

It doesn't. It's just data. Just because you have data doesn't mean you're simulating it or that you're leveraging some of the top tech, especially within the office. So just to be...

What would the specific term be without like?

He said simulation projections.

Simulation predictions.

So what I would propose, if this is an amendment you'll consider, this includes integrating supplemental data from state, academic, and private providers, including FEMA, USGS, the University of Miami, and Florida International University. And what I would propose is as well as simulation projections.

Why don't we add it after the word data?

What if we did, this includes integrating supplemented data and technology from state, academic, and private. And you're kind of not pigeonholing yourself into one specific type of technology, but you're just leaving it open to technology as a whole.

I like that. I'll make a motion with those amendments and using the word and technology to capture. After data. Yeah. Supplemental data and technology. Yeah, from my colleagues.

Okay, motion from Avra. Do I have a second on this motion?

Second.

She beat me. Awesome. Okay. All in favor? Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any abstainer? I think it was unanimous. Yes. Okay, wonderful. Good work. Thank you. Appreciate the collaborative effort in... refining this. I think that's good teamwork. And this kind of process of having experts in the field on a specific topic be able to educate us at least to whatever extent we can before making these types of decisions will help us in this kind of a process on other future items as well. All right, so we skipped. And john, thank you so much. And thank you after your presentation. Yeah, thank you so much. Fantastic. Thank you all for your work. We skipped old business item number five, when we went to the items to be voted on. So I'll go back to that, which was the city budget. So just a quick framing of the topic was, we decided back in, I believe, March or April to to make our own recommendations list. We all made recommendations. We had a workshop. It was well attended. We consolidated the list. We had a meeting in July where it did not become a meeting. It was a workshop. It was myself, Silvio, and Abra in attendance, and we discussed the items. We made a few refinements, and then I appreciate everyone making it to the special meeting in August, of which we voted to finalize that budget recommendations memorandum, which has been circulated to all of the relevant parties. And the first budget hearing was this weekend on Saturday. And then the next one is coming up, I believe, to finalize everything looks like next week. So this is just an opportunity to essentially remind folks that our recommendation list, it is out there if you want to read it, refer to it, and all of us in case you want to share it or reach out to any of the commissioners about it or have any other comments about the city budget. All right, well, hopefully some of our recommendations get worked into it. And I think that this, This was a good effort, and I think we kind of created a good framework that we can also follow for subsequent years. So I think as we go through our meetings, if topics come up and we think that's something we should think about, we can individually or collectively during the meeting mention that and try to take notes to make sure it's included in the meeting minutes. So when we hopefully do this task again next year, we already have ideas. Alright, so we move on to the next item, we do not have any waterfront projects item seven. So we move to item eight Office of resilience and sustainability updates.

Good evening, everybody. Sonia Brubaker, Chief Resilience Officer, City of Miami. I want to give some updates from the Office of Resilience and Sustainability. I hope everybody had a good summer, a good break off. Happy to see everybody today. We've had a lot of work happen over August, and so I want to update you on that. One of the first things that I'm really happy to give an update on is that the city worked on a Blue Street project during really June through August. And this is actually from our Southwest streetscape plan. So you guys got a presentation of this plan. I believe it was early last year. And the plan identified where there's some tree planting hotspots. And also identified a couple of different demonstration projects. So one of these was a Blue Street project. And so we have nearly completed it. We're very close. It's located on Southwest 3rd Street, spanning from Southwest 4th Avenue to Southwest 5th Avenue. So this is right by Jose Marti Park. and it is in the Little Havana pedestrian priority zone. And so we have taken kind of one block and we have increased tree coverage by over 70%. So we've added, give or take, about 20 trees. We're using structural soil. We incorporated porous concrete on the sidewalks and porous asphalt in the parking spaces. And so this is going to be just a really, really great place for people to walk in that neighborhood and for us to be able to see, for it to demonstrate, you know, how it's going to help reduce flooding and how it's going to help reduce the heat island right there in that neighborhood.

Really, really, really excited for this one.

Seeing things in the ground. So the next.

Do you have any pictures?

I don't have a picture right now. No, I have some pictures before, you know, trees. But once everything, everything is in, I will definitely show it at a future meeting.

So is it under construction currently, or is it already done?

It is nearly done. So it's under construction, but it's not a whole lot left to do.

Exciting.

Yep.

Thanks.

