Sustainability and Resiliency Task Force - Regular Meeting

Good evening, Frank. Good evening, Neil.

How you doing?

Good. And yourself?

Pretty good.

Very good. Your hair looks good. Good evening, Madam Mayor.

Good evening. Hi, everyone.

How you doing?

Pretty good. How are you, Neil? Long time no see.

Good evening. Here's Dave.

Neil, how are you doing? Long time no see.

Doing okay. Okay. I haven't seen you in a while either.

No. No. How are things at the bridge? We're live and recording.

Recording in progress.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Good evening, Dave.

Hi, everybody. Hello.

Hello, hello.

Happy Tuesday. How's it going, everybody? What are we up to? It's a beautiful day out in the neighborhood.

It's awesome. How are you doing?

I'm still working. I'm going to Vegas for our anniversary this weekend, so we're excited to go see a show at the Sphere.

That's our big... Oh, in Las Vegas? Yeah.

Uh-huh. I hate Vegas, but I'm very excited to go see my favorite band playing at this most amazing experience.

Is it YouTube?

It's not YouTube. It's Phish.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah.

Jealous.

Super excited. I've seen like all kinds of videos on like, it's like, it's like a supersized IMAX.

Yeah, I went. It's something special. When you go in there, you can't fathom how big it is in there. It's almost like we're worshipping a god because everybody's just looking up.

Who did you see there?

I saw this. It was like a techno band called Anima.

Cool.

They did some pretty cool visuals. Good evening, Roger. Good evening, Chris. I think we're just missing Brenda. Anywho, we have enough people. I'm going to call the meeting order at 633. I'm going to do roll call. Dave?

Present.

Neil?

Neil Kriesner, Treasurer Iowan.

Alicia, present. Oh, wait. We're missing Oliver and Brenda. Do we have enough people to start? No, we don't.

Yeah, you have a quorum.

I do have a quorum? All right. We're going to get started. So approval of meeting minutes?

I would make a motion to approve.

I'll second. Everybody in favor, a.k.a. Dave?

Sure. All right.

I didn't read it.

I'm trusting Neil.

I think it's Oliver that writes it.

Trusting Oliver. I was talking about Neil reading them.

Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. I'll second that, too. Moving on to old business, item 3A, update on stormwater master plan by Chief Resilience Officer Christina.

Good evening, everyone. So the latest update on the stormwater master plan, we've had to, we had decided that it was best to let go of BCC. We find that they, it was more cumbersome to have them on board and that they were slowing down the process. I think we probably discussed this in the last meeting. So the latest update would be we've actually go ahead with our plan to look at Treasure Island more as a streamlined project and rethink the phasing. And we've had two consultants, EXP and Chenmore, and we've let them know of our plan to revamp the way we're approaching Treasure Island. So Roger, I don't know if you want to add anything to that. It looks like you're looking for the mute button.

Yeah, the browser is not really working for me. I don't really have much to add. That's a pretty good, succinct summary of where we are with Treasure Island. So we have to... We had to approach the Treasure Island issue differently because right now we have one consultant that's designing Harbor Island and another one that is responsible for North Bay Island. And as it stood, Treasure Island was an outlier because up to this point, we were employing multiple consultants to design the system, and having BCC managed it, there was just simply too much friction. um so that's where we are now um this is gonna go um i think for um additional discussion as to how to approach it um next month and as far as the other projects um for north bay we're doing really well on harbor island um We had an amendment that was passed, was it last month, Christina, for that consultant to proceed with designing the seawall and outfall for phase one of Harbor Island. So that one's underway and North Bay Island is in the construction phase. We're already receiving shop drawings for approval and other submittals. The one thing that's kind of an outlier for North Bay Island is still the issue of the property acquisition. which we are actually trying to find a way around right now. So not much more other than unless you guys had any questions specifically regarding any of the three islands, but that's my summary.

There is movement. We're progressing. I didn't notice that my resilience update was attached to this item. So I draft monthly a resilience update that I send out to commissioners and staff. I'd be happy to send it to the task force as well, if that's something of interest to you.

Yes, please. I'm trying to open it right now. Let's see if it's in the agenda.

Roger, can you talk a little bit more about the item that's coming before the commission? Is it in May or is it in June? Roger or Christina or Frank?

Well, I think it's supposed to be more of a discussion item, Madam Mayor, as far as to update the commission and the public on where we are and why we've identified this path to move forward. So we will have... By the time this goes up for commission, we will have a scope of work that is clearly identified for the design of Treasure Island that will, like I said, outline the path for one consultant to take the reins and take responsibility for the design of Treasure Island. We will already own everything that has been done up to this point by the previous consultant. So there is something that they can build off of. That's the village's intellectual property, basically. So the new consultant, whether it is someone that's different or whether we elect to continue with a an existing consultant who's worked on the project at this point, they'll still have that baseline to work off of with phase one and phase two, as they're currently identified in the stormwater master plan.

I have other questions, but I don't want to overtake the board's opportunity to engage on the stormwater plans.

I primarily want to... I'm sorry.

No, you could go ahead and ask questions, Dave.

Yeah.

I wanted Rachel to move forward with her questions as well.

Awesome. I'm just reconfirming that these new pump stations will be including injection wells. Yes.

Great. And the stormwater and the park is included as well. Great.

I do have an additional update on the park.

Before you do that, let me just ask my follow-up question on the commission item. And you said there will be a scope of work for us to review and discuss on the dais. Is that right, Roger?

That is the goal, yes.

Okay, yeah, that's great news. That's what I was hoping you would say. If I can take a look at it before it gets published on the agenda, I would love that. If not, I understand.

Of course, yeah. It will be a draft scope of work, but it's definitely something that will mostly be represented in anything that we do down the line.

like i said it'll at least be a draft a solid draft okay okay great great i might suggest i don't uh there was an incident that happened in kivas game the other uh the other uh last week was kind of an interesting um an interesting situation with their stormwater project it's um Uh, they were, they're calling it the big dig and basically a econ was coming in and proposing like all of these new, you know, pipes and, you know, gray infrastructure, digging everything up. Um, and there was a lot of pushback from the community because of just the sheer volume of like stuff that was being done. And the commission ended up scrapping that and, and, and opting to go with a, uh, with a proposal from, uh, get GIT. And they are building in green infrastructure into the whole project where they have to actually pump less out into the bay. I can forward that to you guys if you're just kind of interested in seeing what the challenges are that other islands are having. But I found it like really super interesting, the dichotomy between the traditional stormwater folks who just want to put in pipes and dig everything up and build stuff new and spend $300 million and more cost-effective approaches, which which are integrating more, you know, blue-green technologies into them. So, Christine and Roger, I can send you these proposals. I don't know if it's interesting for you to just kind of monitor what other islands are doing. I think they were about to get themselves into a very expensive situation. So...

Dave, I'd be interested in seeing this Git proposal that you speak of. I can say that when Key Biscayne was developing their plan, We were also in the early stages of ours, and there was a lot of information exchanged. Our initial RFQ was based off of the Key Biscayne RFQ, but I rewrote a lot of the stuff about green infrastructure requirements. And when we entered into our agreement with BCC for the Stormwater Master Plan, Green infrastructure was an explicit required component of the stormwater master plan, but instead of being integrated throughout the engineering plans and the models, it was like an appendix separate and apart from the plan and. it was never incorporated the way that we requested, expected, set forth that it be incorporated. And so it is my greatest hope that by going back to the drawing board, as painful as this is, and this is not the first time, but it's my hope that by going back to the drawing board, we will be able to do exactly as you described. So I definitely would like to see that proposal. Now would be the time.

