Climate Resilience Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the City of Miami Climate Resilience Committee meeting for November 10th, 2025. We have four members present, so today is going to be a workshop, not a meeting. Is there anything else I need to announce besides that? Okay. So we'll start with item one, roll call, from my right.

Jenny Limolino.

Aaron DiMaio.

Barbara Bisno.

Silvio Frank Pupo-Casco.

Thank you. Miriam?

Miriam Flores.

Sonia Brubaker, Chief Resilience Officers for the City of Miami.

Jahan Solomon, Office of the City Attorney.

Thank you. All right, item two is public comment. Does anyone here like to make public comment? And if not, do we have any submissions? Is that not allowed? What does that mean? Is it applicable to our agenda? Is it on the agenda item? I think we should allow it.

All right, this is from, and forgive me, I don't mean to chop this name, Lori Prepsett. It's regarding the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority Public Innovation Challenge number seven, Supercharging Emergency Management Across Miami-Dade. It's regarding the tree ordinance of three tree per yard requirements. There's a lack of trees that could be planted along 83rd Street between Hawthorne Avenue and the bay. How can this be enforced, especially if the landowners do not have the environment nor heat index for their tenants' benefit? They ripped out two young trees and it's incorrect. Thank you.

Understood. So Hawthorne, I believe, is a street on the beach. That's what you... Okay. Um... Maybe we can assist this person regardless and forward this comment to Office of Resilience on the Beach, just to be kind and help out. All right, if there's no other public comments, item three is approval of the CRC minutes for October 20th, our last meeting, but we are unable to make a motion on those because we do not have quorum. But if anyone wants to have a comment on them, If not, we'll move to item four, which is presentations. So our first presentation this evening is Edgewater Trust Fund from the Planning Department.

Hello, everybody. My name is Katherine Engleton. I'm from the Planning Department, and I'm going to present to you guys on some legislation that we took to the Planning, Zoning, and Appeals Board last month for Chapter 62 of the City Code and Miami 21, the Zoning Code. So we called it the Resilience Trust Fund. Right now, there's only areas in Edgewater that applies to, but we named it the Resilience Trust Fund because we're hopeful that it will expand it citywide. So basically, there's a new trust fund that we set up in Chapter 62, which is planning and zoning in the city code. And it allows properties to increase their density with a contribution into the trust fund. It points to Miami 21 for the criteria for qualifying properties. It stipulates what the funds can be spent on and where they can be spent. It authorizes the city manager to spend funds up to a certain dollar amount and requires annual financial reports for transparency. So the exact language from the ordinance is there is hereby established a trust fund to be entitled the Resilience Trust Fund to be maintained by the city into which funds shall be deposited and from which funds shall be withdrawn pursuant to this article to pay for infrastructure projects that result in reducing flooding, storm surge, or urban heat island effect. Examples of projects include, but are not limited to, pump stations, raising roadways, sea walls, bioswales, living shorelines, native shade tree plantings, native ground cover, green roofs, permeable pavements, rain gardens, parks and open spaces, and green walls. The list is not exhaustive. So basically, we wanted to go a little bit above and beyond. We know that resilience isn't just flooding. Obviously, it's a major issue of ours in the city of Miami. But we know that there's also heat issues with the urban heat island effect. And we know there's also other equity issues at hand. And with the money that we generate, we're hoping that we can use that on hard infrastructure that can help alleviate some of the more tangible aspects of climate change, like the storm water issues and the heat. So in Article 4, Table 4 of Miami 21, it'll apply to transects T4, T5, and T6. T4 is Basically, it's the general urban zone, so I think it's capped at three or four stories. T5 is the urban center zone and T6 is the urban core transect zone. And residential density for properties within the coastal high hazard area or Miami-Dade County storm surge planning zones A, B, or C can be doubled by up to 100% with contributions to the Resilience Trust Fund as outlined in Chapter 62. So we've created these resilience fund areas that are listed in an exhibit A. Those will be hosted, assuming this gets adopted by city commission, it'll be hosted on the Muni code website. So then you'll just click on the exhibit A, it'll open it up, you'll see the map of where the areas are. So now I'm gonna walk you through Yeah, so basically there are resilience fund areas, and right now we only have two of them, and you can find it in legislation referenced as Exhibit A. Assuming this does get adopted by city commission, it will be hyperlinked in Muni code so that you can click on it and the map will open so you can see what the areas are. That map is included at the end, but I kind of wanted to walk you guys through the analysis that we did to derive these two fund areas so that you guys can see that a lot of thought and data went into it. So basically we had to start with the future land use map of the Miami Comprehensive Neighborhood Plan. A lot of people are less familiar with the comprehensive plan or the future land use map. So I'll just give a brief synopsis. In the state of Florida, comprehensive plans are required for all municipalities, and part of that is a future land use map. The future land use map states what can be built today and in 20 to 40 years from now. What goes into that is things like existing population, population projections, and different growth scenarios, and the level of services for infrastructure, basically what those needs are based off use types. you'll have different water uses, different trip generation for traffic, depending on if it's a commercial use or a residential use. So all that information is actually already done to ensure that we have adequate levels of service for solid waste, for sanitary sewer, stormwater, for traffic, for schools, parks and open space. And if I already said solid waste, I'm gonna say it again. Those are the ones that we basically test for. And the Future Land Use Map ensures that we have adequate capacity for all of those infrastructure types. Now, this is showing you the existing Future Land Use Map of the city of Miami. Over 27% is single family residential. And over 17% is duplex residential. So basically, almost 45% of the city is restricted to one or two family homes. We're only a city of 36 square miles of land area, so we're already artificially restricting our housing supply just because so much of the land can only have one to two family units. Now the future land use map and all of the different land use categories, a lot of them have, they have language in them that allows doubling of density. So you can already double the density. It then defers to the land development regulations, which is Miami 21 for the city of Miami, to unlock that doubling of density. And again, all of the infrastructure calculations were done when we adopted that doubling of density. language to make sure that there was adequate public facilities to support all the land uses. So this map now shows the future land use map, and we've kind of grayed out the areas that we didn't want to consider for the resilience trust fund areas. So we removed all the single family areas, duplex residential, even though it does allow for doubling of density, we didn't want to because the way that interacts with T3, because T3R and T3L are single family and T3Os are duplex. We basically left it to, I'm gonna read out the acronyms. LD-MFR is low density multifamily residential. LDRC is low density restricted commercial. MD-MFR is medium density multifamily residential. MDRC is medium density restricted commercial. HG-MFR is high density multifamily residential. RC is restricted commercial. GC is general commercial. MIPFTU is a mouthful. It's major institutional public facilities, transportation, and utilities. And then CBD is the central business district. So these are all the areas that we felt were okay to basically assist with unlocking that doubling of density that is already given. then we have to look at Miami 21. Now, it's important to note that you can have a zoning that is lower or the same as the comp plan's future land use map, but it cannot exceed it. And again, that goes towards the whole point of comprehensive planning and future land use maps in that we have to ensure there's adequate capacity for infrastructure. So you could have a property that has a future land use map of restricted commercial, but its zoning may be T3R. You won't see that because all of this is longstanding. We've had zoning before comprehensive planning. Comprehensive planning started in Florida under the 1985 Florida Growth Management Act. And we've had zoning since 1934, I believe was our first zoning code. So obviously these land uses and these patterns, they're well established within the city. So looking at the Miami 21 zoning map though, 45% of the city is T3. Again, that's a large chunk of land that restricts how much housing we can actually build. So then this map does the same as the previous one where it grays out the areas that are kind of off limits for this resilience trust fund area. So we have omitted T3O, as I said earlier, even though duplex residential, which is the corresponding future land use map to T3O zoning, does allow for doubling of density. We're not because we want to preserve neighborhood character and we want to be sensitive to the issues that we're currently hearing from residents and from our planning zoning and appeals board about preserving neighborhood character, basically. So basically, it's only going to apply to T4, T5, and T6. We eliminated civic institutional and civic institutional HDS health district. Those correspond to the major institutional public facilities, transportation, and utilities future land use designation. So then another thing that we looked at was the coastal high hazard area and the storm surge planning zones. We looked at this because we knew that this was a great way to figure out what areas are most in need of having infrastructure that is going to mitigate against flooding and other resilient issues. So the storm surge planning zones are a layer taken from Miami-Dade County Emergency Management Department. Those are used for hurricane evacuations. You'll also hear them called hurricane evacuation zones. It's the same thing, it's just they name it different things in different documents, basically. We decided that we wanted to really only focus on storm surge planning zones A, B, and C because we felt that D and E were really kind of encroaching a lot on our single family and duplex neighborhoods. Obviously, there is some bit of T3 in some of our C zones, but We also see that Edgewater is a sea zone too, and we knew that with the high density zoning there, that it was an opportunity that we couldn't pass up. So if you guys aren't aware of how these zones work, basically a zone A is at a greatest risk of storm surge from a category one and higher. And then it makes its way up further and further. So zone B is that the highest risk from a storm surge category two and higher, and then going down to E, which is at risk from only a category five. So that was another reason why we were kind of looking at it is, you know, the propensity to flood at the level of strength of a storm. So we also looked at existing OCI stormwater projects. This map is a little outdated because we asked OCI to give us projects for stormwater, and we did not realize at that time that RPW was also handling storm projects, so we only got the list of OCI projects. RPW, correct me if I'm wrong, but RPW also handles stormwater projects. We didn't know that, so we reached out to Office of Capital Improvements because most of it was previously under there. So when they gave us the layer, they only gave us the layer for their projects, and they forgot to tell us about the RPW effect. So this map is outdated. We do apologize. But when we learned that, we helped that with fixing some of the legislation before it goes to commission. But basically you can see here that a lot of the projects that we didn't have knowledge of were not in Edgewater.

