Planning Commission - Special Meeting

there's a review process that uh will take place. Um so in order to get started, let's just go ahead. We'll follow normal procedures as is for a regular meeting. So let's all stand up for the pledge of allegiance. We should do the roll call first. We'll do the roll call after. All right. I allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much. Madam Secretary, if you could please call the role. Yes. Chairman. Chairman Erns. Uh present. Vice Chair McD present. Commissioner each. I couldn't hear you. I'm sure Commissioner Commissioner each. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Blamir, Commissioner Seed, presided. Yes. Commissioner Pierre Commissioner Bob and Commissioner Besson. We have a quorum. Good. Thank you very much. Um, I would like to introduce our newest member of plan commissioner commission, Mr. Pierre, if you could introduce yourself, please, and tell us a little bit about um your actually long history with the city of North Miami. And I and I've known your father for a long time. So, please introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your um nice to meet everybody. My name is Dominique Pierre. Uh I've lived in the city for I I want to say about 23 years. Um I uh went to undergrad at FIU and law school at FIU. Uh recent graduate last year and now I'm

practicing mergers and acquisitions with uh a firm in Bickl called Acre. Mr. Beer, welcome very much. and uh uh he is the son of one of our former mayors and a former member of this panel a long long time ago Andre Pierre. So it's an honor to have you on on board our um our extinguished distinguished panel. Um okay so um we have no amendments to the agenda I believe. Is that correct? Love, that is correct, sir. All right. And then there are no minutes to approve since we'll bring that up in the next next meeting, regular meeting. Again, this is a special meeting. Um, and uh I want to go ahead and make it a point to let everyone know that there will be no public input during this discussion. Um the discussion will be among the planning commissioners and we will not have uh any u um public input u uh following the presentation. Uh that being said um I'd like to go ahead and pass the mic off to Debbie Love. Welcome Miss Love and thank you for joining us. We've missed you and your presence at past meetings. Thank you sir. I appreciate that. Again, for the record, Debbie Love, um, development services director. Tonight's meeting is a little different. It's not a public hearing. It's an opportunity for you as power users of code, um, to talk about some of the challenges that you've seen that could be potentially addressed down the road. Um, so this is a facilitated discussion. We'll have a separate facilitated discussion with the community. We have another meeting on

Monday night that is of additional power users, developers, contractors, uh resident representatives, business owners. Um and then when we come back with the the and then we'll have a whole bunch of community workshops once we've actually drafted the LDRs um to bring forward to the community, but we'll also have a series of these type of discussions with the community. So these are discussions for this evening, which is why this is not a public hearing. Um, folks that are here, we hope that you take note and that you bring your concerns or your thoughts or your ideas uh forward at the meetings that are held specifically for the public. Uh, but you as a power user, we're trying to get that input from you all. It's not you you're not making decisions, you're not making specific recommendations. You're talking about here's your challenges, here's some things we've seen. Um, and then down the road it'll get So, our consultant is going to talk to you about the setup for this evening. They have a PowerPoint presentation they would like to to uh start with and then they'll get you into the facilitated discussion. Right. Very good. So, with that, if I may introduce Sylvia Vargas, you may remember her. She is part of the consultant team that worked on our our comprehensive plan that we're very proud of. and uh you all including the public you all contributed to that process and miss Vargas would you take it away. Thank you Miss Love. Uh it's good to see everyone uh from it's been a while but you know uh thankfully the reason is because we successfully adopted the comprehensive plan. So a couple of new faces. Um I want to thank you all for taking the time to meet with us tonight

in this special meeting. uh granting us your time in that way. Um I am joined tonight by my colleagues Josh Nogera who kindly he just joined our firm and I have him taking notes for tonight already. So he's going to be helping us uh to take down your input. And then I'm also joined by my uh colleague and subconsultant Carla Evenbach. She was part of our team uh that worked on the comprehensive plan. may remember that she uh was uh very immersed in the areas of environmental uh climate change, conservation, coastal management, all of that. Um resilience in essence. So um she's uh she's uh taking um slightly different role this time, but bringing all that knowledge with her to help us with regulations that pertain to that aspect of it. So, um, let me see if I can get this going. Is this on? It's maybe backwards, too. It's backwards. Backwards. No, no, no. There you go. I got it. Perfect. All right. So, tonight we have uh divided our agenda into two sections. The first one is us looking backward a little bit since it's been a while since the adoption of a comprehensive plan. And even I'm starting to forget. I'm going to try to give you a little um background um a little refresher and um the reason why I think that's important is so that it gives us context for what we're going to do now. Um so that's the first part and then in the second part we're going to go into the future, the present and the future. We're going to talk about the implementing uh mechanism of our comprehensive plan. uh the the the biggest one anyway which is the land

development regulations which is what we are going to be doing over the next uh uh six to eight months and uh we're going to go over our goals for this project the process and the anticipated timeline um Miss Love has mentioned some of our stakeholders that we are um uh interacting with right now and then we're going to jump into our facilitated discussion. All right. So, um, again, this is a little refresher. This is where things started. Um, an RFP was issued by the city of North Miami in early 2022, I believe it was, and it caught my eye because it said a lot of interesting things. It talked about trying to create a comprehensive plan that was what I call the comprehensive plan for the 21st century, userfriendly, uh, easy to understand, written in plain language, accessible. Um, and what we ended up defining as accessible is that there would be translations in several languages and it would be ADA ready, um, ADA compliant. um it's a comprehensive plan that is systems oriented and I can talk a little bit about what that means but you know even though the plan is still organized in in elements in essence what we're trying to do is to think in terms of how those elements interact with each other to create different ecosystems um land use and housing land use and transportation and services and and so kind of see uh how how they interact how they need to interact in order to provide effective policy guidance and to get away from siloed thinking uh which hinders uh successful implementation. And finally, um a plan that was focused on action, not just, you know, sort of high level goals and policies, but

really kind of bring it bring it down to a more um granular level that says this is what we're going to do. This is when we're going to do it. this is who's going to be responsible and this is the timeline for this particular action to happen. Um just quick reminder of our process. It had four phases. It took a long time because we had first of all we had a long period that we left open for public engagement for public input but also uh there was um a delay with the um um statutory review that required us to go back if you remember the plan had to come back one more time to you. Uh and actually that worked to the city's advantage because there were a couple of things that we tweaked between that first adoption and the second adoption. So uh it it actually was pretty uh pretty beneficial. Uh but uh the plan was ultimately adopted in on uh June uh 25th 2024 and became effective uh in August of that same year. and the city has been uh implementing different parts of it. Um u we just are now then getting started on this particular uh piece which is really important. Um just a um little reminder of what our overarching recommendations or statements and guiding principles for the comp plan was that in all policies we were going to embrace fairness and inclusion for every resident, business owner and even visitors to the city. Uh we were going to embrace sustainability and resilience. we were going to embrace community health and wellness and technology and innovation. That the

revision, the update of the LDRs was going to be a really um um critical component of the implementation of the uh comprehensive plan. uh that we would take to that effort. um um a flexible approach to create more a framework to accommodate change than a rigid structure for regulation knowing that um the uh the future is uncertain. And we want to uh stay ahead of it as much as we can and uh committing to uh improving the city's infrastructure to make sure that it could provide for the projected growth that we envision in that comprehensive plan. There were four major themes uh that were woven both uh throughout the other elements of the comprehensive plan or in the form of new uh elements or new sections of the comprehensive plan. Community health and wellness, I mentioned that before, technology, infrastructure and access, housing affordability and environmental protection and climate change response. H um quickly I'm going to tell you how we uh threaded those themes into uh the vision uh statement that went into the comprehensive planet that sort of frames the overarching framework for everything. Uh very simple the city uh the reason why we came up with this and also the branding for this comprehensive plan which is the future city know me beyond the centennial. you have a centennial coming up, very important milestone. And so thinking about what that means, looking at the history, looking at the past and also looking at the future. Um the comprehensive plan

