Village Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to order. I'd like to call that with. I'm so sorry. Good evening. I'd like to call to order this budget workshop Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026 at 7 p.m. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Mayor Karen Cunningham.

Present.

Vice Mayor Mark Meriter.

Present.

Council Member Patrick Fiore. Present. Council Member Steve Cody.

Here.

Council Member Marsha Mattson.

Here.

Quorum is met.

Invocation, Court Member Fiore.

Thank you. If we could all bow our heads in prayer, tonight's Bible verse reading is from Amos, Book of Amos, Chapter 5, Verse 24. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream. Amen. Amen.

Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Let's give a nice round of applause for Amaya Williams. She is a student at Miami Palmetto Senior High, and she is interning with Village Manager Nick Marano and Sustainability and Resiliency Coordinator Andrea Candelaria. Glad to have you here, Amaya. So at this time, we'll take requests, petitions, and public comments. Madam Clerk, do we have any requests, petitions, and public comments by form?

There are no comments submitted by form.

Very good. Then we'll go ahead and close, request petitions and public comments. And we'll move right into fiscal year 2026, budget estimates and impacts on fiscal year 2026, 2027, budget planning and forecasting. It's all yours, Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Communications, if you could put my presentation up, please. Thank you. Let me just very briefly go over what we're gonna do tonight. I'm gonna do an overview presentation. I did change it a little bit from what was originally published with the agenda. I emailed that presentation out to the village council you should each also have a hard copy of that presentation I'm about to give tonight. For any residents here in the room, we also have hard copies available up right next to the village clerk here. So again, I'm going to go through my presentation. I'm happy to answer questions either as they come up or at the end, whatever you would prefer. And then I will be followed by the department directors in the much larger brief, and we'll go through that. So if there are no questions, let me start. So let me kind of just set the table of what we're doing here tonight. If you look on the left, you've got the total budget for the village. It's comprised of a couple of different major funds. You've got the general fund, which as the name would imply, funds the majority of village operations. It funds your police, it funds your parks, it funds all of general government. For example, all of us up here in the dais tonight, the village hall, all the agencies here in village hall, with the exception of the building department, are funded through the general fund. I'm going to go through a little bit more detail this evening on things like where does the money come from and where does the money go. The village has a number of special revenue funds, mainly in the public works and in the building department, in the public works department and in the building department. Things based on either grants, transportation, transit, or again, buildings. We also have capital transfers. That funds our annual capital improvement project, and those dollars can come from a variety of sources. They can come from the general fund directly. They can be made up of a mixture of the general fund and special revenue funds. They could be grants. But again, the capital transfers, funds, capital projects, these are one-time expenditure of funds that generally are going to produce a durable project or a durable asset for the village. A new building, for example. So let me proceed and talk about people. No surprise, we're a local government entity Our largest expenses are all people related. I want to draw your attention to the rightmost shaded green column here. This is what the staffing level is that I will be proposing for fiscal year 27. And I want to drop down to the total numbers here. On the left side, you'll see the different village departments. So again, I'm looking at this rightmost column here. We're actually looking at reducing our total staffing level from 68 full-time employees to 62 full-time employees. We're going to convert a couple of those to part-time employees. I have kept a number of these vacant for actually going on two years now. All of these positions have been kept vacant throughout this current fiscal year, and that's helped the village be able to balance our numbers and meet our budget requirements for the fiscal year. I really don't see a scenario in the future where the village will be able to rehire that number of employees. So instead of just keeping numbers on the books when I'm proposing for fiscal year 27, is to better reflect the reality here of 62 full-time and 24 part-time employees. Dropping down, you'll also see we have a number of contract positions. Village attorney counts as one. The village or the Palmetto Bay Municipal District of the Sheriff's Office counts for 49 positions. So we have a total of 50 contract positions within the village as well. Let me continue on. I'd like to draw your attention to the leftmost pie chart. This is all the revenue sources coming into the village. Again, this is our general fund. This is the main checking account, so to speak, that the village pays all of its bills with The largest, if you see this light blue slice of pie, that largest pie represents ad valorem taxes or property taxes, and that represents nearly half, 48%, of all general fund revenues. Utility taxes are the darker blue slice here on the bottom of the pie. That represents 17%. Franchise fees, 9%. This green slice in the top left quadrant represents intergovernmental revenue, 18%. What's intergovernmental revenue? Well, that's sales taxes. So if you look at sales taxes, franchise fees, utility taxes, and property taxes, they are the majority of the sources of revenue for your general fund. Going over to my right pie, where does that money go? Well, this year, over 53% of it was budgeted for public safety, for the Miami-Dade County, or I'm sorry, for the Palmetto Bay Municipal District of the Sheriff's Office, 53%. The second biggest slice goes to parks, 16%. This dark blue slice on the right here, general government, makes up 8%. General government are all the contracts that are common to two or more village departments. Everything from utility contracts to our electric bills, to IT support for the entire village, that all comes out of general government, and that represents about 8% of the expenditure. All your other village departments, to include facilities maintenance, then all come in at about 2% or 3%. Historically speaking, this bar chart shows you from 2008 through our 2026 budget year, this is what the revenue profile in nominal dollars looks like to the village. So here's 2008, the green represents property taxes and the blue represents all those other revenue sources that I spoke about. So you can see as we go from 2008 to 2026, how those revenue sources have grown over time. What's important is to factor in inflation. And when you factor in inflation, here's that same period of time from 2008 to 2026, you get a much different picture. the village took in just under $16 million in total revenue for the general fund. When you factor in the inflation rate on an annual basis for each one of these years, ending up here at 2026, the village is taking in roughly the same amount of money in 2026 than we did in 2008. And I think that's really important to understand. And let me put it in a different way that I think will make a lot more sense to people. If you could buy a product for $1 in 2008, that same product, if you're able to buy it today, would cost you $1.55. So it's important to look at the value of each of these dollars over the years as you evaluate how much money the village actually takes in and how much money the village actually spends on services for residents. So let's talk a little bit more detail about how the millage rate in Miami-Dade County gets divided up. The millage rate is the decimal, is the number that is used to compute how much property taxes an individual folio will pay. So if you took a dollar's worth of property taxes in Miami-Dade County, for each dollar that a resident here in the village pays, the village receives about 13 cents out of that. 87 cents of every dollar that a village resident pays goes to another source. And where does it go? Well, the vast majority of it goes to either the Miami-Dade School District or Miami-Dade County. This light blue slice is Miami-Dade County. This dark red slice is the school district. That's where the majority of the property taxes are going from the village of Palmetto Bay. This purple slice represents Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, and what's important to point out is every village property tax paying resident pays more in property taxes on an annual basis to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue than the village of Palmetto Bay and every dollar paid to the Village of Palmetto Bay also includes all of the police services for that resident. So just the fire department costs more money than all the services that the Village of Palmetto Bay pays, or the Village of Palmetto Bay provides. How does the village stack up against all the other municipalities and the unincorporated parts of Miami-Dade County? Well, if you look at the left part of this graph, this is about two mills right here. So here's the two-mill line, here's the village of Palmetto Bay, and here are all the remaining municipalities to the right in Miami-Dade County going up Biscayne Park is just under 10 mils. Opelika, over 9 mils. So again, Village Palmetto Bay currently is at 2.3018 mils. That makes the village one of the very lowest in Miami-Dade County. Historically, this is an important slide to kind of understand how the village was established, and what the service levels within the village were built at. If you look historically from 2004 through 2025, last summer, when we established the 2.3018 millage, you'll see that for roughly half the village's existence, we had about a 2.447 millage. And I think that's an important number to point out because the service level that the village developed was built around a 2.447. And if you remember my slide back here, when you factor in the time value of money, the revenue has been, again, over nearly a 20-year period here, the revenue has been surprisingly flat. So when you get back to this slide, our service delivery level was built at a 2.447 millage. Anything below that takes a great deal of work between the department directors, the police commander, the village manager, in order to meet not only the expectations of residents, but also be able to bring in your budget at least in the black and hopefully in a surplus situation every year. This year, effective on the 1st of July, Senate Bill 4F passed. The governor signed it in the law, so this is effective as of the 1st of July. the legislature changed how the village or how every taxing authority calculates not only their rollback millage rate, but then every level above that rollback rate. And I'm going to go through that very briefly because it's important that the village council understands this this evening. For fiscal year 26, You can see our taxable value in the village was $4.8 billion. For this coming fiscal year, the planning number that we have been given is $5.16 billion. That's an increase of nearly $300 million. We don't have the final number yet. We should get that on the 1st of July. So using the new method of calculating our rollback rate, the rollback rate, and again, let me define the rollback rate so everyone knows what that is. The rollback rate takes your new taxable value and calculates what would the millage rate be to produce the same amount of revenue that you had the year before. I want to be clear about that. It produces the same amount of revenue that was produced the prior year. That rate is 2.1802. Not to go into all the details. I'm happy to answer questions. I don't want to kind of slow the brief down. But the maximum millage under the new law that this council can approve with a three-vote majority is the rollback rate. It's 2.1802. So that means with a simple majority vote, three votes, you can't even maintain your current millage. You can only approve the rollback rate. Between 2.18 and 2.39, that requires a four-fifths vote of the village council. So you need a super majority to approve a millage up to 2.39. Anything above 2.3982 would require a unanimous vote of this body. And again, I would point out that the service delivery model was built on a 2.447 or so millage. We've been operating under that for a number of years. We've made it work. You know, we've kept positions vacant. I'm going to eliminate those positions. I'm going to get to our sheriff's office major here who has done a fantastic job of managing his budget as he has done every year. And the sheriff's office is going to come in significantly under budget. But at some point, there's no more slack left in the budget. I don't have any more slack to take up. And all of the budget presentations you're going to hear from the department directors this evening, if we were to price all of that out, it would require a millage above a 2.6. So again, based on the new law, a millage of 2.6 would require a unanimous vote of this body. And that is what you would truly need. And I'm gonna, on July 6th, when we present the maximum millage item, I'll go into much more detail. We'll have all of our numbers at that point. We don't have all of those numbers this evening. So I don't wanna go into that level of detail, but I just wanna point that out tonight. So as you hear the department directors, everything that we're projecting for next year would require a millage of just over 2.6. So how are we doing this current budget year? Well, these left two columns represent all your revenues. The first column is what was adopted in the budget. Second column represents what we think based on what we've been receiving throughout the year. This is where we think we're going to end up. Our revenue we're projecting is going to end up close to what we budgeted. That could change. Sales tax, I don't know if it was because of the conflict in Iran, but sales tax revenues have been lower than we thought they were going to be. So maybe there might be some recovery now. Maybe some people have put off some big expenditures, and we may see that number go up before the end of the fiscal year, or maybe not. But again, we're projecting our revenues are going to come in pretty close to what we budgeted. On the expenditure side, which is these rightmost two columns, you've got your adopted budget, and again, similar to revenue sources, where we estimate that we're going to end up All of your departments are going to come in at or below budget, with one exception. I'm going to talk about that in a moment. The bigger departments, parks, Director Carmona is going to come in under budget. And Major Rodriguez has done nothing short of a fantastic job. And I really want to thank you. not only on a professional level, but a personal level for your leadership and attention here. So your two biggest departments are coming in under budget. The one department that's coming in over is the village attorney. And as you remember, that this should not be a surprise, we did at the beginning of this budget year take all of the litigation expenses basically off the budget, and the council said, we're just going to pay that out of fund balance as we go. So let me go into a little bit more detail on that, because I've had a number of council members ask me to present this this evening. So if you look at legal, there's two main line items in our budget that make up what we spend on legal services, the vast majority. We do have some other legal built into planning and zoning, for example, but it's relatively small compared to these two larger line items. You have general legal. That represents your municipal legal. It's Lily sitting here this evening. the advice and recommendations that she and her partners and associates make throughout the year on ordinances, on resolutions, on other items, just your general municipal government type work. And then you have litigation reserve. At the beginning of the year, we originally projected about a million dollars for litigation reserve. We took that number off the books, and we decided we paid out of fund balance. So we're projecting that general legal is going to come in about budget, somewhere around what we budgeted. Litigation reserve, at this point, we're projecting $815,000. It could go up. And I think if it was a choice between would it be higher or lower than $815,000, At least tonight, I have to say, well, it'd probably be, if anything, if it's going to be higher, that would be much more likely. And then for next year, we're, but we would recommend a budget of 450 for general legal and a million for our litigation reserve. So where is the litigation reserve to date been spent in fiscal 26? These are dollars that we've spent. So the main litigation of the village is currently in, obviously has taken the lion's share, and you can see where the others are. If you're not familiar with this one name, it has been a long running code enforcement problem that we have been working on for literally the past seven years. So what are we looking at moving into fiscal 27? Again, when you look at the addition in, I'm sorry, didn't mean to do that, but if you look at the increase in our prior year taxable value, it represents about a $300 million increase. So the ad valorem collected from that would represent about $620,000 more than the current year at your current millage rate. When I look at all the other revenue sources, sales tax, utility tax, franchise fees, fees for services, all of those other general fund revenue sources, you can add about another $600,000. So that means that your revenue forecast for next year is about $1.2 million above the current year at your current millage rate. But I really need to end it on this note because I think it's important that if you look at a $1.2 million increase in revenue, the draft police budget that we received from the sheriff's office is $949,000 more than this year. And again, we are truly fortunate that we have a police commander who actively manages his budget and understands the fiscal constraints that the village is in, but the budget that I receive from Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office, I can't do anything about that. The sheriff gives us the budget, I have to use those numbers. We've been very fortunate, and this year is a good example of it, we're coming in, actually at this point, over a million dollars under budget, but I just want to caution you that, you know, one named storm would wipe that out, right? So that million dollar budget, the million dollars that the sheriff's municipal district is under would be completely wiped out with just one name storm. So we're fortunate, but we have to recognize that we're fortunate. We have a structural problem there because on an annual basis, the sheriff's office budget increases at a rate higher than all of our revenue sources grow. Even if you were to raise the millage rate, the budget that we get from the sheriff is increasing at a rate higher than your revenue sources are. The rest of your government departments, the other parts of the village government can all increase in value at or below what the historical growth in your other revenue sources are. So I just want to put that additional $1.2 million in context. And again, when you compare this year to next year, there's a million dollars of litigation reserves that you've also got to account for that was not in this budget. So when you add together just the increase in the sheriff budget and the litigation reserve, that's 1.9 million there. We haven't even talked about any of the other parts of village government that may need additional resources. We opened up a new building at Coral Reef Park, new recreation center, and the recreation part of it is what's important. It's a programming facility. We do We do events and we do classes, and we haven't hired any additional people for that. In fact, I've taken people from parks over the past two years. We're getting ready to build Veterans Park. During Phase 1, I don't think we're going to have an issue. We'll be able to maintain the landscaping and the hardscapes there. But certainly when we get to, like, Phase 2 of Veterans Park, we're going to have to talk about staffing. And right now, there's no room for that. So I put that out. I'll have additional, I'll have all the inputs that we'll need in order to have this discussion when we do the maximum millage presentation at the regular July meeting. I'm happy to answer questions about it, but until we really get all the inputs, the revenue numbers, it's really hard to have kind of a fact-based discussion. I can tell you what I think and I can bring Director Chin up and we can do estimates and things. So anyway, I put that out there. It's been a good budget year in terms of the execution from your department directors and the major And I don't want to lose sight of that. So I don't want to end it on a down note, but I really do need to make that point clear. So with that, Madam Mayor, members, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. How do you guys want to do this? We can do it one of two ways. We have all the department, your departments are going to present in just a couple minutes. Do you want to jot down your questions and then ask them all at the end? Or do you want to ask individual by individual? Starting with the manager. Okay. Anyone else? Okay. Then we'll start with the manager. Do we have questions for the manager? I have one quick question for you, and thank you for the presentation. The capital projects, obviously I know the obvious, the Veterans Park, what are some of the other capital projects that are lined up for this year? And I know I'm probably, I don't want to steal your thunder from the next presentation, but if you could just share a couple of them to kind of wrap everyone's head around it.

