Sustainability and Resiliency Task Force - Regular Meeting

One, two, three, four, five. What happened?

Do you know if Rachel will be joining?

Hey, good evening. This is Frank. In my understanding, the mayor will be on, just what you told me.

Thank you, Frank.

How are you guys doing?

Doing well.

Good.

How about you?

Yeah, we're okay.

I'm here with Mr. COVID.

I see you.

Alrighty, I'm going to call the meeting order at 6.31 PM. Brenda, roll call.

Neil Krasner, Treasure Island.

Dave.

Oh, Dave Dobler. Yeah. Where do I live? What part? Doesn't matter. Dave Dobler. Oliver Pfeffer is present.

Brenda Krebs, Harbor Island.

Hello, Madam Mayor.

Good evening. Hi.

Long time no see. I see we have a new member of the North Bay Village team, Christina, Chief Resiliency Officer.

Hi, everyone. I'm very excited to be here. Huge pleasure.

So, want to do an introduction, Christina? I really want to...

I have an introduction for Christina. I would love to introduce her. May I do that, Madam Chair? Absolutely. Okay. So first of all, it's really nice to see you guys. I'm sorry we didn't meet last week and I'm sorry that I missed your last meeting and I feel like summertime was a very weirdly quiet but also behind the scenes extraordinarily chaotic time and And this feels like a very comfortable place to me. This space feels like home. So I'm really excited because Christina is such an incredible asset for this community. And we're really so lucky to have her. So she's got a bachelor's in engineering. She's an engineer. She has a master's in sustainability from the University of Miami. The degree has many other words in it. I'm summarizing the degree. It's a very fancy master's from UM in this subject area. She was the sustainability coordinator at the City of North Miami. I can tell you the City of North Miami as somebody who's representing projects in that city right now, their sustainability code is pretty good. it's pretty good and they enforce it pretty, you know, sustainably across their projects and the approvals. So, and then before coming to North Bay Village, she was the sustainability director at the city of Pompano Beach. So she's a certified floodplain manager. She's got a ton of green certifications as well. She's been working with Roger, our capital projects manager, And they have been looking holistically at the stormwater master plan, at our wastewater infrastructure, and our potable water infrastructure. And then, of course, Christina is also paying attention to all of the other, you know, the seawall ordinance. And she's going to tell us what she's working on. But they've been super busy getting the train back on the tracks so that we have a plan for our infrastructure that makes sense and that is doable. So... Welcome to North Bay Village, our new CRO, Christina Viala.

Yes to all that. Thank you so much.

No, I just want to say thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here and to serve as your resilience officer. I have a wonderful team. Roger is a great leader to work with. We've been making really strong progress on our initiatives and creating a plan on more initiatives we want to add. We've been coordinating with, you know, regional partners like Miami-Dade County on their back-based study. We've been consulting with our different consultants to move forward on the different stormwater master plan projects. We've already applied for a few grants, and then we've identified more grants that we want to go after. So it truly is a pleasure, and I can't wait to see what this task force is going to talk about today. I know I'm very grateful for the task force and for you, Mayor Rachel Streifeld, because I know the reason my position is here is because of you guys. So thanks for having me.

We really need someone like you on the team. And I mean, I think this is a huge win and I see Rachel getting, you know, excited.

Don't call me out. I feel the same way. I turned off my camera.

We have plenty of things to do. And I want to back up what Rachel's saying. Like you have a city council that's very, very supportive. Everybody wants to work for a better future for North Bay Village. There's a lot coming here. And, you know, we've always been trendsetters with the, you know, with Rachel mostly moving everything along, but.

No, it's absolutely not. It's really not. The full dais, our administration, and you guys, you guys have gone above and beyond to advance the resilience and environmental leadership that this community has become. So it's definitely such a group effort. Dave, I see Dave has his hand raised.

Yeah, hi. I'm super excited to have you on board. Congratulations on your new job. We'd love to take you paddling someday if you ever care to experience Biscayne Bay. Is there anything that you did previously in Pompano Beach that you're super stoked about bringing to here? Or is there anything that you're seeing here that you're thinking, oh, I can make a really big impact? I know that the stormwater wrangling all of the different consultants together was a big part of what I think you're going to bring to the table. But is there anything that you are kind of bubbling on that you might share with us?

Yeah, sure. Um, I, I do have a little internal plan. Um, I, your CRS, I think that's something that can, we can easily, you know, take control of. And, uh, the thing I love about, you know, taking the reins of the CRS program is you get to create a lot of internal policies. So it really, uh, it's going to reverberate throughout the city, you know, in the building department, you know, um, and, you know, here in engineering as well. I would love to see us, you know, adopt some policies, some standards for our internal processes, but more of that to come.

Excellent. Mayer, I have a question for you. Recently, Derm was- Madam Chair, he is out of order.

I'm just kidding, Dave.

Thank you. This is why I won't run for office. I don't always follow the rules exactly to the T. Madam Mayor, Durham was recently, in Miami-Dade County's budget, Durham is no longer going to be involved in the permitting process for review and input. Will our chief resilience officer have a seat at the table on projects that could affect environmental, you know, the Bay or something like that?

Um, first of all, I don't, I'm, I'm aware that the county made significant revisions to terms enforcement authority during the budget, uh, budget hearing i'm aware of that um i am also trying to cut through a little bit of the noise to understand from an attorney's perspective what that actually means um and so i don't i don't i'm not jumping to conclusions um and i certainly i'm not gonna be of the belief that derm has no involvement in in county permitting um So we have a number of different reviews that happen, and our code obviously forms the basis for those reviews, as well as the Florida building code and other general standards, the floodplain rules and that kind of thing. So we review a lot of our green initiatives obviously are incorporated into the code. And so every project is reviewed for consistency with pervious green space. We have a really strict front yard landscaping code. I think that our development standards are, you know, we just overhauled all of them under this administration. So there is a priority for stormwater management and sustainability. We have our seawall ordinance, like all of these environmental things are reviewed when they're reviewed by our planning firm that we, you know, our planning department, which is Calvin Giordano. I don't know, Christina, if... Well, maybe Roger or Frank can answer this, actually. Who from Public Works reviews those? Because the civil, I think, is reviewed by our team. So I don't know if, Roger, if you want to comment on your role in plans review.

I actually don't do much plan review, any. The only thing I've taken control of is... water and sewer allocation, the water and sewer allocation forms. But most of the review is left up to Cap Engineering, Mohan, and those guys. So we really don't do much in the way of plan review.

Frank? I'm thinking, Frank, as far as Mohan being our certified floodplain manager, are we still paying cap for Mohan services as our CFM?

Yes, we are.

Is that something that we might be able to transition in-house and recoup some of those building permit fees?

We are looking at some shifting around with cap. And I'm waiting for Roger and them to get to the level that they feel like they can take on some more responsibilities. So we've talked about it, but there's nothing immediately happening.

Okay.

Mohan knows the terrain of the village very well. And it's his expertise has come in very handy depending on where these actual locations are, because of his understanding of geological subsurfaces and so forth. So he's a has been a real good asset for us too. So aside from the savings on the money, we need to be sure that we can, you know, take over for him functionally well.

I totally appreciate that. And I'll say that I have a lot of respect for Mohan because we had a property here on West Treasure Drive that was trying to get around the 50% rule, and Mohan was really forthcoming about that. So, yeah.

Mayor, if I may follow up. If I could jump in for a minute. Sorry to interrupt.

Hi, Orlando.

