Village Commission - Regular Meeting

He managed to get the child breathing again, stabilize him until fire rescue was able to arrive on scene and take the child for advanced medical care. For that reason, he was nominated for Officer of the Quarter due to his exceptional performance in a life-saving incident. His professionalism, courage, dedication, and commitment to duty saved the life of a one-year-old in a high-pressure dynamic environment. His professionalism exemplifies our oath of office to faithfully serve and protect to the best of my ability all individuals I may encounter, delivering exceptional service and decisiveness, compassion, and honor. And for that reason, we nominate Mr. Savant as Officer of the Quarter for October-December 2025. Congratulations. That concludes the presentation.

Officer Savant, do you want to say a few words? I mean, the story is incredible, really.

It's so exceptional. Please, please. I'm very grateful to be selected as Officer of the Quarter, but it's not only me. This is on behalf of every single officer that worked alongside me i see them they're beaming every single one over there so proud of you and my team thank you and also everybody will reach out after the fact to check on me officer polanco she knows i was very emotional so thank you everyone it's really a beautiful story thank you so much

officer savant i think i think the commission would be honored to take a photo with you if you don't mind okay

Okay.

Thank you.

That's a really good question. So we're fine. We're fine?

Yeah, it's okay.

Like three to four hours.

Like three to four hours. It takes forever to get through there. Oh.

You want me to cheat and go outside?

Okay, our next item of business is also a presentation. It's actually a proclamation. We are in the month of March, and while we still can, we want to recognize Women's History Month. So I want to thank Commissioner Doris Acosta for working with me and the clerk and Janice Rosado for putting together the proclamation. Whereas the month of March is recognized nationally as Women's History Month, a time to celebrate and recognize the significant contributions and achievements of women throughout the history of the United States and within communities across the nation. And whereas women have played an essential role in shaping our society through leadership, service, innovation, and advocacy in fields including government, education, business, science, healthcare, public safety, the arts, and community development. Whereas the observance of Women's History Month was formally recognized by the United States Congress in 1987 to honor the historic contributions of women and encourage the recognition of their ongoing impact on our nation and local communities. Whereas women in North Bay Village continue to make invaluable contributions to the community as elected officials, educators, business owners, first responders, entrepreneurs, volunteers, civic leaders, and dedicated residents committed to building a stronger and more vibrant community. And whereas the leadership, dedication, and service of women help foster innovation, strengthen families, enhance public service, and inspire the next generation of leaders within our community, and whereas recognizing the accomplishments of women past and present provides us an opportunity to celebrate their achievements while encouraging future generations to pursue leadership, education, service, and opportunity in every field and profession, now therefore I, Rachel Streifeld, Mayor of North Bay Village, and on behalf of the North Bay Village Commission, do hereby recognize and proclaim the month of March as Women's History Month. And witness whereof, I then too set my hand and caused the seal of North Bay Village to be fixed the 17th day of March, 2026. Happy Women's History Month, everyone. Okay, we are gonna do open forum and we're gonna do it all now. So if you want to make public comment, you'll have a few minutes. Madam Clerk has a few cards. If you haven't filled out a speaker card and you'd like to make public comment, please go ahead and fill out a speaker card and pass it along to the clerk or raise your hand and I'll call you to come up to the podium. Who was our first card?

Madam Mayor, are you going to do the same this time as the last meeting where people came in to speak on an item? No.

I just said I'm going to do it all together at once.

All open forum comments now. Mayor, you have one comment card from Pablo Martinez. Okay. Dr. Niente, how are you?

Doing well. Name and address for the record, please.

Yes, it's Pablo Martinez. 1865 and commissioners. I just wanted to sort of continue with the update with the Pantry Club and the interaction with the residents of my building, but also other residents in the area. And I want to thank Commissioner Cervantes for reaching out and the other commissioners, mayor and vice mayor in the past for reaching out regarding this. I've been able to sort of exchange a few communications with Sean, who's the manager or the person responsible for managing the club. And unfortunately, we haven't been on the same page in the terms of either he couldn't at whatever time my phone, I'd change phones. But I wanted to ask him how, you know, if there was any kind of, updates or reforms or any kind of measures taken to mitigate the noise. He said that when I replied to him, he wanted to come to my apartment. It was a time that I wasn't available at that particular time. No other time was, I guess, available. And I asked, well, can you now? And he's like, well, sorry, but whatever measures have been installed. And I reached out what kind of measures because I measure before and after. And he hasn't as of yet. And I'm sure he will eventually come back to me in terms of, you know, the different measures that have been put in place by the club. And that is one. So we continue to, I guess, hopefully make progress. I haven't noticed major changes. We haven't noticed major, major change in terms of volume and probably the Vice Mayor will report at the end. He mentioned some item in the agenda. Sunday is still going strong. So, and you can look at all the agendas and all the Instagrams and all the events there. Also Fridays, on and off the Fridays, not as loud as Saturdays and Sundays, so it's okay. So that's one thing. And the second thing, I want to handle a petition to reconsider for any commission to participate. November of 24, I reached out and I was told that Unless I had my ID with the address of my apartment, I couldn't participate. I submitted my lease that says that I live there and that it says that I am who I am. I did not get a response and then I reached out to the mayor and I humbly petitioned, I think it was in November, if I could be considered. Now I have a bona fide ID with my address. So I humbly petitioned to be considered to participate.

So I just want to respond to that after you raise this issue with me about your residency requirements to be a member of a North Bay Village board. I did have a conversation directly with the clerk to recommend and I apologize. Mr. Well, the clerk is a charter officer. I can go directly to the clerk. So I did have a conversation directly with the clerk to confirm that all that is required to participate and serve on a board is your proof of residency. Your lease should have been more than sufficient and the requirement that your ID match your North Bay Village address is not necessary. So going forward, we've amended our practices internally to accommodate many people who have that situation. And as soon as there are board openings, we do advertise those vacancies. And so you will need to submit an application for the specific board at the time that a vacancy occurs.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for all the hard work that you do. Thank you.

No, thank you for the engagement and for contributing to the board. Appreciate it.

Do we have anyone else who would like to make a public comment?

You have no speaker cards and there's no one online wishing to speak.

Okay. I think we have some folks here in the chamber who would like to speak. Pilar, please come.

Good evening. Pilar Somoza, 7510 Miami View Drive. I just want to continue the discussion that we had last month about the waste management. I guess I had a month. I don't have any new information. Mostly is that I had the time to speak with more neighbors and hear more. I know Commissioner Doris had a meeting in North Bay Island and also in Treasure Island. So basically, I just want to ask the commission, the mayor, to reconsider the privatization of the waste management project. This is one service that every single person that I spoke to says that it's a wonderful service. It's so hard to find actually a service where everybody agrees. It's almost impossible. This is the first time that I hear every single person saying the government is doing a great job. So it's really a shame to take away the thing that the government is doing so well. I heard that there's cost analysis that have been requested about just keeping the service that we have just for the single family homes, some kind of a hybrid model. And that request have no, that that information have no been provided. I didn't ask for that information. So I don't know, but that was told to me that several times that information have been requested. there is a strong community support about the service. I mean, you're getting to a point where people are saying, we have such a great little city. Why do they take away that from us? Why do we actually need a government if we don't have sanitation? They cannot provide us with that service. So this is something that people appreciate. And I would really urge you, to reconsider because then you're going to get to a point where people are saying like what i don't want to hear which is why don't we belong to city of miami on miami beach i mean maybe we can get more benefit with those bigger cities so we have a great thing here let's keep it don't don't don't push people away to to ideas that are not necessarily what maybe needs to be considered now just please reconsider and listen to the reasons i don't know if you have heard anybody in favor but i personally didn't know here one single person i know you got several emails i know some of you um made phone calls responding to those emails i know some of you also responded to emails that is so appreciated any dialogue is good but a hundred percent of people that i spoke to and there were many because i had two months now last month and this month

they're all in favor of keeping what we have thank you would anyone else like to make public comment this is the opportunity yes sir please please please step up to the podium share with us your name and your address

My name is Thomas Parker. I live at the Islander Club, 7928 West Drive. I wish to address the Ordinance 12B about the – well, there was two sections to it, 150 – 22, I think. And that changes from boats, vessels, and houseboats, which used to be there 20 years ago, to add specificity to it, saying overnight anchorages. And then the second part is about adding some teeth to the fines and codes, because there's been some claims. I actually, Thomas Park, I wrote you a letter the mayor, and we had some issues.

Let me just- With trespassing, people climbing up over your seawall.

Yes.

And we referred your email to our Marine Patrol.

Yeah. Yes. And I was working, I have a vested interest. I live at the Island Club. I overlook the bay. Right before I came, there's 47 boats there. So it's a finite number for your information. 95% of the people there are good. It's a good community. And there's been a few troublemakers. So first, I'd like to thank you for putting it on the agenda today, all of you. And I support the resolution. I read it closely. The second part gives teeth to the fines and stuff. So this is all good stuff from my perspective. Personally, I have a compact 16 sailboat in the anchorage there. It's not an overnight sleeper, but it's a little thing that I like to go out.

But it's in the anchorage.

It is in the anchorage. It's registered. It's registered.

So you fall outside of the scope of the... I read it. You read it.

Because I wrote the letter and I saw that you put it on the agenda. I came to support that you support the public in... my little issue. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Parker. And finally, just it's perfectly logical this ordinance to pass whatever at the council meeting that My only, with reservations a little bit, is that whoever wields the power, you know, that adds on to this, doesn't do it with such draconian means. Because 95% of the people, for four years I've been there, they're a good bunch of people out there, you know? And there's just because they saw a quick access to the Shell station, you know, you all probably all know about the sanitation issue on 79th Street. So that's most of the small percentage puts their stuff there. And actually, because I walk to the marina quite often, and I know that's in Miami, right? That's on the other side.

north bay it's actually miami-dade county yeah making the jurisdictional issues even more fun so it's north bay village and then the city of miami has jurisdiction over the water palm beach miami-dade county has jurisdiction over pelican harbor and the anchorage area and then city of miami has the rest of the jurisdiction until you knew the lines were right there it's a lot of fun yeah i mean it's you have to work with the others but just that uh

you know, until our situation is resolved, because we built a private dock there. And there will be a gate with a fob, you know, to prevent anything coming in from the water side. And that's about it. I just want to thank you for taking up the issue.

Thank you. Thank you. Would anyone else like to make a public comment? Okay, I'm going to close the open forum. Thank you, everyone, for coming to share with us your thoughts. We're going to go ahead and move on to the approval of the minutes. Madam Village Clerk Attorney?

There's no minutes.

There are no minutes? No, of course we don't have any minutes. All right. We have an advisory board report from the Community Enhancement Board Chair, Ms. Bree.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Commission members, Village Manager, officers. I appreciate this opportunity to give you all an update on the Community Enhancement Board and the recent discussions over the last few months. We've been primarily focused on public space improvements on community engagement and improving our internal processes so we can support the commission as much as possible. From a project standpoint, several village initiatives have been part of our discussions. First thing, we've received updates thanks to the terrific job that Commissioner Darrow and Village Manager Rollison have done. We're pretty well versed in how the community center has been coming along. And we've been discussing opportunities to support the grand opening, which is perhaps something we can liaise with the opening committee on, and also ways that the residents can, sorry, the committee can provide input on future programming and uses of the space. Relatedly, we've also discussed future park and public space planning and looked over and included the areas and parks planned for Treasure Island. So we're really interested in contributing ideas around programming, shade structures, and the community use of those spaces once they are activated and come online. Another occurring topic has been the Island Walk Initiative, and this is obviously heavily contingent on what that ends up looking like, depending on what the various condominium HOAs come back with. But we'd love to enhance this with elements such as art and signage and other features that would make it a more welcoming public amenity. In addition, we're making progress through streetscape improvements, bath shelter projects, various kind of greeneries and the like. And finally, we are discussing ways to increase public awareness and engagement with our CEB initiatives, including sharing updates through The Verge newspaper and encouraging residents to participate in discussions about future improvements. So we remain focused on quite practical and achievable improvements to the livability, accessibility and general public spaces of North Bay Village. And we look forward to continue to support the commission in its priorities. Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I'm going to also touch on some of the new public spaces on Treasure Island in my report, so stay tuned. Okay, and we have an update on the very first meeting of the grand opening planning committee met last week for the first time with Community Engagement Director Lily Torres.

Madam Director, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, staff. So, yes, we had our very first meeting of the Ad Hoc Community Center Grand Opening Committee. And we met on March 11th. It was a hybrid meeting. So they all came in person, which was really nice. So they could all kind of mingle and meet who they'd be working with over the next few months. And since this was our first meeting, we were all kind of just getting to know each other, kind of figuring out what we wanted the event to look like. I shared the event proposal and they kind of decided amongst themselves what areas they were going to focus on. So some people wanted to focus on food and beverage. Others wanted to focus on operations and logistics. We're still very early, but preliminarily, the board decided that they want to try to meet every two weeks for the time being. And that's about it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you also hosted a hard hat tour for the committee so that they could do a walkthrough of the actual site.

