Sustainability and Resiliency Task Force - Regular Meeting

Okay.

Good evening, everyone. How you doing, Wisha? Well, how about you?

Good afternoon. This is Sylvia Vargas on iPhone 137. For some reason, I can't connect with my Zoom account, so it's just anonymous. But it's me. How are you?

Good. And yourself?

Good, good. I'll be listening in the background here. Awesome.

One moment. Looking at everybody. Oliver, hi. Brenda, hi. Hello, hello. Frank, hi. Isabel, everybody. Yay.

Hi, how's everyone? You guys are so good. You're here every month.

We're fun. We're the fun one. All right, so I called the meeting to order at 6.32 p.m. Roll call. Dave, present?

Yes. Recording in progress.

Neil?

Yeah, Neil, Treasure Island here.

Brenda?

Brenda here.

Nice. And Oliver.

Good afternoon. I'm here.

Hi, everyone. So we got some old business. Let me pull this up real quick. Does anybody have any comments or changes for last meeting's minutes?

I don't.

Could I get a motion to approve?

I would make a motion to approve.

I second it. All right. All in favor.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. All righty. Now moving on to old business update on the green code revisions project red line document. Has everybody had the chance to review it?

No.

Awesome. So did you hold on?

Did we have homework?

I was given this. I haven't gone over it yet, but I just wanted to see if anybody else had a chance to look over it or got a little early view on it. But I was going to request from Oliver to walk us through the changes.

Yeah, I can, but I would, you know, and Isabel, I saw, you know, when I saw the first draft come out and get published on the agenda in minutes, I noticed that It was the, for some reason, I don't know how it works with Word. Maybe if I send you the PDF version, but it didn't come out with the red lines. I just sent the Word version. And so you can't really see the changes. So it's kind of confusing. So what I'd like to do either with Isabel or I will just kind of create a PDF copy because apparently the Word version isn't updating properly. So you'd have to compare the documents. It's not going to make a lot of sense if you just look at what's actually attached to the current minutes.

So we can... Oliver, hi. This is Sylvia Vargas. I did get the Word version from Rachel, and when I opened it, I could see the changes.

Okay, good.

So I don't know if that's... Okay, okay.

Anybody else on our task force, were they able to see the – no.

I was unable to see it.

No, you actually need to be in view changes mode and then print and then save as PDF – then print to PDF. Yeah, exactly. I just – I didn't go through that process, I thought.

So – I would propose that either... Well, Sylvie, if you're here today and if you had a chance to look at the red lines and have initial comments, it would be great to get some of your input. And then we should re-upload the version so you can see the comments to the rest of the task force because it's not really...

I mean, I do want to give an opportunity for all of us to go or review the changes so we could touch on any questions we might have or explanations. I just don't think that we're going to be able to follow along unless we have that red line document. So I just want to be respectful to Sylvia's time as well.

I appreciate that Alicia. I went through it wasn't too difficult to see that the changes and I'm sorry, I'm going to switch to I'm going to switch to my computer. Hang on a sec. Can you all hear me?

Yes.

Okay. The changes are substantive because I understand that this is not just a tweak of the tools, but it's a change in approach. We started this five, six years ago and I was kind of dipping our toe in the water and It was still a bold step, but it was like, well, let's see how the market reacts. Let's see how developers react by having an approach which is incentive-based. You get points by doing these things. You do have to get points. And we started pretty modest and have increased as we went. But I think the time is right to... You know, nobody's batting an eye, I think. And so the time is right to just kind of say, you know, we're just going to make it our base requirement to get these features integrated. So I'm behind it. And I appreciated the work that you put into it, Oliver. And, you know, I guess everybody will put a lot of work into it before we're all done. But I know that Oliver worked really hard on it.

And the mayor, too.

Oh, hi, Rachel. I'm sure you did, too.

Good evening, Madam Mayor.

Good evening. How are you?

Doing well. Doing well. Good. Did you get a chance to look at the changes or proposals?

So I... Went through Oliver's draft, made some revisions. I don't think anything super significant. I made some revisions and then sent it along to Sylvia and Isabel. So the version that I thought you all were getting, and maybe you did, you just can't see it because of the formatting or the version that it's in, but it's basically my comments to Oliver's red lines.

Okay, thank you for that clarification because I didn't realize that, and that's great. Thank you.

So maybe, Isabel, if you're able to figure out that way of having the red line and then saving the PDF so that when you check the PDF, it has all the red lines, strikethroughs, and underlines for the new language. That way we can all, and we could send that out maybe after this meeting to the, at least to the task force. And then by next meeting, we can gather.

Why don't, why doesn't someone just share their screen so we can go through it? It's probably easier to do it in community relatively quickly than to have folks, you know, dealing with it on their own, especially because once you print it into a PDF, the comments become really small.

Okay. I can try.

The version on the agenda package should be Madam Mayor's since she reviewed it after all of her initial edits. So it should have her initials at the end. Can someone please confirm because I am actually... Yeah, Isabel confirmed.

Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so who would like, Madam Mayor, would you like me to, I mean, Sylvia, if you're okay, well, actually, whoever wants, I'm happy to go through it, but it's- Why don't we do this together?

I mean, because mine are really just like tweaks to yours, right? So in this opening paragraph, I just added a couple of kind of higher objectives and fully accept what you added here in terms of like the stated objectives of the green code. I deleted You guys, please don't, you know, revolt against me for this. But I removed contribute to meeting state and local commitments to reduce greenhouse gas production and emissions because we're not really doing that with this code. And I want to leave room for future commissions to actually make progress on those things when the time is right. Just being really honest. We can keep going.

Yeah, let's go. I agree with that.

I have no... Oh, I added water management to the objectives. This is more of the fluffy stuff. Who's scrolling?

Sylvia, I think.

Okay. Applicability. This is a big change. So... Oliver, the way that you had this drafted, it could basically impose green code requirements on anyone who pulls any type of permit. And I don't want people who are just trying to replace their old windows and doors to get caught up in these requirements. So I included a sort of substantial improvement language here to limit the applicability to either new construction or someone doing a substantial improvement, 50% or more.

Okay.

Sylvia, if you could double-check the language, because I just used my brain. There might be something more technical that we should say there.

Yes, okay. I kind of made a note that this needs to be checked against sort of the standard language for a substantial improvement, but yeah, you're right.

All right. So it is still applicable to all new construction. That has not changed. Just for everybody on the task force to stay with us. So, I think we're making it a little bit easier for new single family homeowners. But at the same time, in all of our single family districts, we've got new lot coverage and landscaping and green space requirements. So I don't feel too badly about it. We're basically only requiring them to do those five things. And then we're requiring the village to comply with the green code, which is new.

So we got rid of the points because now it's a requirement. So that's what all those strikethroughs are about.

Oh, Oliver, one of the things that I did is I just cleaned up the affidavit, the landscape or the green code, like compliance affidavit. Basically, I'm requiring and we're going to require a narrative signed and sealed by a green professional. And I just sort of streamlined that in the application requirements portion and the review portion.

Okay. Can I ask you a question and take a step back because I'd like to get kind of an overview of like what the thought process is that we're really trying to accomplish. As I read into this on the second page, are we just requiring all buildings to be LEED certified?

No.

Like what is the thinking going on? Because we're moving away from a point system. So like help me understand at high level.

I think that to me, that kind of became clear when you come into this section now. Because these are the things that you have to do in order to comply with this new required baseline.

So Dave, instead of giving people a menu of options to get points to say, yay, look at our green building because we got 20 points. we now have a much higher base minimum standard of green development requirements that are just like as a minimum you absolutely have to do these things so some things just got shifted over to her building code from the green code it's still the green code we're just enforcing it differently and drafting it differently okay um

Understood. So with the certification, does that answer your question, Dave? Yes. Okay. Good.

Can I say something that, I'm sorry, this, one of the things that struck me here is that we have a minimum FFE requirement in Chapter 10, which is our flood protection chapter, which is different from this.

Sylvia, it should be whatever we have in Chapter 10. Okay. I know that we've recently...

Yeah, the language there is not specific. It doesn't give you a number. It's basically BFE plus a free board of two.