Orlando. Code enforcement director for the city, forgive me. I have my camera off. I had to run to the urgent care. I got an ear infection I'm dealing with. Thank you. Ear and toothaches are the worst. I can't stand them. So just to piggyback on what you said, Mayor, I've become quite a stickler with the stormwater pollution prevention plans for all these sites. I have, I've been on building's tail on making sure that we are not letting these sites begin or open without having the silt fences and the gravel in place. And just over, I've taken a zero tolerance policy with these runoff issues. In the last three months, I'd say, or four, we have shut down completely. I'm just going straight to a stop work order. We shut down the entire job site. We red tag it and nobody's allowed back on the site until they have silt fences properly installed. and the gravel entrance to prevent sediment from rubbing off the tires when they come off the site. So in these last few months, we've shut down around nine sites, cold blank, just shut down the work until they have those items in place. And we have the building department go by. The building official actually himself or his assistant goes and makes sure that those things are in place before we allow them to reopen. We just wanted to throw that in.

Thank you, Orlando. Applause, applause. Get them.

Mayor, I think that this really highlights, and first of all, thank you for that level of enforcement. I'm very grateful that our city is looking out and our staff and our teams are looking out and our residents are looking out for this stuff. I guess that if, I don't know who you were referring to about our outside consultant, but if they bring the level of expertise that you and Frank both shared, those reviews need to stay there. The point about I don't think that our chief resilience officer, for example, should be reviewing all permits. But there are specific ones, like there was this conversation the other day about the related project at 8000 East. And that is a perfect opportunity to ensure that when something could potentially go wrong for our Bay, that we are having good, solid, scientific, expert opinions and insight. And so I guess that's where my question was coming from about making sure that we are bringing the right skill sets to review specific projects.

Okay, so that's a really good recommendation. It's a really, really simple, like we can adopt it right now. Frank?

I'm here. What we've been talking about doing is having her attend the DRCs.

And that's exactly what I was going to say. So everybody's on the same page. Absolutely.

Yeah, because that would be the place that she can make her observations and points that we want to incorporate into the development.

And I'm going to want to see recommendations from the CRO, like the same way that the village planner does an analysis and provides a recommendation. I'm not saying that Christina's recommendation needs to be incorporated necessarily into the official backup for the item. But whatever her comments are on the project, I'm going to want to see them for when it comes time to do the public hearing on the project.

Understood.

Cool. Thanks.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Christina.

Thank you.

Of course, yes.

Make sure you speak up on issues.

No worries. I did DRCs in my past two positions, so I'm happy to be a part of it again.

Awesome. Wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you, Christina. Back to order. Approval of meeting minutes. Any changes, comments, recommendations?

I don't see any changes from my perspective. If no one else has any changes, I would entertain a motion to approve the July minutes.

Second? I'll second. Second.

Second? Third?

All in favor? All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Aye.

All righty. Moving on to old business. Update on stormwater master plan by Mr. Hogg. Thank you for joining us tonight too. See your face. The camera's never on.

Right. Yeah. Um, I figured I should follow Christina's example.

Um, also such a nice office space to show off.

Yeah. Well, the main thing is I did not have a camera set up in July. So, you know, uh, the, the, the, the team here came through for me and, uh, gave me a, provided me with a better setup. So here I am. Um, Just dive right into it. Actually, before I do, I do want to say my little piece about Christina. She's been a great addition. We're already like... uh, an old married couple. So, um, we, we, we, we joke, but we get our jobs done. We're very serious about our roles here, um, together. And we, you know, we, we, we back each other up. So it's been a very good working relationship in a really short amount of time. So it was a really good pickup by the, by the village for me, um, professionally and personally. So. All right, so getting into it, I am going to share my screen, actually, so that we can look at. I'm going to pull up the July, well, what would have been the presentation for July. We have not made very much progress since July. It's only, you know, call it October. but we haven't made very much progress since July. And the reason being that, well, I'll get into it shortly here. Let me bring up the report. And I'm sorry, I'm one of those folks who have every single tab open possible. Can I share my screen?

While Roger is figuring out his screen share.

Got it.

Okay, never mind. Building the anticipation for what I have to share.

okay there you go all right so um this was put together by bcc so just a quick overview one where the team is um the internal team is in relation to our um getting up to speed with the stormwater master plan right now um since christina was on board we've been able to meet with each of the individual uh designers um for the projects that are currently in design. So that includes, I'm just gonna scroll right down here too. That includes Harbor Island phase one, North Bay Island phase one, and Treasure Island phases one and two. All right, so zoom out here so we can see all three islands. So we met with each of them in the course of the last month or so. to get an update on the progress on each of the designs and to get an idea of what we need to move forward. I will say, for the MIR specifically, I will try and assuage some of your concerns. We have a very strong team of designers, very good engineers. EXP, Rubik, and Chenmore are all very good, strong designers. And they recognize the progress that we need to make and the importance of implementing the stormwater mass plant and getting things to construction. So they recognize that. But to address each one individual, I'm going to start with Harbor Island, since that probably is the most simple. Harbor Island, we have, we're about 60% into phase one on the design. One of the things, actually let me scroll down to Harbor Island so we can see here. So the work that's been completed so far is that the design requirements for the, for the.

Roger.

Yes.

Can you zoom in on this slide so that we can see it a little bit better? Sure. Perfect.

Awesome. All right. So, Ribic is the designer for this phase of Harbor Island. And you can see a very simplified overview of what the design is meant to be. We coordinated with FPL on the location of the pump station. So we have identified where exactly the pump station needs to be located. We prefer for it to be located within the property of the park. just to avoid any changes that would be necessary to the parking situation next to it. And also to provide, it makes it easy to provide the easement needed for the FPL equipment. One thing that came out of all of this that's really important is the location of the outfall structure. If you recall, the village had issues coordinating the civic park design at the time with the stormwater infrastructure. And part of the reason why there was so much miscommunication is because Rubik or Stormwater Designer was under the impression that Civic Park would already have been constructed by the time, or the improvements to Civic Park would have already been constructed or underway at least by the time they completed their design. So it seems to me that was the source of a lot of the miscommunication. But since Civic Park is now pretty much indefinitely on hold, we have an opportunity to relocate and change the design of the seawall for Civic Park to accommodate the outfall structure in a way that makes the system more efficient. So basically, we're working from the position that the The stormwater infrastructure will go in first, will take precedence. And then if any, if we move forward, which is a part that will come much later.

Roger.

Yes, ma'am.

As part of the phase one for Harbor Island and the moving the outfall and creating a new outfall, I'm assuming that this will entail building a new seawall as well.

Correct.

So we have these grants in place and this money for this seawall. What happens to that money? Do we have to start from scratch? Can we take some of the seawall design from the Civic Park seawall project and bring it over into this project?

All right. So that brings up a significant issue as far as funding is concerned. Because of the issues with the seawall grant money, well, put it plainly, the seawall grant expires at the end of December next year. But more importantly, all design, everything should be implemented as far as the construction of any project related to this grant or funded by this grant needs to be completed by June of next year. We are... I mean, it's September now, we are not gonna have anything constructed by June. And because this is federal money, there is no opportunity to extend the grant. We've asked several times, I've asked our grant manager, Lakeisha, to look into that for us, as well as Christina reached out to her contacts at FDEP to see if there was any opportunity for us to possibly extend that grant.

Have we talked to Alec at Brazaga?

That was actually the first person I spoke to. So Alec reached out to DEP on our behalf as well to see if there was any opportunity to extend the grant. So we are, as far as the funding of the seawall is concerned, we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. I don't see any version of this where we can basically use the grant funding for this project, at least for the seawall portion.

What does the grant require?

It requires all construction funded by the grant to be completed by June of next year in order to be eligible for a reimbursement.

When you say next year, you mean June of 2026, like this June?

June of 2026, correct.

And the wall needs to be completely replaced to support?

Correct.

And we were told just the permitting can take a year.

Right.

And that's because of Derm, mostly.

Because of Derm. Not anymore.

Well, time will go by. Maybe there might be a chance.

Yeah, I tried to find, that was actually my hope and my goal was to see if there was any way we could complete, at least get the design in to have it permitted by the end of next year. So possibly we could have gotten the grant extended, but the June date changed everything. So once I read into the grant language, I bid more.

What is the value of that grant? How much dollars? $3 million. $3 million. And so what's our obstacle preventing us from doing it, from completing the tasks?