Please tell us about that. The committee got a walkthrough of the community center construction site with the village manager. um and we got to walk throughout the first floor second floor third floor and the rooftop um it was great they all loved it and then we came here for a meeting um they thought it was great so they were really impressed exciting thank you does anyone have any questions or comments thank you for your report who would like to go first with village commission reports

Okay. Commissioner Darrell, I'll call on you.

All right. I just wanted to congratulate and, you know, celebrate that we had a Shoma vertical party this week. So if you drove by, you now see the cranes in the sky in Shoma continuum, also receiving the. building permit and the crane today being returned to Tula Residences on West Drive is something that I think people are excited to see that we'll be resuming our first tower. And Pagani has mentioned that in June and July, they're looking for groundbreaking as well. So starting to see some movement on our development in North Bay Village, which is exciting. And I had a question in regards to the bus shelters that were quoted out. When are we going to see those put in?

I think Roger, I know I've seen the pre-construction meeting has been set. The contract has been signed. And I think within... Roger, I'm not sure. It's within 14 days of the signing or 30 days of the signing. We have to have the pre-construction meeting. I saw that one out today. And there's a list of things they have to provide ahead of time for that meeting, their work schedule and some other items required by the contract. But that's, you know, moving forward. Yeah, that's going forward.

Great. That's it for my report. Thanks.

Good evening, everyone. Happy Women's History Month and also St. Patrick's today. I had a very busy month, as it was. I had two community meetings last Sunday with our neighbors in North Bay Island and Treasure Island. We met at the entrance of North Bay Island and later at Galleon Street at the park with our public works director, Stephen Bultman.

Stephen, Stephen here.

We had great conversations with the neighbors. I would say a lot of the people who participated were people who were normally active within the community, but there were some surprise faces for me there, some new people coming in, which was great. we discussed a lot of questions that everybody has in the community. And from the both meetings, I would say my takeaways where people were definitely curious about the remaining, providing the same service we have to the single family home owners versus the commercial spaces, which is similar to what Coral Gables does. Coral Gables services their own single family homes and then they have a vendor do the commercial space. They also talked about, bringing all of this, having a better answer to how much would it cost us to have the service ourselves. I think that there was also clear understanding now that we don't have the money to run the service that we have right now. We just don't. So it's a question of do we go to a vendor or do we invest in having the service that we're going to be needing once we move from our public works location that we have that is temporary. So there are some expenses that were not quite clear, A and B options. There was also a conversation about having the final say through elections for the residents. I can tell you, Steven was a pro. He answered so many questions. Everybody was in a very good spirit. He was not a feisty type of meeting. I feel like everybody came in with real questions and more than concerns, just real questions to find out how are we going to make a transition either to a vendor or are we going to make a transition into having our own system? Again, there was a lot of questions from that. We had both meetings, like I said, around town. If we have to have more meetings like this, I'm more than happy to do this more. So that was that meetup. I can tell you not one person came in saying that they were happy or even looking forward to transitioning to a vendor. That I can say. No one. There were a couple of people who were thinking they've heard before other conversations. They will maybe make sense. And then they they had more answers. And then they came back to me and said, no, now that I understand a little bit better. No. So there's been people who may have been open to it, but now they're not. So I haven't heard of anyone yet open to it. I've received several emails, as much as all of you, I'm sure, have been receiving several emails from the community on this. So that's as far as that meeting. For Women's History Month, we had a wonderful workout session dedicated to empowering women on Tuesday, March 10th. It was an amazing dynamic group, and we had some acai bowls, which I've never had before, from Acai by the Sea right here in Northside Village. It's a local business if you want to support it. It was delicious. What else I have here? We're going to be celebrating the start of the paddleboard season for the club members on March 29th, which is a Sunday at Pelican Harbor. We invite everyone in the community who wants to join. they are you can either use a paddleboard or a kayak if you wish and it's open to all ages and that's going to be we're going to be meeting on sundays at 9 30 for stretching at 10 a.m to 10 a.m to 11 a.m will be the workout part of the club every sunday starting after that um we also have new safety vests you may see some of our pet feeders well cat feeders i should say in north village amazing

Do you know what I saw today, speaking of cat feeders? What? I saw a cat scamper across the street with a little rat in its mouth.

Oh, good. Success. You see? That's why they're there. Well, so this is where you're going to be seeing. The reason why they're wearing this is two things. So that residents understand there is a program by our village that is taking care of all of these animals and that they respect the feeders who are doing it. And also so that people don't think it's just random people coming to feed pets in our area, cats in our area. They'll understand. And also for you to see them because most of our feeders have to come out either at 5 a.m. in the morning or at 8 p.m. at night to be able to actually see the cats in full action. So this is what you will see. And again, this is a very dedicated group of residents who participate and help us on their daily mission of helping our aging cat population. Let me see if there's anything else in here. As always, I have my weekly walks. I'm always walking around Northway Village if there's anything that needs to be fixed or done. Don't forget, we have action team online to make those reports. But if you still need assistance after that, please feel free to contact me. I do have my office hours every Wednesday from 12 to 1 here at City Hall and my monthly Zooms, which I just had one last week. Every month I have a Zoom where I go over the agenda and also answer questions. I was very happy to see many residents logged in and ask questions. It was a very productive meeting. I will host one again next month and we'll have our mid-in-person meeting happening most likely in August. So other than that, my doors are always open and I hope everybody has a wonderful spring break coming up. Stay safe and have a wonderful time with your families.

Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Trevone.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. First of all, though, almost over, I want to wish all my friends and neighbors a happy St. Patrick's Day and therefore wishing you a day where the coffee is hot, the meeting is short, and luck aplenty. It was kind of a busy month since the last meeting. First, I was invited to the Shell Club in Hounddale Beach by our mayor. to mingle and meet and greet with Mayor Alon Davidi of Shredot, Israel, an amazing evening with fellow elected officials from neighboring communities. Next stop was an evening with David O'Hagan, who handles mainly our Chamber of Commerce and is one of our local developers, having a personal look at the Vertical Valo 1, which is an ET-Vol capable of transporting six passengers and lots of luggage. looks to me to be the Rolls-Royce of E.T. Volz, and so far the fair was also a Rolls-Royce affair. It was really fancy at the Bass Museum.

It has been a busy month celebrating with friends, Women's Month, Forum, 305 Day, among many others.

The past three weeks, I have devoted some time to combating anti-Semitism movement updates and discussions on the Iran war and how it affects the world jewelry, including North Bay Village. Short 45 minutes to an hour Zoom meetings with very informative topics. As they continue, I will be participating. Today, my team and I had a meeting with leaders of the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, to look at our collaboration with them and expanding our mutual goals. By the way, Bree, I would like to meet with you and your committee about this as well. There is a program there that we'd like your input. We've held private meetings with developers of Grand Vita and their partners and the exciting plans for TISE. Also had a meeting with Matthew Jeffries, the U.S. representative for ELOD, in regards to 7913 West Drive. Last, I also participated in Shoma's Vertical Party. That was a fun afternoon event. This week, I will be participating with our mayor in the Passover Community Seder this Thursday, and it's going to be followed up with the Coastal Chiefs Dinner Board Meeting at Indian Creek. I will leave the legislative report and comments for others to make, but know I'm available to discuss it with any residents at their interest and leisure. In closing, I want to wish my Muslim friends and neighbors a blessed Eid, my Jewish friends and neighbors a Shabbat for Passover, and for my friends of the Catholic faith hoping for peace, embracing love, and sharing blessings with family and friends during the Holy Week, which brings me for you to mark on your calendars June 17th as Anti-Hate Day. North Bay Village will be hosting an interfaith conversation regarding peace, and how to obtain it in our continuing series of North Bay Village Against Hate. Thank you.

Commissioner Trevone, thank you so much. Vice Mayor Cook.

Thank you for all the work you're doing there around the anti-hate campaign. It's an amazing initiative and fully support you in this.

So thank you.

I just wanted to express my excitement, kind of tagging on to what Commissioner Dara was saying about all the cranes that are going up. We see them coming up now. It's at Shoma. We're going to have cranes up at Continuum very soon. Pagani by summer. And I'm hearing related is moving forward very quickly. It's exciting to see the transformation of our community. This is going to be a very, very big year for us. It's nice to see the crane coming back to Tula, finally wrapping up that project too. I know a lot of residents were concerned about how long that was going to stay in flux. And luckily we're getting that back up here and we're going to get the construction started there too. So it's great to see all the progress that's happening in the village. But what I'm most excited about is the opening of our new community center. I didn't hear the update, but I spoke to the village manager yesterday. We expect to have the community center open by the first week of June. which is really, really exciting. It's around the corner. This is the project I'm most excited about. It's going to be transformational for the village. I can't wait to see our residents using it every day, hosting new city events there, and making the most of it for our community with the fields, paddle courts, the walking path, and so much more that we have coming over there that we all get to use. I want to thank the village manager, all the city staff, and all the committee members of the grand opening committee. Thank you for all your volunteer work. You guys are what makes this project possible. It's what makes this project great. And I'm really excited to see this through and see this finally opened up for all of us to enjoy early June. Beyond that, I also spoke at the city of Miami Beach at the FERC meeting, and they voted 3-0 to move forward with sharing North Beach resources with our residents. So it's going to give our residents Miami Beach resident access and rates. to all of their North beach facilities, including golf, um, Normandy pool, uh, and other things are, we're also looking at potentially free access during off peak hours and during, uh, off season. Um, we're going to have a little more clarity on this in the next month or two. Uh, there's only free water safety classes and a lot more exciting things to announce. We're also collaborating on a 5k, um, should have an update on that and the timing of that 5k by, by May, by the May meeting, it's going to be, should be on their April agenda. Um, So that's also exciting. It's good to see the collaboration happening between our communities, sharing of resources, maximizing each other's resources where we can. I made sure to highlight that a lot of their kids they use, they attend our YMCA summer camp. But we've invested into the trolley program once a month. We've also discussed maybe expanding that to nights when there's events at the bandshell. So it's great to see just the collaboration between our communities. It's great to see how open and receptive Miami Beach has been to these things. And it's going to be a nice, exciting new amenity and resource that we'll have as residents here in North Bay Village. And finally, I wanted to discuss the FCC tournament. This was a tournament we participated in last year and we won. We've been asked to participate again. However, considering our measures of fiscal austerity, I thought it was best to not invest. into this engagement this time. But that said, I do have some good news in that I was able to identify a sponsor, a gentleman, Brian Swords, who was willing to cover the entire $5,000 cost for us and for our city to be able to participate in the tournament again. So we will be participating another year. Hopefully... We'll have an opportunity to defend our title, but most importantly, support this program, which offers programming, mentorship, opportunities for our kids, for the broader community. It's a great organization, and it's great for us to support them and have another opportunity to represent North Bay Village and hopefully win the title again.

When is it?

It's mid-April. We need to check on the date.

Okay. Exciting. Does that conclude your update, Vice Mayor?

That's all.

Okay, great update. And I want to thank you and give you credit for following up with the Finance and Economic Resilience Committee at the City of Miami Beach and for taking time out of your day to present and for getting a unanimous vote in favor of You know, bringing back the resident discount that North Bay Village residents used to have in Normandy and amplifying and extending those discounts and rates so that we can bring more quality of life and amenities to our community. Okay, so for my report, I'm going to start with the combating anti-Semitism movement letter that I signed on to this past week. There was a horrifying terrorist attack against a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and I immediately joined a public statement urging – urging national leaders to unite against antisemitism and condemning the terrorist attack against the synagogue in West Bloomfield. And I want to thank Commissioner Trevone for connecting me with the folks that are combating the antisemitism movement. And I was very proud to sign on to that on behalf of all of us. We are talking to the organization Football for Peace. They came to North Bay Village a couple of years ago. They hosted a great event that was attended by over 100 North Bay Village families. Football for Peace is using sports and science to make the lives of young people more enriched and more service oriented. They asked me to participate in creating a legacy event here in the village, something that they would do uniquely themselves on an annual basis. So we're having that conversation, but in the meantime, I've connected them with Lily and encouraged them to present to the grand opening community, the community center grand opening committee. They might want to bring, they have a mobile science lab. where kids can step into the science lab and touch starfish and coral and just expand their horizons and appreciate a little bit more of the water quality and Biscayne Bay stewardship that we do here. So that's football for peace. We are hosting another meeting of the coastal mayors. The coastal mayors organization was created by North Bay Village a couple of years ago. We've had a little bit of a lapse in meetings as frankly I and we adjust to the austerity measures. I appreciate the way that you put that. So we've got co-hosts by uh val harbor village and bay harbor islands mayor seth salver and mayor isaac salver are co-hosting with us and that's friday 11 30 to 1 o'clock we'll be at the val harbor waterfront park this is mainly for public works directors and chief resilience officers and sustainability managers and cip managers as well as mayors and elected officials to meet and discuss bay specific issues and our agenda is going to be twofold one because we're in bell harbor we're having a conversation about the the sandbar parties So we'll have Marine Patrol from Bay Harbor, Bell Harbor, North Bay Village, as well as FDBC will be there to talk about vessel nuisances, derelict vessels, Samba parties, that kind of thing. And then the second half of the meeting is going to be about the reasonable assurance plan. All cities and villages and towns across Miami-Dade County are putting together their capital projects, their roadway improvement projects, their stormwater management and wastewater management projects. We're submitting a list of eligible projects to Miami-Dade County that they are going to then submit to the state of Florida, which is going to be an all-encompassing communal reasonable assurance plan and we will be our feet will be held to the fire by the state of florida as we move forward with those plans and this is all in a comprehensive effort to bring back and restore the biscayne bay watershed so This wrap process has been going on for quite a long time, for at least two years. And this forum with coastal mayors is hopefully going to be a really great opportunity to help educate all of the other cities. We'll have staff from Miami-Dade County and their consultants there to make sure that as we submit projects, we're doing it the right way, prioritizing the right projects. Are we thinking about this in a sensible way? So on and so forth. So that's Friday at 1130 to 1 p.m. My colleagues on the dais, you all got invitations for that. I would love to see you all there. I know we're going to have Deputy Chief Behar is going to be attending, as well as Roger and Christina in Capital Projects. So thank you, Mr. Manager, for your help and support. And thank you, Lily, also for taking on yet another task and managing the outreach and the RSVPs for that. Thank you. I wanted to follow up about a couple of items that really need the manager's input. I know that we were finalizing our work order for the ADA improvements, our crosswalks across the causeway, our signals, and just making sure that everything was working properly. And while we were in the process of finalizing all of those inspections, we unfortunately had a fatality on the causeway. I've been doing my own sort of reconnaissance and I feel like the crosswalks that I've been in have worked and the buttons that I've pushed have worked. But Mr. Manager, if you could either give us the update or have Steve or Roger come, but I'd love to have the crosswalks and streetlights update.