Yeah, and this was... And it's probably just something I want to bring up. Obviously, this should match with our existing requirements. But at some point, my whole point, one of my biggest concerns is that when you look at some of the work that the city's done with the seawall requirements, I think it's 7.5 in GVD plus the ability to build another two and a half feet on top of that. So the structure of the seawall can support more. And if we don't make our minimum finished floor elevation going forward, at least what the higher seawall level will be in the future, then we're basically building a bowl. For houses to water come over the seawall whenever there's a high water event, and then we just retain water. I'm dramatizing it to make a point. It's just because if you have a seawall that's going to be eventually at 10 feet and you don't have houses at 10 feet, that creates a logistical, just basic engineering problem. issue so we don't need to address it right here right now it should match but i just i want to keep bringing that point up so again at some point the code the the the city should eventually make that so it matches so that you know 100 years down the road you know doesn't that assume that homes are going to continue to be built on fill Well, when the streets go up, which I'm thinking they will have to eventually, a lot doesn't have to be on fill, but you're going to have then a very unusual situation where you have the roads, like in Miami Beach, those roads that are higher than the base elevation of the structure, but The fill was one of your concerns, which I understand, but I'm speaking from experience having raised my lot when I built my house three and a half feet. And I put in the proper retaining walls and the drainage to take care of it so it wouldn't flood my neighbors. But I don't know if those requirements were in the code. That's just how I built my house when I built it because I was concerned after I saw what the hurricane did.

Well, the requirements are in the code, right? You're required to retain all of the projected rainfall during a particular rain event. You have to show that you can manage that type of drainage efficiency on your property. It's very helpful to think about this. Yeah. I remember we went and had the conversation about zoning in North Bay Island. And the amount of freeboard that we opted to allow was limited by the desired ultimate height in North Bay Island. So we limited to two feet of freeboard because otherwise you were gonna have 40 foot homes.

Yeah, actually, we initially had a minimum of two and a maximum of four. And we kept that for a little while. But then because we also had the provisions for elevated houses with an understory, we realized that that was constraining the ability to use those provisions to create that kind of situation. So that's when we went back and we took the maximum out.

So our code is currently a minimum of two feet of freeboard?

Correct, but no maximum.

Okay. So yeah, I mean, we can have the future conditions in North Bay Village 2040 conversation another time. That's fine. I think for now, Sylvia, if you could, make this language match Chapter 10. Okay, will do.

Yes, we can kick it down the road. And as long as I'm around, I will keep bringing it up every so often because it bothers me, really does.

The thought of us drowning?

No, no, no. Just the thought that we have the opportunity to do basic planning, thinking about elevations and planning for sea level rise, and to make the hard decisions now so that, again, 20, 50, 100 years from now, God willing— we will be one of the communities where people are like, Oh, somebody was thinking back then about this, what everybody was telling them was going to happen. And they actually planned for it in their code because when new houses come in and get knocked down and get built, they're just going to pull up the code and the builders are going to do whatever's the cheapest thing. Not cheapest, but you know, they're going to look at the code and go, okay, let's just build this elevation. And had we decided to tell them, Oh, here's our long-term thinking. Sea walls are going to rise. They're designed that way. But anyhow, I'll zip it because I'll be around. I'm not going to beat a dead horse right now.

You don't feel like you need to zip it. I mean, it's much appreciated. Much appreciated. I mean, your thinking is entirely aligned with how I think about these things. So I very much appreciate it. One thing that I've been trying to get our engineers to put together for quite some time is a... timeline of projected roadway elevations for the whole village for the next 30 years. And I want to publish that so that homeowners and homebuyers understand where the road in front of their property is going to be in five years, 10 years, so they can plan as well. Anyway, we're super in the weeds, but I appreciate it.

I have a comment about What happens when the houses are higher than the seawall? I'm thinking from a different perspective, the county's impervious surface ordinance is gonna require them to retain all the water on property and deal with it. However, if you've got a seawall and then a big mound of soil and grass coming up, and then you've got the house, all of that rainwater and whatever is in that yard is just gonna go roll over the seawall. And so I have a little bit of concern about there not being something to catch some of that material or fertilizer or dog poop or the fake grass that people are going to install.

Well, with all those new ordinances going into place, wouldn't water retention or cisterns be allowed now to do something like that?

Well, there's ways to design around it. I'm just trying to think of what could be what could be an outcome of really raising the ground floor of the house higher than the seawall as Oliver was talking about.

Yeah, well, I think the mayor probably knows much more about this than me, but I'm pretty sure the requirements are in the, and Sylvia too, you're required to retain all your water. You're not allowed to, you have to show it an elevation of your new lot and it can't drain into the bay. That's just not allowed. Sylvia would kick it back and be like, no, you have to build a drainage system so it all drains in your lot. Great.

Yeah, that is required. Absolutely. Yeah. And I was just thinking as you all were talking, one of the aspects that we haven't really grappled with, which seems pretty basic is fence heights. in the context of elevating lots and elevating houses and so on, and what happens to those fences, which contribute to creating these conditions of like the bowl that you talked about as well, Oliver. So kind of going on a tangent here, but yeah. Just trying to kind of find the balance between keeping the water on site and making sure that the water doesn't stay on site.

Okay. So should we mark this one to do a deeper dive into? No.

No, we're going to just match the existing code.

Yeah, we're going to just reference chapter 10 or mimic chapter 10.

floodplain ordinance okay do we scroll down more yeah green roof all right let me know when to stop uh wherever wherever you were i i have an issue with the lead certifications um Is this for bigger projects or is this also including residential homes? Are there programs for that?

There are programs, but I understood that new single family homes are exempt.

That's correct. New single family homeowners are only required to comply with one through five.

But then even the recommendations, like I would want to... So... I also invited Nick with a reef arches and I kind of just want to tie this all together is for better or more new technology. I, you know, there's companies that provide it and maybe there's a way that we could have doing presentations or more material for, you know, homeowners that are interested in it rather than going to these programs and they're all on their own. You know, I don't want to go for, lead certifications because it is costly as well. Same thing for the Florida landscaping. I looked into that certification from the University of Florida and it's very on your own. So I just want to make a point of like, I think it would be good when we do implement like the newer technologies that we find that we do have some professionals or people that are in the industry that could, you know, help us engage with the community. do better outreach better education so people can participate in these programs because how are we going to execute it like i see miami-dade um miami-dade county did the um what was it dave you provided that to nick the living wall tiles yes it's cool but um how do we how do we get the word out? And how do we get people to participate in all this work that we're doing? And we want to be the most resilient island, but how are we going to get the residents to participate in it? So

Yeah. I mean, my read on that, taking aside any specific technology or whatever, um, it seems like, like, I'm not sure why we're excluding single family homes from doing anything besides one through five. It seems like now we are a, like, this is a building code for, for, for condos. Um, and apartments, like we're no longer requiring, you know, a point system for installing an EV charger or, you know, solar. I mean, basically we're saying that, you know, you have to build it higher and use energy efficient water and energy efficient appliances. That that's it. It seems like we're taking a serious step back here on single family homes.

Yeah, for me, I was just going after what I see as the big fish coming down the road. I mean, there's very few lots. There will be some redevelopment, obviously, over time, but there's so few single-family homes compared to the thousands of units and millions and millions and millions of dollars of construction that I think is about to happen over the next few years. So I was just focusing on that. But you're right, Dave. There's a way probably we could... add back some incentives, you know, if that's something you think is important. I have no objection to that.

Yeah, I would just like the, I mean, the single family homes that are bordering the islands is our first line of protection. So I just want them to have all the opportunities to be able to make their homes resilient and If you guys want to... ...lasting resiliency with other, you know, just what we're doing. We're providing, I see wind turbines in the code, like we're offering new technologies, but, you know, how are they going to find it?

If you guys want to take a stab, Dave, Oliver, you know, at adding back in a green home... expedited discounted permitting incentive. We've been discussing it at the commission. We're doing fine on the building fund and building fees. And I think that we can afford to expedite and discount master building permits for those single family homes that do the most. I don't want it to be a giveaway. I want it to be significant. Significance toward achieving the objectives of improved drainage, so green roofs, rain gardens, prioritizing those, and innovative seawall technologies, living shorelines, kind tiles, reef arches, whatever. But the big stuff that we've really been trying to incentivize, let's not throw everything away. but the sink into the incentive program. Let's make the incentive program really targeted toward those elements that we really wanna see.

