Resident Services Board - Regular Meeting

Hello. You're on mute.

Yes, hi, how are you?

Good, yourself?

Good, thanks. Recording in progress.

For once, I was on time.

Hi, Frame, how are you?

Good, how are you, Lydia?

Good, thanks. Let's give it a minute. I know Susan was coming on and hopefully Jose. Okay. How's everybody? Good?

Yes, very good. Thank you. Beautiful weather today, right?

It is. It's beautiful.

Yeah, autumn is coming.

My favorite time of year. The reason why we all live here. Nice and cool and warm at the same time.

Yes.

Officer Jessica.

Hi. Good evening. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Good, good, good. Thank you for asking. Nice to see you.

Nice to see you too. Thank you. Okay.

I couldn't see Jessica. Yes. I'm sorry?

Okay.

No, I was just commenting on the fact that everybody said, nice to see you, but I can't see Jessica. Oh, okay.

I can't say it's nice to see you. Okay, so Susan. Oh, and Jose are here. Perfect. All right. Give them a minute to get settled in. Okay, so we're going to start the meeting at 6.32 p.m. Guys, if you're able to turn your cameras on, Jose and Susan, please do. So roll call. So Francois, present. Yes. Yes. Susan, I see you, present. And Jose is present.

Present.

Hey, how are you?

Good, how are you?

Good, thanks. Okay, so approval of minutes from the September 2nd meeting. Can I have a second for approval?

Second.

Thank you.

Second.

Okay, and our agenda is very short. Jose, I don't know if you met Susan. She started with us last meeting. Susan, this is Jose. This is the vice chair.

I did meet Susan. We ran into each other at the Speedy gas station probably three months ago. And I remember I told you, I was like, you should, you were taught, you were talking to me about joining the resident service advisory board. And I said, you should submit an application. And I think you did. And at the time we still hadn't moved off that other board member. So good to see you finally being able to join. Welcome.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

So let's go to O Business. Update on the Community Tech Council initiative. Is that you, Jose?

No update there. You know, what I've discussed with Gorn is just the events that we've been doing have been suffice. So we're going to continue doing those and continue doing events around those. I mean, with all the... kind of events, we've done three that have been pretty successful and really haven't been able to form kind of like the gentleman who joined last time that you met, who actually we had tried to see if he was wanting to be on the board. Really, that didn't materialize. So we're just going to continue doing the tech events that we already do already in our industry. So we'll probably get some more formal structure on that. And I'll also be talking to Kristen. I know she's already doing some with the chamber. So that'll keep going. You can take that off as an agenda item from going forward.

Okay. I saw that they did an AI one. I don't know if that already happened, the chamber, right? Did you guys see that?

Yeah, I saw that.

Whatever happened to those classes that we had that one gentleman come talk to us about it?

the yeah i mean we really couldn't didn't have a way to fund it yeah oh and so i was looking into trying to get some sponsorships uh i asked around in my tech circles and didn't really get you know so i went back to xavier and was like hey yeah we can fund this somehow and that's kind of lost some steam so i think it was what what do you tell us it was like 2500 bucks or 1500 i can't remember

I think so, yeah.

But we didn't really find funding for it. And then it looks like this chamber came out with some stuff too. So it looks like they were able to fund it or do something similar. So it was probably a better avenue to go down that path.

Yeah, theirs was more marketing related. It was something. I can't remember what I read. It wasn't exactly what that gentleman had proposed to us, which I really liked.

His was more structured around Gen AI for seniors. And I think the feedback we gave him at the time was, maybe we don't call it, what did he say? He said it was like Gen AI for old people or something. We're like, maybe change it up. And we thought it wouldn't really have been a good idea. slogan to kind of throw out there. So we kind of, I think that was the other thing that, you know, probably didn't bode well for that. But lack of funding and I think just the demographic we were going for, which I think would have been great because there's definitely a need for that. So I want to get with Kristen from the chamber and see if there's things that we can do to add on to that because there's tons of topics we could focus on with Gen AI. Sure. Yeah, definitely.