Next, I wanna give a quick update on our heat sensors and homes project. So over the summer, we installed 78 heat sensors inside and outside. of people's homes and energy burden neighborhoods. So we have data coming in, we have not analyzed that data yet, but we are going to collect those sensors in October and take a look at all the data and see kind of what people have been experiencing for this heat season. We'll have a survey for people, and then we'll take all of that information, that lived experience information, and come up with some recommendations on how to keep people cool inside and outside of their homes. So more to come on that. And lastly, I want to give a quick update on tree giveaways. I hope that you saw the poster as you came in today. If not, take a look at it. We are doing another tree giveaway. The city usually does one in April, and we're doing another one. We're doing five in October. So it will be October 4th, October 11th, and October 18th. You can see the locations on the poster. I also have a nice little flyer if you want to take one. We're really going to need your help in the outreach on this and getting people there, getting people to know that it's available. So we'll have all of these translated. We'll have the flyer translated and information going out. But it would be great if you could share it with your networks, and we want to make sure this is a real success.

I have to say, your last tree giveaway was the talk of the entire MRC building. All 24 of my employees were rushing to go downstairs to get trees, and they were exchanging and bartering in the office. So really good job. You got everybody talking about it.

Thank you. Nice. I had a question regarding the Little Havana Blue Street. Are there plans to do this in other locations within the city, or is this just a one-time pilot?

So this is our very first one, and that's why it's so important that we talk about it and that we can really show it as a demonstration project. and track it, just keep track of what it's doing, because it takes more funding to be able to implement these things, but as we see the successes of it, it's a much easier sell to be able to say, hey, this is where, these are the specific spots where we can do this, where it's needed, and where we can do more of it.

It would be great too if you could share, like when you show the photos, like when you talk about the porous concrete and the porous asphalt, It's good to share the actual details because I think there are probably other municipalities or other communities that could learn from it as well, right? So open sourcing your means and methods I think is particularly interesting because maybe even those of us on the private side. So developers typically have to do sidewalks. The city and the county requires to do their infrastructure. And so maybe what could happen is when we do these public works projects that are required as a part of development, we can integrate some of this newer technology. Because I don't think the building department or certainly we're not aware of it. So I think that would be really helpful. And maybe informing public works about this, maybe some of these things could become requirements.

Yeah, that's really helpful to hear. Because one thing that we were thinking of is we're like, okay, well, we want to be able to also show people what the cost is. And then also pair that on top of the data of again, where this can be utilized best, because it doesn't necessarily go everywhere. So we want to be able to put it where it's really needed. So that's really helpful. We'll think about that and how we can get those messages out.

I agree with Avra a lot, that seeing the details in the open source would be fantastic for other private sector as well. And I mean, Factory Town is really leading the charge on innovative solutions, which is quite interesting. The one way that maybe you could be effective with citizen science type research is making sure that perhaps third street, second street, fourth street, that every resident there gets maybe a mailer about IC change. And then you can track whether, you know, flood events on those three streets to compare. And maybe we can start to get, you know, like granular data, which is what they're really good at for, for that location that, you know,

I also wanted to ask on the topic of data. I know you mentioned before, and we've seen throughout the summer, the cooling centers. I don't know if there's been an update on, like, maybe has there been a lot of, like, public, I guess, use of them, or, like, public comments about it? Like, how have you seen them, like, grow and develop, and are there plans to, like, continue the cooling centers also for next heat season coming up.

Yeah, yeah. No, we definitely have kits that we give out that have electrolytes in them, kind of refillable water bottles, things like that. And I think for us, it's really being able to get the word out to say, hey, this is available. because there's a lot of people that come to the parks that come there anyway to cool down, but may not know that it's a cooling center. And so we've put out some ads on the digital display boards. I don't know if you've been able to see some of those, but we're trying to figure out ways to let people know that they're available. We've done some short videos. We've put information on our website. but we'll have more data at the end of the season, and then we'll use that data to say, okay, what are some additional things we can do next year?

One of the things that we implemented this year for the residents that sign up for Alert Miami, we now, when we send out the blast, we actually send out all of the cooling center locations to them as well, so they have that data readily accessible when we send a heat warning or advisory call.

Do they know they can get kits too? Do you let them know to get the kit?

They have to show up to learn. But no, we don't put it there. We only have a finite amount of information. But we could add something to that. That's a good point.