Well, Roger may have more details, but they were already in the process of finalizing that project with the walkthroughs when that unfortunate incident occurred but i know they've completed and is roger within earshot roger can you give us an update on the uh signalization and how that finalizing that project went?

Yeah. Good evening, Commissioner and Mayor. So we did our final walkthrough about three weeks ago with the contractor and the CEI. We have one punch list item that's left, which is we have a couple of the signs, the new signs on the signals at the Adventure Avenue intersection that are peeling off their brand new install, but the contractor is coming in to repair it. The product is pretty much wrapped up at this point. We only have the file inspection, signal inspection by Miami-Dade County that's left to be scheduled by the county. We requested the inspection. We haven't heard back from them at date as yet. The project is pretty much done.

Maybe I have some follow-up, if you don't mind, for the manager. At East Treasure, Hispaniola, Adventure, and Harbor Island, North Bay Island, do all four of those signals have a pedestrian-exclusive walk signal?

I believe the project limits were Adventure, Adventure, Hispanola, 1800 block, and East Treasure, if I'm not mistaken. I don't believe that the Harbor Island intersection was a part of the scope of the project.

Okay.

So to answer your question as to whether that intersection at Harbor Island has a dedicated pedestrian exclusive signal, I don't know.

When I walk across it, it works. I just needed you to say that.

It should work. I haven't tested it myself. But there should be a pedestrian signal on both sides of the intersection, north and south.

Yeah. Okay. And the scope of work, just to clarify, were we having like the audible beacons installed at all of those?

And they are working? They are working. I tested them myself at each intersection before and after our final inspection. And they all work well. They all call out, wait. They have the timing chime. And they all announce the intersecting streak.

Okay. All right.

So. Yes.

Is there any way when we're working on the flat bridges, basically it's going to work on the Harbor Island and North Bay Island entrances as well, to include that crosswalk into the same system of signalization at that time?

Yes, yes.

So we need to bring it up to FDOT and the county that we need to add it to the program.

We can request it, yes. Please. Yes, of course. Thank you. You're welcome.

Okay, thanks.

No problem. People have talked to us about the timing of the lights now are out of whack. And so that's handled by the county, signalization, and we've reached out to them. But particularly in the morning where they're going to work traffic and they're coming home. We're getting long lines. The signals are not synchronized, and so they're piling up here and piling up there. So we're aware of it. It's the county, and I know Chief Noriega and Sam have been leaning on them to get out here and get those signals back into.

So I will just say, and this is part of my report. So commissioner Steinberg gets all of her mayors together in a room once a quarter. And it's like a very intimate conversation. And she typically will bring someone from the County. So director Stacy Miller was the featured guest at our last meeting. Mayor's breakfast. Stacey told us that the county is upgrading its signalization not to where it's a smart signal. It can't detect traffic and learn from traffic patterns. That would be very very futuristic and fancy we're not there yet miami-dade county is doing the fundamental basic technology upgrades to bring the signals into like 1995 as opposed to 1975 i think is where they're at so that's that's probably where the change came from but we need to continue You know that getting Miami-Dade County to change the signal timing, it's very, very challenging.

Yes. But we're working on it.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right. Did you write the date that you started working on it, like on the wall somewhere?

It's recorded.

Okay. I wanted to also ask you, Mr. Manager, the last I heard about our bid process for the construction of Village Hall, that we were finalizing another item with our favorite agency, the Florida Department of Transportation. We were finalizing this FDOT issue so that we could finalize the bid package, that we could go out to bid. Where are we on Village Hall?

Well, we got some good news today. Steve, if you want to come up and fill everybody in with the recent with FDOT that happened today.

Steve Buckland, Public Works Director. Yes, so we had a meeting at 11 a.m. today with several members from the FDOT team that are both in plan review and with the Flat Bridge project.

How many members of FDOT were involved in that?

There was a total of 15 people in the meeting. There was myself, our architect, and FDOT. But we had a very long conversation. We're the ones that need the dose, like really.

Yeah, we are.

We had a very long conversation about their last two comments. We actually had reached out to Elizabeth Jett with FDOT, which she helped us out a great deal and helped square things away, and everything got squared away today. We should have approval this week from FDOT so that we can then proceed with finalizing the plans and going out to bid. Yes, there was 15 people.

We still don't have approval by FDOT, and we can't go out to bid until this is done.

We needed the approval from the last two comments that presented.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This isn't about you. This is about the state of Florida. This is about FDOT. They're delaying our ability to go out to bid so that we can meet a deadline that we have with Miami-Dade County to build an emergency operations center on a state road.

we have explained that to them explicitly and i think the meeting today finally got a person high enough in the food chain to quiet down some of the resistance we were getting from the report that i got that they said no that we don't think that's necessary we don't think that's necessary they were telling their staff and so this individual when we finally or Steve bowed his neck enough to say, listen, you got a nickel holding up a dollar here. We're trying to get out the bid to do this project. And every time we turn around, FDOT has another observation that another bureaucrat within their system said, well, you know what? Now we ought to see about moving this tree or doing this or doing that. So, you know, they had this meeting and I think it got squared away. But for the plans to come out for the final set for the bid set, Everything has to be signed off, and we can't issue a bid set with one agency holding up. It's been over two months delayed since they raised this issue. Well, there's been different issues raised. Take care of one thing. We had to get rid of the sidewalk. We had to... There were issues that we had to do. They wouldn't let us put steps in to get to the other sidewalk. So we got rid of that. And then you think you're all ready to go. And then it goes to the next person that they pass the plans on to.

It's incredibly frustrating. It's incredibly frustrating. And it has nothing to do. I mean, I know that you guys are working around the clock. I just, I find it. You know what? I'm going to get down from my soapbox and move on with my commission report. Thank you for that. I did want to ask about the status of the trolley because Thursday is the third Thursday, and I know that there were a number of reports last month that the trolleys didn't show up. So I would love to hear an update from staff who's communicated with Miami Beach about the trolley.

I think Lily had a conversation with them, but they, or maybe Janice did, I'm not sure which, but they assured us that the trolley did come. So...

Yes, I was in communication with the director of transportation on Miami Beach. He went all the way down the chain of command and they are dead set that the trolley did come. They think that the confusion might have been that the buses are not marked or that our residents were maybe expecting a trolley. It was a bus? Yes. yeah it's not like it wasn't an actual trolley this time it was a bus i think so yeah i would be confused too how are we supposed to know that it's supposed to be a trolley we're looking for the trolley they did not let me know um so they're now moving forward that they will if it is the bus that they are sending to add explicit signage um and or to send the trolley

Okay, it's Thursday night, so what's the plan for Thursday night? I have to confirm with them. Okay, yeah, if you could do that through the manager and communicate to the residents and let's make sure we have the right signage so that people are not confused. And then we're actually going to get a trolley. Okay. Yeah, people really like this, so let's not drop the ball. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I got a really encouraging text message that deeds have been delivered to our attorneys for the sites at North Treasure Drive and West Treasure Drive. You're making a face, Madam Village Attorney Clerk.

It may be that Mr. Ruscio has received them. I have not.

They were addressed to Mr. Ruscio.

Probably at our office. Yeah.

So the West Treasure Drive site is... primarily going to be used for a passive park because the primary use of that site is really for stormwater retention and stormwater infrastructure. The North Treasure Drive Park is much more significant. It's located right smack in the center of Treasure Island and at Borders Pirates Alley. We are not ready to do this from a financial standpoint at all right now. But I do think that the long-term vision for that North Treasure Drive site is something that should come through an extensive Charette public engagement process. We should have community meetings. We should get feedback about what people want to see there. I know there are five of us on the dais and each and every one of us has a different idea about what they would like to see there. So I'm just stating that for the record. I believe we should have a charrette and a formal extensive public engagement process to talk about how the community would like to use that public land. And then, of course, what infrastructure does the village need that public land for? you know that can be i don't know where we are in terms of like being ready to have that conversation because it is certainly not budgeted for um but i just wanted to put it out on the radar um I'll take feedback on that, actually. I mean, this is not a discussion item. It's my report.

But I do have a question because I completely agreed about having a conversation on what will be the most effective and useful way to implement activities into that space. My question is about the original plans for a temporary use for the soccer kits.

That's the next thing. That's the next sort of like tangential on this item is temporary fields. So we are going to have access. to the fields um immediately any day now um i think the plan is for us to inspect the fields and you're talking about treasure island fields yeah the treasure i'm talking about the north treasure drive lots they're gonna have soccer fields But right now that's just, it's just grass. Correct. Right. So we are in the process of designing and permitting the grading and the drainage for that property. Got it.

When you say fields, I'm thinking sucker fields.

Yeah. Sorry. It's okay. Choices of words. So right now it's just a field. Got it. It's just a vacant field. We're in the design stage for drainage and grading. The Anson Foundation and Sunbeam are kicking in lighting, trash, benches, and I think nets to protect surrounding property owners. Um, That project is still a couple of months down the road because we have to permit the grading and the drainage. So as the site exists right now, which is basically a vacant green lot that is not flat. Like Civic Park. Right, like Civic Park. Well, no, Civic Park was graded. Really? Yeah. Yeah, they graded that park. So they graded and installed drainage. We built a whole bioswale.

Well, that I remember, but it's not that even on the other side. That's what I'm thinking. It's kind of a story, but it is graded.

So anyhow... I've heard requests from a number of parents and families that they would like to be able to use that green space on a temporary basis. I know that we're losing some athletic and recreational space. I think the basketball courts, while the community center and the recreational spaces are under construction. So if there is any way to have maybe a limited recreational classes and to use that fields before we do the grading and the drainage is something that I would like the village manager to address.

Well, once we have access and I reached out today to get access to physically getting into the fields, we'll go out there and we'll evaluate it and see exactly what we can do in the interim.

It's very uneven.

It's an angle breaker situation. The fact that it's uneven and you could essentially really get hurt there is a big concern. It's something we need to be careful. But maybe there's a portion of it that is more even than not that we could section off. We're going to check it out. Okay, great. We'll check it out. Okay. And last but not least, just really quickly, the legislative session obviously concluded last week. They concluded without a budget, which means we don't know whether or not we'll be receiving appropriations. They're going to reconvene in April for a budget session. They're going to reconvene for another special session next. to redraw all of our congressional districts. And then they're going to reconvene, I think, a third time to discuss property tax reform. And we are all going to be watching property tax reform very, very closely. As of right now, the proposal that passed the House doesn't decimate us the way that it decimates places like Miami Shores and Biscayne Park and El Portal. But it's something that we need to stay absolutely on top of and maybe do a little bit of advocacy. But yeah, there will be three special sessions over the course of the summer. And tomorrow I'm attending a closed door legal briefing with our law firm about property tax reform. That's tomorrow during lunch. we have a League of Cities lunch that's a League of Cities property tax reform yes okay so I'll do that tomorrow during lunch um and that's about it for me let's move on to the Village Tony's report no report this thank you Mr manager good evening everybody um I just want to touch on a little bit on the community center

schedule because there's been some, I don't know if this is a result of the committee getting together with their plans, but I've received several calls that apparently there's some feeling out there that this project is being delayed to like September. And that's not the case.