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, too.

Yeah. I believe you're right. Yeah. Yeah. I should know that, being that I'm in cybersecurity. So thanks.

We're actually, the police department, we're actually going to be hosting several workshops for cybersecurity, by the way. Oh, nice. So, yes. I was going to touch on that later on, but yes, we're going to be hosting some workshops on identity theft and cybersecurity frauds.

Do you have an agenda for that, Jessica?

Yeah, I'm working with the state attorney's office. Some of the topics are going to be fraud and scams during the holidays, child ID theft, cybersecurity fraud, ID theft, senior theft. So it's going to be a couple of, it's probably going to be one day in November and one day in December. So once the state attorney office gives me their availability, I will be putting that out on our social media outlets.

Yeah, I'd love to see what they are. And then I think you're spot on right around the holidays. Correct. Like I think just my mom, like even I got one today that was like your insurance, your health care provider got this for you. Click on this link. And it's like, you know, my mom the other day came over and she was like, hey, I need to pay this bill. It's $13 for something. I'm like, why wouldn't they have just sent a bill? I'm like, don't click on it. They're getting more and more creative. And it's scary. Very creative.

And yeah, it's calls and emails on behalf of FPL. So my goal is to have a day in November, day in December where And it's crazy because, you know, it's it's it's they're targeting children, Social Security's seniors that are vulnerable. So they're targeting everybody. So that's my goal is to have a day in November and a day in December. We have workshops, especially around the holidays. So once I get with once a. If the attorney's office gives me dates, then we will put them out on social media. And hopefully, I'm going to try to do a Zoom for those that can attend. But that's my goal, November and December, to have those workshops.

And Jessica, I'd like to participate or volunteer because I have a lot of content. And I'm a promoter with the Cybersecurity Council, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Okay. Okay.

And so I'm happy to provide content and even support the whole workshop effort.

Great. That's fantastic. I'd like to get together with you. Well, I will be reaching out to you.

Same here, Jessica. Thank you. Let me know if I can help in any way. My brand of cybersecurity or what the company I work for does is more focused around like at the corporate level. But there's still a lot of relevant topics and things that we could probably just – Based off the agenda you provide, I can see if maybe I can help or even bring in speakers, you know, CISOs for major corporations that can maybe talk about this. Maybe the state, you probably have the resources too, but glad to help any way I can.

Perfect. Thank you so much. Well, I will be reaching out to both of you for your assistance. And, you know, the more information we have to provide our residents, the better for the residents.

Francois, you have a lot of hats.

Well, no, this is – so I work for an online service provider in New York, part of Altice. They're nationwide. I mean they provide internet service throughout the country. But it's one of the things – it's been a passion of mine always is identity or digital identity and the internet and the amount of fraud that's being committed is – it's really bad.

Yeah, it is.

It's severe. Yeah.

And they're getting the most vulnerable people, of course.

Mm-hmm.

They moved off the... You owe toll money. Now they're going into other things. Yeah. It's crazy.

They're getting very creative.

Yeah. And you bring up a good... I mean, there's so many. Identity is just one part of it. But I work with companies like CyberArk and some of these others that just focus on identity security, Francois. So... Yeah. Who do you work for? Who's the provider?

Well, Optimum is the brand and the company is LTCUSA.

Okay, cool. Just wondered.

So we're the fourth largest internet service provider underneath Comcast, Spectrum. Well, actually the third largest because Comcast is the top and Spectrum is underneath that and then we're in third.

Okay, cool. Good to know.

Cool. Okay, so I guess New Business is a discussion on Dance in the Park event. Barahim, is that you?

Yes, that's me. The last update on that, I connected Lily. Lily. Hi, Lily's here. Yeah, it's there. I don't know what happened after that. You want to give us an update? Yes.