Is BGG the ones who designed the proposal without injection wells?

No, we don't. Our plans have always incorporated injection wells.

The one that I saw that was posted online?

Oh, no. You're correct. There were the initial versions. Yes. Thank you for reminding me. We were, again, disappointing consultants. We were assured that we were going to be going above and beyond, we were exceeding baseline environmental water quality requirements. We were assured that that was happening in the plans. And then I found out that DERM rejected the plans because they didn't meet the minimum water quality standards. And that is when the injection wells were added.

Okay. Yeah. And that's who we got rid of. So I'm pleased to hear that. As we're evaluating, what is interesting, and this brings back from my old life in IT security and cybersecurity, is that there are people who specialize in very specific things. And then there's people who say they can do it all. And, um, evaluating somebody, I think based on projects and, and, and their, their approach, um, would be a key consideration as we interview, you know, new, um, because everybody's going to say they do it right. The question is who can actually, who actually, who actually puts this at the beginning part of their thought process. So.

Right. I mean, let's remember that the second ranked team on the Stormwater Master Plan, or no, the second ranked team on the Treasure Island Stormwater Implementation CIP plan, when we hired Black & Beach, when we did that competitive bid, the second place team was EXP. And they're one of the two consultants that's still working on the project that Roger... that Roger mentioned. So they'll, you know, I'm, if they, if they submit, are they, are they allowed to submit Roger?

Yeah, there'll be, we, we, there'll be any, it would be an open competition. So they'd be allowed to submit the, the only open question. Um, and I was discussing this with Christina earlier is, um, whether or not we, um, are able to actually just use the pool of consultants that we have, basically issue it just to the pool of consultants that we have, or if we're better served by putting it out on the street. And if we use the pool, then that will expedite the process of getting someone on board, but that doesn't necessarily give us the you know, that doesn't open up the project to who would be best suited to designing this stormwater system for Treasure Island and incorporating all of those, especially now that you've mentioned it, Deva and Meir, you know, the blue-green infrastructure that, you know, we definitely want to see on the project. So, and of course, there's... Roger, can I ask you something about the pool? Yes.

Our engineering pool comes with their subs. Are the subs within the pool a set pool of subs or can- No. So our engineering firms can be bringing on subs that specialize in green infrastructure?

Yes.

That's helpful.

Yes.

Okay. We can definitely design the scope of work to nudge them to work with better subs. If they use subs that perhaps don't favor green stormwater infrastructure, it'll be part of the judging process.

Yeah, it's important for us to come up with a scoring matrix that prioritizes our priorities, the green infrastructure,

Landscape architecture.

Landscape architecture, roadway improvements, all that stuff. So we're going to make the scoring matrix, whether we put it out on the road or just keep it in-house with the pool that we have. It will be on us to make that the priority and enforce that. Yeah.

Okay. I'm mentally shifting into the phase of, okay, well, if you want something done right, don't rush it. We're going to do this the right way. I'm letting go of all that has happened in the past.

Yeah, I know it's definitely not an ideal situation, but I can assure you that this is the best path forward. especially compared to what we're doing just now.

I'm comfortable with your guidance. I trust you.

Who's going to be part of the scoring committee? And if you're looking for anybody to join in, in scoring and evaluating, I would volunteer. I have no ties to any of them, by the way.

Well, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll, We'll figure that out. Like I said, it depends on whether we use the pool or it goes out on the street.

That's ultimately up to you guys if we're going to go with the pool or put it out in the street.

It's more of a legal question as far as CCNA statutes regarding the value of the construction of the project. I just need some legal guidance where that's concerned to make sure that we're not we're not in violation of the Florida statute where that's concerned.

I understand. And then, like, in the case of, like, recommendations, like, with Dave and the Git consultants, did I get that right? But if there was a recommendation made, like, could they be added to the pool or would it have to, like, technically go to the street?

That would... If... Since Git is not in our pool, they would have to either sub to someone, to another consultant, or we have to issue it, put it out on the street for them to be able to bid on it.

Okay. Understood. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Does anybody else have any questions for Christina or Rajesh?

If there's no questions, I did want to add one item to it. I know the mayor has mentioned some sort of industry day. for some of our stormwater plants. And I think I've found something that would help us have something similar to that. So the University of Miami Center for Urban and Community Design, they're working on a class in the fall. It's gonna be called Sponge Park. So it's a studio class. So it'll be developing concepts for different parks So they're gonna work with the county on Biscayne Gardens Park, and they're interested in working on our future stormwater park. So essentially it would be a fall studio with, we get two or three teams. So we'd get two or three different designs. There would be input from stakeholders in the city, in the village, but also different departments, engineers, different firms in the private sector as well. So I feel like that gives us an avenue to have that industry day that we really wanted. And it can push us to up to 30% design on the landscape nature-based solution side while we're still working on also the stormwater master plan or just a portion of Treasure Island. So I just wanted to gauge to see how the task force feels about that. That sounds really interesting. Yeah, they've submitted a proposal.

So this one... sorry the sponge park is them offering like designs for seawalls or so it would be for the stormwater park the stormwater park and that would be because i'm thinking sponge when you say sponge i'm just thinking of like in water like they'll be meaning they'll be absorbing a lot of water a lot of stormwater ah okay kind of like the the chinese concept because i think there's a sponge city somewhere in china um which is what we want

Oh, okay. That's great. So more to come on that. But they seem really, really interested in working with us as being one of the parks for their studio.

I mean, that sounds amazing. How does everybody else feel about it?

I mean, in general, it sounds super cool. They're going to get us to 30%. Does that mean that will somebody pick up on the 30% to 100%? Or do people, I don't know, in this space, if people are like, oh, I didn't design it, therefore I'm not going to build it. I don't know how that works in this.

Yeah, I've had I have the same questions for them. The good thing about this is there's going to be a lot of input from companies like Curtis and Rogers, you know, other landscaping companies. So they'll be giving a lot of input. So I think that will really facilitate us, you know, having one of them when it goes to bid, just grab it and take it to 100 percent when we're ready. And I also love that they'll be engineers. So it's mostly landscape architect, but they'll be pulling people from different professions as well, like engineers and marine biologists. So that will be really interesting.

Yeah, that sounds super cool. There's two, two, two thoughts. One is that, um, and, and, and if, when you come to the summit on May 20th, uh, Walter Meyerson is going to be presenting, uh, he's going to be on a panel. Um, and that might be, that might be super interesting. He's done like some stellar work. And when anybody in Miami is like, oh, you know, like they point to, to, to, to his work. And he did this like gorgeous thing in, in Puerto Rico along this whole shoreline. Um, the second thing is that, um, for the county's reasonable assurance plan, they, uh, they are offering free consulting services. Uh, Tetra Tech, uh, is, and, and, uh, I believe the county is offering free services to consult on the reasonable assurance plan projects. So I wonder if any of these, I wonder if we can, at the right time, extract any knowledge from them.

Yeah, absolutely. We can definitely do that as well.

Do you want me to figure out who that is?

