Village Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening, everybody. It's 7 p.m. and we are live. So I'd like to call to order this virtual Committee of the Whole workshop Tuesday, July 14th, 2026. We're still at 7 p.m. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll?

Mayor Karen Cunningham? Present. Vice Mayor Mark Meritzer? Present. Council Member Steve Cody? Here.

Council Member Marsha Madsen.

And Council Member Patrick Fiore will be joining us by telephone. I'm here.

Oh, great. All right, the gang's all here. Council Member Fiore, do you want to lead us in invocation?

Yes, I have a short Bible verse for this evening. We could all bow our heads real quick. The reading is from 1 Chronicles. In 34, give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever. Amen.

Amen. If I could get everybody to please stand. And Madam Clerk, can you lead us in the pledge?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, Indivisible, liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. All right. At this time, do we have any comments by form for the public comment portion? I saw you sent one that you said was late.

That is correct, Mayor. The comment that was received by form was disseminated to the members of the Village Council It was submitted after the deadline date and time. It will remain part of the permanent record, but if it's the wish of the council to have the comments read into the record tonight, I will.

I don't mind. Does anybody else? All right, Madam Clerk, go ahead. I don't see any objection. Go ahead and read it.

The comment was received by Mr. Henry Clifford, 8875 Southwest 171st Street. Please add the promise speed controls in the Benton Park neighborhood south of Perrine Elementary. If petitions are needed, tell me. If engineering is needed, fund it. If the school board or county needs to be contacted regarding speed limits and zones, please contact them. We expect the bridge opening to create more traffic in our neighborhood, not less.

Thank you. All right. With that, and I'm taking a look, and Olga, maybe you can tell me. I see names that I don't recognize in the lobby, but it appears as though it's staff or people that are on the screen. We have Katie Cromwell, Laurie Smith, Lala. I'm saying that incorrectly. My apologies. Morellis Gensler. Are these all panelists, Mr. Manager? Hannah, I see Hannah Palmer.

And so you've got a mix, Madam Mayor. Mirelis is our stormwater engineer. Lori is an attorney from Wiserota. I don't know if anyone else is hearing that high-pitched, almost like a fax machine noise. If you're not speaking, if you could please mute. I don't know. I'm not sure. We'll have to troubleshoot it, Madam Mayor. Katie, I believe you're from Refteles. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So I think that covered everyone, Mayor.

All right, great. With that, we'll move into the presentations, and we are starting with the stormwater program update sponsored by administration.

Oh, thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm going to key up my relish here. This actually is going to be the update from Raftelis, and we're going to queue up a presentation. We're going to talk about our stormwater rate study, the methodology that went into it, and additional details. So with that, Mirelis, you've got it, and take it from here.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Mirelis Gensler. as the village manager said, and I'm the stormwater engineer. We've been working very closely with our primary consultant, Kimberly Horn, and their sub-consultant, Raph Ellis, who will be presenting for you today on the proposed changes and additions to our stormwater program and our stormwater infrastructure. So in our weekly meetings, we discussed our vision for the stormwater program with input from our vice mayor and our tree board, and we itemized what is needed to move towards our goal within the next five years. We have also provided RAF Dallas with our operating budget, the progress of our current and upcoming projects, and an updated CIP for the utility system that we put together with Kimley Horn. They're combining the information provided with our vision for the future to provide a proposed stormwater fee at the end of the study. Interlocked with this effort is the stormwater master plan that Kelly Horn will be developing once we receive the awarded grant funding. And we're also looking to incorporate CRS objectives into that master plan to reduce our CRS rating. I just wanted to give a little recap of everything our wonderful consultants have been working on. And now I'll pass it on to Katie and Hannah from RAF Dallas to present the stormwater program update.

Great. Thanks so much.

I believe Hannah is going to be sharing her screen with a presentation. And I may need somebody's permission to share my screen. I have it grayed out. It says I need to ask an organizer. All right. I think we are looking good.

Are you able to do that?

Got a spinning little dot, but I have clicked share.

Okay.

Can everyone see that? Yeah. Great.

Okay. Great. Well, hello and thank you so much for having us here today. My name is Katie Cromwell and I'm a vice president with Raftelis and the assistant director of our stormwater practice. And we work with stormwater utilities across the country as they look to update and implement new stormwater programs. So I have with me Hannah Palmer-Dwar, who's a senior consultant in our practice. And over the past few weeks, we've been working with staff to develop some options for updating your stormwater program. And we're here today to share with you those options. So here we have a brief agenda of what we're gonna cover today. So first we're gonna talk about our city goals and how that fits into the stormwater rate study that was just referenced. And you're gonna hear more about the exact details of the rate study next week. So today we're just really focused on the the program updates specifically the updates related to the tree program and the green infrastructure program and so with that we're going to cover some key assumptions as part of our study we're going to review two different scenarios that were developed as part of that and then we'll wrap it up with a comparison of those scenarios and I'll just say up front, please feel free to chime in with questions as we go along. You can see kind of where we're headed, but please feel free to chime in as needed. So first, talking about our study goals, we understand that the Village has some specific program enhancements related to their stormwater program that you wish to fund and implement. that will improve the quality of life for your citizens. So in particular, that includes enhancing your tree planting and urban shading program and developing a green infrastructure program. It is expected that these new programs would be funded by the village's existing stormwater fee and should thus be included in the village's stormwater fee rate study. So for this programmatic study, we worked with staff to develop a program and funding framework for the Villages Stormwater Program that would allow you to build on moving forward. So we're going to review the projected program costs for a five-year period to support that desired future level of service for specifically the tree and green infrastructure programs. And that includes staffing, equipment, and materials costs. And so we have two scenarios we're going to be presenting today, one more basic program and one more advanced program. And so I'm going to hand it over to Hannah, who's going to cover a lot of the details of those scenarios that we developed.