We're only at 60% design. Right. We have to be obviously at 90% design and we have to submit, go through comments, resubmit, yada, yada, the whole permitting process.

Correct. And we would also have to redesign the seawall. We couldn't use the previous design that EAC had provided for Civic Park.

This is why they took Durham out of the permitting process. On chapter, ending chapter 24.

Well, to be fair, look, there's validity in having environmental regulations in a national aquatic preserve, as I'm sure we can all agree. But the reality is that we are having this issue because from the beginning of Civic Park as an idea, like there was one civic park plan and one civic park design and then we had a stormwater master plan where phase one called for this pump station in this park and for whatever reason those two projects never communicated with each other even though they were within one department And like Roger said at the beginning, the major obstacle was this miscommunication about the timeline for Civic Park and what was happening with the Stormwater Master Plan. And we were full speed ahead on Civic Park redevelopment and redesign fundraising and getting grants and wanting to... put in all of these resilience projects and create that marine preserve the way that the SRTF envisioned four years ago. We just should have taken a step back and taken a breather and reevaluated the choices that we were making much earlier than we did.

OK, I have a question about If permitting is the issue, the county just passed seawall legislation that's designed to expedite as long as we don't go out more than I think four inches, maybe it's 14 inches. So I wonder if we could get something through permitting quicker.

Is there anybody else that we could talk to that's like, does anybody in the task force or within the city have any contacts of contractors, engineers, like people that are starting to interact with this new policy, if it affects it at all?

Well, I'm very aware of and familiar with Commissioner Higgins' seawall permitting expediting bill. I think what's unclear is the role that Durham is going to play going forward. And frankly, I think that's a conversation that we should just have with our friends at Durham, you know, and we can call Pamela and have the conversation. But I also, you know, Roger, I want to, I want, I don't want to go, you know, down this path of, of trying to shoot for the moon if it's, just virtually infeasible given all of the redesign work that needs to be done on the seawall. I mean, we don't even have a design.

Well, we've already, I've already spoken to Rubik about redesigning the seawall and they're putting together, um, uh, a work order or an amendment to their, um, to our contract for a work order to design the seawall. Um,

I mean, the major difference between the seawall that we have designed today for that location is the location of the outfall. Is that correct?

No, there's more to it than just the location. It's also the material, the architecture of it, the architecture and the structural design of it as well. Because when we investigated it further, the sheet pile design that EAC provided is suboptimal for the bay. It requires significant upkeep and because the acidity to the bay has changed so much in recent years, sheet pile only lasts half as long, let's say, as it would otherwise have lasted. So we would put in the seawall and have to address it in another 10, 15 years is what we were told.

Could we recommend if anybody does have any contractors? I think there is a shortage of marine contractors that might know better materials or sustainable materials.

Yeah. So, so that's when we, we, we spoke with, um, doc and Marine and those were, that was a contractor that, uh, I think they did the, the work at global park, if I'm not mistaken.

Um, yeah.

Yeah. And, and they, they were the ones who, um, gave us, offered us their expertise as far as like the, the design with regards to the design that ESC provided for the seawall. Um,

So let's say like perfect case scenario for you. If we can help out with contacts or, you know, doing a little bit of research, you reaching out to Durham, is it possible? Is it like crucial team members that can help out with this too? Like, is it?

We could get a design complete by. December, I would say. Let's say if we got the work order approved, let's say in time for the October, commissioned meeting and it got approved. We could have a design by January, but then that design would have to be going to permitting. And I don't know. I'd have to also check to make sure that the the survey that was done, the Seagraph survey that was done for the civic project is also applicable to the new design. So that's the other thing. There's there's some additional technical issues that we have to sort out.

So about the seagrass survey, they actually have to redo it.

Right.

Today was the last day of the season to redo a seagrass survey. The survey can be more than six months old. So the opportunity to do another survey opens in May. It's May through September.

So yeah, that's... Dave, you have your hand up and I was just going to touch the point of like Is it relevant now with what has happened to Durham? Maybe stuff that's more of monitoring might have been new.

So here's a couple of interesting things. First of all, the new seawall ordinance to pass through the county requires a permit within 90 days. it's elevated to a, it's turned, now seawalls are turned into a short form. And so they have a 90 day clock. And so that would seriously move forward, you know, the permitting process. The second thing is, is that As far as design, like on all of this stuff, I think, I hope that we have a relationship with City of Miami Beach, Lindsay Precht specifically, who A, used to work for Durham, but B, is also doing a lot of seawall and living shoreline projects and stormwater projects, these pumps. And so they've made all of the errors already. And so I would love to see, you know, I would just, and I don't know how to do your job, and so I'm not suggesting that this is a good idea, but we could literally just take their designs, tweak them for our space, and we know that, because they've already done it. I don't know if any of that helps, but I'm a little concerned that we can't do a seagrass study until May. That's odd.

I didn't know there was a timeframe on that. Yeah, it's seasonal. And the designer, they did a lot of the designs and they've worked with the city of Miami Beach quite a bit. So they're familiar with what they have over there and I'm sure they would apply it to North Bay Village as well. The only problem is, let's say I do get a design in December and let's say the permit is in and all things being equal, even the seagrass, let's say taking up the issue with the seagrass survey, we still have to wait for permitting and then Again, the deadline is for construction to be completed, not start, but completed by June of next of 2026. So it's not that we can't accomplish it. It's just that the funding, we wouldn't be able to use that funding source. That's really the issue. So it's not a matter of whether or not we can accomplish the design and put everything in. It's whether or not those funds would be available for use for this project or that portion of the project.

Roger, I really appreciate you spending the time to listen to our concerns and to take the suggestions. This reality has kept me up at night for months because I have secretly known for three months that we were going to lose this grant. And particularly with you all, you guys worked so hard to impact the design of this seawall. And we pushed and pushed and pushed with EAC for years for this seawall and for the design of the entire park. And it just is not doable right now. But the sort of salt in the wound of it not being doable is losing this $3 million grant to do this Living Shoreline. This has been a signature project for us for years. And it really hurts. It hurts me.

I feel your pain. I feel your pain. I was trying to find anything we could do to make use of the funding. We're too close to the end of the line to do anything meaningful in time to use the funds. Alluding back to something Christina said during her introduction, we are trying to find alternate sources of funding. Maybe it's not something that could be directly applicable to this portion of the stormwater master plan, but something to give us some additional funds, some breathing room to accomplish a lot more.

Well, I do feel like when we eventually are ready to install this underground infrastructure and rebuild the seawall as part of the Stormwater Master Plan, that will be an incredibly grant-eligible project.

Yes. So, yeah, we're just missing the boat on this one.

Roger, this is Frank. How much time... Do you think you would have to have, if we could get an extended, what would be your target time to have it extended to?

Um, I would need at least 18 months from the current deadline.

Okay.

Let's let's let's talk.

Come and see me tomorrow. Let's talk. Yes, sir. Okay.

I like the sound of that, Frank. So it's postponed, not dead, guys. It's all great. You know, we have a great team and, you know, this is a lot. I can't imagine. This is all well supported as well. You have our backup. We'll offer anything. You are in charge. But we do have a great team that has a lot of contacts. So if you ever need any resources, I think that's where we come in real handy.

That is excellent to hear. And I'm glad that we have the support of so many connected residents.

Roger, you want to keep moving through this? Yes. How much other stuff do we have on the agenda tonight, Madam Chair?

We probably have another five more things. 3B, 4A, 4B, 4C, 4D.

Yeah, five. I can blow through a couple of these things. I'll jump to North Bay Island next because that's the one that's actually the furthest ahead at this point. So North Bay Island phase one, we don't have an illustration here, but we have the ITB award ready to go. So it's ready for construction. We have the designs 100% completed. It's ready for construction. We have a contractor selected. I know Frank is working with the property owner. That's the address actually, but to get the easement that we need to put in the control equipment and the electrical equipment. And we're also currently working on hiring a, a CEI right now out of our consultant pool. So the wheel is turning. The big issue is that easement that's needed for the equipment. But things have been going positively with regards to North Bay Island. I don't know if Frank has any updates on the the easement issue, but we are moving in a positive direction where that's concerned.