And that was one of the factors in moving forward. But you know, you live and you learn.

Then we also looked at development trends. So this is a heat map of our 10-year development trends. The way that we got this analysis was basically using property appraiser data. So anything that was delivered to the market between 2015 and October 2025, assuming that the property appraiser records were already updated and showed that the year built was 2025, then we used the unit count to generate this heat map. So you can see that the majority of development has been happening in Brickell, downtown, Park West, Overtown, Wynwood, Midtown, and Edgewater. You can also see on the southwest end of the city that we have some... targeted spots along the Metrorail stations. We're attributing that to the county's RTZ program. So I'm sure as people tap into that more, we'll see more development along those transit stops, which is great. You know, we should be densifying transit areas. So we decided that we were going to use, as I said earlier, the coastal high hazard area and our storm surge planning zones. And this is how we came up with our two fund areas. So we have Resilience Fund Area 1, which is mostly Edgewater, and Resilience Fund Area 2, which is Edgewater, parts of the Venetian, and Watson Island, and downtown. And... That's pretty much it for now for the areas. We wanted to kind of do a pilot project in an area where there's a lot of untapped potential in terms of zoning and what's allowed, and also an area that we know is in need of infrastructure. We do know that there is a project, at least one project planned in Edgewater that we didn't have because it wasn't an OCI project, but that's only one project, you know? There's, Edgewater goes very long north, and I believe the project's at 23rd Street for RPW? Okay, yeah. I personally used to live on 29th Street for many years. I recently moved downtown because rents went up, but I saw the king tide all the way up in 29th Street, so I know that we could use more projects further north. That's my own little, you know, story. So just to give you guys an update, since this did go to PSAB, we had a modification that was proposed and included. PSAB wanted us to eliminate parking requirements for all of the bonus units. So all of the future land use and the zoning in Edgewater has a density of 150 dwelling units per acre. So the comprehensive plan allows them to double it by up to 100% so they can go to 300 dwelling units per acre. Any unit, just for easy math, let's just say we have a one acre project for easy math, so if they, contribute on a, the contribution is on a per unit basis, they want to, let's say, purchase 50 units. Then every unit after the 150 between 151 and 200 would not have any of the parking minimums that we have applied to those. And there was a great discussion at PSF about that. They were talking about how it eats into the development area of the project because we do have FLR floor lot ratio that kind of restricts how much actual developable area on the parcel of land there is. They also talked about the cost to development. Parking is very expensive to develop. A lot of people don't realize how heavily subsidized public parking is, especially for parking garages. I mean, you'll see estimates that for a parking garage, it'll be anywhere between $40,000 to $60,000 per spot to construct it. Yeah, and so they were, obviously the Planning and Zoning Appeals Board has a diverse panel of people, and some of them are developers, so they were giving their own experience and expertise that we greatly appreciate to have that. So that was incorporated into the legislation. It still has not made it to commission yet, but we did incorporate that for the parking minimums. We also had to revise our spending threshold. We were being a little ambitious, and we had originally said that we could spend up to $500,000 before requiring a city commission vote, and our lovely city attorney's office caught that. It's not compliant with our procurement ordinance, so we had to revise it down to $100,000. We were hopeful that we could maybe try to avoid, you know, having a vote, and just spending the money as efficiently and quickly as possible. But we do want to be in compliance with procurement, so that was caught, thankfully, and it's been addressed before it goes to city commission. There was also some clarifying in the Miami 21 text for article four, table four, basically now instead of saying you have to be in a storm surge planning zone, and a coastal high hazard area, and T4, T5, or T6, and located in this area, It just says, see chapter 62 for qualifying areas. It'll make it a lot easier for applicants and reviewers on the city side to understand if an applicant who comes forward and claims that they can use this program, that they actually do qualify. So why now? We know that the city has an affordability issue. We know that there are a lot of housing needs. And as I said earlier, 45% of the city is artificially restricted our ability to develop because of the zoning, because of T3. And we're not saying eliminate T3 at all. People should be able to keep their single family houses. People should be able to live in the communities that they've lived in their entire lives or whether they just bought it and moved in. But we do know that without annexation, we are constrained hard for land that we can develop housing. So since we already have these policies in place that allow us to double the density, we should offer more opportunities for the private sector to actually utilize the development rights that are there, and there are opportunities already for them. We have TDDs, TDRs, we have public benefits, and we wanted to provide another avenue that would help us with mitigating some of the impacts of density in these areas.

Would you define TDR and TDD?

Yeah, sorry, the TDD is the Transfer of Development Density Program that we have, and TDR is Transfer of Development Rights. A lot of that has to do with historic preservation and transit-oriented development areas. Basically, historic properties that are designated They can't be redeveloped really. So any of the unused development, either density or floor area, the zoning gives them, but the historic aspect kind of strips them up. They're allowed to sell that at a market rate value to developers elsewhere throughout the city. There are these receiving areas that you can send them to. And that's one avenue that does exist currently for people to increase their density. And there is demand for that. But we also wanted to provide another avenue that, like I said, helps mitigate against some of these adverse impacts of being coastal. So through basic supply and demand economics, the more housing you provide, the more affordable it'll become just because you're helping meet the demand that the city has. And these are high demand areas, as I showed you from the heat map. So we might as well work with with the market conditions and with the needs of the city and try to improve what we do have by trying to untap some some demand that we have for additional financial resources to help us with our infrastructure planning and that concludes the planning department's presentation in a second could you tell us what the next steps are this is going to commission yes this is going to commission I'm not sure when. I know it's being scheduled soon. It did. It did. It went to PSAB and some of the items that were on that agenda have already been adopted by city commission. So there was some other reasons why this didn't go immediately. But I think it's going later this month, if not then probably early next month to commission.

Great. Overall, I think this was a really good presentation. I appreciate the in-depth research that you did in order to create this. And this concept of exchanging development capacity for some type of community benefit, I think is very important for the city to capture those benefits. I think this is going to be a trend that we continue to see. And as starting of a, in theory, just this program and introducing it for the potential citywide, but looking at this one target area, I think is a good way to start it So in general, definitely commend you all on that and the work done. There are some things that I find semi-ironic though that I feel like even though in general I really highly support this, somewhat ironic that we're incentivizing additional development capacity in an area that obviously is already flooding significantly just with sunny day flooding days. And when we look at storm surge maps and sea level rise maps, we see that this area is shown to be inundated in a number of scenarios. So it is ironic and kind of contrary that this would be the solution to do this. When we think about what the alternative would be of retreat or not allowing additional development capacity in this area or other high risk areas, I don't know if there's really the appetite for that to be changed at the moment, let alone in this area with such High development capacity so given just high level those main things it seems like this type of a solution of ensuring that resilience infrastructure is built in this area with massive amount of current development and i've also seen. 3D maps that show the proposed development is area which basically doubles the amount of area area that's just currently in the in the pipeline. something needs to happen to ensure that this area gets the infrastructure that it needs, especially because District 2 is a donor district, from what I understand, to the other districts in the city. And I recently found out the city is a donor district to many areas in the county. So just given those facts, this opportunity may allow for better short-term implementation by the projects themselves from that reduction, the 15% reduction. and also just ensure that development dollars for infrastructure go to this area that needs it. So just kind of setting the stage, in general I like those aspects. I know this area very well too because I lived in Edgewater and it was actually what kind of started my fascination and kind of high level interest in flooding. I saw a flooding event in Edgewater where I lived The entire neighborhood was flooded out, and that kind of kicked off me going around during rainstorms and photographing it, of which you guys used one of my photos from the King Tide event in Edgewater in this presentation, or the other presentation. I'm not sure if it was this one. It was this one, too. It was this one?