that you adopt, all adopted last year seeks to honor the city's past while positioning the city to steer its future. and it envisions the city of North Miami as a model for the entire region for sustainable, resilient, equitable, innovative, functional, enjoyable, urban living and I think that urban uh aspect of it is really important because it kind of um um attests to the um uh to many of the goals that have you know sort of been permeating through the comprehensive plan of supporting change and supporting growth. A city that is uh diverse and growing and evolving and that understands and embraces that as a way of maintaining its uh not just its resilience but also its vitality. Um, you may or may not remember that when we first started coming before you, because we came, you know, a couple of times at least, um, that we presented several growth scenarios. And ultimately the city uh as a precautionary measure to prepare for a future that seems likely whether it is within the 20-year time frame of the plan or beyond is an assertive projection. is a a projection that says we are growing fast and we will continue to grow fast and we are going to prepare for the eventuality of that growth with our infrastructure with our services and um this is this is what that uh projection uh looks like. There were other uh projections in in in that analysis that um are probably better suited to other aspects of the plan, but

for the purposes of infrastructure planning, this is what the city chose. We also had during the comprehensive plan uh project um process. Um you may remember another partner that I had during that process uh an economist, a real estate um um expert that looked at the market uh components uh and helped us figure out where the city stood within the regional market and and where the local market was sort of heading. And one of the um I I wouldn't say surprising but it was a little startling finding was that over a period of 30 20 30 years the city had hardly had any change in the development of multifamily residential in the city. Hardly anything at all. It was a fraction of that some you know small percentage. And within the past five or six years, what he found is a startling change. All of a sudden, the city uh had delivered over 800 units of multifamily rental housing with an average average annual absorption of which he projects to continue at about the same pace of about 300 to 350 units. and in addition a pipeline of over 4,000 units. Uh so that kind of tells you why it was that when we were preparing these growth scenarios, the city was looking at this sort of aggressive projection because this is what we're seeing right now. We understand and we we we take into full consideration and I think the city needs to do that as well that there are factors right now that could change the phasing or the timeline for that to happen. So, you know, we have some

uncertainties. We have new tariffs that uh we've been there before, you know, uh that will um sort of uh potentially raise the cost of construction, supply chain issues for uh for construction materials and and that kind of thing. and uh other factors such as there are some uh state preeemptions that have already been um adopted into legislation over the past year and a half as well as others that are coming down from Tallahassee potentially uh we think pretty lightly uh this year. Uh so all of those factors are going to change the dynamics a little bit of you know how much growth happens within these next 3 5 10 15 20 years and even if we were to have a condition where that growth slows down I think it's not that the growth is going to it's just going to kind of be pushed pushed down so we still expect that the projections are going to be valid even if it is for a longer period of time Uh during the um comp plan process uh we realized that over the past let's say 10 years uh the city had been focused on incentivizing growth into certain areas of the city. Uh and that those areas far from being saturated but you know um there was a potential for shifting gears and focusing on uh channeling growth into some of the other areas so that the growth of the city became a little more balanced and the city had better ability to control the provision of infrastructure to both the areas that are already being developed and the areas that it wants. to develop. So in this round uh the these uh growth areas or priority growth areas are going

to be the PCD which are the areas in yellow on the map and the uh NMTSDO which is the area in red on the map. Those are going to be for the next 20 years. Maybe not the whole 20 years, but at least for the foreseeable future, the areas in which the city is going to be looking to paying um particular attention to how to channel growth into. Um we are already uh in accordance with policies uh that are in the comp plan looking at incentivizing um uh some types of development into areas such as the Northwest uh 7th Avenue corridor. um uh with um some incentives for uh workforce and affordable housing and a high flexibility um uh bonus. Uh the other thing that we did was through our analysis realized that uh one of the other overlays the NRO was really not serving the purpose that it had been designed for and was actually harming more than it was providing a benefit. So that uh was a recommendation for eliminating the NRO uh that went into the plan. Um the other important thing that happened with respect to growth is that at the time the uh supply of units in the city's um floating unit pool was being rapidly depleted but not equally between the two areas that were um established uh in the original floating unit pool. And so two things happened. One was that the distinction between those two separate parts of the pool was uh eliminated and the two um uh separate areas were consolidated. So now you have one big pool. Uh and the second one is that the pool was re uh replenished with over 8,000 almost 9,000 uh

units. Silia, if I for a moment, just a point of clarity, as you may recall, we selected that high growth scenario as a conservative because then that meant that the infrastructure study that we did to to say that look, this is when we plan the we anticipate growth this amount. And we wanted to make sure that the infrastructure was tied to that population growth. So that as you reached each stage of population growth certain improvements were made to the infrastructure um particularly water and sewer in this case roads are a separate issue because it's a lot of that's governed by FDOT but we wanted to make sure that the water and sewer infrastructure so we took the more conservative approach of being ready so we may not get all that development but we will certainly be ready for infrastructure uh the infrastructure improvements because it's tied to that growth. Thank you so much. Yeah. If I just on a followup with that um regarding infrastructure, um I know it's a balancing act because certain uh u infrastructure is is uh enhanced with new development. But again, I I would think that we would still have to look at what we the existing infrastructure of older neighborhoods or established neighborhoods and and having it equitable in terms of of getting their needs taken care of. Also, it's not it's not focused in a particular area. It's said population growth. So when you when you update your infrastructure, it's to cover the entire city, right? To to for growth because growth isn't going to

just occur in the PCD or the NMOD. It's actually going to include other areas of the city. So this was a conservative move that we made so that we can make sure that the infrastructure is upgraded to meet whatever growth happens in the city because that's a That's certainly an important issue because right now uh we are we have to look at that for each development but we wanted to do this more holistically as a city. Okay. And to add what Miss Love just said and to what what you said uh Mr. chair. Uh the balancing act is that the city has to serve its infrastructure to maintain it and to uh plan proactively for the provision of future infrastructure and to maintain and increase capacity. But at the same time, you have development coming in that has to provide a fair share for the impact that it creates. And the city sometimes has a capacity and sometimes it doesn't. And so when that when that happens, the development uh either can be um pulled back uh it can be delayed or it the development or the the property owner or the developer can make the improvements to allow his development to occur. So that's that's another you know side of that equation that provides you know sort of the private contribution of it. Uh but as far as the citywide planning uh that really has to happen in order to you know um be uh efficient and and and to provide uh for services that um will um allow for quality of life for all of the parts of the city and all of the residents uh then that that has to be the city and that's what I actually commend the city of North Miami because

it took a very proactive approach to doing a study that would um in fact feed into and provide us with the information that we needed in order to make policy decisions. Not me, but the city. All right. So, I'm going to turn it over to my colleagueuh Carla to walk us through a summary of highlights of the policies in different parts of the comprehensive plan that are driving changes uh to the LDRs. We know that there are some changes that have to happen to the LDR. So, you know, we're coming here to talk to you about those, but those are already set in the comprehensive plan. The plan says we will revise the LDRs to do X, Y, and Z. We know those. And so, uh, she's going to tell you a little bit about those and then we're going to talk about other aspects of the LDRs that, um, the changes that that that could happen into the LDRs that we would like to hear from you and and, uh, and and and from, you know, eventually from all the different uh, power users of the code. Carla, thank you, Sylvia. Good evening, commissioners. It's great to be before you again doing this next part of the work. Um again I'll just uh quickly go through some of the substantive areas of the comprehensive plan as their policies are driving our uh work on the LDRs. Um some of this will be familiar to some of you who may have been through that process with us in the area of land use. We've already covered I will not read these. Um you can scan over the slides yourself but you know some of the highlights. We've already talked about the NRO being eliminated and changes with the floating unit pool. Um other other land use uh issues that the the comp plan uh prompts us to work on are strengthening the transitional standards um protecting single family