So are you talking about new projects that we'll be recommending?

Well, I guess new projects and maintenance.

So the only new project that I'm going to bring to you in terms of capital is going to be a new fence project for Coral Reef Park, and I think it's 250, whatever we estimate, correct? And I think that's one of the challenges. Again, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself until I have all the numbers. But we've enjoyed some very large capital. Our capital improvement project on an annual basis for really the past five years has been very healthy. I don't think we're going to have that next year, man. I think the only thing I'm going to bring to you that's new is going to be we want to replace all of that wood fencing around Coral Reef Park, that low wood fencing, constant maintenance problem. The new composite that we've put in in a couple of the areas is much better. That's really the only new project. I'd have to go through my list and tell you still what is to come, and I we can do that before the end of the evening. If you're looking for what we've already got in the hopper.

Yeah, or I can talk to you about it after. I'll just kind of, you know, I know what we spend money on. So capital projects is definitely one of them. And you're right, we've had a lot of big projects. I'm wondering what the projects are moving forward or what you foresee them. Yes, ma'am.

Just that one new one.

Okay, thank you. Other questions, Vice Mayor?

yeah so first of all thank you very much for the ongoing discussion that we've been having over the last couple of weeks about this but the main concern that i i have had and i'll state it publicly for the record tonight is that I was looking over our budget numbers and our reserves. My understanding is that we're at about $5 million. And then with our legal expenses coming up next year and other expenses that we're doing regarding capital projects and just the ongoing expenses of our operations, I'm wondering what the trajectory of our... fiscal reserves are going to be going into the future, and at what point, if ever, we could be in a position as a village where we're hitting that GFOA floor where we start getting, for lack of a better term, into dangerous territory with our fund balance.

Yeah, I mean, again, depending on where we land in terms of a millage this year, and I don't want to get too far over my skis, but There is a very significant ballot item on the November ballot. But within a couple of years, if our revenues are not keeping up with our structural requirements, then you've got to make it up one way or another. you could draw down your reserves. If you did that, probably within a couple of years, you'd be at about that GF, the Government Finance Officer Association recommended minimum of reserves, probably in a couple of years if you did it that way. I mean, you could cut expenses, you could do a combination of the two and extend it. I hope that answered your question.

yeah and the other the next question i have then is let's say so that's one option is draw to that down and in a couple years we'll eventually just in my view hit a wall the next option is cut expenses which my understanding is you've told me privately like look we can build a balanced budget and i appreciate that notion and that's really important to me that every budget that will pass as accounts will be balanced but the other side of it too is the expense side and from your own presentation the bulk of it is personnel So if we were, for example, to remain at our current rate or go lower because of the simple majority, what does that look like in terms of the potential cuts that we might be facing to our services or personnel?

Well, again, it would depend on the amount. Kind of hard to answer that in the abstract. And I want to be very honest, Vice Mayor, and I do appreciate the input I've gotten from you the collaborative nature. I know you're trying to find solutions here. I want to be really thoughtful about what I say because I don't want people to unnecessarily be fearful about their jobs.

But it is obviously like it's either we have to reevaluate our rate, we would have to reduce our personnel or three eventually draw down from reserves and those That seems to me like what the options are tonight, or I guess going forward with our budget, and it's going to be up to us as a council to figure out how to best address that going forward?

That's correct.

Thank you.

Anyone else with questions for the manager? All right. Mr. Manager? Oh, go ahead.

On the total revenue table, other income has gone up. 348%. It's gone from 317,000 to 871,000. What is that income and would you explain that?

So hopefully Director Chin will correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming a big chunk of that is the Diadem. Diadem paid the village $500,000 up front and we ran that as other income, correct? That's correct.

All right. No other questions? I'm going to let you call your directors. Yes.

Okay. I'm going to tee up the village clerk here, and we're going to get the next presentation loaded. Give me one moment, Madam Mayor. They're loading the presentation.

That little graphic that says loading.

OK. All right, Madam Clerk. You're up.

Good evening, honorable mayor, honorable vice mayor and members of the village council today. I am very proud to be given this opportunity to present the fiscal year 2027 budget overview for the office of the village clerk. Again, on behalf of myself and my colleagues, thank you for allowing us the opportunity to serve you and be here today to present during this budget workshop so that you have a glimpse of how we put your tax dollars into work. Now, the first slide in front of you regarding department overview. The office of the village clerk is one of three charter offices established by your village charter. In very short words, our office serves as a corporate secretary to the village council and advisory boards, maintains the official records and minutes of the village, administers public records requests, oversees records management, administers all your village elections and special elections, and provides passport acceptance services to the residents in the community. The department is currently staffed with two full-time employees and one part-time employee, Missy Arocha, as your village clerk, Melissa Dodge, administrative assistant to the village clerk, and Evelyn Baragon, passport acceptance agent. Although Melissa and Evelyn could not be here this evening, they truly wanted me to express to you how grateful and honored they are part to be of the village community. Palmetto Bay's team. Now please note that for the new fiscal year budget we would like to fill the position of the public record specialist which is already budgeted on our existing budget therefore for fiscal year 27 I am kindly asking that we move forward with filling that vacancy. For fiscal year 26 the adopted budget was approximately $442,928, representing only 1.5% of the village's general fund operating budget. That is a very small portion of the overall general fund chart. So in other words, I'm not spending too much of the general fund. We are also proud to report that passport acceptance services provide resident convenience and modest offsetting to the villages general front. Regarding the accomplishments of our existing fiscal year, the clerk's office continued advancing accessibility, transparency, and operational efficiency across the village in line with these strategic goals that were previously adopted by the council. Some of the key accomplishments include launching the eCommons feature, allowing residents to submit public comments online for council meetings, including updating the public comments by form feature that provides residents an opportunity to participate in their local government remotely. Fully leveraging Granicus Peak for digital agenda management and meeting administration to meet all your agenda deadlines. extended the agreement with Just FOIA, enhancing public records responsiveness through Just FOIA, where residents can submit other requests online if it is their option. The office also hosted two major resident service events, such as the first annual mobile unit services event with the Miami-Dade Clerk of Courts and the first annual passport fair in partnership with Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar's office. including advancing paperless operations through digital agenda packets, DocuSign approvals, laserfish archiving, and electronic voting for council meetings. The Office of the Village Clerk is very proud that these initiatives directly support the Village's goals of accessible government and long-term financial sustainability while remaining responsible for the management of taxpayer funds. Regarding the 2026 performance of the office, this slide illustrates the total of personnel and operating expenses for this department. And as for our current projections, the clerk's office is expected to finish fiscal year 2026, ready, under budget by approximately $19,700 or about 4.5% overall. To me, that is a huge accomplishment. I'm saving taxpayer funds. And I wanted to point that out. We're being fiscally responsible. Personnel expenses are trending by about 1.5% below budget and operating expenses are projected below budget, primarily due to lower than anticipated consulting and legal advertisement costs. Most importantly, this current fiscal year was an off-cycle election year. Therefore, no election costs were budgeted or incurred for our existing fiscal year. Now for our goals and strategic priorities for the new fiscal year budget. Looking ahead, the department has four primary priorities. One is to successfully administer the November 2026 general election and special election regarding the charter amendment proposals in coordination with the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections and through the easy vote election management system. Maintain strong public records performance and full compliance with Chapter 119 of the Florida Public Records Law as requests volumes continue to grow. Evaluate the new Chapter 50 website publication option for legal notices, which may provide future cost savings while preserving statutory compliance. Continue expanding LaserFISH, digital archiving and reducing reliance on paper storage and manual retrieval. work alongside staff and the members of the council to kick off the electronic voting feature that the council recently adopted with Granicus. Our primary focus remains on professionally representing you, the village council, and serving the stakeholders of our community through compliance, transparency, operational excellence, and efficient service delivery while spending money wisely. My next slide brings me into the requested budget for fiscal year 27. The proposed budget for this office is approximately 12.5% over the 2026 budget. The increase is driven only by two items. One is personnel expenses by about 3%. Reflecting COLA and merit adjustments that will be proposed by your village administration. And number two are The operating expenses increased by approximately $45,000. The $45,000 is a placeholder that will restore the election cost line for the November 2026 Village General and Special Election. All the other major operating lines remain unchanged, including legal advertisements and ordinance codification. While the percentage to you might seem a little significant, it is primarily driven by the restoration of election year costs that were not budgeted in our existing fiscal year budget. This is a standard adjustment associated with election cycles and not an increase on your ongoing operational expenditures. Now, this brings me to the risks and challenges of the office. There are three risks that we are monitoring. First is the November 2026 election cycle. This is a higher risk operational year because village races will appear on the same ballot as statewide constitutional amendments, including the homestead exemption amendment that could have fiscal implications for the village in the future. Missing statutory deadlines or underfunding election administration would create legal and reputational exposure. Restoring the 45,000 election line is essential to meeting those obligations. Second is the public records demand. Florida public records laws carry fee shifting provisions, meaning litigation costs can quickly exceed the cost of proactive compliance. And that was previously explained to you during the manager's presentation earlier regarding the village attorney's expenses. And our office continues using just FOIA and annual training to mitigate that risk. And third, institutional knowledge concentration. With only a current three-person office handling statutory functions such as elections, records retention, and meeting administration, study planning is very critical for our office. Now, in closing, the Office of the Clerk remains focused on delivering transparent, compliant, and efficient government services while supporting the council, residents, and all the village departments. You heard me say this last year during our budget workshop when I got up and did my presentation. I like to refer the village organization as a puzzle. That's because each department represents a very unique piece with its own responsibilities and expertise, but no single piece can complete the picture on its own. It is only when all departments work together that we are able to provide quality services to our residents. And as a fun fact before I end my presentation, the municipal clerk is one of the eldest positions in local government with a longstanding role in transparency, accountability, and public trust. As the office most frequently engages with residents, whether through meetings, elections, public records, passports, or our typical everyday inquiries, whether they are on the phone, by email, or in person, We recognize the responsibility that comes with serving as a bridge between local government and your beautiful community of Palmetto Bay. The fiscal year 2027 request is a maintenance budget with a necessary election year adjustment, and it allows the office to continue meeting its statutory responsibilities without increasing additional staffing levels. We remain committed to being mindful stewards of taxpayer dollars while maintaining the high level of service our residents have come to expect. On behalf of Melissa, Evelyn and myself from the department of the village clerk, we are very thankful for your time. And I also wanna thank our village manager who is the heart and soul of all the departments. Thank you. That concludes my presentation.

Thanks, Missy. Are there questions for the village clerk? Where did you get the heart and soul? I'm kidding.

Okay, and now for something completely different. I'd like to tee up the village building official, Dean Clements.

