P&z Board - Regular Meeting

Mr. Sandra. All right. I believe we we do have a quorum. We're only missing Raul, I think. I mean, Robert Robert is the one we're missing, right? Julia. Robert.

Mr. Julia. Robert Julia is the only one we're missing. All right. So, uh, call the meeting to order. Um, let us please stand for the pledge of allegiance. 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. Now, let's have a a moment of silence for and remember the two police officers that uh just passed and uh and also uh for the veterans that have uh been in service and uh some uh you know that so courageous and you know for serving a number of years to our beloved country. You may be seated

through the chair. I'm going to go ahead and call roll just to get that out of the way. Board member Deasier, present. Board member Cruz, present. Board member Leonio, present. Vice Chair Rodriguez here and Chair Senra present. Chair, you have quum. All right. So, um make a motion to uh approve the minutes from the last meeting. Okay. There is a motion. I'll go ahead and second that.

Okay. Made by Mr. Deasier and uh second by Omero Cruz. Okay, let's go ahead and call the role for the approval of minutes. Motion by Deasier and board member Cruz. Board member Lonio, yes. Board member Deassier, yes. Board member Cruz, yes. Vice Chair Rodriguez, yes. And Chair Senra, yes. The minutes have been approved.

All right. So, uh I guess we uh we don't have any public comments uh tonight. It's just the presentation of the uh traffic. Uh right. There are no public comments or participants here today nor online. Okay. So, uh with the town, uh Susanna or

Yes. So, uh, hello, um, board member and, uh, and chairman. Um, I'm here to present Jesus Fentes. I'm sorry. Um, I'm here that he's going to be presenting two very special projects that I've been talking to you all about for months. [cough] I'm sorry. I know some of you have seen this in prior um, presentations. This is the first time that we present to the planning board at some point in January. This will need to be adopted by the town council. Uh both two different plans, the vision zero and the transportation master plan. They're separate plans. He's working on both of them at the same time because that's how we saved the town a little money by using the same data to produce all the plans. and he's going to give you the the uh where where we're going with this, where we are at today, and also get your input, which is invaluable for um part of the community outreach that we're doing. And and without any more, this is Jesus Fuentes. He is working with EXP and he's working on both of those plans for us.

Okay. Thank you. There should be a little green little button. No, on the on the shaft of the the microphone the big the long the big stick right there. No, the podium m there's at the bottom at the very bottom. There you go. And just for the record, uh board member Julia is absent. Just to put that on the record. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you uh planning and board uh planning and zoning board for having us today. Uh we would like to present to you if I know how to use the clicker or I'll just say next I guess and then they'll change it. All right. So uh today I'm going to be presenting to you two projects that we have ongoing right now in uh working with Tusana and we're trying to um do an overhaul of the transportation system uh in in um Miami Lakes. The first one is vision zero. So next,

so um in fiscal year 23 um the the town went and applied for federal funding and they got $34,000 uh to do to evaluate the whole transportation system uh to make sure that you can uh look into uh reducing fatalities and severe injuries. And like Susanna mentioned, with this money, the town was able to also do an update to the transportation um master plan and also do an update to the greenways and trail master plan that eventually I will come to you and present and also an update to the complete street master plan. Today I'm going to be presenting to you uh the vision zero, the transportation master plan. So, um, as I mentioned, uh, in 2023, uh, the US Department of Transportation provided, uh, funding to the town, uh, in the ballpark of $34,000 and then to work on a vision zero comprehensive safety action plan. What is vision zero? Vision zero is a is an initiative that looks into uh the the roads and try to mitigate those uh fatalities and severe injuries. understanding that we all are humans, we all make mistakes and try to make sure that the number of people dying on the road is less by designing our roads, by doing education, by doing all these different counter measures to try to make sure that our roads are much safer. And then they focus on something called the safe system approach. the safe system approach look into safer roads, safer cars, uh pos post care, uh when you have an accident, different components to make sure that um the way that we look at the transportation is in in a more holistic way. And this come

from the federal government um and with the the goal of of looking at crashes as preventable occurrences. You can prevent a crash if you look into your roadway system and make it much safer. So, look at the crashes in uh Miami Lakes. We looked at from 2016 to 2022. You can see they're all over the place. Um, but the majority of them are on 57th Avenue. I mean, that I don't think that's a surprise to anybody, but a lot of the the crashes are on 57th Avenue. Okay, within that time within that that time period we had 783 crashes. Um and um we excluded specifically I75 and the Palmetto because Miami Lakes is landlocked by highways and it's unfair to add all those crashes that are happening on the highways to Miami Lakes because it's not reflective of actually happening within the roadway system of the town. And then you look at the fluctuation of the crashes. Everything was going well. I mean, typically, as we all know, in March of 2020, we had the the COVID pandemic and a lot of the crashes went down. It went a little bit up and everything was going well, but then in 2024, you can see that you have a 314% increase in crashes. Um, so something happening and and that's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to figure it out what exactly is happening that is causing this type of increase. It's typical to have that fluctuation up and down. Um we would like to see it all going uh down from if if you look at the numbers it actually went 48% down from the highest point which was in 2016 but you know in 2024 it went up again.

And if you look at the type of crashes, the majority of the crashes are sidewipes. Um, and you have rear ending, which is rear ending. When you have a lot of rear ending crashes, that means there's a lot of congestion. Um, so folks are not stopping at the time that they need to stop. Uh, you also have a lot of left turn crashes, off-road crashes, meaning that a vehicle is hitting something off road, whether it's a fire hydrant, a tree. Uh, interesting enough in [snorts] Miami Lake that we have a metric that uh crashes with animals. So, there's also crashes with dogs and and different animals. Um, you also have rollovers and right turns and then you also have pedestrians uh crashes. And then here's a distribution of all the crashes throughout the town. And you can see again how lit up is 57th Avenue. in 57th Avenue. Um it's it's it has a concentration of the crashes not because it's a FDOT road. It's just because it has six lanes. It's faster. The probability of crashing on 57th Avenue is much higher than in other roads within the town. And you can see how um the the fluctuation with the number of people injured. Um we were doing everything was fine. 2023 was hunky dory and then 2024 we have 19 injured uh folks in in the town of Miami Lakes. So we want to make sure that the counter measures or the the the um uh improvements that we do to the roadway minimize that and and keep it at the level that is close to zero because that's the that's hence the vision zero uh of the the the initiative and you can see over here I'm going to show you the heat map again look at 57th Avenue 57th

Avenue is where everything is happening and I might add the 57th Avenue is also where you have a lot of industrial activity. So um which I'm going to present to you in a little bit uh when uh with the transportation master plan, but that was never evaluated in the town of Miami Lakes. When the the original transportation master plan of the town of Miami Lake was developed back in 2004, freight was not even considered. And if you start looking at crashes of commercial vehicles and vulnerable users, pedestrians and cyclists and whatnot, a lot of them are happening on 57th Avenue. And that's just because that's the route the freight, you know, vehicles go and take to go to the Palmetto or to the rest of the uh regional network. And you can see here the distribution and and you know 69% of the crashes are happening on FDOT roads. Um and again it's not just because it's FDOT. Their roads are bigger, faster, they have much higher um um traffic volume. So the probability of having crashes on those locations is much higher. But interesting enough, the second highest is um the town of um roads that belong to the town of Miami Lakes. About 22% of the crashes are happening on town of Miami Lakes. And that's where we're going to focus our um improvements on roads that the town can address. And then we're going to provide a memorandum to the county, Mr. County, Mrs. County, Mr. DOT, Mrs. DOT, these are the problems that we see on your roads. Please address them. So, everybody has to pitch in and take, you know, part on the whole effort. But you can see there

that um that even though the majority of the DOT is 6% of the roads within the town, 69% of the crashes happen there. So, it's a significant amount. It's a very, you know, the discrepancy is very obvious. Um and then you do what we call the high injury network. What is the high injury network? It's the collection of roads where the majority of the crashes are happening. And you can see here in Miami Lake about 85% of the crashes are happening on nine roads. Nine miles of roadway. All of them are concentrating those nine miles. So you uh develop this high injury network because that's where you want to concentrate your countermeasures. That's where you want to concentrate. Those are the lowhanging fruits for you to address those issues and that's where we're going to do the uh the majority of the of the improvements whether it belongs to FDOT, the county of or the town. We have done a lot of public outreach. We have met a lot of the residents to gather a lot of feedback. Uh we started this in July back in July when we did a bike helmet giveaway and collected surveys at the uh farmers market. Then we did the national night out with the police department in early August. Then we went again to the farmers market and then we went to we have coffee at the firehouse station 64 where we gather a lot of feedback from folks as well. We went to the senior bingo in August uh late August where we collected a lot of um uh feedback as well. Uh we went to the uh chamber of commerce where we presented the case as well. We got a a really great reception from there. Everybody was interested in the whole um uh trying to make sure that we address the issue because it becomes an economic issue. Um if Miami lakes wants to continue to be competitive in

comparison to other towns in the region, they have to address the issue because folks are going to move to Miami Lakes because it's safer. they want to move to M. I want to bring my business to Miami Lakes because it's much safer than DA or Halia. So that's the idea that we brought to the Chamber of Commerce and it was they were very receptive. We went again to the senior bingo um late in September. We went also to the Cars for Heroes early um in October. We went to the Popto Fest a couple weeks ago. So we have talked to a lot of people and we have collected a lot of um surveys. Nonetheless, we have created the dashboard. If you want to scan it and look at, you know, when you're bored at home, you can scan the QR code and look at where all the crosses are happening. You can see all those locations and it will show you a bunch of metrics where you can uh play around with it. The public comments map, we have created this not only for the vision zero effort, but also for the transportation master plan update. The public's comments map is going to be open until November 30th because that's the when we're going to start closing out the the gathering feedback from the from the uh public. As you can see in a lot of the pinpoints that you see over there, those dots that look, you know, blue, green, those are folks putting locations where they would like to see improvements. So, um, what we they have said to us and this have they when we collected the surveys, they go and fill out that location and they pinpoint where they would like to see improvements all over town. The surveys, we have collected a lot of surveys as I mentioned before. um we have it in English and in Spanish and it's going to be open to the public until November 30th as well. That's where we're going to close out um the the survey collection.