Yes. So thank you so much for connecting me with Esther. So we are moving forward with the Dance in the Park events. I am working with her to get the dates situated right now, but we're aiming for early November. So what we're going to do is three introductory pilot classes. And it's basically the exact proposal that Farahim had showed us, so thank you so much for bringing this to us. And I will update you guys as soon as I have a date. I just don't have it yet.

I've been a little... What was the cost of it, Lily? Just curious. I remember hearing the proposal, but I think there was... City going to fund it? I think she was going to do one class for free or something?

Yes, yes. So it was one class for free and then two other classes. that the vice mayor sponsored. I don't remember the exact number off the top of my head. I want to say it's like somewhere between 150 to 200 a class, somewhere around there. Well, that's it. She's been super great, super helpful.

For how many people? Just curious, like, is it, like, or just depends? It's not $150 per person. It's just $150 for, like, a group of. Right, right, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. $150 it costs.

Is there a day, like, which week of the day, Fridays?

I am not sure yet. I definitely have to work with the other vendors because we do yoga in the park. And then Michelle, Francois' wife, does ChelaFit. in there as well in Vogel Park. So I think our only choices right now might be Fridays. But like I said, I'll confirm. And then as soon as we pick the first three dates, I can shoot you guys an email and let you know if we don't meet before then. But we're hoping for early November.

Fridays are a good night for that.

yeah that's what they were talking about um like right before families go out to dinner or something like that they do a fun event or something yeah for sure what are they gonna start like with salsa or merengue or are they gonna do hip-hop or i think we had talked about bachata um maybe afro beats somewhere in there um yeah so it should be fun

And next is staff commission leads on updates. So, Lily.

We have the 80th on Wednesday from 6 to 9 p.m. Susan, thank you so much for volunteering. It's going to be amazing. Yeah, I'm really excited. So you guys should definitely come out if you're available. It'll be at Vogel Park. We have some really exciting stuff that we've never done before planned, so it should be a good one. And then we have Halloween on October 30th. If anyone else wants to volunteer for the Haunted House, Susan and I will get with you specifically on volunteering for the Haunted House. Sorry, I've just been so swamped. I haven't even thought about the volunteers that I need. I know... Commissioner Acosta had reached out to me for time slots on the haunted house. So you might see a flyer out there asking for volunteers. So she's helping me with that, which is really great. Need all the help I can get right now. And the 30th is when you need help? What was that?

And the 30th is when you need help? Is that when you're starting?

Yeah, so I'm going to build the haunted house that whole week. So Commissioner Acosta has a sign up sheet that she's been helping me with to fill in the blanks with who's available when. So if you're available anytime that whole week, I could use the help for building and or I need actors in different. The actual haunted house on the 30th.

Is that going to be at Bogle too or is it going to be at the Steve's? Yeah, that's at Bogle. So the event's on the 30th?

Yeah, the day before Halloween.

Okay.

So I'm in the League Academy for the help in building the house. Oh, thank you. I'll even participate as an actor.

You want to be an actor? Really?

Absolutely. Yeah.

Great. Okay. I definitely am going to try. That's actually my last week at my current job where I've been for 23 years. So it's going to be a rough week.

Last week?

My last week. Yes. Wow. I think. Well, yes and no. I mean, I already have a new place, but it's going to be tough. You know, 23 years in one place is a long time. Wow. Yeah. So I will try. I'm not going to make any promises. This is going to be a tough week. Okay. That's okay. I'll let you know for sure.

We'll definitely be at the event. You know, I don't miss many events. But yeah, I think that day I don't want to commit because I don't know if I'll be able to. What time does the event start? Like six?

Yeah. Halloween is six to eight.

I'll be coming in from travel, so I won't get into like three or four, but I'll be at the event.

Great.

And I'll miss the 80th. That's this week, right?

Darn it.

Yes. This Wednesday.

Yeah.

I have scouts on Wednesday, so I can't.