I like that idea. I mean, does it make any sense to do the point system for single family homes and these other mandates for

I don't think we need the point system. I think we can provide a discrete list of building elements, plumbing elements, green elements.

I think the point system would work for new construction. I think it's just simpler to understand for the GC side or architect side or builder side.

No, you just say the following improvements, if any of the following improvements are included in a project, that project is eligible for expedited permitting and 50% off the master building permit. A, green roof, rain garden. B, innovative CUL technology. C, da-da-da-da-da.

Like in classes?

Just the way that the code would be written. trying to avoid creating a new table.

And it would kind of make sense given that there's probably, what would you guess? There's going to be in the next 10 years, there's going to be one new single family, two new single family homes a year?

No. No.

No. Just look at any waterfront house that's more than 20 years old is going to become a McMansion.

Oliver, you need to walk around Treasure Island.

Yeah, I have. You're right. I know what you're talking about.

I mean, it is insane.

Okay. I agree then. This is a good idea.

So, I have a question, and this is... Why are we not mandating some kind of valuable certification? In Miami Beach, for example, any building over 7,000 square feet needs to be LEED Gold. No, Dave.

It's any building over 75,000 square feet. 7,500 feet. No. It's 75,000.

It's major, major buildings. Okay.

It's expensive to get those certifications too.

Yeah, it's expensive. I'm like, you know, I'm going to draw the line in terms of like what I'm requiring for somebody to do in their single family home.

Well, this is why I like the point system because it gives people the flexibility to do what they're probably already going to do anyway.

But again... We're requiring them to do those five most basic things, which were the bulk of the point system anyway. We're taking away the point system and requiring them to do all of the things. And if they want to have expedited permitting and 50% off their building permit, they can incorporate these handful of other features that we really want to focus on.

Uh, mayor, I'm going to, uh, I just Googled very quickly, uh, and the green building ordinance in Miami beach established in 2016, uh, requiring all new construction to be LEED gold certified or living building challenge certified for any new construction over 7,000 square feet.

Okay. Still not a single family home.

Or a really big single family home.

Yeah. It's not something that I would support at the commission, so we can talk about it all you want.

This is where I would like to partner with some... or have companies like Nick's Reef Arches to educate our community rather than just leaving them on their own to figure these things out. You know, can attend our events, outreach. Nick, if you've done anything similar to that with other cities, please step in. Give us some ideas if this has worked for you.

Sorry, I'm just driving.

um so the question was how are communities do you have any outreach programs do you educate like what do you do to for people to find out about your technology like what residents usually ask you how do you hand hold them what do you offer to other cities as well um for residents to understand that this is a good technology and it supports the ecosystem oh okay so basically

if let's say a homeowner says, you know, Nick, I'm interested in supporting the ecosystem. I grew up in Florida my whole life, you know, and I've seen the waterways change color. Is there a way I could help? Is there a way I can somehow contribute towards a better environmental or being a better environmental steward? So the first education component is what can they do? And if they're on the water, that's where I could help. I say, well, typically the government says only rip rap or specifically the environmental division says anytime a new seawall is put in, you just have a rock. So I first educate them on what the methods of mitigation are. And it's just, you'll see videos on YouTube. It's just a contractor. It doesn't matter who they'll just hold a softball size rock and they will throw it into the water. Um, That doesn't really work for creating habitat, and it shows in the waterway. So then what I'd show them is, okay, there are alternatives to what mitigation practices are, and we're one of them. There's many technologies. It's not just ours. And we say, okay, you could put an arch. You could put a reef ball. You could put any unit underneath it. You could put tiles of the sort. It doesn't matter. You could dangle oysters underneath the dock. So that gives them more encouragement to say, okay, there's companies like this who also care. Part one. Two is to say, okay, I've accepted the premise. Now, what are my options to do this? Do I need any permits? How do I install this? So that's where it depends on the use case. And I say, well, once it gets into the water, things get, no pun intended, but it gets murky. It's the question of who owns the water, what's touching the water or the bottom, who's regulating the seawalls, what are the local codes or county codes. So I have to educate them on FWC, FIND, DERM, FDEP, Army Corps, or a water management district. That's six just off the bat.

How much is the cost for all that on average for like, let's say a 30 foot seawall? To get a new seawall? Because we also have to think about how much it's going to cost and are they really going to be saving a good amount of money or expedite?

To get a 30-foot seawall?

Yeah, rip-rap for a 30-foot seawall.

Okay, so if it is rip-rap, it's typically charged on per cubic yard. So it's usually about $100, $150 a ton of It's about one cubic yard per ton. Yeah, I mean, it could be thousands of dollars. And also, if you want to consider where the rock is mined from, it doesn't make any sense for any community to say, let's detonate the middle of the state with a mine and dynamite it. You grab rock. You need to wash rocks clean. which is crazy. You got to wash the rock to actually get the dust off. Then you have to ship it from Ocala or even Atlanta, Georgia from a DEP approved or sorry, our F dot approved mine. So they'll specify where it has to be sourced. You haul it from the top of the state. Then it comes to you. Then a contractor has to bring it down and then literally place the rock by hand or they just throw it over. That takes a lot of time. and cost for the homeowner the cost of riprap varies significantly because a marine contractor doesn't know what's the slope requirement sometimes it's two to one slope it that's why it's really hard for residents because the rules themselves are changing and the costs themselves for riprap so that's where i'm trying to standardize it to say one arch creates a new reef and that's your mitigation so yeah they have a question

I'm wondering how we made a right-hand turn here, because I think we were talking about single-family homes, and so I'm not sure I understood the... I think we might just want to reshift back into the proper lane.

I'm trying to figure out a way where we're not requiring single family homes because we agreed that we want them to participate more in the green code or these innovative technologies. But we don't want to go through like LEED certifications like that could cost $5,000 to $15,000. So what is the solution for us, you know, to... for people to meet our code, what we're recommending for them to meet these point systems. Like if you go into the LEAD program, there is some guidance in it, but you're paying a lot of money for it. So I'm just trying to figure out like how we can Increased participation by education. That's the price point for people right now. All we can offer is just insight, information, and continue to advocate for these things by understanding them better and knowing what the process is. Is brief arches or kind designs going to make sense for our residences? We're going to be inputting all this stuff, but what do we actually understand behind it?

And this was, but, but I think this was the whole, the whole concept of like last year's conversation when we were updating Uh, the point system, which is to allow the flexibility, um, uh, for people to, uh, achieve, uh, the goals and also start a conversation where people start thinking about things they may not have thought about. So for example, if I know I ha I know, you know, in the, in the existing, they have a menu board, they have 20 things they can do. They have to do five of them and. just by looking at that list, people will be like, oh, what's the most valuable way for me to, you know, I need to do some of these things. So what's valuable to me? Well, I have an electric car. So that's an easy one for me, right? I have a seawall. Oh, what is this idea of a living seawall or rip rap? What is this stuff? Oh, I can build habitat. Well, I like that idea. So, I mean, I understand why we don't want to do, well, I hear that we don't want to do, you know, LEED certification. And I don't know whether, you know, LEED versus Green Building Code versus whatever. But I think that's kind of the intent on the single family home. And so, yeah. I don't know. I don't know why we would exclude single-family homes when we have been focusing on single-family homes up until now. We're not making single-family homes do anything in this, except be a little- Existing single-family homes.

We agree on new single-family homes.

Energy star is going away anyway. We're not making anybody, I don't know, putting a rain sensor on, that's just an obvious one that anybody's going to do anyway, just because they don't want a ridiculous water bill. I think that's just automatically part of any irrigation system. Um, you know, high efficiency fixtures that's in, that's in county code. So I think we're not doing anything for those single family homes except making them be, be higher. So I'm not, I'm not thrilled, honestly.

For all the, okay.

I mean, I like the point system because you're not penalizing people or you're not telling them what to do. People don't like to be told what to do. If you give them a target and like, okay, you have to do any of these things, oh, okay, that's not too bad, right? I can plant some butterfly plants. It's an easy out.

So... Do we know how many people participated in our current green code? Like, was there a high participation rate? Do we know, like, what was the highest?

Yeah, for new homes, they all were required to participate at the lower threshold of points. So yeah, every single, you know, family home that came through the village permit system in the past five years has had to meet that requirement.