Hold on. Brenda's coming back one second. Yeah, sure. That would be great. Feel free to connect. Dave, you're such a wealth of information.

We've interacted with the folks from Tetra Tech in regards to the RAP. So I have the contact's name somewhere buried deep in my e-mail.

yeah um i think i know who it is one of them is i think it's michael let me see marcy uh marcy is one of them yeah uh i think marcy is with tetra tech yeah yeah and then uh mike wessel is with esa associates and uh marcy frick is with texas yeah that was almost a year ago well they are they are eager to help for the reasonable assurance plan projects and this i think clearly fits into that and the nice thing is is that any of the projects that are in the reasonable assurance plan like i don't want to say this like like rock solid but The RAP is supposed to unlock funding, right, from the state. And because it's in the reasonable assurance plan, that tees it up very nicely for, you know, once the RAP, like Indian River Lagoon gets $100 million a year. Biscayne Bay gets 20. It's because they have a reasonable assurance plan. That 100 million a year that they're getting from the state goes to actually paying for and implementing these projects. So any of these projects that we can tie with the reasonable assurance plan because they are going to be improving water quality, that opens up the door, that's the unlock code for projects. So the county is giving us free resources and we're in alignment. And so now all we want to do is we want to make sure that we get the you know, we get the best and the maximum value from our little space on these wonderful little islands.

Dave, can you resend me the information about your wrap day, please, so that I can talk to the manager about it?

Yep.

Thanks.

And remember, for those of you who are thinking about it, the reason the wrap day is a closed door for municipalities, primarily those working in public works and stormwater and, you know, sustainability, anything touching Biscayne Bay. The full Biscayne Bay Summit on May 20th is open for everybody. And that is going to be really the state of the bay, how we're doing since our first summit nine years ago, the reasonable assurance plan. There's going to be a lot of really good content about the obligation of developers and development. There's going to be some really, really, I think some really, really good content that everybody might find valuable if you care about Biscayne Bay.

I think we do. Any more on this topic or are we going to move on to the next item? Nope. So then we're moving on to the next item, 3B, update on landfill waste diversion strategy.

So I met with you, Dave. We had a wonderful meeting. On Compost for Life and, you know, composting in general. And I think since then I've reached out to different municipalities, to our sustainability group to find out who is composting. I know the city of Miami is doing a pilot and city of Miami actually thought they were the only one doing it. But so many other people gave me feedback on what they are doing. Like Deerfield is doing it, Coconut Creek, Pinecrest, Junidin. I don't know if I'm saying that right. I knew it. It felt wrong.

That's where the governor is from, so I would advise you to mispronounce the name.

And this meeting is recorded. Oh, no. I got you, Ron. So there's definitely a way forward. I think funding is what we have to work on for this, but it's progressing. And I spoke to Francisco from Compost for Life. And, you know, he described the different types of services that they give. So would we want something where people go to, you know, on each island, there's a designated drop off spot, you know, that could be a way and then we can measure, you know, for a while to see how often we need to do it, we would have to figure out what's the best way to do it for the, for the, the islands. You know, I don't know if door to door would be the best way.

You have thought. If I may. Yeah. I have been, I have been dragged into this conversation about waste and for the past two years, not by North Bay Village. And I've learned some really interesting facts. And we have an opportunity right now to rethink our waste system, how we handle waste. A couple of things that I've learned is that organic material, Well, first of all, everything is about the contracts. Everything is about the contracts. The first contract we were doing with the first waste hauler had lots of flaws in it. And I'm glad that we did not accept it as is. There's always little caveats that end up. um preventing us municipalities from introducing compost organics diversion because it's written in the contract and there's minimum spends and so uh organic material like food scraps represents about 30 percent of our waste stream but it actually weighs up to four times more than just your dry waste. Wet organics weigh 30% to 40% more, and that costs us because we pay tipping fees. We pay per ton. So Key Biscayne is going in a direction or they were, I don't know if they still are because I got involved, they were going on a flat rate, pay for the whole service, just come deal with it. Everything in the contract and the way that they're approaching it is designed to disincentivize diversion and reduction. because it doesn't matter how much you throw. You can throw one ton or 10 tons because it's a flat rate. The village thinks that it's getting a bargain, but the reality is that there's zero incentive to reduce and divert from landfills. And that's completely unacceptable in our current waste crisis. So what I've been working towards and what I think we should do here in the village, I do have a proposal. I've actually got it mapped out. I built PowerPoint today. I'm happy to share it if anybody wants to see it. But my proposal is actually... that we issue three simultaneous rfps and we develop in fact i'm just gonna i'm just gonna share if you don't mind can i may i may i take over for a few minutes madam chair absolutely thank you um i worked hard on this presentation i so i might as well might as well knock it out um and so This aligns actually with Key Biscayne as much as it aligns with us here in the village. And so what I'm really boiling this down to is issuing three simultaneous RFPs for different components, and I'll share that with you. Factoring something is called pay as you throw. So pay as you throw basically means that if you throw away more, you pay more. And if you throw away less, you pay less. And this establishes this gets us ready for a diversion ready future. So we have like a once in a decade opportunity because whatever contract we have is gonna happen, we're locked in for 10 years. And so the three simultaneous RFPs are one is for residential landfill because the county handles residential recycling. We let the residential landfill be one RFP. We then have a multifamily landfill and recycling contract. Um, and then we have a third, which is composting residential and multifamily in one contract as an opt in. So all three are, uh, so all three. Yes.

Where is our commercial landfill and recycling? Is that in multifamily? Um, I haven't thought, I haven't thought about that because I think for commercial, I think we cannot impose contracts on, on private commercial operators.

