Code Enforcement Board - Regular Meeting

Mr. Hill, if you would get us started.

Mic check one, two.

Good evening everyone. Thank you, Enrique, for getting us going. Good evening, everyone who's present. My name is Marlon Hill. I'm the village attorney representing the Code Enforcement Board here this evening, October the 2nd, 2025. And I would like to welcome you to the Code Enforcement Board meeting. Chair Huber is hosting the meeting along with all the members of the board here. They're all volunteers and also residents just like you. and potentially your neighbors as well. And they're charged with enforcing the code and are interested solely in compliance with the code here of the village. Mr. Orta here with his team, Emily, our clerk, if you haven't checked in as yet, please check in with her to make sure that you are part of the agenda.

If you could be so kind to put your devices, all devices,

on silent or vibrate, we would greatly appreciate it. This evening's Code Enforcement Board hearing, basically we have three different types of hearings. There's a first hearing, a penalty hearing, and a request for relief. If you got notice of the hearing today, you're going to fall in one of those three categories. We will walk you through exactly what the process is for each of those hearings as we proceed with the agenda. If you're going to be testifying here this evening, please, if you could stand and raise your right hands. If you're going to be speaking on behalf of any of the cases, if you could stand, if you're going to be appearing, yeah.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth? Thank you so much.

And whenever you go to speak, just come forward, speak directly into the microphone, so we can make sure that you're properly recorded, okay? Thank you.

All right. Thank you for coming to this evening's Code Enforcement Board hearing. This board is empowered to hear evidence in order to reach findings of fact and conclusion of law for the purpose of resolving cases that come before it. A finding of violation in any case before us may lead to costs being assessed and a daily fine being levied for violations of the Villager's Code of Ordinances. The board is always interested in comments or statements that will help us make a determination in each case, and we are always interested in compliance rather than levying fines. If you have not already done so, please come forward and give your name to the clerk so that we may know you are here. If there is no objection, we will consider at one time all cases involving the same piece of property. Madam Clerk, would you call roll?

Jessica Angiano. Mr. Rodriguez. Here. Mr. Vickers.

Mr. Buenconcejo.

Mr. Pearl? Here. Mr. Hahn? Here. Chair Huber?

Here.

Mr. Berryman?

Here. All right. Madam Clerk, do we have anyone present for first hearing?

We do not.

All right. At this time, the chair observes that there have been no appearance by anyone on behalf of the alleged violators in connection with case numbers. 02-2538, case 03-2569, case 08-25222, case 08-25225, case 08-25233, case 08-25242. case 0825248, case 0825249, case 0825250, case 0825254, case 0825255, case 0825260, and case 0825262. Mr. Director, the case files on each of these matters contain affidavits attesting to the existence of the code violations alleged and demonstrating proper notice to the alleged violator of tonight's hearings. They do Mister chair all right at this time I will entertain a motion for summary adjudication.

Mister chair I move for summary adjudication of all such cases to include finding a fact in the conclusion of law that a violation exist as charged in the respective notice of violations issued. In each such case, the offending party shall correct the violation within the time period specified by staff in the staff recommendations for these hearings and immediately notify the code enforcement officer when the property is brought back into compliance. In each such case, if the violation is not brought into compliance within such time period, the code enforcement officer may report this fact back to the board in accordance with the board's rules and regulations, at which time a fine is hereby authorized to be automatically assessed against the violator In the daily amounts specified in staff's recommendations for tonight's hearing, retroactive to the original compliance deadline, which will constitute a lien on the property of the violator.

Do I have a second? SECOND BY MR. BERRYMAN. I WOULD JUST LIKE TO AMEND YOUR MOTION TO ADD THAT IF ANYBODY WAS UNABLE TO ATTEND DUE TO AN UNOBSERVED HOLIDAY, THAT THEY COULD CONTACT THE NEIGHBORHOOD SERVICES DEPARTMENT BEFORE THE NEXT MEETING AND GET AN AUTOMATIC EXTENSION.

SO AMENDED.

SECOND THE AMENDMENT? SECOND. ALL RIGHT. MADAM CLERK, WOULD YOU CALL ROLL?

MR. HON?

YES.

Yes, mr. Rodriguez. Yes chair Huber.

Yes.

Mr. Berman For the record I note that Case number Oh 825 233 You have the name of the previous owner?

All right, also on tonight's agenda is matter of staff's request for orders imposing previously adjudicated fines as a penalty for lack of time and compliance with the board's prior orders. I will now call the penalty cases. Madam Clerk, is anyone present?

No.

All right, excellent. Case 0424259, Case 0524317, Case 0625162, and Case 0723287. Mr. Director, do the files on all these penalty cases contain an appropriate affidavit demonstrating in each such case the violations referenced in your request continue to exist subsequent to the date on which they were to be corrected in accordance with the previous orders of this Board and that to date no one has contacted Neighborhood Services to advise these violations have been corrected.