And if you have any questions with regards to vision zero, our next step it will be putting together the counter measures and then we're going to be presenting a lot of this to all the different stakeholders. We have met uh we h we ho hosted what we call the vision zero talks where we met with your like board like yours. We went to the veterans affair, the safety affair, the seniors affair. We went met with parks and and recreation. We met with you know um UN bike safe walk safe. We met with uh Miami Day Transit, DTBW, FDOT. We met with all the different stakeholders through you know that could make a difference or provide some uh um feedback and then um so we closed in that phase out and you guys are the last ones that were meeting for that purpose. Uh we also met with Miami Day TBO which is the planning agency. Um and then um we presented to BPAC which is the bicycle and pedestrian safety uh uh action advisory committee um to FTAC. was here um in these chambers. Um so we have talked to a lot of folks. So we're closing out the public engagement phase of it. Once we have um specific countermeasures, we're going to come back to you guys and say, "Hey, what do you think about it? Um can we have your support so we can move to adoption?" And that's pretty much it of the process for this particular effort. Where I have a question. Where on uh on 57th Avenue is the concentration of most uh accidents

by the school? By the school by the uh technical school. Yeah. Yeah. We seen a lot of that from that school. A little bit further. Um north or south? North. North. Yeah. And the school is actually on the south. Yeah. Yeah. It starts a little bit a little bit south of the school and it goes all the way, you know, there's like um um Chick-fil-A in that area. So, it goes a little bit that's north of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All that segment that's where a lot of the crashes that we're seeing there. And then we've seen the thing is that I, you know, I didn't want to overwhelm you with a lot of statistics and whatnot, but we've seen a lot of crashes specifically um with mopeds in that location.

Um we have seen pedestrian crashes. We we as part of our evaluation, we looked at specifically at the school the boundaries like a a quarter mile of the school to see crashes within that boundary. And we looked at the crashes specifically during school hours and school days um to see if there's a correlation with between it. And then we've seen some um some crashes as well. So there's an opportunity for the town to address safe route to school, which I know is something that the town has been looking to do for a while. So um but yes that's that segment of 57 and I think that the problem is that um the side that is adjacent to the um airport you technically

it's not inside the town boundaries. Yeah it's outside the town and it makes it very difficult because half of the road belongs to you the other half belongs to Yeah. The southbound is closer to the Miami boundary. Yeah. So it makes it difficult to analyze. Um but nonetheless we say like you know what it's it it will make a difference if it's within or not 57 is the is the specific the print you know the main focus of the practices but I can say to you that we also and you're going to see it in our assessment for the transportation master plan that

um 154th is also very problematic because it's the only road that you have to go east And because you open uh the bridges to Halia to the annex, then you start having a lot more traffic of folks coming that way here. And we're starting seeing pockets of of crashes in those locations as well, especially in 87th. Um 87.

Yeah, it's it's not it's not as uh as prominent as in on the east side of town. Um, but you see some crashes popping up, locations, like clusters of crashes popping up here and there on the east. You'll see the diagram. There's a lot near the school, which probably if you start looking at on [clears throat] your first slide there, the the one that had the red dots. But when you start looking at the the on the west side, it's it's closer to Barbara Goldman,

all the red dots, but Miami Lakes Drive and 87th Avenue, because I live right there, has a lot of significant accidents. and then it goes south from there. Um although now with the new the new bridge open, I'm sure that that there's going to be a spotlight. I don't know if you can visualize it on Yeah, I see already a couple dots. I see a lot of dots there. And those are dots. Those are not dots from 2016. Those are dots that recent from 2024 and right on 87. Yeah. On 87 and 107. Well, that's probably because the uh the artery was open. Yeah. So you increase the total

although there's not supposed there's not supposed to be trucks there. Rarely do you see a truck but there there is some trucks there. Hey if if if uh with the chair's permission. So, [clears throat] in 2015, 2016, I believe that uh the the former vice mayor Tony Lama and myself hosted a um transportation uh meeting with um everybody the all the stakeholders who It was very interesting because the county and the state kind of sat down and they started looking at each other's plans and they weren't talking. The state and the county were not talking on what was happening. So, out of that um meeting and and that that uh all those presentations, we put together a master plan for traffic. And uh one of the biggest things that we had was [clears throat] um well, the state had replanned the palmetto. So, If you guys aren't aware that the pomemetto was a $825 million project.

I was part of that advisor. Right. Exactly. You're part of the advisory board to to open to stretch the palmetto out. Unfortunately

Unfortunately, there's a there's a a gas line that comes from Port Everglades that follows the Palmetto along and nobody wants to pay for that gas line to be moved, which is about the price of just the project. So, so that that that's why we have the the mess on the palmetto when they stretched over at 103rd Street. They they did that. Um, now they did some new mess on the on the northbound lanes at 103rd, which I guarantee you if you start looking statistically, there's a bunch of accidents there because people are merging. Uh, and then one of the other plans that we had gotten was 57th Avenue was supposed to have a diamond exchange where you go opposite directions,

right? Um, and then two underpasses underneath the Palmetto to do east west um lateral Texas U-turn. Well, no, those are Texas U-turns, but they were supposed to be underneath the Palmetto. one for 148 to get to to where um Miami Children's Urgent Care is, right?

And the other one at Bob Barbara Gome I mean Bob Graham at Bob Graham underpass so that people don't have to take Miami Lakes Drive coming out of PSN and those areas they can just catch the Palmetto from there. So that that plan was destroyed and crushed um because this gas line situation. So, you know, it's it's uh to see this coming back again is really really nice. Um I just don't know if the you know, we can control what we can control Miami Lakes are our traffic light uh whisper is about to retire. Yeah. Um what I can tell you

our major our major and the traffic light system on 87th Avenue in the pal I mean uh Miami Lake in the Palmetto that that unfortunately that is really one of the bottlenecks on the way here. Traffic from traffic west to the Palmetto was all the way up to Miami Lakeway uh south. And then you're gonna see in my next presentation we looked at sorry

um and you're going to see in my next presentations because we looked at the volume to capacity analysis of the roads in Miami Lakes they already are outside the level of service and what's interesting um and I don't know if you know that about the transportation um element of the comprehensive plan of the the town is that the east side of the town has a different level of service than the west side of the town. Um because the east side of the town was developed earlier um and it has a lot more um commercial activity. The level service that is allowed for that section is E. Uh which you know a level service E is you still see a lot of congestion. Um it's not failing but you see congestion. Um the west side of the town um in the the the divide is the Palmetto. Um the west side of the town is a level service D. Um which is typical to suburban environments. But the thing is that the town is so disconnected from one side to another that you force everybody to drive. And then the town already that Miami Lakes Drive is already the whole entire segment from 87 all the way to 57 is already failing level of service.

That's the only way that you can go

now. It's failing. This is failing now the level of service. So because remember the planning effort that we're doing for the transportation master plan is a a horizon year of 25 years. So we're looking in how Miami Lakes is going to behave in 25 years and what can we do to mitigate what we problems that we have with the limitations that we have because you don't have any more right away. So and we all know the rightway is extremely expensive. So already Miami Lakes Drive 154th is already not meeting capacity. 2025 and don't even get me started to 2050 and you're going to see the numbers. Uh so it's it's really you got to change the dynamic of how provide options to folks. Um and so they can we we even had an exercise that we I'm going to show you the pictures of the exercise. We did what we call let's take the bus Miami links. We took the bus with transit alliance Miami. We took the bus with Miami Day Transit and we also took the freebie and to to assess how the on demand service is. It was interesting to us that the folks who operated thought that told us that some of some users believe that their own car and they don't like to share with anybody which is not the case. Um we looked at how okay let's take the bus and how we experience it as users because what happens often is that you have folks who are designing infrastructure and they don't even use the infrastructure. So we decided to take the bus to test it out and then you have some you know improvements that you got to do. So you got to make it more amicable for folks to move around. Especially cuz the crashes, one thing that I didn't mention, the crashes in Miami Lakes, a big chunk of the crashes are the elderly

and the young. So if and Miami Lakes population over 65 is going to grow more and more and more. And if Miami Lakes wants to become a a um agent in place location community, which I feel that a lot of our communities are becoming that way, um you got to make a choice. And so that's why the the this exercise and the exercise that we're going to present is about providing choices to the town of Miami Lakes. So you guys choose what you're comfortable with and and perhaps it's good that we start the other presentation because you have talking about the stuff that we already over but with regards to crashes is really you got to look at in a more holistic way and what we have corroborated with the folks are everybody's telling us we need to slow down traffic especially in the residential areas. People are rushing, especially by the um Barbara Goldman um school. Everybody's rushing in that area. They all tell us we need to slow down traffic. Again, it's a decision as a as a town, as a community. What would you like to do as a town? Would you like to have a a more low pace for folks to walk around or you know, we got to make that decision. So that's kind of like the exercise that we're working on and we hope to present to you the counter measures soon so you can let us know.