Great. Thanks so much, Katie. So this is really the heart of what the village has asked us to help with, which is how do you build out green infrastructure and grow shade across Palmetto Bay in a way that is realistic and sustainable in the long term? What I want to do over the next few slides is walk you through how we thought about it, and then show you the two different scenarios that we've talked about, the basic and advanced. And I'll try and keep it at a bigger picture level, and as Katie said, we'll do our best to answer questions as we go, so feel free if you want to stop and talk about something, we can absolutely do that. Before we get into the two scenarios, I wanted to share some key assumptions that provide a basis about everything we're going to discuss. So the first is that everything here is in addition to what the program already does. This is not a replacement. This is not a repackaging of the current program, but rather an additional investment to accelerate shade and village resilience. So these are new additions funded through the stormwater utility. And as such, our job was really to take the village's objectives and desired level of service, translate those into real programmatic elements, and then project out costs that can be built into a stormwater rate study. That's why you'll hear us talking so much about staffing, materials, equipment. These are all the pieces that actually move you towards your goal here. And more than any single tree count or dollar figure, what we're really trying to do here for both scenarios is establish a framework that's going to carry us forward into the future. Second, we worked within cost constraints as we envisioned both of these scenarios. So if cost were no objective, we could design an enormous program and put a huge amount of work in front of you, but that wouldn't really be realistic. And it really wouldn't be sustainable either. So we built these two scenarios to live within the storm program that is actually realistic and deliberately aimed for a revenue requirement that the village can reasonably support. So what you're seeing is ambitious, but it's grounded in what the village can actually do. Finally, we have envisioned a project where growing the canopy is a shared effort. So under this framework, the village plants and cares for trees in the public realm. And when the village does that installation, they cover everything, including the full cost. We've got trees, materials, maintenance, everything that not only goes along with getting it into the ground, but established. We've built in support for trees on private property as well. And this is where the split comes in, where the village provides the tree and the residents handle planting, materials involved with planting, ongoing care and maintenance. So that partnership is what lets us stretch the reach of the program further than the village could do on its own. And we'll try and show this really clearly in each of our scenarios between village and private tree installation. So with those assumptions in mind, we can move forward to our next scenario, or our first scenario. So our first scenario is what we're calling the basic program. Think of this as steady, sustained momentum. The village is planting trees every year, both on public land and then supporting residents on private property. So over five years, that adds up to roughly 460 new trees. To do that work well, we've built in a dedicated shading crew and some contracting dollars so the village isn't stretched thin when the work picks up. And then if the workload gets heavier than the in-house crew can handle, these contracting funds can be used to bring on extra hands, any additional equipment that the crew might not have already. And it really keeps the program from stalling due to any staffmen or equipment gaps. On the green infrastructure side, the scenario provides modest funding for opportunistic projects. So funding is available to take advantage of good projects as they come up rather than a large standing program. So for instance, if the village is already repaving a street or redoing a parking area, we could add a bioswale or a rain garden into that project while the ground is open and while the crews are there. So in that kind of a case, you can capture the stormwater benefit without bearing the full cost of the project as a standalone or independent endeavor. Another example, this funding can also be used to close a cost gap. So if permeable pavers cost significantly more than standard pavement on a specific project, this funding can be used to cover that difference so that a greener option that is beneficial to stormwater management actually feasible instead of being something we just can't do. Lastly, as part of the stormwater program, this includes a stormwater piece that Katie mentioned, which is a vac truck and crew to support the system. So the idea here is a program that's real, that's durable, we get trees in the ground, we have private partnerships, and just as importantly, we keep all of our trees alive, healthy for the long haul. Our second scenario is more ambitious. So we're looking at the same structure, but a bigger push on all the fronts. So here the village is planting at a significantly faster pace, and we have closer to a total of about 1,540 trees over the five years. And to support this accelerated program, we bring on crew earlier so the work starts sooner. And then we add an additional arborist because of this scale. We talked to the arborist and he let us know, you really want that expertise caring for the canopy there. And then we've also put in additional contracting funding to keep this pace, to keep up with all of these trees that we're envisioning planting here. Under this program, the green infrastructure steps up as well. So we've got more funding to pursue projects as they arise, and the stormwater component stays the same as that first scenario. So we're looking at a back truck and crew. So we have our two scenarios here, and let me bring them together on our scenario comparison slide. This comparison slide also breaks down the full costs. for each scenario by shading costs, green infrastructure costs, and stormwater costs. All the costs here are shown. These are total five-year costs that have been inflated. And what we're seeing is that the base, looking from the basic to the advanced program, is the investment roughly doubles. This is really a reflection of that pacing of shading. More trees, sooner with crews and appropriate care. So the costs, we've also shown an average annual cost here too. And I would offer one important way to read these figures. I know it's really tempting to just take the number of trees and divide it by the annual year cost, but what we really want to stress is that that really understates this. The great majority of this cost isn't necessarily dollars per tree, but really it's the crews the material the equipment the years of maintenance and the establishment of trees that we're trying to keep keep a canopy alive and growing so these scenarios don't just model the shade but literally that we are building shade it literally grows over time and it stands up to the capacity to sustain it so with that I'm going to pause there. Love to hear any reactions, questions.

I can't. Can you close out your screen if you don't mind? Because I can't see anybody to ask. There we go. Thank you.

No problem.

Questions? Nope.

I would just like to add a little note that what you're seeing is in addition to our current program. So Scenario one, I think it's 460 trees. That would be in addition to the trees we already plant. That wouldn't be the total number of trees.

That's true. Thank you so much. This is additional costs as well as additional work. Thank you. Vice Mayor?

Yeah, my core question is, as you're building out this model for both scenarios, I'm just wondering what the, I guess, assumptions were for the math behind the numbers that were presented. And if you can go into a little bit more detail as to what the calculations were.

Absolutely. And I can get as detailed as we'd like, but let me try not to get too nuts in front of everybody. Are you interested more in just costs related to trees or just the big picture, everything?

Well, both. And before you said it, I actually pulled out my calculator and calculated the cost per tree, and then he said COT2. So I am guilty of doing that. But And I was surprised by the actual cost. And I guess the key question I'd actually like to get to is, for example, what is the assumption as to how many staffers we need per tree to plant and maintain? What was the assumption as well for acquisition for those trees? And just everything that went into that number that's being presented. And just so I get a little bit more context as to what's behind that, please.

Yeah, definitely. So one of the things that we did discuss with Mary Alice and Dionisio's team, as well as the arborist, who is, I don't see him on the call. We talked about the current efforts to plant trees and what the current efforts represent in terms of, you know, is there any extra capacity for, if we say, hey, you need to plant 50 more trees a year, is that possible? Is it possible to say 150 more trees a year? And what we heard from the arborist is really, Kind of a mixed answer. Of course, you can't have the crews going out every day planting trees. There are going to be days when you are not able to do that work, days where those crew members need to be doing other things. But our advanced program was a little too advanced for the current crew, so we did add additional staffers there. And one of the things that we also needed to keep in mind was that the more trees we plant, the more maintenance is involved. So it's not just a one and done. It's not just I go out, I plant a tree, it's done. There's a lot of intensive maintenance that is involved, especially in the first 12 months of a tree being planted. That lifespan is really important. So we needed to assume good crews are doing good work. So for our, and let me see if I, I'm no longer sharing my screen. So sorry about that. For our basic scenario, we added two crew members starting in year two. So we're assuming that one year's worth of trees will be planted in that first year. And by the second year, we might need another set of hands to both plant trees and maintain trees. And because of the additional trees planted in scenario two, we added an additional crew member plus an additional arborist. And of course, the contracting costs were also in addition meant to add more support here to make sure that we're not missing anybody. So our contracting costs per year for our basic scenario, we have $40,000 a year. And for our advanced scenario, just a modest increase up to $50,000 a year. So that's $50,000 a year plus an increase, one additional crew member, plus everyone starting one year earlier. In terms of, and I'm sorry, does that answer a question of crew?

Yeah, and I'm just wondering how that compares. So essentially you took the numbers that we're spending now on our current crew and then essentially made some estimates as to what we would need for future work on our canopy?

Roughly, yeah, that's roughly the approach that we tried to do. Is our crew able to achieve the work that they're currently asked? And if we double it, if we add 50%, what would that look like? And did you have questions... I don't know how detailed you'd like to get about actual tree costs.

Hannah, if you want to share the, I think the costs for the city installation of the trees and then the private installation as well. And I will also just emphasize, you know, it's a little bit of a, of a bottom-up, top-down analysis because we are cost-constrained in terms of what would be feasible revenue requirements to recover with your fee without your fee being exorbitant. So, yeah.

And so those costs for installation for the village, for each tree for the village, we've assumed a $300 per unit cost. For private installation, it's $175 per unit. And the village includes all materials, whereas the private installation does not. So that's the focus on the tree itself. whereas the villages, the tree, the materials, the installation, we've also included an annual maintenance cost of $20 per year per tree.

Any other questions? I have a quick question. And I know you're in the process right now, is my understanding, or you're about to enter a process.

we don't have a number yet right in terms of what what the increase potentially could look should look like what you're proposing we don't have final numbers that is something that i believe is going to be discussed next week on the july 20th meeting so this the rate study is currently in progress but we have looked at a range that we're hoping to get to which um which for the basic program is 10 to $12 per ERU. And I believe the advanced is 11 to 13 per year. Katie, do I have those correct roughly?

Yeah, that's correct. And again, you know, our colleagues are kind of trying to hustle and finalize the rate study. So that's a little bit up in the air, but Um, yeah, I think that's, that's the right range and, um, you know, you'll get more refined numbers next week on that.

Great. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you. That, that to me is the most important part of the presentation. So thank you. Uh, are there any other questions, comments as it relates to the presentation or questions for the village manager or DO director Torres? No? Okay, Councilwoman.