They do and they have not.

All right. I will now entertain a motion to pose fines with the same motion as discussed for first hearing.

Mr. Chair, hold on. Where's the default?

I got it already queued up. Want me to do it?

Yeah, go ahead, please.

i move that in each case currently remaining on the penalty docket for tonight's hearing each respective violator be ordered to pay the daily fine previously adjudicated and authorized to be imposed against them by prior order of the board retroactive from the day the violation was to have been corrected that upon recording the board's order in this regard will constitute a lien on the property of the violator

And please add the 30 days if they were unable to attend. Sure. Automatic extension.

And we will entertain an automatic extension of 30 days for those who contact staff regarding the unobserved holiday.

All right. Barry, you have a second? Second. All right. Madam Clerk, would you call roll?

Mr. Pearl? Yes. Chair Huber?

Yes.

Mr. Rodriguez?

Yes.

Mr. Hahn?

Yes.

Mr. Behrman?

Yes.

All right. Madam Clerk, do we have anyone present for request for relief?

Yes. First up would be Mr. Edgar and Ms. Lillian Rios.

All right. If you would approach the podium and state your name and address for the record.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. My name is Edgar Rios. I'm here with my wife, Lillian Rios. The address is 920 Northeast 99th Street.

And your address is? That is the address. No, your address. You live there?

My address is 658 Live Oak Drive, McLean, Virginia. Okay, thank you.

um all right so we are here for 920 northeast 99th street case 143-2022 unauthorized construction expired permits right the fine amount is 2 500 the amount proposed is 300 please explain why we should accept your offer

Yes, Mr. Chairman and members of the board, as you probably already know, I'm sure you reviewed my request for relief. I was here on February of this year, on the 7th, at which time the board accepted the amount of $250 as in compromise of the $2,500 fine that was assessed. Shortly after the hearing, the following Monday, my wife and I attempted to make the payment here at the office, but we were told that the paperwork had not gotten to them and therefore we could not make the payment at that time. As the record reflects, my wife and I, we actually reside in Northern Virginia, and I assumed that I would be getting some documents from the board or from the village assessing the amount and giving me the ability to pay. Unfortunately, that never got to me, either here or there. In the interim, as I indicated in my request for relief, My wife was diagnosed with cancer and we had to, we became preoccupied with getting attention for her and we subsequently became consumed with that situation and my wife underwent surgery and over the last six months she's been undergoing chemotherapy in California. So this thing unfortunately slipped through the cracks. I didn't get, I got a notice from Mr. Orta that finally got to me out in California on the 12th, at which time I immediately wrote a check out and sent it to Mr. Orta. in satisfaction of the fine, of the amount that we had agreed to. And he, of course, rejected it, indicating that I needed to make a further appeal to the board. And that's what I've done. And I realized that there was a delay in getting this payment to you, so I'm prepared to increase my offer to $300. But essentially, that's the story. All right.

My concern, I came, I got on a plane and I took the risk of getting sick because on Monday I start radiation treatment. This is no joke. My husband attempted to speak with Mr. Horta. I attempted to speak with him. He doesn't return any phone calls. He doesn't send letters. He does it at his convenience. And we pay a lot of taxes. The people here in this community pay a lot of taxes. So we're paying salaries here. So it seems to me, if people are attempting to communicate with you, whether it's for good or for bad, you should have the decent courtesy to return a phone call. I've been sick, severely sick. I couldn't get out of bed. I don't have any children, so I had to have my nieces come to move me so I could go to the bathroom. I attempted to speak with him, and he didn't have the decent courtesy, no compassion, no consideration to pick up the phone and to say, I hear you. Let me see what I can do. And as stressful as it's been for me, because my brother-in-law died, that was his brother, and it was a very, very tragic death. We couldn't even get the coroner in Virginia to tell us what happened to my brother-in-law because he had disappeared. We've been under a lot of stress, and we're human beings. So we need to begin to have some compassion and some consideration for our neighbors, and we cannot... go about living our lives like if everything is a-okay. I got on a plane to come here, We came two days early because we were concerned that we were not going to be able to get here because of the air traffic control. No one should be put through that kind of changes. We have ways of communicating. We have email. We have letters that can be sent. Fine, let's say they did send a letter, but I'm going to say they didn't because it hasn't been the first time. And we happened to receive this letter in Virginia, and we got it sent immediately to California. I'm not here begging you. What I'm asking you is to correct the way you go about doing business with the residents of this community. Because it's a community that people fear you. This is not, this is, no one should have to fear you. You should be able to come here and talk to the people. People should be able to reach out to you. It shouldn't be all retribution. So that's why I came. My husband didn't want me to come. And I said, I'll come because I have stage three, stage three cancer, okay? Stage three, serious sarcoma. I have a serious cancer. I shouldn't have ever had to come here, ever. And then he wants to shake my hand. I don't want to shake his hand. I don't even want to look at him. It's disgusting to think that we're acting like if we're Republicans. I'm not a Republican. I'm a human being.