Okay, great. I'm looking forward to seeing the Blue Street. I'm going to go check it out. So let's move to item nine, open discussion and other items. We are in king tide season.

Yes, king tide season began September 8th through 11th, and Mother Nature threw us a curveball. Not only do we have to prepare for the king tide, but we had lots and lots of water. So if you're not familiar with the pumps, they pump towards the water. and the water's coming back in, so it only provides a limited amount of relief. But in this last one, Public Works thought on their feet, and they added additional pumps to some of those locations. So the residents were very happy. They saw us out there. They were manned during the entire time of the rain. So they were very happy about that.

We haven't heard any complaints thus far.

But we do take proactive steps within the city of Miami to prepare and be ready for king tide season. We convened our annual kickoff meeting on August 12th with the Office of Resilience and Sustainability, the Department of Resilience and Public Works, Miami Police Department, Miami Fire Rescue, Communications and Solid Waste. During this meeting, we reviewed last year's after action report. What went well? What can we improve on? We discussed that openly. Everybody was unanimous in moving forward with our plan. We discussed the tasks for each department, roles and responsibilities, and things to be prepared for the upcoming season. Then on September 3rd, just prior to the 8th through the 11th King Tide event, we reconvened. We got an update. Everybody was on point. All the pumps were operational and ready to deploy, and they were actually already staged at the flood-prone locations. Our VMS signs were put out in those two locations that were identified prior to the King Tide event. Code compliance ensured that all registered City of Miami landscapers kept the storm drains clean so they're not blowing all the debris into the storm drains. Communications did a great job with putting all that information out there and digital outreach and to inform the residents. We, as I said, placed the variable messaging signs in those locations. Office of Resilience and Sustainability did public engagement and tide forecasting. They also provided our cool graphics to the communications department. Solid waste did street sweeping the week before and a couple days right prior to the actual King Tide event. But I can't express my gratitude enough to how well the City of Miami departments work together. to help prepare and protect the citizens of Miami. So I thank everybody. Next king tide is one day, September 22nd. So don't drive in tall water.

Go ahead. Thanks, Chief. I think that's super interesting. Have you looked at, in terms of the pumps, where the pumps are located, as well as the... you know, not throwing waste into the storm drains. Is there any way to gather that data when it gets deployed for it to connect real time to inform you if, hey, this storm drain is full, or like for you to have like a GPS tracker on the actual pumps as well? Because I know our commissioner for at least Halapata in D1, we have four new pumps. But I'm not sure if he also knows, like, you know, I'm sure that his office knows kind of where they move them. But, you know, if they know, how do they share that data with you? So you also know maybe if you have not sure how that how that's coordinated.

So the first point is majority of all our drains in the city of Miami go to the ocean. And that's the big problem. If the king tide in the ocean is rising, the water is not going out to the ocean. And so when we're pumping the water with the portable pumps or the stationary pumps, it's going back to the ocean, which is eventually coming back in. You compound that with the heavy rainfall, Yeah, you're just making mud, slush. To the other points, when we send out our king tide advisories or our flood advisories, we also put in our actual reporting, our situation report, we put where all the pump locations are. So they should be receiving that. That goes to the commissioners or to the public? It goes to the commissioners and all other departments.

Okay.

What is that called? It's called the situation report. Usually if we're going to send out a flood report or a king tide situation report, that goes blasted out to everybody within our flood group.

Thank you.

And if somebody's not getting it, one of the commissioners, please let me know. We'll add them.

Have you guys looked into injection wells in certain locations where the in an effort to send it down instead of back out. Have you guys explored that at all in any of the locations?

I'm unaware, but Sonya's ready.

Yes.

Yes, there are a couple of projects that are currently in progress that are out to bid that include injection wells in certain areas.

Yeah, I have them on a couple of my sites and they work. They're not as expensive as you think. And the permit process is at the state level, not at the local level. get a permit in five days so don't get civil engineers like to get you spinning around sometimes like you got to do this you got to do that but you they're approved actually at the state level so um if you guys if you ever want to talk about that further i've had great success okay yeah that'd be great and that's pumping water back down into the aquifer

Is there filtering and other things monitoring that have to be done in order to make sure you're not pumping waste?

There's a filter.

There's a filter.