On the last council meeting we had a comment on the 25 mph limit and I was surprised that uh one of the old folks said that uh for her 25 miles per hour was too slow that it looked like he was not driving. So some people are complaining already about the 25 mile per hour. I I believe it. You know, when I was a kid, I was able to walk to school. Can I send my son to school walking to school? Hell no.

No. And [clears throat] in um in one of the programs that we tried to to do that, the county wouldn't invest the monies to change the signs to 25 miles an hour. So, um, when I was when I was a firefighter in Coral Gables, they the city spent the money

and then changed all the signs to 25 thou to 25 miles an hour and then they were able to bring it into uh only the streets that that belong to the city. Um, but it became a bit little bit more effective and at the same time they were able to avoid speed bumps and all that stuff, but they had an aggressive enforcement. We don't have a motorcycle unit in Miami Lakes because, you know, they they they disbanded that. We had three motorcycles at one time. Um, now we have none. But our officers are out there giving tickets, but they're usually on the main roads trying to avoid all the craziness. They're giving tickets on 87th Avenue, Miami Lakes Drive all the time. All the time I see them for speeders, and it's fantastic,

but I don't think the town has the money to bring the the the 25 mile per hour signs into perspective. and and I'm gonna I'm gonna appeal to the reason that you he's presenting to this board is because you all have very specific um talents that we implore you use as as um as volunteers on this board. Uh we have two architects, one construction person, one firefighter and one um person that has made his living selling vehicles for most of his existence. So this is I know who that is. you have a very very particular set of I know who that is [laughter] and and I'm going to appeal now

I'm going to appeal now to the two architects and their sense of design in saying that you know just posting a speed limit is not how you manage speed you manage speed by managing the built environment and managing how things are designed around them and that's what we're working on we're working on how are we going to design our built environment our outdoor space our our our space so that it's encouraged that people drive slower. Not because the posted speed limit is some arbitrary number that we can come up with, but because it feels safer to drive at the right speed. Because I can assure you that none of you are speeding driving down B or Cowpen. Why? Because they don't feel like you want to speed there. Are you speeding on fairway? Yes, you are. Why? Because you want to speed it because it's nice and straight and there's nothing.

It's true. was inviting. There's no there's no side. There's no cars parked on the side. Correct. There's no obstacles for you to crash into. You see, do you do the same thing in Bull Run? No, you do not. In Run, you're going with You see a lot of places uh down south now where they do the uh the turnaround and the curving. Yeah.

So, it'll slow down. So there's a lot of little things and and that will be the second part of all this exercise where he's going to start proposing how we will be asking FDA the county and even ourselves in the future to redesign our roads so that we are pressuring people to have safer driving habits not out of mandates and enforcement but more because they don't have other choice because that's what they feel like doing. It's a little bit more using design smartly to to create an environment and and that's why I'm very excited about this project as an architect myself. I think you know this is how you really behavior right

by creating an environment that is inducive to that behavior being this is a a geo engineering is also a psychic effort because you have to uh be able to provide options and I town one you start putting together all the compar to what it was in the future. So you have why so slow we crashes by 40 I don't know 40% we've had two fatalities on fairway and Miami lakes drive

that that you're absolutely right that's vital to to straight net so don't slow down so that would I'm sure you would say that that would probably be a great place for roundabout might be my way down the same. There's several roads. We all know is a speed.

Very good. A stray shot. Yeah. And I do my And so ago they just changed and having a day there. But so my lake was site is actually a great example of a place where people are speeding that we can design better by introducing first vertical elements on the sides. Yeah.

Right. More which more trees vertical elements closer to the road that make you feel a little more enclosed because that makes you feel like less speeding. So wide open road makes you feel like you can go faster, safer when you start seeing putting that make you feel, oh, when I get that's another visual cue of you need to slow down. You can't using some Um,

are things that need to be looked at on the spot deserves its own uh you need to look at it for first. Yeah, every road deserves it own geometry, but there's tricks that have already employed in other places that work really well. It doesn't make the road nicer and more pleasant to drive in. The best one is trees. Trees are a great

and I can give you I can give you an example of something because I don't know who the construction person is but so I before implementation instead of round. You could not corridor. All people the street families with on Imagine with educational components. We don't change that as well.

And one of the ways that this partic is you guys approve variances, right? You approve how we deviate from the stand of the town code. The town code has a lot to do. A lot of things that we need to change in the town code. Yeah.

To allow these changes to happen better. And you know, we're gonna be discussing fences at the end of the day today. You know, believe it or not, not want to be on those sidewalks and try to get into their cars. today and you you're actively participating many many years other inter interventions more more effective how we're going to communicate with other agencies how do we communicate with FDA when they come in with a project well we're going to pull out this bag of tricks and say no you cannot do this to our road because you're going to make it worse in this way. So you need to make it so that it's compliant with this vision zero plan that we have so that you don't make our roads more dangerous that you make them less dangerous. Right? Same thing with the county. These are the these are the things that we asked you to do and when you come in and say that you're going to improve this road or you're going to want you to do what set of circumstances we have your own future and that's that's the whole exercise about this you know The first transportation master plan for M was it was like trying to throw something at

the wall and see what sticks. It was not done per mode of transportation looking specifically. Let's look at pedestrians and see what are the needs for pedestrians. Let's look at transit and see what are the needs for transit. So the way that we're doing this is looking at every single way that folks move around in Miami Lakes and looking what is the need of that type of uh mode of transportation and what solutions can we provide as we look ahead in the next 25 years into the future. So, um, this money partially is also from coming from the Miami ATP, the part of the municipal program. Um, and so because the town of Miami Day got the money from the federal government as well, we use the same data for everything. And in that way, the town was able to save a lot of money and update all the m planning that they needed to update. So the goals are, you know, not only to engage the community but to uh look at traffic models and see how the dynamics are for Miami Lakes, you know, make sure that we can provide options to folks to move around based on the needs of today and the needs of the future. uh and look at the different different funding mechanisms to provide uh uh you know resources so Miami can be able to implement it, right? Because it's it's you can put together a

Sorry to interrupt. Is your mic on? Is the light on on the mic? Yes. Okay, perfect. Thank you.

Um it the you can have a beautiful plan, but if you don't have the money to implement it, then the plan is going to be on the shelf and and it's not going to get anywhere. So, this is how Miami Lakes moves around right now. You can see and then I'm going to compare Miami Lakes with Miami Day County. Um, Miami Lakes right now is behaves transportation wide as a very typical suburban community. About, you know, 76 77% of the population drives by themselves. Um, good for you, right? [laughter] Um, you also have about 10% that are car pooling and only 2% not even 2% take the bus. Uh, 3% you know use taxi or on demand services. It's everything the other modes are very minimal and you also have a percentage significant percentage about 11% that works from home because that's something that we can do now. Remember in 2004 we couldn't do that. That technology did not exist and that's the whole point when the in 2004 we didn't have microobility. We didn't have on demand apps that we can call for. So it is very different and then the the idea is to look at those things and what could be in the future. So, but look at Miami Lakes um Miami Day County overall. It's a little bit less uh reliant on the on the car. Still very heavily reliant on the car. But what we're trying to uh propose is to try to make sure or try to have Miami Lakes to move closer to the average of Miami date county without compromising the freedom of movement of Miami Lakers. We're still