I'm interested in what the tree board talks about, which is generally they talk about citizens, private citizens installing the trees that they have mentioned that giving away more trees, Currently, we do it once a year. We could do it several times a year and then having the residents be responsible. That would considerably cut costs, would it not? And I guess that's a question. And then is that feasible for this kind of program to mainly have it a private program in terms of planting trees only?

That is something that we have considered. So that is the difference between that public cost and the private cost. So in the private cost, that's what we're assuming is basically a model like that. It does cut costs because, of course, we are not responsible or the village is not responsible for materials for ongoing maintenance. So you're very correct, yes. And then in terms of feasibility, I am not sure if I'm the best person to answer what the tree board might be in regards to what the tree board might be doing. Part of the reason that we were looking at a split between the public and the private isn't just a cost-cutting measure, but it's actually more of a, there is only so much land that is public land. It is a very practical measure of, this does need to be an effort that is borne by the larger us. the city can plant trees on every square inch of land that's available, and they still mathematically wouldn't be able to get to the 2040 goal.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you, ladies. Appreciate it. With that, we will move into stormwater program update by Reptelis Consultants, sponsored by Vice Mayor Mermitzer.

Madam Mayor, if I could very briefly, and I apologize, the agenda wasn't worded completely correctly. This is actually the Vice Mayor's presentation here.

I'm sorry, I thought that, but I'm just looking at it as it is.

Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.

Okay, understood. All right, thank you.

Vice Mayor, my apologies, but this is your presentation here.

Okay, do you have anything else related to the first presentation, Nick?

No, ma'am.

Okay, great. Are the consultants, do you want to stick around or are you needed for this portion?

You don't have to stick around, but you're free to stick around if you'd like.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, ma'am. With that, I guess it's a stormwater program update by Vice Mayor Merwitzer.

To start, I want to start by thanking Nick, Mary Ellis, Dio, and the team. We've had several meetings about this in the last, I would say, four or five months, and this is something that I've been eyeing since I took office back in December of last year. So before I get into the actual policy, Two things. One, it would be great to have the PowerPoint brought up. I can't screen share, and I unfortunately don't have it downloaded on my computer properly. I'm trying to get this set up. So I'm wondering if the village clerk could actually be the one to go ahead and share the PowerPoint presentation, just go through it. I have a new computer, so it's been a learning experience for me.

Give me a moment. I'm trying to get it on the screen. Okay. Can you see my screen?

Yes, I can see it.

I'm just hoping I can go into presenter mode and I can begin.

If I could just advise everyone, if you look at the very top in the center of your screen, you can click on that top button. It may say hide everyone and you can change it to active cameras and it'll bring up the whole group so that you can see everyone.

Thanks. Perfect.

So, Before I get into the actual policy, I want to explain why I was bringing this forward in the first place, because I feel like policy can only make sense if you understand the full premise. So Palmetto Bay exists because we reclaimed the land from water and the whole part of Florida was wetland before it was a village. We drained it, we built on it, and we've been managing that decision ever since. And the water has never really stopped trying to come back. Every time we have a king tide, an afternoon storm, Every flooded road on a normal Tuesday is that same process still running that we experience. And for most of our history, we could build it out. We could add bigger pipes, more concrete, or more sub basins. And that's getting harder. Our own resolution plan projects at 60 days a year of high tide flooding by 2050. And we're already seeing over 40 days a year of extreme heat, and that's climbing. And meanwhile, between 2016 and 2020, our village has actually lost tree canopy while the rest of the county has relatively held flat. Found on two really critical things, including water and shade that determine a place like Palmetto Bay, if it's a livable place to be in the future. So I grew up here. I want future kids and the kids growing up in the village right now to have the same Palmetto Bay that I had, which is a walkable green and livable place where a normal rainstorm in the afternoon is just that it's just normal rainstorm and it doesn't cause flooding on a street. And that happens in the future because this council and councils all come after us decide to invest in that purpose before it was an emergency. And I also want to be direct about some of the discussions we might have about cost or anything else. Infrastructure will never get cheaper. Every year that we wait, the cost of doing this goes up and the cost of doing nothing becomes even more expensive. And doing nothing will be the most expensive thing we have ever done. We just have not seen the bill for it yet. And there's also a piece of it that's pretty easy to miss. Stormwater as a system doesn't just disappear when it drains off of your driveway. It runs off into our streets. It goes into our lawns, into Biscayne Bay, which is right on our shoreline. And once it actually gets to Biscayne Bay, that actually goes down into Biscayne Aquifer and that then becomes our drinking water. So this to me is not an abstract environmental issue. This is something that every single one of us, when we drink water out of our tap is experiencing when we decide to manage our stormwater system here. So that's the whole premise behind this whole package as we go through it, and I'm excited to present to it. So if we could go ahead and move to the next slide, please, I can get into the actual discussion direction, and I'm looking forward to discussion after the presentation.

I apologize, Vice Mayor and Council, but I'm experiencing technical difficulties with the presentation on my end. I have our Director Caravalho here trying to assist me. I could upload the presentation into GoToWebinar as another option and or email it to the entire Council right now. If you just bear with me and I apologize.

I think we all have the presentation. I'm just mentioning this in the interest of time. We all have the presentation in the agenda. If you can scroll through the agenda, does that make sense? Okay. So you all have the agenda, I assume, in front of you, and the PowerPoint's there in paper fashion, but If you're good with that, and maybe just tell us what slide we're on, we can follow along that way until they get things straightened out.