neighborhoods adjacent to these corridors that we're working on. Um strengthening the resilience and sustainability uh for development and redevelopment design standards, various aspects of the corridors. Um integrating health facilities into neighborhoods, considering uh agriculture uh urban agriculture, different forms of that to uh eliminate food deserts, etc. Um and this is the future land use map. There were not a lot of changes to it. Um but you can see here uh some of the changes that the city did make I guess prior to prior to our work in the area of infrastructure and mobility. Um this is you know a kind of a wide ranging thing. Everything from to standards to uh universal design standards for street design. um implementing parts of the vulnerability assessment. Um we'll be implementing those uh through those development development requirements. Housing again we've t touched on that already. There's quite a few uh policies that lead us to change the LDRs especially with respect to uh um making it possible to bring forth a variety of housing types um and encouraging live work units and uh assuring affordable housing for example in that floating unit pool. Um another thing to point out would be you know the strengthening of the sustainability and green construction incentives. That's a big uh part of it. And um and uh you know of course protecting these historical and cultural and architectural resources of the city. Uh the natural environment. This is sort of encompassing everything from

the climate change element to the conservation and coastal management elements. Um so we brought forth some uh emissions reductions benchmarking in the comp plan. Um the we talked about um mitigating the impacts on the natural environment from development uh developing tree canopy uh through several means ensuring that we know how to maintain that tree canopy and uh improve our swailes, take care of our swailes um and uh and so on. Clarifying some some some open space dedication provisions etc. buffering requirements. Um, in the built environment side, there's everything from buildings to uh urban design and uh uh you know public space. We're talking about uh um designing resilience hubs. We remember may remember we talked about resilience hubs as a place a resource for the community in the event of uh disasters um where they can find resources and uh fulfill their needs during those times. uh implementing the parallel flood policies, uh reviewing uh the energy conservation green building program to make that stronger and to tie it to the developer benefit package. Um and the Miami date county has a new imperous uh surface ordinance. We had already been moving in that direction with the comp plan. We'll be reviewing to make sure that we're in compliance with that and uh trying to incentivize clean and renewable energy use, water reuse, etc. And I guess I'll pass it on back to you. Thank you, Carla. So, um the reason to give you this little uh refresher is to set up our conversation

that we're going to have. Um like like I said, you know, there are some things that the comprehensive plan already has told us that we need to do as far as changes to the LDRs. Um uh you know, this in my view uh and from my experience working with um codes across multiple municipalities, the code in the land development regulations in North Miami is actually in not bad shape. It's uh it's been updated. The last time that uh that that happened to some extent not not wholesale but you know um pretty significant was by Miss Love in 2017 and and so you know it's a code that I I I look at it it's it's on critics which is very user friendly and uh uh when I when I look at it I think it's it's pretty well organized and it's got you know the right pieces. it doesn't have things that are you know 70 or 80 years old. Uh but that doesn't mean that it could not use uh improvements other than the ones that we are going to make in order to make it consistent with the comp plan. So, um part of our comprehensive plan was as I mentioned that it was very a uh um uh focused on action and in order to um to do that we created an action agenda and summarized all the different things that the um comp plan told us that we need to do over the next 20 years into a list of 50 actions. Um the beauty of that uh is that it's in the form of a matrix that assigns responsibilities to the different departments. It also identifies who the partners to those uh lead departments are. Uh it identifies the time frame um in which these um

actions are going to be uh implemented. It identifies um related policies and god I wish I could see a little better. Yes, it also identifies um measures of uh performance because one of the things that we did in this comp plan is introducing performance indicators for different um um objectives. So we even have a way of track our success or lack thereof for each one of these actions. And one of the main um one of the main uh um and and like the top of the immediate list of actions that we needed to take is the update of the LDR. So this is why we're here. Um other actions have already you know uh from other parts of the complant have already been under implementation by the by the city uh and different departments but this one is a big undertaking and so it's taking a little bit uh more time to uh set up. Um this is um a summary of what we see as the goals of the separate things that we wish to accomplish and uh hope uh will be uh the outcomes. Um we talked about the need. This is something that you know we have to do make sure that the uh LDRs are aligned with the adopted plan because we made so many changes to the comprehensive plan. There's going to be uh parts of the LDRs that may now not be in full alignment. So we'll look at those. We'll make sure that they are. In some cases that will require just tweaking what you have uh or perhaps uh introducing new language or perhaps eliminating some language but uh that's that alignment has to happen. We also um Carla talked a little bit about some of

some of that um need to be aligning um the LDRs with statutory changes that have happened over the past year and a half since we adopted the comp plan as well as uh um changes that are sort of in the horizon. Uh one uh example is um the live local act is being uh is being um tweaked tweaked again. Uh so we're looking closely at that and what it means for uh local regulations. Uh there's another bill SB 184 I think it is that is going to require uh local um governments to uh allow um accessory dwelling units. So now that's not simply you know like oh well it's our choice to do that now u the the the state legislature basically is saying you you have to allow them. So um that's the kind of thing that we're going to u be u paying attention to make sure that we comply with statutes. Um, one of our major objectives is to continue to I I I talked about how I think this code is pretty uh user friendly, but that doesn't mean that it cannot be improved. And we're going to continue to look at it from the um from the perspective of enhancement of user friendliness. Uh whether that means um you know um flow and organization, graphics, tabular uh summaries or otherwise. And finally, and this is where you all come in, the power users, we want to know what this code is missing today. What the challenges are and things that exist in the code. Uh issues that are difficult uh or addressed uh perhaps not appropriately

for where we are today and the gaps. uh what are the topics that the code should be addressing that is not what are the emerging uh topics emerging issues that the city should be thinking about and and trying to get ahead of in the form of um provisions in the LDRs. So with that um this is our timeline. It's a little bit um uh I would say it's a little bit aggressive now but we do want to establish momentum and keep the momentum going and be done before the end of the year. So uh with that we are in the middle of what we call our discovery phase. Uh this is why we are uh looking at different u studies and plans that the city has been working on that can have an an impact and effect on the LDRs. looking at that uh talking to department heads, talking to uh yourselves and to um you know um property owners, developers, residents. We're going to go out to the public to talk to them to learn more about what they see as the issues, the topics of concerns, the challenges, uh and the opportunities. Um in April, um well, we're in April and so between now and the end of May, we're going to be in our diagnosis phase as well. sort of saying these are the things that we have found from our discovery that we are going to be doing. Uh these are sort of like our framework of initial recommendations. It may come in the form of a an annotated outline. And then during the summer, we're going to be furiously drafting so that when we come back uh at the beginning of the school year in September, we can go out again to the

stakeholders, to the public, and present our initial recommendations to get feedback on those and proceed in um in um in October and November through uh the adoption process. um talked about the stakeholders. So I'm not going to linger on this slide, but I'm going to jump right into our facilitated discussion. Uh so what we have is about five questions that we want to pose to you to facilitate the discussion. Um we can we can deviate from these. You can ask us questions. We can have what I would like is to have more of an interactive conversation with you, a true conversation with you. And um Josh is ready to take down some notes for us to um to uh take home with us. And our first question has to do and I I think I kind of know but you can tell me what your interface is with the LDRs. Um obviously you are the planning commission. You uh review and make the com recommendations on development. So, you know, if you want to expand on that or or go in a different direction or tell me I'm completely wrong, that's perfectly fine. I'll I guess maybe we can start with uh Commissioner each. Well, there's se several areas that I was thinking. I was just listening to you talk about our tree canopy. Well, the tree canopy is great, but we don't have people to maintain it. So, what do we do? Uh we put trees up. They're not fertilized. uh trees get knocked over, they're not replaced. That's a problem. The other thing I see when we're talking about sustainability uh and the square areas, people park on the square areas. You got a hard pan, you're not getting percolation. What are we doing about that? We have