Miami acres will still be able to move around how they want to move around, right? So, you're gonna be pro uh preserving your suburban lifestyle. That's nothing is going to change. We're just going to provide you options. We want to say, "Hey, folks, try it out. See if you like it, if it works for you." And then, you know, perhaps you don't have to drive to come to the farmers market when you live three, four blocks away. You can walk to that location. Having the option of walking is yours if you have the infrastructure, right? If you don't have the infrastructure, then you're not going to be able to do it. So, having that type of um enhancement to the economic opportunities of everybody, everybody will have better access to jobs, to businesses, to school, to health care. So, providing different options for folks to move around. And that's what we're trying to propose. Having Miami Lakes moving a little bit closer to the average now of Miami Day County, which is still very suburban. It's not that we're not asking you to be Bickl. We're saying that it's you still going to have options to still drive around if you would like, but having the option to move with other means. Could this be the future of Miami Lakes? Think about it. You gota decide what you want to do as as a as a community, right? So, we looked at, for example, the bicycle needs. Right now, you have not even 10 miles and you ask, "Well, nobody bikes in Miami." Well, this is why you have no infrastructure and it's all segregated. There's no connection to anything. You have minimal separation. You can see over there unprotected, unprotected, unprotected, unprotected. So how would you expect people to actually bike when you have facilities like for example Lutland

that have 16% of the the of the traffic is truck traffic? No. So put yourself in the situation. The idea is that we provide facilities for everybody right for all ages and abilities making sure that everybody can move around the way they want. So only three facilities within town are protected and you have a lot of shar. I don't know if you know what shar like the symbols that are painted on the road that means that you share the road with that's not bicycle facility. Yes, it means that you have to the share the road with the cyclist but you you know the drivers are going to drive the way they feel that driving. That's not really a cycling infrastructure. So you have a very specific need for cycling infrastructure in Miami Lakes and that needs to be addressed. So what we are proposing is we are proposing to uh about 15 miles of bicycle infrastructure to provide to start having those connections and once you start building that wrership then the need increases and you continue building more connections because the idea is that you have to have a network that is secure or safe that is attractive. People are going to remember everything is about um options. Is this more appealing to me than driving? They're not bike. It has to be attractive for people's to use it. It has to be comfortable for people to use it, right? It has to be direct. Why do I have to go and divert and do 300, you know, diversion to go to the same place that a car will go in in two minutes, right? You have to have that. And it has to have a cohesive network. You have to have facilities where you can move around in a way that is simple like if you're driving, right? So, we want to make sure that cycling is also a

competitive mode. And with that is that we're proposing at least 15 miles on new facilities all over town. [clears throat] Oops. Pedestrians as well. You're doing much better with pedestrian infrastructure. You have a lot of sidewalk all over the place, you know. Um, if you look at it, you have, if you count both sides of the of the the the road, you have about 72 miles of sidewalk. That's really impressive, right? It's people can walk in Miami Lakes and I think that's something that Miami Lakes is known for the trees and you can walk with a nice shade of trees, right? But you still have some gaps, especially in the areas and they are very industrial. You don't have sidewalks there and that's when you start seeing crashes. So, we're proposing about 16 miles of sidewalk. Some roads have sidewalk on one side, some roads have need sidewalk on both sides. What we're trying to do is to close the gap. We want to make sure that Miami Lakers can walk and and this the the facility is for all ages and abilities. If you walking with a cane, you'll be able to use the sidewalk. A lot of the sidewalk do not have ramps, for example. of the crosswalks are not in compliance with ADA. Or you get to the intersections, which is 72% of the crosses in Miami Lakes happen at intersections. And you get to intersections and the intersections are not the zebra crossings. They're not high visibility crossings or you don't have you have intersections that need some daylighting, meaning that you have to provide more visibility to those who are walking and biking. So that those minor changes here and there provide make a difference. And that's what we're trying to say here. Let's close the gap. Providing 16 miles of coverage so we can close that gap. And but one thing is important. Even though Miami Lakes has a

lot of trees, trees are not equally distributed in the town, the eastern side of Miami Lakes was designed around trees. The western side of Miami Lakes is a different story. And that's where you need you have a lot of the gaps because if you know and you know if you go to your neighbors to the south hay aliyah is known for what the old ladies with the little umbrellas walking because it's it's really hot on the street right so that's we have seen that situation on the west side of Miami lakes why because it's extremely hot and we we have in the summer sometimes we have days that it's 100° and a person that is 65 or over is not going to walk that. So imagine if you don't have a car, you cannot drive and you need to go to the the to Publix for example and you cannot walk and you have nobody can drive you there. So you limit the capability of that person you know the elderly person to be independent that independence important for some the the elderly is about 15% of the population in Miami Lakes. So you're limiting the independence of those folks. So that's that's the idea. provide infrastructure for all ages and abilities to make sure that everybody can use the facilities. Transit, you know, you have a lot of you have a lot of uh bus stops, you have some bro uh some transit routes. Um but not all the bus stops are ADA compliant. It's just the pole the route and that's it. If it rains, you're screwed. Well, one of the problems with buses from the the county buses is they don't go straight.

No. And if you took that um I mean, for example, the bus in the west side of Miami Lakes comes off of 82nd Avenue, which is completely residential. Um you know, and it does it's not on 87 it's not on 87th Avenue, which is a high density road, right? Um, and so that was one of the biggest things. I think the the problem on the west side is we have a lot more homeowners associations where we have walls and we have no access. Um, there's not even a gate there for people to catch the bus on 87th. So you have you have buses on on residential streets, right?

Uh like 82nd Avenue, right? You know, until they get south to the to the corporate area. But yeah, um I think I think that I mean if you look at I don't know if you did the research, but I'd love to see the the the number of riderships that actually ride buses in Miami Lakes.

We do have those numbers in the plans. And then and then the what I can tell you is that the we looked at transit propensity meaning how feasible is that you're going to ride transit in certain locations and the locations that you're say saying are the ones that need it the most. Why? Because you have a higher concentration of of people over 65 and younger than 15. They cannot drive. So they rely on transit to move around and they're all in the southwest corner of the town. That's the area the majority of the need is and you don't have transit there.

So when the town had two buses before we went to freebie, the majority of the buses were being used by the high schoolers. Yep. Out of out of uh Barber Gman in the afternoon. So people were complaining that they couldn't get access to the buses in the afternoon, but it was reducing a lot of traffic at the time. Yeah.

So we went to Freeb uh because it was cost effective. The buses had limited out. Their their maturity date had come and go. Maintenance was a nightmare. We didn't have a third bus backup. Um so those those things were affected uh at that time. But we looked at also the metrics for free freebie because that's one of the things in the exercise that we say let's take the bus ops the waiting time is horrendous. If I have to wait 36 minutes for a freebie is unreliable. You could have a service and you can have some modest writership, but if you have more cancellations than writership, your service is is useless. And that happens here often. That happens in Halia. That happens in because congestion makes it unreliable. So if you have a waiting time of more than 30 minutes for a on demand service is unreliable. So by taking away the only connection that you guys had for east and west and I understand that the limitations of maintenance and that was the the whole drive of removing the but by removing that connection east west connection you you created a the palmetto now is the grand canyon because now it's the whole town is completely separated. So that's what's happening. And then and then the freebie service now is mainly as the they told us is mainly uh uh people over 65 to go to the bingo uh senior lunchon and all these different things. So before you had the kids right after school, now you have the bingo goers using it. So um you know you solve an a problem but

you created another one and then that this the the separation between the two parts of the town is making it very difficult to to the trans is making a a dent on your transportation system. So I I want to stress that enough because that is a the biggest problem in town is that um

and and let me also u cut in here a little bit. Um there's also commentary every once in a while that you know the kids that are going to the high schools they have parents that can drive them. Why do we have to provide transportation to kids that are going to high school? Because every kid that gets picked up by their parents is four trips a day. Yeah. That are arriving at that school. If you have a school with 1500 kids

and you do the math, that is 4* 1,500. That's how many trips that cute little high school that is in the middle of a residential neighborhood is pulling in every day. And and if you don't think that that's not impacting our level of service that is failing already on our roads, it definitely is. And that is the I can say that for the high school, I can say that for the K8s, I can say that plural, I can say that for the middle school, and I can say that for every single facility that we including the public the private schools. This is a problem that we have in every school where they're no longer going to school walking. They're not taking transit. They're riding their bikes. Individually dropped off and individually picked up by their parents twice a day.

And that's

Yeah, that's mobility of care. you focus on from home to work, work to home because that's the majority of the traffic, but you have this little trips less than three miles and then you had to go to the grocery store, you had to go to the doctor, you had to take your dad to the the dentist, you had to take those little if you are able of those more efficient as a transport system. That's the whole but yes she's correct a lot of congestion and then that's more more times than not not accounted for because it's hard to account unless you track specific people and survey them. It's very hard to do that. We looked at all the required um to they can be accessible for everybody amenities. Imagine having a shelter for all the people and then good luck to you. So in having a lot of the the bus stops are what we call far side meaning the bus stops after crossing which is now and then The folks had to go two blocks and where have the croettas um over there?