I understand that's correct. And therefore, um, what other municipalities do is they have waste hauler, uh, uh, they have, um, like city of Miami beach, they have three, uh, approved waste haulers. So there's a waste hauler franchise, uh, So in Miami Beach, they limit it to three, but now it's two because they keep getting acquired. Key Biscayne is anybody and everybody. So anywhere from Great White to Coastal to Waste Management, and so whoever the commercial entity decides to pick. Selecting by issuing an RFP for commercial, and I haven't gotten to that point exactly yet, but if you issue an RFP for commercial, which sets the baseline standards for the franchise agreement, then you can select two or three and they can shop between those three. But because there is a franchise agreement that we're issuing an RFP for, This ensures that we can do the labeling, that we can do inspection, that they require to inspect trucks for leachate dripping on the ground. So I think the franchise waste haulers is probably for commercial the way to go. and then just build in that RFP, the things that we wanna see, and we can pick the number that we want, and then the commercial entities can go shopping based on that from an approved list. So Key Biscayne is looking at a flat rate single contract. It's a long-term contract that is a fixed fee. And so There's no reason to support diversion. The village has no reason to invest in reduction and diversion and adding composting later on actually becomes a composting breach. And so, um, in the contract is really important that we, uh, that we, that we, uh. that we look at the potential locks that we have that would prevent us from doing something. So residential is landfill only, multifamily is landfill plus recycling, and then composting is opt-in organics collection. I'm gonna show you the math because by doing it now, we actually eliminate the objection that people will have where composting, adding composting costs them more money. It does not have to. And so when we do the three targeted contracts, they can go to separate vendors. One single vendor could win any of them or all of them, and that's fine. And in the residential landfill, we must include this concept of pay as you throw. Now, this is really interesting because I was trying to wrap my mind around how we reduce costs or keep our costs low to our residents and not penalize them for being better humans and composting. And so the pay as you throw model is really, there's two levers. One is the cart size. And one is the frequency of pickup. So if, you know, in my house, we have, we generate, like, because we compost, our weekly trash, like, fits in a small bag, right? We don't have a lot of waste. Therefore, why should I pay for a 96-gallon tote with twice-a-week pickup? Right? So if I were able, let's just say I lived in a house and it's only two of us. If I was able to select composting, then I have no smells that I'm worried about. Right? That's why we pick up twice a week because we don't want smells. We don't want animals. We don't want the mess. It's the organics that are creating the smells and the mess. And so if you die, if you remove organics out of your waste bin, then there's no reason why you would need landfill pickup twice a week in my world. So charge me for a 32 gallon cart with buy with, with pickup every other week. Right. And then add composting where I get weekly composting service. Um, We need to redefine, we need to make sure that the definition of solid waste expressly excludes source separated organics. If we don't do that in the contract, then we will be in breach of contract and then they're not gonna let us do it, right? We need to separate in the RFP collection services with disposal fees. meaning those trucks are going around anyway and they get paid for the pickup. We are then charged for the amount that they actually dump at the landfill, right? So we only pay what we throw, which gives us incentive to divert and reduce. And the waste haulers, they will charge a small administrative fee. Okay, fine, no problem. Um, and then we have strong vehicle integrity and leachate prevention standards. Um, and, uh, so, so that's like, you can read all these other ones. Um, RFP number two is multifamily landfill and recycling. Now we could, if we wanted to have multifamily, uh, and, and single family landfill. I'm not saying that we have to have the same recycling company do the landfill, and maybe it makes more sense for us to do a landfill contract, which applies to residential and multifamily, and then do a separate recycling contract only for multifamily. Maybe that's a way to go. Here's a, let me see any of the things here. We have a unified labeling requirements, real-time contamination audits of recycling and very important chain of custody data. So we know that when a truck comes and picks up the recycling, that it actually lands at the recycling facility because their financial incentives are really to, usually, I believe, it is cheaper for many of them to take it to a landfill than it is to actually take it over to the waste management MRF, depending on how much it costs for the tipping fees. So it's important that we know that those trucks go because half the people you talk to will probably say, I don't bother recycling because it never ends up any way they throw it in the same truck. That's a trust issue. And once somebody stops recycling, you're not going to get them to start again. So by having a chain of custody data, the processing, the end market material fed to us, we can then show that on the dashboard and say, here in North Bay Village, we actually recycle. And so the third is composting. I believe that this should be an opt-in, meaning when we sign these new contracts, everybody gets the same exact service as they have today. They want to save money or they want to adjust it. They can then adjust it, get a smaller bin for landfill, or they can adjust the frequency, and then they can add organics. I'll show you the math in a minute. I do not believe that we need to do pilot programs. We know from other municipalities, composting is not new. It's not brand new. It is new here in Miami, yes. Is it gonna take a little while for Miami to get used to? Yes, but because this is opt-in, then, and it doesn't cost them any more money, in theory, I hope that's the way it works out, then we will get really good compliance and no contamination. A fun thing that I really like is to have the finished compost returned to the village for parks, rights of way and resident giveaway. Because this compost is nutrient rich, we won't need to fertilize. What a great story. So I wanna prioritize single family curbside Multi-family on-site, and they have different, both Fertile Earth and Compost for Life have totes that have locks on them so that somebody just doesn't see it lifted up and then throw it in. And third, for those people who live in multi-family and commercial who they don't offer composting, we would have a drop station maybe in a park or something like that. So here's the pricing structure that aligns household, the village and the hauler around reduction. I think my numbers are probably not entirely correct because I just Googled them. Um, so the current Miami Dade County rate, if you're a Miami Dade resident, so I don't know what math this works out to us. I would need data. Hold on a second. Uh, hi, I'm in a meeting. Can I call you back? Sorry, it's my sister, she called twice. There's probably something important, but you guys are more important than my sister to me. Okay, so assuming that the baseline rate is $700 a year, that's a 2024 number, that works out to $58 a month. And if you move to a 64-gallon cart every other week and then add in biweekly composting, factoring in $24 a month, then you're actually saving $11, the resident. And so this would incentivize people to do composting. The other benefit, the side benefit is because as I said at the beginning that wet organics is the heaviest and also the largest driver of street leachate, all of that little dripping, smelly, gross, icky stuff that drips down the trucks as they go along if they're not maintaining the trucks. This reduces our overall landfill costs. right, which allows us to keep our waste hauler fees lower, right, because waste hauler fees continue to go up. So it aligns everyone's incentives, visible cost changes behaviors, organics are heavy, tipping fees are by the ton, and less wet mass is less leachate and cleaner streets. And so this is the hauler service fee is how we ask to be billed. Hauler, you're driving your trucks around. Go for it. You charge us that fee. Then we pay for disposal. Here's the six objections that I'm anticipating, because I asked these myself. One is the contracts are more administrative overhead. We don't have the staff to manage three. If we issue them all together, It's probably not going to be too much more work. Maybe, hopefully not too much more. Composting is unproven and composting is operating at municipal scale in Tampa, Orlando, Gainesville, and across multiple Broward municipalities. We're not pioneering, right? We are not the first people to ever do this. Pay as you throw. And this was my biggest concern because I've heard this before. Pay as you throw will cause illegal dumping because people are just going to throw trash in their neighbor's cart and commercial dumpsters and in the bag. The EPA studies show that it is a real risk, but it is far smaller than projected. And so... I don't know, I think that's probably the most real one that we would have to think about and not be too, and not just assume everything will be perfect. But I think that we're probably not gonna have the illegal dumping issue. I don't think so. Is it correct that in single family homes, that the waste bill is added onto their existing water sewer bill do we know does anybody live in a house how do people pay for landfill generally that's what i've i've always heard um in all the different cities yeah yeah that that that's what i assume because that's the way it works everywhere else i did not want to assume um so uh You can actually save people money and we can control instead of like Fertile Earth or Compost for Life going around one, one, one, one, knocking on the door. Hey, do you want to do composting? We can do this through the system. We should wait for Miami-Dade County to lead. They have the resources. The county ain't doing shit. Sorry, everybody. They are not doing diddly. It's very frustrating and I'm very, very upset that the county is failing to actually take real action right now today. Um, uh, flat rate is simpler. Um, that's an objection. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think it's, I don't think it's, uh, so what we're asking, what I think I would like to ask the commission to approve is have staff develop three simultaneous RFPs. Um, and the composting is it's completely separate one. Um, and on the contracts are structured to be pay as you throw, uh, with disposal fees passed on, passed through by the ton. and then the composting, the language, and then make sure that we have the piggyback language because Coral Gables is gonna have to do their waste hauler contract in the next two, three years. Key Biscayne is doing it right now. City of Miami Beach is kind of like they've been working on theirs for a couple of years. So why not collaborate all together? Because I think that we can probably do something pretty cool And I would love for the Sustainability Task Force to review the draft RFPs and provide comments to staff. So I think that is it. I don't know if anybody has any thoughts on that seagull that I just threw at you.

I'm trying to wrap my head around all this. Yeah.