So today I sent an email to Mr. Singh. We have provided him, as you know that you got for us, Roger, the survey so that he could see exactly how much of the property we needed to have for this project. With the redesign that you all came up with, so we don't have to take as much property as we originally had, And you guys worked it out with floor power and light to adjust the equipment in a different orientation, which made it a little bit slimmer area that we have to take. I sent an email to him this morning, again, requesting his attorney contact. So our attorney, because he wants to do it with his attorney, he doesn't really want to be involved. So I've asked him again to supply me his contact for his attorney, and then our attorney with Vice Sirota will get with them. And I again expressed to him that I want to try to do this with an amicable agreement. And now I'm waiting for his response. He's out of town a lot. And so that's where we are on the property. And I'm holding off on bringing that award to the commission because the clock starts to tick once I make that award. And the clock is also ticking on how good his bid is good for it. So we're keeping an eye on that so we don't run that out. And I want to try to get that land squared away so that we don't have an issue with building and not having a place because a lot of this is going to be coordinated. A lot of that infrastructure that's going on the street has got to be coordinated with where the hardware is going on the land. So we're working on it with our attorneys and hopefully he'll be responsive and we can keep it moving.

Do you guys have a slide on the pollution control systems? Like the design of them?

I'd have to reach into the design specifically when I can pull that up.

While Roger is pulling up the pollution control system, I will share my biggest, most important update, which is that the Village Commission approved an amendment to the Sunbeam development agreement and the Sunbeam special area plan on last night. And the new changes to the development agreement are relatively minor. But the big takeaway of the commission action last night is that Sunbeam is giving North Bay Village two properties on Treasure Island. One property is on North Treasure Drive. It's the former site of the Treasure Island Cove condominium. It's about a 1.1 or 1.2 acre site. It's right between North Treasure Drive and Pirate's Alley. And that's gonna be public land. The other site that Sunbeam is giving us on Treasure Island as well is on West Treasure Drive at North Treasure Drive. It's the single family home. property on the water that has a bunch of trees and a very, very old house. And you guys recall we've been talking about the pump station on Treasure Island, and this was the ideal location for that pump station. So we now have that property will imminently be in our possession. We own it. And that will be not just the home of the West Treasure pump station, but we will have the opportunity to do a lot of other green infrastructure in that park. So it makes the stormwater master plan for Treasure Island phase one actually something that we can accomplish. So that's a huge deal.

They're two nice pieces of property. How much are they both valued at?

The acquisition is valued at around $12 million.

That's huge. Wow.

Yeah. Hi, Oliver. Nice to hear from you, buddy.

I just got home, literally. I was listening in. Wow, that caught my attention.

Yeah.

May I ask what the amendment was? for Sunbeam?

So we relieved them of their obligations, their future obligations to provide workforce housing in the subsequent phases of their special area plan. For phase one, which is Grove by the Bay, they have and are paying a fee in lieu of providing workforce housing in that phase one. And so they had a continuing obligation to provide, I think, 6% of the units in all of their buildings were required to be workforce. They were given that requirement before we had a payment in lieu option. And when it came down to it, they decided that they wanted to fulfill their workforce housing obligations offsite. And that's why they went ahead and purchased Treasure Island Cove. And as they were meeting with commissioners to talk about the future of that site, one of my colleagues, the vice mayor, sort of suggested, he and Andy, I wanna give credit to the vice mayor because the idea for us to just be deeded the property as opposed to the construction of workforce housing, that really was the vice mayor's idea and Anson was amenable. And I asked Anson about the property on West Treasure Drive and he made that happen and that's the deal. It's a good trade off.

I just throw in my two cents real quick.

Yeah.

So I've been following. I congratulated Goran. This is a huge win for the village. I think that the Civic Park, looking at the drawing a little while ago, the pump station is going to take up physically, you know, a portion of a very small park to begin with. I think all along, We as a task force, yes, we threw ideas out. I don't think we were disappointed, but not to the point that we put so much work into it. We presented our ideas. We had an engineering firm design around those ideas. But I've always felt we were trying to pack too many things into a very small space, considering the dog park and the berm and everything else in there. I would rather look forward to that will get redesigned with a new pump station, expansion possibly of the dog park with our tropical berms and everything else, and maybe looking forward to the new park, which I understand will be used temporarily as a soccer field until the new facility is done. But the new park is a much larger footprint And I think whether it's the task force or anyone else in the village design, we have a much better space to design a more complete park with everything that we kind of wanted in the first one. And I'm not giving up on the idea that in the future, we still will have the marine park part where the pump station will be, the kayak launch, the underwater trails and all of that. So I'm kind of thinking it's a trade off that we're not really losing. We just accept the reality that things got crisscrossed and two projects kind of bypassed each other. But going forward, I think with the picking up of this new space, we can design a much nicer park in the future. Again, just my two cents.

That is so, so appreciated. That optimism, that empathy, that go with the flow. I really, you know, thank you for saying that.

I mean, I'm sorry for the loss of whatever funding because it's so hard for us to receive. But I think we just need to be realistic that it's not this task force. It's not this administration. Something in a previous administration was overlooked. Uh, it happens in every municipality and unfortunately, uh, it was caught that, you know, pump station was overlooked, but I think we need to just go through reality of let's get that pump station in place, whatever the time element is going to be, um, and move on from there. Yep.

Very well said, Neil.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

All right. Let's get to move on.

All right.

Or. I'm sorry, Roger. I didn't mean to cut you off.

No, I'm sorry. Yeah. So this is just to answer Dave's question. He wanted to see the pollution control devices.

All right. So we've got bar grates. I saw that there is an injection well somewhere else. I don't see... How are we dealing with sediment?

So...

yeah so we have there it's there's no outfall associated with this phase one oh okay then i don't care yeah so we're doing straight yeah yeah okay no no i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm focused on sustainability i don't uh if if we're injecting it down that's fine for me okay all right um all right

Do you guys want to keep going through it? Do you guys want to go see the rest of it?

Yeah.

I personally only care about outfalls.

All right. Um, I'll just touch on treasure Island real quick. Um, treasure Island. Um, at the same time. Um, in conjunction with each other. The mayor already alluded to the property that was acquired, that was a huge win, agreed. It's funny because Christina and I went for a walk around Treasure Island and we looked at that property and we were like, man, it wouldn't be amazing if we could get that and then look earlier weekly. So that resolves one issue. So the issues on Treasure Island are threefold. But real quick, each design, or excuse me, we're at 60% design on phase one and 30% design on phase two. And just as a refresher, what phase one and phase two are, I'm going to go back up to the map. So we can see phase one is on the west portion here on Treasure Island. And then phase two is on the southern portion going along South Treasure Drive. Phase one, 60%. Phase two, 30%. The issues facing both designs are similar. The big thing was outfalls and easements for those outfalls. Phase one, we have a solution on that front. Phase two, we do not. The phase two portion is like I said, is at 30% and kind of at the full stop because there's basically no point in the designer continuing without having a location for the outfall and the easement that's required for it identified. So that's phase two. So they're kind of at a hard stop right now. For phase one, excuse me, Other than the outfalls and the easements and the property issues, we also have to address two things. The water and sewer infrastructure that, you know, we've said this a couple of times in different ways, each of us, between Mayor Frank and myself and Public Works, there's an opportunity to not just address stormwater, but to address aging infrastructure in our water and sewer systems. And if we're going to do one thing, the stormwater, it would not be in the village's best interest to do the stormwater and have to come back a second time to tear up roads to address water and sewer as well. With that in mind, we are taking a different approach. We're on hold, so we can still proceed with the design of the stormwater, but we also want to take a beat to integrate water and sewer as well as road infrastructure, improving the roads as well. There's a second portion that the designers brought up. of the overall stormwater master plan, which is the need to elevate the roads to create a more resilient infrastructure, which comes with its own set of significant technical issues to overcome. You may have heard this several times. I know the mayor has brought this up. I know Frank has brought this up. Those three items together have created a strong impedance to progress on the Stormwater master plan itself with regards to Treasure Island specifically. We don't have the same issue at Harbor Island. We don't face the same issue as much on North Bay Island, but Treasure Island is significant because it's much relative to the other two islands. It's much lower lying and part of the design requires raising the roads.

