Council - Regular Meeting

Test, test, test, test. One, two, three.

get started with special presentations the time is 610. yes please meet your phones council please come up here perfect okay we've got councilman Fernandez coming in now we'll wait for you to go ahead and start so he thinks oh you do Perfect. So we're going to go ahead and get started, and we're going to begin with a special presentation by the Mammalakes Bar Association. And so at this time, I want to introduce Melissa Alvarez to come up, the president of the bar, and to present the award, along with Merelis Castilla.

Thank you, everyone. So good evening, Mayor, council members, and everyone here in attendance. On behalf of the Miami Lakes Bar Association, it is my honor to present our 2026 scholarship award to a gentleman by the name of Gabriel Diaz. Do you want to come up? The purpose of the scholarship was to recognize an outstanding graduating senior from within our community that has demonstrated not only academic success, but leadership and commitment to their future. And Gabriel exemplified all of those qualities. We had a committee that voted for him pretty much unanimously to award him this scholarship. He will be attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology, so he'll be wrapping Miami Lakes over in Massachusetts. He plans to study computer science and environmental engineering, and we are incredibly proud to support him as he begins this exciting journey, and we have no doubt that he has a bright future ahead. Congratulations on this well-deserved achievement, and we wish you nothing but the best.

Let's go ahead and present them the check and get a few photos, and then we'll get to the proclamation. Don't spend it all at once. Well, it's his money, so.

Because tuition's much more than that.

True, true. Next up, I want to invite representatives of the National Sleroderma Foundation to please come up. There she is, I remember you. Welcome back to Miami-Lakes Town Hall. And we have a special proclamation here proclaiming June 29th as Scleroderma Awareness Day in the town of Miami-Lakes. I apologize. I may mispronounce it as I go along. But the proclamation reads, whereas Scleroderma Awareness Scleroderma is a rare chronic connective tissue disease generally classified as an autoimmune disease where the word scleroderma comes from the Greek word sclero meaning hard and derma meaning skin. Whereas a scleroderma patient's immune system becomes overactive and attacks its own tissues through an overproduction of collagen, which can cause thickening and tightening of the skin, as well as serious damage to internal organs, including the lungs, heart, kidneys, esophagus, and gastrointestinal tract. Whereas scleroderma is a highly individualized disease with the symptoms ranging from very mild to life-threatening, that affects an estimated 300,000 people in the United States, including families across South Florida and is found in every age group with the onset frequently being between the ages of 25 and 55. Whereas prompt and proper diagnosis and treatment by a qualified physician can minimize the symptoms of scleroderma and lessen the chance for irreversible damage, but there is not yet a cure for the disease. And whereas, founded in 1998, the National Scleroderma Foundation is a 501 charitable organization where its volunteers work diligently throughout the month of June, recognized nationally as Scleroderma Awareness Month, to raise awareness, promote research, and support individuals living with this disease. Now, therefore, I, Joshua Diegas, by virtue of the authority vested in me as the Mayor of the Town of Miami Lakes and on behalf of the Town Council and 33,000 Miami Lakers do hereby proclaim June 29th, 2026 as Scleroderma Awareness Day. I want to thank you for all your consistent advocacy efforts. Again, like I said, I do remember you and I hope that someday we will have a cure, but I want to turn it over to you to go ahead and say a few words to those who are watching.

Thank you. On behalf of the National Scleroderma Foundation, Florida and Puerto Rico Chapter, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to the City of Miami Lakes for recognizing June 29th's Scleroderma Awareness Day. As a person living with scleroderma, this proclamation is especially meaningful. Thank you, Mayor Diegues and the City of Miami-Lakes, for being a beacon of hope for our scleroderma community. Thank you so much.

We'll grab a quick photo now. All right, it's 6.15. We will come back at 6.30 to formally kickstart the meeting. Good evening, the time is 6.31, and I'm calling the June regular council meeting to order. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Cuadra Garcia. Present. Council Member Herzberg.

Present.

Council Member Fernandez.

Present.

Council Member Sanchez.

Present.

Council Member Garcia.

Present.

Vice Mayor Morera. Present. Mayor Diegues. Mayor, you have quorum.

Excellent. Thank you. Everyone, please rise for a moment of silence, which will be led today by Councilman Steve Herzberg.

Thank you, Mayor. I ask everyone to bow their heads. Dear God, we ask for your guidance and wisdom this evening. Help us listen with respect, seek understanding, and make decisions that serve the good of our community. Amen.

Thank you very much. Remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance, which will be led by Councilman Sanchez.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. You may be seated. Council, we're on the order of business. Are there any additions, deferrals, or deletions? Councilman Fernandez?

I'd like to pull from the consent 12B and 12C and 14B. They're all in regards to Optimist Park, so the folks here don't have to wait all night for those.

Wait, so just to be clear, you want to move or pull 12B? And 12C. And 12C. And then 14B. And 14B.

Sometime sooner, I'll let you make that call.

So you want to take that up right after public comments, maybe?

That would be amazing.

All right. So after public comments, we have 12B, 12C, and 14B.

Mr. Mayor? Councilman Sanchez. I move to move items 10A and 10B, the committee reports, to after public comments.

Both reports? Yes. Okay. So let's get that. 10A and 10B.

10 a 10 b anything else council through the chair uh councilman garcia yes um i apologize for not being there just not feeling well and i don't want to expose anybody to to my germs um i like to pull my item 16 h 16 e is it e i'm sorry i apologize which one was it again councilman garcia 16H, I believe.

H. Yes. Okay. Okay, show that item withdrawn. And with that, council, is there a motion? I'll move the amended agenda. I'll second. It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. THE AGENDA IS AMENDED AS STATED. WITH THAT, COUNCILMAN SANCHEZ, I THINK YOU WANT IT TO BE RECOGNIZED FOR A MOMENT OF PERSONAL PRIVILEGE.

YES. AS WE KNOW, WE LOST THE GOD MOTHER OF MIAMI LAKES NOT TOO LONG AGO. SHE MEANT A LOT NOT JUST TO MIAMI LAKES BUT TO MIAMI-DADE COUNTY. and to the veteran community and in the South Florida area because of that I would like to request a motion on the floor to lower them to my mix flag to have stuff for the remainder of the month of June.

Is there a motion there's a motion to as the world.

I'm looking at the attorney and he's I think he wants to say something we just got the will check that we can do that is I think we have to do in coordination with County state officials.

Only the known the town of Miami only that are not only that that's fine.

OK so it's been moved has been seconded any discussion. Seeing none all those in favor say aye aye. I saw the motion carries. And we're now public comments, madam clerk.

Good evening. Please, as I always state, please, if you're here today and you would like to provide public comments, the only thing you need to do is approach the podium, state your name and address for the record, and we will give you three minutes to speak. And as well, we always welcome the public that is online. If you wish to speak and you're remote, the only thing you need to do is raise your hand by clicking on the reactions icon and selecting raise hand and IT will allow you to speak. We will as well give you three minutes. And if you decide to call in during the meeting or you want to listen to the meeting and you want to participate, the only thing you need to do is raise your hand by pressing hashtag number nine and we will allow you to speak as well. And please, as we always state, all comments and questions from the public shall be directed to the mayor in a courteous tone. And to ensure the orderly conduct and efficiency of the meeting, public comments will be limited to three minutes. Welcome to the meeting. AGAIN. WELCOME.

LOWER, LOWER, LOWER.

NO, NO. WHERE YOU WERE.

IS IT GOOD?

NO, JIM, SO ON THE MIC ITSELF? IT'S ON? OKAY. SPEAKING TO IT?

MY NAME IS JIM HAMILTON.

THERE WE GO. MUCH BETTER. BUT CAN YOU RAISE IT A LITTLE BIT MORE JUST SO WE CAN HEAR YOU LOUDER?

Jim Hamilton, I live at 8528 Glencairn Lane in Miami Lakes 33016. Mr. Mayor, to the council, to Mr. Peterman, in representing the Optimist Club of Miami Lakes and also as a resident of Miami Lakes, I just wanted to thank the council for your continued support and commitment on the park department's ideas about replacement items and into the Optimist Club of Miami Lakes in the park. Some replacement items will make it a safer environment for the kids. We have over 1300 kids that use the park through our activities each year. And by replacing the light poles that are dangerously bad and improving the lighting to LED, which will save money, we get both a safer environment and a cost efficiency for the town. We appreciate your support on that. We also look forward to working with the contractors that will be working on these park improvement programs. So we'll change our schedule of activities to accommodate whatever work is necessary, particularly when they're changing light poles and other things that, you know, that we need to shut down on. So again, I just really wanted to be here to thank the council for your support.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker.

I want yeah. Good evening. Good evening. Mayor council members that my name is Felicia Salazar culture first committee 6, 8, 7, 5, Quinn Palm Terrace. I'm here today to invite you to our fishing tournament and we've been doing it for over 20 years and it is a tradition so for Father's Day this coming Saturday, June 20th from 8.30 to 11.30 and We won the whole community people watching and those here is it should be fun. I mean one time we had 100 kids, but we hope to have as many as possible this weekend as part of our and country and 250th anniversary, I think we should all celebrate the freedom that we have to enjoy all these activities. Again, the first 30 participants are gonna get free live bait, but you have to bring your own fishing rod and line. We're gonna have raffles, we're gonna have a lot of We're hoping to see if we can get someone from the Fish and Life. I don't know if it's enough time, but we had it one time. He was very helpful with the kids. Again, we're going to have raffles, goodies, food, and so forth, just snacks. since we're not going to be seeing each other after that. The 4th of July, as you know, is our big event, and you're all welcome to come. It's going to be a big one. Like I said, it's 250 years of independence, and we're going to have lots and lots of activities for everybody, young and old. And please spread the word for the fishing tournament and our 4th of July. It should be fun. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next speaker.

Bonnie Cintron 14770 Lewis Road. Good evening Mayor Villegas, council members, Mr. Peterman and staff. I have been reading The detailed and well researched information that Hope Reynolds and Boris Foster have been diligently accumulating and circulating. Several homeowners have added their words addressing you, the council directly. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the homeowners in District 1 have been treated wrongfully due to the erroneous way that their special taxing district has had their share of the taxes assessed. The argument brought forth by Mr. Foster, who is a lawyer, and by Hope, are clearly stated, and they're very easy to understand. The assessment for Section 1 has been calculated incorrectly, it would seem to me, after reading all that they have written. And it's up to you to correct it. That's my message. The ball is in your court. you have a chance to right or wrong and I beseech you to do the right thing and change the way those taxes are assessed. I think it would not be too difficult to do that and it would show that you really are looking out for we the people, for the people in that district have been wrongfully charged. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Diego's Council. My name is Roman Garcia, 7664 Northwest 180th Terrace. I am one of three committee members that represents the MLO Flag Committee. Just wanted to give you guys a little bit of an update. We just came back from Bradenton from the AAU World Championships. And our travel team that represents our organization in 16 and under won the World Championships. Our 14 and under, 12 and under, and 11 and under all finished top 10 in the world in Bradenton. And we came back last week. and played in another tournament in South Kendall. Our 16U went up against 18-year-old kids in that division, winning the championship there. And now our 16U will be representing Miami Lakes at the AAU World Championships in Iowa City at the Junior Olympics in Iowa City at the end of July. So I just wanted to let you know we're here to support the items that are on the agenda tonight The enhancements to the park, it just shows we want to continue to grow our program to continue to give the kids the opportunity to excel in their fields. Thank you. Have a great night.

Good evening, Mayor Diegas, Vice Mayor Morera, council members, and town staff. My name is Carolina Cuba, 19611 Northwest 52nd Avenue, and I'm a student here in Miami Lakes. Tonight, I'm speaking in support of item 16L, the Youth Advisory Board. This is something that began in 2024 through the efforts of my peers and I, because we believe that young people deserve a meaningful way to participate in local government. I want to thank Vice Mayor Morera for bringing up this item and the council for considering this opportunity for young people. When the original resolution of the Youth Art Advisory Board passed in 2024, my peers and I were excited about the opportunity of having a direct voice in local government. Unfortunately, the board then was never established. And while that was disappointing, we never stopped believing in the purpose behind it. If you think of it, young people are not just the future of Miami Lakes, but we are also the present. We attended schools, participated in its programs, and we also volunteer in this community and are affected by every decision made by this council. Therefore, it is the removal of the residency requirement is crucial as many students who are invested in the town of Miami Lakes may not necessarily reside within the town's boundaries. So removing this barrier will ensure that the board can represent the students as intended to serve. The Youth Advisory Board will provide students with an opportunity to engage in civic life, learn about local governments, and show their perspectives. By establishing this board, Miami Lakes is not only giving students a voice today, but it's also investing in the leaders of tomorrow. What began as an idea shared by groups of students in 2024 now has the opportunity to become a reality. That is why I'm standing right here in this podium today, just like I did two years ago, asking for your support on this item.

Thank you.

Good evening. Carlos Andres, 14530 Dade Pine Ave here in our beautiful town of Miami Lakes. Mayor, council, town management, thank you for the opportunity. Just want to start off by thanking some of the folks from our hardworking staff here in the town. um you know jeremy and his team uh working to get tree trimming working with fpl for the tree trimming with them has been a nightmare but jeremy has made that you know smooth and very supportive omar getting street lights repaired now that we got that carry forward um and ndso handing you know really just responding to calls timely um shout out to uh deputy bellany and beckford um for always being there on the call i want to also uh it feels very good to see a lot of people here from the mlop um you know i congratulate this council for taking the right steps forward uh to fund uh you know the park and maintenance um items uh as we know we love to say in the chamber we say it all the time we love to you know this is a place to live work and play this is the play You know, we just heard Roman talk about, you know, different competitions he put in. Competition is critical, and we're being compared all the time to other cities, and here it is. We have now an opportunity to compete in even more of our parks. So I'm very happy about, you know, seeing all these items, already getting work orders approved, and a supportive community here to show you that we're leading the cause. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, staff. My name is Homero Cruz, 8515 Northwest 169 Terrace. Coming in front of you on item 16K, which has to do with arresting and notification of HOA restrictions, presented by Councilman Garcia. Give you a little bit of history. When we did not have a town, and we were part of Miami-Dade County, sangra development had accomplished an agreement with the county that in order for people to do an addition or do anything in their houses they will have to come with a letter of approval from sangra before the building department can go ahead and issue a permit Since we became a town and we had our own building department, I've been arguing this all these years, that we don't have that. We have just a piece of paper that we give the owners. They'll read it. And sometimes they don't even come in front of the HOA. In our case in Royal Oaks, we have an HOA and we have an ARB. And we are very, very picky on our bylaws and how people should conduct themselves. I serve on the planning and zoning board. I've seen cases for a zoning hearing where we go ahead and approve them, and I know that they're not in accordance with the bylaws. What happens then? People spend $20,000, $30,000, and then the AA, ARB, or the HOA cannot approve those plans. So what do we do? What do we tell them? You have to rip it off. You can't do it. Like right now, let's say somebody wants to come in front of the building department in Royal Oaks and say they want to close the garage. Under the building code, there's nothing that says that you cannot do it. But our bylaws says very clearly that you have to have a two-car garage. So you go ahead and issue the permit. They build it, they take out the garage, and then maybe a year later, they want to come in front of the ARB, or we do an inspection or the rounds that we do twice a week, and we realize that that house has no garage. I'm asking that we should not complicate things. We should make it easier for the HOAs and for the owners. How? The same way we used to do it back in the days with Sangra. Don't accept any plans if they don't come with an approval from the ARB. And don't issue a permit. Same thing happens with the metal roofing. Under our new code, we can allow metal roofings. But there's a section in Miami Lakes where metal roofings, I know Jim Hamilton wanted to put one in his house, and he couldn't. because the bylaws there don't allow a metal roofing. But Jim did the homework. He went in front of the HOA before getting a permit. So I'm asking you to please consider having this requirement before anybody can present plans and issue any permits. Thank you.

Good evening, Patrick Kunkel, 15860 West Presswick Place. I'm also the elected president of the Loch Lomond Homeowners Association. I come to you tonight very disappointed that there's been no movement. Twice I've presented to you publicly what you've asked for, and we still don't have any movement on this. The building, we continue to do patchwork over patchwork to make it safe for the guards that live in, that provide, that are occupying the building. doesn't do anybody any favors we also as residents feel we deserve something that's pleasing to our eyes and our neighboring business has requested some cleanup also but there's not much i can do for that so i'm asking you to please consider the information has been provided to you at least acknowledge it i'm available if you have questions i've made myself multiple times available to you and nothing's been asked of me since i've submitted information so i ask that you take it serious please the loch lomond residents and move forward with our guardhouse thank you hello good evening mr mayor council members and staff my name is wayne reinhardt i live in loch lomond

I've lived there for over 23 years. I'm the past president of the HOA. I started as president back when Dake County was in charge of the special taxing district. That's a long, long time ago. And that was pretty bad because going through their procurement department was horrible. So like when the AC broke in the guard shack, I would just hire my handyman and go to Best Buy and buy one and put it in. I paid for it out of my pocket. Just like all the security cameras there as well as the the screen in the concrete poles holding those cameras I put in and I paid for Okay, so I dealt with the county which was like almost impossible and then you gentlemen took over the special taxing district and I was very encouraged that now things were gonna happen fast and it's not happening fast enough it is very very bad that that building and i'm surprised somebody hasn't gotten hurt either going in or out of that building I would I would ask you guys to please do what you can to let's get a decent building put up there Okay, if you're short of funds, I don't know Mr. Gostesi, you'll know but if if there's some private funds that can be raised, you know, I can I can raise it in La Cloma, but Let's please move this along. I beg you okay, the residents of Lachlan as you saw in the numbers we paid 3 times as much as any other Association. I know the main reason for that is we have a rover and all those other associations don't so understand why it's a little high. Okay, and maybe we don't have the many homes as some of the hos. But we deserve this we deserve this and I've had many discussions about a restroom for the for the security guards The the Graham's which Bob Graham used to live in the neighborhood He committed to using those restrooms at the golf course which is like a 30 feet away from from there from the guardhouse and I've talked to all of them and they're fine with the balkan at 30 feet and then Charlie to look at the golf course, he's remodeled them and he they maintain it very well. So the bathroom thing got is not an issue because bringing the sewer line across the road and and build the bathroom is very costly. So we don't have that expense so it's pretty much 4 walls, a couple windows in an AC unit. So as you guys to please do whatever you can to move this along for the residents of Loch Lomond. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker. We're here for the security guard, the gates. In this period, you can speak about whatever you'd like.

Okay. My name is Calisto Milian, 16422 Northwest, 82nd Place. I'm tired of more money getting spent and we don't resolve anything because those security guards don't do anything, just throw pictures all day. Those pictures, if you want a picture right now, if somebody goes to steal something in your house, that happened to me before, and I ran, I called the cops, I went to security gate, they didn't want to give me the license, I did all kinds of stuff, nothing got done. The biggest problem we have is not even the security guard. The little doors that kids are riding with the bikes at night, they open all the cars, okay? They know sometimes that they can't get through the security, but they open all the guards. They just open the doors, they go through the sidewalk, and they ride around bikes at 3 o'clock in the morning. Sometimes I get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and I see them. And they ride around, they open everybody's car. They take everybody's glasses, phones, computers, and nothing gets done. Just like I ran by the security gate, I saw them putting an air conditioning on. That air conditioning cost the city $4,800 a Goodman. With $4,800, I could get a five-ton unit out of my house installed. I spoke here a couple months ago, and I keep saying, we're bleeding money. Why are we spending all this money? That little air conditioner could be replaced with a split unit. It would have been 600, 700 bucks, $300 to install it. I don't know why we're paying all this money and money coming out and money coming out. It doesn't make sense anymore. And now I hear too that they want to make a bathroom at the park. $800,000 for a bathroom that wants to get done at the park? It's crazy, it's crazy. Come on, you guys went to school. All of you guys went to school. I didn't go to school. I can't read and write. But I'm a self-made millionaire, believe it or not, okay? I own 27 properties. JC knows me. But come on, man, try to do things cheaper. Run the city like it was your business. Run the city like if it was your business. I'm not trying to tell you you're stealing money. I'm trying to tell you you need to save money where everything in the city gets paid double or triple. Why does that happen? Why? Why? Nobody ever could explain that to me with the government. Why are we paying more money when you could get somebody to do it cheaper? We don't need those guard gates anymore. We don't need them. All it creates is traffic. Everything is traffic. You don't resolve anything. I don't know, I can't fix the city, but I'm just trying to tell you to think before you guys do something. Because I can understand a couple years ago, $1800 for a fan. Now $4800 for one unit. Thank you, sir. For a one and a half ton unit, $4800. I don't know if both of them got replaced or four of them got replaced.