American. Yeah, that one that place with the bus there. We had to do all this and ready to use it. about is not just time that I'm supposed to be here with you those changes with the better bus network. I don't know if you're familiar did a couple years ago are not happy about that's what look at propensity and the last mile cap

correct correct so we looked into that and then we're you know some shelters on bus uh a tri. So here to make sure that their the transit is something that my friend over here the the car dealership owner is is going to you know love. See, you know, we are aiming and this is a regional the very uh modest regional growth rate because we're we're already overbuilt. We don't have more space to have a crazy growth that we're going to build Burickl here. It's impossible, right? Um so we're assuming a 1.12 growth and that's this in alignment with the long range transportation plan for the Miami date. So, and then when you look at the traffic projections for now, because the the the the traffic counts that we have are from 2024. If we look at the counts now, we're not meeting, as I mentioned before, the level of service. And if you look at 2050, forget about it. So, you can see over there, 19 out of the 34 corridors in town are not meeting level of service. They're not even meeting level of service E which is already not a good standard to begin with because DOT the quality of level of service which is one of the recommendations that we put together for the vision zero is that the town needs to establish a proper quality level of service not only for cars but for everything and DOT has a level of

service C for suburban environment and D for urban environment. you are going towards failure and that's not should shouldn't be that way. Congestion shouldn't be shouldn't be the norm is that's what I'm trying to say. You can see over here the the traffic volumes look at how many oranges and and reds you have already in 2025 and now look at in 2050 more red. The more red means the more congestion. That means that you're not meeting your level of service. So already you don't you don't have capacity but you don't have capacity and where are you going to create more capacity you don't have right away to do capacity. So that's why providing options is important because you change the dynamic and pro you still moving people just not on cars because you don't have space for the all the cars that we have here. Look at the volume towards capacity. You still see a lot of oranges and and and and reds. Look at 2050, a lot of red, meaning there's there's there's no point of return. And by not having connection between the east and west, it makes the problem even worse. So we have a what we created is a a priority corridors where we're proposing improvements um minor uh signal priority signal uh changes to improve traffic flow because widening the road is impossible. You don't have that um without jeopardizing the quality of of your the lifestyle. you don't have that luxury to widen the road more. So, what we're proposing is um signal timing improvements

um at the intersection providing some geometry changes, more queuing space for you so you can clear out um the traffic a little bit more. Um, and then freight. And the reason why we looked at freight and I said to Susanna, Susanna, when we when the 2004 was done, I don't think that Miami Lakes industrial area was anything. And now it's a very established area where you have I what was it like about three billion um, you know, in total of the whole revenue in the area is about three billion. It's a significant amount area for for revenue.

So we had to look at freight no matter what. Um and then it's not that we are against freight. We had to find a way that freight can coexist with everything else, right? We don't want to be like Halia that we have a big industrial area right next to a fruit stand and then a Jehovah Witness Church. You don't want to have that. You want to have everything organized, right? So, Miami Lakes started with some resolutions to kind of like tame where uh truck parking was happening because truck parking is a big issue. Um because you have the the area, but you don't have where to park those trucks that are delivering the goods. So, it's important that um Miami Lakes a designate truck routes. These are the routes where trucks can be period. You cannot be mixing with residential traffic because that's not the way that you should do it. Especially you want to have it away from residential neighborhoods, schools, and all that. You have some critical intersections where trucks can even do a turnaround because it's so tight that they're damaging the sidewalk, they're damaging the curve, they're damaging everything. So, you need to look at those locations where they're doing the the U-turns to improve that. Um, and other um, you know, transportation uh, needs. Um, look at your parking not only for for vehicles but also for microobility and bicycle. We hosted that um, farmers market event and folks didn't know didn't came with a bike. They didn't have a way to park their bikes. there was no parking space for them. They had to leave it.

Yeah.

So, that shouldn't be the case. If you want more folks to bike and use the, you know, come over here and shop, provide the infrastructure. Um, and one thing that we're putting in the recommendation um for freight and that I wanted to mention as we look in the into the future, I don't know if you have seen the little robots that deliver goods in downtown Miami and Winwood. Those are coming. If you walk on Flaggler Street, they deliver that deliver food to my office. It's a little robot that is called one is called LA, the other one they have cute names and they come to our office with the food and then you open it with a QR code and then then it goes and then it senses you and it moves around that is coming. So think about it if you if you feel that this is very compact area but you don't have space to do deliveries and all that find ways you know logistically that you can accomplish the same thing in the very limited space that you have. That's something that we're also recommending as part of this. Look at logistics for small towns. Don't think about bringing a humongous truck in the middle of of Lutland Road should not have 16% of truck traffic. It's insane. That's the heart of the town. I understand for 57 because it's right next to the industrial area, but Lland is the the heart of the town. You you cannot have 16% of traffic going through town center. That's in that's insane. So, think about that. And one last thing, EV charging station. We need to prepare for the electric vehicles. A lot of folks are buying the electric vehicles. You have to if you want to be competitive in comparison to other municipalities, you have to provide that service. Uh more folks are going to get electric the EVs and you have to be prepared for that. And we didn't even look at AVs, which is

I don't autonomous vehicles. Those are coming too. Uh but there are so many uncertainties about those type of vehicles that at this point do those autonomous vehicles plug themselves in? No. [laughter] Exactly. No, no, no, no, no. And I and I think EV sales are plummeted. Fred might might be able to add on that, but nationally, I mean, we don't have the infrastructure. No. For EVs. No. I mean, for for for that type of, you know, it's very expensive. Yes, it is. You know, it's just um I mean it'd be nice to have them throughout the town. Yes. Um but the infrastructure is expensive and grid support. Ex Well, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. The the I mean if from my understanding each EV takes the energy of 25 refrigerators to charge. So that's a lot of power. Yeah. you know. So, I I I just I don't I mean I I know people are buying them because they like them. They're nice. They look like spaceships and they're inside. They're really neat. Um but I mean practicality I don't think that we have uh the infrastructure. No, we don't. And and that's what we're mentioning in our assessment that we don't have it

but as they become more popular and they start replacing the the fleet the regular fleet they might be a need for this type of infrastructure as well. And the point of this is not so much to uh cater to a very particular

type of technology is simply that as transportation uh designers we need to keep our ear to the ground for new technologies that are coming in so that we can be in the forefront of those technologies and not be falling behind. At the end of the day we are a small government. Uh we have limited resources. our capacity to actually even install EV chargers and all those things are always limited by budgetary issues and all of that but at the same time we also have the the power of regulation which is where we incite and and encourage private developers correct

to do the right thing. So, you know, it's not so much that we are going to be providing the service ourselves. It's more like we're going to be encouraging the right sort of development and the right sort of services to be provided by the private industry that is coming to us for approval um of projects, right? So that's why and and that's why we it's sort of like our job to stay on the forefront of what's coming in regards to, you know, transportation technology because that's how we design the space that we move in. Right.

And last but not least, I know that the town has the mobility fee, but you got to update it because, you know, there's there's some legislature changes in Tallahassee that prompted some changes. So the town has to change it and update it because this is a source of funding and if you want to have an extra source to accomplish all these different changes and and make your the town much better then you have to have an extra income. Every penny counts. Um so um and then so we pretty much uh are the final is the implementation plan and that's what we're working on right now. We're aiming to have it done uh sometime in December and we want to come to you in January with the implementation plan of how we going to get this together, where is the funding coming from. Uh there are a lot of sources CITT money uh the county has also a mobility fee impact uh mobility impact fee. Um that they're using for their corridors. Um DOT have some funding in the work program. there's some federal additional federal funding that the town can, you know, seek to complete this improvement. So, there's a variety of resources and that's what something that we're going to uh provide to you. Um, and again, the public map that I mentioned that we're closing out in um a couple uh in a couple weeks and that's it. Um, questions. I think I provided a lot of

[laughter] It was a lot, but I wanted to wanted to make sure that you guys we did a very robust assessment of Miami Leagues because we wanted to dig every single type of dynamic that we could think of. Sometimes we went on a rabbit hole and Susanna was like, "Stop. No more rabbit holes." Um, but yes. So, any questions? [laughter]

Nope. I know this is the is the uh actually the probably the number one uh concern area of concern of every citizen in this uh in this town. The traffic traffic is horrendous.

Yeah. Um, you know, I I don't know if it is and I see uh, you know, the the possibility of maybe doing some things to slow the traffic down, but but I also think that if we slow the traffic down with as many cars as we have running on the streets here, that could be hell of a problem, too. Uh, then the congestion is going to be even heavier. So that's the challenge always and you're 100% correct about that is how do you continue to have traffic flow and at the same time make it safer for everybody to be out there on whatever mode of transportation. One of the reasons that when you start making it safer to have other ways to move around, right? There might be less cars on the road.

Correct. And that's a good thing. Uh, one of the, uh, again going back to the kids in the schools that this is like really lowhanging fruit because if you have again 1500 kids in a school and they're all coming in in individual vehicles, you have way too many cars on that road

for twice a day, right? um re, you know, allowing those kids to access their education and those teachers and all of these people to access access a school without necessarily even if you're only getting a percentage of them, even if you're only getting 25% of those kids, you're already removing all these vehicles from the road. Same thing of people that are trying to go grocery shopping. If you live very close to the one of our beautiful supermarkets and your only way to get to that supermarket is on a car because the facilities, the sidewalks are too hot or it's dangerous to cross the street or um you know, then you're not going to be walking there even if you could, right? If you're just going to go buy two bananas and a and a jug of milk, right? And that's an additional vehicle on the road. So that's why uh allowing people to have a multiple multitude of options for the different trips that they take during the day is is what we're sort of attempting to do to release some of that tension on the roads.

It's it's going to be difficult. You know, it's going to be and again challenging to say the least. But one one thing that I can tell you in our analysis is that we looked at how far people are driving to commute and a big chunk of them are more than 20 miles. So if you have a much better connection to the regional system for example I came here to this meeting I took the train from downtown. I took tri rail to Metro Transfer and then I switched to the other train got off at Opalaka because I don't know why the another see my friend Nelson another example of why the U freebie takes people to Palmetto when Opalaka is much closer.