Hey, Roger, I might suggest that because Miami Beach had to raise a lot of roads, and I think one of the opportunities that they missed that they are trying to find other ways to address now is stormwater retention. And they just opened a beautiful park last week, Bayshore Park, which has this whole big stormwater pond. It's really quite lovely and the most spectacular banyan tree I've ever seen. And I think the opportunity that they missed though was to create underground channels and storage to retain the water but underground. So I might suggest that we think about that because if we don't have to pump it out, then it bubbles down under the ground. So you might want to take a look and see if that is an opportunity. I completely agree. Get everything over at once. Um, Miami beaches, septic, uh, or sewer tank sewer lines are incredibly old. And I imagine that ours are getting up there as well. Um, you know, with the 40 to 60 year lifespan on them, um, there's no time like the present. If I imagine our, our stuff is just as old as Miami beaches. Agreed.

Yeah, we all agree on that.

So. Yeah, so we're taking steps on the other end with the help of our consultants to address the water and sewer infrastructure.

Roger, can I make a suggestion?

Yes, ma'am.

If we know that we need outfalls on South Treasure Drive and the southern corner of East Treasure Drive, We should be proactively reaching out to either the property owners themselves and or the condo associations on those stretches and invite them to come in and have a conversation with us about the stormwater master plan and how eventually it might impact their properties. hear from them about their needs and see if we can find a unicorn property that will want to work with us and allow us to put our outfall there in exchange for us helping with some type of other thing.

That's the plan, Mayor. We're reaching out to where some development is coming in the future and some that we can do now and whether we can work out some type of an easement with directional bore. I mean, we're looking at a lot of options to try to locate some places there along the stretch that we can do that.

I have a relationship with the property owner at Treasures on the Bay.

Okay. I know there's some opportunity on South Treasure for phase two with a couple They're either for sale or ongoing construction. So that's something that we need to address sooner rather than later. Once we get that addressed, phase two can actually skip along pretty quickly. But the big issue for phase two is definitely the outfall location and the easement and the property issues.

Is there a pump station as part of phase two?

Yes, there is.

And that's going to go underground in the road?

Correct. Okay.

All right, let's move on to item 3B. Is that everything? Thank you, Roger.

That's pretty much it. I don't know if the mayor wants to mention, but we have the Stormwater Workshop coming up in November. There's going to be a lot more meat on that bone to discuss in November. So looking forward to that.

We don't have a date yet, everybody. We will soon.

Yeah. So we're hoping for November, I should say.

Very good. Dave, send me over the information you have for the stormwater retention ideas. Maybe we can look a little bit further into it, and if it makes sense, we could give that recommendation to you, Roger. Sure. Sure. That idea, because we don't have any permeable surfaces in North Bay Village, and it's going to continue to be less permeable. So thank you again, Roger.

Roger, let me ask you another question real quick. The existing pump station that we have over in the southwest corner, did that well fail or are we having somebody look at that to see if it could be reestablished in the short term or the pump needs to be replaced? Have you been working with Steve on that?

No, I haven't spoken to Steve about that yet. So I'll get with him tomorrow.

you know that's a good stop gap if we can get that operational again because it was working and doing a pretty good job a few years ago okay i'll get with steve i'll you know address it dave is your item next update on nbv recycling initiative or who's presenting

Sure. I wasn't really going to be presenting so much as, I guess, leading the conversation. I think there's two things. One is a conversation and a discussion that I don't know if the mayor is prepared to have about what we do with our waste haulers and garbage collection. The other thing that I really wanted to highlight was the results of a pilot program that I did with a grant from the City of Miami Beach to test effective labeling on dumpsters. I've shown this committee the poor labeling and lack of unified coloring and messaging of all of the dumpsters and rollaways in North Bay Village. They are completely unmarked. But that is not a North Bay Village specific thing. That is a countywide thing. Nobody is properly labeling. And so we wonder why people are not recycling properly. Well, infrastructure is half of it. The other half is, you know, half of it is the individuals doing it right. The other half is the infrastructure in which we enable them to do it right. And so I noticed, so a couple of things, and this is even the county bins. We have signed an interlocal agreement with Miami-Dade County where they provide our residential recycling services. And The interlocal agreement places the burden on North Bay Village to do contamination abatement. And so it also says that we are not supposed to label put any markings on their roll-away carts. Now, Frank was able to have a conversation with them and get some more specifics and try to push them towards actually putting labels on their recycling carts. But I then noticed Commissioner Acosta had posted some of our code enforcement tagging efforts where we were going around and tagging, which is what the county wants us to do. However, we're still not labeling these rollaway cards. And so we are having our code enforcement go be bad guys and women to tag and tell people they're doing it wrong. And while we are putting a tag on there, we have an opportunity where we could put a label on those bins, right? I don't need a label on my bin because I know what I'm doing. But if we are tagging somebody because they're doing it wrong, we are giving a, here I can actually show you, all we're doing is putting a yellow sticker like you have messed up kind of notice on here. If you don't mind, I'll share my screen in a moment here once I pull up the image. And so I just kind of want to get our hands more around what the heck are we going to do in our own little, you know, fiefdom here, not fiefdom, but in our own wonderful little part of the bay to really get recycling and our waste reduction, like, when do we get this right? And how do we get this right? And so this is the tag that our wonderful code enforcement officer was placing on here. However, When we zoom in on it, it's just a, you know, it's in multi-language. That's great. But it's really not, you know, there's no messaging on the bin here. And so, I don't know. I think we're not... really...

Okay, the message is heard that we need to be educating people, not just not just notifying them of the violation. Is that what I'm hearing, Dave? Yes. Do we need the blessing of our race? Orlando is here. And I want to give him an opportunity to talk about the code enforcement work. Because I know that we do have label, I don't know what is going on with my zoom camera, by the way, like, I just I don't know what's happening. But I know we do have labels and I believe that they have been, but I'm gonna let Orlando chime in.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Mayor. Dave, that's a great point. And I'm sure the village manager is about to chime in. I'm pretty sure it was in his direction. He actually, he had public works with our public works director, Mr. Buckland, had our public works staff actually go out and sticker every single recycling bin that they could see out. And we actually put a label on all the recycling bins that the county was gracious enough to provide us, including those enforcement labels that you mentioned there, the yellow ones. And we've actually tagged public works, tagged and labeled all of the recycling. I need to follow up with them and see if they actually did multifamily. Perhaps the manager has some information on that, but if not, I could follow up with Mr. Buckland and, uh, Let you guys know and send an email to the to the task. So we the county provided us with a label which we've actually put in our kitchen as well. We have it in the city kind of outlining so folks know what to put in what not that yellow tag that we started placing on the cans actually has a checkbox for the individual items that we were able to see. that were contaminating that pile. So we checked those off. So that way, when the resident comes out, and we did receive quite a bit of phone calls that day saying, oh, you know, my recycling didn't get picked up. Why? What happened? It got tagged. So that, you know, that was the beginning efforts of us starting to educate for those residents. items that should not be in the recycling bin. And to be honest, the one we saw the most was that what folks don't know about is plastic bags, you know, the public's bag. That is, you know, even our own inspector was like, oh, wow, you know, I like to put all my recyclables in a plastic bag because I figure, The plastic bag is recyclable and it's not. It contaminates the load. So that is our goal through labeling those cans that the manager and then we follow up with the enforcement by tagging those cans.