Yeah, I opted not to use the one where you were standing in the water, although I thought it was funny.

Thanks for that. So I've seen the flooding. It happens during King Tide, it happens during rain events, and it... It happens, and it's impacting a lot of people, too. So, like, the amount of development and the amount of density in this area, I think, also affords this area the right to have infrastructure. You know, it can be a donor district while also getting an appropriate percentage of funds allocated to ensure that these residents are properly served, especially given the high density of that area. Parks that are sea-level, sea walls connecting the Baywalk. I have a couple questions. So... I think when I look at the amount per unit that I heard during the PZAB meeting.

Yeah, it was around 45,000.

I've done a lot of work in this area, looking at feasibility of sites, zoning. The FLR of 12 allows for a lot of height and then large podiums. That's why a lot of the projects we see in Edgewater have those huge rec decks. a conclusion of FLR to density and height. So in doing this, this proposal would likely allow smaller units, more units with smaller units, which would help with affordability. Right now, a lot of the units in Edgewater are quite large units, which is good. We do need units for family. But we also need just more units in general. And we've seen that the typical family unit hasn't been the highest level demand of units we've seen. interest in more studio and one bedroom units, so I think that this would help get that. get that going. But, given what land currently trades for an edgewater 75,000 100,000 many cases over 100,000 per door on a per land per square foot basis. I think the 40,000 may actually be a little low and that I think that there would be an appetite even for slightly higher than that and that it would ultimately create a self-fulfilling kind of feedback loop. All of this density and increased infrastructure, although it is in this very vulnerable area, it may actually create this engine that actually allows for this area.

Exacerbate the conditions?

Well, no, it may actually like help area needs the infrastructure right it also probably should maybe have no more uh no more housing supply if we look at sea level rise projections so i think that this may if enough people use this fund we're going to get a lot of infrastructure which ultimately would help all of the existing people and those other people so i do think that maybe the cost per unit should be looked at and potentially increased um I do also think that the parking reduction for the additional units is a great idea, I think that that would help. Also kind of offset that cost, especially if you were to increase the cost per unit that the people pay in and they're not paying for a parking space. That just that actually kind of like adds value into that, which can then be. Taken from the cost of development of a parking space and put into resilience infrastructure.

That is great feedback. We'll definitely tell, I'll refer that to our assistant director because we were very intentional when we wrote the legislation not to put the dollar amount in it because we wanted to have the ability to increase it routinely to account for inflation and other financial aspects that may exacerbate prices. For example, tariffs. Nobody really takes that into consideration when they're looking at the CPI, but we know that tariffs are going to drastically increase the cost of everything. So we don't have that number in there, and it's good that we don't, because we're still working through the legislation, and the number doesn't have to be approved by the legislation, so I'll definitely take that feedback back to her. Because like I said, we were just looking at the numbers to, we were looking at the median that has been spent so far, on the median dollars spent on infrastructure projects, stormwater projects per residential unit, or I should say per property, because we weren't able to really I wanted, when I was going through the analysis, to try to assign a number to residential units and then commercial properties, but there was really no way to do that. I had some missing variables, so we just did it all flat per property. And the 45,000, when I had spoken, that was with the incomplete list that we had. So we are looking at updating the numbers, and we'll definitely take that information.

It's also that, if you look at those projects that were on the map, Those projects are much more suburban than this area. I think it's fantastic that you're starting to quantify cost per unit and cost for a potential unit of infrastructure. That was something that was talked about at one of the very, very early stormwater master plan meetings. And I think starting to have that as a quantifiable data point is going to allow us to make much more justified decisions, especially in the urban core.

I was looking at it on even just like per project, and you're right, it's insane when you go to the more T3 areas, how much more expensive per property it is than in the areas like Wynwood, for example, that you can see on the map, do you have projects?

Many, many, many multiples higher. I have one more comment and one more question. Other comment is related to ground floor height. Given that this area, again, has a lot of susceptibility given its topography and location, I think it's important if more construction is going to go here that the ground floor height is very tall to allow for future adaptation. For the roads to raise it's something that we've talked about here i've made a presentation on it, I never finalized it. But, and I don't think it's obviously going to be part of this, but I hope that that is something that planning and zoning can look at again on their own and maybe see if that makes sense, just to ensure that the things that are getting built can be adapted. And the last question is the map you showed on page 10 of the total area of the Trust Fund map also includes the areas east of mainland on the MacArthur and Venetian. And I believe that there's five properties that would apply if you go to the other one that has the zoning.

Right. It's not a lot of properties.

There's two on the Venetian and then there's three on Parrot Jungle Trail. All three of those, I believe, are the ones that went to I think we actually saw them earlier this year. And then the two in Venetian are kind of isolated. And we've discussed the Venetian, you know, a few times from Barbara bringing it up. I think that that area needs its own kind of mini master plan and that including it in these other areas kind of continues that trend of D2 urban core being a donor district to low rise because so much of that area is is actually low rise residential. And I would request or propose that that be looked into to ensure that that area gets the infrastructure that it needs, while also not detracting from the work that you're doing here in these other zones.

That is very valuable feedback. We were trying to use the storm surge planning zones as they are created by the county. So the one, just flipping back to this map really quickly, but the one that had the Venetian in it, that was because that was actually one whole square of a zone. But that's a very good point that you make. So we can definitely look into maybe bifurcating them into separate zones.

Amazing, I really appreciate your presentation.

Yeah, and then just to add to that, something that I didn't mention was how the funds can be spent geographically. So the way that the legislation was written was that the money has to be spent in the fund area that it was generated. However, you can use the money across fund areas. We know that the nature of some of these projects may be in the right of way. So it'll be like a network and maybe multiple streets and avenues. and if they stretch between, they cross between the two fund areas, then you can use that money in the adjacent fund area. You can also use it outside of a fund area if at least 51% of the project's footprint is located in a fund area. We know that The nature of these projects can be a little weird geographically speaking, so we didn't want to really kneecap the ability to go through and build these projects just because they're technically not in a fund area.

Thanks so much. As far as our work this evening, since we don't have a quorum, we can't take an official action. If we wanted to do something, though, I'm not saying we should do anything right now. I'm just introducing before you speak.

No, no, but I wanted to ask you.

Yeah, absolutely. If we did want to do anything this evening, we could do a straw vote. We could do something ceremonial. We did in the past if we wanted to say something before it went to commission. Okay.

Go ahead, Barbara. The Venetian Causeway is where I live. And I was... I understand from what the chair said that there's two projects. The second island, San Marino, San Marco, pardon me, is all single family. So I'm a little confused. I thought you said that no single family.

Right, those don't qualify for the, so if you're zoned, T3, you cannot.

You know, I've never looked at the zoning. Right, you are, trust me.

Yeah, you are. Hold on, I'll go back to the zoning map right here. So obviously this is zoomed out. It may be hard for you to see. I have it pulled up right now. But you can see that most of the Venetian Islands are a pale yellow color. That corresponds to T3, which is, you know.

Single family.

single family if it's RRL.

So what I'm asking is, on San Marco, on the other map, RF2, I think you called it, It's in this.

It's in it because, and that's what the chair was just kind of getting at.

I mean, I understood the conversation between the two of you.