So that was the offer. I mean, I think you got my request. All right.

Do we have any questions or comments from the board?

I'm ready.

No, hearing none. The amount proposed is $300. Is that your best and final offer? Yes, sir. All right, and how long would you need to pay? I'll pay it today. Yeah, the paperwork takes at least a week to get through everything. 30 days?

Mr. Chairman, I have to leave town tomorrow to get back to California. Can I leave a check here with the clerk, or can I just... That way I can get it done without having to come back to pay?

If the board will pass it, we're fine with that.

Okay. All right. So the offer is $300 payable in 30 days. Do I have a motion?

Yes. Mr. Chair, I move that upon receipt of $250 in 180 days that the lien on this property be released.

Second. All right. Madam Clerk, would you call roll?

Mr. Rodriguez?

Yes.

Mr. Perl? Yes. Mr. Hahn? Yes. Chair Huber? Yes. Mr. Behrman?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Clerk, is anyone else present for request for relief?

Yes. Next, we have Ms. Anca Copes.

OK. All right. If you would state your name and address for the record.

Yes, so my name is and I believe that one 85 North East. One of the one 85 North East one of the street.

All right, so we are here for case 0, 1, 2, 5, 3 violations regulation short-term rentals find them out $5,000. The amount proposed is $500 please explain why we should accept your offer.

So first of all, this is my first hearing ever. So a little bit nervous here. We purchased the property in December of 2022 and we moved here from California with full intent of living here. It is our main residence. A couple of months after we moved in, actually several months after we moved in, both my husband and my parents live in Europe, in Romania and Portugal respectively. My father became very ill. My mother wasn't able to take care of him. We have a then 13-year-old daughter, now 16. So we had to move to Europe and so we left the property initially unattended because of dealing with various matters. We were renting in Europe and obviously neither the neighborhood nor we can afford an empty property. We did check with the regulations. We put the house on Airbnb. We've actually spoken to someone whom you may be familiar with, Richard Serafin. He told us that we could rent the property on Airbnb. which we did with a minimum of 30 days and later with a minimum of 90 days. We received the notice in January. We were in Europe, so we only got hold of it in March. We have a property manager. The violation had to do with a lack of signage and a guest book. We've corrected all of the issues. A property manager came here and he said we have to unlist from Airbnb because it's prohibited. We called Airbnb. We spoke to an attorney, said there is no legal prohibition for renting 90 days or more on Airbnb. We live in Portugal. Our daughter is with the grandparents today. We still have an ailing father-in-law. We came here to resolve the issue. We do intend to come back. So our daughter is 11th grade right now, living in Lisbon, and she intends to come here at the end of high school. She's in a prestigious sports program. That's why we're still there.

All right. Airbnb is not prohibited, but you do have to, there is a whole policy. You have to get a business license. You have to have a parking plan, a contact. You can't just, yeah. So it is permitted. You just have to go through the process, which...

Chair Huber, just to add like a small edit to that, it's prohibited for single-family homes. Only commercials, condos, things of that nature can do short-term rentals. And they have to go through the licensing and everything else that you've stated.

Yeah.

We did contact Airbnb and we spoke to a lawyer. There is no such prohibition. I mean, at least we couldn't find the evidence.

It's in the town code.

Where is that available and why isn't Airbnb or anyone of...

Because they don't care. I do believe. They don't care.

We don't know because we don't want to be in violation. I mean, it's not our intent. We want to be good neighbors. So we were not aware.

So Mike, because this is revocable and irreparable, the $5,000, that was like the third occurrence for it to have gotten to that amount? No, it's the first.

It's the first one.

The first occurrence? Yeah, we weren't aware. All right. Go ahead, Barry. You have a question?

Mr. Orr, how did this come to the village's attention in the first place? I'm trying to find out. They got the apps. We have software. Is this a response to a complaint or a disturbance or somebody called the police about a wild party?

We have software that tells us all the short-term rentals in Miami Shores.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So that's how you found it?

Yes, sir. Host Compliance is the name.

I have a question. What's the current use of the property?

It's been unoccupied, which is not good for the neighborhood, financially extremely expensive to us. It's our only home, so we are actually renting at the moment.

The home is always well maintained. I do want to put that on record.

Yeah, we have a property manager. We clean the pool and cut the grass every two weeks. And once we became aware of the violation, we did everything in our power to fix it.

What does Miami Shores consider a short term? It's anything less than six months?