Okay, great. I think it would be great to also do this on multifamily and condos because I know that at Moda here, we've pretty successfully gotten recycling right in a 300-unit building. There's a couple who don't do it right. I think the educational component needs to be, you know, this is our opportunity. So to get it right. And I'd like to see the private waste haulers get on board with this as well. you know, whoever we have our contract with. And Recycle Across America is actually giving their licenses to label, to use their labels, you know, custom branded for us. They are giving away free licensing for use of their labels. So if, you know, it'd be great if we could find a standardized label that can go on residential and commercial multifamily so that everybody gets used to it as they move around from building to house and house to apartment and in and out. So if anybody wants to explore it, we were able to get multifamily condos from 52% contamination down to 5% contamination.

And Moda, you did that?

No, this was our study that we just did. We took 10 condo buildings and we had eight that actually participated in the whole thing. And they let us label and we educated their staff. And the management company sent out an email and some educational information. And we got on the buildings that participated, they went from about 50% contamination to 5%.

So instead of working with the waste haulers, it seems like to me, then why don't we just work directly with the HOAs? Because...

Well, somebody's got to apply them. Yeah, somebody's got to apply them. And these bins and these dumpsters are owned by the waste haulers. So in Miami Beach, what we're aiming to do with them is to get the communications team to approve a standardized universal label and design so that it goes across residential and multifamily and then provide the artwork to the waste haulers for them to print and properly label.

Can I share a quick anecdote?

Yes, please tell us because Broward County has much better, uh, in many areas than we do. Tell us what you know.

Well, um, I was actually from North Miami. I developed the sticker similar to your sticker, uh, except I made it trilingual. You know, I had it in, uh, I mean, Haitian Creole and Spanish on the bottom. So last year, or it might have been this year, actually, I visited the Pembroke Pines recycling facility. And it's just to echo what you were saying, Orlando, people usually put plastic bags in the recycling facility. I take it to Publix or Target because they have a bin for recycling, even though we're not sure where it's going. So when we got to the plant, if anything's in a black bag and it's closed, even if it has recycling in it, they're not going to open it. BECAUSE IT'S ALMOST LIKE A THREAT, YOU KNOW? IT'S KIND OF LIKE NEW YORK CITY, IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. SO IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT THAT WE DON'T HAVE ANYTHING, IF THERE IS A BAG, THE RECYCLING, WHICH THERE SHOULDN'T BE, THAT IT'S TRANSPARENT.

THAT'S EXACTLY CORRECT. AND I'M GLAD BECAUSE WE, AT THE MANAGER'S DIRECTION, WE IMPLEMENTED, AND I'M SURE THE COMMISSION, RECYCLING for all the offices in the village. And when we, when we first, they first distributed all the recycling bins to everybody's office, they had plastic bags in them. And I said, Oh boy, what's going to happen here. So I, I stayed late one evening and I wanted to make sure to be there when the cleaning crew came and I personally educated them and told them, Hey, this is the way it needs to be done. And, uh, we went through the whole thing with them and, uh, The reason why they're putting the bag is because, you know, the folks throw, you know, I don't know, a can of milk or whatever in there and it'll splash and the can will start getting smelly. So rather than them having to have to clean each can from every office every week, they're going to put the bag in it. But they committed to us that they're going to open each bag and then dump it properly, you know. without the plastic bag. So we don't encounter what you just said.

Yeah, so we all have these horror stories and stories about how staff and even people who should know exactly how this works, they are surprised by learning some of these things. The solutions though are not that hard. What we just need to do though is dedicate a little bit of time and energy to thinking through the entire process about how do we reduce contamination and how do we increase diversion? I would love to see a full-throated conversation and thought process about how we reduce the volume of waste that we send to a landfill. And we've got... I just did a... Proof of concept that shows that it works, that it can work. Not everybody's going to participate. One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. But I don't know what our process should be about moving forward. I don't know how to move forward on this, but I think we really should give some effort into this and then lean in on this as we... As we come up for our private waste hauler contracts and my take on that is that we should be doing our own recycling and then we should let the waste haulers deal with the landfill. That's my take.

Let me make another observation from being a city of Miami resident. Years ago, we had the little blue containers that you kept in the kitchen. And then you put that blue container, it wasn't a 90 gallon one, it was a small square, I'm sure you've seen them around, blue container that you could carry out and put by the side of the road. And they didn't use the one-armed bandits at that time. They actually came around and they picked them up and they dumped them. The problem I see with these plastic bags is created because the people cannot get the stuff from their kitchen out to the 90 gallon container. So they're not going to carry a handful of cans and a couple of bottles. So they've got this plastic bag in there that they can bag it all and now carry it out. So I think either. we provide to them a container that they can use just like we used to use. And they take that out and dump it in loose into the blue cans. Or we tell them they got to use the clear bags. And I know in the city of Miami with a clear bags, even with a clear bags where they take them on that, when they hit the floor, they, they go in the, in the landfill, they don't open them up. So, I think one of the issues is how does the home owner resident get the stuff from their kitchen out to the blue

90 gallon container so this is a great point uh frank and um actually this might be our opportunity i'm trying to find a picture of it uh but my good friend luis rodriguez many years ago in miami beach uh received a grant to design um you know these reusable kind of uh tote bags think Think what you might take shopping for. And they were made out of recycled polyester and on one side of it, actually on both sides of it, contained educational information about proper recycling. And so these were provided to a whole bunch of residents so that they could carry their recycling out and place it correctly.

I love that idea.

I'll see if I can find a picture.

So I guess there's like three different routes that we could take.

I can say just real quick, just to back up Frank, that's literally what I do at home is I have a separate bin just for recycling and just dump it loose. I think that might actually be, for me at least, from personal experience, that might have worked.

I think bins are great. I personally, I live in a really small apartment. I don't have room for Actually, that's not true. How about a tote bag?

It's a very small bag.

That's what I was going to say. I have been using a tote bag. I have a reusable bag and it just, once it gets filled, I walk it downstairs. Listen, I want us to move on because it's 8 o'clock. Dave, your point is very well taken, but I'm going to stick up for Orlando and our code enforcement team of all of three human beings, three people who have been so conscientious of the policy objectives of this administration and of this board and have attended these meetings for four years, five years, hearing us push and push and push and push and push on recycling. And the fact that we have this you know, like we've made some progress and there's a lot of attention being paid by the code compliance team on this issue. And I think, you know, keep continuing to give suggestions about education. I know that these guys are working so hard to actually deliver on the policy objectives that this task force has set forth, whether it's the pollution prevention plan, and the filters or educating residents about recycling. I mean, really, we are so fortunate to have staff who not just don't obstruct the policy objectives of the elected officials and the residents, but they are actively leaning in to make sure that we're actually enforcing these policies. So Orlando, thank you for the work that you're doing.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We really appreciate it. And we are taking it as a top priority. To Mr. Dobler's point, we're going to make it a personal mission. I'm sure it's okay with the manager. We are personally, Maria and I, going to go and visit all of the multifamily homes, properties rather.

And this is not going to be the first time. You've done this before.