I'd be super curious. I don't think we're, I don't think we're, we're, we're, we're tracking this, but I would be super curious about what people actually did.

Yeah. That's what I would like to know too.

We can probably find out, um, we can get, um, it's going to take a little, um, effort, but we can, we can get the, um, the record of, um, of uh approved um uh single family homes that um were required to incorporate the green building features and see you know what pops up but like even off the top of my head a lot of people were doing the energy stars uh the energy star appliances a lot of people were doing the um the installation of the electric vehicle charging stations at home. We know that we've been preempted now also, but I don't think that's going to go away because people want that. Many people were doing permeable cool pavement driveways. Um, the low water plumbing fixtures. Um, yeah, I think that, that those were the most common.

And those are great.

But did anybody opt in for like, let's say the, uh, sustainability task force, um, additions like living wall, or is that more on the developer end?

Like, as anybody- We did not have a living wall feature in the point system before.

I mean, I know we've had- We had a green roof. Yeah, we did.

We did. We did. I mean, you know, the landscaping features were relatively new and not that many people took advantage of those in the period that we've had this. in place. The expanded point system has been about a year maybe.

Okay. But we haven't had anybody participate in it within the past year with the point system.

No, I mean, like people went through the point system with that expanded menu. Yes. But I think that people tended to gravitate still to many of the same features that were being chosen before. They're the easy ones that, you know,

Let me interrupt here. So Alicia, every single new single family home has to go through the green code and hit a number of points. I think it's 10, maybe it's 12 now.

It's 12 now, yeah.

Well, every new single family home has to get 12 points. Under the code that we're proposing now, they still have to do... you know, the minimum FFE or ground floor, energy star rated equipment, water reuse for irrigation and rain sensors, Florida friendly planting and maximize water use efficiency. So they still have to do those five things.

Yeah, I understand.

I was just asking if anybody opted into anything that had... We have not successfully, through the green code to date, the green code has not successfully encouraged or incentivized anybody to do a green roof or a living shoreline.

That's all that I was asking if anybody even showed up.

I think we should... try this again, come back in July with an amended version of this that creates a particular incentive to do the things that we really want them to do instead of giving them points for things that they are probably going to do anyway. Mm-hmm.

Well, that was, Madam Mayor, that was the purpose of increasing the points, right? It was ratcheting it up because there were certain things that are like, those are no brainers, right? And so that just means you increase the number of points that are required or you decrease the value of a specific point, right? Yeah, I look forward to seeing the rest of this because I actually haven't seen any... I haven't seen where this improves. I've seen where this takes us a step back.

Okay, let's keep going through it. Before I scroll back down, can I just say that the only thing, the only... Not issue, but this is already... Not this language, but if we're going to match what we already have in another section of the code, it kind of seems duplicative to have it here because we already are requiring buildings to be elevated.

Right. I agree. There's no reason to put it in there.

Okay. Okay. I scroll down. You tell me where I stopped. I don't want to go too fast, so I don't make everybody.

That's enough.

Hold on a second.

Good evening, Commissioner Doris. Thank you for joining.

Isn't LEED and I think green building certification, isn't that just an accumulation of points?

Yes. What do you mean, Dave?

So if you want to build a LEED Gold, you have to collect a certain number of points according to the scorecard.

You have a scorecard.

Yeah, you have a scorecard and you have a certain number of points that you're collecting, right, in order to meet it. I saw the Hyatt by the Mighty Beach Convention Center. They were talking about how they're going to achieve LEED Gold or LEED Platinum. And they're like, oh, we're doing this and this and this, and we have this many points for this and this many points for this. so I'm I If they're already doing it.

It's just not doing much in Florida. They're meeting on a bigger scale. They're meeting all of those low flow water reuse, like the mechanical electrical plumbing. Those like hyper advanced systems are done so in an extraordinarily sustainable way. Right. But the benefits at the scale of a single family home are not as significant and they are more expensive. Right.

Right, I'm not angling for requiring LEED certification for single family homes specifically. Just seems like we were doing essentially the model of LEED certification, but using our own point system, which is actually a lot less expensive.

Yeah. And build-outs that are specific or unique to North Bay Village's needs. I think that's that should be the point to that should be the goal.

Shall I move on?

Yeah, I'm really curious about how a 40 story building is going to have solar that meets 30% of the building's needs or solar hot water heater.

Those were in our point system. They have been in our point system and nobody has taken advantage of those.

I think we're in the options section, Dave. I don't think these are requirements. I think this is a pick your Let's see. It says in addition.

Yeah. In addition.

So then other elements must include at least two of the following features. So right now we're in the section where we're kind of saying, hey, pick, you know, they're going to pick whatever is the easiest or least expensive or whatever they can feel like they really want to put in of these more difficult, you know, more expensive things to do. So these are all the. Ones that we have to go through, you guys can decide, oh, I care more about this one. Let's make them do this one. Or let's try to get them to have three of these. This is the part where, again, I was focused mostly on the new multifamily stuff. So we can go back and revisit the things we were talking about single family as a revisit. But this is how I was thinking of... getting the additional stuff that was kind of just a, hey, it'd be nice if you do this, we'll give you some expedited building permit. Now it's like, oh no, you have to do two of these, I think.

I see a lot of these things that are just basically LEED certification. And so number F is we need LEED silver certification. LEED silver is easy. Why aren't we going for LEED gold or platinum? Why don't we just say that all new buildings must be LEED Platinum? Like simplify it.

Well, that's pretty bold. So we might get some pushback, but I don't mind it at all.

It is. It is. Well, so, you know, Miami Beach is LEED Gold certified. That's their level. And what Miami Beach does is they make you put a bond. And when you've completed and they come check all the boxes, they see that you did everything, you get 100% of that bond back. If you don't do it, then there's a scale in which you get 50% of that bond back and then 0% of that bond back.

Guys, I just got to tell you, my phone is ringing. Sorry. Hang on. Two things. The commission's not going to approve a certification requirement for single-family homes. You're just not going to get the votes on a private property rights type of situation. And moreover, the Florida legislature just preempted local government land development regulations becoming more burdensome on property owners. We're literally not allowed... to pass legislation that makes anything more burdensome on property owners. And so you just gotta bear in mind what is legislatively feasible.

Then I say, don't touch it. We've already passed our stuff. We already have our rules.

Dave, why don't we bring this back in July with some modifications as it pertains to single family homes and we'll just keep working on it, okay?

Yeah, sure, but I'm just not sure what, I'm not sure how this is improving anything.

Oliver, this is, it's got to be your fight because I've already stepped out of bounds as a board member.

I understand. Well, okay, Dave, I've looked at this from my experience as a developer. and having done this numerous times with different cities, with different projects. And I looked at it through those eyes and I said, oh, if I'm a developer, I don't care about their incentives. I care about building a project as quickly as possible, as easily as possible. And these incentives weren't big enough for me and my developer brain to actually do anything. But I have been to cities and financing programs where it's like, oh, no, you have to do something. And so that's all I was trying to balance. I was just trying to get for all these new projects that are multifamily to make them do something as opposed to just have an incentive that didn't mean anything. And it wouldn't incentivize me as a developer to do anything of these very nice things that you had in there that I kept in there as pick your poison.

But that's the only reason why I made this change for the- Maybe my understanding of our green building ordinances is wrong and that's very possible. Wasn't this a requirement?

It was a requirement. Yeah. I just want to make sure that it is understood that even though the menu offered a lot of options and you could choose from among them, you still had, depending on the type of project, to meet a certain number of points. If you're a mixed use, you have 22 points or whatever. I'm starting to forget how many. If you are a hotel, then these many. If you are a multifamily residential building, these many points, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, you're right. I apologize for not accurately portraying it because you had to get the minimum points. But when I went through it and I did the points of what would be the lowest hanging fruit, it seemed like I could get away with basically a bunch of EV chargers. a couple other little things that weren't really doing, that weren't getting the things that I thought we wanted to do as a task force to make them more difficult and make them the requirement, not go through and play the game that most developers do is, oh, how can we do the least amount The least effort, the least points, just what we're going to do anyway, basically. And then the things about like the points, they could almost get all the points, let's say, I'm making this up, but based on my recollection, with just EV charging stations, let's say, they could just put in, you know, 10 EV charging stations.