That works for me. So on slide two, I'll go ahead and give you all a roadmap as to the thought process that I had in working with administration and developing this, which includes the philosophy. which is moving from a pipes-only program to a full-on program where we manage rain where it falls and what our own data shows about that. The package is broken up into three separate policies, which I'll get into soon. They're still a work in progress and they're under staff review. So once that's ready, I'll be happy to share with you all what those look like. And I want to go into what each one of those do. And then also lastly, the money and sequencing as to what this will look like in an ideal world. So on the next slide, on slide three, we get into the most important thing, which is the water, which is, I already mentioned this, but we're already experiencing more high tide flooding and also an afternoon storm can flood some of the streets in our village. It's a routine thing that you can look at. If you step outside today, You can also feel the extreme heat that we have in the middle of July here in Miami-Dade County, and that's only going to get worse as time goes on. And also as we look at some of the scenarios because of climate change, sea level rise and storm surge issues, that's a 27 that we're gonna be looking at. So we move on to the next slide again, The idea and the philosophy behind this, and this is the conceptual heart of this whole package, is that today every drop of rain that either lands on a roof, a driveway, a lawn, is essentially treated as someone else's problem. And it's been our utility's job as a stormwater system to maintain those drains and our canals, and those outfalls carry that water away from where it falls. And that capacity is fixed. And as we experienced with a lot of the sub-basin, which were incredibly needed, it's also an expensive addition to do. So every single new hard surface that we add to the village of Palmetto Bay spends a little bit more of that capacity that's been fixed. And we have to essentially figure out a way to absorb that water at the source. So every single surface that we can have where we have a parcel that holds that water and soaks it up, essentially frees up that capacity for those stormwater systems that we're investing in today. So that can be things like trees, soil, and rain gardens that we mentioned earlier in another presentation from Aptilis. And it's the same way we can treat that water before it reaches a pipe or a pump station and It essentially allows us to distribute the system wide burden across thousands of homes and businesses, instead of concentrating it on a few big facilities, again, like our canals and our storm drains. So once again, our natural geology is trying to reclaim where we are and it's a fight that with concrete alone, we just cannot work with that geology as its own system. We have to figure out a way to address it at source. And that's the whole philosophy here. So getting into the most important part in my view as to what the system would do, sees that trees were actually a major piece of stormwater infrastructure and a single mature tree can intercept thousands of gallons of rainwater each year. And Florida's urban forest as a whole has prevented an estimated 50 billion gallons of runoff every year. which again is over $450 million of treatment cost to take care of that water. So the adopted canopy target that I think is incredibly important for our village is 40% by 2040. That essentially catches us up to our peer municipalities like Pinecrest and Coral Gables and allows our system as a whole to absorb that much more stormwater within our system. So getting into what that actually looks like beyond trees, again, we have the urban tree canopy, but we also have on the next slide things like rain gardens, bioswales, and all conversions that we're going to have to work with property owners and also with our public projects that we do in the future to install these across the village where we're essentially, again, intercepting the stormwater at its source. So Getting into the actual policy as to how we achieve that, there's three things that we have to do. First is obviously we have to set the stormwater utility rate, which I'm looking forward to that discussion as to what that should look like. The next thing we have to do is make it easy for people to actually get those improvements installed on their property. And the last part as well is that if you want to actually build something in the village of Palmetto Bay, you have to meet these new standards to essentially push us in the direction where we need to be. and we're not essentially treating the stormwater on your property as someone else's problem or the utility's problem to manage. So again, that's the philosophy here. The idea is that the three of those programs work together where it's seen as a system where both private property and our public projects are working together to intercept that rainwater at its source. So essentially all the stormwater ordinance would do, which is the first ordinance, which is on the next slide, is that it's going to add a lot of these new features that we just discussed in the last presentation, things like the green infrastructure, urban forestry, being able to do some inventory for our stormwater system, and also doing outfall retrofits because as we have sea level rise come up to our water table, we have to be able to ensure that our stormwater system continues to work in the face of that. On the next slide, we have beautiful program, which, in my view, will hopefully just be a pilot program for its first year. But essentially, what we're trying to do with this is two things. One, we have the old program, which I know Commissioner Fiore previously sponsored, which was the business improvement program. And this is going to be essentially my hope is that we can have discussion about rolling that program into this one. where in an ideal world, if you're applying for a permit in the village of Palm Middle Bay, the village can essentially partner with that applicant and that person seeking a permit from the village. And they're able to essentially get a grant to install the existing program, which is, again, the facades, the signage, the lighting for that business improvement program. But a new component of that would be also giving ability for that property owner to have things like stormwater trees, rain gardens, and other really critical parts of our stormwater system installed directly on their private property. This was mentioned in the last presentation, but the reason why this matters is that the vast majority of our property here in the village of Palmetto Bay is not in public domain. So we can invest all we want in our public domain water system, but unless we're essentially able to treat every parcel as part of that same system. And eventually it's going to become a public cost with whatever actually lands on that private property. We're essentially not doing everything we can to add that capacity that's needed. So I'm happy to get into more detail as that program is there with staff, but essentially the idea is you walk in for a permit and the village is essentially able to work with you directly to see if we can work with the private property owners to install some of these green infrastructure items for the Village of Palmetto Bay. So again, on the next slide, it talks about some of the ways that we actually get there. But the idea is to essentially make this as close to a turnkey as possible, where prior to the development of this actual ordinance and prior to the implementation, we're actually able to essentially give people a menu of standard designs at bulk rate. and we're able to install those directly with the property owner at those pre-negotiated rates. And you could either work essentially with a pre-qualified contractor to install that rain garden. Like let's say you're tearing up your driveway and you want to install a new one. You'd be able to have that contractor come in and put that on your property as you're working with this and funds while you're doing that work already. So that's the philosophy behind it where we have essentially a menu of preset designs that we're able to install in as many places as possible to add that infrastructure as efficiently as possible to private property. So that's the hope. And again, the idea here is for this to be a pilot in year one to essentially get that feedback and understanding as to what that program would look like and move from there. Moving on to the next slide, and I'll pause for a second here because the land development code on its own is another significant addition to our current. And I want to see if there's any questions from council to see where we're at.

Other questions? Okay, go ahead, Vice Mayor.