It's my next project. I'm [laughter] working on I'm working on that. The county put in a beautiful park and ride on I75 and Miami Gardens Road. Nobody uses Nobody uses it. Nobody use Nobody uses it. Um, y [clears throat] and the problem is because a they put it in, they didn't advertise it. Yeah. They don't tell anybody about it. Yeah. Um, there's no incentive to use it.

So, you know, if you give them free rides on the buses and it's going somewhere specific, but the [clears throat] last thing comes to play is a the last mile and b, how do I get home in a hurry in case of an emergency when I'm on public transportation? Right. And so those are the things. I mean that that parking rod just sits there empty. Right. And I mean I see maybe three cars there. Maybe maybe it was great for co because we used it for the the parking ride in the route was the same same opportunity.

It's empty. It's empty. Um but I think the your challenge and your challenge is to change the minds. Yeah. Choice writers. choice writers, but it's not so much about change the minds of the people writing, it's changed the minds of the people making the decisions. But on on on the um Miami Dade before it was TPO, Maurice Fer talked MDX, which is now GMX, out of putting trains on the 836 east, east and west. Mhm. I mean, he literally talked him out of it when

And that's very badly needed. Yeah. When all the other cities are, you know, and they're like, "No, no, the whole Europe is leaving trains." No, they're not. They travel through trains and it's fantastic. Mhm. So, these are the people that you have to change their minds. Yep. you know, but it is it is complicated in the suburban area because

and I can tell you that I am able to do that because I live out east and then I have two train stations really close by to my house and I can take the train either bright line or trial whenever I need it. But I don't drive. I came here I told her like I just got on the the Opalaka station on my Uber here. It's because I'm a choice writer. And then when you start you you got that's why we providing the options. We want to have those choice writers to make their own decisions not folks who are forced to just drive everywhere. Have we ever surveyed um [clears throat] like for example the residents that live in this area which is probably about 400 apartments I think in this area that the Grahams built or the new location on Commerce Way that they have another 220ome apartments? Have we ever surveyed their their daily habits? Do they use public transportation? Do they drive? I can tell you that one of the things that you can see already is that we have a a big increase in pedestrian traffic in the downtown area in our main street area since the apartments have been in. I mean you see people walking dogs, you see people walking to Publix, you can see you can feel

Yeah, you can see it. But how do they to work? Correct. I um many of them are uh working from home. Um, a lot of them we do not have actual data. We have player we have some plays AI data about the number of people that come to town the town center. It's about 26,000 uh 26,000 that come here. Yeah. In and out from like other places from all the places. Yeah. In and out daily. That's that's a significant 26,000 driving 30ome,000. getting something there. You're getting somewhere.

And and and that's plus the amount of cut through traffic we have cuz we are also basically a through town there. There's a lot of people that come here to access the interstate system.

They don't come here to Main Street or to live or to come to our businesses. They come here because it's their only way to access the interstate system. Yeah. So again, part of our um you know, uh part of my job, I don't know if you guys uh knew this, but a couple of years ago, I took on the transportation hat of the town and part of my job has been basically attending every meeting where they even discussed transportation. This is how we started on this little project because once I heard about vision zero, I was like, "Yes, we're doing that." Um, and we go to all of these meetings basically to just be like the little drop that just continues to say Miami Lakes exist. We need to think about us. We're here. We are taking in a lot of your a lot of your volume is coming through us. You need to pay attention to us. you're you're you know your system is being accessed through our town and is using our streets to get on and we need to be paid attention to and you need to like not forget that we exist, right? So that's what that's what we do all day that one of the reasons that we are engaging Jesus and his team is because they were also very bosiferous in many occasions. So I appreciated that. Um and and we're doing this on a regular basis. This this is an ongoing project. It'll be like this for at least as long as I'm here. Maybe Justin will continue it as uh you know when I you know when I retire my hat. Uh but this is that's what we do all day every day. And giving uh additional access to the expressways is another thing that I drive people crazy about. Additional

and it's coming in the Gratney. You're going to have a brand new access right now on the graty

and all of those tiny, you know, the that parking ride in 886 will be the finished uh part of 97th Avenue, which will be a place where a lot of people are going to be able to access the and that's not in our town, but I can tell you that I talked to anybody that will listen about that because they do need to finish 97th Avenue to that parking ride so that people can get on I75 and not have to come here to get on. Uh, FDA is about to open the the ramp on to um to the to the to the turnpike. I was actually seeing it this weekend and they already paved all the way to uh 97. Uh so they're like probably going to be doing there they were putting out concrete this weekend. So uh give it a couple of more months and they'll be they'll be laying asphalt and putting things there. So that's that's coming soon too. Uh and all of this takes the pressure off of our road system, right? So the more we uh direct the traffic elsewhere around us, the less of that traffic is going to be coming here to get on right.

I think the continuation of 59th Avenue to into Miami Lakes Drive is going that's going to be a big deal. A lot of the congestion from 57th. Yeah. Yes. It's going to help quite a bit. Those are all they seem like silly interventions but they're actually pretty momentous and and you know even though we do have a lot of challenges and no not the future is not rosy on that sense we still have a lot of work to do but you know it's again to keep that focus and to keep the eye on the prize and to and the reason that we're doing all this is that so that we stay all on the same page and that we all have like keep pushing in the right direction and at least you know we're all rowing in the same direction.

Yeah, especially nowadays that the funding is very limited for a lot of these things. Um, so it's getting very very competitive. 59th [clears throat] Avenue was 10 years ago. Yeah. Eight eight eight years ago. That's when we started 59th Avenue. It was part of the first transportation

and that project has f you know has faced some some challenges that were based on the fact that it was sort of um thought out without realizing that uh some private properties were going to be highly impacted. Um, and you know, the design was done a little I I remember you guys were given you were on the counter at that time and you were given three options and um I wasn't I was sitting in the in the audience that day and and you picked exactly the one option that was going to make the biggest mess. And I thought, no, not that one. That's why you got to speak up because we're not the experts. That's why we need people like you and you, sir,

to give us direction. Yes, but you know that's Yeah, it was a different it was a different time. It was a different time. It was a different time and I mean eight years later we're we're we're closer than we were then. 100%. And and that's another exciting part on the better the better track. Yeah. And I wanted I wanted to if you haven't noticed the amount of people that have been walking outside. Oh yeah. And the demographics is all young people. So, Gen Xer, Gen Gen Zers and and probably uh younger millennials, they don't like to drive and and then um so that's it's it's a so let's not make them let's not

and that's the point, right? Let's let's give them options that they don't have to. And again, it's not that you don't have, you know, there's always a point where one needs a car, right? that if you can use the vehicle only for the trips that you need to go farther out or maybe access a place that is harder to get to or you know for maybe a third of your trips you I you I always move always to a place where I know I can walk somewhere I if I'm shopping for a home or I'm looking for where to move next I used to live in Anchorage because I could walk to Veterans Park and I could walk to Burger King and I could walk to Starbucks and I did so on a regular basis. Uh the that's one of the beauties of Miami Lakes is that everywhere you live, you can walk somewhere,

right? And and trees and we have trees and we have beautiful facilities. So, you know, it's part again, it's part of giving people options so that not every trip has to be happening on a vehicle, right? Even though I think everybody should have a vehicle. Yeah, 100%. 100%. That again, it's part of your options. one at least one, but it's part of your options, but also we don't want to be putting that many miles on it because, you know, you want to be able to like uh keep your your miles low, right? Yeah. Any more resale value?

Any more questions, comments? I know it was a lot of information to digest, but we wanted to be as informative and robust that we could. And the the survey is still open. Yes. If you guys haven't taken it, uh again, your information your your your input is Yes, I know you did. uh you guys your input is very valuable because obviously you have a specific set of skills that we you know count on every month to

and I just wanted to end that we again we're going to come back again here not only for these two projects but we have the greenways and trails master plan that we started a month and change ago um where we are looking at different options to create uh trails like for example the one that you have 170th. It will be nice if you have like a trail head and then some sort of, you know, um theme name. N name it. I don't know. The Fred Trail something, you know, it has to have a name. Don't encourage him. He already he already has a street named after him. I don't even [laughter]

He's got his own street. 59th Avenue is actually Fred Center part. So, but that is coming. And then uh the last one that we're going to do is the complete street master plan and that's uh the update and then that's coming later on hopefully in a couple months we'll know if we got more funding to do the freight component because we want to have an evaluation of specific freight for Miami Lakes. And with that I don't know if you have any questions um you know either have that. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. So now we have the um maybe take a little break, five minute break and we'll be back. [clears throat] Go get a drink of water. [clears throat] Where's Where did you take the Oh

No, we have for now another presentation. Yes, this one should go quickly. No, it's just one. It's just one. Yeah, I said the u through the chair if I can go ahead and introduce the item. Okay.

Item 5B, fences in the sidey yards facing the street. An ordinance of the town of Miami Lakes, Florida, amending section 131509, fences, walls, and gates of the cow of the code of the town of Miami Lakes, amending the regulations for fences on sideyards facing a street east of the Palmetto Expressway, providing for incorporation of recital, providing for repeal of of laws in conflict, providing for severability, providing for inclusion in the code, and providing for an effective on behalf of the town.