That was my question. 90 days. Yes, which is we are in compliance right compliance right now so technically we should be able to rent for 90 days or more properties unoccupied and expensive as you know.

So if I may chair. So obviously Airbnb cannot be the the means to rent the property, but if they have a property manager. There's nothing that states that they couldn't rent that out short-term for 90 days or more?

Well, that wouldn't be short-term, and they would have to have a lease. They would need some kind of paperwork to back it up. We require a business tax receipt.

Which we have. We have a business tax receipt. We have a license. So we technically should be able to rent, and it's really expensive. Even this flight was more than $3,000.

So the question is, and with all that clarification is, As long as they don't go through Airbnb and they go through the property manager, that they've hired, they should be able to rent it out or no? Sure. As long as it's a minimum of 90 days.

But it is already. So it has been a minimum of 90 days. It's just the problem is related to Airbnb, so can we lease somewhere else?

Well, that's the thing. It wouldn't be a lease. You'd need a lease, a legal document to prove that the term was 90 days or more. So you would have to write a lease to these people for the 90 days. That's the differential between an app and an actual...

But how do people know about the property? So if the property manager- You would post it on real estate application.

Correct. There's real estate apps to market as for rent for 90 days or more.

Your property manager, excuse me, your property manager, since you have one, should be able to, he or her, to put it out to realtors to say, hey, you know, I have this short-term rental for 90 days. And then that's how you would get it out. And then upon getting someone to look at it and they want it, they just do the lease. Because the issue is...

It would be a fractional year.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to make it so it's palpable and understandable for everybody.

There's a huge market in this area for that. A lot of people come during F1, and they might not stay in there for 90 days, but they rent the place for 90 days.

Art Basel, for example, would be an ideal time, which is coming up. Holidays, the boat show. So there is a means. It's just that what I understand is you can't go through Airbnb.

This is not explicit in any way to us. So it's nowhere to be found.

Hence why I'm trying to help us out here.

Unicode. Look up the Miami Shores code in Unicode.

Your property manager should have access to the Unicode. to be able to understand that, or he or she should be able to come here and speak. They ought to come here, since you're paying them, to come and speak to the folks here, to the staff, to say, hey, we can use Airbnb, but is this a means that we can use?

Or VRSC or anything else. I just want... The issue here that we have to get down is that you can't rent it for less than 90 days.

Yeah, but we are not in violation there. So just listing it on Airbnb was the issue.

But if you're renting it for more than 90 days, you have to have a lease with that party, and you're not getting that lease through Airbnb. Yeah. That's the key.

Okay. Although there is technically an agreement through Airbnb?

But it's not the same thing.

No. It has to be a lease. May I interject? Okay.

Mm-hmm.

So is there a path actually that we can obtain a license for short-term rental if we wanted to? We just want to do things right. So can we apply? Because last time I spoke to you, Emily, you told me period, no. So that didn't give us a lot of options in that regard. I'm more than willing to go through whatever process it takes to be legal in whatever circumstance. Okay. I would like to do that. Right now we are not renting less than 90, but I would absolutely want to have that option and follow whatever process it takes to do that. Right now we are not in violation. We haven't been, but we were listed on Airbnb.

Offline, Emily, if you could direct it to the city staff that could come to that application process.

Well, let them... Let them sort it out.

Yeah, but I understand that that's permitted. At least that's the lawyer that we spoke to told us that it's permitted. We'll give you the content.

As a property owner, you figure it out. The code says what the code says. You can go to municode.com, M-U-N-I code.com, and you can read it and see what it says.

Yeah, search Miami Shores, and every single code for the entire village is listed there. All the updates, all the changes, everything's in there.

Well, our intent is, first of all, to be compliant. Exactly. That's why we came. But to summarize, right now the house is not compliant. And we can still... Yeah, it is removed. It's removed a long time ago. That's very expensive to us. Okay.

Okay. Mm-hmm.

yeah okay all right do we have any other questions or comments from the board all right hearing none yeah the fine amount is $5,000 the amount proposed is $500 is that your best and final offer yes all right and how long would you need to pay

No, we are leaving actually back to Portugal, so I would like to do the same, leave a check with Emily if you accept that. Since our daughter is in school, so we can't be away for too long.

All right, so 30 days.

I'll pass by tomorrow.

Yeah, we try not to do anything less than that. Yeah, thank you. All right, do I have a motion? You do. All right, Mr. Berryman, and do I have a second? Second. All right, you got that? All right, call roll.

Mr. Hahn?

Yes.

Mr. Pearl? Yes. Mr. Rodriguez? Yes. Chair Huber? Yes. Mr. Behrman?

Yes. All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, and you are doing an awesome job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk, do we have anyone else present for a request for a relief?