I'll be traveling with work, so I won't be back. That sucks because I really would like to attend that one. But I'll catch up with the pictures, I'm sure.

And then the thing after that, right, is winter. It's the next, like, big, you know.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. So Lily, I didn't catch up with the last budget meeting. What happened with the event budget? They cut it. They cut it. Did they cut it from what you were requesting or did they cut it from the original?

They cut it from what I was requesting. I had put $15,000 for my big four or five events for the fourth, State of the Village, Halloween, Winter. All of those I had put at 15. I had 8,000 this past budget year and I landed at nine. So I have 9,000 per event.

Per event.

Yeah.

Okay. So went up a thousand from what you had last year, but they didn't cut. When you said they cut it, I'm like, they cut all our budget? No, no.

They cut it from what I was asking for.

Yeah.

Because everything has risen exponentially. Right. Married. Yeah, those are the rough budget season.

So we have, well, how many events is that? So like four events, five events?

My big ones, yeah, yeah, the holidays are four or five in total. I probably do, with all the smaller events that we do, I think I'm at like 18 events a year or something, something like that.

Seems like you have something every week almost. Mm-hmm.

Because we have the ribbon cuttings, we have the ground breakings, we have State of the Village, we'll have smaller events that the commissioners want to do. Easter. Easter. Or spring.

Not Easter.

Spring.

So for your major events, you've got like $45,000, $50,000 plus the other smaller events. Yeah.

Have their own little budget.

Good to know.

Any other questions for Lily? Sorry, my dog's barking.

So I'm going to mute myself, but I'm listening. No questions for her? Okay. Officer Polanco, you're up.

Do you have anything else for us? Just wanted to thank those that came out to National Night Out last Tuesday. It was a great event. My goal was to do it a little bit different from previous years. I included local businesses, local restaurants. We had Benihana's, Cow, and Zoli. We had a new... business called Asahi by the Bay, which you guys should visit. They are in Grandview Palace. We had corrections doing fingerprinting. We had FHP, Miami-Dade Fire, Miami-Dade PD, Crime Watch, the North Bay Village Optimist Club, the Miami Beach Explorers, the Miami Beach PAL. um possum possum a treat which is another local business we had animal day uh miami-dade animal services um bring a couple of um fur babies um we um just wanted to make a little bit different this year um and um i want to thank susan i i met susan at national night out and um For future events, we have Veterans Day, which we will be hosting on Tuesday, November 11th. I have a location, but I don't want to confirm it just yet. That is going to be on Tuesday, November 11th. It's for all our veterans. We want to honor them, celebrate them. Like I mentioned previously, we're going to have two fraud workshops, one in November, one in December. Most likely a Monday or Tuesday. That's what a state attorney's office advised. We're also going to have Breakfast with Santa in December. And in January, we are going to be hosting a bike rodeo co-sponsored by Commissioner Acosta, which she will be fitting the children with helmets. Our North Bay Village Police Department is going to be hosting a little... bike safety event with me and so far those are the events that we'll be hosting as far as the PD side. It's a busy couple of months for us.

Yeah. I hear. Yes. And we're excited. Thank you. I heard National Night Out was fantastic. I'm so sorry I missed it.

I know I was looking forward to seeing you, but yes, like I said, I want to do things a little bit different. My goal was to have the residents interact with our staff more. We had all our staff out there and yeah, I wanted to include our local businesses um, a national down. And I think, uh, we were able to, to do that. We had our local business, not only a restaurant, but, oh, I'm sorry. I also left out progress dental, which is our local dentist that she is in 1440. Um, she came out, give out, she give out some giveaways. So I was, I was happy to see not only restaurants, but businesses, um, out there, um, um, But yes, it was great. It was a great event.

First one in years that I've missed, I couldn't make it. I was traveling as well, but I heard it was great. So fantastic work, Jessica. Thank you. Thank you. We had a great time.