Hi, me again. Um, this ordinance is um, it comes from a new business item of uh, council member Sanchez. Um, but it's also something that we have discussed several times in the past because we have had quite a few uh variances related to um fences on side yards facing a street on the east side of town. Uh, obviously it's a you know one of those situations that people change the way they utilize their properties and they start changing uh their tastes and their the way they they want to live. Um, and Councilman Sanchez proposed a uh a a good middle-of the road proposal to maybe reduce the amount of variances that we have related to this issue. And and and here's the proposal, right? The proposal is not to allow so in the in the um the proposal in in right now what you're looking at if you look at the screen right now the way that they're allowed to fence their backyards uh when they're facing the street is as you see in the in the drawing in front of us. Right? They're basically allowed to fence in at the 15 foot setback line which is more or less where the line of the house usually is of the main structure. Right? So they basically allowed to enclose um between the two structures. Um and if you see it on Well, did I go backwards? Hold on. If you see it in perspective, what did I do? Hold on. And this is a quick uh sketchup that I put together just to show you. it just it's between just between the two houses. The issue that we always have

and it's always a complaint of the property owners is that you have uh windows that may be facing that side that now are exposed to the sidewalk whereas where people are walking right and and they always their practical difficulty for the variances is always I need to enclose those windows to provide some privacy and and then there's a various degrees of how far into the encroachment they want to go. Uh this particular code change proposes that not to allow them to go all the way to the property line, but to allow them to go 5 feet from the main structure or 10 feet from the sidewalk, from the property line. So, not all the way, not not to the degree that it is allowed in the west side. Uh and I'm going to show you a little drawing of what that looks like. Hold on. This is what it looks like. So, it's still far away from the sidewalk, 10 feet. It's 5T from the main property, from the main structure, which leaves a 5-ft walkway. It's more or less what it is, a regular setback on another property. So, it's not a very wide space, but it does provide that little bit of protection for those windows and allows a little bit, and this would be as of right for all the properties. So, it would reduce the number of variouses we have. And uh this is one of those where uh you as the local planning agency uh gets to give advice to the council as to whether or not you think this is a good idea and or any changes that you think should be modified to to modify the ordinance. And this will be heard by the council next week on the 18th in second reading.

Yeah. Through the chair. I uh like the green areas. I really do. I understand the open windows because I have them in my house. And then my house, anybody that walks down the street looks into my living room. But that's when my wife happens to open up the shades in the evening, she closes them, you know. I like the green areas. You talk.

I really I really like the green area. The fact of having the green areas, I understand that people want the privacy, but that's one of the things about Miami Lakes that makes Miami Lakes what it is is you have that freedom. you you feel like you're in open spaces with the trees. Everywhere else it's nothing but fences. And then what happens is the fences over time get deteriorated. They don't get taken care of. And I was going down I happened to take 191st Street to go to the Dolphin Stadium the other day through Miami Gardens. And I couldn't believe the nasty fences that were all the way up 191st Street from uh 57th Avenue all the way to 27th Avenue. And I was actually saying that to my wife and then this issue came up. You know, I people don't take care of them. And that's the problem. If it look like that, I say, "Okay, that's really nice." So, it looks nice, but they don't take care of them. They let them fall apart. Is there any specific um type of fence that they are proposing or

chain link fence or at this point whatever type of fencing is allowed there's no chain link everything so it could be a mixback no I I I would object to chain link fence I would object yeah yeah I I I I kind of agree with the the rest of the board um it it would have to be some type of fence like um on 87th Avenue the town has taken upon itself which I completely agree with in the initiative of making those areas that don't have HOAs match the paint color so that 87th Avenue

looks looks consistent through right so maybe in this in this ordinance adopt some type of standard color uh fence and some type of material whether it be metal or I I think metal is the the one that lasts the best and PVC starts to deteriorate the wood 100% agree

you know a couple years in the ground you get one storm it's gone then the neighbor takes half that fence and um my my only issue is I don't know it depends so let me let me ask you let me put it this way as a question the property line is 15 feet, you get five and 10. The property line is 17 feet. Do you get seven and 10? No. Um, the way that the code is written right now, you get the least of those so that it's at least 10 feet from the property line and at most 5t from the home. So, you're still 5t from the home from the structure. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I I [clears throat] just think that's I mean I like the 10T gap but I think that you're cheating the the resident of use of their of the use of their property because I have seven and a half feet and it's you know it's sketchy sometimes when when I have to uh well when the kids were there when the kids were small we were bringing bounce houses in and stuff like that so I can imagine um but these this is only for sideyards that have two fronts correct correct that are facing a street that are facing the street. Mhm. Yeah. So, I mean I I I rather change it to 10 plus, you know, and then they get whatever they have 10. So, the so the reverse 10 and five.

Uh no, 10 10 at the at the outside and then if they have 17, they can use seven. So, okay. And stop it and and do the standard 15, whatever, but not not to make it a zero lot, you know, go to go to seven, seven and a half and max it out there. But if they have a good distance, which some do, you know, they should be able to use their sideyard. So just change the minimum required setback to 10 instead of 15 and not a distance from the existing home, but just a distance from the 15. The minimum setback for corners is 15. And if we we you know, now we're now we're saying that we're going to make it 10.

Yeah. Because if you're going to make it 10 for some, I mean 10 for all and then some people get, you know, they're cheating two and a half feet, three feet. I mean,

they can have that sideyard, you know, and and some of these homes, [clears throat] the backyard may be maxed out um because they weren't allowed to put anything on the side. Now you're giving an opportunity for the kids to have a place to play, you know, and in their safe environment protected from the fence, you know. I I I would I would uh agree with the uh the 10-ft setback, but what I'm concerned about is the type of fence.

Yeah. Because if if we were to say, "Okay, 10 feet," and we would allow uh wood fences um you know, I' I've seen a lot of of fences here in in in our area, wood fences that are horrible. I mean, they the the homeowner don't, you know, just let it let it rot and and let it rot and let it rot until it really rots, right? And I have one around just around the corner from my house that I go by every day on my my walks and uh and it hurts my eyes and uh and there's nothing we can do about it.

So uh let me just um are we making a recommendation here? Yes. And that's why I'm trying I'm going to I'm going to see if we can either peacemail this for this or maybe create a future item that we can discuss. So that's uh because when we start talking about the the material that could like obviously right now we're only speaking of properties east of the palmetto. The palmetto um we're not discussing anything west area here.

Correct. So we're not talking about anything west of the pomemetto. So, if you were going to make a um recommendation to um limit the materials available for fencing on this type of fence that is and obviously you're only talking about the kind of fence that is facing the street um and you're getting those additional feet of yard, right? Is is your intention to limit the materials only on those fences or would you like to propose to limit the materials on all fences in town? Does that make sense?

Right now it's saying you can do it by block. You can do it by chain link fence. You can do it through hedge fencing. It everything is in there. And there's a clause in there also that you have you tell your neighbor 30 days and from the time you put your do it's like you're doing a concrete block fence and you tell your neighbor you got 30 days you know let let finish the other side of it and if they don't finish it this thing get finished from what I read there there's a 30-day window that you can do and then you don't have to finish the the other side of the the fence

but that's when there that's when the fence is between the properties and it wouldn't apply to this one because because this is between the town and and the property owner, right? Like this is not talking about the fence between the two properties is only talking about the property the the corners across the back to your neighbor there. Correct. I mean in the back of the the back of of your neighbor. Said what? Yeah, that's that's we that's being enforced today. What's that mean? That's being enforced today. Usually either you finish the finished side to your side to your neighbor's side. Mhm.

Or um or you you can do that the ugly side to your to your property, the post if it's a if it's a wooden a wooden fence or you can finish both sides. Yeah. What I what I did with my neighbors is we we paid 50% and then we put we decorated both sides. Both sides. Right. That's the way that's the way it should be done. That's the way it should be. But yeah, the aesthetic the aesthetically pleasing side needs to be to the street. Correct.

No doubt. No doubt about that. So the recommendation then would be to uh as long as it is to covers both properties with the same type of fence, not one different from the other. Well, right now they can do one different from the other. One could be block and the other one could be but it would have to be the same in order to restriction about you know uh in here I read there was a restriction in there about putting bob wire but only on commercial areas. So, but it still has been said talked about bob wire. If you love bob wire, I mean right there's going to be some people real [laughter] right right now. A budding commercial. No barb wire fences.

But right now by by right by right a homeowner can put a a fence 15t away from the sidewalk. Yes. And it it could be chain link and it could be uh wood. Yes. Yes. Or it could be the the durabon the you know the metal you know concrete block anything. Okay. And now we're saying that they that they can they can or or the the the proposal here says 10 ft from the from the sidewalk. Right. And I assume six foot high. Correct. Mhm. But our recommendation should be that that it must be completed with the uh neighbor

to look uniform and to look the same. That would be right. Yeah. Because you you're going to have two two homes, right? Have a lot of mix. But you know what? If one per do it that way, it'll have a lot of mix mixes because then one guy is going to do it his his side is going to do it in one type of material and then the other is going to look and then it's going to the whole thing is going to look like hell. We have that on two properties on 87th Avenue. But it would it would apply it applies the same thing as as the code states right now. If you're if you're if you put your fence 15 foot away like the code says I can put a fence of wood because and you can put a fence of metal

right but that's what we have to uh change right okay that's what we I think that's what uh well what if we should propose to the right what if uh homeowner A can afford the um the expensive fence and homeowner We can only afford the wood fence which is allowed by the town or the chain link or the chain link for that matter. Chain link is cheaper. That would be a problem. It's all allowed.