Hi. Yes, we do. We have Ms. Pat Neal and Mr. Shane Graber.

All right. If you would approach and state your name and address for the record.

My name is Shane Graver, 9699 Northeast 2nd Ave with property address of 133 Northeast 99th Street for relief requests.

All right, so we are here for 133 Northeast 99th Street. Case is 1-14-12208, failure to maintain parkway, fine amount $404,400. Case 1-609-2020, rubbish, garbage, improper storage. Fine amount, $167,100. Case 55602019, unsightly house exterior. Fine amount, $324,150. Case 8141, 2019, keeping prohibited animals. Fine amount of $108,050. Case 012322, pet limitation and control. Fine amount, $47,100. 012323 leash or other dog controls. Fine amount $45,750. Case 0623259 tethering of dog and pet limitation. Fine amount $139,600 for a grand total of $1,236,150. The amount proposed is $10,000. Please explain why we should accept your offer.

Thank you and thank you for having me first of all none of those violations occurred under my ownership it makes me feel guilty immediately the minute we're up here this is a property that. you familiar with okay i don't i'm not it's known as the pig house in this area of town you know i'm in real estate i've been selling here for nine years and that has been the bane of my existence when selling any property on 99th street and it always comes up and one of my clients bought the house on one side which he fixed up another client of mine bought a brand new house on the other side and i had to like tell him, trust me, one day this will go away. It almost killed the sale. And anyway, the house is notorious, very well known. What happened was the previous owner, I'm not sure if there were mental issues or some sort of problems they were having. It was in a foreclosure process forever. She wasn't even living there, but she maintained her animals in the house. and was living elsewhere and coming every night, according to the neighbors, crawling through the window and feeding dogs and pigs that she had in the yard. It was quite scary, but the bank, so Bank of America finally foreclosed on it. Nobody, you know, usually this goes to a county auction first, and in this case, nobody would purchase the property at county auction because the liens were so high, you know, because mostly investors, they know how to do their homework. That's fine. Bank of America takes a property and there are secondary auction companies now. They used XOME.com and they put it on and they had one deal fault. I found this all out later because they told me everything at the auction house. They had one deal fall through because of the liens and because they had to evict the person who didn't technically live there, but a lot of people are afraid of eviction process. So after the first auction didn't go through, my client next, you know, I sold next door call and said, hey, or his management called me and we put an offer on the place. But same thing when his attorneys and his management teams out of California, a very different state. where they're very intimidated by the legal process and eviction and whatnot. Anyway, so another deal falls through, and I have the auction people calling me, because I know we do a lot in this area, like, do you know anyone who would do this? And I said, this is not that complicated. Someone has to come in and fix the issue. it's almost it's not risky it is risky and I was like I will do this because it is honestly it's not that complex it's a lot of work don't get me wrong of course then I need to I had to come up with the money to buy this property which is over a million dollars hence my big angel investor here Pat who accompanied me today and I she's an animal lover so I was able to use that is one of my ways to have her borrow so we could buy this property. But the goal is to sell it to the neighbor next door. He lives in a new house that is a single story. I sold it to them. It doesn't have a big yard. He has children. He would love to be able to have it as land for himself so his boys can play there. Ironically, the house we're talking about used to own the lot where his house is next door and I believe was vacant forever. So it's kind of a reciprocal swap. Otherwise we'll sell it and someone can build another white box, which I know no one wants and I think it's kind of a cool thing. Even the neighbor on the other side is a builder and he's like, hey, I would love it to be able to be land. which is why we requested $10,000, which is still a lot. But if we don't keep the costs in check, then we'll have to just develop it or do something else, which is not the intent. The intent here is to sell it to the guy next door. They promised one day he would be able to do so. But I wanted to give you each – I was going to do a PowerPoint, but no one wants to go through that. So I do have a presentation. I want you to see the condition before and after. This is known as the The pig's house. So I'll kind of use this document, if you can kind of bring us through the timeline, which is on February 18th of this past year, almost 10 months ago, I finally won the auction. It still took until March 5th, as you'll see on the first page, to close. Great. Then I didn't realize, I mean, I was under the impression that if somebody wasn't actually living in the house, we could go in. So we hired a locksmith, we went in, and out of nowhere comes The person who had lived there before was quite scary for everybody, trust me. I don't know if she had a gun, but she was, for an older person, she was quite