You only use them, it's like an overflow situation, right? So that in these extreme situations, there's a filter, so you have to clean them out regularly. But they work really, really well. And it solves a problem, right? Especially for something like King Tide, right?

We probably have a heat map of that, right, Sonia? Like where those kind of critical areas we might want to have that is?

Yes, yes, for sure.

I certainly think that's a great thing we should look into or try to pilot in one location. Okay.

That's awesome. Fantastic. Thank you. All right. Next item is vice chair election planning. Our 2025 vice chair, Nkosi, has resigned from the committee as of like two months ago, I believe, because he is now post-doctorate. I don't want to misspeak, but he has a position now at Harvard continuing his research. So we should have an election for vice chair at the next meeting. So if anyone wants to be in that role, just come prepared and we will vote.

What does preparedness look like, Aaron?

Say a few words.

Understood.

You know, just anyone who wants to. I think that the official bylaws, which we actually have a copy of today, state the process. Anyone can, I think, announce themself, or someone can nominate someone else for the position. And then maybe if there's more than one person, say a few words, and then we'll have a vote. And hopefully, I think Barbara will be back at the next meeting as well. She's been gone for a few months, which was a pre-planned break that she had before she was appointed. So I think hopefully, maybe next month, we have a full roster would be nice. Okay, moving on, we have future agendas. So item a current and recommended best practices regarding trees in the environment. So this was specifically requested, I believe, actually, by Barbara, but it's kind of in general, just to the ongoing chapter 17 discussion that as that progresses with the with the group that was hired to do the outreach that we'll make sure that we're involved and we'll continue to have that on the agenda. And then item B is ground floor height and freeboard. That's an item that I started on about a year and a half ago and didn't conclude it, but I'm going to bring that back in Q4, uh, hopefully for a vote, essentially just getting back to the, uh, to ensure that buildings have enough height on their first level that should a road need to be raised, that it is able to happen. Like when you drive around South Beach on West Avenue, you can see the after effect of what happens when you raise a road without having enough height for the buildings. ramps and stairs, and they did it pretty elegantly, and it's pretty nice, but at the same time, you might want to have the opportunity to have enough height to do so.

Chair, actually, there was at the last, on Wednesday, the U.S. Green Building Council had a meeting for, I think, LEED certification training, and they highlighted the Miamiverse, a digital twin of downtown that the DDA did with a map. So DDA came to present. one of the things that came up in that session was when you click on some of the buildings, being able to understand exactly that, if there's a way to get access to the database for ground floor height. And, I mean, that's not something I know much about, but a lot of people in the room were very interested. The government was interested, the architects were interested, building owners, et cetera. So if you have an area in downtown, or Brickell downtown, which is, I think, your... your area, you might be able to see how to integrate that data into the data set that the DDA is using to understand flooding. Or Keith Kurzweil is also looking at RICL downtown simulations for flooding, I believe. So, I'm not sure who you should talk to there. I could find out, but you should plug in this recommendation to those conversations, because I think it would be helpful.

Absolutely, thank you. I'll reach out to Keith.

And can we workshop this on Chapter 17? I'm not sure if we'll have time before the next meeting, but maybe after.

Yes. So like, is that FSU get hired already? I think they've been hired. And it's just waiting for a kickoff meeting. But that's all we know for now, as far as I know. Yes. Okay. So I do think we should be prepared when those conversations begin. And you know, we had four or five agenda items with with that on our agenda from November to March or April. So you know, we talked about the topic in length but I do think we should individually have information or recommendations that we think we would maybe collectively want to do as far as memo probably a memo format more than a resolution of similar to what we just did for the budget of ABCD of various things so And if that should be a workshop to be able to do that, you know, I think that that would be great. But we just need to make sure that we have the content to make that workshop effective. So if you'd like, you know, maybe at the next meeting, our next meeting is in two weeks. So it's pretty short. And then our follow, or it, what? Yes, our next meeting is October 1st. So maybe we can plan that at our next meeting. And if there's any other future agenda items you guys would like to know, yes, then you can let me know now or reach out to Miriam. And if that's it.

Yeah, we had a conversation with Stanford University. They're doing some research on natural capital. I think Alyssa might have some notes from that meeting if she's around. But Alyssa has joined the meeting. I got the wrong email for Sonia. Sorry, Sonia. But Alyssa did a really good job, and she's been looking to the Investool. So they're coordinating giving some data on that, whatever that coastal program is. So we may be wanting to invite the Stanford Natural Capital team in the future for a presentation.