curbs that have been put in like on 16th Avenue. People jump the curb and they park on top of the the grass area. So we, you know, it's sometimes it's like a we're chasing our tail. Yeah. And I I find that very frustrating. Like we have an ordinance that says you're not supposed to feed the wildlife. So we have these musci ducks all over the city and we put up signs, beware of the duck crossing, which is preposterous. They're defecating all over the place. It goes into the storm drain, goes into the canal, it's polluting the canal. So issues of sustainability, little things like that, swale maintenance, tree canopy. Other things that I was talking about would be um okay, let's look at the long run of parking garages within the city and some of them have been up 40 years, but some of them still back up to the residential area under the new code. You have to put grill work up there to knock away the harshness or the lights from intruding into the residential area. Maybe we should go back and give it like a a sevenyear time limit that everybody comes into compliance with. So an amortization period, you know. Uh I know and I I just I don't know if this would come under the comp plan or in the LBRS. Coral Gables has a uh a setup where if the design comes in and it's exceptionally well done, a work of art, you get two extra floors to build on. I don't know if that would be in the LDRs or if that would be in the comp plan, but I think that's also something worthwhile looking at. Okay. I've seen some of these projects go up on Sixth Avenue here just recently, the gateway to the city, and I get flustered with it because here we have these projects coming

in, but they're I thought it was me. I know I'm going deaf and I didn't think I could hear myself. Um they're just very plain buildings. Yeah. and the one of the developers had the audacity to say, "Well, the amenities are in the apartment." Well, that's a lot of nonsense, you know? I mean, back in the 60s and the 70s when you built apartments on 6th Avenue, people had recreation. They had the uh the pools and and the pool area. So, you know, I I'm looking at for extra credit. Maybe we try to gear it where they do rooftop gardens, which I think is essential to the environment and keeping the environment cooler. And if you can't afford a a pool on the roof, at least put a jacuzzi or m make it a place where not only you come home and you're not looking at your four walls, but you you have an area to to recreation out. Uh there things like that or now the other thing I was thinking about is the design review committee. Now that's all city staff. Am I correct, Deb? The development re committee is uh all staff. And now you guys look at the design and consultants. you look at the design of the building and see if it's attractive and so forth and so on. Okay, sir. Okay. Well, I was thinking maybe the citizens that live within the community should maybe couple of us should be on that on that committee to give our input. See what happens when I was in the police department. I used to say I don't want to become an army of occupation. I want to be of the people and by the people and I believe the same thing with the planning commission and the staff. We should have representatives that live here 24/7 that might want to give their input. I know we we give an input at our two minutes at our planning commission meetings and stuff like that, but when we're looking at the final product, it might be worthwhile to have a couple of members maybe of the planning commission

address that. That that's just a a thought. Okay. Um I I have a heck of a lot more to generate, but we'll be here at 2 o'clock in the morning. So, let me give it to my and I'll I'll come back with more ideas. Right. And by the way, this is not your only opportunity to provide us input if you want to send an email to Debbie. Uh she can certainly u address it to us. Even if you you know like you have your list right now, but like if you come up with other things later, you know, you can do that. Okay. Uh, one of the things I don't know if it's in the LDRs now, but one of the things that really annoys the heck out of me is when I walk around and I do a lot of walking in the city, I see dumpsters. Mhm. And I believe all dumpsters out there should be enclosed. Enclosed. And they're not. And I don't know if that's in the LDRs now or if it's not, we should be enforcing it. But I want to make sure that's in there. Yeah. Uh, it's horrible. You see the garbage piling up. the garbage blows around and and uh and then there should be a nice transition between the different elements within the city. I think we do have some of that right now like if we're going from public use to residential or whatever. Yes. You know, we want to make sure that we have not only a wall but the proper uh landscaping abilities in there. So those are some of the items that I I I would or the the other thing I that really annoys me and I we ought to look at our bike lanes and uh I was thinking well why not when we look at bike lanes we look at a grant maybe where we get a possibility of putting the bike lanes through the alleyways at least try one beautify an alleyway make it picturesque something something you know I like to get it out there that we just don't want to be a drive-thru city. Hey, North Miami is innovative. I want to go

there. Sure. And then you have a you go from say Biscane Boulevard over to the uh to the U canal on Griffin Boulevard. Maybe we can look at a bike lane and make it beautiful or if we can get a federal ground. I don't know where the money's coming from now, but okay. But that's those are some of the ideas that I that I was tinkering with. when I walk I I see it and I say, "Well, maybe I should bring this up and that up and and I have a couple drinks and I forget what the hell I was going to say." I do appreciate it. And um you know, it sounds to me like there are number of issues that you raised that um perhaps are um uh enforcement issues. So things that are already in the LDRs in some way or another, but maybe they need be they need to be um enhanced. Um so we can take a look at those and uh and and certainly you know work with uh uh your other departments. Um I know that we had a meeting with the department heads this morning and you know we heard a lot of the the the concerns that they have as well. Uh some of them are coincident with uh things I'm going to I'm sure that I'm going to hear uh from from you and your colleagues uh tonight. So um uh shall we give your colleagues the the mic now or please do? Okay. Hi. Hi. Um you know you made a statement early on which I thought was pretty accurate um in that um we um were a city that not not much happened for many decades. Um, we've certainly played catchup real quick. Um, but in that catchup real quick, I think we've um not addressed the responsibility and

and I work for developers and I I can I won't say work for them. represent them once in a while, but I can tell you that um a lot of times that they're confused, okay, as to what their obligations are because we're not clear about that. Okay. Okay. Um we're not clear about the their obligations. They're not clear about what we mean by some of the language like community benefits. What does that mean to them? Yes. other than saying, "Oh, gee whiz, I'm gonna help the golf town." You know, you know, so there's there's a lot of things like that, like how do you deal with uh the things that are under their ob their obligation roof, right? You know, their community benefits. Yes. You know, their obligations for infrastructure. Okay. So they they just sort of grasp at things because of somebody says, "Oh, you need to look at this or you need to support that or that kind of thing." Right. So um I'm not everything he's you know I concur with what he's saying and and to carry it further. it comes to us, the decision makers or or the ones that have to advise whether or not these projects work well, right? Uh and we're confused. it comes to us in a confusing manner and we're kind of left dangling in the wind with well we didn't see that coming or or you know we we find conflicting um conflicting meanings in some of the regulations and and some I think most of us will agree some developers will take advantage of that and leave us kind of hanging between you know the bad guy and

the good guy and making the decisions. So looking at any kind of decision making needs to be adjusted somehow to make it clear to both the developers and to our our panel as to what actions are are clearly able to carry forth uh without conflicting with one another in the decision making. Thank you. And these are all very useful. Yeah, these are important issues. Yes. Um not only for the citizens you know one of the things that you know I think people tend to forget you know developers come and go the citizens still still are still here. So it's important that we make sure that you know what you bring here um benefits everybody long term and clarity is an important part of that so if you come in and you have definitive regulations if this is what you do sure okay I think they're so vague that they they're able to try to find loopholes and that slows down the process that that muddles the decision making as to whether or not that project is is viable continue or you know to improve I don't know if this is something that you can do right now and obviously I want to give your colleagues the space uh to uh speak on this and and and also for all of you to go through the rest of our questions with us but if you uh can think of some examples of these areas of sort of ambiguity that make it difficult for you to render uh recommendations when projects come before you or where the developer also may be um leveraging uh the ambiguity. I I would really appreciate hearing overlays overlays.