Well, I think it probably came from the fact that when the committee met, We didn't know exactly when the community center would be ready. And there was the sentiment that if it wasn't going to be ready to open until the middle of the summer, that we should wait until the fall to do the event. That's probably where people are getting September.

All right.

So they are on schedule. And right now with their schedule, they are planning, uh, June 3rd for their temporary CO inspections. And they say they're ahead of that schedule. So we had a site walk yesterday.

Yes, I forgot to mention in my commission report, I did go to the community center. I forgot to mention that.

And the- A fellow that took us around said they think by the end of May they're going to be finished.

He seemed pretty confident.

No, it's coming together pretty quickly.

They're about to install the turf for the main field.

Right.

Already.

Right. And And then today I sent a email to the PFL side of the equation requesting our first meeting on the operations of the facility because there's going to be now a partnership between us and with them and we want to figure out who we're going to be dealing with and exactly how we're going to set this up and get the programs going. And it'll be a seven-day-a-week operation. We want to see what kind of staff they're going to be bringing, what their plans are. And we have to address it at our end, too.

Will they follow into the requirement of background checks, level two background checks, anybody who works at that facility with their children?

Well, if they're working with children, then they're going to have to have it.

Or it's just working with them. Because we have, for example, one of the things that I saw was a 600 square foot corner office that they're getting. And, you know, that second, that level where they are, we're going to have access to it. So I'm just thinking, like, how does the level two background check works? Because you are going to have kids who are going to do homework there after hours, right? families who are just going to enjoy their afternoon there with children. And then you have the YMCA, then you have the summer camp. I mean, there is a lot of programming, hopefully, that we're going to be having. How does that work with the level two background check for their staff?

I mean, Janice can speak to it, but I mean, you're going to have to have the background checks if you're working with the children.

I would imagine. But when you say working with the children, it's very separate of just coming into contact with the area where children are. You know, like the secretaries, the staff, the people that come in from Argentina.

I think the question is what exactly is the distinction between who needs a level two and who doesn't and who at PFL will have a level two and how will they be interacting with kids?

How are we going to divide these youths?

Well, the PFL people, I imagine, are not going to be working with the kids inside that building.

But they have an office there.

They have an office there, but that's on the ground floor. That's not where the kids are.

Again, if that's what you're saying, that they're not going to have – I don't know. That's what I'm trying to understand.

Denise, you want to address that? I mean, that's why the second floor has been designed like it is for the children to be without the adults.

Correct. But where is their office? On the third or second floor? Whose office?

The proposed office, which is still under discussion and you all have to negotiate.

Well, I think the space is already determined.

It's on the third floor.

Okay. So who has access to the third floor?

Well, listen, it all hasn't been worked out. That's why we're starting to get into the operational side. Got it. But the objective is the second floor is specifically designed for the little ones.

Yeah.

Okay? We're going to have senior programs. We're going to have those type of operations, too, and those would be on the third floor.

Yeah. Yeah.

So they're not going to be with children on the third floor.

But what if a parent is coming with their kids upstairs? I mean, we're not going to limit that no children are allowed on the third floor in a community center. Or are we?

you know you're asking questions that we haven't even yeah well pondered about how people are going to matriculate through the building yeah well that's why i'm asking generally when you have programs that you run that we would be running or vendors that would be running the children are supervised at all times in a contained space in that space it doesn't necessarily mean that a child can't be in the same floor as a person that's not level two it is they are the programs that we're running we have to make sure that the children are supervised at all times and if they're going to go use the restroom then one of the attendants or counselors that's assisting with it they take the group of children to the bathroom to the restroom they wait for them they escort them back into the room where the event um so they're limited in a way

And with the expectation that when people come in, and let's say I'm coming to a yoga class on the third floor, and my kid is coming with me, or my friend's kids are going to be there, and they're playing around in the community center while we're doing our yoga, then it's going to be like a public park situation. You understand what I'm saying?

I guess children still need to be supervised. I guess the purpose of the center is not to have... Children unsupervised. So when it comes to programming that we would be running there, obviously it would be running in an orderly fashion and the children will be supervised in a contained environment. That's why the classrooms were divided. And, you know, that thought process occurred.

That would also apply the other way around, where the staff understands their limits on what they can be roaming around, right? Like the people from downstairs may understand that the second floor is going to have YMCA. You're not supposed to be wandering in there. It goes both ways. Because the normal person walking into a community center does not know this, does not know who works for who, who's doing what, is this person that I can trust? Oh, he coaches in that program over there. That means that this is a trustworthy person. Meanwhile, that person was never supposed to even be there. So whether you have the answers for it or not, I just want you to have that in your mind, because when we do come to the operational part of it, how do we mix staff, also outside staff, because not everybody's going to be Northside Village staff. It's going to be people from the, I forget their name, Alpha people, whatever.

Right now, they are not operating inside that building. They will not be. The inside of the building is for us to run for our community center. There's an office there for PFL, not AFA. PFL to rent and lease the courts. The spaces. But they're not leasing stuff or renting stuff inside. They're handling the courts and they're handling the soccer fields. So You know, there's a door there. People will come to them instead of through where the cafe area is. They're over in that far corner. And that's where the people will come that want to use a court or if there's a group that wants to get on a soccer field. But they are not operating anything inside the building. That's us. The only thing that's in there that is PFL... operated, is there a vendor for the cafe area?

Again, it's just all about the safety for the kids and how we protect them because I don't think that it's easy to understand where the staff starts or where the other staff ends. For us, of course, it makes sense because you know the operational, at least you're working on that. That's something just to keep in mind as we go through with it. That rich person wouldn't know who's who.

Okay.

That's all.

We'll go with the manager.

Absolutely.

In regards to the FDOT approval of our city hall, if we don't have an answer by end of business day Friday that we can proceed, please let me know and I will make a call first thing Monday morning to the secretary of FDOT and request an emergency meeting with whomever we need to meet.

Hopefully that won't be necessary.

Hopefully it won't be necessary, but let's do it.

Understood.

Please.

Okay. I really appreciated this back and forth, and I think it's obvious that a logistics and operational meeting with PFL is really necessary. Would you be willing to provide a report or have them make a presentation? However you see best to update us in April, I would like to request that for the April commission meeting.

We can do that for sure.

Okay, great. Great, great, great. Do you have anything else for your report, Mr. Manager? No, ma'am.

That's it.

Okay, fabulous. We're going to move on to the consent agenda 11A. Um, this is a resolution of the mayor and commission of the authorizing the issuance of the amendment number 1 to work order 24 engineering, incorporated for modified design, permitting and bidding services for phase 1 of the harbor island stormwater improvement project related to the religious stormwater improvement program in an amount not to exceed 147,609 dollars and 28 cents providing for implementation and an effective date. Um. I would love to just have staff tell us what the amendment is to the work order. What is the scope of the project? What is the timeline? And if you have any additional details to provide us about the location of the pump station and what else will be happening in terms of the outfall and the seawall at that location, I would love to hear that too.

Okay. Where to start? So this amendment came about probably as a result of the issues we were having with Civic Park and getting that off the ground. In fact, it wasn't even constructed. So we approached, well, we approached Rubik with some updated information regarding the seawall and the outfall. Originally the outfall, the location of where Rubik was, or our consultant, I should just say, was planning to place rubik. The outfall piping, the piping routing to the wall and to the actual location of the pump station was partially dictated by the design of Civic Park at the time. Since that didn't happen, we saw an opportunity to relocate the outfall to a more advantageous location, which would both be good for the stormwater project as well as the future park project as well. um so this opportunity to just do a design um and incorporate that into our stormwater plan because that really was the best bet the stormwater the the infrastructure should dictate where everything else goes not the other way around so that was our that was our approach so with that we you know They thought it was a good idea. It would definitely benefited the project. It would reduce the idea that we came up with. It would potentially reduce the cost of installation and construction for phase one. To answer your other question, we were able to reorient the project the station to provide more space, more actual usable space for Civic Park. So that was one of the positive outcomes of the layout. In addition, we also have an opportunity to improve the design of the seawall for what we had that was part of the Civic Park plan. So there was that. Obviously, we're going to try and incorporate biodiversity, living seawall, that kind of thing into the future design, and also incorporate something that is a lot more resilient to the new chemistries of the bay. The previous design, after doing a bit of research, the previous design was not something that we thought would last for a very long time.

um so we've had an opportunity as well to incorporate something that would be a little bit a bit more resilient to future conditions um that's pretty much i don't have any other questions oh i do yeah we're talking about seawalls i have so many follow-up questions what my bad what what aspects of the previous seawall design did you find not resilient enough to meet the current conditions of the bay

The piling design, the material, the metal, I should say, was not... After consulting with some folks that were more familiar with the seawall design, that piling design was not... it was good for 25 years ago but the chemistry of the debate of the bay has since changed um it's a little more acidic um so it would not hold up we weren't confident they would hold up over a longer period of time um it would most likely that design would have to be replaced after 15 years rather than 20 or 25 um so that was something that we thought we could improve with a new design

Okay. I spoke with Christina about this project. The subcontractors who were working on the living seawall design in the earlier iteration of this project. It was an engineering firm called Rez and they worked on this project for two years and they were really in the weeds, no pun intended, on the permitting requirements to get it done. I specifically asked Christina, through the manager, if it were possible to retain Rez as a sub to Ribic on this project so that we don't lose the two years of expertise and intimate understanding of the benthic conditions and the location and the restrictions and the FPL easement and all of the things that make design on the site so difficult. What is the response on Rez as...

I do know that Christina had a long conversation with the engineer from Rez. I don't know if he's still with Rez, but she did reach out to that person.

To Patrick?

Yes, it was Patrick, yes. And they had a real detailed conversation. We got a lot of old records and conversations that stretched back over the two-year period that you mentioned. As far as whether we're able to retain them as a sub-consultant, that I currently do not have an answer for. That's something that I don't think I was really approached with. So to answer the question shortly is I don't know.

Okay.

Okay, all right, well.

I'm sure there's, we still have access to all of the work that resonated that they did previously. And I'm confident that the folks that Rebecca's using as a sub are more than capable of, you know, getting us over the hump.

Okay, all right, great. Does anyone have any further questions or comments? Does someone wanna move the item? Thank you, Commissioner Trevony. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Thank you, Commissioner Darrow. Madam Village Attorney Clerk, will you call the roll?

Commissioner Trevony?

Yes.

Commissioner Darrow? Yes. Commissioner Acosta?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Cook? Absent. Mayor Streitfold?

Yes.

The motion carries.

Thank you. Item 11. Thank you. Roger item. 11 B is a resolution of the mayor and village commission of North Bay village, Florida, approving the 1st amendment to the development and construction management agreement with project football, LLC, relating to the development and operation of a community center, sports courts, and other improvements at the property located at 1851 galleon street, providing for authorization, providing for implementation, providing for several and providing for an effective date. um mr manager do you and the village attorney want to share um just an update explaining what was done since our last meeting on this contract where things stand maybe some key provisions uh in the contract so on and so forth and i see we have another um addendum here with the additional community center cost spelled out for us.

Okay. So in January, you recall that you gave us direction to add an increased contribution to the agreement. Your existing agreement with PFL provided that the village was going to contribute $1.2 million. At some throughout 2025, I'm just going to say this generally throughout 2025, there was discussion and approval for the addition of a third floor. And the costs of the estimated costs for that third floor were approved by the commission. You'll recall that we had drafted and the commission had approved an original first amendment to the operating agreement and the development agreement with PFL for the galleon site. And that was never signed. So subsequent to that, we engaged in further discussions. This commission considered various issues. And so the amendment that you have before you this evening is only amending the development and construction management agreement to provide for the addition of the third floor, the village's contribution So in addition to the 1.2 million that you had already approved or is already in the agreement, you are contributing an additional 4.263494 and 95 cents towards the construction of the facility. for PFL to build out the concession on the ground floor, which again, which will be operated by PFL or a sub-licensee, which will be subject to your approval and in accordance with the First Amendment to the Operations Agreement, which will be coming back to you. This amendment also provides for PFL to utilize 600 square feet of space on the third floor, subject to the terms of a commercial lease, which will provide for annual renewals. That lease will also be coming before you for approval. And we did have a call on that last week. pretty straightforward what the lease will be and we we did take into consideration what the commission discussed about the use of the 600 square feet and who can use it so we're working on a draft of that lease and we'll be working that out with pfl's council um so this amendment is fairly straightforward it also includes a an amendment to the development agreement to to delete the site plan and the plans that are currently attached to the development agreement and replace it with the plans that are currently under permitting and what's actually built. So I'm happy to answer any further questions. I will defer to our manager and our public works director on the exact numbers. I have familiarity with them, but I think Stephen does a great job of explaining how we arrived at those numbers. I can tell you generally that the agreement will now provide that the village is contributing 5.4 million. change um the number that i just gave you just a minute ago was 4.2 and the reason for that distinction is you already had 1.2 million in the agreement you're increasing it by 4.2 and that 4.2 is really 4.26 4.26. Yeah. 4.26, and that encompasses the build-out of the second floor, the additional third floor, some of the stormwater costs. There's also costs that had not been contemplated before for... We swapped that out.