I mean, but right now they can put they can put whatever they want as long as it's 15t away from the sidewalk. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, most people don't because it leaves them with like a three-foot spot, right? So, it doesn't get it doesn't happen. Mhm.

We did it. We did it on on and and but some of these properties like I know that the Miami Lake way south there's a home on the corner and it's got a fence goes all the way to the back along the lake. Um and that was that was an issue that we had on the west side. And that's why we changed the code to allow it to go right to the slope and at the property line. And then I don't know if we have this problem on the east side, but we changed the ordinance on the west side because when they built 87th Avenue, 87th Avenue is actually 2 and 1/2 ft taller than the property the the some of the homes.

Yes. And so we built we we we fixed that ordinance to allow the fence to be six foot tall from the sidewalk. So on some homes the fences are 8 feet, fences are 9 ft depending on what the height of their property is on the other side of 87. On the other Yeah. On the on the west side of 87th Avenue. Yeah. Because when they built 87th Avenue, they had to bring it up. Yeah. They had to bring it two feet up. And so the six foot fence was actually four foot brought up for female. Yeah. The six foot fence was actually four feet when you're walking on the sidewalk

and people were looking into everybody's yards. So we we we had to change the ordinance to depending on what your property line what your property level is. You can go six foot from the inside of the from the side of the sidewalk. So the sidewalk up six foot and then inside it's different different measurements. So we have different that was seven years ago. Yeah. I I love that you remember all these things. Yeah. Right. I don't forget. I mean, I don't have an issue with the with the five foot with the 10 foot from the sidewalk. But what I I don't either. You know what I have an issue is what do we do with the material? Yeah.

The material and and the likeness. So, the council have to make that decision what to do with the material. Yes. But you guys have to pass you have to put it together into some sort of motion so that I can recommend to the council the the change that you want to make to the ordinance. You understand? It would be that that to have some type of continuity, right? So make so make so why don't you make a motion so you conformity as far as uh the type of fence and you know whatever not not let anybody do whatever kind of fence they want, you know.

All right. Then I I will make a motion to approve the um um the ordinance with the five foot with the 10 foot from the sidewalk. And um as long as um as long as there is um continuity or matching materials on on the fence within adjoining adjoining with the adjoining property adjoining joining [clears throat] properties and they can do the same thing like the like he did. They went 50/50 with the other person. Yeah. And that's it.

Yeah. And if somebody wants something magical, maybe they're willing to toss in the difference for the neighbor that can't afford it. Well, and if they want to see, tell them to take a ride on 191st Street from Red Road all the way to 27th Avenue. Just look. It's horrendous. It's the uniformity. The uniformity in itself is going to bring up the property value. Exactly. It's going to make it look better. Yeah. Yeah. That alone is going to bring up the property value. So,

so do you understand the motion? For the purposes of clarity, I just want to make sure I mean and from a legal perspective, I think it would be thinking ahead that it would probably be easier if you there was limitations as to the type of materials and you know setbacks and all like those changes I think are more um within like the jurisdiction of you know planning to go ahead and control and enforce as opposed to after the fact requiring a neighbor to build the exact same fence. without any kind of you know you know municipal guidelines already in place. So if you were to it would be hard to enforce.

It would be very difficult to enforce but if you were to phrase it in a way where it was um like a material like a type of material then that would be a little bit easier because they go into it knowing that that's our ordinance and that's what you're required to do. Does that make sense? Like you say chain link fence that would be that's the least expensive for everybody because steel fence and right now they're doing broad iron fences that are really expensive and everybody can't afford it but they're beautiful. Maybe. Yeah, because even if you identify the fence as metal that covers chain link and covers the metal panels,

but it also but it also covers like you said the uh the aluminum the aluminum nice aluminum. Yeah, the new aluminum panels that that are super expensive that not everybody can I mean I I understand we want the uniformity, but I think that's something that's going to be have to left left to the council and and code enforcement and planning to I mean code enforcement to figure out what they want to do with that. But I don't know if we can. But what we what we have to keep in mind is right now if I want to put a fence 15 foot away from the sidewalk by right I can build it out of block and I can build it out of wood. You can build it out of any

out of out of any material that's that's you know within within code and and it doesn't have to match anything in your neighborhood. As long as it meet the wind loads you can we you know Yeah. And I don't know if we can regulate that. I mean, so again, the matching the neighbors material is the hardest part. How about the color? Can they m Can we set a standard color so that you can So you don't have a white one, a brown one, a green one? I can tell you that there's municipalities that do not allow chaining fencing. That's that's something that happens in several municipalities. I used to enforce that. I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. There's municipalities that do not allow chaining fence, right? In in general,

right? Uh there's municipalities that require um no no pointy ends on on on fences on the top of the fences, right? Uh I can tell you that uh some of them regulate the height depending on where you put the fence. So if it's closer to the sidewalk, it has to be a shorter fence. If it's farther from the sidewalk, you can put a taller fence. Um there's a lot of things we we can regulate color. Well, don't we don't we already regulate that you can't put chaining fence in the front of your house in Miami Lakes. Correct. You cannot enclose your front yard, right? At all with anything, right? With anything. We do not regulate at this point chaining fencing anywhere. If if you're allowed to put in a fence, you're allowed to put in chaining fence. Right.

Um, well, maybe maybe we need to to let let the council look into that as well and then and and and start maybe that's the start of the process of of uh you know not no chaining fence on the sideyard when it's like this. Maybe the backyards where it's not visible to the public. But on this situation, maybe chain link fencing needs to be, you know, put it put as a no no on uh on this ordinance. And and if you pass a I agree with that. I mean, chainling fence I I would object to that. Yeah. If you approve a motion to that effect, but I'll be happy to put that as a recommend. I'll put a motion in to Well, we'll have to withdraw a motion. Oh, no. You already put your motion. I don't have

you know, my mo my motion is to You have to just add to it. My motion is to to uh go along with the staff recommendations, right, of 10 foot away from the sidewalk, right? But my my not objection but concern is which they don't they don't mention in here is the uh the material of the fence and um to your motion. No chain linking fence. Add that to your motion. No chain linking fence. And no wood. No chain link. No wood or just no chain link? No chain link and no wood. Okay.

No chain. No no chain link. No wood. Six foot high. 10 foot away from the from the sidewalk. And no minimum. So not five feet from the home, just 10 feet from the sidewalk period. 10 foot from the sidewalk. Got I mean if the if the setback is 17 feet, they it's you know they they can have 12t from the sidewalk or or 10 foot from the sidewalk. Yeah. So that's that's a good Yeah. And then you have a you have a second already. Second by Vice Chair Nelson Rodriguez. Okay. Calling the role for the ordinance item 5B. Motion by board member Leonio and seconded by Vice Chair Rodriguez. Board member Lonio.

Yes. Board member Deassier. Yes. Board member Cruz is absent. Vice Chair Rodriguez. Yes. And Chair Senra, yes. The motion passes. All right. Right. So I think this uh this is it for for us tonight. So we like to adjourn the meeting for the year. Year. Yes. I will see you next year. Oh, good. Happy Thanksgiving. Wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving and a merry Christmas and a good new year. Happy new year. Wow. And and your first hearing on the new year. We were just saying this a year ago. [laughter] I know. Your first hearing on the new year is the second Tuesday of the month, which is

when exactly? Can you tell us? Because if it'd be it'd be very useful if you're going to be traveling or something, you let us know ahead of time so that we may postpone it or like just leave it for February. 13th. The 13th. Yeah. Yeah. Normally I travel in February. [snorts] So anyway, the 13th of January is the next So we're we're going to have a uh we're going to have a a meeting on in January. January 13th at this January 13th. Correct. Okay.

Um if if we have any applicants, that's another story. If I don't have any applicants, obviously we will be cancelling. And at this point, Justin, we don't have anybody, right? We don't we have somebody waiting for the town council, but not for not for the planning board. So, one of the reasons that we're doing this today is that I don't have to drag you back in in in January if if there's no applicants. We appreciate that. So, at the same time, at sometime in January, we will be looking at the calendar for 2026 to adopt our meeting times. And so if you come in for the next meeting with whatever thought you have, whether you know our current calendar looks good to you, the the second Tuesday of the month works, that's fine for me. That's fine for me. Yeah,

we're used to it. Yeah, we're programmed. We'reized. I just u just let us know when when the when the Christmas party is. [laughter] Well, this I'm the mayor's got us coming up this this Friday. Oh, really? He's paying for it. [laughter] I didn't even know there was a party on Friday. I don't know what you What are you talking about? The mayor's gala. It's coming up on Friday. Oh, the mayor's gala. Yeah, I didn't receive an email. There's a big prom here. I I don't get the emails. I don't know what's going on, but I I didn't buy tickets and I didn't get I didn't because I didn't get the email, but I would have loved to attend. [laughter] I'm going to keep quiet. Yeah, I heard they were sold out. I'm going to keep quiet.