Sir, I'm sorry, your time has expired and I have to be fair to all the other individuals that want to speak. IT'S COUNCILMAN QUADRA GARCIA HAS MADE A MOTION TO EXTEND THE GENTLEMAN'S TIME BY 30 SECONDS IS IS THERE A SECOND SECOND IT'S BEEN SECONDED BY COUNCILMAN FERNANDEZ UH MADAM CLERK PLEASE CALL THE ROLL COUNCIL MEMBER HURSBURG YES COUNCIL MEMBER FERNANDEZ YES COUNCIL MEMBER QUADRA GARCIA COUNCIL MEMBER GARCIA yes council member sanchez yes vice mayor moretta yes mayor diegas yes the motion passes thank you you have 30 more seconds madam clerk please put that back on the clock and for those that already spoke you have 30 additional seconds uh should you choose to come back up you ready so you know it's all i'm asking is man come on you guys have a college degree

You know, I know how to run a business. I can't even read and write. I'm not embarrassed to say it because I can do anything in my life. But it's embarrassing when you get somebody like me up here, you know, and tries to tell you guys, you know, how to run something, you know? Look at Bukele. He's running a country that nobody's stealing money. He's doing the right thing. You know, you guys could do it too. Find somebody.

Colas got my number find somebody I have an air conditioning guy called before I came here you would have done that job for 2800 bucks 30 seconds I'm sorry they're up the 30 seconds thank you thank you Mr. Mayor if I may for one second okay and then I'll jump in after you just just to maybe it was the same thing that this issue the special taxing district is a public hearing is it not so you'll have another opportunity to come up and speak if anyone just so just to make sure everyone's aware of that

Now, before we go to our next speaker, I did wanna take a, and this is very rare, normally I'm not in favor of this because it holds us up, but I just wanna explain to you that, as we've explained to Councilman Cuadro-Garcia before.

I'm not trying to disrespect anybody.

No, no, no, I'm not taking offense. I'm trying to face my opinion.

I have my opinion.

I understand, but let me speak, please. I'm trying to answer your question. I'm trying to answer your question.

I don't wanna embarrass, I'm not trying. No, nobody's embarrassed. I'm not trying to tell you guys, that I'm better than you guys or anything. I'm just trying to tell you.

This is normally why we don't engage in back and forth, but I'm trying to answer your question, right? Things in the government are naturally more expensive because by law, we are required to put a bid out for the services and materials that we receive. We can only select from those that are ultimately go through that process. So it's not as simple like in our everyday lives with business trying to go to a retailer to try to get a unit or to try to get additional office supplies. It's not that simple and that's usually what drives up the cost a little more because there's only a couple vendors perhaps that are willing and able to do the work or can meet the requirements. to be able to bid on the work in the first place. So that's usually what happens. So I just wanted to clarify that, that it's not as simple as what, at times, Councilman Cuadrado-Garcia has stated, that we just go and find a contractor from a friend, and then we just hire them to do the work. I just wanted to clarify that that does, for all governments, add to our costs. Just wanted to explain that.

Can I say one more thing? Just one more thing. I have friends that work in the government, and they work for ICE, and they work in the government. And when October comes around, they have to spend all the money that's there in the bank, because if not next year, they get less money. That's why the government pays more money. What I'm trying to say is, you guys need to try to fix the problem. You guys need to fix it.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Councilman Eric Sanchez, 9030 Northwest 162nd Terrace. I wanted to come here because I think it's a great opportunity since the Optimist is here to ask for money for works. There's a very big problem happening at the Optimist and I think the council needs to know about this. There are coaches that are allowed to coach who are assaulting umpires, assaulting other coaches, and when there's reports made about these things happening, they reprimand the person who reports it, being me. I gave them a lengthy report detailing things that happened with the coach, and as a result of that report, without insulting anybody, without giving anyone, calling anybody any names, simply laying out the facts, I was dismissed. And I think that there needs to be pressure on the optimists that this cannot be allowed to happen because it's a liability issue for the public. for coaches to be allowed to be a coach when they're assaulting umpires, and not only assaulting umpires, assaulting other coaches, and berating their own kids, dropping F-bombs. You can see the kids, how they react to how the coach demeans them on a daily basis, her own kids. And as a reward, the optimist decided to name this coach an all-star coach as a representative for them to represent this is what Miami Lakes is about. So I think that this council, I ask that they hold the optimist's feet to the fire and ask more questions and demand more from them, thank you.

Thank you, next speaker. Anyone else in chambers? Okay, Madam Clerk, anyone online?

Yes, we have several participants. I'm going to call them as I see them. Mr. Abel Fernandez, I see you have your hand raised. Welcome to the meeting. Please unmute yourself. Mr. Fernandez. I see your name in the screen, but we don't hear you.

Why don't we come back to him and go to another speaker?

Yes, very well. So I'm going to call Mr. Adonis Sardinas, who also has the hand raised. Welcome to the meeting. Please unmute yourself.

Good evening, Mayor Diegas, Vice Mayor and member of the Council. I come to you all the way from Tampa, Florida today as I'm traveling for work. My name is Adonis Sardinas. I'm the Vice President of Loch Ness Homeowners Association representing 148 homes on Loch Ness Drive joining you tonight. Just wanted to provide some quick updates from our last conversation. First and foremost, we thank you all for all the efforts and all the city employees that we've been in communication with over the last few months. I wanted to bring your attention to street light that's located on Stonehaven. There's a case number 20629 and 317. That was submitted back in December 17th. If we could put a little bit more light on it to see, no pun intended, TO GET IT REPAIRED BASED ON THE COMMUNICATION WITH THE PUBLIC WORKS MANAGER. DUE TO THAT, THERE'S NOT ENOUGH REQUEST OR DEMAND TO REPLACE THESE LIGHT POSTS. WE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO REPLACE THE ONE IN OVER A YEAR. SO IT WAS FIRST REPORTED MAY 2025. JUST WANTED TO BRING IT TO YOUR ATTENTION. In additional updates, sidewalk obstructions in Loch Ness, I wanted to thank Code Compliance for really stepping up and assisting the Loch Ness community with addressing some of the concerns of the residents. We still have a handful of offenders and we are collaborating with Deputy Robin Amador on a handful of residents on how to best approach these these residents and educate them on why obstruction of the sidewalk does impact some of our community members like our seniors, parents and joggers in the community stay safe. Item number three I have on my list, the speed humps update. We look forward to the asphalt replacements on Loch Ness Drive. I personally jog every morning and I do jog with my family and I do notice a few of our residents and some guests, like Amazon deliveries, that don't realize, I think that the road, that particular road is 25 miles an hours and they have a tendency to just keep going. So we are the community based on my conversation with a few residents that are looking forward to the speed home. So I thank you, mayor, city manager Peterman for those efforts. Optimist Park, we are looking forward to the enhancements to Optimist Parks. I've communicated that with parks. So thank you all for your efforts with that. Update number five that I have for you all, on my last public comments, we spoke about the investment that the HOA has made to a little free library. We're close to installation and I'm just keeping it top of mind. So when we do have a date established, we would love someone from the town to join. And in closing, thank you all for your continued partnership. The Loch Ness HOA is engaged and very grateful for the town Responses. With that, Adonis Sardinas from Loch Ness, HOA, and I wish everybody a good evening and a happy early Father's Day and a happy Fourth of July for everyone in the chambers tonight. Thank you, Mr. Sardinas.

Next public comment.

Yes, another person, another participant that I see with a hand raised, Michelle or Michael Benitez. Welcome to the meeting. Please unmute yourself.

Hi, Michelle Benitez, 16422 Northwest, 82nd place, Royal Oaks. I wanted to bring up to the attention of the guard gates. I know Mr. Calixto-Millan spoke about the guard gates earlier. The guard gates are basically useless. I got hit by the pole of the guard gate. And when insurance companies asked for videos, there was no videos. There's just nothing. The security company we have right now, it's not the best, I would say. And communication wise, town of Miami Lakes was very good. Now with the security company, it was horrible. We just got a paper now that our HOA was going to be raised. How is our HOA going to be raised when we have that new community that they're building in the back with those $2 million cookie cutter houses? You know, it's the same thing with the air conditioner. How can an air conditioner cost $4,800 when it's just, it's impossible to just keep on bleeding money and the HOA really here doesn't do anything. Anything has to go with Town of Miami Lakes. Yes, you can have a metal roof with Town of Miami Lakes, but no with Royal Oaks. So something has to happen. Either getting rid of the guard gate and the HOA period or, you know, putting better systems in place. But something needs to work because... For example, the accident on my car, I had to pay out of my pocket because there was no video, there was no proof, but it was my fault. Yeah, I would have run that poll, and I bet you anything that video would have appeared in a quarter of a second. So, you know, something needs to be put in place with the whole Miami Lakes District.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Mr. Abel Fernandez.

Yes, good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Town Council, Mr. Manager. Town Attorney and Madam Clerk, Abel Fernandez, Chapter 119. I'd like to talk to you regarding the possible catastrophic vote in November to cut our taxes. And government needs taxes in order to operate. And unfortunately, this was an ill-thought process that was put forward to the voters. And I fear that the voters are going to approve increasing this tax exemption, and I hope that the. I hope that the town.

Mr Fernandez, I think you accidentally muted yourself.

Not allow. Sorry, it said that the host was not allowing me to talk, so it wasn't me. It was the host. If I can reclaim 15, 20 seconds on that. Mr. Mayor, I am sure that you're concerned, as many of us are, because critical services need to be funded. I think our budget is lean. You guys are doing a great job. but cutting our taxes is gonna be catastrophic. It's beyond belief that our Senator for the state, for our area, Mr. Brian Avila and our House Representative Tom Fabricio both voted for this disaster and shame on them for what they did. In regards to Councilman Garcia asking police officers to carry narcan that is not necessary uh i did some reviews on numbers uh the town of miami lakes does not experience opioid overdoses this is an additional cost that we would have to fund the miami-dade police uh sheriff's office for and it's not necessary we've got four units four als advanced life support units in this town that can cover any type of incident in which Narcan, or Naloxone is the correct word, Narcan's the brand, that would be needed. I don't support that. That's fluff. I don't know if it's for election purposes, but this is the same thing as the useless idea of drones and the useless idea of us putting chargers in town for electric vehicles. I ask that you try to get Councilman Garcia to concentrate on real issues like broken sidewalks, lights out, and then these ideas that just add to our expenses unnecessarily. Thank you for your time, Mr. Mayor. Thanks for the great job you are all doing. I am concerned, as I said, about what's going to happen with the tax

in uh in november thank you mr fernandez next speaker

Next speaker is in the screen with the name of A.M. I only see the initials A.M. If you want to participate and speak, please unmute yourself now. Speaker with the initials. OK, moving on. I don't see another speaker in screen. I do have to state written public comments that my office has received. So if you allow me, this would be the time to do so. I'm going to start with a letter received from Miami Lakes Professional Center condominium. This is in regards to item, it's the quasi-judicial item that we have in the agenda. It's item 15A, Education World Learning Center. They sent an email and I disseminated that email with all the elected officials. So I just wanted to state that for the record. And I'm going to start naming individuals who sent e-mails to my office in regards to the common denominator is the item on the agenda 14, a ordinance in 2nd reading the non at the Lawrence special taxing district. All of these e-mails are objections to that item. E-mail received from real CEO got to see a objecting to the budget. item forty nine mister tommy de jane in objection to the miami lake section one on one budget mister me again for data objection regarding the section one budget email from mister harry e bollinger objection to miami lake section one budget mister frank and by he has Again, in objection to Miami Lakes Section 1 budget, Maria Santelises, in opposition or objecting to Section 1 Special Taxing District budget proposed. Ms. Tina Gallinar, in opposition to Miami Lakes Section 1 budget. Mr. Boris Foster, in objection to the same budget, item 14a. MR. RENE CAMBERT IN OPPOSITION TO THE PROPOSED BUDGET OF MIAMI-LAKES SECTION 1. EMAIL FROM MR. OBJECTION FROM MR. THOMAS TANNIHILL AND HIS WIFE, MS. ANNIE TANNIHILL. TWO DIFFERENT EMAILS IN OBJECTION TO THE SAME ITEM, 14A. E-mail from the, well, the name that I have here is PACPAC, and it's from Lake Glen Ellen HOA, in opposition as well. Ms. Stephanie Gomez, in opposition to the Miami Lakes Section 1 budget. E-mail from Bertha Alvarez, in opposition to Miami Lakes Section 1 budget. Ms. Susana Herrera in objecting to the calculations done regarding same item 14A. Mr. Albert Aguiar, in opposition to the calculations done to the Miami Lakes Section 1 budget. An email from, in opposition, of course, to Miami Lakes Section 1, item 14A, of Ms. Hope Reynolds. And in said email was included the opposition, or the objection, from Ms. Bonnie Cintron and from Mr. Pedro Gonzalez. So let the record reflect that all these individuals objected to item 14A.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. And before we move on, I want to acknowledge a special guest who is with us in the audience today. We have Judge Christopher Benjamin with us. Sir, please stand and be recognized. Thank you for joining us today. he's an excellent jurist and thank you for coming by with that we are now going to the combined items 12b 12c and 14b i'm aware that 14b is an ordinance on second reading so at this time i'm going to ask the attorney to go ahead and read the ordinance into the record 12b correct

Well, I'm 14 be that's the ordinance on second reading 14 be okay in order to the town of Miami Lakes, Florida amending the town's fiscal year 2025 2026 budget established by ordinance 25 dash 346 providing for expenditure of funds were running for amendments providing for repeal of ordinances in conflict. Providing for implementation providing for severability and providing for an effective date.

Thank you, Mr. Attorney. This item is a public hearing item, so I'm gonna go ahead and open it for public comments. This is 14B. Anyone in chambers wishing to speak? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, anyone online? Again, 14B.

Again, the individuals, the participants online. If you want to participate and provide comments, item 14B, which is an ordinance in second reading regarding the budget amendment, please unmute yourself now and welcome to the meeting.

Okay, seeing none, public hearing is now closed. And now, council, or rather, I'm gonna go to the manager to go ahead and introduce the items before we go to a motion.

Yeah, this is you the item you saw last month that's unchanged from last month it is moving of the money that we have in a park. Improvement impact fee funds moving it into the mlp capital account to fulfill the the list of items that the council approved that last month's meeting to move forward with the improvements. Primarily safety and a D a compliance improvements at the Miami lakes optimist Park.

I move it.

It's been moved and seconded any discussion. OK and again this is for 3 items. But madam clerk go ahead and call the roll.

Case so regarding motion 14 be budget, it's for all 3, it's for all 3, OK, but because it is an ordinance in second reading item 14 be in addition.

You prefer that we take it in the view because the motion initially when we're mending the agenda was taken up together.

I think they're on the order has to be separate I would put on the ordinance separate and then vote on the resolutions for procurement items separate.

So let's let's go ahead and vote on the and I'll explain why the ordinance is a public hearing the other ones are not okay, all right so 14 be a man for please call the roll.

Yes, ordinance in second reading item 14 be councilmember Garcia.

Absolutely yes.

Council Member Sanchez.

Yes.

Council Member Fernandez.

Yes.

Council Member Cuadra Garcia.

Yes.

Council Member Hershberg.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Morera.

Yes.

Mayor Diegues.

Yes.

Ordinance in second reading, item 14B passes.

Excellent. Okay, so taking up the remaining items, 12B and 12C. I'll move both. All right, it's been moved. Is there a second? Second. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion?

I'll just say it's long overdue, but I'm happy to vote for it.

Councilman Cuadra-Garcia.

On that item, I am in favor of doing the fence. I'm in favor of doing the lights. That's great. That's a positive. But I think that we need to shop. Shop the price, I hope. Do we have to strike this today?

You mean do we have to vote on it today.

Yes, yes. I would I would make a recommendation that we do one more attempt to shop for a better price.

my only concern because while normally i am inclined to agree my concern is with the school year um right now they're on all as it is a pretty tight timeline uh to get it completed i think it's around october um and and then the school year starts and the the programming starts i think we want to try to avoid interruptions to the programming and I want to say, given that both of these are piggyback contracts, I don't really know that we're going to find substantial savings. But that being said, I'll leave it to the will of the council. But timing, I think, is an important factor here.

OK Mister manager anything else you want to add.

Yeah, I just want to make sure that everybody is clear on both of these items were competitively bid we are using a method that's called piggybacking which is to the vice mayor's point is to accelerate the implementation. The first one which was the fence item we're piggybacking on a contract that was led by the city of Miami So that was actually, they also benefit from the economies of scales that we do not. So the city of Miami get much better pricing than we do because of their size. The second one, which is the lighting item for the replacement of the wooden poles and the fixtures, is a contract out of Clay County. that we're also was also competitively bid in actually 2023 I'm not mistaken so it actually even is benefiting from the fact that now those prices that were negotiated or even 2 or 3 years old which we should be lower than today's price. Thank you, any further discussion?

Councilman Herzberg.

So to the manager, I guess the question is you're confident that if we went out to bid, your position is that there would not be much savings, if any at all? I tend to agree with the vice mayor and the councilman, Cuadro Garcia, that obviously we would prefer, but the issue then is timing, right? Correct. So your position is that these are solid prices regardless of what, if we even were to bid?

yes sir okay anything further all right all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed no one nay and with that the item carries congratulations we've got it done or at least the first steps so thank you very much for your time uh and we're moving on now to item 10 a that would be the report of the public safety committee

Good evening again, Carlson dress with the public safety committee. This is our by any report to you all thank you for the opportunity and for supporting our first responders. The want to go ahead before I get into you know the order of business here with the report to Council just want to stress out. you know our budgets right i know that when we were having the workshop i want to see a few weeks ago you know one of the things that we were requesting is to go back to our budget the way it used to be at 4800 and i made some some numbers um you know some representations of numbers and i want to make sure that i'm very clear so now in the actual column over the report you see 426 dollars That $426 is really offset by the $10,240 that we got from sponsorship funds. So what we've spent on what I call our operating expenses has been $3,166. That's our operating expenses. sixty five hundred dollars of that was to pay the car show expenses and then a thousand dollars was donated which you know we all know right so i know it's kind of weird because it's a small number of 426 so the way you get the math with that is that you would add 10,240 to the 426, and then you would go ahead and subtract the numbers that I gave you. So I just want to make sure that's clear. Sorry that it's not as clear in this presentation, but I also think that it's very important to report to the council what are projected to spend for the rest of the fiscal year. Um, and I also said that, um, during our workshop that we have, uh, $1,700 per, uh, projected to be spending, uh, we have $4,800 available. Now I do want to call to the, to the council's attention that during our January report to council, we made a request that was approved anonymously. to earmark uh twenty three hundred dollars for next year's car show okay so i want to make sure that i know that probably we i can have a discussion with our budget officer you know after this meeting to make sure that that happens but i just wanted to you know bring that to your all's attention and i have the minutes in front of me from the january meeting okay so um that's when it comes to to funds where we're at now um current initiatives we uh we attended uh the nic meeting with the hoas we launched our radio frequency identification pouches that's to make sure that folks can't steal key fob signals the um We did a back to nature on April 18th, which was a shredding event law enforcement awareness month. Thank you all for your support. We had coffee of a cop. We had a presentation at the chamber. We launched our slow down yard signs, which has been a very good campaign. We've received nothing but positive feedback from the community. Lots of requests from different folks around town to get it at their parks, at their homes, and just very happy overall with the support for that campaign. We were, correctly, I actually just gave our major the golf cart public safety, or let's just call it golf cart safety tips for now. We'll call it that. Essentially what this is, and I even remember our town attorney, Gastesti, speaking about it, is we're going through the ordinance that established the golf carts, going over some of the requirements in place, and just making it very proactive. We're working with the Miami Lakes Golf Cart Club. to make sure that we get it out there. And just putting a lot of stress on safety that some of the concerns we've been hearing from residents, like kids riding in the carts without car seats, people overcrowding carts, people riding on golf carts on sidewalks. So we wanna make sure to bring that attention, especially now in the summer to the community. We are gonna be partnering up with NIC for the life ring demonstration PSA as well. And then what we have going on right now, I actually just, I want to say last week, received approval from, you know, the Grams on the summer safety tips. What we do for that is just, you know, bring up four examples of summer safety issues that we keep having, put it on the Miami Laker, put it out on social media. We have a swimming lessons initiative that I'm going to be asking for the support of this council on in the organization here of our new report. We have the annual deputy and fireman recognition in September. national coffee a cop in october and we have our cars for heroes on november 14th so we actually moved it up a little to november it's going to help out a lot with the weather now new initiatives going down here in the order of business so the miami-dade county has what is called the zero drowning prevention program And as you all know, I keep saying, you know, almost every time I come up here to talk about a different item during public comment about how important it is for us to compete with other municipalities. So we felt in public safety, and this was actually something Johnny Torres thought of a few years ago about, you know, having swimming lessons. So zero drowning is a program. They work with a lot of municipalities and they want to talk to us. So I don't know what it would cost. I'm hoping it's free because it is the county that's doing this and reimbursing us for any expenses. But we want to instruct staff. I already have an email that was introduced to to Jeremy and to also to Gladys Claricelle to start the conversations with this program. might not be in time for this summer but you know we'll get it lined up for next summer so that's that's the uh the request that i have um you know for this and uh that comes with creating a budget line item for uh this event the swimming lessons creating a budget line item for back to nature which was our event that we had this year i want to separate that and making sure it's very clear, transparent to our residents, you know, the different events that we hold and how successful they are and how much they cost. And that's essentially what I'm doing here. And the estimated amount that we have for the current fiscal year for the back to nature is $400. might be a little more expensive next fiscal year because they helped us out this year. And then the last item on our list here is the Communications Department has requested that we present to you all our new public safety logo. Essentially, it's what we have right now just a little modernized. We tend to love it. But yeah, those those are essentially you know, the items that I'm presenting to you all and I'm open for questions.