We swapped out. The cost was there, but we substituted the funding instead of coming from the... the bond or contributions from the developers. We swapped out those areas just on our property that are stormwater with using stormwater bond money. And then the other item that, and then the build out of the two floors was the 350,000 that we negotiated, what the total amount for that is. And then at the last minute came up that we had not included the low voltage wiring and so forth. And to completely build that out was another 150,000 and change. And so that's in this project also. And that's for them. that's completely billed out with everything being provided.

I really appreciate the detailed breakdown of these additional costs because it helps me to tell the story, obviously, of how we are spending money. Sorry, there's a fly. So what I don't understand about this spreadsheet snippet, the addition of the third floor shell at a cost of $2.5 million, that all makes sense. The additional stormwater work at a cost of $1.25 million, that makes sense. The low voltage security, that makes sense. What I'm struggling with is the 350K for the second and third floor build out together. i could be misunderstanding what our agreement was it was our choice to add the third floor and therefore all costs associated with both the shell and the build out of the third floor are to be borne by the village since we already had an agreement with them to build the two floors my understanding was that in exchange for the office space whether it was on the second floor or the third floor, it doesn't really matter. But in exchange for the office space, weren't they responsible for the build-out of the second floor?

Not totally. We got a credit towards that, but originally that second floor was not built out at all in the original program.

Okay.

And so we came and said... So we were going to have that open floor. We were going to have the open floor and the third floor. And then when we got with them and started talking about the office space, they came to us with a proposal to say, look, you're going to have to go out and get another contractor to come in here. They're going to have to do plans. They're going to have to be another project to build this out. So they gave us a proposal to... finish it so that when we do the TCO, all floors are ready to operate. And we brought that back and it just made sense for us. And our portion of that came out to $350,000. They pay a portion of that, like the bathrooms and so forth, they are paying on because us had to be there. And then the third floor office, they are paying for completely. And then we shared the cost of the others with, you had to have a drop ceiling, you had to have a floor, you had to have the walls finished out. So we split those. And that's how it came. I mean, Steve can, I don't know if there's more detail that you want, but it's a shared expense on the two floors.

Thank you, Frank. Commissioners, who has questions or comments? Or if none, a motion.

Shall move.

And a second?

I'll second.

Okay.

Madam Clerk Attorney, please call the roll. Commissioner Schiavone?

Yes.

Commissioner Darrow? Yes. Commissioner Acosta? Yes. Vice Mayor Cook?

Yes.

Mayor Streitfeld? Yes. The motion passes.

Beautiful. Okay, we are moving through and on to our ordinances. Let's go ahead and actually take 12B and get it out of the way because I want to dig into the sign code a little bit. Does anyone object to doing vessels before signs?

Okay.

All right. It's parks and rec baby. Totally live action. So 12 B is an ordinance of the mayor and commission of North Bay village, Florida, amending chapter 150 boats, vessels and houseboats of the village code of ordinances by creating section 150 dot 22 overnight anchoring restrictions. To regulate certain overnight anchoring of vessels within the waters of the village, amending section 153.4 schedule of fines and civil penalties to establish a penalty for violations, providing for severability, providing for codification, providing for conflicts and providing for an effective date. This is sponsored by myself and co sponsored by commissioner Acosta. And it's strongly and enthusiastically encouraged by Commissioner David Suarez in Miami Beach and Commissioner Damian Pardo in the city of Miami. I guess David's not coming, but that's fine. Shout out, David, if you're listening. So I went to Tallahassee last year with Commissioner Suarez. We reversed a state preemption. The state preempts us from regulating overnight anchoring in our jurisdiction. We now have a carve-out that is relatively unique to Miami-Dade County where we can restrict overnight anchoring. And we can do so in our jurisdictional waters. And we can also work with our partnering and neighboring agencies to site vessels that we're calling not derelicts, because derelict is a defined term under Florida law. I'm calling them squatter vessels. vessels these are vessels who are anchored for more than 30 days at a time in a six month period and they're anchored just outside the limits of a regulated anchoring area so these are people who don't want to register their vessels they don't want to pay the nominal fee to do so within the bounds of what's okay they just want to kind of camp out in the water and a lot of times these vessels end up derelict we end up having a cleaning up cleanup after them after the fact and in some cases as our neighbor mr parker shared with us this evening people are trespassing through the islander club through island place through uh bay shore through you know, Grandview, really, I mean, we're climbing up on the seawalls and like walking through people's parking lots to get to the gas station or the grocery store. So I'm really excited that we're bringing this ordinance forward. I do want to thank the Deputy Chief of Police, who has answered all of my Marine Patrol Authority jurisdiction questions over the last two years on this item. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions, comments or emotion?

I'm happy to make a motion on it. How do we plan to enforce it?

we will have the ability to post notices proactively. One of the things that the ordinance does, it allows us to give warning notices to vessels. It's the kind of thing where admittedly, we only have one marine patrol vessel and it's part-time. In an ideal world, we have plenty of funds to purchase a second marine patrol vessel and have patrolling much more often. For right now, we're going to be working heavily with our partners. There's also been an expansion of enforcement authority. It's not just police, but code enforcement can also issue citations. And Miami-Dade County has those resources. So does the city of Miami. It's literally like putting a notice on the boat itself.

So half of them, they're not even registered back there, but we'll cite them. We don't know who it belongs to.

Mm-hmm.

That's it? Just leave a ticket on the boat?

Yeah, we leave a ticket on the boat, but then we track who the vessel is assigned to. We can impose fines like any other code enforcement procedure. We can impose fines and then foreclose on a lien, and it also gives us the ability to notify Miami-Dade County in a more expedited manner that they can enforce.

There is a registration on the vessel. Yes.

And if it's not registered?

Well, that's the beauty about this ordinance, right? It allows us to now have more tools to our disposal when we do see a problem happen. It also allows for our police department to venture into the county's help. And they can say, well, you have an ordinance. Yes, we do. So we can collaborate. Recently, I was told that and I don't know if Sam, you want to expand on this, but you explained to me how they had a helicopter. I believe you said that they were geotagging all of these vessels. I don't think we have right now a plan of procedure, meaning that we're going to be going and tagging all these people. But having this would allow us to join forces with the county and also for us to target areas that we see a problem with.

It also protects us because Miami and Miami Beach are aggressively enforcing, which is pushing boats in our direction. Yes.

Yeah. So I would imagine Sam could expand a little bit better. What would that procedure look like?

So as you were saying, the county did fly over the area, geotag all the boats in the area. So then they'll go back and see if they're moving. You literally have to move and it's not like it used to be before. I dropped anchor, moved three feet and I was done. The ordinance makes you actually move. So that's what they're doing. At this point, All these vessels we see are outside our jurisdictional work. So we still always... The Marine Patrol community in Dade County is very small. So we all cooperate with each other. But enforcement primarily at this point calls to Miami or the county and they are doing that. But it is basically that. Hey, you're... You're overtime parking, time to move. If you don't, then fines can be assessed. Now, I don't know if we had a discussion with the attorney about some additional enforcement arms. I don't know if that ended it, added on there. So when we had the discussion the other day, I don't, okay. So eventually it would, If it was added, allow us to code a removal of the vessel. Was it added?

I know, right?

The next question. Not for removal, not for first reading. Any provisions we can make for second.

What were the recommendations that you made to the village attorney so that we can affirmatively recommend them on second reading?

It would be that eventually we have authority removal, which can be done, however.

keep in mind that there is a cost for that it's really expensive we know and we pay for it up front and then we have to take them to court afterwards right yeah yeah thank you do we want the um motion to be inclusive of deputy chief behar's comments not necessarily because we can go on with second reading when we have this No, I know, but the notion to include his comments and prepare the version with his comments for second reading.

I definitely think we should take that into account. Go ahead and make a motion to move forward with this ordinance and include feedback from the police department into our second reading.

Okay. And a second from commissioner Chivoni, madam village clerk attorney with please call the roll.

Commissioner Costa. Yes. Commissioner Chivoni.

Yes.

Commissioner Darrow.

Yes.

Vice mayor. Yes.

Yes.

Mayor Streitfeld.

Yes.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Commissioner. Okay. 12A, an ordinance of the Mayor and Commissioner of North Bay Village, Florida, amending Chapter 11 signs and Chapter 15 form-based code to address current legal requirements to establish specific standards and regulations and to consolidate all provisions related to signs, providing for self-reliability, providing for codification, providing for conflicts, providing for an effective date, and providing for the First Amendment. I just added that, editorialized. Okay, 12, a, we are amending our sign code to be consistent with current case law around speech and the time place and manner with which we regulate speech through science. There is attorney. i would say like 15 minutes max wow that's too long she did 30 minutes at the planning and zoning board where they approved this ordinance so cut it in half i i will be much much faster this evening uh just bringing up a presentation uh for those of you who are on the dais

you do have a portion of my presentation, which is where I'll focus. I printed just those slides out for you because they are too small to see on the screen, if you allow me one moment. There we go. All right. So in sum, what are we doing? We are unifying our sign regulations under Chapter 11. Chapter 11 is currently where your sign code lives, but you have provisions in Chapter 15 and you have some super small provisions in Chapter 8. What we've done is consolidate all of that in Chapter 11. The idea with most of this is to make it a more user-friendly sign code. As the mayor noted, why are we doing this? There's legislative intent that goes into this. There's case law that has developed over the course of the last decade and a half, changing how sign codes are treated on a nationwide basis. So that's why we're adding all of the legislative intent. There's, again, lots of reorganization of the regulations sections. definitions are extensively updated. And when I say extensively updated, what I mean by that is you had definitions in Chapter 11, definitions in Chapter 15. I went through the painstaking process of comparing what those definitions are and We've selected what we hope is the right definition, but I'm happy to get into that with you between first and second reading if any of you really want to dive in into the weeds. And then the illustrations of your sign types, we've also incorporated that into a new section 11.2.5. Those are the illustrations that you had in Chapter 15, and now you'll find them in Chapter 11. So I... I think I'm going to skip through a lot of this because I have said it as quickly as I can under the definitions. You'll see that there's some new definitions. Some definitions that were in the code we are removing because they're not actually utilized in the code. So there's no need to have them as defined terms. I mentioned the illustrations. Non-conforming signs and this is in the interest of keeping this moving. There was a recommendation from the Planning and Zoning Board to look at how we handle non-conforming signs. Their recommendation was that we provide that the sign be removed within 18 months If it has already been five years from when the sign was legally permitted to be there, and the reason for that is the code currently provides that within five years from the date that the ordinance was adopted way back in I think 2018. You would have to come into compliance with the new code that. Hasn't necessarily happened. So the board asked that we look at providing for an 18 month sort of reprieve grace period and then start getting those sign owners to update their signs.

how many non-conforming signs do we have i don't know we got that information yeah i mean to be perfectly honest i don't i'm i'm not interested in putting a tax on local businesses at this time and that's how i see this okay i would prefer to phase out legal non-conforming signs that the same way that we phase out other legal non-conformities which is through the building permit process when there is a change of use or a change in occupancy or a redevelopment yeah we don't have that many businesses to begin with okay yeah i mean i i just the signs the signs that are you know T624, T630, these are either condominium associations that would have to assess their residents to change their signage, which I do not want to do, or there are small businesses who are really having a hard time. So let's amend.

I agree.

Do I have a third for that?

I have a comment to make.

Yeah, please.

Actually, it's a question. Political signs. York signs.

We'll get there. We'll get there.

We'll get there.

We'll get there. This is specifically on the point of phasing out legal non-conforming signs. Signs that exist on a building right now. Not temporary signs.

We don't even know how many we have or if we have any. So what are we discussing? well that's that's what we started with the conversation but if we don't know if we have any well the code needs to provide for legal non-conformities period but there is something new in the code now you're giving an 18 month grace period for calling and such to maintain them why do we have zero non-conforming signs what are we doing what are we giving 18 month grace period to creating a non-conforming sign

We have to have the wording for it.

If we have zero non-conforming sons, who are we giving an 18-month grace period to?

No, that will be mute at that point. So it's mute. It's mute. It's mute.

I think that for a second reading, the information is useful. I don't know that it changes how I would like us to treat legal non-conforming signs, whether they were legal non-conforming five years ago, or they're going to be legal non-conforming after we pass this ordinance. I don't want to force people to spend money now to bring them into compliance. I want them to be able to continue existing until they sell, change the use, change the occupancy, or redevelop. Those instances that I just referred to are like investment events where there's capital being infused into the business, so there's a new business. I don't want to saddle people with an unexpected expense.

Or the sign is destroyed by a natural disaster. Correct. It cannot be replaced. Yeah. I agree. Thank you.