Thank you. Thanks, Missy. Thank you. all right because you're the heart and soul of the community you need the mic uh dean the mic good evening honorable mayor vice mayor council

My name is Dean Clements. I'm the building official for the village. The intent of this presentation is to walk through the department's operations, financial performance, accomplishments, budget priorities, while demonstrating accountability and alignment with the village's strategic goals. Remember, this is the intent, not a guarantee. Okay, give me the overview slide. Here we go. Let's start with what the department does and how it operates. Department's core mission is to protect public health, safety, and welfare by enforcing federal, state, and local building regulations through the building code and related agencies such as Miami-Dade County, Durham, and the Florida Department of Health. Core services we provide include permit issuance, plan review, inspections, floodplain regulation, code enforcement support, lien searches, records requests, and thanks to our clerks and operation manager, all-day premium quality customer service. We do all this with the staff that consists of 13 positions, five full-time, one part-time, six contractual plans examiners and inspectors, and one temporary clerk. This hybrid operational model relies on a balance of village employees and outsourced inspection and review services. The department operates within a special revenue fund and is fully self-funded, meaning there is no reliance on the general fund, and the revenue is generated primarily through permit fees. Fiscal year 26, adopted budget totals $2.3 million, with the largest component being personal health services followed by operating expenses. Approximately $600,000 in operating costs are tied to the contracted staff, which is a key structural element of how the department delivers services. Overall, this department is essential, self-sustaining, and service-driven, with a lean operational model supported by contracted services. Our accomplishment The council had strategic goals. So how did we do? We did great. We delivered. How about goal A, the accessible government? Our department significantly improved digital government services by expanding the online permitting platform. We processed roughly 2,900 permits and 3,400 applications electronically. which enhanced customer convenience and reduced in-person visits. Operational improvements reduced permit delays and resubmittal, thanks to better application standards and pre-construction coordination. What about goal B, financial stability? Despite staffing challenges, the department remained under budget and maintained high service levels, completing 10,937 inspections We kept review times stable. Financially, the department demonstrated a major turnaround by moving from a significant fiscal 24 deficit to a positive projected fund balance by fiscal 26 year end. How about goal D, responsible growth? Our team supported major development projects, including the shores at Palmetto Bay, ensuring compliance while facilitating responsible growth. Okay, what are our goals and direction? The top priority is implementing next generation digital permitting system, improving both customer service experience and internal efficiency. Next, the department aims to maintain financial stability, sustainability, I'm sorry, ensuring revenues and the fund balance remains positive. Another priority, the department will continue to focus on support for village capital improvement projects, ensuring timely permitting and inspections for infrastructure and parks development. We will also facilitate responsible community development, particularly major projects like the shores. And another goal is the department will also maintain high inspection service levels targeting over 10,900 inspections annually and an efficient turnaround times for permit applications. What's next year's financial plan? Okay, the total proposed budget is 2.38 million, representing about a 3.6% increase over fiscal 26. Increases due to personnel costs increased modestly by about 1.27%, mainly due to salary adjustments with no change in staffing levels. Operating expenses increased by 7.37% driven by higher software licensing and maintenance costs, additional temporary administrative support, and IT consulting and training investments. No capital outlay expenditures are proposed, indicating a focus on operational stability. This shows a controlled strategic increase primarily tied to technology and operational support needs. My last slide, risk and challenges. The high risk, and that's what I'm going to hit on tonight because I think it's important. The department relies on permit fee revenue. making it vulnerable to economic conditions, development trends, and interest rates. That doesn't seem to be a problem. We're not slowing down at all, that I see. But I'm working close with the manager. If we detect any downward trend, he'll be advised immediately. So he's up to speed. A slowdown could reduce revenues below the target levels, potentially creating deficits. Mitigation includes monitoring trends, maintaining reserves, and adjusting spending as needed. The big thing is a new legislation that's been proposed and approved that's gonna restructure our permit fee schedule. And I'm already working on that with consultants, the manager, other building officials, the county, because we're going to have to restructure. We'll no longer be able to calculate on like a percentage basis. Everything's going to a square foot. So I'm going to be bringing a new permit fee schedule before you for approval. Got to be in place, I believe, January 26th. The medium risk is like... my staff i'm constantly working with them if i have to renegotiate contracts or something to keep us in line but so far we're looking pretty good but i'm i don't have answers yet on this new fee schedule so sorry you don't have answers on what i didn't hear a new fee schedule a new fee schedule sorry it's to reduce the whole idea is to reduce cost for developers, make it more affordable for development. Hopefully, I should be okay with the new structure.

Very good. Thank you so much. Do you have questions for Vice Mayor?

Yeah, I'll just say, by the way, thank you very much this year, and also tomorrow there's walk-through Wednesday. Walk-through Wednesday. Yeah, come on in, walk in with your paperwork, walk out hopefully with an approved permit. I will say the reason why I care so deeply about your department specifically is I think it's the Aside from parks, it is the department that I think most residents interact with by far the most. If they're doing home renovation projects or anything that requires a permit, they have to go through your staff. And I'm wondering, with the proposed budget today, if you feel comfortable with that. And I've seen the goals, which is to increase service delivery in the turnaround times. I'm wondering if there's... Anything else that you would need in this budget cycle going forward to give your department the support it needs to ensure that residents can have a quick turnaround time with their permits and we can move in a direction where our residents will be able to get permits quickly?

I think we're budgeted. If we can get the software online, this coming up shortly, within the next couple of months, we should be okay. But you'll be the first to know if something happens.

Thank you. and my second question as well is the contracted positions i'm just wondering what the origin of that was historically speaking and i guess for a longer term conversation i want to know if this council would like to have it at some point is it worth keeping contracted positions versus moving them in-house i'm just wondering what the trade-offs were of that and where we landed with contracted versus staffed right now i'm comfortable because we have a good team put together as far as the review staff and the inspectors

And the complaints have almost virtually 100% turnaround. So right now, and the cost is much less. So if we can, I'm still working on it. I'm not saying you won't see some changes that I might bring to the manager to reduce those costs even further. But right now, I think we can't beat what we got right now. Perfect. Thank you. That's all.

Thank you. Other questions? Councilwoman Manson.

I have a question about the Euclid Group, the shores at Palmetto Bay, and what that situation is there. Would you explain that?

Yeah, they're challenging the permit fee over there. The attorneys are working on it. It seems to be under control.

Speaking to the mic. Thank you.

They want a reduced rate.

Thank you. Other questions? All right. Thanks, Dean. Great job. Who's next, Mr. Manager?

Finance Director Desmond Chin, Madam Mayor.

Good afternoon, Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. Desmond Chin, Finance Director. The department overview, the department mission is to ensure the safety of the village's financial assets through governmental best practices, policy and procedures, and internal controls. We do that with six full-time employees, and our current budget is 586,797, which I'll go over more in detail on the budget performance slide. Our fiscal year 2026 accomplishments are aligned with the financial stability goals of the council. We obtained the distinguished budget award and financial award for the 20th consecutive year. And we implemented the new Tyler software. And for the Tyler consultant, it was the most clean I've ever seen a quote from the consultant. It went very well, in my opinion. For the fiscal year of 26 budget performance, should be on the budget about $27,000. For the operating, that was mainly auditing services where they didn't have to complete all the single audit reports they needed. There are some savings in personnel expenses, also about 2%. For the fiscal year 27 goals, again, I hope to obtain the Distinguished Budget Award and Financial Award for the 21st consecutive year. And as we phase out our old software Eden, the next implementation will be payroll. Hopefully that goes as successful as the financial modules. For the fiscal year 27 budget requests, we're showing an increase of about 46,000. That's mainly because we had to renew or we went out for RFP of new auditors, which came in, of course, with higher rates for the next five years. the risk and challenges. My high risk is this property tax proposal that's going to be on the ballot. If passed, we won't be able to maintain our current service levels. We'll have to review all revenue sources, the appropriate millage rates, and possible service levels. It does keep me up at night and makes the other two areas inconsequential to me, actually. That's what I have for you tonight. Do you have any questions?

Thank you. Questions for Director Chen? I think it's keeping us all awake at night, so thank you. Thanks, Desmond.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Sorry, Director Cadaval, Human Resources, Communications, and Grants.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Olga Cadaval. As the manager indicated, I am the Human Resources and Communications Director here to present the budget for my department. I want to preface this presentation by first underscoring the fact that the information that I will share with you tonight is not related exclusively to any one of my single divisions, which are HR, communications, and grants, but it encompasses all three of my very distinctive divisions. We operate the three divisions with five full-time staff, and two part-time positions for a total of seven. Our total fiscal year 2026 approved budget was $856,964, which represents approximately 4% of the general fund budget. Our mission is to provide quality services to the employees of the Village of Palmetto Bay that promote individual and organizational success, to share real-time information with Village residents and to procure grant funding to further village goals and priorities. Here we have our main accomplishments for fiscal year 2026, which neatly align with council strategic goals A and B for accessible government and financial stability. During this fiscal year, we grew our social media following by 32%. and our email subscribers by 58%. Through May of 2026, we produced an estimated 84 videos and published 534 posts, prepared 137 informational and promotional campaigns, keeping residents informed across all village channels. We also completed the full redesign of the village website with improved navigation and user experience. We are actually still working on the backend of that project to ensure that the improvements are something that are actually come to fruition and that people will be able to use the website in a better fashion. In HR, we are actually, before I go there, our most notable accomplishment for 2026 in the communications division was the expansion of our Instagram followers from 5,818 to 10,770 in just under two years. This is a testament to our achievements as we work to augment our audience and increase resident engagement. We are pleased to have accomplished this goal. In HR, we managed 15 recruitments, reviewed 325, applications, coordinated 70 interviews, and processed seven new hires, sustaining full departmental staffing levels across the village. We are proud that in addition to those day-to-day operations, we also coordinated 17 meaningful training sessions village-wide, up from 10 the prior year, focusing on financial wellness, employee safety, and compliance, having successfully completed our biannual workplace harassment and diversity training for every village employees. In grants, we are pleased to have secured more than $800,000 in new grant funding for village projects in parks and public services. Our overall budget for the closing fiscal year will come in at approximately 11% under budget. As we review the two main categories that comprise my budget, which are personnel and operating expenses, we see personal expenses coming in at approximately 94,000 under budget and operating expenses at 12,000 over budget. The primary reason for these variances is that a temporary part-time position was hired in lieu of a permanent employee and relative costs were charged to the operating category, which in turn increased operating expenses and decreased personal costs. For our fiscal year 2027 goals and strategic priority, as our first goal, we have to grow our YouTube audience and video reach. We want to expand the village YouTube presence through platform optimization, consistent publishing cadence, strategic content development, and cross-platform promotions. We had great success in achieving meaningful results with our Instagram platform and plan to do the same with YouTube. Our goal two is to expand video production and launch village services series, increase video production by 110 videos or reels, that is up from an estimated 84, and prepare 180 informational promotional campaigns. Also introducing a dedicated recurring series, spotlighting village services to deepen resident awareness and engagement. These metrics are consistent with our continued goal to restructure output that focuses on short video content, and the increase represents 35% additional content. Our goal three is to explore AI tools to maximize efficiencies and enhance content quality. We plan to research and test three AI-assisted tools to extend the capacity of staff, increase output, and elevate the quality of village content. Our goal is to implement at least one AI tool by the end of the fiscal year. Goal four is to strengthen our grant portfolio and expand funding opportunities, completing 10 grant applications, securing three grant awards, and maintaining full adherence to reporting requirements and timeliness on reimbursement requests for all active grants. Goal five is to modernize HR operations by implementing a new HRS system to improve operational efficiency and update for key personal policies. This becomes particularly important if we are subject to significant revenue reductions stemming from the proposed property tax amendment. And goal six, identify and address potential succession gaps. I first want to clarify that I am not insinuating that anybody is leaving or expecting anyone to leave. However, we do need to be prepared for that possible eventuality. I would work closely with the village manager to identify our critical positions and develop a plan of action and recruitment strategies to ensure the smooth transition and most importantly, continuity of operations. For fiscal year 2027, we are not proposing any staffing changes. The personal increase of 5.5% reflects the proposed merit and COLA adjustments. Operating expenses are showing a significant decrease primarily because there are certain services that are moving to general government because they are not exclusive to our department, one of those being Granicus, which is now under a single contract, which the council approved during our last meeting, rather than separate contracts with the clerk's office and communications. Therefore, we are looking at an overall budget increase of 0.4% for my department. For recent challenges, personnel are my greatest risk. We are a support department for the entire organization, whether we are promoting an event, informing the public of a policy, recruiting for positions in other departments, or requesting funding for village projects, we rely on our staff to make it all happen. It is why personnel represents 89% of my budget. As a high risk, I've identified the grants division because the division is staffed by a single position managing all grant applications, reports, and reimbursement. It is a position driven by hard deadlines that are established by outside agencies, and a reduction in hours or a vacancy would immediately jeopardize new funding and adherence to active grants obligations. I've also included, as HR director, I am looking ahead the potential impact of the homestead exemption amendment if passed it would significantly reduce revenues for the village leaving departments outside the protected core services at risk in hr the impact will be twofold reduce staffing with increased workload to manage potential hiring freezes and staffing restructuring or reclassifications in communications while ai can mitigate staff reductions to an extent The human judgment remains a factor in maintaining the quality, accuracy, and consistency of the messaging. As medium risk, we have the HRIS system implementation. The planned deployment of a new human resources information system is essential to modernize HR operations, reduce manual processing, and improve compliance tracking. Delays in implementation could extend inefficiencies and potentially increase compliance risk. I also have communication staffing. Emerging AI tools, as I mentioned earlier, for scripting, video production, graphic design, and scheduling help mitigate this, but introduces the new risk of over-reliance on AI, which could erode quality of output and the human judgment, particularly for emergency or sensitive messages. Also places oversight and quality control burden on the already constrained PIO position. Our low risk is grant funding volatility. Federal and state grant priorities can shift, having the effect of reducing the village ability to secure anticipated funding for capital projects. However, we feel that we can mitigate this by diversifying our grant portfolio across multiple funding agencies, which is our main reason for setting as a new fiscal year goal to increase the amount of grant applications from eight to 10. And that concludes my presentation. I am here for any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Questions of Director Cadaval? Vice Mayor?

Yeah, I know last year there was discussion, especially on health insurance costs. I believe there was a significant increase. I believe last year, correct me if I'm wrong, was like half a million dollars. Is a similar increase expected again this year for health insurance across village staff, or is it roughly the same?

So I am expecting an increase. We know that that's going to happen. We always have the ability of, I mean, we're hoping that the increase will be single digit percentage. We do have the ability to choose different providers. Having said that, the way that our budget is structured is we do budget on sort of allowance, up to allowance per employee And I don't believe that that allowance amount is being changed. So for budgetary purposes, that will remain the same. What we're trying to do is to make sure that we don't burden the employee with additional health care costs. I will know more in July. Unfortunately, I don't have those numbers with me right now. It's too early at this point. Thank you.

Thank you. Other questions? All right, Director. Thank you.