Can you email that to me, Dave, please?

Sure.

And me as well.

So the second point was pay as you throw. So right now, a lot of the waste companies don't, are really trying to avoid charging by like the ton. They just want to do it as a flat fee. It doesn't matter how much it weighs. And that's what we're doing.

I don't know what ours looks like. Okay. This is what the village of Key Biscayne is is this is what their staff is recommending to their commission right and because it's a flat fee nobody has any incentive if if if you got unlimited gas gas didn't cost you you pay a hundred dollars a month you're driving everywhere but when gas costs you five dollars a gallon yeah you're gonna try to line your trips up, right? And maybe get a more fuel efficient vehicle. This is the same concept. So I don't know what we're doing. I don't know what our contracts looked like today. That's a great question for staff.

Yeah, I think that's the most important point for this negotiation and to like incentivize residents to do this or partake in this, because if not, I see it being very difficult aside from being a huge educational campaign. I feel like when I speak to residents, everybody wants to do it, but they just don't know how to do it. And then participating in it, they do believe that it is a high cost to do it and it's a lot of extra work. And then there's a thing of where if other people aren't doing it, then they're not going to do it. So it's like,

All of this. All of those reasons. You're absolutely right. And the idea here is to eliminate those, right? So the people who want to do it, they will get a five-gallon bucket, let's say, and it will be sealed. There's no smells. There's no animals. I have them out on my patio. Apartments can do it. Multifamilies can do it. And there's no issues with smell or critters. So by giving people the option to opt in, then it just becomes part of a village service. And if we do it with pay as you throw, it ends up not costing them the $24 a month that it costs me. Like I pay for a pickup service and they come pick it up out of my backyard and it's this white glove service. It's great. But it costs me $24 a month on top of my landfill fees or whatever I pay.

Madam Chair, I don't know if you can see, but Oliver has his hand raised.

Hi. Hi. Yes, please speak, Oliver, please.

Sorry for zooming in late, but thank you. Dave, that was an amazing presentation, and I don't know how other single-family homeowners are going to react, but I, for one, I think that's actually... it's actually, you know, for me, I like the solutions that you're presenting. I need to look at them a little bit more because I came in late, but I think that's an intelligent, more complicated for the city staff to deal with all these contracts, maybe, but maybe not. And it's, oh, here's my question. Okay. So this, and maybe you mentioned this at the beginning, but this is besides the, The organics that would come from yard waste, that's kind of separate in this view? Is this keeping it in the city? Or how would your proposal address the thing that single-family homeowners deal with is... Is the, you know, I got the coconuts coming out of the tree. I have to go, you know, all these branches to the front. Am I paying for all that per pound or how does that happen?

Well, okay. So I don't have a good answer on what we do with yard waste. I haven't thought through the answer on yard waste.

The village is going to still do yard waste. The village is still going to do yard waste.

Now, what they do in Atlanta, I thought was super cool, that the city will only pick up yard waste if it is in these big paper bags that they sell at Ace Hardware and Home Depot. So instead of plastic bags, they're paper bags. But they're like really big. And they have a lot of leaves.

A lot of times the cities, the workers are very nice. And even though I think there may be some requirements where we're supposed to put stuff in bags, a lot of times those big coconut like fronds, you just can't chop them up. So they come around with a big truck and they just put the raw waste in. But I kind of agree with you. If there's a way to take the smaller stuff and that way we don't have to worry about plastic mixing with that stuff and to clean up the waste. So it has this, you know, Like, you know, I think people can understand like, hey, just we're not we're trying to have stuff that's organic, stay organic and compostable, whatever they do with it. I don't know. Frank probably knows more details, but that's OK. Thank you so much for that presentation. I'm going to study it tonight.

Did you grab slides, Oliver, or do I need to email it out? Oh, please email. Yeah, I would love that. May I may I finish a couple of finishing touches before sending it out? OK. OK.

Does anybody else have any questions on this? And then Dave, if you can just send it out to all of us, I really want to see it as well. If anybody took any notes, if we do pay, so we don't know if we pay by the tonnage, we just, or if we pay a flat fee.

Well, I think right now village staff is handling the landfill pickup and dumping at the waste haulers. So right now we are paying by, if that's the case, then we are paying by the ton, but it's our village staff that are actually handling the driving and the pickup. In this new scenario, Or maybe it's still village staff. I'm not getting into that conversation. But the driving and the pickup would be still separate than the tipping fees at the landfill transfer station. So I think it's the same as it's similar in model of how it's done today.

Okay.

But we want to avoid if we are doing an RFP and let's just say that we're not going to have, we're going to go, we're going to, let's just say we're going to privatize landfill, then we want to avoid that flat rate.

I agree. Because I feel like that would have a trickle down effect. Like that's when it would incentivize people and just kind of get more eyes on this or people understanding the issue that we're dealing with.

Dave, once you send me the presentation, I'll forward it to Stephen, our public works director, to see what his thoughts are. I know he sat with us, but it might be good for him to see this written out as well.

I think this is going to – yeah, great. I think that – I think this is going to be a new concept for a lot of people, that people are going to have to chew on a little bit to understand and wrap their mind around it. But I think that if we sit down and maybe ask to do some of the math, we might actually find that my numbers, which is still the caveat, I don't know if those numbers are exactly accurate, right? It's the best I can do. And I've only worked on it for, you know, the presentation for a couple of days. So yeah. Awesome.

For Key Biscayne, when are they making their decision?

They do not seem to be involving the community to the same level that we do. And so I think that they are pushing back on even giving the sustainability committee even a copy of the draft RFP. So I think what they are saying is that we have to hurry, we have to move because our contract expires. And like with all contracts, you can go month to month on these things. You can extend contracts. Miami Beach is operating on a contract that they signed 15 years ago or 10 years ago. They just keep extending it. So I think that their sense of urgency is actually...

They don't want to keep dealing with it?

I don't know if it's a manufactured sense of urgency or if it's that they are not like recognizing that they have an opportunity and like, we should really look at the contract. Like to see, can we go month to month? All right, great. I'll send that around. And, you know, Christina, I appreciated that you did so much research and exploration on this. And, you know, our conversation was great in bantering through some of the ideas and it helped me come up with these ideas. And you had some really good comments. Steve had some really good comments. And I just really think that, you know, We would be innovative for Miami-Dade County, but this is not innovative for a lot in the world.

What do you think would be a good next step for this?

What do I think? I think that Christina and Stephen should take a look at this. make any modification suggestions it should go to commission that this is the direction we want to go and direct staff to go in this direction or you know whatever modifications like like have an open we can have an open conversation about it but i think that ultimately there should be a a an agreement and a direction from the commission to or or if staff just wants to run this way if this is the recommendation i don't know i don't know the process um but i think we should just I think we should figure out what the heck we want to do and then start drafting our RFPs.

Okay.

That's a better question for the mayor.

Madam Mayor, do you have any comments on this?

I actually will defer to you all as the advisory board to discuss the proposal and If you are ready to advance it when you are ready to advance it, or if you don't want to advance it to the commission, that's up to you guys. But the appropriate next step would be, exactly as Dave set forth, to basically make a recommendation to the commission that they set this direction and that they direct staff and that this is the direction we want to go on this particular issue. But I completely defer to you guys in terms of whether or not you're ready to do that. If you're not ready to do it tonight, that's fine. If you're not ready to do it ever, that's fine too.