Okay. There's my third. So got it as to that's on section 11.3. So we'll address that for second reading. Okay. 11.4. So currently this regulates your signs everywhere except the transit zones. We've incorporated the transect regulations all under section 11.4. Let me see if there's anything of interest here. A lot of this is also reorganization of what you already have, so I'm not going to dwell on that. You have various sections on the regulations, all within 11.4 for your different zoning districts. So we'll start with the easy one, and we'll get, I think, the... the most discussion is going to center around what you were requesting, Commissioner Schiavone, about the political signs. So we'll get there. Right now, no signs are allowed in your single-family districts except for nameplates. So these district-specific regulations have been reorganized under 11.4 from where they are currently in 11.9. With respect to multifamily, the signs that are allowed currently, there are no signs allowed except for the temporary signs, exempt signs that are referenced under another section of the code, accessory signs, directional signs, identification signs, and signs on the balance of awnings, canopies, roller curtains with the owner and street number of the building.

The commercial regulations. Sorry, Heidi, can you go back to the proposal for RS1 and RS2?

District-specific regulations from section 11.9. Okay.

But temporary signs are allowed in RS1 and RS2? Yes. Okay. Yes. Sorry. Go ahead. Okay.

This is just general district-specific regulations. So this is what's allowed. Again, in commercial general district, you have temporary signs, exempt signs, accessory signs, flat signs. projection detached and signs that are in what I would say a shopping center where you have the same ownership and you can have signs at each establishment.

So I saw, I noticed that the crane on the Shoma property has an illuminated Shoma brand on the crane itself. I actually think it's really cool, but I just, you know, bring it out here into the public realm to share that there's like a whole new world of places to put branding. So maybe we should think about that. I like it too.

It's sleek.

It's cool. Yeah. It's probably the only nice thing.

Going back to the RS1 and RS2 permanent signs. we had a portion of the ordinance that required a numerical sign identifying the home, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, of a certain size, certain location. Is that still there?

It's still there. Okay. What is allowed are nameplates not to exceed one square foot. What's a nameplate?

Your name. Schiavone residence.

Villa Acosta.

Okay. Thanks, guys. Non-illuminated, unlike the crane sign you just mentioned, to identify the owner. So that's the sign you can have. It's not to identify the address, it's to identify the owner. Right.

But the numerical sign was left the same. Same size, visible.

I will look at that to confirm. I don't recall seeing a specific requirement that you have to have the numerical sign, but I will look.

And waterfront supposedly was needed on both the land side and the water side.

I think I did see something about that. That was changed years ago. So I will look back at that.

And that was actually one of the questions I had because I believe I read about one sign per frontage.

We'll get there. Okay. And on waterfront. Okay, so I'm moving forward. Transit regulations, again, we've moved them over from Chapter 15 to 11.4. Okay, and now this is what you have in front of you. This is the chart. So 11.4, these are currently what's in chapter 15. Before you start looking at the strikes and underline, you may recall that when we did the ULDC cleanup a couple of years ago, that was far more than a cleanup, but that's what we all referred to it as. During that cleanup process, What you see here in strike through and underline, these were recommendations that were considered at first reading. Between first and second reading, we removed the provisions of the code in Chapter 11 and Chapter 15 with respect to the sign code so that we could treat the sign code separately. And that's that process that we're doing here. So what you see here in strike through and underline are the recommendations that had come at the first reading way back then when we did the ULDC cleanup. I don't recall where these recommendations came from. So now is the opportunity to say, we don't want to change it. We want to change it. And then of course, anything that we're doing, we will, in preparation for second reading, we will make sure that it's in compliance with all the new Florida laws that don't allow us to make regulations more restrictive. What do B, O, T, and P stand for under period? So B is for the length of the business. So while the business is open, for example, if you have a restaurant, you can have your A-frame or sandwich board sign while the business is open. O was... for the occupancy of the building or of the unit owner or business. So if you have an awning at your business and you want to put the name of the restaurant on that awning, that name would only be there for the occupancy that's tied to the business. T was temporary and P was permanent signage. So there's some clarifications here and then some that go up in size, like the band signs. The copy height was increased to 18 inches from 16 inches. The maximum sign heights were added into this chart. And if we have no feedback on this one, I'll move on to the next slide that you have in front of you. Here we have the corner signs. By the way, where you see, for example, on this screen, slide 13, that H for sale signs are stricken, those are being treated in a separate temporary sign section, which like political signs, we will get to.

Where does the 18-inch recommendation come from for the copy height on a canopy sign?

I want to say that this was a recommendation from the planning department two or three years ago. But I don't know if that came from community involvement or feedback or anything like that.

It frankly feels a little bit small to me. We can look at that. Okay. Commercial construction is being removed altogether? It's being moved to Tembury. Okay.

The same with banner signs on that slide. On this slide, you have a continuation of the sign types that were in Chapter 15 that, again, are being moved to Chapter 11, to Section 11.4. You've got...

I don't know that we want to limit directory and wayfinding to one per frontage because there are... And I know that, obviously, Sunbeam Continuum and Shoma have special area plans, and their sign codes can be modified by their SAPs. I guess that's the way we'll continue doing that. Yeah, okay, that's fine. Okay.

So more of the sort of same clarifying regulations here. I'm going to skip over. You have a long list of prohibited signs that are on page 34 of Exhibit A of the ordinance.

What are the two stars next to mural sign? What do they indicate?

That may be a left, that's a remnant from existing code and

If memory serves me correctly, I am removing, if I have a facade that's larger than 1500 square feet and I would like to do a mural, is there a process that I can apply for that does not involve a variance where I can request to have a mural larger than 1500 square feet?

It would be a variance.

It would be a variance. I think we need to provide a different path forward because a variance is the wrong standard. It's not a hardship to want to create a mural, but I think something more significant than 1500 square feet. Sorry guys. I know we're really in the weeds, but something larger than 1500 square feet. I think maybe, maybe, you know,

Some percentage of the facade.

I'm not interested in how we regulate the size of the mural. I'm interested in providing property owners a path to getting their mural approved. If it's over the size that whatever we set forth, that doesn't involve having to claim a hardship.

Something you mentioned that strikes an early, if a person has a SAP, there are a lot of, for calling it such, violate or change the sign laws, and they're building that.

That's how the SAP works, my dear. That's how the SAP has always worked. When you have a special area plan, you can modify the provisions in our zoning code so that they make sense for your development. And so all three special area plans, Continuum, Shoma, and Sunbeam, have their own sign code regulations that are specific to the special area plan.

so basically the strange two signs of continuum that are the ones that come to mind i don't want to give them the 18 month grace period to change them there is one that supposedly is coming down with their name on the continuum east building and there's something on the rooftop for those vehicles that are traveling above them and can see the signage of whatever it is that they're putting, whether it's the address or the name of the continuum of the building, those are still going to be allowed, even though they're excluded from these signages.

Yeah, when we approved the continuum SAP, we approved their signs, yeah, yeah.

There was a long discussion on that, I remember, here at the podium about having that sign up on the side of the air shaft or what, you know, up high so it could be seen when a plane flies in.

Yeah, any special area plan has its own sign code.

Just making sure that that's going to say there, you know, no violations. Okay.

Mayor, to your point about the variances, our regulations, and this is an update, I'm going to move ahead in the presentation since it came up. So I guess I didn't end up putting the full regulations, but you currently have a variance process. Variances to these regulations are different from what we normally do in lieu of the hardship variance criteria of Chapter 7. The criteria here are that the signed variance must relate to a particular piece of land. The signed variance can be granted, and this is a change we're making, provided there is no substantial detriment to the public good. The benefits of the deviation outweigh any detriment. The variance wouldn't would not substantially impair the intent of our comp plan or zoning ordinance, and the variance does not authorize an outdoor advertising sign. It's not a hardship standard.

OK. All right, good. It's a public hearing. It's a variance, but it's a different standard.

Correct.

Great.

OK. That makes sense to me. OK. So going back, I mentioned that. Permits are still required for signs. There's signs that are exempt from permitting, but you may not need the permit for approval of putting up the sign, but if a building permit is required, you're still required to have that. Your exempt signs have been reorganized, and now getting to what most people want to talk about when we talk about sign codes, so temporary signs. Right now, you have the ability to have temporary signs that must be removed within seven days after an event concludes, and your political primaries and elections are treated as an event. Those signs that are unrelated to an event have to be removed within 30 days after being erected. Temporary signs can't be lit, and permits are not required for temporary signs. What we're proposing retains a lot of that, Your regulations for real estate related signs, such as open houses, for sale, for rent, those have been consolidated under 11.7, and we have not changed the regulations on how those need to be removed. Sale, lease, rent, those get removed within seven days of the sale, lease, or rental occurring. Open house signs are installed the day before. can be installed the day before the open house and removed the same day of the open house and they cannot remain for more than 48 hours. And you can only place these types of signs on the referenced property. So you're not putting it down the street and there is a prohibition on putting signage in the right of way.

What has always irked me is not so much local political signs. We're pretty good removing our signs or hiring people to remove our signs. But it's those races outside of the locals, whether it's state rep, state senator, national, whatever race you want to call it, judges that don't bother coming around and picking up their signs. And they can be left there for months, including years, if they're placed in the proper spot that people don't realize that the sign is there, there was one by the fence of the property next to Continuum that's now MG. But now since they did the fences and they're working on Continuum, it covered that one side fence. That sign's been there for over a year. How do we find the poster of the sign, whose name is on the sign.

So it would be the property owner gets cited, not whoever's on the sign.

It's a political sign.

You would cite the property owner on whose property that sign exists. They are in violation of having the sign, whether it's a political sign or it's a sign that says, our village manager is amazing. It doesn't matter what the content of the sign is.

You are citing the owner of the property who did not realize that that sign was placed on their property. Key word. He did not realize that sign was placed on his property originally. And because the property is up for sale and it has gone through God knows how many flippings, it's still there.

Do we give a warning or something? Because it also happened with political signs local. People left their signs or overnight there were signs and bonds.

We're talking about signs in general. Correct, that's what I'm saying.

Is there going to be a warning? Because a homeowner, I was told by many homeowners, I didn't know that sign was there. I woke up and there's a sign in my yard. So I'm wondering, I mean, I don't want somebody to get fined on something that they didn't even give permission to do, but they didn't want to be in control.

You call the candidate and you bitch him out.

No, that's not my job.

I don't want to be the person.

That's how you find the owners. The owners feel the same way.

I found Gorin's son in my yard and I was backing him at that race and I called him up and I gave him an earful.

But a lot of people feel, you are a commissioner doing that or a neighbor who knows a lot of people.

The average person doesn't.

All I'm saying is, how do we protect those people? who, like you're saying, may not be aware of a sign.

Do we give a warning or something? I'm sure we can give a warning and I'm sure that we can find a way to administratively reach out to the candidates and say, hey, your sign has been here for a year and your judicial race was a year ago. Come get your sign. And I'm sure we can do that.

Listen, it's not much different than any other code violation. We usually try to go to the occupant or the owner and say, hey, you got this problem. You resolve it. So only when you get cited, you don't want to take care of it.

There's any other code? Exciting when we go out.

Good evening. Orlando, Code Enforcement Director. I'd love to see where that sign was because I didn't see a sign there for a year. There's no way.

On the side of MG's property that's facing Continuum East. Okay.

It wasn't visible from the right of way.

It was visible when you were driving west on the causeway.

Man, so what I would do, I was surprised to hear that. So our procedure was, especially on the main thoroughfare here, to address your comment, Commissioner Acosta, private property, If a sign appears in your yard, you have all the right to remove it. That's your property. Throw it out. What I always did here on the main thoroughfare is when I would see whoever from Dade County, this, that, I would call that property owner because I pretty much have everybody's contact for all these lots. And I'd ask them, hey, did you allow so-and-so? to put these signs on your property. They'd say, no, do you mind if I remove it? Absolutely have at it. And in fact, anytime you see one, they remove it because they haven't given anybody authority. The last election we had, a few people reached out, say, hey, on my property, I'm allowing this person to put a sign, this and that. So that's how we do it. I like to call the owner, ask them if they gave consent, because if they do, they could put it. But if not, I like to remove them. Me and Maria go out and take them off.

Now, political signs. Because we're getting close to political period. Are they allowed on the city easement on your property?

They're allowed on your property.

But it's city easement. The city has an easement of X number of feet in the front of my house. So that would be right away.

It wouldn't be allowed on the right of way, right?

It's still your property. Just because the city has an easement, it's an easement. It doesn't mean that the property is not yours.

So that means it's allowed. Oh, you're saying like an FPL easement or something?

No. Is there a situation on North Bay Island where the city has an easement over the first five feet beyond the right-of-way? Fifteen feet.

It's more than that.

Fifteen feet.

Fifteen feet. So within the first 15 feet of private property, if it's the city's easement, what is the easement for?

It's not an easement. That is actual city...

Sidewalks, if you want to put in sidewalks.

So is it an easement or is it title? There's a difference between having ownership and an easement interest.

The right-of-way that they're speaking of is city-owned right-of-way. It is not an easement. Even though, you see, you've got the edge of the road.

Yeah.

And then you've got 15 feet from the edge of the road that is considered swell. That is owned by the city that the abutting property owner is responsible for maintaining and keeping the grass cut and all that kind of stuff. Okay. But it is not an easement for you.