Yes. Always cause a problem. Yeah. Because there are um how do they work? bulk. For instance, overlays could be allowing something in in a in a area or a um what do you call it? Um like a residential area or a non-residential multi-use family residential area or whatever. And so if they want to the the overlays have a different it always seems like the overlays have a different um um meaning as to what they can build compared to what really exists within that that designated area. So there's no clear-cut way we would like to see and I think most of us would agree on this. I don't know. I haven't heard anybody yet. But a more defining um set of standards that apply to just, you know, I I I can see not wanting to do away with with uh with the overlays. Yeah. Overlays. But I mean, I' I've called Debbie and going, "Wait a minute. This is this overlaying area is overlaying another overlay area." Yes, I understand. We don't know which which uh which one takes precedence, which one. Yeah. Well, no, not so much of that as which ordinances would apply to which area. Okay. Okay. You know, I see. That's that kind of sour us on the overlay thing. We look at it and we're confused. I myself I'm not a huge fan of overlays, frankly, but and I know the city has a lot of them and they have they have their purpose. Um but if there are any ways that we can simplify you

know we'll certainly not just simplify but you know uh clarify we'll we'll certainly look for those make it uniform first of all okay that you know one set of rules works for both the district you know the district the underlying district underlying district okay one one final one one final word it's good to have requirements and LDRs and that kind of thing but you have to enforcement and a lot of times um a lot of times the enforcement's not there. So um you know but you know as you well know um you know I I've talked to people who say they're in one city and they have a requirement for this is what we got to do for the infrastructure. They go to the city next door and it's like non-existent. Yeah. So, you know, it's and as we go further, particularly in an old city like ours, we need to focus on the infrastructure. Yes. And how to make sure that that is as we're fast catching up with the growth. Yeah. We need to fast catch up with the infrastructure. So, on the enforcement side, there's uh you know, there's several layers to that, right? One is resources, and those are both of of uh of personnel and and and uh funding. Um and and uh that uh sometimes um there there's there's actually a sort of a a philosophy about um uh establishing regulations that if you don't have the means to enforce it, perhaps you shouldn't even be doing it in the first place. Um but you know, we all know that it's very, you know, difficult to give up saying, well, we don't want this and therefore we're going to regulate it. um even when you don't really have the means to enforce. So we'll certainly

look at it. I'm not sure how much we can solve of that in the regulations themselves without you know interfacing with the actual enforcement part of it which has to do with you know uh more of a resource personnel operational aspects but uh we certainly will look at it and then and then looking at at an item let's say comes before us where it only would relate to one specific um area like um somebody wants something changed in the R2 district, but and it could in fact be bad for the R3 district or whatever or or that person would question why why would R3 be exempt from having to do what R2 has to do. Okay. So, you know, that's when I talk about uniformity, um, I am of the thought of what's good for one district should be good for the other for all the districts within the city because I think you get into an area where people can take advantage of of that and not in a good way, but in a bad way. and then we get it would become a whoops moment uh in in allowing for that. Um okay I was not Debbie and I have gone round and round about this in the past. Uh for instance you mentioned that the state is talking about allowing uh um additional structures be put on properties and everything. Um, in some cases that may be wise, other cases it not might not be

wise. So, how do you balance that out and and having affair to to everyone? Well, and that's that's our responsibility to make sure that, you know, that the neighbors are are are fine with somebody building that accessory 2 feet away from their fence or whatever and and and you know, and then have that brought to us and having to make that that decision. Yeah. And then you know if there's any vague any vagueness in any ordinances then we we are kind of caught in a no man's land with that decision making. Right. Right. So okay. Yeah that's that's fair. If if the state preempts us in some of those some of those uh abilities to uh tailor regulations whether it is tailored to them to the city or tailor them to districts in the city um I think that the ability of someone to say well we don't want it here it's going to be severely limited right is for better or worse um it's not just adus as you know very well there's a lot of other areas that you know the legislature is um you know preempting um the state is preempting local governments but you know it's hard for us to keep up with all the it is hard it is hard yes from Tallahass these days yeah with that said um if you don't mind I'm going to go to uh some of your other colleagues and we'll come back um commissioner thank you very nice hearing from the other commissioners on the on the panel up here. Uh, and they've all made some incredibly valid points. Uh, I think when we get to three overlay districts, we've overdone it, and then nobody knows

where they're going. And there ought to be something where if we get to three districts, then we need to stop that, take them all back, and take a look and see if we shouldn't rewrite this to a single district. We just don't need three overlay districts in some of our areas. Uh speaking uh going back to the to the points that that Kenny brought up and then Mike [Music] mentioned to clarify, I'm a bicycle rider in the city. Now granted, it's not totally by choice. I simply can't afford a car, so I have to ride a bicycle everywhere. Well, you know, you get an entirely different perspective on the roads and neighborhoods when you pedal it at my snails pace through neighborhoods, you know. Um, and and uh the swailes are an important issue because there's no place left to park the cars except on the swailes. Many of our blocks look like used car lots. There are so many cars out there. You've got to wonder how many people are living in a house with how many bathrooms when they have six cars in the front yard. So since we've got all these cars, don't park on a swale becomes pointless. In which case do we need to reconsider how our swailes architecturally are developed? Are they functional as places for grass? or is there some alternative where we just dig it all up and put it in some kind of rock system so that you have drainage that doesn't compact. Yeah. Because there's no sand areas left that aren't overly compacted. I passed a house today where the car is sitting in water for

three days. Three days. which means that soil is so compacted that you have to pump as for all you know. Yeah. So we we have a problem with a 1950 swale and a 2025 mobility issue where you can't move in this town if you don't have a car because none of our neighborhoods are really walkable. especially in the six months of the year where the heat is positively unbearable. Right? Which leads me to ask the next question. We really need to permit and encourage developers to provide canopy coverage over the sidewalks. You're not going to visit downtowns and other business districts if you run the risk of heat stroke from block to block. That was a nice concept in the 1950s. You know, we wanted South Florida open air, all this wonderful stuff, you know, and now you've got generations of people with skin cancer and cardiac problems and respiratory problems and the heat is stifling. Yeah. A and we still don't require some kind of extended platform or canopy coverage over the sidewalks. If we want to have downtown environments, you've got to make them pedestrian friendly and we've forgotten that. We don't seem to know how to do that anymore. Yeah, if I if I may weigh in on that one. By all means, we're having a discussion. So, I'll I'll I'll point out a couple of things and I deeply respect your input and I so miss the times we used to chat when I was in Charlie's position and we would visit and go over

issues. That's really great. Go ahead. And all of you are amazing folks. So, thank you for that. Just a couple of points there. We recently adopted a mobility plan that looks at alternatives to swelles to be able to develop on street parking. But the on street parking that we would be developing is actually percolates. So you then have on street parking, you have an area, a space, you either replace that with curbless on street parking. So we do have this opportunity. In other words, we do have a plan that says and it even identifies the areas of the city with different types of street types to to encourage the protection. Yeah, you mentioned it, right? To to be able to percolate, but you still could park, right? Yeah. And so where are we doing this? Or is that still Yeah, maybe someday if there's money. That's part of it. Maybe someday if there's money. That's right. And and but the mobility fee that we'll be collecting will go toward um projects like that. Uh currently what we require developers to do is to put in um street trees uh along the frontages of their property. One of the things that we were talking about doing incentive wise is an example is typically they only have to improve the street right in front of their project. So if we have this plan that our goal is to have green streets where it's curbless gutters on street parking percolation um uh how can we incentivize that developer not to take it beyond just their frontage of their property otherwise then you'd have like one section of it done is to actually maybe wave the