Perfect. So the land development code is a major update to our... And a lot of what's actually in this land development code was actually taken directly from policies that are in our comprehensive plan. And also some of the recommendations that we have in our own resiliency action plan. So that includes things like our green infrastructure requirements. It includes things like the tree property. All those things are rolled into this land development code update. So essentially we're taking our existing plans and actually putting them into our land development code. So the philosophy behind it specifically is that this will be a prospective code only, and this will only apply to new applications going forward. Nothing existing on current property will ever become non-conforming and no one's going to get a code violation for what's currently on their property. The other part of it too, is it has to be scaled specifically to the size of the project. And what that means is if you're just doing a simple kitchen remodel, You're just gonna get a one-page checklist just to make sure you're complying with some very basic things like, hey, please don't roll over some tree roots that would damage and kill the tree long-term. Meanwhile, if you're doing a full-on teardown of a property and rebuild, the requirements under this land development code update would scale up with that and scale up with the impact of your work so that we're essentially meeting the project cost where it's at and we're not gonna be imposing thousands of dollars in new requirements for someone who's just simply trying to update their homes. And also the last part of it as well is that there's a compliance path everywhere in this code, where if you work with Palmetto Bay Beautiful and that program, it's automatically client so that you're automatically going to comply with this new code. You don't need to do a full on engineering review or plan revisions as part of it. And you also get a portion of that funding from the grant as well. So that essentially the idea here is that the, The grant program is a carrot. The land development code is a stick and hope people in the right direction. And the last part as well is it's not effective until later next year. And that's because two reasons. One, we have some requirements according to the village attorney on Senate bill 180 and that's sunsetting on October 1st of 2027. And the second part as well is that since this is a shift in how we do plan owning requirements, This would take some time to ramp up and ensure that we essentially be able to, we're able to work this into our next budget cycle, not this coming year, but the following year. So that's the philosophy behind building this. So actually getting into the specifics as to what's in land development code on the, you have a couple of really important items. The first is that if you're building a parking lot here in the village of Palmetto Bay, you're going to be required to actually provide some shading for it. Um, the current code is, um, a percentage space and this would ramp it up to an actual space-based, um, where, um, you start off with one tree per eight spaces where we're at today, and then stepping that up gradually to one per six and one per five, um, on a year on a, on a schedule. So that as time goes on, the code gets a little bit more strict. Um, and it also gives private property owners time to prepare for this. Um, any wellness is the important part of it. You can see in other cities that I've tried to do this sort of work, um, where you'll just plant a very narrow strip of soil and essentially give those trees in that area, very little room to grow and work with and essentially get dead trees in a couple of years. So this specifically addressed that challenge and essentially require that every tree gets actual soil to grow and reach maturity. The next part as well is for new construction and major redevelopment on commercial properties, they're going to be required to hold the first inch of rainfall. This is something that was taken and inspired by directly from our comp plan and then rising to one and a half inches by year 12. And the reason for that as well is that whatever happens on your private property is eventually going to impact the utility as a whole. So we have to do what we can to retain and capture some of that rainwater on site so it's not getting into our system. That's another component as well. The other part as well is turf reduction. So if you're doing a teardown or rebuild or a major re-landscaping of your property, we're going to be adjusting the cap from 60% to 40% of the required landscape area. That's actually in line with some of the other codes in Florida that have been a little bit more aggressive and The rest of that has to go to native trees, groundwater, or other permeable planting. The other part of it as well is that if it's within 20 feet of a canal or drainage feature, it also cannot be within that area. And again, I want to emphasize that everyone is grandfathered existing there. There's not a requirement in code to rip up your lawn tomorrow or do anything unless you're essentially tearing down your property and rebuilding it, or if you're ripping up your entire landscape project and redoing it, which is is already doing substantial work on your property. So again, this is perspective and this has nothing to do with current property. And the reasoning behind that is for every square feet of lawn that we have here in the village of Palmetto Bay, that requires things like pesticides, required care and other things that is required to maintain that lawn long term. And as that goes down the drain or gets into a canal, you essentially get that discharge into the skiing bay. And one of the things that we've consistently seen in our canals, if you just, for those who live on a canal or live near a canal and have seen it, one of the most common things that you see in there is a bunch of grass that's from a lot of the lawnmowers going through. And this essentially takes some of that. And the last part as well is that if you remove a tree, you have to replace the canopy area, not just a tree count. Essentially right now, if you're cutting down a tree, you just have to replace it. This actually measures it by canopy coverage so that we're actually not losing canopy as a result of people taking out trees on their property. There's some state law that exempts some of this. I'll get into that in the next slide. So the next slide has for a reason protecting the trees that we have and the philosophy behind this specifically is that it is much cheaper and much more cost efficient to maintain the canopy that we already have but then have to go around planting new trees everywhere in the village of Palmetto Bay as we just saw in the last presentation. So this is as important to me and also to the math behind this as our own tree planting program because we have to be able to keep up with at least the loss and we have to essentially reduce that canopy. So essentially, Um, a preserved tree provides in one year, what a newly planted tree takes 15 plus years to grow. So again, it's about keeping what we already have. Um, essentially what our code currently ask is that you show the trees are in the permit sketch. Um, and what this would do is that if you're doing work that requires heavy machinery, um, in the trees root area, you essentially. fence it off and you don't put heavy equipment or machinery in that area it doesn't require an arborist to come enables and make determinations about it or if you're just trying to do some basic work in your house which is as hey if you're bringing heavy equipment on your property that has risk don't put equipment on near that tree in its root area because that kills the tree the only time an arborist will come into play is if you're doing some really high risk work any excavation utility work foundations or pools and that's only within the root area of that tree and that's also only for trees that are more mature so this is not like coral gables where again if you want to just do a resurfacing of your pool deck the the city is going to require an arborist to come in and give and provide the city a whole bunch of information this is a lot more simple essentially hey tell us where your trees are and also make sure that they're not being impacted. And lastly, as well, routine yard work as well is not being impacted. And this is also that mirrors my county's code of chapter 24, which prevents tree abuse and the provisions around that. So this is not a new standard that people haven't seen before. This has been done in other places. So in summary, what this means for single family homes, Most permits, if you're just trying to get a fence or root in or a small addition, just ask that you provide the village a simple sketch where your trees are and just please don't put equipment on your tree roots. For larger projects, the philosophy here is that if you're adding a hard surface or impervious surface to your property or resurfacing it, you essentially try and absorb and inhibit some of that stormwater from rolling off your property and impacting the rest of the system. So the idea is you can plant some stormwater trees or go through the Palmetto Bay Beautiful Program and get that planted on your property as well. And the last one is if you're doing a full teardown or rebuild, the standards become a little bit more stringent where it kicks up to the reduction for turf to 40% and also kicks in with the restriction on not having turf within 20 feet of a canal or swale. So again, nothing in this package will require existing homeowners to change their current yard. This is only a standard if you're already replacing 50% of your landscaped area or more, or doing complete tear down and rebuilding your property. So moving on, again, just to emphasize as well, and the most important thing I would point to on slide 16 is the hazardous tree provision. State law, unfortunately, where if you hire an arborist and say it's a dangerous tree, you have to allow that property owner to cut it down. This provides a pathway to comply with that state law. I've done separate methodology. So last one for the commercial property, large parking lots. Um you again have to plant one canopy tree per eight spaces. Um and it ramps up the requirements as time goes on with the council check in before ramp ramps up the requirements. Same thing with intercepting rainfall and also um it promotes cool pavements essentially not planting or causing heat islands all across the village of Hummel Bay. So You can also, one of the things I'm looking into as well is if you can't plant the trees on your property itself, the applicants can also pay into a canopy mitigation fund that already exists in our code, and that's currently pending a study. So the last part of the presentation I'll get into is to reiterate why this is an important thing for us to do. It will give us less flooding, cooler streets, cleaner bay, lowers our flood insurance, keeps our property values high, and also gives people a fair deal where no one's being with this, but it's also nudging people in the right direction. So the timeline, hopefully tonight we can have some discussion about the policy and direction of this. And then based on that feedback tonight, we can hopefully have a finalized item by September for first reading alongside our adoption of the rate to fund it. And then by October, we can have it finalized and approved and have that approved alongside the land development code changes. So with that, looking forward to questions, comments, concerns, and feedback before this is fully brought to council. Thank you.

Okay, questions? Okay, and Pat, if you have questions, you'll just have to chime in because I can't see you. So just speak up. I have a quick question, because this is obviously far more expanded than the presentation that was given to us just a few moments before your item. So what is the cost?

That's going to be worked on by the ambition of whatever we decide to fund the stormwater program with. Palmetto Bay Beautiful would be partly funded by our existing funds from our business improvement program. And then lastly, the land development code side. I'm still waiting to actually get a final answer on that, but my assumption is it would probably require one additional staffer that would be essentially discussed and funded not this... ongoing year, and it would be up to the new council to fund that.

Oh, so this is like a new council thing?

Yes, a lot of it, except for the actual stormwater rate, which the idea, again, for the canopy trees and some of the grant programs behind the green infrastructure, that would be funded hopefully by the stormwater program, and whatever that rate is, I've been working with the administration on getting that rate to fund that. But that's the hope, is that if we're doing an adjustment for our rate, we can also throw in some incentives for private property owners and also funding for our tree canopy.

And thank you for addressing the issue with staffing, because I think that's going to be very problematic based on what I heard at the last Our Budget workshop. Councilwoman Matson, I saw your hand, I think.

Yes, thank you. You're welcome. I'd like to know how the manager and the public services director, their reaction to this.

Thank you, Dr. Masson. I can cover very briefly. It'll actually be beyond just public works. It's going to include planning and zoning. I think I also have Director Gonzalez from planning and zoning on here. If I could just share, you are, okay, there are, Javi, got it. Let me share my screen here for a minute. Okay, you should be looking at one PowerPoint slide. Okay, great. So Director Gonzalez and I took a look at implementing the general fund aspects of the plan. We'll cover the stormwater costs. And I think our Rastelis consultant already kind of foreshadowed where we think that cost will be in terms of ERUs. So if you look at the new program costs here, there's a couple items on here. The Veterans Park doesn't apply to what we're talking about. But we were just looking at what would additional program cost be as we move forward? I think the Vice Mayor brought up there would be additional staffing required to implement the land development code part of it. Chiefly, you would probably need someone like an arborist, certainly someone who had an arborist certification to run the LDC aspects of the plan. So you can see the cost there. You can see the additional costs for the canopy we threw in some additional legal cause. We will further refine these numbers again don't include the veterans Park. Cost in there will further refine the but in order to implement on the general fund side. This is how we see it director Gonzalez if you want to share anything else please feel free to.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Manager, you hit the nail on the head. Most of the work in the ordinance will be the responsibility of an arborist. The rest we can handle. Some items in the ordinance are already located in the land development code, so we can take care of that, but it's a robust ordinance. Great ideas, great benefits, but we would need at least one staff member at the current stage that we're in to handle the items.

Okay. Are there any other questions? May I have a follow-up, please?

Of course. So, Mr. Manager, then, do you think this is a good program? This is something that Palmetto Bay could use and make it a better environment for the village residents?

I do. I mean, I think it's a good program. I mean, obviously, this is a policy decision for the village council. We would need to resource the program. We do have challenges in that. But I do think it's a good program.

I would also just emphasize as well that the program would really kick in in fiscal year 27-28 and not this following or this coming one. So this would be a discussion for the next, the best way to execute this.

Nick, could you bring back up your slide?

Okay, you should have it up now, I think.

Is this a presentation that we already have? Or is this, because I see other slides attached with it. This is not a budget presentation.

No, ma'am. I mean, obviously, if the Village Council wants it, it's a public document. I'll send it to you. This was an internal planning document that we put together, not only to assist the Vice Mayor in doing his presentation here this evening, but also as we were preparing all the data that we would need for the fiscal year 27 budget, this was one of the presentations that we put together that would support both. That's why there's a veterans park. And that would actually be for the design and permitting of phase two of veterans park.