Thank you chair, any questions comments comes with answers you recognize.

Mister chair, thank you very much for all the information I think I very much appreciate everything that you put forward everything you've done and everything that you're going to continue doing you know that I've been a very big supporter of the public safety committee, you know safety just not in our homes, but in our streets, you know for businesses it just it creates a great ecosystem that is Miami lakes. However, in the other side of that coin we know what's what might happen in november of this year and we have to be you know save save a penny for a rainy day right now you know that very well which is why at the day that we had the the budget conversations with all the committees we stated that we were going to leave it flat i wholeheartedly support the the swim initiative that would obviously be for next summer um i would have to recommend tabling that for now putting it on the back burner per se, just until we see what the results are in the November ballot for the property tax reduction that they are proposing in Tallahassee. And we hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. And this is one of those situations this year. It's an outlier type of year, but I applaud that initiative. And you can count, I'm pretty sure, on all of our support to continue helping the Public Safety Committee, even if I myself have to help you with sponsorships for the car shows or anything else. Right. We have to start seeking other avenues of funding just because it was coming down the pipeline. But I thank you for everything that you've done from the car shows to the coffee with the cops to the first time ever the open house of Station 64. I applaud all those efforts. I know that you have our support, but we also have to live in that world where we don't know what's going to happen come November.

Right.

Thank you, Councilman Sanchez. For my own part, seeing no other comments at the moment, I guess I want to echo first and foremost Councilman Sanchez's points, but I also wanted to ask, the amount that you're requesting, this $400 for the Back to Nature event, is this a A line item transfer of money you already have, or are you asking for additional funds?

No, not additional funds, just to have a separate line item so that we can identify.

So which line item would you take from them?

I think it would be under possibly the events, public safety. So it's account 548. YEAH THEY'RE ALL THEY'RE ALL 548. SO YEAH IT WOULD BE THE ONE THAT HAS UH THAT SAYS 13905 YEAH BIFURCATE THE 13905 RIGHT TO 400.

UM OKAY UH MADAM BUDGET DIRECTOR IS THERE ANY ISSUE WITH THAT SORRY I DON'T KNOW IF I CALL YOU UP

good evening mayor council um in the last correspondence that i had with mr andres uh i do believe we discussed that there are some line items that he have that are overexpended and he needed to make those whole after those are made whole, whatever's left over in his events line item, he then would be able to cover.

So in that case, thank you. What I would recommend is I'm going to follow what Councilman Sanchez said. Let's just not even table it because I don't even want to put a timeline or anything on this coming back. Figure that part out. Make sure that all the ducks are in a row. As far as moving money around, I really do think that the committees should be given the discretion to do as they DEEM BEST THAT'S WHY WE PUT YOU IN THAT POSITION SO I'M NOT GOING TO HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS BUT WHAT SCARES ME A LITTLE BIT IS THAT WE THINK THAT WE HAVE A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF MONEY AND WE MIGHT ACTUALLY NOT HAVE IT IS FOR IS WHAT I'M HEARING FROM THE BUDGET DIRECTOR SO LET'S GET THAT RESOLVED AND THEN ONCE THAT'S RESOLVED COME BACK AND AND I THINK WE'LL PROBABLY VIEW THAT FAVORABLY

Yeah, I mean right right now we do have available budget for the 39 that was just a bifurcate the $400. But we are we do have to meet as a committee because it happened after our meeting to discuss the budget carry forward and what the locations are going to be to the budget directors point there's going to be some transfers that I guess at that point the town manager will present to you all and you know to do a reallocation of funds.

As far as the logo, I think it looks fantastic. My one little caveat that I throw in there is I would not like to see us spending a ton of money just for the sole purpose of replacing the logo. Meaning if we still have material with the old logo, I don't want any of those materials thrown away. Let's expend what we have and then naturally replace it with the new logo as we run out of materials. I'm referring to like, for example, the uh the the cell phone or or the the the car key yeah those things that have the old logo i don't want to see those things end up in a garbage bin just because we switch the logo okay let's use what we have and then eventually uh replace did you have a comment uh councilman hartford

thank you one thing though about the the swimming lessons we did this last time i don't want to hold him back from moving forward and figuring out how much it costs if it's free so we did it for the car show last time i would act i would move to approve it subject to coming back if there's a budget item and if it's at no cost then let let the committee do it because he i don't want i don't want there to be confusion that oh the council didn't approve it so now you can't go ahead and move forward i want him i want the committee to be able to figure out what it costs reach out to the county whoever they need to reach out to but with the caveat if it costs money you got to come back if it doesn't cost the committee any money move on forward so i'll make that motion to approve that that new initiative subject to it being a zero line item or coming back to us if it requires i'll second that

Seconded. Any further discussion? Seeing none, those in favor say aye. Aye. Those against say nay. Motion passes unanimously. Anything further?

I think do we need to reprove the the I I don't remember Council's approving the the the logo doing to prove that manager, I would say that.

I think it looks great person.

No me too.

I guess I remember during a briefing someone said why I suspect that over the years sometimes they've been approved formally by the Council other times I'll just say to the extent that it's required.

I'll move to approve the second the new logo as seconded by Council and Fernandez any discussion. seeing none those in favor say aye aye motion passes unanimously thank you thank you all righty we are on to ytf we're on item 10b

Good evening, vice mayor and council members and town staff. My name is Hayley Prieto, chair of the Youth Activities Task Force Committee. I come here to just kind of reflect on what the year that we've had so far. We've had our Spring Fling event that went Fantastic. I did have a medical emergency, but the rest of the committee members did fantastic. We did have the same hiccup that we have every year of the Easter eggs, sorry, the eggs. But I think over the years we are having more of a handle on it. Our next event officially that we are looking forward to is the Halloween event, which will be on Halloween Day, well night, on Saturday, October 31st. As for attendance, we have been fantastic on attendance, as you can see attached on page 68. There hasn't been any problems with attendance. I did want to bring to your attention that on our website for our page of the Miami Lakes Youth Activities Task Force, it does say the third Thursday of every month we have regularly scheduled meetings. If you look at page number 92, which is the meeting minutes from August 21st, 2025, we have under item 6A, committee meetings, I motioned to move the committee meetings to the third Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m. The motion was seconded and passed unanimously. So I just want to stress that our next meeting is going to be on the 24th Wednesday.

Thank you, Mr. though, before I jump into any comments or questions, I did want to ask our communications director, Scott de Calderas. Number one, does that cause any issue for the liaisons for the town providing what needs to be provided to the committee? Is there any issue with them moving their meeting? None whatsoever? okay perfect uh and then also uh obviously you have you your office has been informed about the change for the for purposes of the website perfect okay any other comments or questions keep up the great work thank you thank you with that we are on to i think back to uh managers well right before uh managers reports uh there was one resignation um Mr. Rodriguez from it doesn't even say the committee so there was one resignation there's no appointments and then now we move on to manager's reports starting with the monthly police report

Good evening, everybody. Major Eddie Ulloa with MDSO. As it pertains to our year to date, up to May 31st, we are currently down 44% in our overall crimes, our targeted crimes. Most notably, I know it was mentioned earlier in reference to our vehicle burglaries, but we are roughly at 59% decrease in that crime. SOMETHING THAT DID OCCUR IN THE MONTH OF MAY IS WHICH DANNY ANGEL DID ADDRESS AND HELPED US OUT WITH THAT. WE HAD AN INCIDENT WHERE A TENANT OF AN EFFICIENCY USED A SHARED DOOR BETWEEN THE THE ACTUAL GARAGE AND THE HOUSE ENTERED THE MAIN HOUSE, STOLE TWO COMPUTERS AND ACQUIRED THE CAR KEYS FROM THE HOMEOWNER, TOOK OFF AND FLED IN THE VEHICLE AND SUBSEQUENTLY CRASHED IN HIALEAH AND THEY WERE TAKEN INTO CUSTODY. SO I KNOW THERE WAS A CONCERN BEFORE THAT WAS RAISED IN REFERENCE TO VEHICLE BURGLARY BUT OBVIOUSLY THIS IS AN ANOMALY THAT OBVIOUSLY NONE OF US CAN REALLY CONCERN. DANNY ANGEL AND HIS GUYS OBVIOUSLY HAVE ADDRESSED THE ISSUE WITH THE EFFICIENCY, SO THAT HAS BEEN TAKEN CARE OF ON THAT END. IN REFERENCE TO THE TRAFFIC STATISTICS FOR THE MONTH, WE ISSUED 199 CITATIONS, ISSUED 25 WRITTEN WARNINGS, 52 VERBAL WARNINGS AND 18 PARKING TICKETS TO INCLUDE TICKETS FOR HANDICAPPED PARKING. AND THAT IS PRETTY MUCH IT THAT I HAVE FOR THE MONTH OF MAY FOR

Thank you. Thank you, Major. Councilman Fernandez, then Councilman Sanchez.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you for all the work that you do. We always appreciate it. I just wanted to ask you, is there a protocol in place where, because what happened regarding the burglary is something serious, and I think that that clearly called for you to address it with our building department and code enforcement department. But is there already kind of a protocol in place where any time one of the officers has some conversation with somebody who we possibly suspect that there's an illegal living quarters, is there a protocol where you will alert our building department?

Yeah, absolutely. Danny and I worked hand in hand in reference to not only this, but obviously other matters that comes to code issues. So if anything of that nature was to rise to the occasion and it's, you know, told to me, I will get with Danny Angel and we'll address accordingly.

Thank you. Awesome.

Major, good to see you. Once again, thank you for all the hard work that you do. But as you know, the summer months are here. School is out of session. And at least I've seen on social media instances where we have teenagers that are running amok and they're causing harm to animals and you know trying to go around people's cars when they're not supposed to is there anything that we can do to try to be more visible in residential areas so that kids see that the police were around then they won't try to do that or anything yeah i mean i mean as as you guys all well know we have a high visibility detail to begin with uh obviously uh we've uh i mean the entire department as an as an agency has instituted obviously our our overheads to be on yeah

Obviously for visibility purposes. Additionally, like for problem locations, we institute, you know, directed patrols in certain areas, obviously to curtail those type of things, to piggyback off of like the whole thing in reference to like the group of kids. uh setting aside the the details that we do on main street additionally we've been doing uh you know unmarked units uh patrolling of the things so even if you don't see them per se we are out there in unmarked cars uh because obviously you know they see us they don't do much and they continue just you know going about their business regular right and you know we we're being a little bit more successful in reference to addressing those kind of like little small matters with juveniles in unmarked cars okay all right thank you you're welcome

Through the chair? Councilman Garcia. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Major, thank you again for everything you do. I can't say it enough. Quick question. I know there was a crackdown on one of the councilmen talked about the handicap signs. I've noticed a lot in shopping centers where people park in the handicap with the handicap sign. Is that connected to the car or is that connected to the driver? Because I see a lot of young people jumping out. They look pretty spry and healthy to me. I mean, you can't really ask them what's going on, but how do you tell if someone is using somebody's car with that or maybe... to crack down on that, because I'm seeing a lot of that happen.

Yeah, I mean, it's just so it's technically addressed to and assigned to a specific person. Sometimes it is addressed, it is assigned to a vehicle. Sometimes the vehicle owner obviously does have the handicap and they have other people driving them around, which obviously still constitutes for them to be able to have accessibility to get in and out of their vehicles. So typically what we do is obviously when we're going to address those types of issues, we obviously check the registration to that placard and make sure that that is being used correctly.

I appreciate that because I know on the weekends, that's when parking gets really difficult in the shopping centers. And that's when usually people use that. And I know you have officers here anyway. So I know you're working on it. So I appreciate that, sir. Have a good day.

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you.

And you see no others, I'll just make my comment, which is, I'm staring at the 25 and 26, the 2025 and 2026 numbers on page 13 of the agenda. And, you know, last year, I feel like we sat here every month and kind of Google over these numbers, when it was your predecessor, and it was CONSTANTLY SEEING LOWER AND LOWER NUMBERS. AND I JUST WANT TO SAY YOU REALLY HAVE HIT THE GROUND RUNNING. OUR STREETS ARE SAFER. AND A 42% REDUCTION IN OVERALL CRIME IS NO SMALL FEAT. SO CONGRATULATIONS AND THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING YOU GUYS DO.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

THANK YOU. ALL RIGHTY. WITH THAT, IF THERE'S NOTHING FURTHER, WE'LL MOVE ON TO OUR PUBLIC WORKS MONTHLY INFRASTRUCTURE REPORT. DIRECTOR SANTOS.

Good evening, Vice Mayor and Council. Omar Santos, Polar Works Director. So I'll highlight two projects. The Northwest 59th Avenue project, an important milestone was reached. We've completed 60% design. It's already with DOT in review. The next project is the Park West. I mentioned this in the last meeting. So in today's meeting, you will be approving the construction award and the authorization to negotiate with the selected inspection company. Once we complete that, our plan is to get construction started as soon as possible.

THAT'S WHY I WANTED TO HIGHLIGHT IN THE INFRASTRUCTURE REPORT IF THERE ARE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ANY ITEM I'LL MOVE ON TO THE NEXT THANK YOU FOR DOING IT LIKE THAT YEAH ANY SPECIFIC COMMENTS QUESTIONS COUNCILMAN SANCHEZ FERNANDEZ EXCUSE ME THANK YOU THANK YOU VICE MAYOR I THINK WE SPOKE ABOUT THIS BUT I JUST WANTED TO ASK IF I CAN GET MY COLLEAGUES TO I DON'T KNOW IF I'D HAVE TO TO MAKE A MOTION BUT Again the led lighting for us just to get an estimate of costs for us to be able to put those led lights underneath the overpass did we I know that we spoke about a last meeting does anybody remember what what we actually approved.

I don't think it was last meeting was the previous one a committee came from what I recall there was a committee presentation and that was discussed. We're we're just waiting to wrap up with the OT the the project we have on the Palmetto construction is pretty much completed, but we're still doing the the closeout as far as documentation. So we want to introduce anything else until we have final approval from the OT for that project.

If I may, Vice Mayor.

One second, Councilman Cuadra-Garcia had his hand up first.

To our director and JC's question, is that the underpass here where we just did the bricks and all that? Yes. OK, so basically DOT has money. If we reached out to them, they would be very happy to entertain moving those non-efficient lights and bringing an LED to those. But you've got to ask. You know, they say the Bible says, ask and you shall receive. So that's what I recommended. You reach out to them, and I'm sure they'll be willing to put some...

The ask is a little different as they want color. They want adjustable color LED lights.

No, now you're asking for too much, young man.

Who wants adjustable color?

Well I understand that was the committee's proposal and that's something we're we're going to be working on and see if if it's even something that that the department will allow under that bridge for us that it got it understood.

Councilman herberg if I recall I think the numbers pretty big. It was because you had some there was some estimate in that in that one out of our own recall. I want to say it was a few hundred thousand dollars. That's what I recall. I remember saying, OK, well, that that idea is dead. But obviously, lighting is important and it's F dots bridge, right? Yes. So they should light it. Should they not?

They'll light it with what they have. What they have, right. I get the point.

Anything in addition to that would be... Right. Well, if they put in lighting, can you just change the bulbs? Like, what's so complicated? No? I don't know. Listen, I don't know.

I don't think it's that simple. Light the light. Light the light, Sanchez. So for the last 2 years I drove North on the Palmetto from Coral Gables Monday to Thursday except for the night of the Council meetings and other times that we have to be here and right at the interchange of a 36 in the Palmetto they have those types of the lights that change colors. Is that after GMX this GMX GMX. What yes, so is there a chance that we can through F dot piggyback off GMX on whatever contract price they got on those items possibly different those 2 different organizations right, but I mean the thing that we piggyback off other government entities. Maybe we can make as a as a 3 party.

Yeah, and like like Omar explained once this project that we did the lane extension with the bricks and all that that project is done and closed out will explore different options because I understand what the council is asking for is not necessarily lighting to light it up and lighting for aesthetics right and just as an aside related but unrelated. is we had a meeting the other last week with the GMX an internal meeting just between staff and staff about the project they're going to do on 67th Avenue and we already planted the seed with them about doing a static lighting at 67th Avenue in the grant and so they already kind of they didn't say yes, but we can look at that I think that's something we can do one of those OK you know so we're already looking at that maybe up lighting on some of the columns that are east of 67th Avenue between there in the curve. So we're looking at that and will introduce that and I think that you know we know somebody who sits on that board so that could help to push it along.

absolutely and then i have one more question about the construction project on the on the expansion of the uh of the lane obviously construction comes with dirt and grime and things like that because of that do you think a ripple effect from fdot is that they would clean the underpass of miami lakes drive so that way our nice white walls let's say miami lakes growing beautifully can be as resilient as they're meant to be and we can stop getting phone calls from residents telling us it's very dirty

So we actually wash those, soft wash them, approximately every two months. It's just, it is very old.

Well, because of the construction, I'm assuming that they got dirty much quicker.

Not much more, but after the next wash, what I'll do, I'll let you know through the manager.

But but there is somewhere to it just as because of his age, maybe maybe because of their you know, maybe their budget cycle and I'm just saying take that one cycle off of our books so that it goes on.

Remember that construction project was ours, yeah, the the extension of the lane. I mean it was funded through that but it was our project they gave us the money through state of they manage the money. It was a state appropriation they managed it, but it we're we're going to run and it is cleaning post cleaning part of the scope.

It would have been for are for the direct area not not the not the slopes because again the town does wash those on a by monthly but mostly is a return every every 2 months every 2 months that you remember was lost animals think I would have to check OK, but again there is a sense that will not as the next time that we want that we wash it will reassess it and say is there something more that needs to happen whether it be no touch up the painting or whatever and then we'll come back with ideas and recommendations OK sounds good.

Yes, I have one more item that I needed to discuss about the report second Yes with regards to the Robert Alonzo Community Center Generator, I understand that there's been some issues with getting designs approved Is there anything that we can do as the elected body to put some?