mobility fee payment in exchange for them to extending that that uh street the the redoing of the street to the to the entire block. So those are the kind of things that we're looking at to deal with this issue of parking on the swells along with other things that were other ideas. We're hoping that throughout these interactive conversations that we have with the community. Storm water is a a flooding here. I'm the city's flood plane administrator in addition to the chief planner and the director. This is a critical issue for us in South Florida. shade, but the trees also do more than shade. They're absorbent. They they increase the absorbency of the landscape in the city. So, we're going to be talking about those incentives of doing exactly what you're talking about. So, thank you. Thank you. But I wanted to let you know it's not your thoughts are not in a vacuum. It's it's things that we as the planning team have already started to look at. And thank you for reemphasizing that we are looking at the right direction. So, I appreciate that. Thank you for letting me weigh in. Thank you, Debbie. It's always a pleasure to hear from you. Thank you, sir. Um, my next point has to do with Let me try and approach this delicately. I I don't want to step on anybody's toes, but we were talking about the um I can't remember exactly quite how you put it, but the issue came up as to uh water and sewer projects. Yes. Okay. And we want to look at the city as a whole. But you do realize that the western part of the city is serviced by the wind and water treatment plant and effectively center city and east city is serviced by Miami date county. And this creates two very

different elements. Yeah. When you're on the west side, our water and sewer piping system is as old as Methusela. Yeah. Yeah. It seems not a week goes by, we don't have another break in in a sewer line somewhere on the western part of the city. I know there's they're supposed to be out rellining the pipes and digging up and replacing and it's taking forever to fix a break. And that doesn't get the whole sewer line for five blocks fixed. It just fixes one little break on the west side. And I appreciate the holistic approach, but that tends to leave the older neighborhoods on the west side really at the bottom of the barrel. U and there needs to be some way to incentivize replacing more of these sewer lines sooner. Yes. And um I will say that the plan actually emphasizes the equity aspect of that. We're not the comp plan was not necessarily focused on just serving new development to attract new development, but really emphasize the need to uh upgrade the existing infrastructure to improve and maintain the quality of life in your existing neighborhoods. It's really important. And the study that um the city's consultant prepared to feed into the comp plan actually identified a series of projects that have to be prioritized for the improvement of those areas that that you just mentioned uh on the west side of the city. Uh it obviously cannot all happen at the same time. It obviously cannot happen, you know, uh quickly enough, I'm sure, for anyone's

uh taste. But uh that that list of of of necessities has been identified and has been uh the cost has been estimated to you know uh perhaps not the extent of like a project by project but you know sort of big picture and there has been a prioritization exercise that went into that holistic planning. So, um I'm just going to say that, you know, that went into the thinking in the comprehensive plan with respect to both infrastructure and capital improvements elements. Uh and you know, anything else that is happening with respect to that, I'm going to let you know your your staff respond. I'm not in that day today, but uh it is it is part of their thinking. Well, that's helpful to know because you know, we're all getting really concerned about the condition of the Winton water treatment plant. Sure. At one point there was this wonderful concept of $200 million in grant money to get it repaired and then that seems to have blown away like Desert Sands. You know, uh we apparently have lost all of that initiative and we've lost the expertise needed to do it and so we're back to square one in spite of the uh policy statements of our illustrious city council. the action on the other hand it's been left wanting to be polite. Okay. So then then we look and and that's okay. I don't expect you to answer any part of that one Debbie because I know you can't touch that. So it's all right. We we understand. And then we talk about replacement of trees. Now that is an interesting point that uh that Kenny brought up. It just happens that on the west side of town we have a divided roadway on 127th Street. Right. Right. Well, I happen to live on Northwest 8th Avenue. Isn't that

convenient? So, at the corner of 127th and Northwest 8th Avenue, we have these three beautifully tall spindly palm trees that died and they're standing there like toothpicks. You know, nobody even knows who's responsible. Is it public works? Is it parks and recreation? Do we have some garden department that does that magically? I I don't know. But they've been sticking up now for a year and it's long past time that we got a decision made to do something with them. Maybe we should just hang Christmas lights on them and leave them lit all year long. I that would be fine. You know, at least at night it would be some justification for not replacing them. Yeah. do come with the planning commission and and I'm you know I I would go along with anything if we could get some action. I don't even know who to report that sort of thing to. It's so painfully obvious and there seems to be no no system of reporting. Well, right now we do have a a uh public works does have on their website um a tree uh request. our sustainability administrator that I want to bring forward to you all at some point some point um soon he has a um one of the things that I wanted to do right from the get-go he's able to he's starting to implement is the creation of a food forest here in the city so we plant fruit trees we plant food we we do gardens and this is what they were referencing to some extent but to answer your your question uh you you feel free to either put it on that website where there's a there's a request or if you would like you can reach out to our

sustainability administrator and he'll pass it along to whoever at that point is maintaining um that particular area whether it's parks or public works we'll take care of that and let and report me a simple email with who I can rang and I'd be happy okay I have no computer I I just have I remember a phone right and uh it's nearly impossible to read anything that you get on the phone because the text is so small. I agree with you. I I deal with text messaging a lot more so than the form of letter writing because you can't read the letter written. Well, I think the general public would would like to know whether or not public it's a public's works department or if it's the parks department. surprised that I see the parks department going around trimming trees when I thought it was the public works department doing it, but you know, the the citizens aren't really attuned to who's whose function is is what. Yeah. So, yeah, thank you for that. Um, I know we um we have a few more questions that we wanted to go over with you and I want to give your colleagues an opportunity to participate. Is is it okay if I move on and then you know we can come back? Yes, please. I'll be very happy to yield the floor. Thank you. I appreciate I appreciate your input. Uh Commissioner Bob, actually I was going to go that just Dr. Best Dr. Besson, we want we want this city to grow. We want to attract people in the city, younger people that enjoy the the fruits of our labors into the future. There's something that's we haven't talked about in uh the city of North Miami. If a younger person, and I'm

saying 20s, 30s, 40s, not me, I'm a little too old for this, but wants to go out at night, they'll go to Winwood, they'll go to Midtown, they'll go to South Beach, they'll go to Hollywood Circle or other areas. We don't have an entertainment district. We don't have a place to attract younger people at night safe where they're safe uh to go and have some fun and do some things. So we lose people that don't want that don't want to live in a gentrified area but not an upbeat area so to speak. Yeah. Um we don't have any theatrical playhouses really. I think there was one on Northeast 6 a while ago. I don't Is it still there then? No. Long ago closed. We don't really have any music venues unless there's an outdoor um venue staged by the city. There are a couple of places around. There's Luna Cafe. You can go to Flanigans and listen to recorded music. There are restaurants that do have some outside seating, but there's no nightife. There's no arcades for the kids at night. Um, there are no nightclubs. Basically, I think we need to consider if we want to attract people into this city that just don't get up in the morning, go to work, come home, they're exhausted, go to sleep, but have someplace to do something and we don't lose that revenue to other communities and cities, maybe we need to put in an entertainment district. Okay. something uh something different. By the way, your description of going to getting up, going to work, coming back, and being exhausted, that sounds like my life. Um All right. But we're But of course, we don't have 20-year-old uh genetics.

Oh, I don't know. I mean, speak for yourself. Well, I still I got a gym at 9 10 o'clock at night over here. So, that's fantastic. But but still, we we just we need to get things cooking. My my kids live in uh Oakland, California, and they're thinking of music, moving into San Francisco because they want more night life. They want to be able to go out to a local bar or, you know, a nightclub or a comedy club or something like that. And that isn't really very strong in in Oakland. There's an area right now, my daughter's visiting Japan, and uh she was in Tokyo just a few days ago. There's an area in Tokyo that has about 200 bars and they're small. They seat six or eight people and you can walk down these corridors. Um pedestrian pedest Yeah, it's pedestrian areas. There's no cars uh that could even get through the area and they have signs on there, you know, come in, we have we specialize in this or we specialize in this drink or something. And you can, of course, have mock cocktails, too, which is becoming more popular. But we need something to attract younger people that want to enjoy the evenings that don't have uh necessarily two, three kids where they have to get up in the morning and get them ready for school and drive them to school and then uh go to work from there. I think we're missing that in the city. Okay, that's I think that's a very good point. All right, who should we move to now? Uh good evening. Um, so most of the points have already been addressed that I have and it was really just more so as the city is, you know, poised for a lot of growth. Um, some of the main things to, uh, keep in mind, which have already been addressed, uh, the parking as we continue to get more residents and more people that move