Yeah, it's kind of what he was just getting at in a sense that it's included in the area because fund money could be spent in that area because there is T4, T5, and T6. So it's a large square that the county has come up with. And it goes from about Biscayne Boulevard, I think, and like where the old Herald, like 15th Street, the Herald Venetian, and goes all the way out to San Marco. So you could have projects that use that that are mainland, that are T6, and then the money could be spent on San Marco. And that's actually what he was just getting at, of kind of like, yeah, so you don't have to worry about your neighbor's doubling density. You don't have to worry about your neighbor's doubling density. They're not allowed to. Okay.

But the other related question is that I didn't take notes on what you read as the long list of what you can do with this money. Put the mic a little closer. It's a problem I have. Could you real quick run through them again because there's a question I have, I think.

Yeah, I have it pulled up again so you can see it on your screen. But we wanted, this is not meant to be an exhaustive list because we know that there's probably technologies that may not exist now or there might be things that do exist.

Okay, I understand. I've just looked at the list.

Yeah, it's just more to be demonstrative. May I interrupt you for just a moment?

I understand this is not complete and there could be other things. But two things. First of all, in the hot areas, it doesn't seem to me that any of this is going to promote affordability at all. In fact, quite the opposite. They'll be more expensive because they have these additional charges now. And it's going to be a really neat area. It's going to be protected from the floods. That's one thing. So I don't know. I think it's somewhat disingenuous to promote the higher density because we need more affordable housing. It's true, but this doesn't, unless there's something built into it that I haven't seen, it doesn't promote it, in my view. The second thing is, I'm always surprised that the... new developments that are proposed, higher density, are ground level again. They're not on stilts, which is what, so the water can just pass through. In other words, either there has to be, if there's going to be these areas, the raising of the roadways, the pump stations, the living shorelines, that's not gonna stop the water from coming. It's only going to deal with, perhaps, permeable payments. The water will pass through, but the water's going to come. And to not have part of the idea that we raise the living quarters is, to me, just nonsensical.

May I respond, or do you have more? Yeah, no, no, that's it, I said my thing. I didn't wanna interrupt you, that was all. Those are excellent points that you make, and those, I think, are things that aren't appropriate to be addressed in this legislation. I think what we're looking at now, what you're talking about, I believe, would be amendments to our zoning and maybe even building code, because you're talking about raising the ground level of the properties. Am I correct?

We're talking about new... Now, I'm not talking about elevating an existing home now. No, no, no, I know. But if you're... Well, okay.

If I may, actually. Are you talking about the single-family homes? No.

No, no, she's talking about new construction. No, no, no, I know that I'm in a different category.

But is it the single family or the commercial structures?

It's... I understood that this legislation was to increase the density of... of certain areas in the city, excluding single-family and duplex residential areas. So if you're going to increase the density, you're building a new building, I thought. Yes. And if you're building a new building, I thought, there should be some issue. We're talking about resiliency. We're talking about long-term, these neighborhoods exist in Miami. To not have... I don't understand, but I'm not a planner, and I'm not a zoning expert. I'm really just a layman on this.

If I may for a second, just because you see glass on the ground floor of a building doesn't mean that it's habitable, doesn't mean that it's a residence, doesn't mean that it's being actively used. The code defines habitable and unhabitable spaces, and it determines... height on your property at which the habitable spaces can begin occupying. All I'm asking is... Those properties don't necessarily look like stilts because they're using glazing, they're using architectural treatment and fenestration to ensure that as a pedestrian that the building still acts and looks like a building, but you have to still raise your your back of house components and your habitable spaces. So it's not necessarily just seeing things that are low, but that's also why I mentioned that I hope that the planning department continues pushing higher ground floor heights, so increasing the height at which that habitable can even begin.

Right, and that's what I was saying is that would be a separate ordinance. I believe that's either gonna be something under the zoning code, the building code, maybe both. This is my supervisor, Ryan Shedd. He's a lot more familiar with this type of stuff. He wrote the ordinance on freeboarding. I don't even know what that means, but he'll tell you about it.

I accept your expertise on where it should go. It just seems to me it's such an important, and to the chair's point, I understand the habitable portion of the building would be higher, but if it's not a permeable area, if it's glass, The water, all I'm... Huh?

You said the water has nowhere to go. Exactly.

So it's a really interesting topic that we've tried to take slowly. So our first free board ordinance back in 2017 or whenever it was only addressed residential, right? So we weren't getting at any commercial office, sort of the ground floor components that you're often seeing in these types of buildings that we're really talking about, right? Because a lot of that comes with a bunch of extra components of like, urban design elements and the way that pedestrians experience the, you know, the neighborhood, right? Because we also, on one side, we want to make a more resilient city, but we also don't want to create a neighborhood that's inhospitable to, you know, walking and biking and, you know, just existing outside of your car, right? And so there's been a lot of interest recently in tackling that second part where we would answer those questions of how would Freeboard work in these types of environments, right? Because residential is already raised up. You can't, you know, right now it's the base flood elevation plus you can do another five feet on top of that. So residential is pretty well taken care of in terms of being outside of the water, right? But then addressing the overall architecture of the building, like you're discussing, would encompass all of those other uses that we just haven't gotten to yet just because it has so many other questions. So we have to workshop with architects and the real estate industry to really figure out what the best way to do that is going to be. So all that is to say that's sort of our next step. So, yeah.

Okay. I just think it's such a critical part of the issue of resiliency for our neighborhoods that I didn't want to hesitate to bring it up.

And we agree with that. The point is that, as Ryan said, we are going to look at it as the next step, and that would be something that would be addressed in the actual zoning code. Even though this does include an ordinance to the zoning code, it's just only for Article 4, Table 4, which has to do with density, intensity, and parking. So you're talking about the ground floor, ground, what, base? Base flood elevation. See, I am just a mere planner. I'm not a stormwater or flood. A mere planner. A mere planner.

A mere planner, but I think it's pretty comprehensive. Could you also address the supply and demand side question of...

Yeah, so obviously we know that there's a difference between market rate and affordable housing. And right now this does not include any mandates for affordable housing. We do have an affordable housing trust fund that developers can contribute to if they wanted to get a bonus height or bonus floor area, not necessarily units that they could build. And this is separate from that. We wanted a trust fund that kind of acts the same way. But instead, we know that what helps with revenues to the city is tax base. And part of that is more units. So if it's condos, then each individual unit is providing the tax base. And if it's commercial, then that just includes the value that will be appraised for tax purposes. Now, we know from basic economic supply and demand that when prices are high, it's usually because there's more demand than there is supply. So we're kind of approaching this in that very basic model of if you provide more housing, eventually it'll help decrease the housing cost We know that it does work. I think the city of Austin is one nationwide where we've seen a dramatic drop in prices because they've developed so much to the market now. We have seen in some of our sub-market areas, like in downtown, some of the rents have started to stabilize or shrink a little bit because of the demand as we're building more units. Now, that's not to say that we're that you'll get it to a point where it'll become something that we call naturally occurring affordable housing, you know, because that's something that usually tends to happen after a unit has been existing for decades. But, you know, anything short of developing more affordable units where it's income restricted, you know, it'll take a while before the rents are decreased enough, but it does happen. We've seen it work in other cities.

Well, educate me on the Affordable Housing Fund. I know that the high-rises condominium buildings that are being built on Watson Island now in this new development in the south part of Watson Island, there's a requirement that they build, that they provide. I don't think they have to build it. I think they have to provide funding for affordable housing off of the island. And so how does that requirement fit into your ordinance that is moving toward higher density in certain areas to pay for these improvements that will help the resiliency of the neighborhood? Is there any way to build in, if you build X number of market You have to build, maybe not in that same exact street, in that exact same neighborhood, but somewhere within the resiliency area.

Right.

Affordable housing. I mean, does that work? Can you do that?

I think legally we could. I think there could be... a way that we could phrase it where maybe they get a discount on the bonus units if they proffer via covenant that they're affordable. I think that is something that probably could be done.

Earlier during the presentation when I interrupted at one point, it said define TDRs and TDDs, and there's other mechanisms within the code already for affordability.

Yeah, I was referencing it more just to give you an example of the other mechanisms that we do have.

That one is related to historic or it's also related to affordable. And there's also a state legislation related to affordable housing. So each piece of legislation can't necessarily do every single thing. So this is yet another option for it. Is that correct?