I think that if we're forcing property owners to keep the signs outside of that swale, we're going to have an enforcement problem because we're going to end up enforcing against one person and not against another. And it requires people to go out there and measure. And I don't.

I'll go further with you. And I've done this. Roadways are supposed to be 20 feet wide, correct? We measured, and you normally, code enforcement, not you, code enforcement measures from the center of the road to 15 feet in. My roadway is 19 feet wide. It's not 20 feet wide. Don't ask me whether it's my property or the property from the first circle of the street. The grass has grown into it. It's only 19 feet wide. You cannot measure from the center of the road because it's no longer 20 feet wide. Senator, the road is open. This cannot be happening.

We cannot be citing people for the location within their property line.

I remember hearing these nightmare stories with Maria and Maurice. And actually, Tim would assist. He'd go out there with the roller and then measuring how many feet.

and if it's off by six inches you're following the owner you gotta pull your sign back a lot of property owners now have um privacy walls and fences and gates and you know if they want to put their vote for me sign not me literally but if they want to put their vote for somebody's sign in front of that fence or wall or gate they should have the right to do it so thank you

So, Mayor, to that point, the slide that you have, and it's up on the screen now, regarding Section 11.7 and the temporary signs, you'll see here, and again, I don't know the origin of some of these recommendations, so I don't necessarily agree with these. There was a war sign.

There was a sign war here for many years. And you're only allowed three signs of X amount of size.

Correct. Correct. And so you have that on the screen. For some reason, there was a proposal to reduce that signage allotment from the maximum number of signs allowed per parcel to per frontage and to reduce it from three signs per parcel to one per frontage, which would, of course, negatively impact interior lots that only have one frontage. Um, so I, I think I know you all well enough to know that that's not a recommendation you would be supportive of. Um, but you know, what is the right number?

There is no right number. Reason being, if we have three seats up for election and I want to put a sign up for each one of those seats, I cannot put up a sign for any other race, whether it's neighboring community. state, county, or federal. Or your for sale sign or your flag. I need to know that.

Because the flag counts as a sign now. So now you have a sign for sale.

You have a flag. That's it. You're done. One of the things that we did in another community was remember your temporary signs are not just what we traditionally refer to as political signs. It's not just the campaign signs. It's not vote for state rep so and so. It's not just that. It's the for sale. It's the flags. It's a beautiful day. Have a nice day. All of that counts.

It's a sign.

All of that counts as a sign.

A flag counts as a sign? Yes.

According to this new law, yes. Yes.

I thought you were allowed to have a flag in your house.

It's exempt. It's an It's exempt under your code, but it still counts as a sign.

Yeah.

I understand, but it's not regulated. You can have as many of them as you want.

Well, technically you are regulating it because now you have a limit of how many of those you can have.

It's quite literally exempt from the regulations. Does that know what you said?

It's exempt. I will confirm that.

4th of July I can't have my flag because I have political I'm just thinking the real estate signs you know how does that affect it's a big deal for us let me come back to that one because I don't want to lose yes we just opened the focus but I'm going to make a note to look at flags and how many count

Yeah. I mean, I'm a political person that puts science all over the place.

I get it.

I get it. Poor Osvaldo and I have had this argument now for God knows how many years.

I know.

I know. I think that we talked about this in my briefing. Yes.

And that was a decade ago in my brain. So did we talk about separate? We talked about the separation.

That's exactly what I'm saying. So because you can't distinguish... on what the sign says, right? You can't say, oh, it says have a nice day as opposed to vote for so and so. We can limit the number of signs. We can impose that type of restriction. What we've done in some other communities is we have provided for additional signage prior to a specific event. And so we can say prior to a general election for however long you provide prior to that election and after. you can have additional signage. We want to give you additional speech rights and we can do that for a limited period of time. And then for the rest of the year, you're capped at, and I'm going to revert back to what your code currently says of three signs per parcel. How many? Currently you have three per parcel in single family.

I mean, because currently I have two. I have a long sign and I have the police signed it, you made it.

Kenny made it, but yeah.

So I have those two, at least.

Yeah, I am in favor of... unlimited temporary signs for a period of time before an event and that would be the event would be you know an election right because i if i want to support candidates during a primary and then i want to support candidates during a general and i want to support candidates in a runoff i don't want the fixed amount of time to impact me it should be tied to an election but i want to be really strict about what happens after the election i don't want it to be like a three-month grace period like you need to take your sign down and move on with your life i do that once

So with your permission, what I'll do is for second reading, I'll come back with some language to provide for enhanced speech prior to an election. Are you comfortable with the three signs per parcel for single family?

It just depends on how the flag counts.

Yeah. And also for real estate signs. I mean, you have a real estate sign.

I already have the three signs up. So we come up with a sign supporting whatever. I can't put it up.

Like we have the water level rising signs that we give homeowners after the park event. So that's one sign right there. Some people have a flag. I mean, I don't know. I think this is an interesting dynamic. Okay.

Yeah, sign code is fun.

I'd like to make a motion to move this ordinance on first reading.

Great. Madam Village Attorney Clerk. Please call the roll.

This is 12A. All right. Doing double duty here tonight.

Commissioner Darrow. Yes.

Vice Mayor Cook. Yes. Commissioner Acosta. Yes. Commissioner Schiavone. Yes.

Get with it. Vote passes unanimously. Services. In direction of the village of solid. It is a 7.

Okay.

Well, this is the item that I think the public is paying the most attention to, so it's really important. All right. Okay, discussion and direction on the village's solid waste services. Okay, we had a workshop. We had a commission meeting. Steve Buckland and Frank have made remarks on the record and presentations. Commissioner Acosta hosted two community meetings outside on a Sunday. I want to give you a lot of credit for that. Thank you very much for doing that. We're responding. Hi, everybody on Facebook. We're responding to power outages across North Bay Village. You may be able to hear NBVPD in the background. They're at a rescue. And Commissioner Trevone is on the phone with Florida Power and Light. This is just really wholesome. Grateful to be here with all of you.

Okay.

That was Chelsea. Okay.

24-7.

So back to discussion item 14A, discussion and direction on the village of solid waste services. We have had a lot of public engagement on this. Do you mind taking that just briefly off the dais? Okay. Thanks. I am of the mind that a lot more public engagement needs to happen on this. I think that there needs to be full exploration of the costs associated with permitting the warehouse to store our vehicles. We need to have that number. Residents have been asking why can't we just use the warehouse first. What?

That was Mandy. The two main people of FPL.

Will you put your mic on? Will you put your mic on?

How many trucks do we have?

Four.

Hang on, hang on, hang on.

That was Chelsea and Mandy Fernandez. or two top people from FPL that are looking into it, they'll be calling back.

Okay. All right. So a lot of residents are asking for the numbers and the timeline and what it will take to permit the warehouse in Little River for storage of basically waste hauler trucks. And even though I have insight into that because of my job, and I personally have an appreciation of how extraordinarily difficult it will be, we still need to present that information to the voters. That's one thing I will say. And I think there are a lot of really good questions about the costs. One thing I don't think people understand is how much it will cost to continue operating Public works are solid waste through the village. I think those numbers need to be more clear. So I think we need to create a 1 page. Very, very simple fact sheet, but doesn't focus exclusively on the costs. It includes costs as points of information. But I think 1 of the most important facts that we need to be circulating very, very clearly is that our employees are not going anywhere. So I think a lot more public engagement is needed on this. A fact sheet, an in-depth email to residents. I would like to actually draft something from the office of the mayor summarizing this and send an email on my own behalf. And I'm happy to do that separately or whatever. So that's one thing. We need more public engagement and more public communication. I also want to just weigh in because there was a lot of conversation at our last commission meeting about putting this on the ballot. I want to be very clear that I am not in favor of putting this question on the ballot for two primary reasons. The first is a very practical and important reason, which is when we put something on the ballot, we gag ourselves. We become prohibited from lobbying, advocating, persuading, and educating the community about what is on the ballot, right? We can't educate on ballot referenda.

You can educate. You cannot spend public funds. so you are able to educate you are each individually able to go out there and explain to the voters what's going on you're able to conduct town halls workshops community meetings whatever you want to call it we can't do that with staff if we can't spend public funds i can't have steve there on a weekend you can do it in response to inquiries so the statute was changed in 2022 In the past, we were able to send mailers and hire marketing companies who would send mailers that were factual, but you are no longer allowed to do that. However, cities are doing education sessions. They are responding via social media to inquiries that are posed. You're just prohibited from spending public funds on sending including factual information to the voters.

That might be true. It's very in the weeds. It still doesn't negate my point that we are limiting our own ability to engage on this issue as soon as we decide to put it on the ballot. And the other reason is because I think that we shouldn't kick important decisions to the voters just because they're important decisions. We are all here more often than just once a month for these commission meetings. We are all here on a regular basis, engaging in the business of the city. We have a vantage point and a tremendous amount of information that guides how we make decisions. which is not to say that our voters cannot make intelligent decisions. Of course they can, but they don't have all of the opportunities to digest the information that we do. And they certainly don't have access to the full scope of the big picture. And again, that's not because they're not trying. It's just the reality of the situation. So I would prefer for the five of us to vote on this issue, not today, But I would prefer for us to vote on this issue, period.

Madam Mayor, I'd like to also add to what you're saying. On a ballot, only the registered voter has the capability and possibility of voting. Out of the community of 8,500 residents, we have about 4,000 registered voters, of which, if we're lucky, we get 2,000 votes. So we have one quarter of our population making the decision. We don't have the whole city making the decision. And we cannot do a vote and open it to every resident.

I agree with you completely. Yeah. Okay, so I, you know, I sort of outlined my expectations in terms of public engagement and public communication. What questions do you guys have at this point?

I'm sorry.

I just had a basic one. We had four. Was it answered that there's four public waste vehicles? How many?

Least. Least, yeah.

Steve Buckland, Public Works Director. We have two trucks that we have leased, and that's what's been in operation now. We still own our two old trucks, but on a daily basis, we have two in operation.

Okay.

One of the things the residents are asking, when I have had conversations with them, is what is the cost of a sanitation truck, number one? whether it's purchased or whether it's leased. And what I try to say to them is we need three trucks. It's going to cost this much money. I roughly come to an estimate of $800,000 per truck, roughly based on what the HVAC cost us, maybe even more. And then we need to hire employees. We don't have the employees. We have four public worker employees. We're constantly going to day workers. Some are good. Some are excellent. But because of their personal records, we can't hire them. I wish we could hire them. It's true. Yeah.

And we have hired some of them because of that excellent work.

You know, so we're caught. We have to get these figures out to them. Hey, you want to keep sanitation? Just realize we have to spend tomorrow. For argument's sake, I'm going to come with a figure of $3 million, which will raise your price to... This much. And when they see that number, they're going to digest it and they're going to realize that we're working in the best interest of the village. Not our own personal interest. It's the interest of the village.

I did. There was a question there. So, um, I can say that I am, uh, I have actually, uh, started working on the, uh, on the feasibility analysis in a little bit further detail. Um, I have, uh, calculating for adding, and when we add another truck and add the employees that would have to operate it, um, the extra cost that the different line items in our budget would increase. So I'm working on that, getting a more detailed analysis.

Can I ask you something, Steve? A certificate of use for a solid waste hauler is essentially what we would need to obtain from the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County Durham, correct?

Yes.

Does a solid waste hauler parking, does that fall within the state's regulatory framework for resource recovery management facility?

I'm reaching out to Durham to see exactly what's going to be required of us if they will allow it to happen.

Okay. I am very interested in seeing the response from Durham about the permitting requirements. Obviously, that's going to really inform. And again, it's not simply the cost of pursuing such a permit. It is the extraordinary staff time and time in general that would go into that construction project. Obviously, the money is important, but with our limited resources and the volume of capital projects that we are currently tackling, It feels incredibly cumbersome to me. But I need the residents to have access to that information so that they can also understand, even if they disagree with me. I need them to be able to understand where I'm coming from.

And there are also some... regulatory requirements of like steam cleaning the truck recovering the trash juice call it whatever you call it uh and getting rid of it adequately you know all these are costs that are gonna that are unsurmountable especially when we have a shortage right now in building our city hall yeah yeah

Yeah, you got a lot of feedback. Please take it away.

So I have some questions that Stephen actually answered partially.

Somebody's on the way now from FTL.

One of those was how would the franchise fees be calculated? And you're going to look into that.

I've got that answer. The franchise fee from a Corals Gable contract was set by the city of Corals Gables.

So how are we going to... We also have a...

If we follow their contract, then we will follow the same thing.

So the reason why I'm asking that is because we also have in our own about franchise fees, right?

I haven't looked at that particular aspect of the Coral Gables contract, but I don't know that we would be adopting their franchise.