Proverbial fuel to the fire to get this generator up and running since now we are in hurricane season So what what essentially slowed down the design was? something unforeseen so when the design was begun it was identified that in the footprint there was an existing easement for WASDE because of that it had to be relocated relocation was easy to find it's just there's additional scope with geotechnical and survey yeah we went ahead and make the ask to the state and they funded that extra so the town didn't have to uh get additional funding so okay we just had to wait a little bit to get that approval that has already been done and the design has resumed okay so by when do you believe the design portion will be completed i will have to get that updated schedule from the designer well currently the pm is working on that to see what's the what's the new finish date perfect yeah thank you one more councilman garcia

Thank you. I wanted to take a point of personal privilege to ask Omar. I don't know if it's Omar or if it's Jeremy. We were out there a couple months ago to see some issues at Barbara Goldman, that canal area that was cleaned up. So basically, I had talked to the manager a couple days ago to see if we can transfer some type of money to get that area cleaned up. I took pictures. I sent it to him to see if we can remove those Brazilian peppers and clean that area or put a pathway through there. And where are we? Do you remember?

I apologize for cutting off Councilman Guadalupe Garcia, but that is not related to the infrastructure that we're talking about in the report. and for your edification though i'm already working with senator renee garcia to go ahead and use some of his district funds to cover uh additional fencing and other things to stop people from uh littering and and putting on their degree there thank you and then i'll and i'll add one more thing to see where we are i just want to be clear the point of personal no no the point of personal privilege is not a backdoor way of injecting something that is not part of what's in front of us. It's what it states, right? A moment of personal privilege. So go ahead and finish your thought, but I just want to be clear that we're on the monthly infrastructure report specifically.

Okay, so when do I ask what I want to ask? The canal embankment situation. So we can, when can I ask? Can I ask now? Yes. Okay, great. So basically, where are we with the canal? We seem to be extending phase one and then we forgot about phase one. Now we're on phase two and we're forgetting phase two. So here that, now that we have the attorney here in front of us, what can we do? LEGAL TO GET THESE CONTRACTORS, BECAUSE I FEEL STRONGLY THAT THE PRODUCT THEY GAVE US, WE KNOW THAT WE LOST WARRANTY ON ONE. WE NEED TO CONCENTRATE AND SEE IF WE GOT SOMETHING ALIVE ON TWO AND THREE. BECAUSE WE KEEP FORGETTING. AND IT JUST KEEPS, YOU KNOW, WE KEEP FORGETTING IT. SO I NEED TO BRING IT UP SO WE CAN REMIND IT.

So where are we okay, a couple of times we've had meeting brief response. Yeah, we've had meetings go to them in our office. They had to be moved. For the most part we are time part in those complaints just that simple these things depending on which one and when they were installed. We are time board. But if you want to sit down with me I've offered to sit down with you I made the appointments I'M WILLING TO GO THROUGH THEM ONE BY ONE OR GIVE A PRESENTATION TO THE COUNCIL. I'M HESITANT TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT IN OPEN PUBLIC ALL THE TIME. THIS IS THE ONE PART OF MY JOB THAT I DON'T LIKE IS THAT I HAVE TO GIVE AWAY MY STRATEGIES AND HAVE SOME OF THESE DISCUSSIONS IN OPEN PUBLIC. I'LL DO IT IF I HAVE TO. BUT I'VE TRIED TO SET UP MEETINGS WITH YOU TO COME TO OUR OFFICE AND DISCUSS IT. I REALLY HAVE. OKAY. WE'LL DO IT THAT WAY. I THINK WE'RE TIME BARRED.

We'll do it that way. But I'm just, I don't want time to keep passing. And I'd like it to go away so I never have to bring it back. But this has to be taken care of. This is a serious issue. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Questions of staff? Okay, seeing none, we're moving on. Next up is me item, 8, 1, yes, but the skip median expansion Northwest on the 7th Avenue and Northwest 154 Street, my apologies 8 see by Omar Santos.

I guess I'll be brief the introduction that the details are on the report, but this is an item that was introduced by councilmember Sanchez last year. He asked staff to look into modification to the median on the 154 near 77th Avenue to improve traffic in the area we went ahead and and produce estimates and those were presented and we're bringing these up to the attention of the council for discussion and and see if you know there's anything you want to do

Councilman Sanchez go ahead. So thank you very much for the information Omar.

And I'm very happy to see that we can fund this through PTP 80 as a possible funding source. So I would. I'll move to approve this project to extend that median with papers at the price allocated, you know estimating that it's still the same as compared to last year, but putting it on the budget for next year as a possible not a guaranteed within the PTP 80. So depending on if there's things that are higher priority than this and obviously those who get funded through the PTP 80 fund prior to this, but if there are things that are lower priority this would take precedent. So my motion is to approve this on PTP 80 for next year contingent that it fits within PTP 80.

Is there a second. I'll second. It's been seconded by Councilman Herzberg. Go ahead.

I guess I just want to confirm, because I don't see the huge need, and maybe you can convince me, but you're saying let's have that discussion during budget season. Yes. You're going to convince me to pay for it or not during budget season. so just tell us so the motion is really that just ask staff to put it on the budget and then we can decide where go if it's there i mean obviously we can always decide if we cut something from the budget right um i guess i i just want clarification what you're asking for staff

Councilman Sanchez.

I want staff to go ahead and proceed with the design if it's approved at the budget, once we go into budget season. So after October 1, continue with the design because the amount of cars of traffic that completely ignore that right turn only sign and eventually can cause accidents in that intersection or have caused accidents is an alarming rate. And it's very difficult to enforce that no right turn when there isn't really an area for a police officer to stage to see when they're doing it. So we have to have a physical impediment, a physical barrier to ensure that that policy of only a right turn at Northwest 77th and Miami Dix Drive has a barrier, the same way they have it in other municipalities like Coral Gables. There's a lot of medians in Coral Gables that you can't turn but only one way in order to be able to use it, so.

Councilman Cuadra Garcia. I'd like to emphasize something here if this road was designed by an engineer by this by the county. I understand that we don't I guess that there there's no that people are not supposed to make a left there because of traffic there OK so my recommendation would be to put real nice decorative delineators on there that are removable You can remove them whenever you want, and you can put them back whenever you want. Just don't close it, because what happens if you have an emergency vehicle going through there or coming through there? If you have those delineators, they can run over them. And again, they're not ugly. Whoever tells you they're ugly, there's all kinds of colors, blue, white, all colors. So I recommend that we do the delineators. They're better, and they're going to be less expensive. That's my recommendation.

Councilman Sanchez, you want to respond?

I'm not in favor of the delineators just because of the express lanes on 95, the Palmetto, I-70, oh, not I-75. Cars run over them all the time. They need to be constantly replaced. They get dirty extremely fast. They can be an eyesore. And I know what the delineators that you're speaking of, they're about three feet tall. They bend to the will of anything that passes over it. This is more aesthetically pleasing. It fits the image of Miami Lakes with our trees, with our pavers, everything like that. And it's a strong, you know, it's not going to be broken. It's something that's going to be there for a long time in perpetuity. And we don't have to worry about that maintenance of having to be replacing them constantly with an extended cost. I know, Councilman Cuadra Garcia, that you are a very fiscal conservative and having to replace something over and over and over again at the cost of the taxpayer. I just see this as a one-time investment and it's a done deal.

So my question is, are you going to close it when it was designed by an engineer or an architect?

I am not going to close it. At one point in time, that sign of a right turn only did not exist. That came into play later on. That road, that median was designed many years before that right turn only sign was there. But now that it is there, we have to move with the times. We have to acclimate to the times. And a right turn only sign means right turn only. So all those cars that are coming out of there to make a left illegally, we can't really enforce it. So this is the best way of having a physical barrier where cars cannot make a left automatic drive, especially with what's coming on the golf course pretty soon. We need to create traffic solutions now for what's going to come later. And this is a small solution that's going to go a very long way.

Councilman Garcia, do you have anything that you want to add?

No, I think that being proactive is a good idea, Councilman Sanchez. Looking into it and seeing and also coupling with the new All the construction is happening with the golf course. I think it's a good way of getting ahead of the game. So, I mean, if it's preventing accidents, I'd like to see some numbers and see how many accidents have been there over the last three or four years. Because that is a very, especially U-turns in that area, a lot of people tend to create their own lanes, if you will, especially when it's busy. So, yeah, being proactive I think is a good idea. And putting it on the budget just to make sure. If we need to take it out, we take it out. So I'll be for the item. Thank you.

My last question Mister mayor. I will recognize you for one final question that we're going to vote.

Yes. Councilman Sanchez it whatever you're proposing is it removable. No I I think we should consider other options that just like my my food for thought.

Thank you all those in favor say aye aye aye all opposed hold I got away for it for me to call and then you go and vote now. ALL AGAINST? OKAY. SO ONE NAY, MADAM CLERK. WITH THAT, THE MOTION CARRIES, AND WE ARE NOW ON ITEM 8D, REPORT ON LOCAL BOLLARD SPEEDIFICATION.

all right so this is a reporter in response to mayor diegas's item from our last meeting the request was to bring back some proposals to improve the aesthetics of the bollards that are currently protecting that lock lock io exterior sidewalk and and the pedestrians are walking through there so in coordination with our parks department we came up with two solutions the first one would be incorporating some green island island ficus plantings and we have a our best shot at a rendering for attached and also a rough estimate the second is using the existing bollards they sell essentially slide on covers that have a nicer finish on the exterior so that that's another option that we we propose and you know the rendering might be a little smaller but i can provide a zoom version of what it looks like but that's the second option as far as funding i didn't really put recommended sources since we're entering the budget cycle so i my thoughts were that this is something that you can discuss in the upcoming budget workshops for funding

I'M GOING TO FOLLOW COUNCILMAN SANCHEZ'S LEAD AND PROPOSE SIMILARLY THAT OPTION ONE BE OUR CHOICE AND THAT WE DISCUSS IT DURING THE UPCOMING BUDGET AND AGAIN IF FOR ANY REASON WE CAN'T FIT IT IN WE TAKE IT OUT

uh but again i think would be a nice little improvement to that particular area so that is my motion is there a second second it's been seconded any discussion councilman hersberg uh well i'm gonna say it anyway it's not mulch well no i do see mulch on the bottom there so that's number one no i number one number one looks so much better than the renderings automatic i because i saw the mulch i i gotta say today i did get a call from residents today complaining about mulch so it's not just me

okay we didn't put the hersberg prompt in there so i didn't i did get that call no option one looks great so i agreed option one perfect yeah anyone else all right all those in favor say aye aye aye all opposed no the eyes have it the motion carries and we are now on item 8e report on transportation surtax ptp fund alternatives for future transit options by um who's going to present it suzanna okay

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm here to report on, I believe it was Councilman Hartsburg's item, requesting alternative funding sources and alternative ways to utilize our PTP funding particularly the 20% for for transit. Am I correct? That's what I'm answering. Yeah, it was the 20% did a little bit of research. And as you understand, we receive some funding from PTP funds every year, every year. They're based on population is a percentage based on the number of residents that we have that the city allocates to the town. And we are required to utilize 20% of that minimum for transit purposes. So we get to use 80% of that for transportation projects. We use it as, not as collateral, but as a grant fund, matching funds for other projects. We use it for a lot of other things, but that 20% has to be reserved only for transit. Right now, 100% of that 20% is going towards freebie on-demand services. We are preparing to go out for an RFP for the freebie service, for the on-demand service again. So we're about to evaluate new types of on-demand service, but at this time, that is the option we have. In addition of the 20% of the PTP funding, we also have some grants from the state that also subsidize partially our freebie operation. Now, that being said, in order to answer your question and help you sort of think about these things a little better, I looked at some of the cities that have similar population sizes and similar funding and what do they do with their money, right? I've attached all of their five-year plans so that you can see what kind of breakage they do on there because they have to report this to the CITT. One of them, their report is really old. I think it's Hialeah Gardens. I've requested to see why there wasn't an updated version of Hialeah Gardens, and I didn't get a response from CITT. But seeing how they use their money, I think I know why. It's basically because they're Hialeah Gardens, which is the smallest municipality I was looking at. They're pretty much using all their PTP funding to basically contract out with the city of Hialeah so that they can extend their transit services into Hialeah Gardens. So that's probably why it's not very difficult for them to prove out what it is that they're spending, right? The next one up in population is Sunny Isles Beach, and it's a very densely populated area, and they have two shuttle lines in Sunny Isles, and they do not have freebie service or on-demand service. in Sunny Isles. They do have service from 8 a.m. to 7.50, so about 12 hours worth of service a day in the orange line. And then the blue line is a little bit less. It's like only till 3 o'clock in the afternoon. So it covers like school time hours. Palmetto Bay, the next one up, has a shuttle to Dateland South at peak times, which is a shuttle, sort of like a fixed-time shuttle, and then they have freebie service with On Demand. So it's a pretty similar operation to what we do, because we also have a shuttle to the Palmetto Expressway. Obviously, they're going to Dateland South, which is a lot closer to them than Palmetto Expressway is to us, so they're... Their methods are probably a little more efficient than ours, but it still is a very similar setup than what we have in the town of Miami Lakes. Both the on-demand service and the shuttle are provided through contract with freebie. Freebie is providing the entire thing. Aventura has three routes of shuttle, about 13 hours a day, Monday through Friday, and on Saturday they have 13 hours as well, but they start a little bit later. They don't have service for the shuttle on Sundays, and they have freebie on top of that. That being said, Aventura chooses to utilize much more of their 20% for transit. They use somewhere around 35 to 40% of their allocated funds for transit and choose to use a smaller percentage of their PTP funding for transportation only. And their transportation projects are basically bikes, share bikes and like, you know, micro mobility and that other stuff, which really is not even real transit. It's not really transportation projects. They're not building roads. They're not fixing sidewalks. They're doing other stuff. North Miami Beach, the last one that we looked at, it's quite a bit larger. It's almost 50% larger than the city of Miami Lakes. And they have three routes, and they also have freebie. And their three routes seem to be managed by the city itself. It doesn't seem like it's under contract from freebie, but I am not sure about that as to how actually manages those routes. And...

If you may.

councilman hersberg thank you mayor so it looks like most cities just use freebie as an on-demand service everybody that has an on-demand service in the in the county of in miami-dade county right now is utilizing freebie the county itself miami-dade county has metro connect which is a different service that they use as a sort of on demand to give people rights to tri-rail um so that's the other hopefully one of the services that i see that we're hoping to see come in as response to the rfp we're hoping to have at least three or four respondents um you know some of them more creative than others so some of them are might be a different operation system than what freebie has and we're i'm excited to see what other ideas people have as to how to provide the service and the rfp would be for the next fiscal year or the year after for next yes we are uh contracted with freebie through october okay is your opinion that really just on-demand service is the best use of these funds there's no other better use or it depends on seeing what the rfp comes back it is what we have right now i am not going to say is best better or the only thing i you never close doors so i'm always reinventing i you know it's Freebie's model is free service. So by nature, they don't have any systems to be able to charge even a nominal fee for a ride, which sort of constrains basically the the envelope of what we can do because this is how much money we have they have to pay their people they have to pay their expenses this is how much it costs to operate so how many writers can we fit into that is how efficient you're going to make right you're just trying to maximize the writers other Other operators may have different funding mechanisms to which instead of being a completely free service, and that's what I'm hoping to see out of the RFP, is maybe there's systems where we can sort of nominally charge if it's free for less than a mile, but if you're going from east to west, then it's a dollar. I mean, I'm making it up right now, because obviously I'm waiting for them to sort of propose.

When do we get the RFPs back?

Do you know? So Rosa's not here. I think when she comes back, she's going to be issuing it out. And then we have to wait 30 days for submissions. Am I right, sir?

But would it be back by September, before September? Right, 100%.

Yes. Hopefully, we should have something by September.

OK. So we'll talk about it again during budget season. I just wanted to see what the, I honestly was most interested in what the other cities were doing. It seems like everyone's doing the same thing. I just hope that we can find something.

a little different i don't know if this is the best use of the funds again there's been discussions with cit we talked to them all i meet with them twice a month um people you know other cities present what they're doing all the time they love to do little show and tells on a regular basis. This is an ongoing conversation. I think the mayor and I were with the CIT director a couple of weeks ago. We are in constant communication with them. Anytime anybody else has a different idea, we know. None of this is kept secret. They request reports from us and presentations on a regular basis. I think I put on your agenda the last presentation we gave them, which was like at the end of last year, they're gonna be asking again soon, and I'm gonna be presenting all the projects we're doing, all the things that we spend our money on, because they want to know what we're spending their money on. So when and if other products come to the fore, I think it was last year, around May, they actually determined that Uber can now be responsive because their ADA requirements can be met by Uber by some changes that they had done within their organization. No city has implemented an Uber deal yet, but you never know. We may be first for that one, right?

Councilman Sanchez. So thank you so so not a very thorough report and I very much appreciate it. I've seen another municipalities. I know you mentioned the freebie is the most used. I've seen in the municipalities that there are companies are for example use of Volkswagen electric bus to the country is about to get those right but I've seen I'm just saying I in the past I've seen those and I know I'd like to put into consideration when you the rps put out. i've experienced freebie myself and there's i can there's a bit of point of frustration at times where i've requested a freebie and then it goes from 15 minutes to 30 minutes to 45 minutes and the reason why that's happening is because those freebies they keep them in circulation even though they're on break So one time I saw it, and it was parked on Main Street for 15 minutes without moving. I'm like, I'm waiting for this freebie to come pick me up, and it's just sitting on Main Street. And I was the next person to be picked up. So I got in my car just to see what was going on, because I tell someone every once in a while, oh, I'm on my break. That's why I haven't left. I would like to, for whatever new company comes into play, or even freebie, for whatever cars are on their scheduled break to be taken out of circulation so that the people that are waiting on those freebies are not waiting. You know, they don't see their wait time go from 15 minutes to 30 minutes to 45 minutes.

So just so you know, there's a lot of frustration that I have personally that me and Justin have with the way freebie operates there. Not all of it is wonderful. Let's just put it that way. We get complaints about things like that. We get complaints about... If I'm here and somebody else is picking up, why are we not picking up two people at a time? And that's my favorite thing. This is not Uber. You don't give people single rides. You are supposed to be picking up two or three people at a time.

In an area, yeah.

And coordinate that, right? So these are the kinds of things. And obviously, anytime that happens to you again, because it's important that I give them feedback with the specific time and car number. that they're doing and I have a dashboard on my computer that I can check where every freebie is at all time and I know which car number it is that is or is not doing what they're supposed to do. I would really appreciate if you let me know so I can actually make the report right then and there and like, Really give it back to them because that's you know again. We meet with freebie Every two weeks I give them feedback all the time on things that I see of you know people that have complained to us of and and wonder you know sometimes the Complaints that handle really well and sometimes the complaints are handled You know less to my satisfaction But but I would appreciate that if you give it to me right away as in like no filter straight out

Absolutely, I will do. And you know me. I know Freebie was the first one, but I'm sure that competitors have come out since. Thank you.

Anyone else on this item can speak with you. I apologize. Councilman Garcia will come back to you. I'm going to let come to a closer to go first but we'll come to you right after.

I make a real brief actually had the same identical issue as councilman Sanchez I was coming to my briefing with Ed I called freebie 15 minutes half an hour 45 minutes, I said Council the freebie I'm getting in my golf cart and I came to the briefing in my golf cart so had a real bad experience.

Again you got to realize that especially if it's we have 4 vehicles that's all we have if one of them is taken to go to the Palmetto now we only have 3 vehicles out in the in the atmosphere right. If If one of those is going from West Lakes to Costco, that's another one that is out of circulation for another 20 minutes, and now you only have two vehicles. So this is sort of like the same thing that happens with Uber sometimes, right? And because it is a very similar service model, not funding model, but service model. Only we don't have congestion pricing. So basically everybody has the same idea at the same time. And then supposedly the algorithm decides the most optimal route for the vehicle to go in and service all the passengers. Sometimes I see it, sometimes I don't see it, right? And this is always my conversations with freebie are always like, can this algorithm be made a little more efficient, right? Can it be made more to prevent precisely that kind of situation?

just wanted to share my experience.

100%, yes. And like I said to him, the same thing. Anytime you have a negative experience or a positive one, we also like to hear the positive ones. They're also very nice to a lot of our community that has trouble getting in and out of their vehicles, and they have them as family members almost, right? They also do a very good job of being ambassadors to the town and providing a service, especially to the elderly, right, and to the disabled that cannot drive. So, you know, by all means, do please let me know so that I can make sure. Again, and maybe it's just a problem in the algorithm at that particular point. It's just a coincidence that you were asking at that moment, right?

Councilman Garcia.