Yeah. Yeah, although it does, just to be full disclosure, it does not say that you have to build affordable units. So if you're looking at affordability, like in terms of income restricted, that's not part of this, but it's something that maybe in a later date we could make an amendment to do that.

Was your question because during the presentation there was a mention on cost of units or affordability?

Well, because the presentation was we are encouraging increased density because we need so much housing, including affordable housing. It was something like that.

Right, I was basically just saying that we know that we have an affordability issue in the city of Miami, and that when you build more housing, it does reduce housing costs, the rents, because basically, in economics, you kind of flood the market, and then that helps bring the prices down.

And when you look at the heat map of where developments occurred, It's happened in a lot of the T6 zones, the urban core zones, because they're building 100-plus unit projects. Because it's pretty hard to build anything, honestly. It's such a long process that building smaller things is a lot, a lot of work. And a lot of developers focus on bigger things. And this, allowing for development of bigger things while also adding resilience, It just adds to the total supply of units, which inherently should help the supply-demand issue, thus affordability.

I accept that. Except it would be nice if it was more explicit. We can take that feedback. You get all this increased density, you have to contribute to the, at least contribute to the affordable fund or whatever the affordable fund does.

We can definitely take that feedback to our department leadership.

Well, it's just me. I don't know if anybody else on the...

I'm sure others would agree with you.

By the way, thank you so much for this presentation. Amazing presentation. Really well put together and great data. I always love to harp on if there's any way to get access to the layers, the data layers for this, so that we can access them and click on them and sort of make them more accessible for others. But I think this is interesting. I don't know how set in stone this is. If you wanted to kind of move a boundary. Around the block you know in terms of the other some of the other plans that was they were looking at the other in this other slide just now.

I'm sorry could you go back to the slide we were just on oh sorry.

How set in stone is this in terms of. You're looking at some some areas some predesignated areas. what kind of input are we still able to give you in terms of this project and the Resilience Trust Fund and some of the hotspots going forward like Wynwood?

So the reason that we kind of limited it to Edgewater right now is because, I'll go back to this map, there were projects already in Wynwood. There's a very faint, I don't know if you can see my mouse on the screen. No, you can't in presentation mode. There's a very faint blue line that is east of I-95 and southwest of the purple line. So the purple project, that's kind of straddling Midtown and Woodwood Norte, which is our neighborhood revitalization district two. The lighter one is kind of straddling both NRD1, Wynwood, and parts of Overtown. So we kind of wanted to focus on areas where there weren't projects. We do now know that there is a project in Edgewater, but that's on 23rd Street and Edgewater does go up to 36th Street. So that's why we didn't include those areas. And then going back to the heat map, the areas of downtown, Park West, Overtown, Brickell, those all have an overlay in the comprehensive plan called a residential density increase area. Those are areas that by right can develop beyond their base density of 150 dwelling units per acre. anywhere between 200 to 500 dwelling units per acre. So we felt that there may not be an appetite to partake in this because they already have a base density that's given to them by right of up to 500 dwelling units per acre. In downtown, it's actually 1,000 dwelling units per acre. And even though the way that the language is written is that doubling of density would apply to those RDI boundaries, We don't see a lot of developers coming in asking for those kind of levels of density, at least not asking to double the thousands, the 2,000, that would be wild.

So just to take a step back again, which is something I mentioned when I started my comments, there's two things here you're proffering. There's the framework of the RTZ, and then you've shown us maps of potential future areas identified. throughout the city, T4, T5, and T6, minus DR, minus the other one I'm forgetting. And then the second part is starting this with Exhibit A, which is only these two zones in the urban core.

Yeah. The way that the legislation is written is that we can edit the boundaries, we can add more, we can dissolve some, remove some, but it would have to be by ordinance.

And in Edgewater, it's well known that there's a bit of a mismatch between the height, the FLR, and the density. Right.

You have a lot of projects that are over 30 stories, but they'll have less than 100 units in them because of the size of the lots and the density.

And as a result, this solution makes sense, in my mind, in this location. but I foresee more things like this in other neighborhoods based on those topographies, based on those looms, based on those zonings and based on the needs that they have of their infrastructure. I think there's going to be other things like this. And you've also identified that there's all those different things that it might go to, but there may be changes to this for other neighborhoods. And if it, did expand to other neighborhoods, it would have to go back through this process. Like you wouldn't just add neighborhoods to the exhibit A or add a new exhibit B.

Correct. It would have to go back to PZAB and then to commission readings.

Which means it could also be adjusted for different areas based on the needs of that area.

Yes.

I think that's helpful. For, I think the TDD, which you explained, thank you for that, transit, what was it, transit?

It's the transfer development density.

And then TDRs, TEDs?

The transfer, the TDR is transfer of development rights. So that's basically more having to do with square footage of a building that can be built, whereas the transfer development density is the units that aren't used from historic properties.

And could you explain a little bit, and I think I might have missed this, who exactly is paying into the fund? And this fund obviously is going to prioritize this area, but could you explain the economics, how you see those economics working?

Right. So applicants, developers, when they come to develop, they will, let's say they want to use the program, they would have to pay... the number we had thrown at PZAB was about $45,000 per unit. And let's say they wanted to build another 100 units, that's $4.5 million. Obviously, these projects are expensive, but I have seen some projects in the city that are as little as $10 million. I don't know what goes into that, but I think that it's very realistic that we will generate enough money to actually build be able to build infrastructure projects.

And are you coordinating? I mean, I'm curious on that map that you were looking at where you're still looking at for the resilience and public works together with some of the OCI projects that are underway. Are you looking at any of the underwater storm drain information and water pumps and the planning? How do you overlay or propose to prioritize some of that key infrastructure, particularly underground infrastructure?

So when we were looking at areas to qualify, we were more trying to stick to the language in the comprehensive plan, since the comprehensive plan's future land use designations are what provide for this increase in density by up to 100%. And the comprehensive plan does have language. It's about planning for coastal high hazard areas and storm surge planning zones. And that's kind of why we use that as a basis. We did speak with RPW, or Office of Resilience and Sustainability, about what went into the stormwater master plan. So we did look at watersheds. We spoke about the types of different infrastructure, and the way that the legislation is written, because I didn't put the entire text of it on here, because who wants to look at a book on a PowerPoint, you know? Basically, though, the different directors, like OCI, RPW planning, they all have to be involved in the process in terms of deciding what the projects, like what will be spent on. Essentially, so figuring out what the best infrastructure type is for those areas, you know, based off of needs and technology and costs and all that stuff.

So are you going to define like a priority matrix of some sort? So there's bring some transparency to that process.

We can do that.

That wasn't already defined, though, in the stormwater master plan.

We can adopt that for this, I guess. Because the part of it does require us to do annual reports for transparency, so we can definitely include that type of information in our annual reports just so that everybody knows how much money has already been generated, has any of it been spent, and what was it spent on. And we can definitely use that matrix to help us pinpoint the types of projects or the locations of them.

I think adding in also the cost per... the benefit per unit that exists and the benefit per potential unit that could exist on not recently developed land, showing how the dollars being spent in certain areas goes per person, I think would be really interesting as well.

That is a really good point. Thank you.

Could you put the slide that shows the two You're good. Thank you.

Go ahead.

Has this been done in any other cities that you could point to? I'm sorry, could you repeat that? Has this been done in any other cities that you could point to? I couldn't find anything like this. Yeah, I'm just curious. I've never heard anything like this, so.

We did actually, Alyssa helped us meet with some other professionals in other cities, and none of them really had anything like this, but because we already have an affordable housing trust fund, we have a parking trust fund, we have a tree trust fund, we have so many trust funds in the city, and we also have other mechanisms in place like public benefits, that is also a trust fund, for unlocking Development capacity and development rights that are given to you that we knew that this was something that we could easily be Modifiable just because it's something unique to the city of Miami.

I think Thank you, it's not exactly applicable, but there's a project on fifth and Alton Park five Park I think it's called and there they built a park in exchange for adjustment of their of their zoning Right, it's like a storm sir. It's a storm and retention park it has additional infrastructure in the park to hold water from that area.

and that's actually a public benefits option that does exist in the code. You can provide parks and recreation space on site for additional floor lot ratio, so the square footage of the building that you could build. It hasn't been very popular. I can only think of two parks off the top of my head, and both are actually in Edgewater, one at Icon Bay and the other at Paraiso. So, you know, I mean, it's great that it has been used, but I can't think of any other projects that actually have used it before. Catherine Engelson.