No, they could not get the points. They could not get all the points with just that one point. Not all of them, but there were...

Oliver, I'm going to suggest, because I'm really not liking the direction of this at all. No offense. I think I understand where you're coming from when you say that we want to make real impact and real change on this. My understanding of the Green Building Ordinance is that you actually have to do some real things Right. And as somebody who is kind of like hearing the mood in Florida with the state legislature, I want people to be thinking about what they can do. And I want to bring up new opportunities for innovation. Right. with less telling you, you have to do this and this and this and this and this and things that may or may not make sense for that particular building. So the point system to me, which is just like lead certification, right? The same format is, I think gives a lot more flexibility to the developers to do what makes sense for their building. I can't believe that I'm actually saying that I'm like more building, I'm more developer. I think this is more developer friendly with the flexibility. And so if we don't like number of points and that's what that's when I came on like one of my first things was like just jack up the number of points right you can only get two points for EV chargers but you know what if you install EV chargers you know enough capacity for you know for all of however many apartments are in a 40-story building then fantastic that moves the needle more than some other things that they could be doing. So I don't know. I like the direction we had been going in and I would love to see you provide, I would like to hear your input after reviewing it about like what needs to be mandatory, right? Versus what is like, I think that there could be a couple of these things that if you were concerned about them being mandatory, fine, we can have those as mandatory. And then you have to get 12 other points or 20 other points. doing these other things. If there's something that's mandatory that you feel has to be there, then yes, I support that. And that should be in the list of mandatory things, but I still like this flexibility and menu board of things that make sense. That's my rant. Sorry. Okay. Like right here. If they get LEED gold certification, if you get LEED gold certification, you get 18 points, right? The requirement is 20. But in order to get LEED gold certification, you got to do this and this and this and this and this and this and this. If you want to go LEED, you want to go platinum, great. Have at it. You're done.

I get where you're coming from, but I would still like to maybe list some technologies that is very beneficial to North Bay Village's sustainability and resiliency. I'll go back to the example with Florida-friendly landscaping. Some of these plants would not do well in North Bay Village or would even be considered invasive, but some of them are considered native friendly, I wouldn't. I just don't want to be dependent on something that is out of our control. And we have a task force that can engage with residents and point them in the right direction and be a great resource. That's just my take. I think that that should be a definite element Like what was above, you know, just guidance on those and you could select from them and we incentivize them. So we're not also in violation of Florida legislation. So.

Well, if we've already passed rules, those rules are in a, and somebody can correct me. I haven't read the language of the state, the state statute. If we've already got something in code, we're allowed to keep it. Is that accurate?

So there's actually a look back period in this new law. I think it's 2024, maybe 2023. Sylvia, do you know?

Yeah, I think it's a year, but I can't remember exactly. I think it is at least a year. But yes, there, there is, there is a.

So, so, so, so, so meaning that, I mean, our current rules that are in place are legal.

Sadly at, you know, uh, what that, uh, timeframe is, we may be out of it with this one because we passed it as part of our code cleanup, which was adopted in March, I think of last year. So it might be out of that danger zone, but I have to go back and look exactly.

That's an argument not to touch it at all. We're going to risk opening this up to scrutiny, right? Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Because once you give it away, you ain't never getting that. Because this is Florida, man. Right.

Dave, because this is Florida. With that in mind, let's just forget about all of this proposed change to the Green Building Code. Because it sounds like we're going to risk losing what we have if we start changing it now based on what you just told us about the state. I don't want to go backwards. I was just trying to tweak it for make it a little more, you know, make sure it was cleaned up for the new developments. But it sounds like it's kind of good enough. I think it's kind of great enough. Yeah. I disagree, but we can go, but that doesn't matter because it doesn't matter because it's good enough because if we do it, if we make changes, it's going to be subject to a look back. So why would we do that? That makes no sense based on what I just learned tonight.

But I mean, but I think like the new things, we require 20 points for new buildings, right? And I thought, Oliver, when we were going through the points.

Actually, it went up to 22. So it seems a little more than that. Great.

So, I mean, Oliver, even if you go lead platinum then and we give you 20 points for that, you still need an additional two points, right? You've got to do something above and beyond.

I know, Dave. I know. But I just – I did the point math in my head and having built a lot of multifamily properties. So the point math when I do it, okay, I can get this. I can get that. That's a no-brainer. That's easy. And it's kind of – it's good stuff, but it's not – going above and beyond what I was hoping to push it. But again, this is all moot.

Yeah. No, I mean, I don't disagree with Oliver at all in that. And, you know, I think that we started with the easy stuff five years ago because we had nothing before. And there are things that, you know, at this point, I would say we not only should we get them out of the table, but I would, even if, you know, if it was just a choice, like the Energy Star appliances and the, you know, there are like these basic things that you're talking about, Oliver, that, you know, the developers tend to gravitate to because they're going to do them anyway.

Exactly. And everybody's going to do them. That's all my point was, Dave.

Everybody's going to do them. It's not just the big projects, but, you know, single family homes. they're going to include these. And so I think that we're at the point where, you know, the table could be curated with sort of removing those, you know, if we want to make them required, that's fine, but then, you know, or maybe the approach should be, you know, the opposite, but again, you know, sort of keeping in mind SB 180. that if you make these requirements, is that more burdensome and therefore can put you at risk?

Yeah, that state stuff is serious. I don't want to put our thing at risk. It already happened. We lost some rights as a city because of other stuff, these lookbacks. So I totally am opposed to my proposed changes at this point.

And Alicia, actually, Sylvia, if you could just scroll back up where you were.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I was just going to go to the electric vehicle section because I know we have to take that one out too, unfortunately.

Well... Okay, if you... How far? No, no, no. Go back down to the chart. Okay. Because this answers Alicia's a little more about innovation. And right in here, scroll down a little bit more. It's the only section that wasn't deleted there. Provide other design features that conserve energy, promote sustainable landscapes, support public health, or increase sustainability. I think that's where things like living seawalls, living riprap kind of designs, I think, fall. And so the answer on that is, as long as the city, the village manager is aware of some of these other cool things, Or the building department, you know, has a list of like, hey, here's some things you might think about, right? Not a specific manufacturer, but like, hey, you know, there's this new, new, new, you know, living seawall thing that's going out. You can Google them or, you know, there's some other styles that you, you know, some other technologies that you can use that we're cool with. And so that addresses Alicia's goals of how do we encourage innovation?

Okay. Can we give it more points and discounts?

No, we can't change it.

Oh, okay.

Sylvia, can I ask a question? What needs to come out of EV?

For the EV, well, I mean, you know, the standards, we need to clean that up. But what we had here, in this version of it was that you could get two points for installing the electric lines and circuit breakers. And then another two points for each charging station up to a maximum of four points. So you could get up to six points essentially. And then all the other types of projects could get two points for each station installed above the minimum requirement that we have in the code, which we're going to have to take out.

Why do we have to take it out?

because we have been preempted by the state.

And what does the state say, that you have to install fossil fuel gas stations, pumps?

No, not yet. No, essentially, the state has given the authority to regulate electric vehicles to, what is it called? I'm sorry, I'm drawing a blank. It's an acronym. One of the state agencies, but they haven't come up with the rules yet.

Okay.

They haven't come up with their own.

Are we required to take it out or we can just leave it and we just don't enforce?

I mean, we can leave it and not enforce it. That's what we have been doing lately. Hmm. But we don't want to run afoul of the state preemption, but we're not enforcing it.

Sure, but if they're just telling us how they're collecting the points, we're not telling them they have to do EV charging stations.

Well, the code does have a minimum requirement. So for the other project types, for multifamily, et cetera, the only way that you could get points is if you go above the baseline number.

Right. I guess, you know, from what I hear you say about the preemption, we're not allowed to mandate.

That you need to have EV stations.

Right. We do not mandate. Right. However, it seems to me that our point system is almost a loophole around that because we're not mandating EVs. We're saying if you would like to get some points... here are the points that you can get for installing an EV charger. I think without reading the legislation, but understanding how the preemptions work, I think we're actually probably safe with this.

You might be right for the point system. I guess what I've been thinking about is our baseline requirements.

Yeah, but we don't have a baseline requirement for EV charging.

We do. We do. Oh, we do? There's a percentage of your required parking spaces that have to be EV-ready.