No, I don't think so neither. Because we have our own. requirements for franchise fees, correct? And if there's going to be the same company being used for both residential and commercial, that's all needs to be considered when we talk about franchise fees. And that's why I was asking you, how are we calculating? We cannot just copycat what the city of Correguebos is doing because we have our own franchise fee regulations here. Like they do. That's why they use it in their contract. I'm also wondering about their in-kind services from what they specified in that contract, which I requested a copy. I'm hoping to get a copy of that actual contract so I can review it. One of the things was in-kind services that I was very curious about. How would that work? You're going by just their contract or are we going by what we... How do we negotiate the in-kind services?

We've already negotiated that our... dumpsters will be serviced at no cost. Any dumpsters at any village facility would be serviced at no cost.

What about the condominiums?

They pay for their garbage service.

Okay, so that doesn't include the condominiums dumpster. When it needs to be repaired, removed, or exchanged, that doesn't include that into it? How does that work?

The contractor supplies the dumpsters for the condominiums and the commercial accounts, except for compactors.

Correct.

So compactors, then the owner has to supply those dumpsters.

And for replacements of them, they also do that?

They repair or replace them as needed.

Containers, repairs, exchanges. Yes. Yeah, I would like to. So the cleanup of the dumpsters and maintenance of the dumpsters are their in-kind services, is what you're saying. What are the requirements for the age of the dumpsters, condition, truck service into the village? And you say here the dumpsters do not have model years, but are repaired or replaced as needed. CNG trucks are proposed as a more environmentally friendly option to diesel with the age to be negotiated. And then waste management is required to maintain the fleet and safe and efficient operating standards, right? I also asked you about, would they provide plastic garbage bins or continue to use the old ones that we have? And you answered single family homes currently provide their own bins?

Yes.

And then the contractable supply, I guess. Yes.

Well, we could, if the homeowners would prefer to keep their bins, we could keep it that way. Or we could follow the Coral Gravels contract where they were base bands, but would provide those bins. Um, I think it's be more uniform that way, but that again, that's a decision that you guys would need to make. And, uh, As far as replacing damaged or broken bins, if waste management supplies those, then they would replace them as needed.

Now, when I looked at that one sheet that you helped us with, that you're holding right there, actually, the legal-sized one, you show the cost of future expenses for both the contract with Waste Management and our current, if we were to keep our own numbers, which we don't even have real numbers yet. We have our own estimate for what I'm hearing. We don't have some of the answers. So I noticed that when we look at the one-year renewals, So the contract is that we're piggy bank only has a three one year renewals remaining. So what we were with the assumptions for the year four and five in the spreadsheet, it looks like the waste management rate goes up in a normal way because we know inflation and cost and all of that. But the one that is associated with our personal expenses, it's a much bigger difference year to year. And I'm not understanding why.

Well, some of those I was, like I said, I'm redoing this, and I'm going to be changing some of that, how that's calculated. I was covering additional, like the fuel went up 10%, but that was because we were going to have to add another truck.

Okay.

So that's going to be additional fuel that happens, additional maintenance that happens. So I've actually taken it back down to a normal CPI and calculated for adding in that third truck, adding in those two more employees and adding in the additional maintenance for each vehicle.

Also, when we talk about the commercial multifamily and single family homes in the information that I've seen so far, and this is something that the neighbors also were asking about. When we see the cost, how it's divided right now for single family homes and multifamily, it's pretty okay. But when it comes to the Coral Gables contract, the cost for businesses goes up and their contract, it supplements a lot of the costs by charging it to the businesses. Is that something that we're also implementing as the Coral Gables contract or we're not?

I don't really understand what you're trying to mean there.

So there's a charge collection for my business. The restaurant is very different than a multifamily home. And then there's also single family homes. The contract that you're reviewing has those stipulations and those fees that What Coral Gables was trying to do was compensate some of that cost and passing it on to the businesses. So I'm wondering if that's something that we're also doing.

Well, I don't know if that's what Coral Gables was contemplating when they came up with those rates or not. But I just know that the rates that they're being charged for the commercial and multifamily is a per cubic yard rate.

Okay, so we're not passing any costs extra to a business owner rather than a single family home or a multifamily. That's all I want to make sure. Okay, good. The other thing, people were very, and this is not to you, Stephen, of course, this is like people were upset just in general from the planning standpoint from the village, right? The moment that we figured out we need to relocate the public service, public works department and dispatcher, obviously it's like the fire department. When we relocated, I'm thinking that we're going to build a new fire station, right? what one of these I'm trying to explain to the residents is that we're working with what we have in front of us right now. This is, this is the cards that we've been dealt. Right. And I think a lot of that, I don't want to say negativity, but that thing that is kind of holding people back sometimes I think is that thought of, okay, so these are costs that we all knew it was going to happen. We were going to, endure right this is not a surprise to anyone that the garbage department was going to need a place that they were going to have to use trucks and they were going to have to have staff we don't we obviously know the city's growing so we know that we're going to need more staff so none of these things sound like a good reason for us in their mind to switch to a vendor when these are things that we should either be more proactive or preventive whether it's It's too late. You know, it is what it is. You know, that's something else. But those are some of the feedbacks that I receive.

I think it's an interesting point, you know, in terms of how they perceive this decision being made and planned for versus what in reality took place. And the reality is, is that, I mean, I've known since the beginning of my time on the commission in 2020 that if not before, that the public works facility on Galleon Street needed to be demolished.

Correct.

So that was something I knew from 2020. And then as soon as we started talking about a community center, which was around 2022, the question came up in that discussion, what are we going to do about public works? And there was a search for an alternative public works location that took several years and obviously concluded recently under this administration when we closed the deal and got the warehouse facility in Little River. The environmental cleanup on the site has been known about since 2023. And I think the magnitude of the pollution on the site, that was maybe unknown. But the bottom line is that We are a space-constrained community, the same way that Surfside, Bell Harbor, Bay Harbor, and even Miami Beach is a space-constrained community. Miami Beach is so space-constrained that they kicked the can down the road on building a new fire station for five years. First, they were going to build the fire station near Flamingo Park. Then the residents around Flamingo Park showed up en masse and said absolutely not to a fire station in their neighborhood. So the alternative location became the South Shore Community Center. And then, because the South Shore Community Center was built by Morris Lapidus and was a historically relevant structure, the historic preservation community came out en masse and said absolutely not to a fire station at the South Shore Community Center. And all the while, the men and women of the Miami Beach Fire Department we're waiting and waiting and waiting for their modern facility. And finally, this year, the Miami Beach Commission approved construction of a new fire station at the South Shore Community Center. So that's just all to say we have very, very limited space. And even though there are things that this village absolutely needs, We can't have all of those things within the jurisdictional limits of our city. And the thing that we're talking about now, and most of the residents who are emailing me live on North Bay Island.

Treasure Island is also feeling it.

along i haven't really received they might not email you but god knows they reach out well i know that there are a handful of residents but it's can i speak a little bit about the history because you're forgetting before that well just just to conclude my point is we were operating a hollow parking facility in the middle of a residential neighborhood and i don't think

There are things that we're overlooking also, not only us, but our residents are overlooking. First of all, in 2018, a group of residents wanted to build a pool at the public works facility. That's what they wanted the park for, a pool, because we needed a pool at City Hall when Connie was mayor, and we didn't give them the pool at City Hall. That died. It became a dog park. They wanted a pool there in 2018. If it wasn't for that man and Carlos Jimenez, who was then mayor, we would have lost our fire station. Our fire station would have been in Miami Shores. And God forbid there's a fire, try to cross that frickin' bridge. Okay? These are the things our residents do not know and do not understand.

Correct. But what people hear is four years ago, six years ago, we've all been aware of this. I'm not telling you whether I agree or disagree. I'm just telling you this is the feedback that we keep getting.

And when we try to raise the taxes, we have a stadium full of people yelling at us that they don't want the taxes raised. They want the taxes lowered. So we lower the taxes. The ad valorem taxes doesn't cover crap. Let's be realistic. The envelope of taxes doesn't come all of it to North Bay Village. We get a fraction of it. It goes towards the county. It goes for water facilities. It goes for fire station. It goes everywhere except to North Bay Village. So we need to raise taxes. If we raise taxes, we're the bad people. If we get rid of the fire station, we're the bad people. If we get public works now contracted out, we're the bad people. We're the bad people no matter what.

Well, you can answer that to people without the feedback. We also have people asking about, they were saying the voting you went over, your opinion on putting it on the ballot or not putting it on the ballot, the thought of passing this buck years and years of let's think about it. It's another comment that I heard a lot. The other thing is the percentage of this expense towards our budgeting, what that percentage is. And I think the bottom line is that we still need more time on this topic.

So we're passing the buck. If we don't act on it now, we have a choice. We can either lose our fire station and not build our city hall, which they'll hate us for. And I will hate you for it because we don't have a fire department. We don't have a fire rescue. Don't have a heart attack.

I am not, just to be clear, I am not suggesting that we kick the can down the road. We need to, I would prefer that we vote on this, you know, before the summer. I would like to vote on this before the summer. But I don't want to vote out tonight because we've requested additional information. We need additional information.

Yeah. And we have pretty much the additional information that we need. But I think we're all leaning. Well, I really haven't heard much from Andy or from Gorin to say we are all leaning, but we're leaning towards contracting it out. That's the only solution we really have unless we want to raise the taxes.

I'm not leaning on that. You're not leaning on that? No. I still need a lot more answers before I can say that. I don't want to be quoted as I'm leaning towards one side or the other. I'm not.

Well, let me tell you, if we don't do it, we have to raise taxes.

We're going to have to raise taxes for other reasons.

And I'm not talking about two millage points.

All right.

It actually wouldn't be raising taxes necessarily. It would be raising the utility fee that goes directly to this service. But it's a tax anyway. Yeah, I know, I know.

One of the things that I did at the end of the meeting for every group, I asked them to raise their hands if they're willing to We don't know the amount of money, but we're talking about it's going to cost you money out of your pocket. Are you willing to pay out of pocket for this? And everybody was, to a certain degree, of course. So that's kind of like what we're getting. I don't think people have the real understanding, and I don't have the real understanding of what that cost would be yet. That was my feedback.

I got feedback that most people don't, understand that we're keeping all of our staff, that they're still going to see everybody in the community like they are. And I think that's something that we need to communicate very, very clearly that we're keeping all of our staff. I think we also need to communicate that we have all of these other needs that our village needs. Public works operations have to be able to shift to meet the modern needs of this village, which is much more stormwater and curb and gutter and drainage clean out much, much, much more. We have additional parks that are going to need all kinds of grounds and maintenance and improvements and fixing. There are items across the village that I could think of today off the top of my head that need more attention to be up to the standards that our residents expect. So all of these needs exist and our public works employees exist to meet those needs. It's just this...

Well, we don't know for that many services as a village. So I understand we have the priority list, but there's also people are looking at it at this and direct services that we're receiving that only our village can provide to us. Garbage and police. Everything else we're contracting out. Right. So. That's part of the commentary. It's, you know, their concern is like, well, here is one service, which one of the things that I was open to was that thought about maybe having a dual service where the single family home owners still have the same service they have. And then we move on to the commercial. I mean, Crow Gables did that to a small restricted area where they still service their owners because the neighbors didn't want to change. This is a very personal thing.

The only single family homeowner on this status right now is me. How many times do I see the garbage people, other than on my ring camera, going to pick up my garbage?

And I live in a condo and I see them pretty much every time they're there.

Me too.

I don't see them.

I do. And I know when they come, but I'm not going to go out.

Hey, how you doing? That's up to you. There's many different people with different lifestyles. It's just what it is. I've even had moms that tell me from Moda how happy they are with the service because they're out there early in the morning with their babies. And they see the guys. They wave at them. So there is interaction. I mean, I don't think that's the question here.

But the interaction will happen with whomever is picking up the garbage anyway.

I'm just telling you my feedback from all this gathering for people talking. And that does not say whether I'm leaning. It's just telling you the questions that we're having. And I agree 100%. We have to be diligent about bringing the information to us as fast as possible to make this decision if it has to be done before the summer. or if it's actually passed on to the voters.

Steven, you said you were working on a revised cost analysis or comparison? Yes, sir. Okay. When do you think that would be complete?

It depends on how in-depth we want to go. I've got a rough... rough draft of it right now i would say you know give me a couple weeks you know give me a couple weeks to to take any consideration some of these other things that are being mentioned for me i'll i'll take a better look at it at that point and i'll be able to make my decision then would you be able to once you have your final draft your new final job to be able to tell us

The increase to single-family homes will be this. The increase to multifamily homes, the average, obviously, will be this. And the increase to businesses will be...

I have that information.

Because once a single-family homeowner, which are the ones that are screaming bloody murder right now the most, sees what the increase will be if we keep it in-house and we spend the money we need to spend to have the proper department...

And it should include the full cost of permitting the hauler facility.

Everything.

Yeah.

You know, the steamers, the pit, the juju juice.

And we don't know yet if that can be done. And we are very challenged with space.

And the lifespan of the trucks.

Putting three trucks over there, garbage trucks, and they couldn't go inside. They'd have to be outside. We've got other vehicles that we have to park there as well.

By the way, we got a request from the developer across the street to paint the building. What building? The warehouse.