Thank you to Lily. Thank you to Lily that she was a great... a great support system for me. So I thank her. She's great at, at all the events and she was great at helping me out with this event. A little stressful, but, uh, we, uh, we were able to pull it off and it was, it was, I have to say it was a great event.

Awesome. Thank you so much for all that hard work. Everybody.

It paid off.

For sure. Awesome. Any, any questions from anybody?

Jessica, does North Bay Village put out stats regarding, like, for example, vandalism? Sometimes I've heard, like, rumors about tires being slashed in the village. Is that true?

You know, so our calls for service as far as tires being slashed, that's, like, very rare. But we do put out our... During our commission meetings, we do put out traffic stats. But on our website, we do put out our stats as far as crime goes. I'm very proud to say that our crime rate is very low. But if you ever need any stats in general, you can always reach out to us and we can always provide that.

I think it depends if they report it too, right?

Correct. Yeah. A lot of times they don't report it, but When they do report it, we always go out, we file a report. But again, it is public record. But as far, I do say, I can say that for traffic, we do, for commission meetings, we do give the SAS, we do, Deputy Chief Behar does do a report on traffic.

I've seen that, yeah.

Okay. Do we have any public comments? Okay. Agenda for the next meeting. Anybody have any ideas? They want to suggest? Nothing?

No, I mean, the woman who did the garden thing membership person that I brought on, she's reached out to me a couple of times. When she presented, I thought it was a great initiative, but again, didn't really pick up any steam because I think of lack of budget, right? And so I didn't know, I mean, I don't know if Lily or that's something we should take up with Vice Commissioner Cook on if that's something that we want to do. I mean, I think from the commission, from our board, I think everyone loved the idea, but I think it may have been cost prohibitive. But I just loved the program. It's really well organized. You can tell she's been doing this for years. So I don't know if that's something we want to pick back up. I'll open it up, see if anyone's interested. What do you guys think?

Yeah, I'm a strong supporter because I think it's all about creating an environment of resilience. And it has to do with plants and all the natural beauty around us. is what creates this beautiful place to live in. So yes. Big supporter of that myself, you know that.

Yep, yep. And my garden is looking good right now. I've been planting all kinds of stuff throughout the season. So I'm a big fan of it. I just didn't think, let me go back and revisit what the cost was. But she reached out to me recently. And I mean, I guess what would be the path for us to kind of look into whether, I mean, it sounds like our budgets have been cut a little bit. I don't know if that'd be something that we'd entertain or what you guys thought about it. That's kind of where we're at.

What I'm thinking because, yeah, there's a lot of things we'd like to do, but it's kind of hard for us to propose extra things when we're freezing cola and no merit raises and all this other kind of stuff. It's hard for, at least from my point of view, to ask for more.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Understandable. I mean, if there's any other way we could fund it somehow. If I remember, the cost was like somewhere around $5,000, $6,000. I have to go look at the proposal she sent me. But that was the only thing I had on.

I think we need to look at our wealthier residents to start supporting services. That's something I want to think about.

Start a GoFundMe or something?

Not a GoFundMe, but I don't know what I mean. I can't think of the words right now. I'm sorry. It's been a very long day today. But yeah, it's kind of hard to look at the village. Where is it going to come from when we can't even do what I think is the minimum? So I'm not quite sure.

Okay, well, I'll take it offline and see. Yeah.

Maybe we can brainstorm. I'm sorry, Susan, go ahead. Who would the garden be?

It wasn't a garden. It was... Because we've already gone back and forth over this for years about how we could start our own area for like a public garden. And we just don't have the space for it. So the thought was, why don't we do the next best thing? And this company, it's called... Seeds for the Future or something like that. It had a snazzy name to it. And they would come and do classes for gardening for kids and senior citizens where they show them how to compost and how to plant different things and all kinds of cool stuff. It was really cool. And they worked with a lot of cities and stuff. So it was more like gardening classes that we could hold somewhere. you know, maybe at the city or at someone's home, you know, where we would just promote gardening and, you know, in general and teach people how to garden at their home and things like that, which is where, you know, the next best thing is, as opposed to have like a public garden because we just don't have the space for it.