Could you forward it to Miriam so I can review?

Okay, yeah.

Awesome. All right, well, if there's nothing else, we'll move to public comment. If anyone in the audience would like to make public comment, you're welcome to.

Good evening. Good evening. Robert Garcia, 11691 Southwest 17th Street, Miami. And I am the Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Miami. A lot of conversation about a lot of different topics tonight that our office is partnered with the city on. So I just want to introduce myself and also make myself available for any future questions. Captain Musser, we work very closely with him and his crew. And we just want to, I don't want to contradict anything that was said earlier. I'm not going to address any of it directly. But I do want to instill that our office has been present in Miami since the late 1800s. Our office got its start in the Jupiter Lighthouse in the 1800s. We have been anchored to this community ever since this became the seat of Dade County. And our office will continue to serve the county and the city as best as we can in the ways that our mission makes us, right? We have a very dedicated set of forecasters who continue to work really hard every day across the entire of our three shifts to make sure that we have a safe and informed community. So hopefully that helps us swayed some of the concerns that were voiced earlier. My main function as the warning coordination mural is to ensure that the city has what it needs from us. We're very unique in the federal government. Your emergency manager doesn't have to go to the county or to the state or even higher to get us. All he has to do is pick up the phone, send an email. I do smoke signals, although I'm kind of blind, he knows. Okay? And one of the reasons for that is for things like this. We want to make sure that the community has what they need. Both of us were at Surfside at differing times during that engagement. We understand what it is with very serious things that the community needs. No notice, I don't think there's more no notice than that. But at the same time, the readiness of this community is an investment that's been made over generations. This is the centennial of the 1926 Miami hurricane, right? A lot changed in this community after that event. And as we pass every year, different events we learn. So that's the goal that we have in our preparedness program is to use the heritage of what it is living in South Florida. For those of us that are multi-generational here, okay, we've heard the same stories over and over again. But we're always learning. But we have so many folks that move here. They're so new to this. And that's why we have to have the continuing education, the continuing commitment. So one of our big offices, John mentioned the HTI, the Hurricane Threat and Impact Graphics. Preparing for a reasonable worst case is not something that we do. And let me know if I'm over time, okay? Because I don't want to. It's not something that we just do with hurricanes. It's also something that we do with all kinds of hazards. We've mentioned heat. Our office is the initiator of heat advisories and extreme heat warnings in this county. Our office is also constantly assessing the science with that. We have an experiment right now in terms of our service with the county. to lower our criteria because we understand that the impacts are greater in the urban heat island of South Florida. At the same time, we talk about coastal flooding, right? King tides, those coastal flood statements, coastal flood advisories, those are products that come from our suite. Our forecasters monitor, and right now we're working closely not only with the city and the county and the state to add more observations, more data. Right now, Virginia Key, the NOAA tide gauge out there, that is the gold standard, right, in terms of the data source that we have.

But we're hoping over the next several years that that'll continue to grow.

And part of that are resources that the city brings, those investments the state makes, and hopefully additional things from the federal government. So at the end of the day, our job is to bring all this data together, scientifically assess it, do threat analysis and keep this city and its public ahead of it. We're not going away. We don't intend to change that. Our mission, as we understand it, remains tied to that same thing and we'll continue to provide it. So if there's any questions or anything, I know I've gone way over two minutes for public comment, but I just wanted to ensure that everyone heard from us, that you feel like you have a chance to reach out And at the same time, you have a very engaged emergency manager who we work really closely with. I can't exalt that enough. And we're, in fact, we're in conversations already about future support. Our office will provide both from virtual setting, but also in person to the city for future events. So hopefully that gives everyone a feeling of some calm heading into any difficulties that may come otherwise when they do come. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Robert.

Thank you, Robert. I was hoping you were going to come up. Robert, and what's your office again, just to have your name for the record?

That is super helpful, and thank you so much for the support and the words of encouragement. It definitely helps me feel better. Thank you.

The National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office, Miami, South Florida.

Thank you.

Miriam, are there any online public comments or smoke signals or All right. Well, I guess congratulations are in order because we are adjourning early. So thank you all for attending. Thank you all for your attendance. And hope you have a good rest of your evening. See you in two weeks. Bye.

I hope the new member doesn't get any ideas. This is rare.

Beginner's luck.