Thank you, Olga. Okay, Information Technology, Director Mercado.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. I arrived a little overdressed, but I don't get to talk to you all very often, so I figured I'd dress for the occasion. It's Machado, by the way, but I'll take whatever you pitch at me. That's fine. I get McAdoo, Macado. Sometimes I'm Irish. I'll take anything. I'm your IT director. Next slide. Yeah, so we have a small squad. We're a full-time team of two. You all know Moises. He's fantastic. No one else can take him from me. I refuse to allow it. On LinkedIn, I ban him from posting. He can't post at all. He's not allowed. He's wonderful. We operate with a very reasonable budget. Most of it goes to personnel services. Next slide, please. We've had a lot of accomplishments. We believe we stand shoulder to shoulder with every department in their accomplishments because we provide them with the tools that lets them get their jobs done. I don't think any department anywhere can function without computers or a network nowadays, and we provide that in a safe manner. Some of our big goals. Well, we helped parks roll out their wonderful, beautiful new coral reef park recreation center. We implemented our fantastic network there thanks to the resources we pulled together to make that happen. We have 10 total indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi access points to provide ample Wi-Fi coverage for the public at that site. In addition, we were able to overhaul a lot of the Wi-Fi services offered at other locations by replacing old equipment and expanding available services. So for example, outside of Village Hall here, we added a few additional Wi-Fi access points so that when we decide to have events here at Village Hall, there's more coverage for the residents to benefit from. Next slide. I mean, there's not much change. We're operating on the budget. If we can move to the next one. So we have a lot of goals, but I figured I'd bring up the two biggest ones for next fiscal year. Excuse me, I lost my place. I'll read from the slides. We would really, really, really like to implement zero trust networking next year. Zero trust networking is an evolution of the village network. And what I mean by that is we all learned a valuable lesson in the COVID days, right? All of our mission critical staff need to have a laptop and need to be able to work from anywhere at a moment's notice, right? But as soon as you extend our workstations outside of the Village Network, you expose them to risk that we can't mitigate. Here at the Village Hall site and at our other locations, we have enterprise-level firewalls, we have intrusion prevention systems, we have anti-malware systems that protect our users whenever they're working. However, you take your laptop home and you're functioning at your own risk other than the software that we provide on your laptops like antiviruses and stuff that protect it. So what does Zero Trust Networking do? It extends our umbrella of coverage to wherever that mobile workstation is so that we can provide a greater level of security wherever you're at. It does involve a re-engineering of the network as a whole in order to accommodate that technology. And that's one of our goals for this fiscal year. We're really hoping to achieve that. The next one is... solving an upcoming issue with disaster recovery. The village has on-premise data, as well as data in the cloud. We have a variety of systems that protects that data in the event of accidental erasure or disaster. We can restore those data points. Unfortunately, one of our systems is approaching end of life, and we need to prepare for the eventuality where we need to get rid of that system and get something else. But there's a logistical challenge, right? Moises, for example, who's wonderful, he has to juggle multiple systems to figure out which backup system to restore data from. And that's a problem. For such a small team, we can't have that complication. So we're looking for a single solution that allows us to back up all of our data to one central place and offers us the benefit of managed services. One of the goals I didn't get to mention in the previous slide, which is fine, is that we've knocked out a record number of service tickets this year. We've taken in, between October and the end of May, over 3,200 work orders, which works out to about 23 new work orders per day. And we're closing 98% of those a month, which is an incredible rate. Moises is fantastic. But that leaves us with a struggle that there's so many tickets coming in and so much work that for a two-person team, there's just not enough man hours to go around. So we have these wonderful backup disaster recovery systems, but part of the solution is testing to make sure that those backups actually work. And very seldom do we get the hours available to do that actual testing. So we're crossing our fingers, and that's not where I want to be. I want to assure you all that if something goes missing, we can restore it, guaranteed. And what managed disaster recovery services do is we'll have a team of individuals working for us that will test all of our backups on a regular basis and guarantee that all that data can be restored. So that's where we hope to move this fiscal year. Yeah. The changes that, yeah, there's not too many changes we're proposing. I think it's all standard operational increases. We are, there are a set of training seminars and professional workshops that we'd like to continue attending. And unfortunately, all the rates for all those seminars have gone up tremendously. Additionally, which I'll mention in the risk, if we can go to risk, I think that's a nice one. I want to focus on medium risk just to get this point over with. If you all have gone shopping for a computer lately, you know the costs are ridiculous right now, right? Because of the AI, crunch, hard drives, RAM, all these costs have ballooned. A single RAM chip, which used to cost us $80, will now retail for $400 easily, okay? Computers that we used to get for $600, $700 a piece are $1,100, $1,200 a piece. So what does that do? We're forced now to fall back instead of replacing and, you know, updating our workstations on a regular basis. Now we're just crossing our fingers and hoping that they don't break. And when they break, replacing them piece by piece, which is unfortunate. If we go up to the higher risk, I won't state the obvious. I think everyone here is nervous about the property tax reform. But we have additional challenges that the state originally had us included on their cyber grant funding grant source, right? But they've made a change to that funding source, which is now it's retooled to be tailored towards rural and underserved areas, which we do not qualify for. So we've been eliminated from that grant. So all the wonderful cybersecurity products that the state originally granted us licenses for, now we have to either eliminate or bear that cost ourselves, which is unexpected. And the other major high risk, we are the smallest department. We're two people. If I'm out on PTO, which I am this week, and Moises gets sick, all of IT is gone. All of our operational tasks cease, right? That's a problem. So we would hope that the council can be sympathetic to that need. We would love to have an additional person helping us out. We do work with local teams. local MSPs and providers to help us whenever a major fire, as we call it, is going on. These teams help us remotely or sometimes show up. But I think it would give me greater peace of mind if we had an additional body helping us out on a day-to-day basis. And that concludes my presentation, if there's any questions.

Great. Thank you, Eric. Any questions? Go ahead, Council Member. Your mic's not on.

What would be the approximate cost of giving you that extra person in your senses?

I would say, I don't want to speak out of turn, but I think it would be probably the same rate that we're paying Moises currently as an IT technician, right? I don't know off the top of my head what that rate is, but I'd be happy to work with the manager on that if that's a potentiality.

That would give us redundancy to make sure that everything is covered.

It would make me feel more comfortable that if a crisis happened and two of us were out, at least somebody's behind to watch

You come in and just tell people to turn it off and turn it back on.

I mean, that'd be great. That'd be great. You're always very helpful. Thank you.

Vice Mayor? So if that extra hire was also there, would it also assist with the replacement of the infrastructure you were describing earlier with the disaster recovery?

Well, I think it would take a lot of the operational burden off of the two of us to give us more time to do more for you all. So let me describe what that is. Due to the rise of AI, we've had the opportunity this year to actually develop some of our own software. We've actually started coding our own applications to help finance, to help parks and do some things. But due to the operational load, I've only been able to dedicate maybe one or two hours a week. That's not going to work. There's no real progress happening there. But I see it as an operational insurance plan, if you will. I mean, things happen. People get into car accidents. People go on leave. Unfortunately, Moises recently, he had bereavement due to personal leave. That leaves us down to one person, and it's like your hair's on fire all day long. It's just the nature of the job here. So I think that third body would really help us keep things stable and keep us out of crisis mode and let us innovate, which I think is where we really would like to be.

I would say you probably didn't hear the memo in the manager's report a little bit earlier. I didn't hear the memo. Okay, thanks, Eric. Any more questions? You have another question?

Yeah, I mean, would you like us to get you at some point like a Mithos subscription from cloud?

We're working on that. We're working with HR on an AI direction for the village. We want to make sure that we move through it carefully. I've experimented with a lot of different platforms, and cloud is fantastic, so are a lot of other systems. Yeah, sure, that would be great.

I love it. We're geeking out. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Eric. Who's next?

Thanks, Bayer. Director Carmona.

I'm going to call her Director Heart and Soul of the Village of Parks.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Put on my glasses so I can see. Fanny Carmona, Director of Parks and Recreation. Tonight, I'll provide a brief overview of our fiscal year 26 accomplishments, fiscal year 27 priorities, budget requests, and the challenges and opportunities of the Parks Department. Our mission is simple, to enhance the quality of life for residents and visitors by providing safe, accessible, and well-maintained parks, recreational facilities, programs, and community events that promote health, wellness, environmental stewardship, and community connection. Everything we do from maintaining parks and natural areas to delivering programs and special events is guided by that mission. The department is responsible for park administration, ground maintenance, recreation programming, and special events throughout the village. We currently have 35 authorized positions consisting of 16 full-time and 19 part-time employees. And we also have approximately 54 seasonal staff and volunteers. The department operates primarily through general fund. For fiscal year 26, the adopted operating budget included approximately 2 million in personal expenses and 1.65 million in operating expenses, reflecting the resources needed to maintain parks, facilities, programs, and community services. With those resources, fiscal 26 was a transformative year for Parks and Recreation. We completed major capital projects, expanded community programming, strengthening environmental stewardship efforts, and enhanced public safety initiatives. And I'll highlight some of those accomplishments on the next couple of slides. The biggest accomplishment this year was opening the Coral Reef new recreation center. This facility restored programming capacity and created new opportunities for fitness classes, senior programming, teen programming, rentals, youth activities, and community events. We continued advancing the indoor pickleball facility, completing design and permitting milestones, and keeping the project on schedule for completion in November of 2026. We also engaged the skateboarding community directly through two workshops and incorporated public feedback into the final design for our skate park renovation projects. We launched phase one restoration at the woods, demonstrating our commitment to protecting some of the village's most valuable natural resources. We improved access and customer service by mailing the play-by-play guide to every household and business, expanding flow code communications, and implementing new software system, MIREC, for registrations, rentals, and park permitting. Beyond recreation, we expanded public safety and emergency preparedness through our partnership with Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office, offering rad kids training and stop the bleed training. We also collaborated with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and hosted coffee with a medic and help sessions. Last but not least, we also installed additional security cameras at all park facilities. While we've accomplished a great deal this year, many of these successes were achieved with existing staff taking on additional responsibilities, which is why workforce capacity remains one of our most significant operational challenges moving forward. That's fine, that's fine. So, budget performance. The department operated within budget, finishing the fiscal year approximately 2.2% under budget with no mid-year budget amendments required. What makes this accomplishment particularly significant is that we successfully opened and operated the Core Reef Park Recreation Center without adding staff or exceeding our budget. Existing staff assumed the operational responsibilities of the new facility through reassignment, cross-training, and a tremendous amount of teamwork. At the same time, we continue to maintain all Village Park's facilities and deliver recreational programs, operate summer camp, coordinate special events, support environmental stewardship initiatives, manage capital projects, and provide the same level of service that the residents have come to expect. While I'm extremely proud of what our team accomplished, it is important to recognize that this is not a long-term operational model. Staff have taken significant additional responsibilities to ensure the success of the recreation center while maintaining all other departmental functions. Continued reliance on this approach may impact service levels, programming capacity, staff retention, and our ability to maintain the high-level quality amenities and customer service that our residents deserve. This year's results demonstrate the dedication and commitment of our team, but they also highlight the importance of filling existing vacancies and evaluating future staffing needs as utilization of our facilities and programs continue to grow. Now let's look at fiscal year 27 goals. Our focus shifts from project completion to serving residents, expanding opportunities, and maximizing our investments. The Core Reef Recreation Center, 2026 was about delivering projects. 2027 is about ensuring residents fully benefit from those investments through expanded programming, increased participation, and enhanced recreational opportunities. We expect substantial completion of Veterans Park phase one by April of 2027. Don't hold me to this date. This is a tentative date as of right now. We will deliver a fully renovated skate park based on community-driven design. Our revenue strategy focuses on increasing utilization of our recreation center through room rentals, birthday parties, fitness and wellness classes, camps, after-school programs, senior programming, special events, and community partnerships. We are also evaluating opportunities to increase sponsorships, expand vendor participation at events, and update fee structures to better reflect market conditions while remaining affordability for residents, while maintaining affordability for residents. The indoor pickleball center will operate through our partnership with Diadem Sports. The agreement will provide the village with a guaranteed minimum annual payment of 200,000, creating a new recurring recurring revenue source while expanding recreational opportunities for our residents. Beyond revenue generation, our goal is to continue expanding offerings for all ages groups, including teen nights, senior enrichment programs, fitness and wellness classes, arts and cultural activities, intergenerational programming, and community events. In fiscal year 26, we hosted 37 special events and 215 programs, and our goal is to build on that momentum and continue increasing participation throughout the village. Our objective is not simply to generate revenue. It is to maximize the value of the village's recreational assets, increase access to quality programs, and reduce reliance on general fund support whenever possible. Fiscal year 27 budget requests. The proposed fiscal year 27 budget reflects a modest increase of approximately 4%. This is primarily driven by employee compensation adjustments, health insurance, and retirement contributions. The only capital request this year is replacement of the coral reef park perimeter fence and repairs needed to the existing irrigation systems. Risk and challenges for the department. The department's greatest challenge is staffing. We have expanded facilities, programming, and services, but we continue to operate with vacancies. Existing staff have taken on additional responsibilities and that approach is not sustainable indefinitely. In closing, fiscal year 26 was landmark year for Parks and Recreation. We successfully delivered major capital projects, expanded programs and services, strengthen environmental stewardship efforts, enhance public safety initiatives, and remain fiscally responsible, all while operating within budget and without adding staff. These accomplishments are a testament to the dedication, professionalism, and commitment of our team, our volunteers, our community partners, and the support of this mayor and council. As we move into fiscal year 27, our focus is building upon the momentum, maximizing the value of the village's investments expanding opportunities for residents of all ages, preserving our natural resources, and continue to provide the high-quality parks, programs, events, and facilities that make Palmetto Bay a great place to live, work, and play. I thank you for your continued support of Parks and Recreation, thank the manager for his leadership, and I'm proud of what we have accomplished together and excited about the opportunities ahead. Available for any questions.