Thank you, Mayor. Just to Susanna real quick. I know previously the town had its own shuttle service and then we went to freebie. But I know we spoke about this many times about working with our sister cities. And you just mentioned that Hialeah and Hialeah Gardens have an arrangement. Hialeah is right there. You can get through 87th Avenue to Miami Lakes. through 67th through 57th, it might be a good idea to look into to see if there is a way to coordinate with the resources Hialeah has. If we pool our resources together, we might be able to have more routes, serve more people. It's all about supply and demand when we have only four three or four of our, you know, our freebies. And one's always at the Palmetto Station. We talked about this before. Maybe that's another route we can go. Maybe we can share resources with Hialeah and everybody saves money. This is the kind of thinking we need to have, especially now, if everything if we start lowering in November, we have to make some cuts i think working with our sister cities might be a way of finding efficiencies that serve everybody so that's something you might want to look at i like that idea about working with a sister city just throwing that out there our prior configuration when we had the the fixed route it was through a contract with the city of hialeah that it was operated

okay and that's why actually yeah okay yes that was the the fixed route that was discontinued in 2017 or 2019 um it was through a contract with the ceo hialeah's transit services

Lack of use, is that what it was that we went with the Ubers?

I mean, the freebies there, you know, that was death by a thousand cuts. There were some problems with the design of the route, some problems with the bus, the buses actually needing to get service throughout, like from 12 to two in the afternoon, which is really your busiest time. And that was the only time they could get service. There was issues with drivers. and other things. So there was a lot of little, a million little problems that were not easily solved by the configuration that we had at the time. Is that something that we want to revisit? I'm happy to. It's certainly something that I would love to revisit.

Well, maybe a hybrid model using what we've learned over the years. You're a genius when it comes to that. So data that's come in, maybe we can find a better way. But it's true what both councilmen say. I've had to cancel that as well because it's been 40, 50, 60 minutes. So I would rather have... a more efficient system than one that's inefficient for everybody. You know, most people have to wait 30, 40, 50 minutes. That's not really an efficient system, although it's free and I get it. You have to wait longer than Uber. But yeah, if you can look into it, appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Anyone else? OK, we're moving on then to item eight of alternative locations for Miami Lakes letters.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Jeremy Bogdan, Director of Parks and Recreation. At the last council meeting, we discussed some of the struggles we were having with trying to finalize some of the FDOT permitting and engineering documents needed to continue with the location that we were looking at implementing the donated letters from the Miami Realtors Association. In doing so, we've gotten some comments back from the engineers in which they are starting to have troubles with meeting some of the FDOT requirements. And in this conversation, we decided to go ahead and look at alternative locations where we can install these letters, have them in high visible locations, and also kind of for the most part out of the four options, look at a way to make them a little more interactive where people can be closer to them and kind of utilize them for photos and something that can be picturesque. So the report in front of you lays out four different options for implementing the letters. One option is rotating through the main four parks The second option is utilizing kind of one of our unique parks in P74 East, also known as Grand Park, with the pond and locating it within the water. Another option looks at another high visibility area, which is the off ramp, but within an area that we already maintain outside of actual highway grounds. And then option four would look at potentially a partnership with the Grams as far as trying to implement it within Main Street.

any questions yes yes the vice mayor and then councilman sanchez thank you mayor so on the option one the rotating around the parks as well as the grand park option and the 826 off-ramp option are you anticipating uh power in in all of these in in terms of uh electricity for lighting

At this time, no. There is no lighting that is incorporated. As far as looking at it, once we select on a location that we're looking at, that would be part of what will come back to you with a full scope and cost and if lighting is going to be something considered by this council.

If I recall correctly, when we initially requested the FDOT location, we had asked for it to have power. Is that what's causing some of the issues with meeting the FDOT requirements?

It's the entire development and engineering of the actual unit being installed in the location that it's at.

OK. So it's not necessarily.

It's not just that.

That's one of the components? OK. As far as this, I struggle with, I guess, the potential logistics, I guess, of the rotational one and damage over time to the unit. I think that the one on the lake, floating on the lake, looks absolutely phenomenal. And, I mean, even if it could just be a solar light just to give it a little warm glow, it doesn't have to be well lit. It just has to glow a little bit, right? Because it's going to be – there's not a lot of lighting in that park anyway, so whatever amount of light it has will make it stand out. I think that that will make it a true – A TRULY NICE LANDMARK IN THE TOWN. AND THEN I DO THE ONLY ONE THAT I REALLY DON'T LIKE IS THE MAIN STREET PARTNERSHIP ONLY BECAUSE IT'S NOT OUR LAND AND THEY ALREADY HAVE A MONOPOLY ON ALL THE COWS. LET'S PUT SOME STUFF ELSEWHERE.

COUNCILMAN SANCHEZ.

JEREMY, THANK YOU FOR THE REPORT. I LIKE IT VERY THOROUGH. The one that I really like is option three, but I do have two, for two reasons. Number one, we don't have an entry feature at that entry point into Miami Lakes. We have one on the east side, but we don't have one there, something that I discussed with the manager earlier today. But something that does worry me, the second thing about it, I know we maintain it, But do we own that land or is that somebody else's land?

It's still FDOT maintained by us as far as the actual grounds maintenance. So it would still be something, but it is no longer in the highway portion.

So the restrictions are not as heavy.

We would look into it. If that is the decision of the council, that is something that we would then pursue and talk with both the designer as well as our FDOT contact.

OK, because this will be a very high visibility area. You know, everyone in Miami will see it there. I like the idea of a lake. It's very nice. I completely agree. But it would be very hidden unless you're going to the main street or the farmer's market or that micro area. It's, you know, it's going to be out of out of sight. So, yeah, I would fall in favor of option three if we can pursue it. But I would think that it's still a foundational item to have the engineering for it for hurricane damage and things

yeah the installation itself would be installation that we'd install anywhere as far as meeting building code and and so forth but the biggest thing is the location and what are the requirements for next to a highway the distance from the center of the road and and that's where kind of the issues are arising okay now i'd be in favor of option three

UM UH WELL UH YOU WANT TO MAKE A MOTION YEAH OKAY GO AHEAD AND MAKE THE MOTION AND THEN WE'LL CONTINUE DISCUSSION I'D LIKE TO ACTUALLY MOVE TO MOVE FORWARD OPTION TWO GRAND PARK UH I THINK THAT THAT'S HONESTLY THE NICEST OPTION UM AND I I AGREE WITH COUNCILMAN SANCHEZ UH ON THE ISSUE WITH UM THERE NOT BEING AN ENTRY FEATURE ON 826 I'D RATHER FIND ANOTHER SOLUTION FOR THAT THAN THIS ONE I DON'T THINK THAT THIS ONE SHOULD GO THERE UH BUT THE THE GRAND LAKE ONE IS GREAT SO I'LL MOVE THAT ONE SECOND

It's been moved and seconded. Councilman Herzberg, you wanted to discuss it?

Yeah, no, that's my position. I think the lake one looks awesome. I think it's a great idea. Hopefully, we can add some solar lights or something. But that's just different. Miami Lakes makes sense to put in a lake. All the rest are just, you know, on the side of the road. This is different. I love it. That's what they are. The rest are on the side of the road. This is not this is in a lake in Miami Lakes in our parks. That's us. So option two is by far my preferred item. I wouldn't even vote for the other ones.

And to that point, the goal of that also is if you were taking, let's say this is some of the ideas that we thought of staff is if you're taking senior pictures or any type of pictures, you can be positioned on the bridge with the letters directly in front of it and kind of catching you as well. So it was definitely a definitely unique spot that we decided on.

Through the chair. A councilman Garcia, then councilman Quadra Garcia. And did any of you guys want to say one more question?

And then, you know, it looks great. You know, especially we do a hashtag Miami Lakes campaign along with it on our Instagram page. It'd be great with a lot with the solar lighting. The only caveat I would ask you is this park is especially at nighttime. A lot of kids go to this park to hang out. I was a kid. I used to do the same thing. uh we need to figure out a way so they don't have access to that little island it needs it can't connect to the shore it has to be you can't be it can't be reached by you know by jumping over or jumping over the jumping on the on the bridge because the kids are going to jump there and trust me they will councilman guadalajara

Basically, at the entrance where we had thought about it would be choice number one. I think that we should try to reach out to whoever it is that we're having the issues with. whether I know they're not responding to phone calls, let's try visiting them and see maybe if you know by visiting that they might give us a respond if not then this is beautiful the lake is beautiful, but have we thought of placing it in the entrance of the town right where the fire station is 6, 7, our entry. Can it be put there.

I'll answer that yes that that that is what we've been discussing for the longest time to do unfortunately, it's not 6, 7, you he's talking about 6, 7, but 67 okay by the by the library, I don't think I don't think there's enough space there right I thought of a library redevelopment is supposedly doing some kind of an entry feature on their redevelopment so we'll have that entrance entrance captured. So I think that's why they they looked at the southbound Palmetto exit onto one 5, 4, As one alternative, but if we're moving forward with the lake and we'll we'll put all the dot all the eyes and cross all the T's and come back to you with exactly what that entails.

But I just want to remind you that the vote that we're going to be taking at the end of this discussion is going to be for option to so you know when it comes time to vote, you're going to make a decision now though.

option to is the lake, yes.

So just want to you be aware so that when we we get to the vote after councilman Sanchez. All right, councilman Sanchez.

So just forward thinking. How is the I'm going to be anchored to the lake. So it would be moving or just stationary.

Stationary, we look at, it's not that deep, that pond, so we'd have to go ahead and not talk and work with Omar Public Works to get a solution that is gonna be stationary. As mentioned, we would want it to avoid moving so that it cannot be moved, and also that it's positioned in a way that it is not susceptible to vandalism and nefarious acts.

And then the second part of that question is maintenance. At times, someone's gonna have to go out there to clean it, you know, exposure to animals in the area flying over and rain, and it's gonna get dirty, it's white. What is the plan to get someone into the middle of the lake to be able to clean it?

We'll bring that back up as part of the cost when it comes back to fine tuning, as the manager mentioned, and crossing the T's and dotting the I's. We'll bring that back as a maintenance plan, what it's going to require, what we anticipate to maintain it at a pearly white letters sign.

Is it easy to put like a small boat into that lake to be able to get somebody out there?

it can um we can also look at because of the depth being so short we can see what are our other options mr mayor one more last one two seconds okay last one but we gotta move

I like the lake issue but I'm concerned we should all be concerned on safety where kids can be going up there and you know thinking that they're Superman taking selfies and we we need to take that into consideration that they might fall into the water.

Thank you all is in favor say aye aye aye aye all opposed no. The ayes have it the motion carries option 2 is the direction. With that we're now on 8. MLOP Pickleball Report.

So in light of the previous council meeting in which we looked at and heard about some of the demand for pickleball and kind of in a niche time in the evenings where the demand was exceedingly higher than the courts available, yet there were some tennis courts that were still being underutilized, staff came up with a plan before you that looks at kind of instituting a hybrid pickleball program that essentially operates two additional dedicated courts in the off times of tennis on a tennis court. So it'll grant us two more courts to meet more demand without foregoing an entire tennis court in its entirety. So the program you have in front of you is to essentially line two new courts on the existing tennis court just to the east of the pickleball courts without having to touch any of the tennis net. It'll actually act as a divider between the two courts, activating those two courts in the specified time within the report. And then any time outside of that, it would remain being a fully available tennis court, which we are in this process. We kind of went out there and saw that mostly tennis is played weekdays during the morning times, not when the peak pickleball times in the evenings are occurring. SO YOU HAVE THE REPORT IN FRONT OF YOU THERE IS A COST ASSOCIATED WITH THE ITEM WE DISCUSSED AND ONE THING WHAT CAN BE JUST IT WOULD BE ABSORBED WITHIN THE CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS OF OPTIMUS VICE MAYOR I'D LIKE TO MOVE TO HAVE THE RECOMMENDATION FROM STAFF HERE ADOPTED AND IMPLEMENTED BY THE BY STAFF IS THERE A SECOND I'LL SECOND IT'S BEEN SECONDED COUNCILMAN SANCHEZ DISCUSSION

No, I am completely in favor of this pickleball is is an overwhelmingly popular sport right now as long as it's done in a proper manner by all of the users that you know without any foreseeable issues of fighting and discussion among them that we're tearing down of our rule signs or anything like that so I am in favor of it but we have to also keep in mind the the rules of these.

Anyone else can I just mention something that sure yeah, and if this motion can also include spending let's say just to be safe, I was just up to that have up to no more than $2,000 from the Miami lakes, optimist capital account.

A man you want to amend my motion or do you want to just make us a follow-up that will be easier just go ahead amended so it's the authorization in the fall and my motion to authorize the funding of up to 2000 2000 from the MLP capital account.

I'll second that. It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion on the amendment? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. The ayes have it. The motion is amended, and we're back on the main motion. Further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. The ayes have it. Item 8G carries as proposed. Next, we are on 8H, Building Department Technology Modernization and Digital Permitting Update.

MS. PARKS. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, VICE MAYOR, TOWN COUNCIL, DANIEL ANGEL, DIRECTOR OF BUILDINGS, ZONING, AND CODE ENFORCEMENT. THE REPORT IN FRONT OF YOU IS IN RESPONSE TO COUNCILMAN SANCHEZ'S TECHNOLOGY UPGRADE NEW BUSINESS ITEM PRESENTED AT THE FEBRUARY COUNCIL MEETING. THIS REPORT REPRESENTS THE CULMINATION OF A MULTI-YEAR TECHNOLOGY MODERNIZATION EFFORT WITHIN THE BUILDING DEPARTMENT. IT BEGAN WITH THEN COUNCILMAN DIEGAS' 2021 CONVENIENT BUSINESS LICENSING INITIATIVE TO ALLOW BUSINESSES TO APPLY FOR AND RENEW LICENSES ONLINE AND WAS FURTHER GUIDED BY THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE BUILDING AD HOC COMMITTEE TO IMPROVE TECHNOLOGY, OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY AND CUSTOMER SERVICE. After rebuilding operations, modernizing our systems, expanding online services, and enhancing our existing software platform, we have now successfully processed more than 100 digital permit applications and plan reviews through our electronic permitting system. And this is all with a soft launch with no announcements. THIS ACCOMPLISHMENT FULFILLS THE VISION ESTABLISHED BY PRIOR COUNCIL INITIATIVE AND ADVANCES THE OBJECTIVES OUTLINING COUNCILMAN SAGIS'S NBI BY DELIVERING A MODERN CUSTOMER FOCUSED DIGITAL PERMITTING PLATFORM. Also attached to this report is a draft scope of services for a digital plan submittal and electronic plan review program, which serves as a reference document and framework for the type of functionality contemplated by the MBI. Staff's assessment indicates that most, if not all of these capabilities have already been implemented or are currently being implemented through the town's existing software platform, allowing us to continue modernizing services while maximizing the town's existing investments.

and i'm sure you guys read the report so if you guys have any questions feel free to shoot them my way i'm going to go straight to councilman sanchez to kick us off so danny first and foremost seven pages is very in-depth you know there's there's a lot of information in here there's a sample scope everything like that and i appreciate the work that you did however It's not what was asked for by this day is what this day has 3 come up requested was the last 2 pages of this report and it's this is a sample. We wanted to see what was that this I understand that 100 reports have already been received, but I also wanted to see what other software and something that we didn't have before. We didn't have the ability to have software plans submitted digitally. So this was a good way of having a trial run without having to replace systems and take nine to 18 months and spend all these funds. It wasn't a replacement. It was a new system that gave us an opportunity to see what was out there for procurement that could be more cost effective. that could be more user-friendly. For all we know, based on the system that we have that is on an annual renewal, it's not a three plus two one years, it's an annual renewal that we've had since 2019, it doesn't give us the opportunity to see what else is out there that could be cheaper, like I stated, that could be more user-friendly, and that now is what's in front of us, something that you ran with when this isn't what was asked of this council. I would still like to see that procurement process go through with an actual scope that shows bigger monitors that are needed, that shows this is the type of software that we need, because this was presented in February. It's been four months that it was presented, and we don't have what was requested. So I get it, you went with the company that we currently have, but we don't know if there's something better out there. We don't know if there's something that is easier to use. So I still insist on having that scope developed so that we can put it out to bid, so we can see if there's something that can save us some money save your department some more money that you can reinvest into other technologies and keep going that way for all we know we're running windows 3.1 in a world that's running windows 11. we don't know that because all we know is a software that we have right now and i'm not saying that the work that you did went in vain because 100 people did get helped and we see the ability to do it but i want to continue with down that path of going through the procurement process and seeing what else is out there because it's something new, something that we didn't have before. So I move to continue on the path of creating that scope and putting it up to procurement when a proper scope is presented and not a sample scope.

There's a motion on the table. Is there a second?

I'll second for discussion.

Seconded by Councilman Garcia. Councilman Garcia, any discussion? Vice Mayor.

I just with all due respect that beg to differ with the council members and just be the motion that was passed when the NBI was to come back with a scope of services and we've done that so I think we have complied with the with the NBI which was to provide a scope of services. We have also we we are responsible for providing um and providing this council with as much information as possible so you make educated decisions so the fact that we also highlighted the fact that we have been able to with our current software accomplish the digital plan submittal and it was a project that was well underway for many months probably over a year between the building department and our i.t department so That's it I if the Council obviously of the Council decides to move forward with a with the rfp and put a put it out were more than happy to fulfill that that wish of the Council, but I'd like to just state that we did provide the scope of services for an rfp. And we feel obligated to provide you with as much information and background as possible. So you make as educated decision as possible.

Okay. For the benefit of all of us, because I heard it from this side as well. There's a little bit of confusion. I don't think we really understood the motion. If you could elaborate and explain it a little bit so that we understand what it is you're requesting.

absolutely earlier today placed on your desk you have this document that has 8h at the top of it is the actual nbi that did not have amendments did not have any changes i motioned councilman herschberg seconded without any discussion it passed and it states it was recommended that staff return at the march 17 2026 regular council meeting with a project scope to begin the procurement process for the technology upgrades needed to implement the ability for architectural plans to be submitted digitally instead of printed paper right out of the gate to be able to read those plans hardware wise you need larger monitors right out of the gate this sample scope has nothing about hardware has a few things about software but nothing about hardware so It wasn't to go ahead and run with it. And I understand that staff understood the spirit of it was to start implementing it. But I just wanted a scope to be developed so we could see what else is out there, what other softwares are out there.

Through the chair. Hold on, Councilman Garcia. I'll let him finish.

Yeah. May I? Okay. Respectfully on that point, isn't the answer to this, how is the report that is provided as 8H on the actual agenda, starting on page 69 through? 74. Yeah, 74 with the, or 75 of today's agenda. How is that report not the answer to this the project scope.

It's not because it also includes things for btr is it includes information that isn't part of this and I understand that it was an item on the path to that. Mayor diegas brought up but the scope of this specific and be I was just for something to implement something that we didn't have period for online submission of plants. It's just it's it to me it's filler information. And instead of putting it out and listening to the letter of this NBI that states just to create a scope so that we can approve and say, yes, this is what's needed, start the procurement process, it was just ran with, and we don't know if there's something better out there at this point that can be more cost effective.

Okay. I also just want to say, because you were mentioning hardware and software, and I'm not going to lie to you. I read through this lightly because it's a dense report. But I did read through it, and it seems that... we're good um my my concern is substituting what is my judgment on what is needed versus you the department heads judgment and for example as a moment ago you were saying we definitely need larger monitors in order to read plans but the guy in charge was paid by our town to read plans was shaking his head and seemingly in disagreement and i no offense to you i i kind of take his word a little bit stronger when it comes to reading plans because that is pretty much the only thing he does uh and so if he tells me he doesn't need larger monitors and i don't have to waste money on a larger monitor i'm gonna go in that route uh and again credit to him because most of the time when a government says we're willing to give you money they they don't hesitate and he did so thank you uh but i i'm still struggling to understand what do you do you need him then to i guess extract from this report the part specific to your mbi and then put that into its own report develop a scope that we can put out for procurement okay is is that understandable is that something that can be done for the next meeting

So keep in mind what you have in front of you and what the councilman asked in his MBI is a portion of our total enterprise system, which is considered community development. Within community development, you have a land track module that ensures that the GIS locations for every permit that is pulled is tied to that folio number. You have permit track, which is your plan and electronic reviews for building permits. You have code track that essentially oversees all of our code functionality. You have projects and planning that archives all of Susana Alonso's variances, development orders, things of that nature. You have a contractor registration portal that archives and activates all of our current contractors. so in essence this is an enterprise program that encompasses a lot of functionality within the development community councilman sanchez's specific item as he read on his mbi was to to intake digital plan reviews which the manager correctly alluded to we've been working on this since 2021 after the ad hoc committee where one of the initial successes that we had which was reported to this town council last year was the success of our business tax renewal where we collected historic amounts of revenue just based on leveraging our current technology. So with the successes of that, and we felt that it was very important to incorporate that into the report, so you guys could understand what has occurred in the last five years in the building department. It's a lot of technology that we have put into that. Sure, digital plant submittal was one of them, and we finally achieved that. We're already up to 100 digital plant submittals and reviews, and we just launched that in April. We're working with Clarissa and her team that once we go live, we're going to launch this and we're going to make this a goal for everybody. So right now we are currently with the existing software. We are currently successfully doing what the spirit of the MBI had.