Okay, so if we have to take that out, that's even more incentive to keep this in because we're not mandating anything.

You're right.

We're safe here. We have to take out the other requirement.

But can we cap it? Is it capped for four points for multifamily too, or is that just for single family?

That's for single.

So multifamily can just keep having electrical vehicle charging?

Yeah, I thought that there was a cap somewhere.

And they can charge residents for it too. There's nothing about, I mean, so I don't know.

No, our... If I'm remembering correctly, I noticed that this version doesn't have the latest, but if I recall correctly, our language, our modified language on EV stations required that for those stations that are provided relative to the parking demand for the residential portion of it, you cannot charge.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

Oh, they can't charge?

Not your own residence. So if you have a mixed-use building and you have charging stations on your ground floor to serve your retail, you can charge for charging on those.

Wait, but if you build a 40-story building... Mm-hmm. The condo association is not allowed to charge the resident at the parking spot for their electricity?

I have to go and check the exact language, but I believe that that was included in the... That would be less my concern, Dave, and more that the developer charged $10,000 extra for an EV spot to sell to a resident.

That's my only looking out for you.

You actually you actually have a. Yeah, I mean, it should be they should be shared spaces. Right. Or they have. Yes, it's complicated. Right. It's complicated. I guess I'm more concerned. You know, I don't know. And this is like you should be able to charge. Somebody has to pay for the electricity. And the condo association, once they transfer it from the builders to the association, the association should not be on the hook for paying for people's fuel. Like, I would not have an issue if my building installed charging as a service. They have to be able to meter that electricity somehow.

Yeah, that's fine with me. It's just the idea that we're incentivizing somebody, a developer, who could then turn around and make money off of the incentives isn't really an incentive in my mind.

Well, these are not incentives, by the way.

I thought we just do it. It's points.

But that's not an incentive.

Yeah, but those standards that we are talking about are not necessarily related to points. They're related to the baseline standards.

Well, I'm very, I'm very curious actually about whether they can achieve all of the building, all of the points they need by installing 11 EV charging stations. Based on what I read that Silvia said you, it was, it was old or not, not the correct language.

Yeah. Hang on. Let me see if I can find it.

That would, that would support Oliver's concern about like, well, just put in.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we went through that discussion with the, I believe it was a prior commission, and this is how it ended up being structured. There was a concern that single-family homes were going to be able to get all of their points from just installing EV charging stations, but not so much that larger projects would. Let's see. All right, so... I mean, we're kind of getting on a tangent a little bit here. And I'd be happy to share the language that we have in the code right now for electric vehicle charging stations, you know, for what it can do for us right now. But for me, I would like to get a little bit more clear direction as to why what I can do or what I'm sure what I should do, because now I'm I'm like, you know, seeing that we're going in a different direction.

I do have a question, though, because I just did a muni code look up and it says that do we mandate that they must score these points or is this an incentive that if they do this, if they meet these 22 points that they get expedited. Is the system mandatory or is it a system incentive?

No, they don't get expedited. The only expedited permitting or discounted permit fee incentive applies to existing single family home retrofits. So new development has to get those points. It's not really an incentive program because you have to do it. You have to get the points. You have to meet the requirement.

Well, I would propose we... I go back to the drawing board and maybe... because it seems like there's a lot of concerns now about this new proposed change to the code where maybe we don't want to change hardly anything at all, but maybe clean up, maybe still clean up a few things, but not in a way that's going to risk a look back, if that makes sense.

Which, by the way, I was checking and I believe that that period goes to August 1st of 2024. So we would be in the free.

That's great. Excellent. If we have to clean anything up, I do hear what Oliver is saying about the EV charging stations because they are, I don't know, in Municode, it said all other type projects, two points for each station installed above the baseline required. that tells me that because if we're not going to have a baseline required, then we need to put a not to exceed maximum of four points. If that's possible, because if this is the section we need to take out,

Yeah, this is our baseline standard now that we adopted last year. And the language that I was thinking of was for the level three charging requirements when you have 60 or more parking spaces. And that it says that when required, level three charging station shall be made available to any tenant, guest, invitee, or other patron of the property with an electric vehicle for active charging may not be reserved for building patrons. That's what it was. Actually, it was the opposite of what I was thinking.

Does the EV charging have a look back?

I don't know the answer to that. I'm going to have to go and get the answer for you. Let me make a note.

Could we move on to new business? I just want to be respectful to Roger's time, and I know Neil has been getting intimate, and this is a very important subject, and I don't want everybody to be winded. The Stormwater Master Plan really does need our support, and we do need to give some good attention to this. So let's move on.

I guess I'm going to drop off if that is okay with all of you. But I just wanted to say that if you need any help with with the revisions for this or have any questions about any of the other topics that we talked about, just let me know, okay? Thank you, Sylvia. Thanks, Sylvia. You're very welcome. It's good to see everyone. Bye.

Have a good night. Alrighty, new business. Roger, is this, you and Frank will be going over, Rachel, Neil, I know Neil is getting intimate with us and getting involved, which I thank everyone for.

Hi, good evening, everyone. Can you hear me fine?

You sound really far away, Roger.

All right, is this better?

A little bit, yeah.

All right. I do not have a formal presentation. I was in the middle of preparing the capital projects budget. It's a lot to untangle, but what I will do is I will give a an overview of where we are on each island and in each phase very briefly. And I will answer any questions that the board may have. So I'm going to start on North Bay Island. North Bay Island is, we currently have the, phase one has been designed issued for bid, we did get several bids returned for interested contractors. The low bid, initial low bid that we received was ultimately deemed to be non-responsive. There were several areas where their bid, several line items where their bid was not complete. So we We have moved on to the second lowest bid, but we're currently on hold for that. We do have some issues pertaining to the acquisition of an easement that's required for some above-ground components that are necessary for the installation of the new stormwater pump that's been designed. So that's currently underway. But that is the project that is closest to basically getting shovels in the ground. Moving on to Harbor Island. Harbor Island is broken into two phases. Phase one is currently at 60% design on hold for several reasons related to the design at Civic Park and some issues regarding the outfalls on that island. but because, you know, if you've reviewed the stormwater transit plan, I know that the mayor is very familiar with it. Harbor Island really is our lowest priority because it's the one that's least susceptible to flooding in the event of a storm event. So, um, that's kind of where we are right now. We're, we're working on also, um, the, um, the contracting for the design of phase two of Harbor Island as well. So that's what that's currently on hold. Treasure Island. We have two phases that are currently underway in terms of design. Phase one is at 60%. Phase two is at 30%. We had a meeting yesterday one of our biweekly meetings that we have with the design engineers, BCC and I think it's EAC. They were reviewing to see, EXP was, oh, this is for phase one. They were reviewing whether or not they could reduce the capacity of the proposed stormwater pump from 90 to 60 cubic feet per minute. They did their analysis and it was ultimately decided that the 90 CFM capacity was more appropriate. I mean, that corner of the island is definitely most prone to flooding out of everywhere else in the village. So they determined that, you know, we're better off going with a larger capacity stormwater pump. Right now, we also have some easement issues in phase one and in phase two as well. Like I said, we do need some easement modifications to access the outfalls. in Treasure Island as well. So overall, we're hitting some stumbling blocks when it comes to acquiring the necessary easements so we can install and maintain these facilities when they're finally in. Overall though, the project or the program is, we're currently evaluating the process that we're currently working in, right? Long and short of it is that there's several other infrastructure upgrades that need to be addressed as part of a greater effort to harden the village in terms of obviously water and sewer infrastructure. The way I the way I've sort of put it together in my mind is that we're trying to bake a cake backwards or bake a pie backwards. We're trying to put the crust before we even put together our fillings. That said, I do think that we are very close to putting in or to beginning construction on the on North Bay Island. If we want to show progress, we'll show progress pretty early on in that project, on phase one of that project. That said, does the board have any questions for me?

Roger, it's Neil. Since I had sent out that kind of invitational hooking up you and Emilio and myself and SOP asking for him to provide numbers for continued service so that you could work that into, you know, to see what the total yearly budget would be to be presented to see if that was an option for the village. I haven't heard anything back from Emilio, so I was wondering, had you heard back from him since I sent that email?