Thank you. Questions for Parks? Vice Mayor?

Yeah, so first of all, I'm excited about the work that's been done on the woods. It's been a long, long time coming, so I greatly appreciate that. Related to phase two, in your presentation, you noted that the main capital request this year is a replacement of fencing at Coral Reef Park. I'm wondering about the phase two and future project work on that woods property as to what is available for funding and also what the plans are for the future in the next fiscal year for the woods specifically.

We're currently finishing this first phase of the woods. That's still not completed. It will be soon. Then moving forward, we're going to maintain what we've completed in this phase one to make sure that it continues to grow like it should, maintain the rest of the property. We are working and looking into what phase two will look like as far as cost and the scope of work when we have that number ready. we can always come back in front of council for approval of funding. I don't have that number as of yet.

Sure. And my understanding, after talking to some people in the community as well, there's some discussion about the actual pacing of the project. So I would just like to have, I guess, the information. personally i'd like to know what it would look like for phase two and going forward with that with that property um and whatever is available in the budget i'd like to fully support i mean just this is just me up here um the woods and that restoration work because that is in my view critically important um the other thing as well is in discussing with the manager my understanding is that we have an impact fee for the parks a balance of around 650 000 is that correct give or take

Oh, fund balance. It's a little less than that.

I think I told I think I told the vice mayor was 500 something. Yeah, because we can get you the exact number, Mr. Vice Mayor, if you'd like.

Yeah, sure. I mean, the point is, it's like mid six digits somewhere in that middle range of like five to six hundred thousand ish somewhere around there. And I'm wondering, as a council, as part of this budget discussion, as we move forward with the actual future of the budget, I know that one of the conversations that we had before this presentation was capital projects, and I'm wondering if the Village Council at some point, either during this workshop or in the future, would like to have a discussion about perhaps deploying some of that park impact fee revenue on projects in our parks, and that could either go to the woods, Coral Reef Park, Pumatoway Park, or the other projects, and I'm wondering if that's a possibility as well for us to either discuss, work with the administration, or figure out a way to deploy that capital so that we can invest in our parks more.

Thank you. You had a question as well, Councilwoman?

I have a question for the manager. It strikes me with the coming apocalypse, I'll call it, with the referendum coming up, the property tax reduction referendum, that parks might be the most affected by any of our departments. Is that the case? Yes.

Well, I mean, it would be a matter of priorities for the village council. And you would have, I mean, you do have other non-monetary tools that you could deploy. You know, for example, the ballot measure only affects or primarily affects homesteaded properties. There are different incentives and things you can do that don't cost any money, where you could grow your commercial base and get that done fairly rapidly. So I mean, depending on what the voters pass, again, it's going to be a matter of prioritization where the village council and your direction to me would be very important, your guidance, how you want us to look And any type of reduction, I think, would be very important. But to answer your question directly, besides police, the Parks Department is the largest general fund activity. So if we are going to make cuts, then you do have to look at your larger departments in order to make the math work. But I just want to put it out there that you do have non-monetary tools at your disposal. Thanks.

Thank you. Anything else? Vice Mayor?

Yeah, one more thing on staffing. I noticed that one of the risks that you mentioned was that staffing level. My understanding is that this year, once the community center opens, some staff had to be moved around to accommodate that opening of that community center. I'm wondering specifically... I guess you can bring this up during the next budget workshop or when we have that full budget discussion, but I personally would like to know what it would cost to fully restore that capacity to the events coordination and our recreation room so that they have the resources that we need to operate fully, I guess, what it was before we opened up that rec center for the rest of your department. So that's a number I'd like to see personally and figure out what we would need to do to get that staff capacity.

Thank you. Anything else? Thank you, Director. Mr. Manager, who's next?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd like to bring up Director Gonzalez for Planning and Zoning.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members. Javier Gonzalez, Planning and Zoning Director. I know you've had a long agenda, so I'll try to be brief with my presentation and walk you through it. as quick as possible. As far as our mission in plain English, the purpose is to provide zoning and code-compliant services to build a sustainable community that serves the interests of the residents of Palmetto Bay. We do operate with a lean team of five full-time positions and one contract. I do want to note that in the code compliance division, there is 16, 17, and 21 years of experience that really reflect on the institutional knowledge that they have and the relationships with the community and the effectiveness that they operate under. Planning and zoning is just myself and the principal planner and then a part-time position, admin position, that we are including in the operating expenses to, support the planner in reviewing permits. Well, to support the planner so that he has time to review permits and they can work on the walk-ins customer service and public notices, that's a lot for our public meetings. The monies that we use are coming from the general fund and total adopted budget for this year was $710,816. For accomplishments, We focus on accessible government. We finalized the online submittal portal for zoning applications, which will be very efficient for residents and developers and anybody who's seeking a zoning application. They'll be able to submit online, pay fees online, and track their reviews. We also updated the street-by-street mobile application. The categories that residents submit under were not very accurate, so that leads to Unnecessary delays, a department receives the complaint, it doesn't belong to them, so it gets routed to another department, and this way we'll be more efficient in responding to the residents. At the discretion of the Mayor and Village Council, we also reduced the planning and zoning fees for residents that apply for variances this year. We coordinated three zoning workshops, which provide a open forum for residents to view the project that is coming before the village, and they're able to provide input and ask any questions that they may have. Lastly on this slide, we did work with the village attorney to update the land development regulations, to update the subdivision regulations, the planning, the laws that were changed at the state level last year. As far as infrastructure, We did update the cabin improvement element of the comprehensive plan, which is a state mandate. And we did, from a land use perspective, we secured the woods property and designated parks and recreation space. We did manage to implement the village-wide on-street parking program to secure parking for businesses in the downtown area. At the discretion of the mayor and the village council, we also updated the driveway configurations. You remember the secondary... driveway and the fence height regulations to provide more flexibility while also preserving the aesthetics of the community. And then we maintained 24 hours response time for code compliance, generating 422 code cases, 150 citations, and processed 113 special master items. That just reflects that the co-compliance division is active and responding to residents' complaint. If there's a property that's not being maintained, they're the first ones to go out there and notify the owner to protect the village standards. This year, we're projecting to be under budget by 8.3%. That is because of a staffing change that we had in our department last year. And then since we did have a position that was a place on hold, we did have to bring a part-time employee to help out with the workload. And since we did that and the monies were coming from the operating expenses, we were very careful about how we spent money. And that's why it reflects the 8.3% reduction. As far as year-to-date revenue collected, 348,344, and that's led by the business tax receipts. the fines from code compliance and zoning applications. As far as goals for next year, these are all state mandates that will take effect soon in July and some in January of 2027. We have to update our land development regulations to allow, as of right, manufactured homes. We do have the flexibility of regulating aesthetic standards. So to be careful, it would be prudent to update those standards to prevent a situation where you have a manufactured home on a lot or as an accessory structure that may not be compatible with the neighborhood. As far as contractors, we have to establish a list of firms or contractors to provide pre-application consulting services upon the request of an applicant. This is new state law too. So essentially, if you're a developer and want to use a consultant to review your plans before you submit an application, you could do that. And the purpose is to minimize the delay in review once you submit a zoning application in our department. They may also have the opportunity to work with staff. The third, under Goal D, is we have to update our comprehensive plan and land development regulations to include objective standards if we're going to deny an application based on compatibility when it's a residential zoning district and a developer's building right next to it, for example, a townhome community versus a residential single-family community, you have to have objective standards. We can't just say it's incompatible. And then the last bullet under Goal D is we also have to update our planning and zoning fees. the state is mandating that they reflect the actual direct and indirect cost of reviewing that application. It can't just be a set number. Under goal B, financial stability, we are going to update the parks and mobility impact fee. And in fact, a resolution is coming before you at the regular July meeting to approve a task order. Under goal A, we're going to expand social media platform outreach, code compliance mainly to educate residents on what they cannot do, kind of preventive measures to avoid somebody violating a code when in fact it was just, hey, we needed to know that we couldn't do that. And that would reduce a lot of the work that they do.

And then lastly, we wanna establish a method to

located unregistered short-term rentals, which can lead to parking noise complaints. If we do have a list of those short-term rentals, we can ensure that they're licensed, probably licensed. That way, we can avoid unnecessary complaints. For next year, we are proposing, we're asking for $889,355 in total. That's a 25.1% increase. Again, that number reflects the transition from a consultant-based department. When I got here, there was no zoning staff. So now that we have established our zoning team and code compliance team, that's the increase. And moving forward, you're not going to have that increase in the 20% mark, maybe 3%, 6%. And the operating expenses, if we're asking for a part-time expense, to support the planner that's reviewing permits, site plans in order to do the administrative stuff and hopefully expedite the permit reviews for the resident. As far as risk and challenges, our goals, we place them into the three tiers, the high risk. Right now, if we don't, our impact fees for parks and mobility are probably too low. If we do the study and we determine that a more reasonable cost is a fair amount that the developer pays, it would be more effective than just using money or subsidizing the general fund to build capital projects. The medium risk, the manufactured homes. So if we don't update those regulations, again, you can have unintended consequences in the aesthetics of the village. We don't expect for demand of manufactured homes to be that much, but just in case, it's prudent to do that. And then tracking the short-term rentals to prevent unnecessary safety noise and parking disruptions. And lastly, low risk of watch items. not really a risk but the outreach to community so that they know what they can and cannot do it's always good for everyone to see to be on the same page and that concludes my presentation happy to take any questions thank you councilman matson yeah i have a question about the new pay to parking zones and how that's working out how much money are we receiving that from that it was on the revenue slide that's about $12,000 and change, to be precise, $12,376.55. And that's not including the operating costs. They do bill us for the service that they provide, the Miami Parking Authority.

All right, so what is the percentage that we get from that with the parking authority?

That's the amount that we've received since February when we did the, since March, we did the soft launching.

Is there a percentage cut that we get?

I think they bill what, like 5,000 a month, I think we pay?

That's about it, yeah. They do, maybe you're referring to the fee that they charge in the contract, the 15%? I think it's a 15% fee, administrative fee that they charge.

And who does the enforcement for that?

Amie Parking Authority does it.

And what do they, how do they do that? Do they have trucks that drive around, or what?

They have a car, an employee, and they drive around on certain days, not 24-7.

And has that been effective in opening up those spaces for retail?

It definitely has, ma'am. If you drive up to like Aromas del Peru or the pizza shop there, there's much more parking available throughout the day and even into the evening as well.

I've noticed in walking around the area, as I do, since it's my neighborhood, that there are many more empty parking spots. So I think that that's been good. So maybe we can expect a diner then in Palmetto Station.

That would be good if they rented. That would be very good, actually. Thank you.

Vice Mayor? No. Anyone else? Very good.