Councilman Garcia, go ahead.

THANK YOU, MR. MAYOR. I THINK THAT NO OTHER DEPARTMENT HAS MADE MORE IMPROVEMENTS OVER THE PAST FIVE OR SIX YEARS OF THE BUILDING DEPARTMENT. PAST COUNCILS, PAST MAYORS, CURRENT COUNCILS. WE SEE WHAT WHEN YOU BRING IN NEW TECHNOLOGIES, THE IMPROVEMENTS YOU'VE MADE. PART OF THIS REPORT KIND OF SAYS THAT. BUT I THINK THE SPIRIT OF WHAT AND ONE OF MY NEW BUSINESS TIMES AS WELL, I KNOW DANNY'S GOING CRAZY WITH THE COUNCIL REALLY SO INVOLVED IN THE BUILDING DEPARTMENT. and what Councilman Sanchez, I think what the spirit of what he's trying to say is, hey, are we consistently reviewing the brand new software or brand new technology that's out there that consistently gets updated? And sometimes you need new screens because of that or whatever. Are we consistently putting that up to RFP? And that's something we should do in our departments, honestly, because we really need to Just make sure we're looking out. We have a scope, create the scope, but are we consistently looking out to see if new stuff have come along that can save us time, effort, manpower, make it more efficient, and in the end, bring better customer service to our business clients and also our residents, right? So in that spirit, I agree with Councilman Sanchez, we should always be looking for what's the next thing, what's the next thing, what's the next thing. But you can't deny that you've made incredible improvements with the software that you've implemented and all the things you've implemented. But we do have a budget that doesn't mean we have to use it. But if there's a brand new technology that's coming at the forefront, you're the professional. You're just me in this. You know what's coming. Just keep an eye on it. Constantly putting it out there. Maybe something comes up. And I know this enterprise system has a lot of different moving parts. The permit track, community development, you know, the planning, the portal you have for the contractors, super important. They all have to work together.

Yeah.

But just, I think the spirit of what he's asking is, hey, are we continually asking, are we doing the best? Is there better out there? That's all, I think that's why, nothing against you, Danny, and your department. You're constantly improving. I just think we just continue to need to ask every year, hey, are we doing the best we can to find the most efficient software at the best cost? I think that's why I seconded the Councilman's item, motion.

I'M GOING TO LET HIM RESPOND TO YOU, DIRECTOR ANGEL, BEFORE WE GO OVER TO COUNCILMAN FERNANDEZ.

I APPRECIATE THAT, MAYOR. AND IT'S NOT REALLY A RESPONSE DIRECTLY TO COUNCILMAN GARCIA. I JUST WANT BASICALLY TO PULL THIS OUT TO THE COUNCIL. If we go this route of putting this RFP, the current vendor that we have is most likely gonna bid. Very likely they could probably win as well too. They're currently being used by Pinecrest, Palmetto Bay, and again, I'm not trying to say this is the one and all, but there's nothing right now in the current South Florida market that is above the rest. what i will add to this council is that there is something around the corner that we've been in discussions with miami-dade county to basically unify their current system with all the municipalities you're starting to see that push in tallahassee with the current bills that's coming out of tallahassee where they want to you make building departments uniform and they're leaning more towards that private provider one of the things that's starting january 1st is that tallahassee has to come out with a uniform building permit application So it goes to show you that they're in line with just making one stop shop wherever you go. It doesn't matter what city you go to. And that's what happens. A lot of challenges and a lot of frictions come with you go to one city, you have one software. You have another city, you have another software. But I could tell you right now in South Florida, There's not one that's above the rest. They'll have the same. Yeah, they keep on flirting with the idea of AI. Right now, I could throw any set of building plans into any LLM model, a model language, and it could read the plans. It's not specific to a specific software. So all that to say is, and it was part of my report is, we're a lean, mean fighting machine downstairs in the building department. I have been part of several, two software implementations, here with the Town of Miami Lakes and with the Town of Miami Valley. And I will tell you, it is a labor and a labor of love to implement new technology. It could take nine to 18 months, and that is not a lie. And again, I just ask this council, at what time are we gonna be implementing this software? Our doors are open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. We're front-facing operation. I'm just trying to figure it out if this goes through.

Yeah, Councilman Fernandez, and then we'll go to Councilman Cuadrado-Garcia.

I mean, to be honest, I know nothing about building and permitting and anything like that. You guys, you're the expert. I'm just curious from Councilman Sanchez, are you aware of a software that is superior to the one that we use? I'm not, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. I agree.

Business software is very different than consumer software, but at the same time, for example, the app that we have, this is not the first iteration of the Miami Lakes app. This is the second app that we have. We used to have a former vendor. no longer have them and now we have a new one. Doesn't mean that there isn't something better, but we won't know unless we open that procurement process to see what is out there and if they can be more cost effective. The more money we keep on our side, especially with what's coming down the pipeline of the tax referendum, we don't know unless we start that process. If it's something, because yes, on the back end, there are a lot of departments that deal with it, but we also have to think of the consumer side, the residents. Is it easy for them to use it? The contractors, is it easy for them to use it? We don't know if there is something easier out there. Is it Windows versus Apple? We don't know. There used to be a system, I don't know if it's still around, maybe it's on the business side at Linux. I think it's now used mostly by businesses, but we don't know what's out there, which is why I want to search out this process to see if there was something better and cheaper out there.

Councilman Cuadra Garcia.

I didn't know that we had to be geeks also. Computer geeks. Anyways, if I understand this correctly, basically it's simple. It's basically we want to go digital. Is that what it is?

Okay.

I mean, our sister.

We currently are digital, Councilman. That's part of the report. We currently are digital.

Oh yeah, our sister, Miami Gardens, is digital. So what is the whole, I'm trying to understand this, what is it that we need? Do we need enough? What is it that we need?

The whole purpose of this was to see if there was a better solution out there, another software company that can come in and say, we can do your online submittals. We can take care of that the software is X amount of funds the hardware is X amount of funds but we instead went with the in-house that we have which was not the spirit of this item it was an exploratory type of item. An idea. An idea to see what else is out there. And it would help you. That could be more cost effective, cheaper. something that's easier to use. But now we don't know that because it's been implemented. The only way to find that out is to create a scope that says we need this type of software or this type of hardware and putting it out to procurement and see what comes back. So if what we have is the cheapest and the most user-friendly and the most cost-effective, then we keep what we have. But we don't know if there is that existence out there.

Well, let's then direct staff to look into it and do some homework and get back to us.

Well, look, we gotta keep moving, so we have a motion. Mayor.

Is that, I mean, Mr. Mayor, is that a good idea? Have staff look into it and come back? Stephen Herzberg.

Okay, yeah, no, no. We're discussing the options that are before us. Again, if you have other ideas, you have plenty of time to get with the attorneys and the manager. But I'm gonna go to Councilman Herzberg, who has not had an opportunity to speak yet.

Thank you, Mayor. I mean, reading this, I just want to get your position clear. Are you saying that the town is already accepting digital plans and you don't see a need for another software? Is that basically your assessment?

WHAT I WOULD SUGGEST AND RECOMMEND TO THIS TOWN COUNCIL AS MY PROFESSIONAL OPINION IS TO CONTINUE TO ENTRUST ME. JUST TO REMIND THIS COUNCIL, I ASSUMED THAT ROLE IN 2021. THAT DEPARTMENT WAS IN PEER CHAOS. WE WERE ABLE TO BRING IT TO WHERE IT'S AT. AND I JUST ASK THIS COUNCIL, EACH INDIVIDUAL, DO YOU GUYS GET COMPLAINTS DURING THE PERMITTING PROCESS? Do you guys get complaints during the code process? Is there a specific complaint that we need to address? And I'll just use the words as Councilman Cuadra always says, if it ain't broke, don't fix. What we're doing now is we're continuing to, when I took over that and it was part of the building ad hoc committee, That software that they had in that department was only at 30% full capacity. I wanna say right now, I've already brought it up to at least 80%. And they continue to bring out software releases, and they continue to bring out software releases like the iPhone. Every time there's a new software release, it fixes a bug, and we're gonna get there. And all I'm saying is that we're gonna go through this round of RFP, and I think we've suffered from this as a town in the past, is we go out to bid, we pull the bid, then when we go out to bid again nobody's bidding because they know that the town is not serious about bidding when we go out to bid let's be fully serious that what we want to bid and we want to acquire we're going to attain because we have a reputation here just like everything else so my recommendation is continue to entrust me we will bring it up to standard and we'll make the building department the best building department in miami-dade county continue

but i just i'm sorry for the cross-examination here your department already accepts because the mbi says he wants you know the councilman wanted to to go start the process and make sure that we can get our architectural plans submitted digitally which is true definitely something that i think the town should be able to do which we have since april 1st and this is not something that i just turned on a switch

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE STARTED DOING IN LIGHT OF THEN COUNCILMAN SANCHEZ, AND I'M SORRY, I KEEP ON SAYING COUNCILMAN DIAZ, WHICH IS MAYOR DIAZ, HE WANTED TO MODERNIZE THE BUILDING DEPARTMENT. THIS WAS BACK IN FEBRUARY OF 2021. we're already doing that and because we're doing that we're like no we got to make everything digital because it's not just a want it's a it's a requirement florida statute now requires that we have to accept digital plans so this is something that has been in the works for the last three years we've had consultants we've been working on it just to make sure and we talk about cost efficiency right now we're paying 45 000 a year for that program to maintain it because we own it we go out to bid and we acquire a full enterprise system half a million dollars

Okay, so I'm going to call the vote. But first, I'm just going to state now that Councilman Sanchez, I respect the spirit in which this item was proposed. I obviously supported it last time. As I'm thinking about it now, my concern is just THE RESPONSE THAT YOU GAVE COUNCILMAN FERNANDEZ, WHICH IS THAT YOU'RE NOT AWARE OF ANOTHER COMPANY THAT HANDLES THIS. AND YET, AND YOU AND I BOTH KNOW THAT BOTH OF US ARE INTELLIGENT PEOPLE THAT GO OUT AND DO RESEARCH ON THESE ITEMS AND WE COULD ABSOLUTELY, IF THERE WAS ONE, I THINK YOU WOULD HAVE FOUND IT, RIGHT? SO MY CONCERN WITH JUST PUTTING IT OUT THERE IS THAT IT MIGHT BE JUST SPINNING OUR WHEELS spending inordinate amounts of staff time on something that we may not get any anybody to to bid um so that's my concern so um just wanted to put out on the record that i'll be a no on this but you know let's see what happens uh but i respect where you're coming from and i want to continue to remind staff that for me I'm always going to support the council's prerogative when we give direction I want it followed exactly as it was passed if you're going to go in a different direction I've always been an advocate and normally the manager works with me on this too but if there's an alternative direction to go in you speak to us to the sponsoring council member first before proceeding with that alternative direction so I just want that noted for staff but with that madam clerk please call the roll

Council Member Sanchez.

Yes.

Council Member Herzberg.

No.

Council Member Garcia.

Yes.

Council Member Fernandez.

No.

Council Member Cuadra Garcia.

No.

Vice Mayor Morera.

No.

Mayor Diegues. No. The motion fails.

Mayor, point of order. You're recognized for the point of order. I'd like to make a motion to reopen the agenda.

All right, is there a second? Second. All right, it's been moved and seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. The ayes have it. The agenda is reopened. What is it that you would like to move around?

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to bring 16L to immediately after 8H, so next, so now. And other than that, that's it.

Okay. So with that, Vice Mayor Morera moves to move 16L to the next item. Is there a second? second all right it's been seconded all those in favor say aye aye aye all opposed no the ayes have it the agenda is amended and we are on 16 l which does that require a waiver yes it does all right so go ahead you're recognized for the waiver thank you i'd like to move to wave section 7.2 of the special rules of order as it pertains to item 16 l second Wait, what?

He's second.

Oh, no, I saw Ed move toward the mic, so I thought it was him that was, I was confused. Yeah, no, it was throwing me off, all right. So with that, all those in favor of the waiver say aye. Aye. All opposed, no.

eyes have it the rule is waived you're recognized to proceed thank you mayor so first and foremost i want to say that this item is here because of one person that's miss carolina cuba who is here in the audience uh she was here during public comments i i don't have to even explain to you guys how impressive she is in her public speaking and in her own advocacy but My motion here is going to be to adopt the resolution that's attached to my NBI as Exhibit A. It seeks to reestablish a youth advisory board for the town of Miami Lakes, and it seeks to supersede Resolution 24-1993. So that resolution was adopted back in April 2024, just before I came in. At that time, they sought to create this youth advisory board. would you like me to actually pause for a second or no okay so so at that time the council basically said yeah we're gonna go do this but as sometimes happens, it was more lip service than anything else because immediately after it was passed, nothing happened. No council member appointed anyone, no applications were sent to the schools as the original resolution required. And again, but for Ms. Cuba bringing this up, this would have completely gone by the wayside. And in so doing, in so bringing it up, she proved the need for a youth advisory board. The spirit and purpose of such a board is to ensure that the voice and the opinions of the youth are taken into account. As a great example, today we took up a very important item, and that's the MLOP items. This would have been an item in which I think that the Youth Advisory Board would have definitely had an opinion, given that it directly affects the youth in our communities. You guys can read the resolution as well as the NBI in greater detail yourselves, but this does envision the council members having a certain amount of flexibility. If you wanted to offer them shadow opportunities, you're welcome to do that. If you prefer to not be bothered, you don't have to give them that opportunity. But the primary thing is that they would be able to deliver a report to us. And just as we're given these here on the dias prior to the meetings they would hand in their report it would necessarily be after close of agenda because they would need to receive our agenda and then they'd be able to have their report commenting on the items that they deem are important to the youth and then we can reference it or not during you know we're not obligated to uh but i think it is important that it be considered um other than that i'll go ahead and move for the adoption i'll second for discussion

thank you okay the first one i heard was councilman sanchez so i'll go to him first then to councilman garcia um if i'm asked miss cuba can you come to the podium for a moment thank you if i understand that correctly you do not live within the boundaries of the town of miami-dakes is that correct

I just have, there's a reason I asked that question. I want to amend this NBI, but first I have a question. Clarice, communications director, really quick, because she knows more about the committees.

I submitted it with a resolution. I could probably answer his question before he even asks it.

Do we have any committees where that residency requirement is waived and it's not grandfathered? So for example, blasting advisory, we have the chair of the busting advisory isn't a resident of Miami lakes, but I believe he has been grandfathered in.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Yes, all the committee members that were already serving on the committees and did not live here have been grandfathered in. The only committee that has a waiver for that rule is Blasting Advisory Board.

Okay, so it's not unheard of to be able to add a stipulation to the resolution for this committee that they do not have to be residents?

Well, Blasting has it, so yes, you're correct.

Okay, so I wouldn't be breaking new ground by introducing it to this one.

Well, it's up to you. All right.

I just introduced what I would do. OK, thank you. OK, so I move to amend the resolution to remove the residency requirement.

There's no need. I'm sorry. I don't know. I thought that my resolution, my proposed resolution was included in this. I had submitted one along with my submission. I don't have it. My proposed resolution had a very simple requirement. It actually intentionally removed the Miami Lakes residents see requirement and instead simply created a requirement that they attend one of the schools in Miami Lakes including HMO as well since that's that's already in the resolution and I fully support.

I just didn't see it. Yeah, I'm sorry.

I didn't realize it wasn't included in the digital agenda. Okay, I'll I'll circulate it actually to the manager so he can circulate to everyone. Okay.

Councilman Garcia.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor. Again, you're absolutely correct. If they're coming to our, if they're attending our schools, then the waiver should be, that should be waived. And again, I wanna apologize to Ms. Kula for dropping the ball. for not uh jumping on this quicker um but but you just showed that it you know your voice your voice works you came to us you talked to the vice mayor and look it's getting done and i agree i think that uh it would be a great idea to hear hear from more students in the town so i'm i'm 100 for this item yeah okay uh uh councilman harrisburg and do you want to say something councilman for any of this

Okay, so Herzberg, Fernandez, that'll be the order.

Thank you, Mayor. First of all, again, thank you for, I saw your emails come in, we spoke briefly, and keep pushing it to make sure someone got it on the agenda. I don't know what happened, why this didn't, Mr. Manager? Mr. Manager?

Mr. Manager, Ed, you're being asked a question.

Is there a specific reason why nothing happened for all this time when it was approved previously?

I think only one person submitted an application. When we put it out, we advertised it, we put it out. Clarisol can speak better about the efforts that we did, but we did put it, you know, like a newly constituted thing, and only Ms. Kuba, I think, was the only one that...

so to to to you i hope that we can get people to apply and and be interested i don't i don't care where they live or where they go to school yeah we're going to need help right i mean getting the enthusiasm going i i'm just letting them know exactly i the resolution makes sense to not have the residency requirement anyone anybody in the youth that wants to get involved i'm all for it so it's a good item i hope we can get it going

the only question i have then to the vice mayor is your idea is what for them to meet like on the thursday after the agenda post how how does it how do they advise us in my head it's like that it's that they meet after agenda posts um ultimately i would actually leave it to them at the date that they believe makes the most sense for them um what makes a lot of sense to me is that It's after agenda post so that they can comment on the things that are on the agenda. I was able to pull up the resolution that I submitted along with this NBI and I did just forward it right now to the manager so that he could disseminate it to all of you guys. The requirements are to qualify prospective board members must one, be a resident of Miami Lakes or be enrolled at one of the following schools, and then it goes Miami Lakes K-8, Bob Graham, Miami Lakes Middle, Our Lady of the Lakes, Miami Lakes Educational Center, Barbara Goldman, or Hialeah Miami Lakes Senior High. I think I got them all. They have to have an unweighted GPA of at least 2.5. and submit a completed application. One of the major differences, which is, I think, the reason why there wasn't a lot of interest in the past, or we didn't get back many, and that has been changed in this version, is how the applications are sent out and received. In the past, it was done through the schools. Basically, we handed the applications to the school, and the school decided who they were sending us. I didn't like that for two reasons. Number one, it allowed the schools to play favorites and we all know that it happens. And number two, I didn't like it because it almost forced upon us who was on the committee. We had almost no voice in who was in the committee. It was just the schools. each school had a representative. So Miami Lakes Middle had a representative, K-8 had a representative, et cetera. And so if there was a vacancy, I can't just select the person who I think is the most qualified. I had to select the one who making faces the the one who uh who who goes to the school that has the vacancy so i didn't like that so we got rid of it uh like i said i've sent the resolution to ed feel free to take a look thank you

I know I had said Councilman Fernandez, but I looked at the time and we really got to get moving. We're falling behind. And thankfully, the conditional use approval, you know, decided to defer. So, my one question to you is, this is going to come back to us, right? I don't know. Yeah, if it passes tonight, it's a new business item, so the resolution would have to come back, even though you had attached it.

I think so, yeah.

Yeah, so I have a lot of questions. I'm deeply skeptical. You know how I feel about creating any new boards. And, you know, so it has nothing to do with you, Ms. Cuba. I think you're great. Huh? no no my personal beef is with just endless committees right that's always been my beef as you saw today look at what time you're here right look how many reports we have to get through so you know and to hear from different groups it really takes a lot of time and uh so i'm gonna review it in depth and think of uh of alternatives that can get me on board i'm going to vote it forward tonight but just to move us along but you know i guess you and i will be scheduling a meeting so we can uh discuss it further with that all those in favor say aye aye aye all opposed no the eyes have it the motion carries thank you very much ladies all right going back into the regular order of business we are now wait remember that the attorney's report number nine Number nine.