If you all were interested, we could make a recommendation potentially of support. We could keep it super simple and just say support. We could add reasons for support. We could also add reasons, proposed changes, or suggestions. Additionally, if you weren't comfortable with that but wanted to do something when we had a full quorum that would actually be a memo or resolution, we could wait until our December meeting should, you know, and it's more applicable that we do something before the commission were to have this on an agenda. And since we don't know if this is going to an agenda sometime soon.

Let me check my email to see if it was scheduled.

Chair, I'd like some more time to be able to review and sink into this as I was reviewing it, kind of coming to the meeting. A couple of ideas came to mind in terms of, you know, very small edits I might recommend. You want to bring them up? I would need more time to prepare that.

Catherine, if any changes were made, would it have to go back to PISA? Can you speak up? I didn't hear it, sorry. If any changes were made, would it have to go back to PSAB?

It depends. If the changes are more restrictive, no. If they're less restrictive, yes. Depends on the use and the requirements. Example, if right now to build something that the benefit would cost 100,000, if we change it to, you know, if we change it to 150, it would have to go back because that's now more on the public. So it depends on what revisions or recommendations they have. Sorry.

Thank you. I would not have known that. I should.

Could you, Chair, if I may, one more request, the page 12 presentation, whenever you have the completed Office of Resilience and OCI data?

Oh, yeah, the map. Yeah, I can definitely.

Can you circulate that to maybe share with Miriam whenever that's done?

Yeah, Sue, you would like me to update it to have all the projects shared? We can do that.

And if you're able to, you know, you mentioned you had a link to the OCI layer. I don't know if you're also able to, you know, if you're able to embed some of the links like you suggested for the language. I love that a lot in your recommendation of, hey, when this is finally approved, the reference will be a link in the municipal code that people will be able to reference. So I think more of that linking Is would be really helpful so I'm excited I was excited to hear you thinking through that the presentation super clean very professional and I'm interested in the heat map particularly to understand.

You know kind of underlying data I don't know if it's possible to request that basically just property appraiser data based off of your built in the units.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then GIS does the rest for you.

Okay. Wonderful.

So I retrieved the data from the property appraiser like the first week of October. So if the property appraiser had updated the data to show that the year built was 2025, then it was captured. If it's still under construction or hadn't been updated, then it wasn't included.

Other than this, I think it's an excellent presentation. Sounds like an amazing initiative, something we really needed. I'm sure Barbara is very happy. As she mentioned, she's been talking about something like this for a while.

If no one's going to make a motion, then I would just request that our comments from this evening are just taken into account for our future discussions with staff and with commission.

What kind of motion were you hoping would be made? Thinking-wise?

Well, I suggested we could show a straw vote, a ceremonial, because it wouldn't actually be legislative.

I'm sorry.

Well, just because he said he didn't want to doesn't mean you couldn't proffer one or someone else. But I was simply saying that we could do one in support, and it could be we could include any of the reasons why we support it and any recommendations, or it could just be we support this. In general, I think this is a good idea. But if you are not ready to do so, I'm happy to suggest bringing it back at our December meeting.

I have no problems with making a motion in support of the mission or the objective of this presentation. If it were possible to incorporate that support with the very pertinent comments you made and others made, but that, I don't know.

Into the mic, please. A little closer.

Couldn't be any closer if I were inside. In other words, my motion would be that we take a straw vote on a motion. Let me start again. I would propose that we vote in a straw vote scenario on indicating our strong appreciation for the attempt to address the resiliency of Miami neighborhoods in very appropriate manner and would hope that some of our comments as to And we can list the comments.

Ensuring the cost per unit is adequately priced given existing price per door in the area. areas east of mainland be treated individually. And those are really my only two comments. So it could just be that we recommend what you said, we support it in its efforts and with these two comments.

And I would add that the increased density be explicitly described as increasing the affordability of the housing.

I'm sorry, but the recording is not going to pick it up. So when I listen to it or if anybody else hears it, they're not going to hear it. It's just going to say, hmm.

You have to move slightly closer. I don't know how we would say that the units would be explicitly affordable without saying affordable.

Okay. Let it go. The comments that he added to my general motion would be fine.

So the motion is what Barbara just stated for the record with support with the two things for consideration.

Do I have a second for that?

Can I be a second? Yes? If you guys aren't going to second it, then I'm going to second it. All right, I'll second it. So all in favor? Aye.

Did you vote? Yeah.

Did anyone else vote?

Aye.

Aye, OK. abstain or a no vote uh no no i'm abstaining abstaining okay so three eyes and one abstain okay thanks so much i really appreciate the work you all are doing keeping us more resilient thanks so much okay we have a second presentation uh item b 2025 king tides but that's going to be move to a future agenda, likely our December agenda. So we'll move on to our third presentation, item C, 4C, which is the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority Public Innovation Challenge, number seven. Welcome. And just to give some context for this, this is, I saw this come up in an email, I thought it was pertinent to our discussion this evening, one, that we should know about this great work at the MDAA from the county, as it's definitely applicable to our work here, but also this particular public challenge number seven is related to our recent resolution storm of emergency preparedness. So for anyone who had seen what we had done with that, was interested in that, that field, this may be applicable to them. Thanks for joining us. Absolutely, my pleasure.

Thank you so much for the invitation to participate. Looks like I don't have the right hookup for this, so unfortunately. Hopefully, I know I got the slides to you a little bit late, but happy to talk through these in any event. I have an adapter.

Would this help?

I think we also received them, so I'll go ahead and pull them up on my side.

All right, I got it up. Perfect. Are you seeing it on your screen?

Yep, it's up on our screen.

Wonderful. Great. Thank you again so much for the invitation to speak with all of you this evening. My name is Paul Gribble. I'm the Public Challenge Manager with MDIA, the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority. And as Erin mentioned, very excited to talk to you about her most recently launched Public Innovation Challenge, which is in partnership with our county's Department of Emergency Management. which, to your point, I think certainly touches on some of the work that you are doing and could be of interest to individuals, companies in your network to explore a little bit further. So I wanted to start by giving you a general overview of MDIA and what we do, and then touch a little bit on the challenge itself. and then open it up for questions if that sounds good. So I'll just jump right in here. MDIA is an independent nonprofit. We work closely with both the private and public sectors to identify, invest in, and support in early to growth stage companies, giving them the opportunity to test out and validate their solutions to pressing public challenges across Miami-Dade County. So we serve as a bridge between private innovation with the public sector with a goal of fast tracking the procurement of technologies that enable local government to more effectively improve quality of life for its residents. And while our work is local, our intention is global as we source solutions from the international market and share out our work on a global platform. And while this global platform includes a wide range of private sector, public sector, nonprofit, and philanthropic partners to help us share our challenges and promote visibility among the international innovation community, we work closely with Miami-Dade County and many of its departments, including for this challenge the Department of Emergency Management, to both address issues facing the department itself and the broader community, and to support innovators as they navigate a major public sector deployment. And how do we succeed in our work? As I mentioned, we look to the private market for specific solutions to the challenges that we identify in collaboration with our challenge host. And then through our public innovation challenge framework, which I'll discuss in more detail momentarily, we select a cohort of winning companies that have built solutions that are ready to be tested in a pilot setting. And in partnership with the challenge host, companies validate the efficacy of their solutions through the pilot model. And as winners of the Public Innovation Challenge, these companies also receive an equity investment from MDIA. And we also think in the long term about how we can support our portfolio companies to attract follow-on investment and pursue commercial contracts after the pilot. So the Public Innovation Challenge is our primary framework for achieving our goals. The challenge starts with the MDIA team meeting with the challenge host to identify some challenges or issues that are posing roadblocks for the department, as well as concerns for the broader community. And through further research and collaboration, we more clearly define a challenge scope that can be addressed by innovative technology driven solutions. We then work with our network of partners to launch the challenge, which is a competitive open call. And through a rigorous and collaborative selection process, we ultimately select three to four companies that will receive a strategic investment of $100,000 each. And again, the opportunity to test and validate their solution in the pilot setting. So just wanted to highlight here the verticals that we are focused on. With each of our challenges, we look to areas of public concern to make sure that these challenges address something at a macro level. So solutions should deliver a clear quality of life benefit to Miami-Dade County residents while also improving operations for the department that we're working with. And we aim to address challenges in the following verticals, risk and resilience, which this current challenge falls under, health, housing, mobility, and digital services. To date, we have launched six previous public innovation challenges focused on sargassum repurposing, passenger experience at Miami International Airport, cargo visibility at Port Miami, transportation visibility, solid waste diversion, and housing access. And again, for the companies that we ultimately select as winners, they each receive a $100,000 equity investment in the form of an uncapped safe note and the opportunity to pilot their solution in partnership with the department at the county that we are working with on this particular challenge. So to highlight a little bit about our current challenge, which we launched just back in October, this was launched in partnership with the county's Department of Emergency Management, DEM, as well as Big City Emergency Managers and FIU's Academy of International Disaster Preparedness. So over the course of a number of conversations with DEM, we ultimately narrowed in on a challenge scope in which we are seeking solutions that can streamline emergency management operations, assist with decision making, enhance situational awareness, and support public preparedness. So these can be a wide range, again, of technology-driven solutions that can help really improve DEM's efficacy, particularly in the face of this current climate where our partners at DEM are always talking to us about how disasters are very local. And now with changes at the federal level, reductions in funding or resources that are available to municipalities, we really view this as a pivotal moment for DEM. to really take greater control of its work at the local level in response to any number of disasters. Obviously, we're looking at hurricanes, flooding, those kind of natural events, but also man-made disasters. We're looking at safety around large-scale events that Miami is hosting more and more frequently, from Art Basel to World Cup. to concerts and sporting events. So DEM is really looking at playing a more concrete role in the shaping of safety and situational awareness around those kinds of events. And again, the three to four companies that we ultimately select as winners, they receive this equity investment and the opportunity to pilot. Just for anybody who might be interested, we have a couple of virtual information sessions coming up for interested applicants. And our deadline to apply is December 18th. And our goal is to ultimately select these companies in Q1 of next year with an ideal pilot launch for Q3, Q4 of next year. So that is my slides. We have our email here. also welcome you to visit our website, check out our FAQ, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Thank you so much. I think it's very interesting. I don't have any main questions this evening, but I do have one request. If this item could be included in the next ORS email update, if there's time and opportunity in that update, potentially also paired with the update on Storm, I think that your newsletter goes out to a lot of people who would be interested in this.