Thank you, Mayor. Director Torres, please.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. I'm Denicio Torres. I'm your Public Services Director. Our Public Services Department is basically composed of two main divisions. The Facilities Maintenance Division, which is funded through the General Fund, and then our public works department, which is all special revenue. We have 19 full-time positions. We've been carrying historically three vacancies. So you'll see reflected that we've usually carried 16 employees. And then we have five, again, general fund or special revenue funds under our public works department. As far as the goals that we accomplished during 26 we completed two major sub-basin projects we completed sub-basin 5796 and sub-basin 44. we were also able to complete localized drainage improvements throughout the year we've been able to advance the 82nd avenue bike lane project council approved it we were able to secure the additional Zikla Armadillos in order to provide the protected bike lanes. We hope to move that project forward, but we are under consideration for some grant funding, which may affect the project start date. As far as our traffic calming, we've been able to accomplish most of the installations recommended for this fiscal year, whether they be the temporary tables or the permanent tables. Our transit ridership is basically composed of two major components, whether it be the iBus or the freebie. They're both targeting towards the numbers of 14,000 ridership number for our I-bus and about 26,000 for our freebie ridership. As far as accomplishments from our facilities maintenance division, we were able to overhaul the HVAC system here at Village Hall. We were able to paint Village Hall and the public services building, and we were able to do repairs to the solar charging system here at Village Hall. highlighting some of the major projects we were able to accomplish. We had our Southwest 92nd Avenue Complete Streets project. This area was infamous for people test driving their cars or driving recklessly in that neighborhood. We used to get many, many complaints. We were able to basically eliminate the pavement islands or the signing marking islands that were there and replace them with raised median, landscaped. We were able to add the designated bike lanes with the green markings. I think it looks much better. We were also able to complete our Southwest 184th Street sidewalk gap project. So basically the three areas of concern that had gaps, they've all been built out. The only pending item there is some pavement markings for the crosswalks. We were also able to do sidewalk gaps throughout other areas in the village, whether it was 144th Street or sections of 87th Avenue, and do other sidewalk crossing improvements along 160th Street as well. Our subbasins that I alluded to earlier, between subbasins 44 and 5796, we added over two miles of French drains and stormwater system, sewer pipes, and we added over 100 new drainage structures. We've also started construction, or we'll be starting this later this summer, two major subbasins. The subbasin 12 has been underway for about three months now. Subbasin 42 should be starting up during the summertime before the Before August, I would say we should be out there on 42 as well as we wrap up sub-basin 12. Throughout the year, we were able to do other localized drainage, whether that was an isolated French drain or some type of seepage trench. We were able to tackle specific isolated areas that were of concern from our residents. Our traffic calming, again, you can see there are the pictures where there was the temporary table installation or the permanent tables. We've been able to, again, knock out basically the fiscal year, all the locations specified, and we're also able to add them to our drainage sub-basin projects and areas of concern. We were able to add some, as well as in Southwest 92nd Avenue. Complete streets, we were able to add some traffic calming tables. Our facilities maintenance basically came in under budget. Again, we historically have been carrying a couple of vacant positions in the facility maintenance division. We've been getting the additional assistance needed through vendors and subcontractors or vendors that we get from time to time to help us out. Public Works and Transportation also operating under budget. Our CITT transportation, again, we dedicated $636,000 to our roadway projects, whether it was roadway repairs, complete streets, sidewalk improvements, sidewalk replacements. Transportation grants, we were also, again, we had it divided up into multiple funds, so we've used monies to do sidewalk improvements and other necessary repairs. CITT Transit also came in under budget. This is basically our I-bus operation. Our stormwater, which also includes all of our VATCON services, all of our personnel, whether it's the stormwater engineer, whether it's our tree trimming services, all are covered under our stormwater funds. And that came in under budget as well. The goals and strategic goals priorities for 2027. We have three major drainage subbasins in the hopper, which are basically subbasins 43, 700, I'm sorry, subbasin 43, subbasin 11, and subbasins 39. They're all being considered for grant funding or some type of state appropriation or federal funds. For our traffic calming, we hope to kick off Our 82nd Avenue project, which I alluded to earlier, and one area of major concern looking at next year is 87th Avenue as far as when the bridge opens up and what other improvements we can do to assist our residents and try and eliminate some of that intrusion and be able to provide some level of relief for them. As far as our 2020 stormwater master plan, we basically hit every single subbasin project that was identified in the study. We've designed and permitted all of the subbasins. We've built multiple of them, and we're basically getting the hopper to secure funding and move the last ones forward, which haven't so far. On here, you'll see that in our basically to-do list, we have about $5.3 million worth of work. based on 2020 numbers, which would be to cover four sub-basins. So we'll continue to pursue grant funding and additional funding sources to help move those projects forward. Our facilities maintenance budget for next year, we're basically holding the present staffing levels, and we're just accounting for the COLA merit increases, kind of consistent across most of, or if not all of our funds. Moving into public works and transportation, you'll see kind of the same. I mean, we're not expecting to add any additional staff, carry the same staff, and basically move forward. Our CITC transportation, basically, we're looking at doing a slight reduction in some of our capital projects. That's more with project timing and permitting requirements and getting the contractors on board as we move. So we'll phase those projects in. And we plan to keep the same, basically, allowance for maintenance projects. Transportation grants stay the same as well. That'll help fund our sidewalk improvements, roadway paving, and traffic signals, and so on, other type of services. CIT Transit, we're proposing for next fiscal year to maintain our I-Bus, basically the two vehicles that we have, and we're also proposing to maintain our freebie. One consideration for our I-BUS is they are basically the vehicles are 2017s. So their mileage is in the 144,000, 150,000 mile range. So they're basically reaching the end of their useful life. We have gone out and requested basically what the replacement costs would be. It averages around 124,000 for the comparable vehicle per vehicle. So if we replace two of them, it would be about $250,000. We would need to replace both of them at the same time. Subsequent to this slide being prepared, we have gone out and requested a lease options. So that is also available. If we don't want to spend the entire, you know, a lot, the entire amount of money upfront, we could do it as a more phased approach, whether it's a one year up to a five year lease, we have different options. As far as the routes, we continue to operate to Dayland Station. The route that we're doing or we've consistently maintained is basically 4.2 miles each way. We have run into incidences where the transit station is under construction, so we've had to move around as far as where we pick up and drop off to work around the construction. I know we're going to have subsequent meetings regarding the I-Bus and request more participation from our residents, but a couple different options if we wanted to consider changing up the route. If we were to take the route from St. Richard's to the 152nd station, you would see that basically the travel distance goes down from 4.2 way down to 1.6, so basically a little bit more than a third as far as the distance each way. So we'd be able to provide, in theory, more service, more reliable, more options, right? And then along those lines, if we want to, Consider other options. Let's say we wanted to revisit having the Palmetto Bay Park. Basically, we used to have a freebie. The van, at one point when we first started before COVID, we had a route that would take you to and from Dayland. I think it'd be reasonable to do a route from there, let's say, to the 168th Street Station, which basically is less than a mile each way. So again, I just want to give some food for thought for future meetings as we move forward with the process. For stormwater, basically the only slight increase based on the merit and COLA increases. Operating expenses were basically, again, holding across the board. As far as risks and challenges moving forward, high risk I would consider our current stormwater rate. Currently we're sitting at $5 per ERU. Our fund balance for 26 was around $636,000. Obviously, as we try and expand our tree services and we try to expand our maintenance as far as increasing the amount of coverage we do on an annual basis with the VATCON, and we look forward to funding. I mean, we've done great. We've been very successful getting grants and state appropriations, but there's no guarantees. So we need to have options. So, again, we are doing a rate study currently. So as the budget process works out, we hope to come back to you with more information on that. And then medium risk we had, which I alluded to earlier, which is our IBUS, which we'll be having subsequent meetings on, I'm sure, but kind of wanted to reiterate that it is a concern basically that they're reaching the end of their life. So they're gonna require some type of major investment if we wanna continue the program. And I'm here for any questions. Thank you.

Vice Mayor.

Yeah, I know last year there was a lot of discussion about the iBus, and this year I'm hoping to have a little bit of an earlier conversation. One of the ideas that I had that I wanted to bring to your attention is that we have County Route 73, which goes from the 152nd Street Transitway Station, essentially to St. Richard's. And then turns north to 77th Avenue and kind of takes a zigzag approach all the way up to South Miami Station. Miami-Dade County, I believe a couple times a year, redoes their bus alignments. And I'm wondering if it's possible to save money on that iBus and provide the identical service that we can. And perhaps maybe we can have a discussion about upping that frequency so it matches our iBus service to essentially have that 73 route, instead of doing essentially the Snake to South Miami, potentially figuring out a way to work with the county to essentially replace that iBus service with that county bus instead. Because it would essentially be an identical service, and I think it's worth having that conversation with the county. So I'd like to know if the administration would be willing to approach DTBW on that front and see what would come back in terms of route alignment.

Why not? I mean, why have a redundant route? Obviously, if anything offers something different, I mean, there's no point in running the same same route.

Absolutely. And I just want to put that option on the table. So thank you.

Councilmember Cody. Thank you. Mr. Manager, what would we save if we were to just eliminate the I bus program?

Basically, the two employees, the number was about $160,000 per year, plus what we spend on operational, whether it's repairs and service. That number, I don't know that if it was up there on my slide, but probably between fuel and repairs, we could easily spend another $50,000 a year. So $270,000 a year.

And then replacing those buses, which frankly are clatter traps, We took them up to look at the pickleball facilities last year, and I thought that my teeth were going to shake loose. But as you said, that's about $260,000 to replace both of them.

If we wanted to outright buy them, it would be about $250,000 for two comparable iBuses, yes.

Okay, thank you.

That's one mountain. Yes.

Yeah, the other thing as well with the service, and I'm not sure if it's worth exploring or not, but I know other cities have contracts. I believe Pinecrest contracts out there, I think it's called the People Mover. So perhaps I'd like to know if it's possible to also explore contracting out that route if essentially it would allow us to pay for that service without having to replace that vehicle. I'm wondering if that would be a possibility as well to look into for the iBus. And the last thing I wanted to ask about, and I see Nick writing down that, so I appreciate that. The last thing as well is with the stormwater, I know that the rate study is coming back. I'm just wondering if you're able to share any progress with that study, if it's still ongoing, and what the timeline will be for that.

Definitely still ongoing. I mean, it's still in the initial stages. We've had a couple different meetings with them. They've been requesting different information. We've provided it. We have another meeting scheduled for this week, but it's still in the early stages, but yeah.

Thank you. May I add one more thing?

Yes. What's the ridership on the I-bus? The ridership, we're projecting for the year about 14,000. As of last month, I think we had about 9,000-ish riders for the fiscal year.

That means... 14,000 trips divided by the days per year?

14,000 passengers for the year.

Okay. That's not 14,000 people a month. That's 14,000 people over a year. A year. Okay. So that's... All right. Thank you.

Thank you. A couple quick questions from me, and actually more, well, one is for you. We recently passed the speed limit of 20 miles an hour, and it might be for the manager, on our residential streets. So what's the next step in that? And the only reason why I'm asking for the budget cycle is because it has to do with signage.

I know that we're going to piggyback off the county, and we basically agreed to do that. I have to go reach out to them and see what stage they're at. We'll get pricing to do it. I'm assuming we'll have to phase it. I don't think we'll be able to do them all in one shot. But I guess we'll go in area by area and start replacing out the speed limit signs.

Okay. And I guess this is probably a question for police, although I think probably I know the answer. In order for enforcement, you would have to actually see a sign. So just my recommendation would be, obviously you all are the experts, but we're the ones that receive a lot of the complaints. So if we could focus signage in the areas that are most impacted by speeding, you know, I'm sure we could, deals like every street, but I'm sure like my street is not, is my point. So, you know, there are streets where we get, plenty of email traffic talking about the speed of cars going down. So that might be one way of doing it, prioritizing the streets. And you're great at putting together multi-year plans and prioritizing, you know, where the need is, so to speak. As far as, I know the Vice Mayor mentioned the stormwater, potential for stormwater rate increase, which you mentioned is one of your risks. I totally support a rate increase. I would be happy to sponsor something, so the sooner the better, because as Council Member Fiore says, the time, the clock is ticking, we're running out of time. No, but I think it's super important, given the one thing that you said, which I think applies to pretty much statewide everything that we do, these appropriations, I think we're gonna see them go the way of the world. And I don't think money is going to be as readily available in years to come. So I think having our own kitty, so to speak, that we can pull from to be able to take care of whatever the next priority is, I think would be extremely important. And then something kind of dawned on me as we were talking about the IBUS, which a couple One, I love the idea, Vice Mayor, of looking at contracting out, the potential for contracting out. That's great. I also, last year, we did an unscientific survey that had plenty of responses. I was wondering if there would be a possibility of doing something like that again this year, you know, before the July meeting, just for a few reasons. One, and it'll need attorney input but one to kind of highlight the services that we are providing, right? We do provide, I think, I think Palmetto Bay, probably every city would say the same thing, but I think Palmetto Bay provides a lot of services and the community demands or expects those services just over the course of time, because we've been great at providing them, whether it's parks or iBus, all those good things. and resiliency, I don't want to leave you out, and Javier, all the things that you do as well. But if we could put together something, but if you could also, and I'll leave it to your discretion, put something together. One, what legally can we say about, you know, the ballot amendment piece just to say, hey, this may be coming. I'm not telling, we're not telling people vote for this or don't vote for that, but if they don't know what's happening, then they don't know what's happening. And if they don't know the impacts, they don't know the impacts. And last year in the survey, Nick, Mr. Manager, you provided some snapshot, like if we have to decrease the millage rate, which we did, which my opinion was a mistake, but we decreased it. We had responses from folks saying, I want the same services. I'm okay with my you know, my level of taxes. So I think it's really create like a little bit of an educational soundbite. Plus, I'd like to know from the greater community, you know, what are the priorities? I think we already kind of have them captured in our head. If we could include a section on there that talks about the iBus, I think that would be great. I don't know exactly what that would look like, but I think that would be great. So thank you. They weren't questions, but I wanted to make sure to get them in while I was thinking about them. Thank you. Anything else? Yeah, one more thing.

Respond to your point as well, especially it's freebie. In Coconut Grove, Freebee operates a fixed route service. It essentially takes people around to different restaurants there. I'm wondering if it's possible to look into this, but one of the private provider options that we might be able to have is with Freebee specifically, they have a van, which has, I think, the capacity of like nine or 10, which I think is about what most of our iBus routes do. I'm wondering if within the terms of that grant that we received from F-Thought, if it's possible to run that type of service where it's like a van that is fixed route I don't know if it's specifically for on demand but I'm wondering if there's a way we can look into structuring that service potentially where we're compliant with that grant but also we have that fixed route with the times there I don't know what again what the full grant looks like but it would be good to essentially figure that out for that extended service and at one point we did have a van and we did have a fixed route it was just

prior to COVID. After COVID, everything had to change because we couldn't have shared rides and we had to deviate. And then we're basically paying for more vehicles that we weren't using. So that's kind of why we shifted from the van to the Teslas. We used to have the low speed gem vehicles at the beginning, which were the golf cart, the extended golf carts, which is what you see in a lot of other municipalities.

Thank you. Thanks. All good ideas. Excellent. All right. I think we've got one more drum roll for the major.

Well, actually, you have two more.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

But we've got Major Rodriguez and the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office Municipal District, but we've got Andrea Candelaria batting clean up here, Madam Mayor. I have saved the best for last.

I don't know what that says about you, Tony.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council, Mr. Manager. I have to agree with the manager's comments. Oh, that's very sweet. Absolutely.

The best is for last.

No pressure. No pressure. So I'm going to start my presentation with a unconventional method, at least compared to the other presentations tonight. So we're going to start it off with a short video. I've had a lot of questions over the year. over the last past year regarding what is the transition from a Miami-Dade or the Miami-Dade Police Department to the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office. What is that transition? And in a nutshell, it's nothing more than we went from an appointed police director to now a constitutional commissioner. It's an elected office of a sheriff. So what you're going to see is going to give you somewhat of a small explanation, but it's also going to give you a screenshot of what we have to offer, our services that we have to offer you, not only on a regular basis as an entity as a whole, but God forbid in a time of crisis. So if communications can please bring that video up, I hope you enjoy it. For those of you that are going to be leaving the council, you're termed out. I hope you see it as a recruitment video. We are hiring.

I've got a cane.

Thank you. Hello Miami-Dade. You may notice some patrol vehicles with different markings as we continue the transition from the Miami-Dade Police Department to the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office. While some vehicles still display MDPD striping, they are operated by the same deputies who continue to serve and protect our community every day. As vehicles are updated and replaced, you'll begin to see more of the new MDSO markings throughout the county. No matter the markings, our commitment to your safety remains the same.