But you know what we have now that we didn't have last meeting? We have the park here on North Treasure or will be part of North Treasure.

so that's actually might we might be able to do something there eventually as far as i was thinking about that yeah i thought about that too when uh when i saw the news on it i mean i think right now it's going to be repurposed for the soccer field um yeah i thought about why can't like the dog park over there like have a little fenced in area somewhere it's big enough where it's like it could be something but a lot of people want that yeah i think that um I find it hard to believe we can't find a patch of dirt somewhere where we could have a public garden.

That land is pretty big. That piece of land is pretty big. So we're going to be able to coordinate a little dog park, maybe a little garden, and then the rest, we'll see.

Like in the coming, forthcoming community center?

Yeah. For sure. In the next couple of years, it's going to be a different story because we'll have we'll have the community center. We'll have that park next door. Well, next door to me. We'll have a little more space and land and hopefully a little more money.

I'd be interested to hear about more about that class, because I was thinking of hosting a flower making class with Abby Flores. I met her there. when they had the crawl, actually. And I had met her son at my house for my daughter's birthday party. So that's interesting, because I'm interested in that too. But it would have to be able to be a gardening way where maybe they're showing people more of how to do things that don't have a huge yard and maybe they want to do stuff in pots opposed to doing a whole garden? Or is it they wanted to teach people how to build a whole garden?

No, they had all kinds of things. They even had hydroponic type of options and vertical gardens.

I'd love to talk to them. I'd love to talk to them. And I like the idea of getting people to raise the money for it. I don't know. This is interesting.

Let me find what media was. I'll tell you so you can look up the video.

Yeah, and she sent me a presentation. Let me see if I can find it. Susan, if you want to text me your email address, I'll forward it over to you. Because she's been pinging me a couple times, and I haven't had a chance to get back to her because I just didn't think we were really going to be able to do anything. Because I remember looking at the cost, and I think that's where everyone was like, ooh, yeah, we can't do this. Right. TBD, but maybe to your point, Lydia, we can look at that space and lobby the commission for a little area of dirt, and then that's where we can maybe have the class, right? So that's not a bad idea.

Yeah, now that we have the space, or we'll have the space. Any other ideas or comments?

Nope, that's all I have.

Very short agenda. Nothing? Okay.

Lily, nothing else from you? Nope. That's it. I do want to say, though, about the garden. I'm open to whatever you guys want to do. If you guys want to loop back around and put that on the next meeting's agenda, that's totally fine. The next steps would be figuring out where the funding could come from and then presenting it to the commission. um at a commission meeting so either the chair can do it or the vice chair or whoever wants to volunteer um and you guys would just bring it to the commission and they would vote thank you of course so i'm just putting that down okay um no public comment okay so i guess that's it

Susan, I just forwarded you that presentation. It's got a PDF attached and the woman's contact. Her name was Yareldi Hernandez. So I just hit send. You should have it in your inbox.

Thank you. And I just want to say the National Night Out was amazing. I went early with my neighbor and a friend and then my daughter and her friends went later and it was a really good night.

I'm sorry I missed you, Susan. I would have said hi.

I didn't know you were there either.

Yeah, I was running around the whole time. Sorry.

As you usually are.

How's Julie? I haven't seen Julie in forever.

She's good. She was in National Night Out too. Yeah, she was there. Susan, it was great meeting you. Thank you so much for coming up to me. It was a pleasure meeting you. And thank you so much for reaching out for...

Next year, I'd love to help you guys more. Thank you. I have such a love for that. I do have a little bit of an event background if I want to let you know that or not.

We will definitely be reaching out to you for future events.

Okay, guys. I'm going to adjourn at 7.05. Thank you, everybody. Good night, all.