Sure, we can definitely do that.

Thanks so much. I did not know that this was also in relation to event preparedness and safety, which given the amount of events we're having, I think is also important for people to know just like the broad scope of what emergency preparedness means. I hadn't considered that. Are there other aspects of MDAA upcoming things or other actions that you think are applicable to the CRC at this time? Not at this time.

I have my colleague Fernando here as well. I know that he is probably very excited to talk about a challenge that we are considering at this moment and in the stages of planning, which we can't announce yet, but I definitely think we will have some that will be of interest to this group.

If, yeah, when you're ready to discuss it, if you just reach out, we'll make sure to include you in a future agenda so we can discuss the details of that and be of any support we can. Absolutely. We appreciate that. All right. If there's no other questions, thank you so much for your attendance today. I really appreciate the presentation. Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay, item six is city-owned waterfront projects. And I added this item to the agenda as an update that the Eco Resiliency Special Area Plan, SAP, for the property located at approximately 1111 MacArthur Causeway, Miami, Florida. It was on the Planning, Zoning, and Appeal Board PZAB meeting in October. So that project has made additional progress since it came before us. And I put it here simply to give that update, that if you wanted more information, that meeting was archived on the city's website, and you can watch it, and you can see how that project has developed and where it's going. I don't have any further information to give at this time as to what the action was taken or where it's going after that meeting. But I just try to continue to add items to our agenda that will track those projects that we've seen in the past and that relate to things that we have taken action on. For instance, the challenge number seven that we just saw. So not much more to give other than that. All right, we have no items to be voted on this evening for item seven. For item eight, we have Office of Resilience and Sustainability updates.

Hi, good evening. I'm Sonia Brubaker. I'm the Chief Resilience Officer and the Director of the Office of Resilience and Sustainability for the City of Miami. And I have a couple of updates this month for you guys. One is our tree giveaway that we held in October. I gave an update on kind of where we were in that last month, but we completed our tree giveaways in all five of our districts. We gave away 100 trees in each district with a total of 500 trees for the first three Saturdays in October. We had a great response. There were a lot of people that came. Many asked for more than one tree. And so there was a lot of interest. And so it's just having us realize that we need to have some more of these events. So there will be more to hear and more to come. Next, I want to give an update on a few FIND grants that we received in September. And FIND is the Florida Inland Navigation District Waterways Assistance Program, where we apply for grants for shoreline stabilization, as well as some of our waterfront enhancement projects. And so some of these projects include the design and permitting of phase one of the Baywalk connection in Edgewater. We received $235,000 for that. We also received just over $3 million for the construction of our Fees II elements of our Jose Marti Park Adaptive Redesign Project. And this includes a living shoreline, a river walk, water taxi dockage, and kayak launch. We also received $2.8 million for construction of the phase one elements of the Seoul Park Enhancements Project. And this includes shoreline stabilization, river walk, boat slip, and kayak launch. And finally, we received $50,000 for the replacement of floating docks at Dinner Key Marina. And with this grant, we provide a 50% match And depending upon which project it is, we combine this with other grants and sometimes it funds half of the project. So we have some additional shoreline stabilization and waterfront projects that are gonna be completed this year. Next, I want to give an update on our electric vehicles adding to our fleet. We are happy that we were able to utilize a grant from the Department of Energy, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program, where we have purchased some electric vehicles to add to our fleet. We have about 3,000 vehicles in our fleet, about 400 are hybrids, and looking to diversify and make the fleet more resilient. We are looking to incorporate electric vehicles so that we can see how they can be used operationally and see if it makes sense to start adding some electric vehicles to our fleet.

Could you repeat that again one more time, Sonia? We have 3,000 vehicles just in general, right?

Just in general, including all of our vehicles.

And the other numbers? 3,000 all vehicles and currently what do we have and what's our target?

For hybrids, we have almost 400. And so we have currently purchased six electric vehicles. We are looking at installing some charging stations for those vehicles. And then we will see how much funding is left over to purchase additional vehicles. And then lastly, I want to give an update on our resilience overview that we put into our budget book each year. Each year for our adopted budget, we have a budget book, and then we put our last year's accomplishments for our resilience activities within that budget book. That is now online. We have a number of items that are included in our resilience overview, and I just want to pull out a few. We look at this citywide, where we track all of the different resilience projects that all of our departments are working on. And we really catalog these according to our resilience strategies. Our strategies have actions in them that we work towards and they are approved or otherwise provided as directives by our city commission. And so we keep track of all of the actions in these plans and how we're progressing towards them. we organize our accomplishments through the plans. And so for this year, we recently passed our extreme heat plan, but we have included that for this, because it was passed at the very end of last year, we included that into our climate ready adaptation plan. Next year, it'll be kind of pulled out. But for our Miami Forever climate ready adaptation plan, We had a bunch of activities that we did this year, including our heat sensors and homes program that we received a grant for where we put 78 heat sensors inside and outside of people's homes. We also integrated living seawall features into 16 seawalls across five projects that was led by our Department of Resilience and Public Works. I just mentioned a bunch of shoreline stabilization and waterfront enhancement projects. And so as a total, we received over $7 million in grant funding to stabilize our shorelines and mitigate coastal flooding. We also worked on a public art competition. We partnered with FIU and the Ocean Conservancy to develop a storm drain art collaborative design project. where we had a competition among 40 FIU students to develop a stencil art design that's gonna be featured near our storm drains to let people know that litter goes into our bay, into our ocean. We also completed a pilot project for our Southwest Street Skate Master Plan. This is known as our Little Havana Blue Street. We also, as I mentioned in the beginning, we finalized our extreme heat plan, which also has a number of actions in it that we started to implement during this year's extreme heat season. And for our Miami Forever Carbon Neutral, our greenhouse gas reduction plan, we also have a number of accomplishments, just pulling out a few. One is SolSmart. The city received a SolSmart silver designation back last spring. And this is a national technical assistance and designation program funded by the US Department of Energy. And it's really designed to recognize communities that have taken steps to address barriers for residential and commercial solar energy. We also expanded our fleet to include electric vehicles through a grant. And as well as our building efficiency 305, our program, our BE305 program, as of October 2025, just last month, all buildings over 20,000 square feet are required to comply with BE305. All of that work has been done to provide outreach to the programs, to provide them technical assistance, to help benchmark their energy and water usage so that they can see the usage that they have in their buildings. and they can see ways that it could be reduced, it could save costs as well as reduce emissions. So notices and flyers were all mailed out prior to the compliance date this year. We also had virtual trainings to help train the building owners as well. And lastly, we continued our e-waste recycling Our Department of Solar Waste has held two e-waste recycling drives at Regatta Park. We have another one coming up this Saturday. So if you have any electronics that you'd like to recycle, please bring them. But for this year, we've collected over 6,000 pounds of electronics and 175 pounds of lamps and batteries. And there's about... 12 to 14 pages of these accomplishments in the budget book, so this is just a few we pulled out, and so want to encourage you to take a look, see all of the great work that's being done, and if you have any questions, just email me, email resilience at miami.gov.