bombastic. So you have some pictures here of the inside and outside. By the way, the inside I had no idea until after we officially evicted. But it was a mess. It's beyond repair. Anybody who would purchase a property to repair it because of the 50% rule in Florida has to demolish it. There's nothing to save here. I love saving properties and renovating them, but there's really nothing to save here. If we go to, there's a slide here. We did meet immediately after we learned we had to go through the official eviction process. We met with city staff, with Ishmael, with Mr. Orta. because I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page because I had the eviction the next week that here's what we want to do. Is there anything I'm not doing here or anything else that I need to know? I'm sorry, staff was amazing for us, so I have only commendation and appreciation that we had a room full of people who were willing to help. Everyone knows about this property in the Shores. So we have our eviction day on the 19th of May. She did appeal using some concerns, but it unfortunately didn't work. And then so you'll see pictures here on what I call Possession Day, Liberation Day, where we have a whole crowd. We had Miami-Dade Sheriff. We had Miami Shores police came. Everyone knows this property. I had no idea. I learned a lot. I learned more that day. than any other day, but Officer Blakeman was there, quite helpful. After that day, Officer Royga had come by many times and met with Pat at the property. On this day, also, your police, not even the sheriff, your police helped to get Miami-Dade County Animal Rescue to rescue, there was a dog in the house that nobody, even the police, were afraid to get because this thing was hurtled in the corner. I think it was part pit. And so they called the county animal control. They came out and rescued the dog. However, there were still six pigs And you see a picture of the dog being rescued. There were six pigs to be rescued in the backyard. To me, they looked huge, by the way, but when you, Pat had done a lot of research, and there are pig rescue groups in Miami. There's two of them, I believe. She's a former reporter, and she knows how to find, I don't know how you even find these people. It's nearly impossible. So we find the pig people. They're going to humanely rescue the pigs, because I don't want my name, I don't want to be shamed, because I'm in real estate here, the bad guy who, contrary to rumors, we did not send the pigs the proper sausages. All the neighbors joke about this, but we actually found the group. The day they come, which is Liberation Day, as I called it when the sheriff was there, there were bees in the house. So then we had to postpone pig removal for the bees. And our pig people are so humane that I couldn't kill the bees. We had to get a specific person who would humanely remove the bees. This is like, oh my goodness, are you kidding me? It's great. It all takes longer and it all costs a little more money. That's fine. I'm a big boy. This was a very interesting proposition. On June 2nd, we had Pig Liberation Day. You do have pictures of how they literally, it was like a production of a movie, the way they set this up. They brought the pigs that I thought were very big. They said they only weighed 200 or 300 pounds and they were malnourished and they were in very bad condition, which I didn't know. You'll then see the pigs are now, some relocated to the Redlands, some relocated to Loxahatchee, which is like the Redlands of Palm Beach County. They're happy, they're fat. You know happy as a pig in mud as you would say these days and then we could begin demolition. We worked with the village Got our demolition permits we began on July 22nd and we were done by August 20th It should have taken a week and a half that house was so full of junk I think my demo guy really will never speak to me again because he honored his original price but the amount of extra trucks and dumpsters and then everything in the yard and the cars and you know it was um if you haven't seen it it was quite it was it was a mess and unfortunately previous owner was not there's one thing of having uh problems in life um but she was not polite with the neighbors these pigs escaped the dogs escaped and were assaulting people the woman was assaulting people apparently i saw a little bit of that when we we did not illegally go in i thought the house was vacant but the first time that we were there with the locksmith and so we went through demolition Got the demolition permits closed. We had to work with the county. That's a whole other thing because of the septic situation. And sod was installed and we had everything clean and good to go by September 2nd, which is actually very quick now that I think about it, but to me it felt like years. I told Pat it would take us two months. Thanks, Pat. So that's an added cost that we'll have. Holding costs we'll have to pass on. But that is our story of the pick house. Let me see if there's anything else here. And I joke about it, but this is something I like to do. I like to make things better. On the side, we like to buy properties and fix them up as well. There is a joy that comes from that. I usually save properties, by the way. But in this case, the goal is to sell it to the guy next door. It's not a profit-making venture. It's going to cost him more than most other people would pay for vacant land. But I think it's... I can tell you... Oh, the other thing. I have letters from... The neighbors are thrilled.