into the city, uh, that there are places for them to park, those that are, uh, visiting local businesses. also sustainability as it pertains to storm water retention. Um the building elevation and the floodprone areas that we have um as well as the green infrastructure which you've addressed as far as incentivizing developers to plant more trees and a lot more greenery. Um, also as it pertains to the population, um, as more people are going to be moving into the city, we do have an aging population that, um, I think it's important that they don't feel forced out. Yes. And so if there's a way to somewhat bridge the gap between the new generation and old as we usher in kind of this new area in the city, um I'm not sure what that would entail, but yeah, I think that would be something uh to keep in mind. And lastly, I had the public participation process. Um, one thing that the city has been good in is ensuring that developers um, do a lot of community outreach. And as we're implementing these plans, it is vital that the current residents still have a voice in ensuring that the makeup of the city does not kind of stray away from its core values. Right. Yeah. So, um, I've been in North Miami for about 5 years, so I'm relatively I'm pretty much a newbie. Um, but I see that the city is really poised for like it's going to be a boom. You know, you see a lot of construction coming in and then a lot of people are interested in North Miami and

so it's important that, you know, there are businesses that reflect the changing demographic, right? And sure, as was mentioned by uh comm my fellow commissioner that an entertainment district would be really good. Um what that would look like is left for the developers, but that's absolutely something that would be awesome. Believe it or not, uh we are working on one on Northwest 7th Avenue. Y um I have been tasked with actually creating um regulations that would create a arts cultural innovation entertainment district for what was formerly Chinatown. Uh, so we'll be bringing all that stuff to the public and to you guys and and and I get to I get to actually come back before you um and bring this and we hope to have it at your May 6 meeting. Yeah. And um and I will add to um to that um and in and in in response to u some of your comments, all of which are extremely valid. uh that um in fact one of the directives of the comprehensive plan with respect to um sort of accommodating the spectrum of ages in the city um from the perspective of housing is to look at uh the regulations for how they represent barriers to forms of housing that may accommodate you as you move through your you know your entire spectrum of life, right? Um and to um because we have a community health uh element that was um adopted as a new element into a comprehensive plan uh to um to again to remove barriers to different types of housing to allow the integration and collocation of health

facilities for example and services uh with um housing that is geared towards seniors so that they are in a more uh integrated and sort of um walkable, easily accessible environment to those services for example. So that's something that we're going to be looking into um um as part of this effort to address. So all of your comments are on point uh with respect to that, you know, and and as I age myself, I kind of have begun to believe very firmly that if we if we serve our aging population, we serve everyone. Just like we say that, you know, if we serve our our population of um individuals with disability, we serve everyone. You know, by making it accessible to these groups, we make it accessible for everyone. So that's kind of what the way that I look at it. So thank you. And last but not least, um, uh, a lot of the fellow commissioners made a bunch of really good points. Uh, I know you have more questions, so I won't take too long. Uh, I do want to say the again, the entertainment district would be nice, especially somebody my age. I remember when Nomi Village came around. Um, so they do a lot of events there and uh I go every now and then and I think as far as attracting people and not making North Miami the the pass through town that would be great. Okay, thank you very much. I think we have three three takers for that idea. Thank you. I appreciate everyone's input um with respect to this question. Um I'm going to I think I'm going to skip over this one. Uh so we'll go uh some of this has already been addressed and I think I heard a lot about you know

issues with the LDRs that either you see them pop up once in a while or you find them to be recurring problems. So um unless there's anything else that you want to add for example the ambiguities that you mentioned and and some of the issues with enforcement of certain issues um I'm going to go on to the next question if that is okay. Let's see what we have. Um, well, you also talked a little bit about this, but I'm going to sort of reiterate and ask you more specific if you have any examples of sections or specific regulations or types of regulations that uh you or others, for example, you mentioned developers come here and they're confused. you know, um um is written poorly or it's obsolete or are there any other problems with specific u areas of the of the code that you would like us to take a look at? Uh so, um I heard overlays. Uh are there any other examples of of areas of concern that we should be um paying attention to in this effort? Yes, it's like recovering an awful lot at 2:00 in the morning or driving home. When you do that, I'll just be awake. Don't call me, but you can email me. Okay. So, um you know, I I I'll let me throw this in just to just to muddle the water a little bit. I really appreciate the huge challenge Debbie is facing and trying to develop and attain it attain inter You know, I shouldn't drink before meetings, or maybe I should, is to develop an entertainment district on the west side. And I'm thinking endlessly that we seriously need to kickstart the

train station. And that would be an area for an entertainment district out there. Yes, you could take an Uber over and otherwise you want people to take the train. That's a great idea. Why not have incentive to come to North Miami for an entertainment district? Yeah. Yeah. And we just seem to be light years away from that. Uh and the train station doesn't have to be a $50 million construction. Mhm. There's land set aside for it in theory. And you know, um unfortunately we don't build it. No line does. Thinking about it from the Where are we with that anyway? I'm sorry. It is a valid question. Where are we? And that's something that is a question that I cannot answer. But I was just going to say I'm going to I'm going to let your staff answer. Uh but I was just going to say that you know the the construction of the station may be maybe um a while away. that doesn't mean that we cannot put in place the regulatory framework to allow facilitate the creation of some type of entertainment district there um at whatever point is appropriate right so anyway with respect to the station I don't I don't know I don't know where that is yeah nobody knows it's okay I would suggest that is if we establish the framework to build an entertainment district over there that would yeah Debbie get us closer. How many overlay districts do we have in this area that Kevin's talking about? Well, right now the North Miami Transit Station overlay, right? Overlay district. You'll see that there was a conflict with the inner row because it over overlapped part. We had the PCD, but the train station is

that pinky. Um, yeah, there you go. Right in there. And the last respondence, the last conversation is that they are um have ordered the train cars, but that's part of the delay right now is getting the train cars for the train. So, they're looking at um 20 32 32, right? Because the delay, the primary delay right now is the train cars. So, line. It's gone through the NEPA um analysis. It's it's u identified. We have developers who are contributing as part of their development parking for the the the train stop. Um and they have included that into their developments right there in that area that we've brought before you. Um so it's I'm excited. We've been planning for this since 2009. We've laid all the groundwork. One of the reasons we were selected as a stop is because we have all the to plan. We have all of the the regulatory construct ready to go. Yeah. So, it's an exciting opportunity and and we're really thrilled about that. Sylvia, you want to keep moving on? Yeah. I think we only have one more question. Um, and we have covered some of this also. You know, are there gaps in the LDRs? There are there topics, emerging issues, emerging topics that we should be thinking of to address. One of them you mentioned the need for an entertainment uh district. Are there other topics like that? Uh or or even more pedestrian issues than an entertainment district that uh your LDRs

do not adequately address or not address at all. uh that we need to keep in mind when you review projects for example or in your experience when you bicycle when you walk around the city that you see um more and more uh that perhaps you know the the the LDRs just don't even address in any way. Debbie, you uh with the LDRs with construction, don't we have it in there now that they're supposed to keep the site clean and and Okay. So, that that's that's another big issue that we I see out there on 120. Yeah. When I took over as the department director a year ago, one of the things I I kept seeing was all of these construction sites that did not give a darn. And so we made it um where they have to have a pre-construction meeting now for new development. They have to keep their site clean. They have to wash down the street at night. They have to sweep. And we have to be on top of them. And our department is our department and right now as you know, as you all know, has been extremely shortstop. So, combined with NSD, our our wonderful building official, which I want to bring her to visit you all, um we have have taken to uh putting stop work orders if they're not doing what they're supposed to do. We have so yeah, we are but again, it's a it's you have to stay on top of them. Yeah. So that's that's our goal is to try to do that and and inspect every day. Go around and look at all of these construction sites every day and we find trash and debris and we make them clean it up. We make them