Well, like I said, it's a small snippet of the resources that comes with contracting your police services with one of the largest and, in my opinion, one of the most professional police agencies in the United States. With that, I'm going to start my presentation. We're going to start off with our departmental mission. Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office protects and serves Miami-Dade County with honor, integrity, and professionalism, partnering with the community to ensure law and order, safety, and trust through fair and transparent efforts. And we hope that you, the governing council of the village, as well as the residents, believe that we are doing that for you on a daily basis. very strong on our partnership with Palmetto Bay residents. That partnership is extremely important to us, and our bond with the community is unlike any other that I've experienced in my over three decades of policing, and I've policed all over Miami-Dade County. This bond is a priority to us, and it resonates in all the efforts that we make in order to make the village one of the safest communities in Miami-Dade County. And by the end of the presentation, you'll see why I feel that way and why it is our goal for the residents to feel that way as well. Our department overview, we currently have 49 budgeted positions with two current vacancies. One of those vacancies is the vacancy for the police lieutenant. which has been left open during this budget cycle. And the other vacancy was just created by one of our deputies that retired last month. So it's a vacancy that's been open for a short period of time. This is our organizational chart, our table of organization. I'll give you a brief breakdown of what we look like. We have one major position, one lieutenant, one administrative sergeant. Our uniform patrol arm of the policing unit or the district is encompassed by four sergeants and 26 patrol deputies. Our general investigations unit is one sergeant, four detectives. The sergeant for that unit, I'm sure you're going to recognize him, is sitting here in the back. And he is what I consider my administrative sergeant would be my left arm. my investigation sergeant would be my right arm. And without them and without my administrative secretary, I really could not do a fraction of what gets done here in our district on a daily basis. Our traffic enforcement, we have four deputies assigned to traffic enforcement. Our community outreach unit, we have three deputies. Our administrative unit, as I said, one administrative deputy, one administrative secretary, one crime analyst, and two record specialists. Next slide. Department overview, total budgeted for fiscal year 2026. The adopted budget was $11,824,000. As the manager had stated earlier, It's something that for me is a goal. It's something that I get graded on as a police professional. It's going to be part of my annual review is to under-execute and underperform those budgeted amounts. And I pledge to you that I'm going to continue doing that as long as I am your police major here in the district. Share our accomplishments with you. When we go back to our visioning sessions here that were held in previous budget cycles, really the goal, the strategic goal that applies to us is naturally goal F, which is the safer community. And I'd like to start by talking to you about targeted crimes. Our key highlights, significant reduction in larcenies and thefts, a reduction in robberies, as you can see, We had a reduction in robberies by 27%. And as I've mentioned to the council in previous meetings and during previous presentations, I just wanna remind you that robbery is a crime of violence and to reduce that by 27% has been a huge accomplishment for our deputies. In addition to that, you're gonna see on this particular side, residential burglaries, again, between 2024 and 2025, it shows up there that there's no change. But when you look at the actual number, the raw number, there were 15 residential burglaries. And that's, again, a huge and enormous accomplishment for our personnel. We were able to reduce residential burglaries from decades before, from 10 years earlier, that were nearing 200 burglaries to a number of 15. And you're going to see in our next slide how we've been able to continue reducing that. Here we have is year to date, and I'm going to call your attention to, once again, residential burglaries. Year to date, last year, we had, through May 31st, we had eight residential burglaries. Year to date, through May 31st of 2026, we have zero burglaries. Unfortunately, we had our first residential burglary last week after this report was already completed. But again, I just want to highlight that accomplishment. It is huge for an area such as the size of the village of Palmetto Bay. With our population, we've got nearly 25,000 residents, about 8,500 residential dwelling units. And for being midway through the calendar year, we've only experienced one residential burglary. And it's really a tribute to the efforts of the deputies, some of which are sitting outside the chambers right now. This is a snippet of the targeted crimes that get assigned for follow-up investigation for our personnel. And again, it shows their efforts. Our clearance rate for 2026 year-to-date is on par with what it was last year. It's 48%. But if you look at the assigned cases for 2025, it was 1,931 assigned cases. This year, mid-year, we're at 744. We're going to have, if we continue at the pace of crimes reported for 2026, we're going to have about a 38% reduction in calls for service, which, again, a huge accomplishment for us. Continuing on to the next slide, we're going to go into response times. Our response times for emergency and priority calls are seven minutes and 14 minutes for our routine calls. These numbers are within our contractual obligations with the village. And again, it's always good to highlight that and be able to tell you that we are within and meeting our contractual obligations. In the next slide, you're going to see a comparison with our south district, our neighboring district to the south, as well as overall patrol services for which the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office is responsible. That's the Kendall District, the Midwest District, and the other districts that we provide patrol services for. Although our geographic footprint is much smaller than most of those other districts, it's still important that we note that our response times are nearly half of what the overall patrol services are and exactly half of what South District's response times are. Continuing on with our accomplishments on the next slide, our operations primarily focus on that goal, on that one goal that I mentioned, the safer communities goal. And just to remind you what that goal says is that it's a consistent priority on ensuring Palmetto Bay is a safe community. Water safety has been a priority that the council has brought up and has identified for the C-100 and the residents that live along the C-100, as well as those persons that come to enjoy of that resource. We continue our marine operations detail on a weekly basis. You're going to see that there's a reduction between those statistics from 2025 and 2026 year to date. And we believe that that significant decrease in enforcement statistics is primarily attributed to compliance through border safety. Our guys, our personnel are out there on a weekly basis. They've gotten to know some of the fishing guides that frequent the area. They've gotten to know some of the fishermen that come and frequent the area. as well as the residents, and we've gotten a lot of positive feedback. As you can see, last year we had 538 citizen contacts, and that's people visiting the area, that's residents, that's people that are at Bill Sadowski Park that they come into contact with. And usually those contacts are also an opportunity for us to educate them on building safety. So we've had a huge success with our marine operations detail, And we hope that you continue to support that. We continue to use our online traffic concern reporting form to document residential traffic concerns and deploy our traffic enforcement unit. It's a wonderful tool. I wish this is something that got implemented in all of the districts throughout the county. It's a great tool for us. we're able to strategically deploy our personnel into these areas that we've identified as traffic hotspots. So we thank the residents for continuously providing us with this information in order for us to be able to deploy our personnel. And again, as in previous years, traffic enforcement is consistent and will remain one of our top priorities. Traffic enforcement, we feel, results in also in traffic safety and the reduction of traffic crashes. Continuing to the next slide, our 2026 budget performance. As the manager had noted, we're expected to continue our underperformance and under execution of the budget by the amount indicated. Our next slide is a proposal of that budget for the 2027 fiscal year. And as the manager had mentioned, there's a considerable increase. Just to note, that significant increase is due to employee regular salaries and overtime, employee retirements, and group health benefits. In doing a little bit of research for this presentation, I can tell you that I see the number. I understand it's a high number. When we are compared with other law enforcement agencies in the state of Florida, we are not at the highest. I believe our starting salary right now is in the low $60,000 range. There are other law enforcement agencies much smaller than us. that start closer to the $100,000 range. So just to show you where we fall within that range. The next slide, I know it's titled 2026 Accomplishments, but it's also a reflection of what our 2027 goals are going to be. We're going to continue to focus on targeted crimes. because that is our bread and butter in order for the residents here to feel that they live in a safe community. Targeted crimes is number one. As you can see from the previous slides in the presentation, year to date, we're at a 64% reduction in targeted crimes. Moving on to response times, we're going to maintain those times within our contractually obligated times. Our marine operations details are going to continue. our traffic concerns and being responsive to village residents. And we're going to continue with our traffic enforcement. A requested budget, as you saw in one of the previous slides, there's the increase. And that was due to the items that I mentioned, the salary increases and benefit increases. Finally, I'm going to close out with our risks and challenges. It's not an immediate challenge, as it says up there. However, something to consider is the upcoming construction and active development projects that are underway. This is something that during my tenure as the operations commander here, we dealt with it with some of the more recent developments. and I think that we've been able to manage construction and development in the village very well. With the addition of one deputy, I expect that we'll review that within the next two to three years with the manager and augment if necessary. I'd like to close by saying that it's truly a pleasure to work with my fellow directors. Again, three decades of law enforcement And I had never worked in an assignment where I had this kind of relationship with my peers where I can pick up the phone, where I can make a request, where I can talk to the manager openly as not only as a boss and as a mentor as I see him, but also as a peer and someone that I know is going to support us. I know that all my directors, my fellow directors feel the same way about me. And I hope that they know, which they do because I get calls from them all the time, that this is something that we truly value as your policing unit. And we're excited. We're excited about looking forward and continuing to provide our services to the village. And that concludes my presentation.

Commander, questions for the commander? Vice mayor?

yeah thank you um one of the things that i noticed that's in the long-term plans from our current budget from 2026 is eventually we're working on getting a boat launch ramp somewhere at corey park for your police vehicles i noticed that with this presentation the capital budget was zero i'm just wondering what the status is of that canal boat if we're still waiting on licensing permitting if we need to fund it i just want to know like what we can do as a council to accelerate that boat ramp at corey park

I'm going to allow Director Torres to make that response.

That would be the best one.

Good evening again. Yeah, sorry. That's been a very long and painful process, but I think we're finally getting to the finish line with South Florida. They keep asking for more information, and we've provided all the responses, but I expect within the next month we should have our permit in hand, hopefully, and then we'd be able to put it out to bid and move that project forward.

Sure, and just to clarify, that's going to be funded within, we would be able to fund that this coming year or within this year's budget? This year or next year?

No, it's already been funded, Vice Mayor, I want to say actually two years ago, two budget years ago, correct? Yeah, that's how long the permitting process has taken.

Perfect, thank you very much.

Anyone else with questions for the Commander? Great. Congratulations on all those great numbers. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you.

All right. And a big drum roll. Come on. Pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I want to apologize to the major, the department directors, village clerk. I didn't really mean it. But Andrea is an awesome member of the staff and your bedding cleanup.

Mr. Manager, remember one time we talked about mutiny?

No pressure. But I will want to start by saying off that sometimes being the youngest in the room and being not only the non-director in the room is a little intimidating, but I feel very honored every day to work with my colleagues, directors. I learn from them every day and they help guide me every day. They know that I like to infiltrate sustainability wherever, and so... very respectful of that, so feel very honored. If you didn't know, I am Andrea, responsible for sustainability and resiliency in the village, but also with other duties as assigned as well, which is also very fun. I enjoy preserving the character of Palmetto Bay through art in public places, putting art where acceptable, leading that committee as well, as well as the resiliency committee, and other projects that I have been granted through through NIC. And I am a party of one. It is just me and my division. Very fun. But my operating expenses are mostly contractual with some consultants and some programs that we're a part of, totaling of $154,528. We have been able to accomplish a lot this year. As you have noticed, we have launched resiliency committee informational videos online. Resiliency committee, working with them, working with experts is really a privilege to do so every single day. They really value the information that we post online and is valuable for our community. We also have launched biannual village cleanups every year. This is actually zero cost to the village because we partner with a nonprofit of Keep Florida Clean. We're able to clean up our village, but also really engage the community in the importance of litter prevention. And with that same mindset, we also have, of course, our biannual recycling drive-thrus. We budgeted this year $36,000 for it. I'll mention in the other slide as well, but we were able to, through responsible management, save about $5,000 with this by teaming up with the DEA and special shout out to the sheriff's office for helping us get that connection as well. We've also launched our Keep Balmedo Bay Beautiful litter prevention program, again, with the same mindset of preserving our community through the importance of environmental education. There's also something highlighted in yellow because it hasn't happened as of yet, but we're awaiting that, the LEED certification of our new rec center, what we have been able to do. And we also recycle plastic bags and batteries here at Village Hall. Also, as part of other duties as assigned, which I'm very excited about as well, we've been able to celebrate America's 250th birthday this year with an incredible collaboration from all different departments of parks, public services, communications, and really help amplify our vision for that as well. As you all know as well, we finally completed our call to artists for the traffic circle on 152nd Street. and Old Cutler Road. And we also were able to, through the help of the push from council member Marcia Madsen, actually order our historical town of Peters marker, which took about five years to do so between different departments. But we finally were able to get a unanimous passage to the state historical marker council. And that marker should actually be coming between August and October of this year. As you can see, we saved about a lot of a budget, but I would want to mention that not only through the recycling drives we were able to save, but with our CRS consultants that we have budgeted for 50,000 a year, we did not use that full amount, mostly because we are in an aggressive approach in pursuing an update to our stormwater management plan, which is what Dia went over earlier. our consultants advise that that is legitimately the bulk of our points as well. So through public outreach, we're able to use, of course, the services from our consultants, but the bulk of our points in order to get to that four is through that update of the stormwater management plan. As you can see, and as you might have remembered, this year the council voted to increase put out another call again for the call to artists. Um, we did not use the budget amount of one 35. Um, we only use about 7,000 or $6,500 for that in order for the new art stipend fees for each artists and to go out, um, for all those costs with cafe art. Um, we have lots of goals for 2027. We want to continue the resiliency committee videos and we want to have an aggressive approach to the CRS. There was delays with FEMA this year with things out of our hands such as government shutdown and lots of delays. But we really want to have an aggressive approach with that stormwater update to the stormwater master plan as well as any other points that we can get. That 30% discount for residents for their flood insurance really is a tangible benefit. Sometimes they don't realize all of the floodplain management things that we do every day such as public services. Drainage clean, that's something they don't realize. Of course, money speaks to them more, but we really want to do that for our residents. We want to continue our cleanups and as well as our recycling drives as well and keep our programs that we have launched this year. Also, we're hoping this year to finally install the Gold Star Family Memorial Monument that we had budgeted for Veterans Park. We're hoping to do so by the spring of this year. And we also really want, we're excited to have our traffic circle art piece be installed by the winter of 2027. As you can see here, there have been adjustments for any COLA or merit increases. And there's also a little bit of operating expenditures given that we are part of the Florida Green Building Coalition and as well as the Keep America Beautiful program. This is also the reflecting the council increase for $50,000 for the traffic circle that was proposed. And this is also the Gold Star Family Memorial Monument. We budgeted $65,000. in case of any other expenses. I also really wanted to highlight that sustainability is really, as the Vice Mayor has mentioned in previous meetings, the cost of nothing has a huge price. Zero investment in sustainability is zero investment in any yields, meaning that our environment is our economy. And so no recycling drives, no litter prevention programs, no public art really hurts the community environmentally, but socially as well. With full investment in sustainability and art, you really invest in the well-being of the community. A lot of people... would want to attribute sustainability as mostly related to the environment, but sustainability is really the connection of humans with the environment. Everything that we have is really for the environment and everything we try to protect is really for our community. So everything is really linked together. And I am available for any questions you have.