They're very happy, so I can share with you letters from neighbors.

The last letter actually has six pages of emails, Mr. Soriero from Nextdoor, of all the complaints and issues he's had and he's been working with the city on. But they're all very much in support. They told me it couldn't be done. But thanks to the guidance of the village and to everyone else involved, we were able to take care of this problem. With that, I didn't even know it was up to $1.2 million. We're asking for $10,000, which is still a lot, by the way. But I understand what a problem it's been, and I respectfully request your consideration and or approval.

All right, so the total expense to date is $1.2 million? Purchase of the property, carrying costs.

Yeah, carrying costs, and then about one to, it'll end up being a little more with closing costs.

Okay, and what are you selling?

They add a premium onto that auction site of like 20, 30. It's ridiculous.

What are you selling it for?

I have to pass through my costs and show it to the neighbor next door.

Okay.

This is not a money thing.

Yeah, okay.

I'll put a sign out front so I get a little advertising, but that's it. I mean, it's really, so it'll be one, two, and you got to go for, you typically have two to 3% closing costs.

And the intent for the new owner is to just leave it as vacant land?

yes and i spoke with him um we're not allowed to say his name even though everybody knows who he is um that's why it's in a trust when you see this but um everyone knows who he is on that street and you'll see him in the golf cart he's well known um I said to him, what are you going to do? Are you going to put a basketball court? He said, I just want green grass for my kids. If you drive by that house, they have two soccer nets in the front yard. How much is that? A $4 million house with 10 feet of front yard. And he just wants to be able to have the grass for his kids. A side yard. A side yard.

This isn't the first property that the neighbor has assisted in tearing down and then left vacant. If I may, Chair. Yeah.

So couple things I would implore you to possibly make this a case study or develop it because obviously put a lot of sweat blood and tears and obviously your angel investors so this would be something that I would be interested myself to read is you know board member to help make decisions in the future because obviously you know you went about doing something that terrified a lot of people to do so kudos to you from me personally um vacant land is all they're going to do with it they're not going to put a fence up no shore breeze well he'll i'm sure okay so yeah so i haven't spoken to him about that i mean i don't really know him too well he's kind of famous and you know i speak with his people in california but i do run into him on the street sometimes got it got it um but please do i would be interested in

I think the village would require what they typically require when someone has, which is a 42-inch, whatever the maximum fence is they allow.

To the face of the house, and then you can go six feet in.

Yeah, however they... Yeah, it'll revert back the opposite way from what it allegedly was.

It was before, yeah. But I would definitely tell you to put something together because it is a lot of work that you did, and I recognize it just from the presentation you gave me.

No, it was a labor of love, I'll tell you that.

I have one question. Go ahead, Mr. Fairley. I have one question for you. How much did it cost to remediate the property?

To demolish it?

Well, to do everything you had to do. I'm sure there was more than just demolition.

We had demolition. We had the bees.

We had the grass was 10.

Probably 100 to 120. And then the biggest thing is the interest on the money.

I mean, that's

Don't worry, we'll get it paid back.

But that's the thing where time ends up costing everyone. Land here, maybe 100, 120 a foot. I mean, someone's paying premium if they buy it next door because it's next door, which I understand. I bought the property next door to mine. There's something natural that everyone wants to expand their realm. But I think it's a win-win for for the community. Yes, Mr. Chair.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, if this was being redeveloped, I would have suggested, and I know we have a couple cases coming before us maybe next month, to move this to a conditional mitigation. But because it's not being redeveloped, that's not really something that we can do because the entire point of the conditional mitigation is to get a new house there. And since we're going to leave this empty, that's not, you know, so we're here in the request for relief.

This is a tough one for a developer at this price, at land acquisition price. The lot's not huge. In the Shores, people really want a minimum of 12 to 12.5 for new construction. And the one next door was only 11 something, and that was still a little tight for what people... Because the families moving here now want four or five bedrooms. It's a family community, if I'm allowed to say that. I don't know anymore what I'm allowed to say, but that's what people want. So it's kind of a tough one to develop because developers want a deal.

How much underwater are you now?

What do you mean underwater?

How much are you all in?

We're probably in 125-ish, 12, 125.

You know, so they'll probably, you know. Is it going to become one parcel now?

I don't know if he's going to do unity of title or how he's going to.

Because the big thing is to take it and then sell it off afterwards. Which I don't imagine is the case, but again, I think this is what we're. I wouldn't have gone through it.

Yeah, it was more that I know that he wanted the land. It was something we talked about when they bought the property years ago.

So certainly we could put a unity condition on it.

$900 to $950, $100 a foot.

I'm not really, because it's a request for relief, so I'm not really sure.

Well, underwater, but to someone next door, it's more valuable.

Yeah, but I mean, if you were to try to turn around and redevelop that, then you're a few hundred thousand in the hole. to start out with based on the value of the property.

Yeah, which is the other reason no one was buying it. I mean, developers want a deal. Builders want a deal. And the market's slow. But beauty's in the eye of the beholder. And if you are next door and you have the means to expand, then...

Well, Mr. Hill seems to think you can, so if you want to ask him how to make a motion for that.

I have a suggestion. Real quick, real quick. So, based on what Mr. Hahn said, could that be tied in to any motion that gets made here where they have to unify the property? No, no, we can't force it. You cannot force it?

No, no, no, you can't. Okay.

No, and that's what I was saying. That's what I was trying to allude to. I would also.

I think at this point, though, everybody's getting off better than the person paying.

Well, but the village would have sat with that house in the same condition, wasting resources forever. And this woman knew how to work the system. And in fact, when I was looking at my docs today, I found that she had been arrested recently on Miami Beach, still using that address, which upsets me, by the way, because that is not her address. But you'd be dealing with it forever. And it was a mess. And there is a benefit and intangible to everybody. If you read the letters from the neighbors, I mean, the one guy was almost crying.