sweep the streets at night. We make them wash it down. They have to have uh all these different things in place. So yes, we do have that. It's not in the LDRs. It's in the code of ordinances. It's in the ordinances. Okay. I I I know because that that site we were talking about on 123rd Street 123rd Terrace are lane there and 16th and 17th. It's it's horrible. But what we what we ask everybody is if because we we can't be everywhere. Yeah. Is that when you see that happening, you call our code or you call NSD and NSD will send uh somebody out or they'll have one of our inspectors go out and take a look at that. But I encourage everyone to help us, you know, with the eyeballs, okay? Because they're not allowed to do that. Debbie, um, we still are kind of, uh, bound by what the state road department has to say about traffic flow on 125th Street. Is that correct? That's correct. There's not much we can do other than and no most the develop most of the traffic there that's in comes through our city is not from our development or even the projected developments that are coming in. It's background traffic that moves through the city. And so our goal is to actually reduce um the need to have uh parking, the need to have cars. uh you know every everybody doesn't need to have a car and we know we want to we our goal is to develop the city in such a way that we can reduce car dependency and thus reduce the traffic impact. So, we're asking developers to do things like create orient their buildings, have more mixed use where you're capturing internal capture of um so you you don't have to go drive everywhere to get to a store or get to a grocery store. Um so

that's the end goal but because we we want development but we need to mitigate the traffic impacts and the way we can do that in our and our piece of it is to design our design our projects have our projects designed to capture the trips internally through mixed use and or design the streets to make them more pedestrian friendly. So you want to bike and you want to walk. Uh so that's the goal. But still do you have the pass through traffic situation with people going to B Harbor or the US one is almost uh doesn't move at times now along our our stretch of business that we have along there and DOT says that they are not these roads are not deficient. They believe they they say that there's adequate capacity. um they have level of service standards and that that there is a when we look at trips when we look at development and then and the traffic I don't because I'm not a traffic engineer but when the traffic is looked at by the engineering team who prepares it um who prepares their studies individually and our team that our our transportation folks who review it um they're looking at the adding additional trips into the roadway and if DOT says there's adequate capacity and it's not failing, I can't make a developer improve that, right? We can't we can't the level of service standards. You can only have them mitigate their individual impacts to any of our facilities. So, the goal then is to get the people that are in these developments out of their cars and um make them make those streets more pedestrian friendly. So there's a

there's a as Sylvia will follow up on this, I'm sure, it's really a bunch of different tools that we use and other types of code uh things that may not be specific to the LDRs, but maybe projects and things that are recommended that public works would implement. Yeah. um the the downtown trolley system that we have, is there any way to enhance that or or increase the volume of trips with that with that? Right. Well, some of the community benefit packages that we're seeing are contributions to the freebie, for example, uh contributions to trolley. These are things that you can ask, you know, to do as part of a community benefit package. And it's helpful to have had that mobility study done and plan done recently because it identifies um uh street improvements, roadway improvements that would make it more pedestrian friendly and get people again out of the car. I would venture to say a lot of people don't understand what what the freebie system or how it works. I wouldn't know right now who to call if I needed a ride. And that's actually on the public works website, right? Yeah. A lot of our information we have on the website. Um, and if you have recommendations outside of this LDR work, which is what we're talking about, this is really outside the scope of this, it would be feel free to share that um, and either with the city manager or with me and I'll be happy to pass it along to uh, but I also plan now as coming back with you all. I plan to bring you public works forward to you all as a as a visitor to you can talk to them about where they are on projects as well as introduce you to our building official and sustainability administrator. But with that, I'd like

to get us out of here. One one thing. I'm sorry. Excuse me. All the things I see just growing all over the city. storage units, number one, dollar stores, smoke shops, tattoo parlors, uh marijuana dispensary stores. You know, a certain amount is okay, but we're just getting a pie whole bunch of them. There's three or four tattoo parlors on Biscane Boulevard alone. I'm not against tattoos, but let's get some we want to get some quality uh uh retail stores in there. And and this is like on the margin. Some of those things are preempted by Florida statute like marijuana shops, um, dispensaries. I thought about like the head shops. I see, you know, they don't sell marijuana, but you got these head shops, right? Uh, we we there there are ways to deal with that in the code that we can take into consideration because we already have distance separation and prohibitions in certain areas of the city for certain types of uses. So you don't prohibit them outright, but we do have distance separation, so you don't get a whole lot of those in in one area. And we can expand that beyond the C3 in the downtown. It's very specific as to like convenience stores, uh, barber shops, hair salons, but it's not everywhere in the city. West 60 doesn't have that prohibition or distance separation. So, those are discussion items that we'll certainly the consultant will um we separated the uh uh when we did the is it the comp plan I think the last time we separated out the uh self storage areas. We have one on 123rd and one on um 14th Avenue and that's it on 123rd Street. I mean they were just growing all over the place. Right. Well, one of the things you all did, remember the last time we did the Elder Arts

together, one of the things you all did is you created a a distance separation for storage facilities. We have existing storage facilities that would not normally be allowed to be there now because of the distance separation. Um, so those are things we can take certainly we'll take a look at is how to prohibit or limit because I will tell you marijuana dispensaries by Florida statute you have to allow them wherever you allow a pharmacy you have to allow them wherever you allow a pharmacistarmacies I think them on this game right now between 123rd and 133rd and and that's why you see them and they go into communities and they have to be treated the same Okay. The other items we certainly can look at distance separations or other tools for helping you with that that those issues. Anything else? No, the only other thing is um I think we mentioned this a little bit, but um we have um uh one other meeting uh of this type conversation on Monday with uh members of your development community that you know uh is outreach to everything from realtors to architects to developers, property owners, engineers, etc. What time and where it's going to be here and I think it is at 6:30. 6:30 and we have a CR meeting that night. Tuesday. Yes. Microphone. that went on Monday will be specific to those groups including um uh resident representatives so that it's a conversation the same format of

conversation from their perspective from their perspective exactly like I said you know what we're trying to do is I don't know if it's target uh what we call the power users of the code of the LDRs right those who most interact interact with the LDRs on a regular basis. Obviously, your staff, yourselves, uh people who look at it for the purposes of entertaining, development projects, and then residents as well, obviously, who are more occasional users. And for that, we're going to have a series of workshops coming up, the details of which we are in the process of finalizing, but those are going to happen probably um in early June. So, uh, with that, I'm going to close. I thank you again for your time and, uh, for your, uh, very, uh, earnest input and I look forward to, uh, seeing you again soon to continue talking about this. So, we we thank you very much. You're very welcome. Thank you. And we are greatly greatly appreciate everything that you bring to us and have brought to us in the past. It's always a pleasure to have you. Thank you. For us, thank you so much. Um, I want to go ahead and we'll wrap up the meeting, but we do have an agenda that was posted. I just want to for the record, um, go ahead and mentioned that we do not have any, uh, continue public hearings. Um, no committee reports to give. Uh, no old business, new business. I think we discussed briefly that the meeting is May 6 planning commission meeting and we do have items for that. I'm trying to get Thank you. I do I am trying very

diligently to working with our city attorney's office to get the overlay the entertainment overlay to you on the May 6 agenda. Uh that was my direction from the city manager. So you know um I'm trying to So we have we have another overlay. Well, you have to have something in it's replacing the Chinatown because you have to have the overlay says that under over top of the existing zoning may not allow but you can't have a whole bunch of zoning districts you know and so we take the underlying augment it through an overlay. That's why I'll come back to you and you know I will explain it thoroughly. Yes. And then we'll also have an item from the housing department. They are bringing forward their consolidated housing plan to you all for review as you've done every year. Uh so you'll be uh hearing from Miss Bazil andor her staff. Very good. Thank you. At that point I'll call for adjournment and our meeting is adjourned. Thank you everyone. Thanks for your time. We really appreciate that.