What is our sense of urgency on making decisions, RFPs, changes like? So if I worked on this- We have.

We need to figure out what we are doing very quickly because we are leasing trucks and we don't have a place to park our vehicles after Sunbeam breaks ground, which is going to be- I don't know, they submitted their permit application for the redevelopment of the lot where we're keeping our trucks and we're breaking ground on the other lot where we're keeping other village vehicles. So we need to move forward in one direction or another. I don't want to rush this process because I agree with you, it's going to take time for people to chew on. But I do know that the commission is obviously going to be discussing the issue. I think we're discussing it at the May meeting. I don't know, Frank, do we have a discussion item? I know communications is working on some messaging materials. to try to do a just general job updating the residents about where we are, which is still in decision making and evaluation and information gathering mode.

As I was going through this presentation to you guys, the one change that I would make is that we should have one landfill contractor who handles residential and multifamily, and then our own separate recycling for multifamily, as opposed to having a multifamily landfill and recycling. I don't wanna see the same truck rolling up to a multifamily and wondering where it goes. Like, is this my landfill or my recycling? So I think that's the one change that I would make from my initial proposal, but I don't know if anybody has any thoughts.

What issue do you see happening like with that? Just like there's too much, like too comfortable, like too, like too much power, right?

No, I think that, I mean, I think that it's a good question. And I'm kind of like, I'm just like, this is all like happening in flight. The landfill folks, from what my perception is like, As long as they're taking it to a landfill, there's no change in service. As long as they are doing a good job with good, not leaky trucks, they're all taking it to the landfill. The landfill companies, I think, there's probably some differences between them, but there's a lot of landfill companies. The recycling, I am very concerned about the financial motivations by having a monopoly in the recycling industry where there's only one MRF and it's owned by waste management and the incentives for not taking something to the recycling MRF and instead just sending it to the landfill, just making that right-hand turn, that truck making a turn, and taking it to the landfill instead of the recycling, I think is significant. And so I am more cautious and less trustworthy of waste haulers who do not have, of waste haulers who are taking this stuff to the MRF. We have to have a higher level of scrutiny because it does cost more sometimes to take it all the way to the MRF and tip it than it does to take it to the landfill. So I want to have an eagle eye on whoever handles the recycling. They have to demonstrate that they have cameras on the trucks, that they are going to do inspections, ideally, like by the staff. When they go pick up, wheel those out, they open the lid. And if it's contaminated, they tag it. We can control contamination if we have a good hauler, whether that's our staff or whether it's a good hauler. And I'm sure that there's plenty of good haulers, but everybody can do landfill. Maybe not everybody can do recycling. That's my general concept. And I'm not here to say anybody is doing something, anything wrong, but the incentives need to be aligned.

Right. So do we feel like maybe next meeting we can make a formal recommendation and we just work on your proposal, what you already came up with? And then I guess, you know, put things into priority of what we're looking for, you know? maybe let's just say cameras are a huge stretch asking that from them, but at least like tagging them and then, you know, seeing that there is contamination, but then at least like tagging them. And then the next like ask, like lesser priority would be like cameras or something like that. We can do like.

I think we can. So just so everybody's aware, the county is now, requiring on their recycling contractors, they have three contractors and they are required to have cameras with AI detection. And so I'm not too worried about us blowing everybody's minds here. The thing that's gonna blow everybody's minds is they've gotta label their bins. Like seriously, it is my biggest bugaboo about, and this is why I just like am so frustrated with the county because they are not labeling their recycling bins. and the waste haulers, the private waste haulers are not labeling the recycling bins. And yeah, it's a bugaboo of mine because it's like, that's the number one thing in education. They wanna blame the community for not recycling right and too much contamination, but they're failing on their part. So that's my frustration with this. I just heard the mayor say that it's probably coming up in the May timeframe. So my proposal today, is that I will make a motion to, I will forward this out after a couple of edits. I will forward this to everybody. I will forward this not to everybody.

Let me just interrupt because I hear you about to make a motion. The commission is discussing the issue in May. I don't know that we're necessarily voting on it. Frank, are you intending for us to vote on this in May or can we push it to June?

I think June would be one of the earliest times when you look at all the issues that we're having to deal with on this, just these elements that they're bringing them up. If we were even to consider some of these things that Dave is proposing, that changes the whole dynamic of what we would bring to the commission. But definitely it will not be in May.

Yeah. Why don't you guys, I mean, I would say leak it to the community, but I mean, we're here in a public meeting. It would be good to get more buzz around the community around these concepts. So maybe, you know, June, right? I don't want you to think that you have a deadline of the May commission meeting.

Okay. By the way, just reiterate that anybody who doesn't want to make a change on their frequency or their tote card size, they get the same thing that they're getting today. If they want something different, then they opt in for it. Right. So we're not going to be forcing anybody to do anything different. We're not changing. We don't have to change the pickup frequencies. Although I'm not sure why somebody generates so much trash that they have to have pickup twice a week. I don't live in that world, but I mean, I'm guessing if you have a bunch of kids, um, but, um, So no judgment zone, Dave, really? No, no, no. I don't understand. No, I don't know. I, I, I, I genuinely don't understand. Cause that's a whole lot of trash.

Hmm.

Right. But even so, if 30 percent of it is organic. But anyway, everybody gets.

OK, fine. I am judgmental.

I acknowledge.

No, living in a single family home, I see that there's different size of garbage cans, too. So some people have smaller ones, some people have bigger ones. So that's also like. an issue and that's why i think people want like a higher frequency because like i see my next door neighbor's one is much smaller than mine so great no problem no problem right no problem they get to have exactly what they what they what they have now if they want something different and so now you just have a menu

Yeah.

So I'll tell you what, here's what I can do. I'm going to work on this a little bit more next month. We're going to come back and I will send this. I will send I'm going to send this to Christina because we have sunshine and Christina can send this out to everyone. And then next month, people can come back with their ideas or thoughts. We can banter it, and then we can decide what we're going to send to commission as an idea. This gives Christina time. This gives Frank time. This gives Steven time to actually chew on this. I don't like to do things in a rush, but I do have a sense of urgency.

Absolutely. Do we know, just one last question, do we know the most... ideal contract even if it's not in like south florida like you said in orlando or tampa they're doing these things or in atlanta like do you do you think we could get a hold of something like that just to see it like the language of their contracts um i i can try i mean you know um

That's tricky. We're piggybacking off of Coral Gables, but I don't know if it's ideal because they're looking into updating theirs.

No, we should be partnering with Coral Gables. We should be partnering with Key Biscayne. Anybody who wants to rethink how they're doing things, we should be talking to them. We should be talking to them now. We should be talking about our concepts, and we should all come aligned on something where we can piggyback. And now you have incentive for these big companies now. Like, sorry, for these waste haulers to sharpen their pencil and to figure it out because this is, well, actually it's not even. Like, I mean, none of these are brand new concepts. You go to waste management and they've got municipalities who do pay as you throw. I'm sure Waste Connections also has customers in other, like they're big companies. We are not the only ones thinking of this. So yes, I will look at language for other contracts.

Thank you, Dave.

I will definitely be looking into this as well.

Any more questions or comments on this item? All right, moving on to items.