Where's the budget book downloaded from?

Let me look at the URL. Miami.gov slash budget.

So the section on ORS is within the full budget book. It's not an individual item.

So each department has a section. So you can look at a section of the Office of Resilience and Sustainability, but we also have a section a section called Resilience Overview. I believe it's on page 108.

So again, it's budget, is it budget and brief? What is the document?

So it's the operating budget.

In the operating budget, okay.

Yep, it's page 108.

Awesome. Congratulations on all of the many accomplishments. looking forward to the next 12 months and hopefully assisting in what we can over here.

Thank you.

Chair, one question here. I'd love to learn more about one of these. All of them are really great, but I'm particularly interested in the storm drain art. I don't know if there's anything else you can share on that project. I must have missed it, but that sounds really exciting. and very needed, so I'd love to check that out.

Yeah, yeah, I'll pull together some information so we can show at the next meeting. We can show the finalists, what the winning stencil is, and then hopefully we'll have a date to share really soon of them being installed, and then we can have information on that as well.

Is there, like, maybe we can do, like, a storm drain day in Miami or something like that? I think that could be fun and maybe invite the artists that are getting recognized to, I don't know, I think to raise awareness of this. Almost every week I get into an exchange with somebody saying, you know, don't flick cigarettes. It ends up in the storm drain, it ends up in the stream drain, it ends up in the bay, and every time it's like, oh, I don't know. So, yeah, I think I'd love to point to some art that sort of describes that.

Wonderful, thank you so much. Okay, so we'll move to item nine, open discussion, other items. Item A is our December and January meeting dates. We made a request to adjust the dates because of the overlap with dates around holidays. Miriam, can you confirm those details with us now, please?

Yes. So our next meeting for December is going to be December 15th. It was moved from the 1st to the 15th. And then January's meeting was moved to the 13th. And these dates are confirmed.

Excellent. And you've sent out already calendar invites?

Yes, I did.

Thank you so much, Miriam.

Chairman, I'd like to make a recommendation. Maybe sometime in the next couple months before these next meetings, if we could have a workshop to talk about some of the updates on... tree legislation and some of the progress of the tree survey that FIU has been leading. I don't know if we could maybe invite Dr. Baraloto to workshop a bit with us. I'd like to freshen up the leaf presentation and incorporate some of those data points. And if it makes sense for us, then try to get this on the agenda for one of the next upcoming meetings.

So you're suggesting a workshop? Mm-hmm. Okay. We can't discuss a workshop tonight or plan one without quorum, but we can... Add it to circulate, maybe circulate an email to see if we can find some dates or something like that and... We can pick a date now, I believe, that we can circulate and try to plan it, but we can't confirm it now. Is there a date you'd like to propose? If you'd like to have Chris present, then I'd suggest maybe reaching out to Chris and seeing if he can, has dates in particular, but maybe we should just pick at least something now so that there is something that we can act on or that Miriam could circulate and try to get confirmation on. So there's holidays coming up at the end of the month. So we should plan perhaps after that, maybe the first or second week of December before our December 15th meeting.

That second week, I mean, I could do as soon as late next week. If we have any members come back the 20th to 21st for the second week of December would probably be better because the first week will be Art Week. So those dates between the 8th and the 12th. I'm also keen. I'm also open on Saturdays. So if you want to do the 13th.

I think we should stick to Monday to Friday, December 8th to 12th.

Yeah, that should be fine.

Yeah, I think so. Miriam, we typically do midday for workshops.

Okay, so just please reiterate those dates again.

December 8th through 12th, midday. Do any of those work or not work for ORS? And for you all?

Well, the 11th is City Commission, December 11th, so that should be off.

If you're looking, so doing the workshop would be in one of the conference rooms. Correct.

Correct. So the 9th is a runoff, the 10th.

The 9th is a voting day? Voting day, yeah, it looks like. You're suggesting we avoid that day?

Yeah.

Okay. And we can do, so it would be 8th, 10th, or 12th. It could be a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. I can make all three as of now. You can as well.

Yeah, me too.

Okay, so the four of us can make those three. Let's request the circulation of those three to the remainder of our board. And also that you'll reach out to Chris. Or I could reach out to Chris as well and see if he's available for one of those dates. And... And then whichever date Miriam has the highest attendance, we will schedule for a midday workshop, please, at River Center, Riverside. Okay, so.

What's the title of this workshop?

I know that I have some specific agenda items I want to work on related to our tree canopy, but maybe we could make a little more generic so we're not just pigeon-held to that. Do you want to talk about CRC agenda items or proposals?

I don't think it can be that broad. No.

Whatever you suggest, Chair.

I mean, if you want to discuss... Trees in chapter 17, it could be trees in chapter 17. If you want to talk about other items, then we should know what the other items are.

Right now, that's the main item, yeah.

Okay, so then that's what it would be.

Okay, and what's that? Workshops on chapter 17?

Yeah, trees and chapter 17. Okay. Or canopy and chapter 17.

So it's going to be on trees?

No, remove... just canopy and chapter 17.

Canopies and chapter 17.

Chair, just so you know, you have five minutes left and we can't extend past eight.

All right. So, all right, we have the item B, the 2025 annual report due in January. We're going to hopefully vote on it next meeting. I need to prepare it. If you have comments that you'd like included, you can circulate it to Miriam. We have an update on Hurricane Melissa. We were going to say a few words, but we'll keep it brief for now. Just if you're interested in participating, I know there's a number of organizations taking donations. And we hope that they recover as quickly and well as possible. I also have a couple of short updates. I'd like to thank the IT department and Office of Resilience, and particularly Manny, Yvette, Becky, Alyssa, and Miriam for the work that you all did to update our website. We now have on the action items section of our website of the Climate Resilience Committee webpage, there's items added that we that we have voted on over the last two years, including some links, and the rest of the links are incoming, so thank you all very much. And we have, I also wanted to mention that the Miami-Dade Solid Waste has a Zero Waste Master Plan public workshop on Wednesday, November 12th from 5.30 to 7.30 p.m. at the Westchester Regional Library. I'm bringing this up because we've taken action and had presentations on this subject in the past, so if any of them are, committee wants to attend or the general public, 9445 Coral Way. I found this on the county's solid waste social media handle where you can sign up for it. Lastly, we have a request for a presentation on the back bay, which I'll try to coordinate for a future meeting. And Sarahi was going to give us an update on bus shelters, which hopefully she has ready for us soon. If any of you guys have any other comments to make briefly, quickly, so we can leave a minute for public comment in case there is one.

Chair, I have one comment in regards to, and it would be helpful to run this by Chief Grant, if there's anything that we can do as the Climate Resilience Committee to ask for support from our Office of Emergency Management in supporting the Jamaican Consul General or Jamaica's recovery, if at all. I'd love to make that recommendation, make that question, make that query

We'll just circulate it before the next meeting. Anything else? Okay. So I'll move to item 10, public comment. Is there anyone here that would like to make a public comment? Or if not, any submissions online? None. All right. Well, thank you all very much for your attendance this evening and for all of our presenters and Those who attended with us here in person, thank you all for showing up. We'll see you on December 15th. Meeting adjourned.