Oh, yeah. But as far as the labeling, I want to make sure, like Dave said, that those larger cans are labeled as well. And if that can educate just one person, that would be great. So we're going to make sure that all the multifamily larger dumpster style cans are labeled with the labels that Public Works put on the single family tanks. And we're going to continue this. There's a mechanism in this enforcement. The manager and I are in communication with our partner with this IL, with the interlocal agreement that we did as far as, you know, having it hurt people's pockets. So According to our agreement, after the fourth violation, we're able to charge that property a $152 fee for us removing that contaminated can. We're working out those details, and we'll have more for you if you want to jot us down for a couple months to give you an update on that. We'd be happy to do that. But that is part of our agreement, so we'd like to follow through with that because in my career, I've noticed that a lot of the times folks You modify behavior sometimes, unfortunately, when it hits their pocket. And once they get a fine, they'll be like, okay, wait a minute. We're going to have to modify the way we do things and start recycling right because we don't want to get hit with this fee. So we're working on that as well. And Dave, I want to thank you for going back to what you mentioned earlier for that 8,000 East Drive project. You sent us that video. Um, this past Sunday of that, um, breach they had on the, um, on one of their soap fences where you saw sediment entering the bay. Uh, you sent us that on a Sunday at about 4 PM. I responded to that evening at around 10 o'clock at night. And, uh, by that very next morning on Monday morning, I had our inspector there from the building department. They identified the issue. Actually, one of the silt fences on the west side of the property was breached, which allowed that sediment to enter. So, you know, it's a mistake. But either way, we we had the zero tolerance policy on them. So I did issue them a five hundred dollar fine for that issue. And they went ahead and repaired that silt fence that very same morning. As I told you in the email, their arm was also there. And they observed the site and signed off on the repair. And I actually had them clean up the whole road too as well because while they were at it. might as well get them tidied up. But if you ever see anything like that, I appreciate you sending that to Action Team. You have my cell phone, I think. You could always drop me a line. I'm kind of a workaholic. You could send me a text at any time. I'll check it out and get back with you. So I just wanted to mention I appreciate you sending us that.

No, great work on that. I, you know, I just saw such quick response on that. And thank you. Thank you very much for that, for the quick action. And yeah, The goal is that they keep it up and they realize that when they're doing a project here in North Bay Village, that they need to protect Biscayne Bay and your action and enforcement really nailed it. So fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you for the work that you're doing on recycling. And, you know, getting around to all those multifamily properties. I'm happy to go. If there's anything you need, you need some manpower. I'm happy to recruit some men and women power to help us out. So whatever helps you do this. But thank you very much.

I appreciate that. We're here to serve you. So thank you for saying that. And we'll definitely take care of it and be on top of it. Best we can.

By the way, I found a picture of these recycling tote bags. Maybe we can use the $500 from the related incident to pay for the recycling bags.

Thank you, Orlando. Dave, I think you also wanted to talk about related groups.

Um, yeah, no, I, I think, um, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm really pleased with the outcome of it. I mean, it already happened. And so we can just give a quick recap on it. Um, You know, anytime anybody wants to build a marina in the bay, I'm always very concerned about too many boats, too big boats, and just really its impact on Biscayne Bay. And so, you know, I emailed a set of potential, you know, concerns that I might have in general and some opportunities where I think the project could be... a net benefit to Biscayne Bay. It's kind of hard to call it a net benefit per se, but we can always make projects better. And I really want to thank the mayor for, I think all of them read the content, but the mayor really took a close look at it and asked the right questions in a very, in a way where it was very like, They want their project approved. We want to make some suggestions. How do we do this? And so the net result was that the related group agreed to put in a living seawall. They answered the questions that I had about the depth of that area in the bay and not needing to dredge and the number of vessels and the distance that it protruded out into the bay. And so I think that overall, I think the mayor and this commission really did an excellent job in looking out for the best interest of the day while allowing the project to move forward. So everybody walks away feeling like, all right, we've got a good partnership here. So I'm very grateful, mayor.

Yeah, I really would love to chime in and talk about this because there's a lot to be said for community engagement when it comes to how this project panned out. I met with JP Perez over the summer, last summer before I became the mayor when I was still the mayor-elect and the Treasure Island Commissioner. And I said to him, if you bring this project you know, within the first two months of my first term, I'm not going to be very happy about it. And I don't think that's a good idea. You know, I wouldn't recommend that timing for you. And he went ahead and he brought the projects. And we introduced a modification to the special area plan, you know, land development code and basically forced them to go through the SAP process. So that slowed down the train and it gave the village commission a more flexible and heightened engagement process with the related group for their project. And they were also required as part of that special area plan process to do community engagement meetings. And we saw over time, the more they presented the project and talked to neighbors, the better the project got. So that by the time we saw it on first reading, we were able to go through their site plan like every single nook and cranny and functional reality of their site plan everything from the connectivity of the island walk can you make a complete you know, circle along the island walk in that property? Is there any place where the sidewalk is going to end and the pedestrian accessibility will be, you know, obstructed? The number of slips, the type of seawall, incorporating innovative seawall technologies, clarifying no commercial uses. I mean, the landscape, you name it. You know, we worked that site plan. And When it came down to final reading of the project, we had a number of residents come and make really, really good, compelling arguments for the bay. It wasn't, it's too high, or you're blocking my views, none of that. It was, We need to be more sensitive about the bay and about the traffic here at Jerusalem Harbor. And all of those resident comments empowered Commissioner Acosta and Vice Mayor Cook to go hard on the number of slips. so that they got them from 44 down to 31. And then I could come in at the end and basically read Dave's email and just run down the list. Do you commit to this? Yes. Okay. Do you commit to this? Yes. Okay. Do you commit? Oh, wait, you're already doing that. Oh, wait, you're already doing that. And then we just literally went down the list to make sure that it was going to meet this excellent standard of environmental stewardship. And then, of course, at the very end, they came in and asked them for a half a million dollars for the entrance to Harbor Island, which they agreed to. All in all, a project that at this point, you know, I can't wait to see it because it's going to be magnificent. And that park will also have a public kayak launch that they are going to build and maintain. So it's a huge, you know, especially the ongoing maintenance obligation, not being on the village and being on the related group. And that condo association is a really good thing.

This is the first time you're hearing it, so this is amazing.

Yeah. No, it ended up being a really good outcome. Yeah, we're going to have 1,400 consecutive linear feet of living seawall. And I would love for somebody to go check the stats. Maybe somewhere in Central Florida, in the Tampa Bay, there's a bigger... living seawall, but 1400 linear feet. We have been trying to accomplish living seawalls for five years here. So the fact that through this partnership with this developer, we're bringing 1400 linear feet, which is absolutely going to mitigate disruption to the bay. I mean, that is such a victory for us in terms of working with the resources that we have and the pressure points and the leverage that we have here. Kudos to everybody involved, really.

Yeah, Mayor, I wanna also, you know, in Miami Beach, they've been wanting to do living shorelines, living seawalls. The percentage of seawall that is actually owned by Miami Beach is a smidge There is no public seawall to do this kind of, you know, this kind of work.

And so that's- Did Carlos Hernandez, Miami Beach Commissioner, I might be getting his name wrong, but he sponsored recently an initiative for living seawalls. I think it's him like supporting it, but what were the recommendations?

Yeah, so, no, thanks. Yeah, so, I mean, I think that using the opportunity for a major project like this during the negotiations is great. And is the Sunbeam Projects open to doing living seawalls?

Yes.

Yay. Sorry? We just have an opportunity to make it replicable with a private owner.

Guys, rest assured that every developer who has an approved site plan has been connected either directly or indirectly to the folks locally who are building resiliency walls, okay? So whether that's Mikel Hamawi at Pagani or Ali Eichner at Continuum or Andy Anson at Sunbeam, if you're building on a seawall in North Bay Village, you know what the administration would like to see.

Fantastic. I'm so excited about that.

Yeah, me too.

Like this is case study kind of stuff, right? Where we're not doing it by mandate, we're doing it in partnership. And I would love to highlight something like this at the 2026 Biscayne Bay Marine Health Coalition, right?

Want to put me and JP Perez on a panel? I'll pay you to do that.

I'll do that. I'm in. No, I'm in. Don't put me on it then. But yes. I think it's really important, right? Because the development, all of this money is going into these projects and these properties. Everybody wants the waterfront. And they are paying really, really a lot of money for a lot of these condos. These people who are going to be moving in. And they're wasting their money on if it's gonna be a dead bay. And so the opportunity is tremendous and it's the style of negotiation that's happening where everybody's doing it in partnership. I am really, really very excited about what the mayor and this commissioner are doing. Great job. This is why I think that Christina should have an opportunity to have a voice in these conversations because she will have heard and then she's going to be learning and looking at things like this and opportunities that can guide the commission. Thank you.