We don't have anything to report, which is fantastic.

That is the best report ever. Yes. All right. Consent calendar. We're now on the consent calendar. Is there a motion?

I move the consent.

Is there a second? Second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. The ayes have it. The motion carries. The consent calendar is passed. And we now come to... 13A, the revised lien reduction ordinance. I just wanna remind everybody we're on first reading. There's no need to beat this up too much. So with that, I'm just gonna move, well, after the attorney reads it, I'm gonna go ahead and just move it, and I would ask that we just advance it to second reading. All right, Mr. Attorney.

An ordinance of the town of Miami Lakes, Florida, amending Chapter 8, Section 8-7 of the Town of Miami Lakes Code of Ordinances, titled Recovery of Unpaid Civil Penalties. Unpaid penalty to constitute a lien. Interest to be paid on liens. Foreclosure. Prohibition of the issuance of permits, licenses, certificates of use and occupancy, or zoning approvals to violators. with unpaid civil penalties or liens civil penalty reduction to temporarily reinstate prior lien mitigation schedules to require town council approval prior to foreclosure on non-homestead property providing for inclusion into the code providing for repeal of ordinances in conflict providing for severability and providing for an effective date excellent i move to adopt uh the ordinance as proposed as i can get it to second reading it's been seconded any discussion hopefully not

okay with that madam clerk please call the roll ordinance in first reading item 13a council member sanchez yes council member cuadra garcia council member garcia yes council member fernandez yes council member hersberg yes vice mayor moreira yes mayor diegas yes ordinance and first reading item 13a passes

Excellent. We're now on 13B, again, an item on first reading, budget amendment JAG grant. Mr. Attorney?

An ordinance of the town of Miami Lakes, Florida, amending the fiscal year 2025-2026 annual operating budget adopted in ordinance 2025-346 to recognize and appropriate grant funds awarded to the town by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement UNDER THE EDWARD BURN MEMORIAL JUSTICE ASSISTANT GRANT, JAG, PROGRAM FOR THE PURCHASE OF POLICE EQUIPMENT PROVIDING FOR THE INCREASE OF GENERAL FUND REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $4,054 AS SET FORTH IN EXHIBIT A, PROVIDING FOR AUTHORITY, PROVIDING FOR IMPLEMENTATION, PROVIDING FOR APPEAL OF ORDINANCES IN CONFLICT, AND PROVIDING FOR AN EFFECTIVE DATE.

Thank you. Go ahead, Councilman Fernandez. I'll move.

I'll second it.

It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Ordinance and first reading, item 13B, Councilmember Fernandez.

Yes.

Councilmember Herzberg. Yes. Councilmember Sanchez.

Yes.

Councilmember Garcia.

Yes.

Council Member Cuadra-Garcia. Yes. Vice Mayor Morera. Yes. Mayor Diegues. Yes. Ordinance and first reading, item 13B passes.

Excellent, we're now in 14A, non-advalor special assessment rates for security guards and lake maintenance special taxing districts. Mr. Attorney, go ahead and read the ordinance.

ordinance of the town council of the town of miami lakes florida approving adopting a non-advalorium assessment role for special taxing districts approving adopting adopting and ratifying special assessment district rates for special taxing districts including but not limited to security guard and multi-purpose maintenance providing for severability and providing for an effective date

Thank you, and before we continue, this is a public hearing, so I'm gonna open the public hearing. Are there any members of the public wishing to speak? Seeing none in chambers, Madam Clerk, anyone online?

Participants, I see two, I see one actually, I'm sorry, Mr. Adonis Sardinas, if you wanna participate now. 14A, ordinance in second reading, welcome and unmute yourself.

Okay, so going once, going twice. The public comment period on this item is now closed. So with that, Mr. Manager.

Yeah, this is the setting of the assessments. It's not the approval of the budgets, but it's setting of the assessments for the non ad valorem special assessments for the security guard and lake maintenance special taxing districts for next year.

Thank you. So with that, is there a motion? I'll move it. It's been moved by Councilman Herzberg. It's been seconded by the Vice Mayor. Discussion? Sure. All right, Mr. Vice Mayor.

Okay, so to be clear, as you clarified, we're voting here on the rate, not on the budget. As far as a lot of the public comment that we have received on this, we did receive some strong objections from homeowners living over in Miami Lake Section 1. They oppose, generally speaking, because it's a lot that I'm trying to synthesize into a short statement, they generally oppose the way in which the direct costs are calculated. They deem that it lays a heavier burden on Miami Lake Section 1 than on others. With respect, I know individually pretty much every single one of those residents that commented. So with all respect to them, I do respectfully disagree with them. Everything I've seen seems to actually indicate that on a per-home basis, the residents of Miami-Dade Section 1 actually pay less than the residents in other special taxing districts. Moreover, at the same time, I empathize with their objection. I understand the way that they're seeing it. They're seeing the overall picture of because we are a bigger community we are saddled with larger numbers of uh with a larger number as a community I think that that is flawed for the reason I already stated in that on a per home basis, they are actually getting a better rate. But additionally, because ultimately, while I did hear a lot of the objections and considered them thoroughly, I didn't see a valid or feasible alternative. And in the absence of that, I kind of have to go with what I have. um so that being said i am still open to hearing a valid feasible alternative between now and the budget but at this rate as far as the rate is concerned i will move move or vote to approve the current rate should we determine that there is a better way uh between now and budget season i am happy to reduce the direct costs and allocate more to the contingency funds and then give them a savings next year i'm happy to do that i'm open to them i want them to know we are listening and we did hear read and and and consider all of the objections that were raised But ultimately, at this time, I don't see a convincing reasoning to go with something different.

All right, we're going to go to Councilman Herzberg, then Councilman Fernandez, and then Councilman Cuadrado Garcia. That's the lineup for the next three.

Thank you, Mayor. And I share your viewpoint to an extent, Vice Mayor. I spent an hour of staff today going over these numbers and the history of how they got there. The way the numbers that work is 100% Section 1 has the lowest per household, right? Their issue is that the percentage of the budget is disproportional, right? But the other ways that I discussed and how it could be done, this is a compromise. This makes the most sense, because at the end of the day, It's going to be paid by somebody. And there are more homes, more residents asking for service. There's actually even four, is it four gates that are there? So there's even four gate guards. Each gate has issues. Each gate gets broken down. And when I'm speaking with staff, my understanding is Section 1 has a large amount of calls for service, right? If you want to come up and talk about what your findings were on that.

Yes, so we were able to go ahead and pull a report for all guardhouses and take a look at guard gate issues as well as guardhouse issues. And in the report, by guardhouse, Section 1 does have the highest reports through the reporting system of SFM for guardhouse and guardgate issues. Overall, even looking at districts as a total, they are barely beaten out by total overall reports other than Royal Oak Section 1. which does have two guardhouses, but it's a difference of three reports.

Right, so the idea that there's more residents and there's gonna be more time for staff, that makes sense. And that's where staff's position came from on how to do this. I looked at the numbers, I tried to see where the numbers would flow. Based off one of the suggestions from one of the residents, I saw the difference of about $21 a year, $22 a year. It's money, but it's not something that's going to move these budgets much. I will say, though, one thing from Mr. Foster's email that I 100% agree with, and I discussed that with staff, was if a district does a big capital improvement, like Locke Lowman's been discussing, that capital improvement needs its own admin fee. because no district, it doesn't matter if it's section one or Oaks, should be supplementing the amount of time and staff time required to build a new guard gate or renovate a guard gate, right? So that's something I think we should all discuss up here. And the third thing, which doesn't have to do with section one, actually, Locke-Loman, which we had a brief discussion now with the president of HOA, and vice mayor, maybe you can help me, I know Locke-Loman has come up and asked for approval to get plans and improve their gate guard does do we need do they need to get a voter petition or can we just add that to the budget is the HOA is saying they have approval from their HOA that's what I'm confused about is how do we get that moving if they're asking for it a director back down do you have an answer to that

So with regards to the item of Loch Lomond, under the current status where there is no defined capital improvements, this would require the budgeting authority through the council and approval to go ahead and start the planning phase for the Loch Lomond redevelopment of their guardhouse. So it would be a function of the budget process and approved by council.

And how much was that money, how much does it cost again?

So it's in the report under the exhibit C that lists all the additional items. It is a total, it's phase one of planning, of design and permitting, it's 55,000. It comes out to $308, it's on the report, I can't remember off the top of my head right now, per unit. And as spoken with the HOA president, they have no concerns with the one-time increase for that $308.

But they do understand that then they're gonna have to pay for the building, right?

Correct, and then in the report, you also have our preliminary estimate working with Public Works as far as redesigning that road and creating the guard gate in a position that will alleviate a lot of their issues they're currently having. And based off that very preliminary budget and using state labor rates and state estimates, it was around 400,000. That number obviously, we'll know more once we get into design.

So maybe a question for the budget director. Do we need to make that decision now? Because if we set the rate, there's not going to be room for $50,000, right? Right. So I guess I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion to add that line item because it seems like the Lachlan HOA is requesting it. And my understanding is that that's the only STD that we're supposed to listen to the HOA. That's my understanding. So I'll make a motion to add that line item to Lachlan HOA.

Yeah, no, I know it's an amendment. Mayor. Let me see if it gets a second and then we'll go to you. Yeah, I'll second. Okay, so the amendment is being seconded by Councilmember Garcia, Mr. Manager, before we continue discussion.

Yeah, just to remind everyone that's similar to the THE MILLAGE RATE THAT ONCE YOU SET THE CAP IT'S THE CAP IT'S THE MOST BUT DURING THE BUDGET PROCESS YOU CAN LOWER IT WHAT YOU'RE DOING HERE IS SETTING THE ASSESSMENTS IT'S THE MAXIMUM ASSESSMENTS AND CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG MELISSA DURING THE BUDGET PROCESS YOU CAN LOWER THE ASSESSMENTS SO YOU'RE BETTER OFF SETTING A HIGHER ASSESSMENT NOW TO TAKE IN THOSE CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS AND IF DURING THE BUDGET PROCESS THAT DOESN'T PAN OUT THEN YOU CAN LOWER THE ASSESSMENT BACK DOWN

okay so if i'm a mayor so yeah i then i definitely am i i had the conversation with hiv president i'm definitely comfortable doing it because if we get feedback all of a sudden that that's not what the residents lock woman want it doesn't seem like that's the case it seems like they want this so let's set it keep it high and then let's get the feedback and confirm that's what they want but i'd rather have it in here now so they can start that process because it's going to be a two-year process so

Okay, so that's an amendment to the amendment is there a second. Second okay. Well what is it Mister.

I just think that it should just be clarified that really all he's asking for is the current rate that is given to us in our agenda just add $308 to it as far as luck was concerned that that's a much simpler way of putting it.

So let's just call it like that.

Okay. So we'll just say that you restated, you know, stated what the vice mayor clarified the existing motion. There we go. So, okay. So with that, any, uh, or not actually the order discussion was create a buffer.

Yeah.

315.

Okay, so, and again, this is only for Locke-Loman, right? Only for Locke-Loman. All right, so just to get us moving, I'll go ahead and I'll second it. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. The ayes have it, the amendment passes. Okay, now, Councilman Cuadrado-Garcia and then Councilman Fernandez.

Thank you, Mister mayor, Mister mayor, I have to speak on behalf of my of my residents on my side of Royal Oaks East after listening to all their objections and cannot support raising any more. in any more money to the security gates, at least on my side. What I would like to recommend, I don't know if I'm in the right channel to ask through the manager, through the mayor and to the manager and to staff, is to see if we can look into living in the 21st century, if we can remove these guard gates, not the guard gates, the security guards, and implement cameras or systems where they take over these guards? Is there a possibility they could be done?

Is there a possibility? Yes. Under the current verbiage in the ordinances that created them, no. Those would have to be modified. So I believe that there's an item later on in this agenda that is a new business item by Councilmember Herzberg for him to work with staff to develop some different options, some different alternatives, some different models or methods on how to manage these taxing districts, plus what would be the steps necessary to make those changes happen, and then bring it back to this council for you to make a future decision on the management and the different protocols in those guard gates.

That'll work.

Okay, Councilman Fernandez.

WELL, I JUST WANT TO STATE FOR THE RECORD THAT WE DO READ ALL THE EMAILS. UNFORTUNATELY, I DON'T RESPOND TO ALL OF THEM, BUT WE CERTAINLY HEARD FROM THE RESIDENTS THAT HAD AN OPINION ON THIS. I'M GOING TO REFER BACK. SO I WANTED THE STAFF TO DO A LITTLE BIT OF RESEARCH, AND IT CAME BACK, AND IT WAS TO ME THAT THE ITEM, BECAUSE I WANTED TO KNOW HOW LONG HAD WE BEEN CHARGING IN THIS MANNER, HAD WE ALLOCATED THE PERCENTAGES OF HOW WE WERE GOING TO BE COLLECTING ADMINISTRATIVE FEES, AND APPARENTLY IT WAS, I THINK, SINCE 21, IF I BELIEVE? 23. 23, AND IT WAS COUNCILMAN, THEN COUNCILMAN FERNANDEZ, TONY FERNANDEZ, and he in fact lives in that section so you know i think it would it's stands to reason that it's the fairest way to collect the these fees uh and i'll just add that um at the end of the day i i think that it the the logic is i i don't see any other way that we can collect uh and we can proportion out how we're going to collect it because we The administrative fee is a set, is an amount that is going to be collected one way or another, and I think this is the most logical way that it's being collected at this time.

All right, we're going to go to Councilman Sanchez and then to Councilman Garcia.

Okay, same as everyone here, we've received the emails. We received... A plethora of email overwhelming the scale is overwhelming to the to the negative and specifically about one line item. On this budget the expenses account number ending in 5, 1, 3, 0, 1, 1, management and monitoring so I went through as I do with my Excel spreadsheets as I you know every budget season I try to do this and. added up all the homes in every single section every single special testing district how much a management costs and divided that to see what the total cost would be. It costs $41 per household. One individual. that handles all the homes so section one doesn't have just their token individual for just section one and royal oaks doesn't have one just for royal oaks section one and there isn't there aren't foreign employees there's one and all four every household SHARES THAT. IF SECTION 1 WOULD LIKE, THEY LOVE TO STATE HOW THEY ARE THEIR OWN BODY, THEY HAVE THEIR OWN LAWS. IF THEY WOULD LIKE TO HAVE THEIR OWN PERSON, THEN I WOULD PURSUE THAT, BUT THE PRICE IS GOING TO INCREASE EXPONENTIALLY TO HAVE A DEDICATED PERSON JUST TO THEM. You're talking salary, benefits, taxes, everything that goes into it. So all four are sharing that one individual at a cost of $41 per household. Actually, Locke Lohman pays $42 per household on that one line item, which is what's being discussed here. The emails that we received are on one line item. It's not on the entire budget. It's on the first line item of expenses. So it's very fair. It's $41 per household for one individual that handles everyone. And from what I understand, the lion's share of attention that goes to Section 1 from that town employee is his time. The lion's share goes to Section 1. So it's extremely fair. And I just don't see where the science, the math is mathing on the side of where the disputes are coming from. We actually had one email from a resident of Royal Oaks that voice exactly what I'm saying. And it's the one that was on the other side. So I get it, there was powers and numbers and they were against it. But it's fair to pay a proper rate to the individual that's handling all, how many? Yeah, so almost to the a little over 2000 homes a little over 2000 homes. So I just I don't I don't see where that is adding up. So I agree that this is proper and I agree with having the marriage. I mean at the rate of the new rate that includes the for for Los Lomans for their security guard.

Mister man Mister man and I remember that next up with councilman Garcia councilman Garcia, you're recognized.

Thank you so much. I have to agree with my colleagues in this. We've all asked the questions, is this the best way to do it? Not everybody's going to be 100% with everything, but I think the way we're doing it now, the way we've portioned out for this fee is, I guess, the most fair possible at this time. So I'm going to be voting yes on this.

uh okay so if you're on the second turn so just so you're aware but go ahead councilman and if you look my district is being penalized the highest look at it

Royal Oaks East is the highest one punished. So therefore, because of that, I cannot support this. And I'd like to know why. How do we get there?

How do we get to these numbers?

It's a simple question.

Yeah, and I would respond, but in the interest of time, and considering the statements already made by my other colleagues that I agree with wholeheartedly, I think it would be better just for us to go ahead and vote. So, Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

mayor and just to make sure that we don't that i didn't lose a motion we have a main motion which was um by councilman made by council member hersberg seconded by vice mayor moreira and that's the main motion to approve the ordinance in second reading we had an amendment by council member hersberg seconded by council member garcia which was to add the line item for lock loman TO GUARANTEE THE GUARD GATE DISTRICT IMPROVEMENT. AND TO THAT MOTION, WE HAD AN AMENDMENT WHICH WAS BY VICE MAYOR MORERA, SECONDED BY MAYOR DIEGUEZ, WHICH ACCORDING TO MY NOTES WAS TO To provide $315,000 to the added budget of capital improvements.

$315 added per household to the assessment that's already in the item.

That amendment that a manager Peterman just stated passed. but i according to my notes we have that amend we still have to have the vote in the amendment motion to add the line item for lock lowman for garrett guard gate district improvement by council member harsberg seconded by council member garcia that's the first amendment you're right and maybe we i mean basically the vice mayor's amendment was like a strike all at the end of the day it all it all got to the same conclusion so we don't have an amendment anymore pending we're voting you're voting on the main motion that is correct as amended okay i just needed it and the manager just wanted to protect your inbox from getting inundated with the 315 000 number okay so main motion ordinance in second reading item 14 a council member hersberg yes council member cuadra garcia Council Member Fernandez.

Yes.

Council Member Garcia.

Yes.

Council Member Sanchez.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Morera. Yes. Mayor Diegues.

Yes.

Ordinance and second reading item 14-8 passes.

Thank you very much. We're now on 15A. I'm going to move to defer. It still exists. It's still on the agenda. We have to defer it. So with that, I'm going to move to defer 15A to the July regular council. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. The ayes have it. The item is deferred to the July RCM. 16A, evaluation of security service modernization options for special taxing districts by Councilman Herzberg. You are recognized.

Thank you, Mayor.

So, yes, Mayor, item 15B, a resolution. The pages were stuck together, so I apologize, Councilman Herzberg, so sorry. 15B, resolution. Yes, 15B, authorization to accept grant funds for Miami Lake's Green North Grant. Now, go ahead.

Is there most is it on the yeah. Yeah, this is just this is an old grant is a grant that's about a decade old and we have to accept this from a dot and it's for a there's been a lot of changes on this project and Omar's negotiated with that dot real well to it's a shared use path that will go from one 5, 4, TO WHERE THE PROJECT THAT FDOT CONCLUDED THAT RIGHT BY MORE OR LESS ABOUT WHERE BOB GRAHAM IS AND IT'S A SHARED USE PATH FOR THAT STRETCH.

I'LL MOVE IT. I'LL SECOND FOR DISCUSSION.

Well, before we go to you, I just want to remind the manager that normally we go to whoever's presenting the item to present it first and then we go to motion. So, all right. So with that, Councilman Sanchez, you wanted to speak and then we'll open it up to everybody else.

Ms. Shaw, good evening. How are you? Good good. Just wondering the funds for this so a third of it would come from grants and two-thirds will give or take You know, it's a rough estimate would come from from PTP funds Yes, the grant funds. Do they have to go specifically to this project? I

yes this was something that we were awarded back in 2015 um but because it was delayed due to that fdot project that would have interrupted we would have constructed it and then they would have had to tear it up doing the construction that they were doing there so it got delayed until now fiscal year 2027. so now as we're trying to execute the agreement with fdot we have to give them a new resolution showing your guys's support or authorization to move forward with the project But with that, yes, it is specific to this project. It's what we were awarded with that scope.

Okay. I guess at this point, I bring that up because of an earlier item that came up during the manager's report of PTP 80 funds and me trying to find some funds for a project that I have for traffic mitigation. And to dedicate that amount of funds is a heavy amount and for an area that might not be used that often.