We had a similar situation, but not nearly as bad as this, but the person owned multiple properties in Miami Shores. And it was the clearinghouse situation that we went through after that person passed was a huge boon for many areas in our neighborhood.

I think that well first of all I like this offer but whether you like this offer you want a little more you want a little less I don't care if these folks turn around and sell that property for two million dollars next week okay they have fixed a problem for the community that's been a big problem. Well, he has. Well, and his financial backer. Okay. So, I don't think it's really appropriate to discuss requiring anything further of him. He's done a great job, and if he wants to turn around and try to sell the property, if the people next door want to make it into a lawn, if they want to merge the two properties, I don't care. I don't think we should care. I think we should help this guy out.

Yeah, I mean, I think the city should prefer a home rather than an empty lot because, you know, the city makes more tax. But there are additional costs associated.

And they can always build a home on it next year or the year after if he changes his mind.

Or when he moves out and sells both properties separately.

I think we should focus on what we can do and not try to fix the whole world. I agree. I got it.

All right. Well, let's start this off then. We have a fine amount of $1,236,150. The amount proposed is $10,000. Is that your best and final offer?

Yes, sir.

All right. And how long would you need to pay?

As soon as you are willing. 30 days? 30 days.

Perfect. All right. So the offer is $10,000 payable in 30 days. Do I have a motion? Sure. I'll give that one to Mr. Hahn. Do I have a second? Yes. Second. Second by Mr. Berryman. Madam Clerk, would you call roll?

Mr. Pearl? Yes. Chair Huber?

Yes.

Mr. Rodriguez? Yes. Mr. Hahn? Yes. Mr. Berryman? Yes.

Yes. All right, thank you very much.

Thank you all very much. And thank you all on the staff side for your help.

And thank you for the effort.

You gave me the light when I was so lost.

Now they just need to do a private-public partnership and just have them going around and buying all the eyesores and doing the same thing. If you want to purchase another disaster in Miami Shores, please approach the staff for a conditional mitigation before you purchase it, and we can handle this ahead of time. What do you mean? So we can make an agreement to pay an upfront sum and it would wipe out the leans as long as you follow the part of the conditional saying we're going to have the house turned around and rebuilt in a year or a year and a half, two years, whatever the conditional mitigation is.

Well, the important part is if you fail, it could – In that case, are the liens mitigated prior to purchasing the property?

Conditionally with the agreement, with the contract.

The difference is before you can do a request for relief, you have to fix the problem where you can't come in.

Conditionally, you don't have to.

Conditionally, you can actually get paperwork fixed up in advance.

Purchase the property and then do the demolition or repairs, whatever you're doing.

If you don't follow through, then you go back to where you started and you lose your money.

Yeah, that's the risk. You have to, whatever the agreement is, the terms, you have to follow the terms. So if it's, you know, 12 months to have the house back and ready, you know, in compliance, then... Yeah, because as long as the liens are removed, then you can get a financing and everything else.

It removes the unknown. I have no idea that...

It will cost you 10%.

All right, thank you.

All right, do we have any, we didn't have any minutes. Do we have any minutes?

We have no minutes.

Okay, all right, we're getting that backlog again.

No, I'm trying to outsource so that we could get fully caught up in one go instead of me trying to balance every day to day and this and that.

You get a chat GPT account?

No. No, I was going to send it. We were going to send it to the professionals for them to handle.

On Fiverr?

But it's kind of like a process and approval, and then there was an issue when they tried before, so.

You can just, I honestly, I used to before, before I used, I use Firefly now, which is an AI note taker, but before that, I used to use Fiverr to take the recordings and send it to somebody to transcribe.

I don't know if we could do that, but I'll definitely talk about it.

Do we have any discussion on the board? I have one item that it came up, it's come up in the past, it came up again today. I would like to request staff to amend the notice of violation and the enforcement orders to include that if the meeting falls on an unobserved holiday, that they can contact the clerk for an extension until the next meeting. A postponement to the next meeting was probably the correct terminology. So I would move that if we have any other discussion. Okay, we have a second. If we have any other discussion.

Yes, Barry. I haven't heard the term unobserved holiday.

Well, the government doesn't observe it as a holiday.

But people that... Like Yom Kippur. Like Yom Kippur. Okay, I understand.

All right. Do we have any further discussion? No? All in favor, aye. Aye. All opposed, say nay. Nay. Nobody. Okay. And more for the team. Any other discussion? Do I have a motion to adjourn? Second.

Third.

All in favor, aye. All opposed, say nay. Aye. Ayes have it. Thank you very much. Meeting is adjourned.