So in some respects, wouldn't it make sense to get a jumpstart? Just saying.

On which one, ma'am? Is that the park here?

Millage. On millage. Oh, on the millage. Money, yes. Money in general.

Yes, I mean, you know.

Thank you.

I know.

Yes, ma'am. Okay. Are there other questions, comments, any kind of discussion? Okay, Councilwoman, I'm sorry, Councilwoman.

I just would like to congratulate the Vice Mayor. This seems to include a number of proposals or laws that we have, the land development plan, the resiliency action plan, the conversation from the tree board, conversation from the resiliency committee. I would say this is a really good plan in terms of incorporating ideas from all of them. And I want to congratulate you on that. That's really good. I do have some question about Where the money comes from, it strikes me that this comes primarily from the stormwater fee. And that right now we're talking about the millage rate, but that's really, in my view, and correct me if I'm wrong, that's what our discussion is about. My view is that a very small part of this would come from the millage rate. The most of it would come from the stormwater fee, which is a whole different thing in my view than the property tax. So am I correct on that? Or would somebody comment about that? Thank you.

I'll defer to the vice mayor, but yes, ma'am, I think you're correct. The majority of the funding will be borne. I mean, the majority of the program is in the stormwater fund, but obviously there are general fund costs in order to implement the land development code aspects of it. and the Palmetto Bay Beautiful Program.

Yeah, so to answer your question and to carry off of what Nick said as well, a large part of it too is in the previous presentation, we mentioned hiring some arborists. The hope is that those arborists would support some of the aspects of this program. And a lot of this as well are some of the existing grant funding that we have for the business improvement grant program. that would go into this. So essentially it's merging the stormwater program and the existing grant program for the business improvement grant into one program as a whole. And on the backend, that's where we would decide the funding allocation as it comes up and the idea as well as to scale this over time. So for the first year, especially for the grant program for private property owners, this would be a very small scale program just to get feedback and also solicit some of the learnings as to what to building out a program like this. And same thing for the stormwater, the actual planting the trees that would hopefully come from that stormwater fund as well. So the vast majority of this would come from that stormwater fee is how I envisioned it.

And you don't know what that stormwater fee would look like yet?

No, but I mean, To be blunt, I'm open to whatever it needs to be is what it needs to be because to me, and I mentioned this earlier, the cost of doing nothing here is significant.

The framework that you're looking at, because what I heard you say was it would fit within whatever these potential two silos are for increase in stormwater. fees yeah and again i'm willing to have that conversation as well and i go back to this that's why i'm asking i'm having the conversation right now yeah so i mean it's not getting cheaper yeah no i know but i'm just trying to figure out is it going to be in with this 10 to 13 dollars or is this above and beyond the 10 to 13 dollars that you know that's what i'm trying to figure out

My understanding, and Nick, feel free to jump in, but my understanding is this would be within that range of 10 to 13 or 11 to 13?

I think so. I think 11 to 13, yes.

And Nick, staffing would come from the, from that same, from the stormwater fund fees?

It would, ma'am.

Okay. Are there other questions? Okay, I heard someone say comments. Councilmember Cody, we haven't heard from you yet. Go ahead. Well, thank you.

I want to begin by separating premise from proposal. I agree that trees, permeable surfaces, rain gardens, bioswales and other forms of green infrastructure can provide public benefits. But that general proposition does not establish that the three proposed ordinances are financially responsible, legally appropriate, administratively workable, or effective in addressing our village's actual flooding problems. The presentation relies heavily on attractive photographs, broad environmental statistics, and reassuring phrases such as inside existing means, grandfathered, which I have to tell you as a grandfather, I always like to see, and automatic compliance. What it does not provide is a budget, a rate estimate, a drainage basin analysis, implementation costs, a staffing plan, liability analysis, or a comparison with the stormwater project we've already identified and that we funded. The presentation begins by suggesting that the village faces a choice between continuing to build pipes and managing rain where it falls. That's a false choice. No one is arguing that we should rely exclusively on pipes, but the actual question is how we should allocate limited stormwater dollars among drain maintenance, basement improvements, outfall retrofits, canal work monitoring, and the proposed new private property grant program. The presentation also tells us that the water is not waiting on us. That may be a compelling slogan, but urgency is not a substitute for analysis. The existence of a serious problem does not prove that this particular solution is effective, affordable, or properly designated. We're given statewide statistics about trees intercepting rainfall and Florida's urban forest preventing rot. These statistics assert that trees are beneficial. The statewide statistics, however, do not tell us how much flooding this package would prevent in Palmetto Bay, which streets would benefit, or how much each gallon of avoided runoff would cost. Calling trees, landscaping, and private driveways infrastructure does not answer these questions. A definition is not an appropriation. Expanding the definition of stormwater infrastructure does not expand the stormwater fund. And that is the fundamental problem. The presentation proposes expanding allowable stormwater expenditures to include urban forestry, private rain gardens, permeable driveways, cisterns, consultants, contractors, inspections, monitoring, and outreach. But expending allowable expenditures does not create additional revenue. It creates more demands on the same limited fund. Now, Mark's deck calls year one a pilot, quote, inside existing means, close quote. Yet it also calls for consultant design standards, a program manual, contractor procurement, inspections, direct village payments, a new fiscal year 2027 budget item, and ultimately a stormwater rate ordinance. The program requiring new appropriations and a new rate ordinance is not self-evidently inside existing means. And a call to decide all these things less than a week before our second budget workshop is, I think, frankly, irresponsible. So before we go any further, I want to ask a very simple question. And this follows up on the question that the mayor raised. What stormwater fee increase is being proposed to pay for this package? If no increase is contemplated, then which existing drainage or outfall projects will be reduced, postponed, or canceled? The presentation also combines a voluntary grant program with mandatory changes to the Land Development Code. The voluntary portion is attractive. Residents may receive assistance with trees, rain gardens, or permeable surfaces. But that appealing concept is then used to soften new requirements governing turf, canopy replacement, parking lots, construction practices, retention, and private redevelopment. Residents are repeatedly told that their properties are grandfathered, but then they're grandfathered only until they undertake certain improvements, additions, driveway projects, landscaping changes, teardowns, or redevelopments. Saying a homeowner is unaffected until the homeowner involves the property is not the same thing as saying the homeowner is unaffected. Finally, the promised benefits are not tied to objective performance criteria. We're promised less flooding, cooler streets, cleaner water, lower insurance, and increased property values. But we're not given baseline measurements, geographic targets, cost per gallon calculations, or standards by which the pilot would be judged a success or a failure. And a pilot without measurable success and failure criteria is not really a pilot. It's simply the first year of a permanent program. The burden is not on anyone here to prove the trees are bad. The burden is on the sponsor to prove that this packet is affordable, lawful, measurable, administratively workable, and superior to the competing uses of the same public dollars. At present, we're being asked to approve a menu before we have seen the prices, the staffing plan, or the bank account. You know, it's all fun and games until the waitress brings the check. Here, the check will be a stormwater fee increase, delayed infrastructure projects, new administrative costs, or some combination of all three. I'm not prepared to give policy direction on three ordinances until the manager, the finance director, public services, planning, procurement, the village arborist, and the village attorney provide the council with a financial, engineering, arboreal, operational, and legal analysis that this presentation omits.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Councilman Mattson, I thought you had your hand up earlier. Go ahead. Yeah.

Yes, I did. Well, okay. My initial request of the manager was to break down what part of this proposed program is paid for by the stormwater fee and what part would be paid for by the property tax. That's what I'd like to see. If you can do that, I'd appreciate it. And I just want to respond to the councilman's comments hey stop that trees have always been part of the stormwater program actually this is nothing new and we just haven't really emphasized them or we haven't really i've been attending the tree board for years and they are always distressed over the fact that the environment is not put front and forward as an important part of the stormwater program. And I think that that's what this does. It's not anything different. It's just a plan and an idea that I think is very creative, very creative for the village. Of course, it all depends on how much money it costs and where the money comes from, but I think it's a very creative thing. And a lot of these ideas are already in things that the council has already passed. So I just want to say that, that this is not anything radically new. It's just a moving forward on what we already have said that we want. So thank you.