Thank you. Questions? Go ahead.

Why are you a division instead of a department?

I don't know if I can answer that. But yeah, that's just for now.

I've always wondered that, and I've never really understood.

Well, I mean, she's a single member, the size and the scope, ma'am. But it's a good question. I'm taking it on board.

No, I mean, is there a reason for not having a Department of Resiliency instead of a division? Because there are divisions within the departments. Obviously, we've heard about them tonight, but this is a division without a department. So I just wondered what the reason was for that.

Well, no, I mean, she's not an orphan. She's part of the village manager's department. But, no, fair point, though. Fair point. Do we answer? Well, no, I mean, my answer is just the size and scope, but it is something for us to look at moving forward.

Well, I just wonder if it makes a difference at all in terms of grants, money, responsibilities. Does it make a difference, or is it just in name only?

I don't think it does. I'll let Andrea answer that.

At the time, no. Really, specifically in the state of Florida, at least with the network of folks that have the same position as me in other cities, it really is the importance of the impact that we have on the community. As mentioned before, not a lot of communities have this kind of position, so the fact that we have it is still really valuable, and if we can increase that impact in any sort of capacity... whether it's different positions, but it really matters the sort of impact that you have, not necessarily the position that you have.

Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Well, cheers. Nice job, everybody. Great job. Did we hit everybody? Okay.

Madam Mayor? Yes. Can I speak now? Yes. Thank you very much. Go ahead. Yeah, I wanted to talk about something very important. I want to thank everybody for their presentations for the last time for me. Thank you very much. Especially Major Rodriguez telling me that I could apply to be a Miami-Dade sheriff's deputy. When I'm done here, I don't know what the age limit is. Is there an age limit? Wow. Good to know.

You have to have two legs.

councilmember fiori has the floor could you continue with your comments yeah so obviously you know earlier this evening i was inundated with phone calls uh about this cat issue at coral reef park a lot of concern maybe others of my colleagues have gotten it and the people actually want to speak to this issue so i don't know when this burn or is or is not but i would like to make a motion to direct the manager to delay this burn till at least July 13th, which would give the public and our residents, and not to mention the safety of the community of cats there, some time till we can sort a little more things out. So that's my motion.

There's a motion and a second. I think we owe it to the manager to be able to explain what's going on.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So as you know, we've been working on this prescribed burn for quite some time now, getting the site ready to be ready for the site burn, which takes some time and energy and money that we spent along the way to get us to where we are today. We are under contract with a company to do the prescribed burn. They take careful steps and they have to look at the weather and make the necessary arrangements and equipment that it takes in personnel to be on board with this, and it's precise with the weather report. So we put out a notice about a week ago, that within the next two weeks, this was going to happen. As soon as we get a confirmed date, we will have a notice three days in advance so that the people know exactly when it's going to happen. We have indication that it could happen as soon as this coming Sunday, and we'll have confirmation on Thursday. When we get that confirmation, the idea will be to post that notice then so that everybody's aware. Since the post originated on our end, we've been getting phone calls like Council Member Fiore stated. One particular resident reached out to the county animal services department, the mayor's office, and even the fire chief himself, requesting assistance with the cat colony and asking if they can be relocated. I received the email as well, so I contacted the animal services director, spoke to her several times, and emailed back and forth. They agreed to come on site starting tomorrow to assess the cat colony, see how many cats is involved, and then secure a safe place where they can be relocated and still have a loving and supportive environment to be relocated to. And that's where we are as far as that is concerned.

A quick question. So we've spoken with the animal services. The area that's to be burned is the center area. What's the area exactly to be burned? was identified as the pine rockland area right um so it's i don't have it in front of me but it's it's the the middle so there's a walking path on one side then there's a middle area that would be the burn area is that correct i mean my experience i walk through the park frequently a large number of the cats are closer to coral reef elementary and is there space for the cats to go in other places? Because there's other wildlife that live there. So there's a fox that's there. There's squirrels. There's ducks that are in the area. Are we making arrangements for all of these animals to be relocated, or are they going to do what they've done in the past in a prescribed burn, which is just move to another area of the park space? I mean, we've spent, this is a huge investment. It's something that environmentally needs to be done. I think we're working with a reputable company. I'm pleased for those that are watching and say that I'm harsh and I don't care about the cats. Of course I care about the cats. But I think they're going to do what every animal does during a burn. They're going to move. No animal is going to stay when a fire is burning. They're going to move off into surrounding area and then when everything calms back down they're going to come on back so I personally I appreciate what you're saying I was on the long thread back and forth with the the you know I could see what was happening I didn't respond I just forwarded it to the the mayor you were on the thread I think as well or maybe maybe I added you or the manager to you I don't know why the mayor's office was... I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about why Mayor Daniela Levine-Cava was involved when she's had no part in the process, which we've all been aware of for quite some time now. So I don't know. Maybe the public wasn't, but I think here, at the very least, we were aware. So I say I think they know what they're doing, and I think we should move forward. I don't think there's I think there's no cause for alarm as it relates to the cats vice mayor

Yeah, a couple things on this. My phone has also been ringing off the hook. As my colleague said, a lot of residents brought to me their concerns about what was happening. My understanding of it is that, unfortunately, there, I guess, was a miscommunication where it seemed like the entire Pine Rockland was all going to be prescribed burned all at once, and that created alarm within the cat community or the cat feeder community that takes care of the cats at that specific area. And unfortunately, they felt like they weren't responded to. That was their feeling, that the administration was not responding to them. And what happened was afterward, that's when this resident reached out to Mayor Daniela Levine Cava and the Animal Services Department and others. I know that since then, your office has been in contact with this resident. From my understanding, it's been a massive miscommunication, and that just needed to get cleared up. After speaking with this resident specifically, she mentioned to me that just like any other year, if it's just a prescribed area and it's not the whole Pine Rockland area going up in flames and there's an area where they can relocate, she personally felt comfortable with just doing that prescribed burn, just like we've been doing for the last, I think, 40 years. Since I've been a resident here all my life, I remember seeing prescribed burns happening there. So it's not like a random thing that's coming out of nowhere. So my personal preference would be to take the wishes of that resident and just to confirm for the record this is just going to be a specific area that's not the entire pine rockland area and that area especially over by core reef elementary is not going to be the area that's burned right okay so my preference then and i don't know how the commissioner would feel about this but my personal preference is instead of postponing the burn and interfering with this contract that we essentially abide by the wishes of that resident and essentially drop the animal services contact from this with the relocation, let them do their thing and just move on and abide by her wishes. And I'd love to, just because this is a recurring issue on this council, if the commissioner or myself wants to bring an item at some point in the future in September to protect cat colonies and feeders long term. I'd love to have that discussion with you, but just for the purposes of tonight, I would personally like to know if my colleagues would be amenable to essentially just proceeding as planned and not involving animal services and not relocating and just keeping it there.

I agree. I mean, I don't, whatever we want to do, but, you know, it's that one individual that has created this whole hullabaloo, if you will, not just doing a direct outreach to the manager or a direct outreach to the parks department. And that's why they set these wheels in motion because of the recommendation to have the cats potentially removed to another location. When I'm in agreement with you, they're gonna get up and move. Nobody sticks around for a fire. They're gonna get up and move to another area of the park. And when things resume their normal, pace they'll be there and at least there there's being fed right I mean that someone will go in and feed them people are feeding them there so I I don't I'll go either way here but I think you know we can't again it's just my humble opinion that we can't constantly be pivoting for you know one one resident abide by with this one resident that is what I heard you say her what her wishes She started the whole hullabaloo. Whatever you all deem as appropriate, I think will be appropriate.

I know that this resident cares very much about the cats and I don't blame her for wanting to protect them and do what she can to protect them. In my opinion, as long as the cats do have a place to go in Coral Reef Park, which I you're affirming that they do have a place to go over by Coil Reef School, that then confirms that those cats will continue to be fed by the community cat feeders and that they will still be taken care of rather than being dispersed who knows where around the county if they're taken by animal services. So I would like to see the prescribed burn go on with the assurance that the entire Pine Rockland will not be burned. whether there will be a place for those cats and other animals to go.

Okay, so what's the final?

Yes, ma'am. We're good with that. Okay.

I mean, I can't tell you where the cats are going to go. But if you're referring to the area on the other side of the path next to the school, that is not part of the Pine Rockland. That's going to be burnt.

And that's where the large portion of the cats are. Okay, so I'm sorry. There's a motion on the floor, and it was seconded. Madam Mayor? Yes.

Listen, my only concern is the cats. I don't have faith in the county. They couldn't even rectify a fuel depot for the cruise port, the largest driver of economic engine in the county, and I'm going to worry about animal services? I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I'm telling you I have no faith. So, I mean, that's obvious. If they can't fix that, I don't see how they would relocate any cats. They'd probably be euthanized. So I have a motion here to delay this burn until July 13th. And I will accept the amendment of Mr. Merwitzer that we leave animal services out of it until then. So the people can, the residents can have input. And really, again, that's my only concern is protecting this community cats. That's it. Not the county, not animal services.

I just want to ask a quick question of Councilmember Fiore. The motion was to delay the burn to the 13th. What I heard is there's a science behind this. It's not a random, you know, pick a date up somewhere in the future and maybe, yeah, we can do it then. And don't move the cats. The cats aren't going to move until the prescribed burn happens. then they will move off into whatever non-burning, you know, where there is no burn. So what's the difference whether they determine it's Sunday or July 13th? Vice Mayor?

Yes, so specifically, I think the council or the commissioner, let me know if I'm wrong here, wants to amend the motion to essentially leave animal services out of it, and based on the conversation, just proceed. So I'll move to amend the motion to essentially say that we'll leave animal services out of it, if that's something that we can do.

But his motion had July 13th, and that's what you seconded. I can move the date back. To Sunday?

No. I can move the date back to like July... Seventh. Yes, I agree with the Vice Mayor, but I don't think this burn should go on right now. Why would they burn anyway? The Everglades is on fire out there. This is not a good time to burn. I'm just...

Okay.

I'm just stating a fact that everybody knows and sees on the news.

So, Madam Clerk, can you read the motion?

They've got a fuel depot. They couldn't even figure it out. They've got to use eminent domain, and they've got to pay $400 million.

Thank you, Madam Attorney. Yes, good evening, everybody. Just a procedural clarification. This is a budget workshop. We really should not be taking direct action or making motions. I mean, I think general direction is proper. But it is a workshop, not a meeting. Thank you.

Okay, great point. So what do you now recommend?

As I said, I think some general direction to the managers is adequate. So we'll pretend the motions didn't happen?

Okay. Vice Mayor?

May I suggest the administration just polls us real quick to just get that action and then hopefully implement that action? Like informally?

action to do that mr. vice mayor what what would the art the from the administration point of view our preference and our plan prior prior to the resident getting getting animal services involved was to leave the cats where they are they're largely in a safe location now and not have animal services involved

that's correct so sounds like that would line up with with what you're proposing yeah my proposal is just leave animal services out of it that's it yes but we would continue yes whether yes okay so the the attorney's saying just to pull if you will the council so i'm in agreement uh go forward and leave animal services out i heard the vice mayor say the same thing councilmember cody go forward with it i've been waiting

for five and a half years since I first got on this council for us to do that controlled burn in that park. It's long overdue, and I think the cats are going to be fine.

Council Member Fiore?

Yeah, leave animal services out of it, but no burn until July 7th.

Council Member Mattson? I think it should go ahead as planned, and I think the cats will be safe in that part of the woods that will not be burned.

Do you feel like you have your direction?

Yes, ma'am.

I know we've gone beyond the 10 o'clock and we got segued into something else, but I had longer comments, which I'll save for the next budget hearing, but I couldn't leave tonight without saying, first of all, thank you for your leadership. I personally don't think that we're in a fiscal crisis. I think we've just got to make some really tough decisions in terms of planning. My goal when I leave is to make sure that this village, as it has been for the last five years, is on very firm fiscal ground and that it continues to be, no matter what happens with the homeowners, homeowners, my goodness, I'm not even making sense now, the homestead exemption reform. I just want to thank each one of the directors. Tony, your words just rang so true to who you are. Your colleagues, I know you consider these folks family. Javi, you've done a really remarkable job over the course of the last couple of years since you've been with us, especially as it relates to making changes in the code. Fanny, you know how I feel about the parks, and I hope you know how I feel about you. You're a leader in your own right. um andrea well what can we say sunshine all over the place and thank you for your you're really a remarkable presenter by the way thank you desmond i know you're always quiet in the background somewhere but uh the numbers always ring true so i appreciate that and dio um listen i think you're just an amazing leader i've really seen you grow i i know i've said it over I don't mean grow in girth, I mean grow in... Listen, it's the hour, and you know I've got to say something cringeworthy. But thank you. I hope by the time it's all over, you'll have some clear direction. I don't think we really provided that tonight. And I know Dean left, but he's already gone home. Oh, and Eric, I see you still out there. Thank you in the background. I don't know if you're going to get more people, but we appreciate all you do to keep us up and running. and Dean did a great job I know he's a little shy on the mic but he did a really great job and I look forward to it's June 20th right is our is that our next July 20th I'm sorry so I look forward to July 20th hopefully I'll walk in without a cane Missy just love you to pieces no thank you for everything that you do for the village and you I know you really love what you do so it makes it makes you shine so with that any other comments move to adjourn is there a second Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, good night, Palmetto Bay.