Yes, so I've spoken to Emilio. I'm glad you asked that email. I've spoken to Emilio, too. Really, because when we spoke at the village office that day, that was really sort of like my first introduction to that project. And since then, I chased it down and spoke with Emilio at length, had a couple of meetings with him to give us a full breakdown and detail of where we are as far as that inlet filter project is. We are complete with phase one, just to give everyone a background of where we are. That inlet filter project was broken into two phases. Phase one is complete. We met all the requirements as far as what was needed to submit for reimbursement from the EP for the grant that's funding that project. um so we're working on that right now phase two should currently be underway i know when i did finally get in touch with emilio they were actually um in the middle of building the new filters for phase two that would be installed throughout through the remainder of treasure island and um harbor island as well um So the last thing, let me pull up my notes from that meeting. All right. They should have started taking the inlet measurements or should have already completed taking the inlet measurements and already underway with the delivery or taking delivery of the inlet filters. The installation of the remaining filters is currently scheduled for next month, late next month, July 28th. I suspect they'll probably be ahead of schedule based on my last conversation with Emilio. Um, and then the monitoring of, um, of those filters will take place between August and October of this year. Um, so I'll, I do have a standing, um, monthly update meeting with Emilio the next, um, The next event is going to be on July 11th. So after then I'll have a better idea of, you know, more complete idea of where we are at that point.

Okay. I really, I think the other priority, like I said before, is that we get the hard numbers right. from him for providing service as I don't see the village is going to come through with, you know, these guys leave town. I don't, we have a great public works department, but they've already indicated enough times that they can't really handle the daily emptying and everything else. We don't have the equipment for it. So I think it's really imperative that we get a bunch of hard numbers from him for that service contract that could be presented to the budget committee to see if that even works into something that the village can handle.

I'll follow up with Amelia about that, but I think I mentioned that when we met last time, I do know that some new equipment was ordered with that service in mind for the Public Works Department. So they should be able to, before, yeah, they didn't have the equipment that was needed to pull those filters out very easily. But now, I think by some point next, obviously going into the new, at least by the fiscal year, the public works department, they should have the equipment that's needed to do that cleaning. But I will follow up with Emilio just as a backstop to see what it would take to have that service on an as-needed basis.

Hey, Neil, this is Frank. How you doing, man? Let me give you a little more update on the equipment. The vehicle has been ordered that has a boom to be able to pull these units. And Emilio was making modifications to the new inlet filters that will allow our boom to be able to lift them out.

Oh, that's good.

That's one of the little delays because he's had some of these ready to go and now he's going back and he met with Steve, the public works director, and they looked at what the pickup's going to be with this boom. And he's making some modifications so that we can easily pick them up. So the truck will be able to go lift them. They'll be able to dump them, especially when the stuff is soaked. It makes it so heavy that, you know, the guys trying to lift them out by hand is very difficult.

So I guess, you know, that part's great. I don't, again, with us being environmentally friendly and concerned, do we then... discount that we will no longer do the quantitative analysis of the material that is taken out?

The analysis is still going to continue. For phase two, the analysis is required. So we're going to do some of the analysis. But phase one, it's pretty much complete. I did mention to Amelia, well, he told me that some of the analysis for phase one is most likely flawed because of, um, because I guess some of the inter, some of the sampling intervals were, um, what should I say? Um, they were cut short. So basically, um, if Amelia was coming once a week to come in and his crew was coming once a week to come collect samples, um, you know, public works was coming in and in between that time to empty the filters. So they weren't capturing a proper sampling run. So some of those might be flawed. We may have to rerun them. Maybe not. But definitely for phase two, we're going to do the sampling. It's required as part of the grant anyway.

Okay.

Part of the issue, Neil, is that we're getting some rains and the filters are getting clogged in between him coming out to do the, you got to get the filters emptied out. I know. And that's messing up the, uh, the analysis.

No, I know. Um, no, I just wanted to make sure that there had been contact. It sounds like you guys were all on track. So that kind of satisfies my concern. Um, Amelia used to lead me in the loop, so when I hadn't heard anything, I wanted to bring that up tonight. So, no, it sounds like we're on track. Switching gears a little bit, we'll touch your subject. Where, and I don't know if this is for Mayor and Dave, Roger, and where are we with the stormwater and engineering? Oh, with the let go of Black and Veatch.

Neil, I can tell you Black and Veatch, if we settle with them, they're out. And I mean, I'm not exactly sure what your question is on Black and Veatch.

Well, I'm familiar with it. They're gone. We've parted ways with them. Where are we in the new search for engineering services?

So what we're in the search for is an engineer who has the sustainability background to bring it in house and start monitoring this stuff in house.

Okay.

We're finding that we have engineering firms monitoring other engineering firms. And I'm not exactly sure they're waiting the best bang for the buck or we're being strung along sometimes. And I think we'd have better control if we start to bring some stuff in-house. I'm not happy with how long some of this stuff has taken. And I know with Roger that we're putting a fire under some of these people to move along. Because I can recall several months ago on the report that was given, is we were at 60% of some of these several months ago, and I'm a little bit surprised to hear we're at 60%. So I want to get with Roger and Steve and find out what's happening, because I met with them a couple of months ago, and I was told, well, we're at 60%. And some time's gone by, and we're at 60%. So I'm just... And that's part of the problem, because we get somebody in-house, And we're looking for a chief sustainability officer that's also an engineer. So we bring that in and we put that person with Roger and we're going to have a lot better control over the contractors that are working for us.

Okay.

And we have that position is open to be filled and we're advertising for it. In fact, we've got an interview coming up in a couple of days, don't we, Roger, with somebody?

Yeah, we have an interview with a pretty strong candidate on paper on Monday.

Okay.

All right, so no RFPs or RFQs or anything else have gone out to a bunch of new engineering firms. I mean, I think we kind of beat them up when we – You know, went through that whole evaluation last year. We kind of called in, I think I analyzed five firms. We narrowed it down to three. So I don't know if there's other new firms out there that qualify that we'd want to look at.

Neil, we retain eight engineering firms at least within our pool. Okay. And our engineering pool was competitively bid last year. That was a separate bid process from the task of the committee that you sat on. Okay. But we competitively bid to fill an engineering pool. And so everybody who's working on – a component within the Stormwater Master Plan, those engineering firms are from our pool. So what Frank is saying is that we're hiring an engineer in-house.

From the pool.

We don't work for Stantec or EXP or Black & Veatch or BCC or any of these other guys. They work for us exclusively so that it's not an engineering firm managing other engineering firms. It's someone in-house managing the engineering work being done by consultants outside.

Okay.

Frank, thank you. Roger, thank you.

Thank you.

I had a question. I see somebody has their hand up, so I'll defer to the... Jack, did you have a question? I see your hand up.

Can you hear me, everyone? Yes. Hey. Thank you for taking my question. Jack Ratner, North Bay Island. Getting back and re-engaging with everything going on here in North Bay Village. I had some new faces to meet. Just a couple of quick questions. To prepare for tonight, I tried looking up anything on our website. with stormwater master plan and of course served on PNZ when we came up with our green code which had to come through my board before it went to the commission and it would be beneficial for anyone to look back at those recordings which are available or at least what was voted on because a lot of things were tweaked by the commission A lot of the things that were brought up tonight by the other gentlemen were just thrown out by the commission at that time in favor of new things as far as the point system and EV chargers and all of that. And I was trying to get on when Sylvia was on. She remembers... all of that well, notwithstanding all the new legislature. But anyways, the thing is, our website, when Roger, I guess this is to Roger, was talking about phase one in North Bay Island, I imagine it's about the pump station. Nothing on our website has any updates with our stormwater master plan. going back to 2022. So I was just wondering, it's phase one that you're talking about, the pump station at the back that, as somebody who's lived on North Bay Island for 50 years, that pump station, and it actually comes up to my house on North Bay Island, that quadrant. I fought against it to try and get a pump station at the front of the island, but here nor there. Is phase one that, Roger, you're talking about the pump station? And when, after three years, are we going to have any type of updates on these ongoing projects on the website, particularly as it pertains to what's important to us, the stormwater master plan?

So to answer your question, Jack, thanks. Yes, phase one is that stormwater pump in the southeast quadrant of North Bay Island. The master plan pretty much goes into detail on the two phases of North Bay Island. That site is selected as phase one. Phase two is for the northeast, northwest corner.