Welcome. I will just mention that we can't, and the, Attorney can correct me if I'm wrong. But we just I know you asked the manager to do something for you. We can't just give them a directive. Unless we all decide that my suggestion would just be that if the item is coming, maybe that's something that the Vice Mayor would fold into work with the manager to, you know, bring that information, because of course, we'll be asking so. Vice Mayor,

Yeah, a couple of things. The first is that this has been a several months long process to this point where we are now. Again, as I mentioned, this involved several meetings with staff to get their input. It involved meetings with our stormwater crew, along with the resiliency staff, along with Dio and the rest of the public works team, and also Nick as well. The whole plan from the beginning was to have the conversation about funding these new programs for our residents, which I think will be incredibly beneficial as part of our discussion for what our stormwater fee should look like. And the reason why this is an important conversation to have as well is that at its current rate, and Nick, if you want to jump in with numbers as well to correct me if I'm making any mistakes here, But at our current rate, because of the investments that this council has made on capital projects from our sub-basins, which I think are incredibly important, mostly a lot of it from grants, some of it from ARPA, some of it from our existing stormwater fund, because of a lot of the new investments that we made, those new investments are going to require upkeep in the long term. And our current expenditures on our stormwater fund are actually drawing down that stormwater fund reserve So if we do absolutely nothing with our stormwater fund, we're going to be in a position where that stormwater fund will be depleted over time unless we take action and set that new rate to what it needs to be. So that was the impetus of what our stormwater program as a whole looks like and how we can actually make it more efficient. And the way you make things more efficient is you get things at their source. so that was essentially what sparked this conversation is like how do we actually have a program that makes sense for our villages to where we are that respects our geology and respects the history of where we are sitting right now um so that that was what brought this um and to the council member who brought a bunch of concerns which i didn't really specific concerns if you have any ideas as to how we can better manage our storm water which all of these are evidence-based ways to manage and inhibit stormwater at its source. I would be all ears if you have ideas to include in this program. And the whole point of tonight was to have a conversation with also get some direction as to what I should bring back to council on the 14th of September. By the sounds of it, the most important thing is that breakdown between the general fund and what the stormwater fund will be. And I'm happy to work with the administration and bring that back to you once this is introduced in September. But I would love to hear any ideas anyone else has as to a program. I've also sent it to people who do this work every single day. And I've gotten a lot of really good pieces of feedback, which I'll also be incorporating in that September meeting, including like living sea walls and some other things, if it's possible to include that as some upgrades that are possible. But to me, the whole conversation that we're having is what we're having right here tonight. So if you have ideas, I'm all ears and I'd love to listen. So I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Yeah, I would just say from my perspective, because I've heard you mention it several times that not only for this item, but for other items, it's for the next council, it's for the next council, it's for the next council. So I would say in terms of policy, leave it to the next council. What I am most interested in is making sure that we set a rate. You all can work around the next council, can work around that rate with whatever policy you want. But my goal will be to see what the rate is and making sure that we're increasing it so that perhaps some of this can get accomplished with the next council. So that's my goal. So manager, I hope you're going to be bringing just a simple presentation as well on increasing the rate, what that would look like for the residents of Palmetto Bay. And then again, later, whatever policy you all want to plug in as it relates to how you're going to spend the money, I agree with you. If it's a next council thing, then let the next council have that say, if you will, so that they can determine, you all can determine together what your priorities are as it relates to flood risk, et cetera, and some of the other good ideas that you brought forward today. Is there anything else, Pat? I know you'll yell out if you have something. Okay.

Just to jump in one more time to respond to your comments.

Sure. I don't know that they need a response, given my opinion.

Yeah, I mean, the challenge is part of to update the stormwater fee and the actual rate itself. And this was a conversation I had with our village attorney, and feel free to jump in. Part of the discussion is you can't just set an arbitrary number for the stormwater rate. It has to be backed by a rate study. And some of the things that went into determining that rate and that stormwater include some of these programs that we're mentioning. So essentially some of that work that goes into building that rate and that fee that you're discussing comes from what we actually want that program to look like. You have to have the inputs for the actual program to justify the rate. And that's where it comes from. So it's not like a one or the other. It's like they're connected.

Right, but I believe whatever the manager is going to bring will have a program behind it. If later staff works with council and wants to change some of the policy, I think that's completely appropriate. You can skip up midstream and make the changes. And for the record, it's not my first rodeo. We brought stormwater fee increases several years back. That's why we're at, what, is it $6, Nick? It was a big jump. We were at $3, I think, or something like that. So anyway, I understand the underpinnings, Vice Mayor. Thank you for the explanation. But I also know that policy is meant to be tweaked, changed, brought back, discarded, tabled, deferred for later. And that can be done. We can set a rate. My understanding, I mean, $11 to $13 is a hefty jump. It's double. So whatever later you all decide, you know, we want to impact here. We want to tweak this. I think, and Mr. Attorney, you can correct me if I'm wrong. I think policy can be changed moving forward. And I know that we'll have a basis for making the increase just based on, I'll call it the simple plan. No offense, Nick. You're not simple. You're quite complicated. But I think bringing whatever policy the manager was speaking of combined with the study, that will be our due diligence. So open to hearing more when the item comes in September for sure. But as I explained, I'm just telling you what I'm focused on is making sure that we've got money to spend on these important things. Some of them might be the things that you discussed. Some of them might be incorporated into a plan later that the manager brings. So anyway, is there anything else? That's a great, great presentation. Thanks, Vice Mayor. And thanks, Mr. Manager, and thanks to the consultants as well. So we're going to move into the village council and administration discussion items. And we have the public safety district as a dependent special district, which has been sponsored by Vice Mayor and it was deferred from our July 6 meeting. Thank you for bringing it to this venue.

Of course, same thing as last time, to just go through the presentation on our own, or would the clerk be able to put it up on the screen?

Director, if you can hear me, I'm getting a message to ask the organizer to make me a presenter to share my screen.

All right, you should be good to go, Missy.