I just want to thank Dave for putting in a lot of time and effort into this. we've obviously been in a challenging position the last several months with this issue. And Dave saw an opportunity and really took accountability and responsibility and just went with it. So there's a lot to digest and discuss, but the work is much appreciated, Dave. So thank you.

You got it. Guys, I'm facing a challenge, so I'm going to have to disappear pretty soon.

um all right good luck good luck jake yeah uh is there anything else that uh the reasonable assurance plan do we have our project submissions christina uh we have some we have a lot of different projects that we could use um not officially submitted yet i don't think we've gotten a prompt from the county but our stormwater inlet project would be one of them uh the stormwater All the projects that we're working on in the stormwater program are definitely eligible for submission on the RAP.

Stellar. I will send you the contact information for ESA and Tetra Tech. And maybe, you know, if you shared like your ideas and thoughts, they can tell you how they apply. And maybe if you have any questions or I think they would be very excited to hear the projects that you're working on.

I love that. Thank you.

I'll send that to you tomorrow.

Then I think we handled 3C. We can move on to new business. 4A, discussion on the Biscayne Bay Marine Health Summit on May 20th, 2026. Dave?

Tickets are available for sale at restorebiscaynebay.org.

There we go.

I will, in fact, what I'll do is I will get a ticket code for a discount on tickets. And then I'll send that over to, I can send that to everybody.

Perfect. Please send it over. Good. 4B, any other comments on that one? No? Good to go. 4B, discussion on sustainability, procurement policy.

Procurement. Sure, that's my item. Something I've been working on. So I've done a lot of homework on this. I've approached staff on how we spend our money. I've approached our... our procurement team, so Maite and Annabel, and just to get an idea of how we can move forward with a sustainable procurement policy. I did have a little, I can make it very quick. See if I can share my screen.

If anybody wants to view it, it's also on the agenda. It's linked and displayed.

I'm scared to do the thing where I make us look at ourselves. There we go. So just very quickly, So this is what we spend mostly our money on, office supplies, food and events. This is where our current procurement policy is in our code. So I've reviewed this policy to see how we can supplement it. And so based on that and other examples of sustainable policies. This new policy should prioritize reuse and sustainable materials. Local is a bit tougher, but I think that's something we can work into it as well. Integrates resilient infrastructure, but that's more on the green infrastructure side. That's a separate policy. That's a different item. And then one thing to really give this some teeth would be to require some sort of reporting at the end of the year And then, so what I use as examples, I use Miami Beach. They have a resilient procurement policy. I also use Orlando. They have a really substantial sustainable procurement policy. And I use different frameworks like LEED. LEED is a really great example. So LEED prioritizes local and the reporting. So that's where I put the reporting and the policy. And I also use WELL. So WELL is the building standard. It's basically LEED. But it's likely, but instead of focusing on just sustainability, it focuses on the wellness of the occupant of the building. So when a building is well-certified, so you're really focusing on the person, so not just the environment. And it encourages plant-based eating and nutrition and reducing artificial ingredients. So there's a lot of different things that it recommends. And because of that in the policy, which is also attached to the agenda, there's a food portion to it. I don't know if you're familiar, but there's different cities in South Florida that have already adopted having always a plant-based protein in certain events. I believe city of Boca Raton, they've implemented it like a Meatless Monday, for example. So I think that's something that would be beneficial for us. Recently, I attended the Climate Compact Well, not recently. It was in December. And we had an author, his name is Michael Brunwald, and he wrote this book, We Are Eating the Earth. And the full title is The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate. So it's really about how what you eat really can help reduce your emissions, save the climate. So because of that, that's why I think it's really important for us to always consider a plant-based option. And when we're having events, because we have a lot of events, you know, if it's commission or ordering food. So this is a way to, you know, make our sustainable procurement policy even stronger than typical ones that we see, like in Miami Beach and Orlando. So it's that. I do have the policy attached, so it would supplement. It would be, you know, right after what we have on our code. And if you want, I can pull it up as well, what I've written, if you want to discuss it a little more. I don't know if anybody's read it already and has some feedback.

I'm reading it right now. Mm-hmm. So would you need our help in locating providers, suppliers? I mean, I support all this.

Yeah. This is great. Yeah, not necessarily, but I would never turn down suggestions. You might know someone or a company that I'm not familiar with. So yeah, I'm open to it. You know, it encourages to use products with third-party certification. So if you're buying paper, you know, get an FSC certified paper from FSC, Forest Certified, Forest Stewardship Council paper, you know, Energy Star products, et cetera. And then nowadays, it's not even that, it's very comparable in price than a regular item.

I mean, annual public report shall include. Okay. So this is good stuff too. Cause then we can, you know, the village can do a track. Yeah. A track. And then also like a campaign, like for residences to have like some guidance on, you know, where to look for these things and get ideas of how they can also make their own household, you know, sustainable and have higher nutrition. Yeah. And it's like on a larger scale too. So like you could see like a larger impact on it.

Yes. And also since we're launching our, you know, our community center. So this is our way to be very conscious about what we bring into our center.

I like this. I don't know how much the vice mayor is going to like this because he loves it when the village does barbecues.

No, you can still do barbecue. It's just you always have to have a plant-based option.

I'm in full support of this. And I would be more than happy to make some recommendations of locally sourced food, products, all that. I mean... very happy to. Does any other members have any comments or would like to kind of give some suggestions or make some suggestions later on? Or have you guys been able to read this over? It's attached to the agenda.

I think it's great to have options.

So I like the idea too. And then, you know, if we can kind of create a list too of all of the providers, suppliers, you know, again, like just have something like if presidents do want to ask us, like, where did you get this? Or, you know, what are we doing? Just like making sure that we have all of these things. So, you know, the community could enjoy, you know, this type of lifestyle too. Even like non-toxic toilet paper, like that's what I started using. And I can recommend a brand for that too, but I don't know if the village wants to go that far, but I highly recommend it. Do tell. It's just, it's unbleached. So, you know, there's a lot of issues with like, You know, how toilet paper actually sheds and it's not good for us and, you know, it's not clean. So I can send you a whole list. I'm more than happy to. I really want to continue. I really would like for you to continue on this. Anybody else have any input?

Yeah. It's Oliver. Yeah, I really appreciate the work going into this. And the only thing I could suggest, having a chance to look at a new character, but just stuff the city does for itself in terms of... I don't know if there's anything in here that would be looked at or be added about. This is my best step. Over time, more sustainable would be interesting to think about. I don't know if it's feasible or how it would be implemented, but I just wanted to add that as an idea.

On my end, you were kind of breaking up, Oliver. Did anybody else hear his... He was a little garbled.

Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm in a bad area. Can you hear me better now?

Yeah, I think so. Could you repeat that?

Yeah. It was just about looking at adding maybe landscape maintenance that the city does on its own rights away and thinking about sustainable practices in terms of materials, but in terms of water and any type of practices that can be a little more Florida-friendly plants or whatever, that kind of idea, if it's not already in there for plants.

I think that's a great idea, but might be better to have that separately as some sort of sustainable landscape plan. But definitely something we can look into.

We could add that to maybe our green code as like a list of recommended plants that the village uses that are compatible with

But isn't it just for new development? So this would be for public infrastructure, right, Oliver?

It's for public. I was just thinking this is all public-related. That's all I could think of off the top of my head.

You're breaking up again, Oliver.