This is very exciting and I think this would make a great session for the Climate Compact in the future. The South Florida Climate Compact.

Yeah, I was really saddened to hear that Monroe County pulled out of the compact, especially because I missed the conference last year. Did you not know that, Christina?

No.

Yeah, Monroe County did a political about face and they basically cut all of their resilience spending. Yeah. So I don't think we have the money in our budget to do the climate compact this year. But next year, hopefully we will. I don't know what's in your conference budget. I just know what's in my budget. I just know that I don't have the funds in my budget.

If you guys need to go, I've got a whole bunch of Hilton points and I got a Southwest airline. I got a whole bunch of points. So

Well, it's in West Palm. Yeah, it's close. If people wanted to go, they could bright line up and back. It's not the hotel. It's just the registration fees. It's not free. Okay. We're operating on a very lean budget.

Let's have a trash-a-thon. We'll raise some money.

I think it's okay. I think Christina and I and Alicia and everybody, many of us here have been to our fair share of those conferences. So my MO for conferences is if I'm not speaking, I'm not going. And unfortunately for right now, I think that needs to be our standpoint as well. If we're not speaking, we're not going. That's just sort of where we are.

We have plenty to work on here. Yeah. I'm going to try and go through this really fast because the next item is mine and it's getting late. I have been speaking to Nick with Reef Tiles and he put me in contact with the YNG group who are looking to sponsor initiatives specifically for sustainability. So there's an opportunity where I have met with Nick, a representative with the YNG group, and a marine contractor, Arthur, with MPH Marine Contracting. And everybody has shown interest in installing reef tiles. And I have reached out to a marine biologist, Colin Ford. I'm pretty sure most of you on the task force know who he is. He's also offering his advisory services for planting the coral. I sent out everybody a proposal. I need to update it with the numbers. So if you guys have any questions right now, it's very preliminary, but it would be a really great way to already start giving ideas. to let's just say related group and anybody else, because this is going to incorporate sponges as well, and biovalves. Those organisms filter water. So this could be a really great opportunity to make a recommendation to also add the biovalves and sponges to that 114 foot seawall. I think we've talked about it before as a task force, having sponges. So again, this is where this sponsored opportunity for Vogelpark is going.

Alicia, I think this is a cool idea. I am very interested in two things. One is long-term monitoring. which is ensuring that we are monitoring and documenting the progress and the health and the effectiveness, right? That's the challenge with a lot of the newer technologies is they don't have the long-term track record. And this is an opportunity to learn and research. And so I would like to see long-term monitoring built in. I also think it might be super cool if we could get something like, you know, the Coral City underwater cam, you know, later on in the future once that thing is built up. But it would be really cool to have like a time lapse of seeing and anybody can see what's going on underneath. I think that would be super cool.

I agree with all those ideas. So we were already talking and since... These sponges and corals are going to be attached to a tile. Have you guys seen the renderings of them? Well, they're little hexagonal shapes. You add them to the seawall and then they have little crevices where you could put the organisms. So for data collection, I think we could quantify it by like per tile. So again, I think this is like very easy for data collection. Like how many gallons per like hour per day these tiles filter. So there's that end. And then for the Coral City camera, I talked to Colin about that and those cameras run around 30,000. So if anybody has a cheaper connection.

I guess GoPro.

Yeah, we'll just switch it out.

All right.

Alicia, I'm going to be really honest. I made this speech to the commission last night. I'll make it here. We are. leaner than we've ever been as far as staff time, budgetary capacity, and just capacity at the village. Over the last five years, we've initiated multi-million dollar capital projects and a lot of policy changes. And we're still, frankly, catching up, developing systems to execute on all of the things that we are obligated to execute on. So I am always... like I just said, more than happy to connect private developers with these really cool innovators when it comes to seawall, coral, like other technologies. But I am going to be consistently a Debbie Downer until we have an increased Ahead Valorum revenue and more capacity to do more things. I am going to consistently set boundaries for the people who work on our village administration because they have a lot on their plates already.

So I've been in communication with Frank and all this like permitting is going to be comped by the contractor. The tiles are going to be sponsored. The installation of it is going to be comped. Majority of it is going to be comped. So I don't think that there is much takeaway from city staff. I can give you more of a further proposal. And I don't think there even needs to be a permit done with these tiles. They're just simply attachments. There's nothing structural to them. But I think it is a good opportunity just to start it off as like a phase one. And then later on, once we do have more money, we can work on the seawalls. Okay, that's my suggestion.

If you want to see, I guess I'm wondering what you and Frank discussed. Is this like a proposal for the Vogel Park seawall or?

For Vogel Park.

Okay. All right. Frank, just keep me updated. Alicia, again, very well-meaning. Even coordinating with folks to get this done and unanticipated costs could become an issue. I'm just going to be in protective mode of staff and the finances.

Maybe being able to coordinate with Glenn Larson when we do the kayak launch. and maybe he can help us get these things attached.

Okay.

So we'll talk with him and he's pretty, as you know, pretty environmentally conscious too.

Yeah. Okay. All right.

Next item is discussion on outdoor lighting policy during sea turtle nesting season. Brenda?

If that's addressed to me, I can't make out what you're saying.

Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I'm sorry. Thank you. I didn't have the mic right there. I'm concerned about what's going on with East Drive with the lots of lighting on a site that is in the evening hours. I don't know that we need it that extensively lit. But any input for this? on ideas about that? Has anybody experienced that themselves?

Like experiencing the policy before at a different city? No, no, no.

I'm talking about, has anybody been out at night to see how bright it is over there?

It is very bright. When I drive past it, I notice how bright it is. This is at 7918. Yeah. Like, what is the deal with the lighting of that building? It is really, really, like, extremely lit up at night.

I mean, I know if it's for safety. I don't know if it's for security. I can reach out to them, but I know that it's, you know, each one of those floors has string lights on it. Maybe we can get them to put a lower wattage bulb. I don't know if those bulbs are there for their daytime activities inside. I can reach out to them.

And I don't know that every, like, does every floor need to be illuminated?

Mayor, I don't know, but I can make a call to them and find out what's happening.

Okay, that's good. And then you and I are going to talk about 7918 anyway after I talk to Heidi. So let's just make sure that we don't forget about this issue. Thanks for bringing it up, Brenda.

Thank you for taking a look at it.

Yeah. Item 4D, discussion on Blue Scholars Initiative on the World Ocean Celebration event.

Is there any action to be taken? I can't even stare at my computer screen anymore. I'm literally going cross-eyed. This is the last item. What times our meeting go till?

Whenever they end. It doesn't have an end time. Let's just power through this last item. What about the Blue Scholars program? Whose item is this?

It's not mine.

It's not mine either. All right, so we'll find out who brought this item and why, and then we can put it on next month's agenda.

Alrighty, moving on staff commission liaison updates.

I have given you my updates and we got a great update from Christina and a really super meaty update from Roger. We've got two new parks, one of them explicitly for stormwater. We've got a living shoreline coming down the pike, all good things and some frustrating things. But I think this is a really... Really, I mean, I'm happy to have been able to, like, get all of this substantive policy update on stuff that I really, really care about, because now that I'm the mayor, I have to focus on a lot of other things that are not necessarily resilience related all the time. And so, like I said, this feels like home. It was really good to get caught up. I'm glad that you guys are now on the same page that I am on. And, you know, let's just focus on ways that we can engage our community even further through the events that we already have going on, right? Like we have the 80th birthday anniversary on October 15th. We have our spooktacular event on the 30th. There's going to be this stormwater and infrastructure workshop in November. Let's just keep showing up and offering productive feedback and ideas.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm really happy we're getting a bigger team. Public comments? No? All righty. Motion for meeting adjournment?

I'll make a motion to adjourn the September Resilience and Sustainability Task Force meeting.

All in favor? Or I need a second?

I second. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great work, everybody. Thank you.