The northwest, sorry, I'm just trying to visualize. Okay, the side facing Pelican Harbor. Correct. Okay. When, I mean, we pay somebody a lot of money for our social media. We pay a lot of money to revamp our website every couple of years. Why isn't this information been updated in three years as it is critical and important here to North Bay Village? Why isn't this transparent and up on our website on the Stormwater Master Plan section?

Good question.

Jack, let me jump in here a minute. Hey, Frank. How are you doing, my man? Listen, I do a report every week that is circulated to the elected officials on an update on all the projects that are going on that are really active. And I'll talk with our with our uh communications uh director tomorrow and see if we can do something about that putting it online i mean there's you know i get the i get multiple projects that are ongoing not just dealing with stormwater and i do a report and i send it out so the elected officials are up to date with what's happening on these things and we could put it on the uh Put it on for the public. I mean, there's nothing secret in there. It's exactly what's happened during the last week that we have information on.

Frank, I appreciate you offering to put the CIP updates on the website. I think that would increase transparency and be really useful for people who are interested to know the play-by-play of where we are with all these projects. But what Jack is asking for is actually really specific, and I very much appreciate the question. Johnny did a really good job updating the Stormwater Master Plan page when... it was approved in 2022. But we haven't really done anything with the page since then. And while there are all kinds of reasons to not have updates online, the most significant reason being the program has hit a number of challenges and the updates are not exactly earth-shattering news, right? But we should look at updating that page on the website. And I'm having a some videos for it. I mean, I want to be really upfront with people about the fact that, you know, we did this really good plan and we moved forward and then we hit a number of obstacles and we're trying to get back on track in a more efficient way.

Well, I can add to that. One of the At least I can speak for the department. I see this opportunity and I'm new. I've been with the village for about three months now. And one of the opportunities that I see is the opportunity to build a portal, a public facing portal that the public can access at any time to give pretty blow-by-blow, up-to-date, almost real-time update on where these projects are. One of the software packages that was included in the budget proposal has that capability. And we're looking to basically build this CIP department into something that we can all be very proud of and that is able to answer the questions that, just like you had for Jack, that you had. where are we on all these projects? Any resident can go in and click the public facing version, some side of that program, and it will be available on the website and you'll get pictures and pretty, not detailed updates, but enough to show the progress that's being made on a day by day, if not weekly basis. So just so you know, Mary, that was one of the packages that was part of the budget proposal. And we're gonna expand on it. It's not just gonna answer the stormwater question, but all of the capital projects that the village is undertaking.

Okay. Roger, if I may, One thing we adopted years ago, lots of things on our Tyler systems was, Mayor, you will probably remember the transparency portal that I championed with at that time finance and advisory board. Portals are nice. They take a lot of work and they take a lot more work to keep them current, just like posting something as Frank offered, at least on the page of our website. In IT, we say garbage in, garbage out, Geigo. Our transparency portal is another portal that we spend money on that doesn't work. It shows our operating budget is $90 million. So those things sound nice and you just started three months ago and welcome to the circus that is a municipality. Yeah, it's just pretty simple. I would love to see things that are more current, things that are given to the mayor and the commission and the commission meetings when Frank does a report. Hey, post it there. Things are just so... difficult to find unless you go through an agenda packet that's a few hundred pages click on links to get a report so i would applaud not just frank's report but every report from every department could be posted in that department's landing page on the website hey here's last week's report from the manager here's from public works um it's easy the work was already done here's the most recent report Public Works. Boom. Click on it. Easy to find. That's my two cents. I appreciate and Mayor, I took your advice. I came to the meeting and want to start reengaging and somebody let me know when you get on to the recycling Again, because that's a big problem or challenge for single-family homeowners. As I told the mayor a month or so ago, we only have pickups every other week here in North Bay Village. Every three days after pickup, my bins are filled and I take photos so that everyone can see, wow, yeah. And other cities, whether it's to our west in the shores or Miami Beach have weekly pickup. I don't know if it's feasible, I don't know what our contracts are, but I can tell you, myself and many single family homeowners on North Bay Island, when our bins are filled, you know where it all goes? It goes into the garbage and bulk pickup and that's not serving anyone except hurting our environment. So, um, I'm throwing it out there. I'll, I'll certainly be, be, um, back to these meetings. Um, but that's a big one and it'd be easy for y'all to check out.

Jack, I have a question for you. Um, single, single family residents.

Yeah.

All right, that's a county, you have county pickup, yeah?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, so for, we used to be able to bring bulk over, which is now gonna be our community center, things have changed here. But living in the world of Amazon and Walmart delivery, and I'm not running a business out of my home. It's just the cardboard boxes piling up from everything getting shipped. And I have the large container and then the standard container. They are filled three to four days later.

I think you can request an extra large container.

I have. I just said I have the extra large and the standard. They're filled within three, four days.

I know some residents have three large ones that they've filled. Wow. That's a lot.

that's a lot of, that's, that's, that's a lot of material. Yeah.

You know, when, when the recycling is, you know, I live on the, on North Island, 50 plus years, I've seen it all from individual bins to what we have now. Um, and I can tell you just on my morning exercise or walking the dog, everyone's bins are, they just throw it out in the track because we are every other week pickup. Unlike, uh, are neighboring sister cities.

Well, that's interesting because if the county is providing residential pickup, I've assumed it would all be standard if the county is providing the pickup.

Well, and that's why I brought it up to the mayor when this was going to be talked about, I think the other month. And it's something I'm passionate about because I feel horrible that You know, I can't leave it outside. I don't have a garage in the rain, so it goes in the garbage. My recycle bins are filled, as are so many of the other residents on North Bay. Not everyone, obviously. Just from a morning walk, I can tell you what's out in the garbage and what's out in bulk pickup on a Tuesday. And a lot of it is recyclable.

On that note, I do think that we are going to be having this recycling conversation coming back up because waste is a hot topic for me. So I think right now we've completed our agenda and we're half an hour over. So might I suggest that we figure out what we're going to talk about next week? uh next one um next meeting and you know i i definitely want to hear you know jack in the community's um feedback on on on how we're dealing with our waste and how you know how poorly waste is being managed in in our county so madam chair i don't know if you want to figure out what our next meeting is topics are going to be yeah um let's let's do this jack thank you

for attending. This is what we really want is having residents participate because this is the best insight we could get, even for the stormwater master. Please continue to attend. Let's put that on the next meeting's agenda. And if you want to get with one of us, Dave, I think is the most knowledgeable. Madam Mayor is as well, but I know she's very busy. Please reach out to any of us. We're really excited to work with more residents.

Do- Jack, do you have my contact information?

That's funny. I couldn't even find you on our website.

Oh, I lurk. Um, it's first name dot last name at gmail.com.

Uh, hold on. Let me just type that in.

I'd be happy to, uh, to, to, to, to, to chat with you and to try to understand a little bit about your experience. I'll probably also have some questions for you. So maybe we can just go take a walk.

Uh, certainly. So it's r.pog at Gmail. You don't have a city.

No, no, no, no. It's a, uh, I'm, I'm a resident. Uh, Dave.Dobler at gmail.com.

Oh, I'm trying to keep up with everyone I'm talking to.

Oh, hold on. There you go. Sorry, I'll put my video on. This is me.

I'm sorry. Say your email again.

It's Dave, D-A-V-E, .Dobler, D-O-E, B as in boy, L-E-R, at gmail.com.

Oh, okay. Thought it was... Roger? It was talking.

Okay. It's Dave Dillmer. I'm a resident and I'm a clean water, clean air advocate.

Well, let Alicia end the meeting and we can certainly follow up. I'm happy to.

Thanks, Jack.

And hi, Neil. Take care, Jack.

Motion to adjourn.

Let me just go through any staff.

I'll waive my staff or commission update.

Liaison updates?

I'm happy to waive. No?

Any public comments?

Okay.

You kind of cut out there, Rachel. What was that?

I was just saying I'm happy to waive my liaison update.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Public comments? We already discussed items for next meeting. And meeting adjourned at 8.33 p.m. Thank you so much. Or a motion to adjourn?

I make a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting.

Second. Third. Bye, everybody.

Have a great night, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

Bye. Good evening.

Recording.