Yeah, I mean, the goal with the project is, again, as it will connect the area next to that school with 154, we're hoping that the shared youth path will help both parents or students or anybody, again, utilizing or that works in that commercial center that's right there that can walk or bike to work from the residential community or again, that local school. Obviously, they're not working there, but to have people be able to walk and bike more safely in that along that area. So we do think there is a user

population there that we hope will be uh big but yeah unfortunately that was decided back then when they proposed it but we currently have a sidewalk that already connects to the new addition that was added by fdot in august of last year when they completed that project where it comes on north 77th and crosses over just north of background educational center where they created that new sidewalk where parents used to park for the middle school pickup yes and that connects to the sidewalk that goes all the way out to miami lake so this project would really just widen that sidewalk

to create that shared use space correct correct so this would end up this would complete the the circuit or connected and provide a full uh facility for both pedestrian cyclists right now where that that fdot section ends is not uh considered a bicycle facility so if they would end there they would essentially have to get on the road Okay, so the one that I've got created is already wide enough to be sure to write me and they want to get a crossing for the town which now we don't have to deal with that with the county okay, so we just need to finish this. The small portion considering the overall size.

The Vice Mayor has a point of clarification he wants to make. Director Santos, you gave a great explanation during my briefing about what exactly this project is, and I can hear that there's a little bit of confusion on the dais as to what exactly this project is, because the actual item that's here on the agenda doesn't really talk too much about what we're doing. So could you just talk about the project? I know you explained that was that that that paid for I think over half of it. Yes, so it ended up being a lot cheaper for us and that they did us a great service go ahead and explain this.

So the project initially which is the green it was to construct a pedestrian bicycle facility from one 5, 4, all the way to essentially the canal crosses to connect the with the county system which we don't have jurisdiction over. FDOT came to us several years back proposing a milling and resurfacing project of 77th Court. When they provided that scope, Susana and I at that time mention that we have a project in the area and propose them building it out for us they agreed to do the portion that they had to they did which is from the canal to uh lucida but the rest would have to be done by the town when we presented this to the fdot team that oversees our funding They asked us to re-estimate the project essentially to show the reduction and the idea was to reduce the funds. Our argument was that even though there is a reduction in the scope because of the changes in cost, we requested to maintain the budgets the same so we kept the original FDOT budget. and the town match and now it's our it's our our time to or the town's time to go ahead and do the portion that's left over that's what this is going to accomplish

All right, the Vice Mayor and then Councilman Herzberg.

Thank you. Ms. Schock, the item mentions that it actually splits the town match 248 over the course of two years, the fiscal year 27 and 28. Can you just clarify how much is 27, how much is 28 for our purposes as we go into budget season?

We'll have to look at that. I know we haven't gotten design quotes for it yet.

No, no one's already in this. That's the reason it's just it's just a split but a portion of it goes towards design and the rest goes towards construction and inspections.

But is it like equal.

I'm sorry I'm very no I don't know what you want to do is that our purpose of distributing it, but it's not it's not exactly one 24 is not exactly that you so it's not exactly one 24 each year. For that component, yes. But the cost may not exactly be that. We would have to respond back.

Yeah, what I want to know is for budgeting purposes as we get into that season, I don't want to allocate, you know, as we've been discussing up here pretty much all day today, you know, PTP 80 funds that are already locked up for this project and then later on we, you know, I don't know, bite ourselves in the foot, I don't know. So that's my main comment.

Yeah, we'd be paying for 62 and a half percent. All right, council.

Councilman Herzberg.

Thank you, mayor. So to the director, So looking at Google Maps or whatnot, I see that FDOT made the larger dual use lanes, right? On 77th Court. Yes. So this connects the two, because right now if we voted no, we would just have this random... two use lanes that's connected to nothing that that's what i see because you have to do you have to connect the southern side and the northern side so this connects though so then the work that fdot did actually gets used and and there's a connection there so that's the purpose and this would be for the construction so we're already on design right okay got it so you already spent money on design you spent money on this okay yeah all right all right first line on the a big you know in miami lakes and south florida in general i don't know how much use these bike lanes honestly get but works work has already been done money's already been spent and right now there is a you know a path that's not connected to anything basically

And remember this is all because we we've got this question we just mentioned this is all part of a larger green ways and trails. I know we have to start in pieces as throughout areas and as we expand the system you'll get that are your connectivity, but if you don't.

If you don't do anything, then... No, I mean, what's getting me on it was, one, money's been spent, but then, two, if you go onto Google Maps right now, you see that FDOT made a dual-use lane already. So if we don't complete this, it's just this random dual-use lane that's not connected to another dual-use lane, right?

And the section they did, it was one of the most complicated parts because it does include that crossing.

And there's no sidewalks on the north side to connect to it. So it's just is there Okay, yeah, I mean we can talk about the master plan a different day, but this seems to make sense Anyone else Wait before we go to any follow-up Councilman Garcia.

Do you have anything you want to add?

No, not this time.

Okay. With that, Councilman Sanchez for follow-up. Just a rebuttal for Councilman Herzberg. It already connects just a single wide sidewalk instead of a double wide. So it's inaccurate when you say that it doesn't connect to anything. It does connect. It just goes from double to single. And that sidewalk goes all the way out to Miami-Dade Strip.

That's it.

all righty anyone else all right this being a resolution all those in favor say aye aye aye all opposed no you guys have it 15 b passes and now we're back on 16a councilman hersberg thank you mayor so uh this item you know coincidental timing honestly but um

When I was looking over the, actually I guess it wasn't coincidental timing, I was looking over the budgets of the special taxing districts, I realized how much money was being, how large these budgets really are, especially on the Royal Oaks side. And you heard it today, you've heard it from Councilman Cuadro Garcia, I don't know with updates to technology how much there is a need for a human labor in these special taxing districts anymore. So this is very preliminary, but I would need staff and legal to start working on it, is looking at what other alternatives there are. The alternative I like, and I've spoken to residents and they seem to like this too, but again, we need to discuss how we get there. And this really would only be for the Royal Oak sections because they have the money. Section one doesn't necessarily have the money for my idea, is you can remove the guards, you can automate the gates, we can have our own license plate reader, not a law enforcement one, our own. And there's enough money there, I've done the calculations, I believe, to hire a police officer, one or two, to patrol the neighborhoods at night. The money's there from basic calculations. I can't guarantee it, so that's why we need staff. Because the biggest cost in all these districts is the labor. You remove the labor, we can either save residents a lot of money if they don't believe the actual human being is necessary, or potentially provide a much better security service with a hybrid model. So my idea is just to have staff start working on it, reporting back to us, and also have legal start working on what we would need to do to modify anything in these districts, which I believe the first issue which we do need to do is take over the take over adopt the ordinances for these special taxing districts which i don't know why we haven't done it already we should do that maybe that's something uh the manager can bring up at a next meeting if you want to discuss that oh Well, I guess let me make my motion. That's my motion. I'll second for discussion.

Great. All right. It's been seconded, but let's get some clarification from the attorney. Then we'll start with Councilman Sanchez.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council. Going to what Councilman Herzberg said, yes, that's something that we should have done a while ago. Really, these ordinances were adopted by the town. We're taking over from the county, but they're not codified anywhere. So If we want to make any changes to them. We first have to have them in our books and we can start the process of how we're going to modify them and I believe vice member that I had created a process within the code of how to start to look at some of that so what we can start definitely there's I think 2 avenues one is really taking these uh ordinances and codifying them into our books and then the second part is we can look at what other technology is out there and then we can you know bring it to the residents and see if it's something that they have an appetite for mayor well remember that uh councilman sanchez was the second so we're going to start with him and then i'll go to you okay

As someone that served in the military, I know the perceived value of having a physical body. Okay. Especially for example, we've even approved an item to have extra screening from 10 PM to 6 AM where you have a physical body, they're asking for IDs and you know, some residents are unhappy about it and they feel like they don't have the stuff and that's okay because it's a public access road. But I also think of a, of a. SPECIAL TASKING DISTRICT THAT'S OUTSIDE OF MIAMI LAKES, EASTERN SHORES. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH EASTERN SHORES OR HAVE EVER GONE IN THERE. THEY HAVE THE SAME THING THAT WE HAVE HERE IN MIAMI LAKES WITH THE GUARD GATE. THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT IT'S MANNED 24-7 BY NORTH MIAMI BEACH POLICE OFFICERS. and as soon as you pull up right in front of the guard gate is a as a miami beach police car with the police officer and start inside of the guard gate but to move so within section one there is an hoa that is implementing exactly what you're standing at they have is now a kiosk is the anchorage is a kiosk and i know it's because my dog sitter then resides in there and every time I go I have to slide in my ID and eventually after a couple minutes somebody comes up over the intercom and says please tell me who you are where you're going and but it's it's different it's not having a human physical body there but that is an HOA is very different if you don't get access you don't get access and hours you have to get access and having that physical body there is the same as having a sign in front of your house that says hey I have an alarm so it's it's you know it's it's a deterrent And I like to see other ideas, absolutely. But at least foundationally, having a person there, I think, is something that is needed. Mr. Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. I respect and probably agree with the spirit and the intent of your item and I want to say thus far I'm probably supporting it but there is an important caveat and I think it's just phrasing the way that it is phrased. the the the item of for example um switching to an automated gate service or things like that that violates some of the existing std ordinances uh i it definitely violates miami lake section one i'm pretty certain it violates both of the royal oaks uh special taxing districts uh which require a 24 7 manned guardhouse uh they uh one or two of them might also require a roving uh officer lock loman i think has the the roving one uh so in order to deviate from that you would require an amendment of the ordinance which would trigger 38- I don't know which section of our town code the amendment that I had made um which goes through the whole petition process and again I I actually kind of also agree with Councilman Sanchez on his point that there is a a strength to having a physical person but you know what at the same time uh where i i will not substitute my opinion for that of the residents the amendment process was created to go out and get the opinion of the resident let them make the decision of whether because maybe royal oaks agrees with you and says we really don't need that it's honestly annoying to give my id after a certain time uh but maybe miami lake section one says no we want to keep giving our ids we feel a lot safer doing it or or not just the ideas i'm sorry um the we want to keep our our physical guard royal oaks might say we we want virtual um let them make the decision uh so as insofar as really what you're seeking here as i understood it was let's generate ideas and on on how we can modernize these ordinances that i do agree with and i'm happy to support and i guess what you're asking for is for the staff to come back uh right if i may mayor

uh correct there's no absolute direction if there's no timeline here other than staff coming back and working with staff and that's actually one of the questions to the town attorney what needs to be done for us to amend the services do we need to go back to the voters do they what are what are the procedures to do that we look at your ordinance we look at the original ordinances those are exactly the discussions all this is is getting staff back but i believe there is i think there is a one i think the councilman will agree with me on at least on ours on these on these sides that we're not really sure how useful the human capital is on taking pictures of guards and you and a bunch of you had discussed the nighttime ids that's not happening i it's rarely happening i go in and out at night it doesn't happen it just doesn't so i really believe i believe if we went out to vote to the the owners of of the rural sections and we told them we can automate the gate and provide you law enforcement at night i'd rather have that personally but that's exactly the questions to discuss and then depending on what we need to do of course we would have workshops send it out to residents we need resident input this doesn't happen without resident input and potentially i don't know i I take a different position. I don't know if it needs a resident vote but that's something for the town attorney to tell us.

The issue is, Councilman Herzberg, is that you need to have a process at least to have the resident input because this is a tax on them specifically. And I think that's something that Vice Mayor Morera's, we'll call it the Morera Act, that's in our code, accomplishes. So, you know, we can follow that or we can tweak that in the future if we want to, but definitely it's going to require a resident input.

I think the only exception is Loch Lomond, based on what we were just discussing.

when the county created these uh special taxing districts they they basically stated that in it's in the ordinance that they could go to the hoa loch loma hoa and whatever the loch loma hoa requested they would follow it was advisory so they didn't have to but they they in all instances they did why because the hoa and the std is one in the same councilman fernandez

So I something to think about I I've been this is my second home in Royal Oaks, I started on the West side across from former vice mayor, Roberto Alonso rest in peace, but I when when this came up back then I was scared I I said to my wife I girlfriend back then I'll move out if we move get rid of the guards, I'm about like you know to me I like knowing it's kind of a feel-good thing. The prestige, you know, that was me. But now with technology, I've been thinking about it. I've actually thought that maybe there's an alternative that we can save money. The part about the police, we have to think about that a little bit further because as a taxpayer i'm paying for police anyway so why am i going to pay again for more police when we we would probably have a roaming police officer at one point going through there i don't know would it deter them to to not go through there if there was already an assigned police officer you know what i mean like that's something we'd have to think about but i will say that i'm open to hearing what alternatives are

That's that that's what it's about. Alternatives. I will say, though, my law enforcement idea is that officers only there. They are roving those specific streets six, eight hours a night. That's a completely different level of security. So but we'll see. We I don't know what the cost is. We got to determine that. It's just a matter of getting these processes moving forward. And as the town attorney said, we need to move forward in taking that ordinance and codifying it.

Next speaker, Councilman Guadalupe Garcia.

Council, I hope you consider what my colleague has presented strongly. I have been there for 26 years, and all those guards do is nothing more than a deterrent, okay? They have laughed at law enforcement. They go in there. They've done all kinds of issues, things. They have burglarized cars. I understand that law enforcement cannot be at all places at all times. That's understandable. We have to help them be their eyes and ears. We have to find something better than what we have now. What's there is not working. So if we're living in the 21st century and we have all these tools available, let's consider them. This is costing money to us. We're not getting nothing. We're really not getting nothing. We're paying for a service that they do nothing. I MEAN, I CAN GET ON AND ON AND ON, AND SOME OF YOU MIGHT LAUGH AT IT, BUT, YOU KNOW, I HAVE TO REPRESENT THE RESIDENTS THAT ARE ON THE SIDE. THERE'S A BETTER IDEA AND THERE'S BETTER TOOLS THAT WE CAN USE THAN THAT LIVE BODY. SO PLEASE CONSIDER IT.

COUNCILMAN GARCIA TO BRING US HOME.

Thank you, Mayor. I think anytime we can take a look at alternatives. I know the Anchorage uses an automated entrance to their gates for a while now, and they also have customer service. You can talk to a live person if you need any issues. So the technology exists, and looking into it, at least seeing if it's an alternative to certain districts, I think is a good idea. So I'll be for the item.

Councilman Sanchez. I just want to reflect back on the report that our major gives where we've only had 49 crimes year-to-date and we're down 42 percent. 49 crimes across 10,000 homes I think is a pretty good number. Not just the special talent district but town-wide. So and I think the deterrent is a good portion of that. It's a good reason as to why our numbers are down in addition to our police officers. That's all.

All right, this is coming back to us. So all those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. No. The ayes have it, the motion carries. We are now on 16B by Councilman Sanchez.

16b so miami lakes has an estimated population of 35 000 people we have for hurricane seasons when they come we have two urgent cares and an er in order to expand that ccms which we are all familiar with mario espino we gave him a proclamation he is the ceo and president of the company has offered one of his he has these mobile units that go to homes in order to help residents with or the elderly community with needs that they might have might be a regular checkup x-rays anything like that he has proposed being part of emergency network after a hurricane so in addition to those 2 emerging that those 2 urgent cares and that you are we have a little bit more. help when it comes to, you know, attending to 35,000 residents. So my motion is to with the resolution is to direct the town manager on behalf of Miami Lakes to work with CCMS and a Miami-Dade County Fire Department to include them in our circle of emergency response post the storm.

seconded by moved by councilman sanchez uh seconded by councilman garcia is there any discussion on the item uh uh councilman hersberg or first let me just ask uh councilman garcia did you have any discussion or were you just seconding to move it along no i'm uh this is for directing the town to look into the you know being in part they're going to come back with the details correct so yeah yeah

Right. So if this is just for the town to come back, I mean, we don't have a fire department, right? So I'm confused on what are we asking?

So when someone calls 911 after a storm, the 911 would consider the CCMS mobile unit within Miami Lakes to be a point of care. instead of having to take them to palmetto or take them to the the er the two urgent cares depending on what they need so if they need if they have a broken bone then they go to the emergency room but if they're having like a panic attack they would go to a lower level of care like the ccms mobile right no i i get all that but we don't operate the 911 system we don't operate the fire department no so that's why it would be a three-party system will be miami lakes asking the fire department to include them in the miami lakes circle of care So if someone from I'm just called 911 and says I'm having I think a panic attack or or a heart attack or stroke and they would include CCMS that the for the evidence to go to them.

I guess my question why the town asking we shouldn't see CMS just be asking Miami the fire to I like the idea.

Miami did fire would send them somewhere across the county.

Miami-Dade Fire is going to send them where the Miami-Dade Fire wants them. We don't have any say in what our fire department does. I like the idea of CCMS maybe partnering with the town if there is a storm and the town saying, hey, they're over here in Town Hall. If you need medical care, come here. I like that idea. just don't see why we're getting involved in 9-1-1s and miami-dade fire i i just it's almost like we're pushing for ccms to become part of the 911 system this has nothing to do with it we don't control any of that right that's all i'm just trying to figure that out a vice mayor moreno thank you so

I mean, I'm very familiar with CCMS. They're a phenomenal company. I hold them in very high regard. My one issue is I do see a little bit too much of government promotion of a single corporate entity. And in the vein of what Councilman Herzberg was saying, I actually do support us designating saying, hey, In the event of a declared weather emergency, I think is how you phrase it here, CCMS can use Robert Alonzo, can set up at Robert Alonzo and at MLOP. So we have the west side and the east side covered. We don't have to worry about road blockages after a storm or something like that. I'm completely okay with that. But again, in the interest of fairness and not playing favorites, and while, again, like I said, I hold them in very high regard, I would expect them to win, they would need to go through a competitive bidding process to be the ones selected to be there at those sites so that... the mayor or the county mayor declares a state of emergency, that then opens up their having been picked after a bidding process to be the one that is there because let's call a spade a spade, they're not there for free. They're charging for those services. And the other concern that I have is them being private the way that they are, are they allowed to reject patients? Because again, we're talking about a weather emergency, declared weather emergency. If they are uninsured, can CCMS turn them away? Because when you get rescued by fire rescue, they're not asking, I mean, they're gonna eventually ask for your insurance. But if you say no, they're still going to treat you. They're not going to turn you away. They're going to take you to an emergency room. My concern is the town putting its stamp of approval on a private entity that could potentially turn away an uninsured patient. And then we are the ones that are getting into problems. So that's my main concern. I think that this is a phenomenal idea that simply just, I think I'll support the item even, to allow it to come back, which is what we're voting on, but I have some serious concerns that do need to get parsed out between here and then, is my point.

Mr. Mayor. We'll go to you, then Councilman Garcia, do you want to say anything after him?

SECONDED NO I'M OKAY THANK YOU OKAY UH COUNCILMAN FERNANDEZ OKAY JUST GETTING A LINE UP SO YOU GO AHEAD AND THEN I'LL CLOSE THANK YOU MR MAYOR UH REQUESTING A POINT OF PRIVILEGE UH TO CORRECT UH ITEM 16A FROM A NAY TO A YAY

Madam Clerk, I think, just can you? Yes. Okay, thank you. It's noted. Thank you, I think he was a little confused is all that happened. Of course. So with that, Councilman Sanchez, I get where you're coming from. And I believe that the Vice Mayor raises a valid point about concerns regarding a competitive process. But again, just like him, I'm gonna vote to advance this and wait back on the final form of this item to further evaluate it. if for whatever reason we have to go ahead and do a strike all amendment later and you know and shape it more as a as an rfp then we can do it at that point uh but in the meantime let's just uh move forward so with that mayor yeah i just want to be clear because what what is the council voting on because you're all saying different things yeah council member sanchez has a written uh

you know request or member or motion on here but several of you have said different things i just want to be sure be sure that we comply with what the will of the council is

well okay councilman you want to take the first stab at it yeah if i may mayor because there's a resolution here directing the town manager to hereby authorize and coordinate with miami-dade fire rescue i don't think that's what at least to me i don't like the idea of just because the resolutions in the mbi that it necessarily means that the item flies into passage right unless it's an urging which this is more than an urging right it's asking for something to be done So just to be clear, I mean, if somebody correct me if I'm wrong, I'm pretty sure this has to come back.

right but what i guess mr mayor the items directing the town manager to do something isn't that the the point of the item i'm confused on what what are you trying are you do you intend for it to come back i do intend for it to come back because we still have to an mou needs to be developed we need to see if the fire department is willing to even put them in their circle of care in their