Sorry. Just thinking about, yeah, city-run landscaping right away.

Mm-hmm. I think that's a great future task. I'd like to keep them separate, just to keep the focus on office and some event and not have it too broad. But I do think, especially with the adaptation plan that's coming up, that this is something... By the way, the adaptation plan was just executed by both the city and FDEP. So part of that will be some recommendations of landscaping. So I'd like to keep that separate so we can follow up on that. Hopefully soon.

Sounds good. Does anybody else have any comments? All right, moving on to item 4C, discussion on green infrastructure policy. Is this your item too, Christina?

It is. We're flying through these. So yeah, I finally shared this. I know I mentioned this in the last meeting. So I've added it to this agenda. So this would be an addition to our existing agenda. I think the way we worded it is to put it under the stormwater section. So we've added some new definitions to our code, like CIP, green stormwater infrastructure, low impact development, et cetera. And then we're asking for, we work really hard on that. I have had the chance of having our mayor give me a lot of feedback on this. So if you have any additional feedback, please feel free to share. But so this would apply to capital projects. All capital projects shall incorporate green stormwater infrastructure. So this will really... you know, make nature's Bay solutions, uh, an inherent part of all our CIP projects. So I was inspired by different cities, like city of Miami, for example, um, all our project will require some certifications or CIP projects like lead, for example, or envision, um, Yeah. I think the only thing that, cause this has gone through a few iterations. The only thing I left out and you're welcome to let me know how you feel about it is for example, in the city of Miami, um, this, the CRO, the chief resilience officer kind of has to review all projects for nature-based solutions before they're approved. I've left that out this time. Um, But I'm welcome to your feedback on this attachment. If you want, I can share my screen if you want to take a look at it.

Could you share it, please? Yeah.

So we would amend the definitions portion of our code and add CIP, green stormwater infrastructure, impervious surface, et cetera. So just complementing what we have already. And we would also add some certification. Envision is basically LEED. for infrastructure. So if you have, for example, a pump station, you know, Coral Gable has a pump station that's Envision certified. Sites is affiliated with LEED. Sites is for parks. Wedge is for waterfront. So we would add to our current code a green stormwater infrastructure requirement for capital projects. It's not a very long document. I think it's two or three pages. So we're requiring certifications for all our projects. Or it could be, you know, very close to it in design and we can sign off on it. But as appropriate to project type, Envision, Leads, Sites, or Wedge certified.

My favorite part so far is the data tracking and reporting.

Yeah.

With that, who do you envision, like, you know, stormwater performance, water quality improvements, and resilience outcomes? Like, with other cities that you've seen do this, how are they tracking it? Specifically, like, for stormwater performance and water quality improvements, and then, I guess, resilience outcomes.

Yeah. Miami Beach, they have a dashboard, although I feel it's not that complete. Barrett County also has a dashboard. Their dashboard is a little stronger. Anytime they have a stormwater project or they install anything related to stormwater, they put it on their dashboard so you can track what Each city, like Hollywood, you know, Hallandale, everyone is doing in terms of stormwater. And that's actually also part of the adaptation plan to, you know, deliver a dashboard that tracks, you know, all the resilience projects.

And then for water quality improvements, that's... Yeah, that's a little trickier than that one.

We could implement as we go, you know, as part of when we do an RFQ, we make sure to add that. But, yeah, it would require some training from staff.

I mean, I love all those questions. And with the insight from our mayor, I might be wrong on this, but wasn't there something that was restricting us from continuing to develop our green code because it was causing

Probably because of SB 180?

Yes. So there's a preemption that still exists today. We cannot enforce or impose any type of restriction on private property owners that would be overly restrictive or burdensome. But since this is restrictions on ourselves, that is totally fair game. These are not restrictions on private property owners. They're restrictions on North Bay Village.

So how can we get this implemented? Whose blessing do we need?

The commission. So same as the solid waste solution, the sustainability and resilience task force can pass resolutions making recommendations to the commission and the commission will take those under advisement.

Christina, do you feel that this is pretty complete or do you want this to be more in the works with our insight, you know, do you want us to work further on this before making a recommendation? I love all this, but you know, you are the chief resilience officer and, you know, I just want this to be a great comprehensive plan that Yeah, I'd love everyone's feedback on it.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be If you want to meet with me one-on-one on this, but I would like it to be as comprehensive as possible before we move on to the commission. It's had a few eyes on it already, so I think it is very close to complete. But as members of the task force, I would love to have your feedback on this.

I would be more than happy to meet with you to kind of, you know, find how other places are doing data tracking and reporting. I think it's really important that we kind of get that right and we find like the right ways to track, you know, our resiliency and be able to flaunt it. And then, you know, maybe it'll inspire residential or private property owners to continue doing that because they can see like an actual impact and they don't feel burdensome on it. you know, doing green build outs. So I would like to get with you on that. And, you know, if anybody else does, I think this is a really important step for us to get around, you know, what has been restricted on, you know, having private property owners at least know that there is a green code. So You have my full support and I want to get with you on this as soon as possible. Anybody else?

All right.

Moving on to staff and commission updates.

Okay, so I think staff had a lot of updates. Christina, thanks so much for bringing all of that great, great work product to the advisory board. I don't know that I have a sustainability update because staff covered everything, which I'm so grateful for. If anyone has anything they'd like me to update them on, I'm happy to field questions.

Did you have fun at the event this weekend?

Oh, how could I have forgotten? Right. Okay. Poop Free NBB 2026 was a huge success. We had a lot of new residents, a lot of big dogs. We had a lot of environmental organizations. Thank you, Brenda, for tabling for Miami-Dade County Derm and Baynanza. Alicia, thank you. Alicia, thank you for coming and representing. We had Francisco Torres from Compost for Life, who I had not seen since the composting ordinance passed at Miami-Dade County. So we had a joyful, tearful, really excited, happy, wonderful reunion. And yeah, it was just, it was a great event. Thank you to everybody who was involved. Staff did an amazing, amazing job as usual.

I spoke to Francisco. He had really kind words for you. Same.

Likewise. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oliver, did you? Oh, no. You're muted still. Okay. Does anyone have any other questions for me? No? Okay. Great. Great. I conclude my report.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Any public comments? I don't think so. So next meeting is going to be Tuesday, May 26, 2026. Does that sound good for everybody?

It does.

Awesome.

Guys, also, I think the clerk has emailed you about this. If not, she will be emailing you. Summer meetings for June and July, the commission It's really all my fault. The commission moved the June commission meeting to the last Tuesday of the month so that I could be in attendance because I'm going on vacation. So our meeting I think is going to be now the third Tuesday of the month, and I'm not going to be able to be present for your June meeting, and I trust that you'll survive without me. And then in July, same thing. So you guys are going to meet the third Tuesday in July and June instead of the fourth Tuesday. So I apologize for the inconvenience. I'm good with it.

Everyone else good with it? Yeah, that sounds good. Sure. All right. So, nothing more? Meeting adjourned at 8.16 p.m. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Motion to approve with meeting adjourned. Oh, yeah.

Motion to adjourn meeting.

Motion. I make the motion.

Thank you. I second it.

Thank you. As a secretary, I have to put all this stuff down in the minutes. Thanks, guys.

Thank you so much, Oliver, for the reminder. Thank you, everyone. Have a great evening.