So Palmetto Bay is safe because we pay for it to be safe. And that's a choice that we make and decide to fund as a council every single year. And right now that funding sits in the same pot as it does for parks, for roads, for building and permitting department, for all of our other functions that we do as a village and spend our money on. And that public safety has to compete for that. So this proposal on its own does not change directly how much anyone pays, but it changes how our police funding would work, how it sits. So it can essentially never quietly lose ground or be up for competition whenever there's discussions with our budget. And that's the whole tech to what's working and make it visible for every resident and do it without costing any additional new tax. So Moving on to the next slide, please. What it is, and it's three ideas split into three moving parts. First is that the police funding will get its own brand new account within the Village of Palmetto Bay, just like how we sit for, as a local planning agency meeting and our zoning meeting, how we sit as a village council and then as a local planning agency. The idea is as our budget progresses, we would sit as a village council for our general budget. And then as this new dependent district for police funding as its own agency and its own council. So it would get its own budget separate from everything else. On someone's tax bill as well, it'll show up as its own line, as its own rate, and it's for money that can be spent on police and nothing else. And then the other part of it as well is, moving on to the next slide, is that it splits our current general fund rate, which you'll see is currently 2.3018 into two distinct rates. You'll have the general fund, and then you'll have what I call the blue line for the public safety district rate. And whatever the police cost, the idea here is whatever the police cost, we'll be able to fund separately from the rest of our budget. And it'll be labeled as such, or it's its own budget, its own protected line on someone's tax notice, just like the fire department just like our library system and just like some of the other, like the Children's Trust. That's the whole idea behind it is that what the police cost is what you should pay and you'd essentially be able to see for the first time exactly what goes towards keeping our residents here in the Village of Palmetto Bay safe. So moving on to the next slide. Right now, and this was taken from our budget presentation, over half of our total expenditures already go to the police. It's over almost $12 million out of our total budget. And that's something that we spend on a day-to-day basis. The cost is not something that we set ourselves as a village council. It's something that is set by contract with the sheriff's office and it goes up every year on its own schedule. And right now our current rate blends together what that looks like, and no one outside of Village Hall can actually see what that actually looks like in someone's tax bill. So, for example, our total rate for our general fund, let's just call it for the sake of argument one, and the police would be two. Essentially, the way it would work now is the total rate would be three. With this new proposal, if the police cost two mils, it would be set at two mils, and that's what we would pay for it with. and the rest of our general budget would be one or whatever we need to fund the rest of our services, which is a decision for the next council to decide or for our council in this case. So again, moving on to the next slide, fire rescue already does this. Our public library system already does this. And all this would do is take our police rate and separate it out from the rest of our public safety and also the rest of our budget. So it appears as its own distinct rate. Moving on, this is the important part as to how it actually works, is that again, every year the village council would set the police rate as its own separate millage, the same way we would do with our regular millage today, but it would only be for that special district or for the police. They'd get their own tax rate and then our own general budget would get its own tax rate as well. Um, and it would also be separate auditing so that every single and in the village would be audited separately from the police budget. Um, so that essentially it's entirely separate from our general budget and our police budget. Um, and also the combined rate, and this is the important part cannot exceed the 10 mil constitutional cap that we have in the Florida constitution, because what we're doing as a city is splitting up our current taxing authority and giving it to this special new rate that we have. So moving on to the next slide, path to adoption. I wanted to share that I've had some conversations with the village attorney earlier today. So that I'll let him take over this slide because there's some discussions that we've been having on that. So John, if you want to take it from here.

Sure, of course. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So we reached out to our office, reached out to the county attorney's office just to talk about procedure and to confirm everything. So the county has a process under the Home Rule Charter that is codified in Chapter 18 of the county code. for creating districts and transferring governance of those districts to municipalities. The County Attorney's Office has taken the position that Chapter 18 is the only mechanism by which it can be done in Dade County and not through Chapter 189 of the Florida statutes. Under that process, the way that would work is that the Village would pass a resolution requesting, asking the County through its home rule powers under Chapter 18 to pass an ordinance creating this dependent tax, dependent special taxing district. From there, assuming once it's passed by the County, the county and the village would then pass joint resolutions. Those joint resolutions would, on the county side, would transfer the governance of the dependent district to the village, and on the village's side, it would accept governance of the dependent special district. and then from there uh the it would just um proceed um uh you know as we had as the vice mayor was talking about that it would fall within the 10 mills um the all of that would be set by the village council um the police rate would be set as the governing body of the district and then the uh the remainder of the um uh the uh budget will be set in the village council's capacity as the council my my partner lori is also on if you if you all recall at the meeting last week there were some questions that came up and lori has a long history as a assistant county attorney in broward and another assistant city attorney so she has a long history with budget items and things like that so i asked her to join us

And just to jump in with the current process, I wanted to just address as well that if we wanted to adopt this on first reading, the correct approach would be...

Sorry, Vice Mayor. Lori, you didn't see that. Can you? Thank you. You're not muted. Try again, Lori. There you go. All right.

Yeah, so the approach that I was told would work for us directly is that we could adopt it on first reading in July if the council chooses to. And the appropriate thing would be to change the effective date to essentially allow when this ordinance comes back for us to propose that secondary resolution as well and then work through the county process and allow it to take effect once we complete the Chapter 18 of the county process. The other part of it as well, and this is my own thinking, is that I don't personally, the attorney, in her opinion or whoever that person was, his or her opinion, as immovable. If we as a council decide to adopt this, I think from what I've heard, there's some other cities that might be interested in doing this as well. And perhaps there can be room for us to work collaboratively with other cities, especially before the election with what's coming on the ballot, which I know has been a very difficult topic of conversation for us. So we can essentially protect that police funding separately from the rest of our budget. So there's other cities out there. If the county wants to actually take this seriously with us on it, I think it would help that there's other cities involved in this too, and we could work collaboratively. And the only deadline that I am personally concerned with, and John, feel free to jump in, is that essentially by the end of this calendar year is when this would have to be finally adopted for it to take effect in the following year, because state law essentially says if you want to create a new taxing authority, it cannot levy until the next following calendar year. So if this isn't done by December 31st of 2026, we're going to be in a position where we would have to wait until essentially 2028 before this would actually kick in. So that's the hope would be that we'd be able to essentially either A, see if the county have a change of heart if other cities are interested in this, or B, perhaps the county could even change the ordinance itself as its own process as well and work from there. So That's my current thinking on it. John, specifically to the effective date, is that an available path for us to take?

Yeah, I mean, I don't see an issue with passing on first reading because it's first reading is just moving it to second reading, honestly. So I don't see an issue with that. And then giving us that, if that's the will of the council to pass it on first reading, it would give us some time before September or whenever it's brought back up for second reading to work through the issues with the county and see if we can get some resolution there as well. So I don't have an issue with that now.

Okay, thank you. Questions? Councilwoman Matson?

Well, I'm going to congratulate Vice Mayor Merwisser. He's coming up with some interesting novel ideas. So thank you very much. This is an interesting one. And I do have five questions. So I hope you'll indulge me in my five questions. If all ad valorem revenues go to the police district, how will the village fund future increases in parks, roads, and administration?

So in a situation where we have these two rates and our entire ad valorem tax would be the police cost, that would be essentially up to the rest of the budget to fulfill, including the stormwater fund, including the transportation fund that we get from the half penny surtax, fuel taxes, and all of our other sources of revenue would essentially fund those other items, which I believe is actually in part what we do today because we have a situation where the entire police contract cost is higher than our millage as it is. So it would also be discretionary up to the next council as to how they would want to set that rate. But there's also a world where the next council could also have a nominal or whatever they decide to have it as, that separate rate B for the general fund of the village of Palm Meadow Bay. But the idea is essentially if the council chose to, they could sustain their operations by setting the millage to pay for the police, and if they want to, it would be a separate fund for everything else.

Okay, so my philosophy of government is that government was set up to protect people, and so public safety to me is always number one priority, followed by infrastructure, especially in Palmetto Bay flooding, and then the environmental aspect of it. So I'm very interested in this idea. But I also want to make sure that other aspects can be funded as well. So if non ad valorem revenues decline, can the council reestablish a general operating village?

So essentially the rule is whatever our combined millage is between the blue line police district and our operating budget, that combined rate is where the rules are. So if we want to split it up between, like right now for hypothetical, we want to have a situation where revenues fell from our operating properties and we need to essentially recover some of that cost from a higher rate we could as a council set whatever that district is to fund police at that higher rate or we could essentially find a way to have the general fund cover some of that shortfall one way the only thing is the police side of it the police the blue line area where you have the district for the police that cannot be used to fund general operations it's like a one-way road so there's just a partial firewall right is that what you're saying no it's a full firewall you cannot use the police district funds to fund general operations you can use a general operations fund to fund the police but it's not the other way around it's like a one-way street that sounds like a partial firewall to me but You cannot take from that one pool of money and give it to another for the police. You cannot give that police money to something else. That would not be allowed.

But you can give the general operating budget to the police if they need it. Is that what you're arguing? Correct.

Okay.

All right. What is the projected district millage for 2027 through 2031 with the police district?

That would be up to the contract costs and what the council between 2027 and 2031 decide to fund it as. Ideally, in an ideal world, you would fund it . Okay.

All right. That's all. Thank you. You're welcome. Are there other questions? I have a quick question. So essentially after reading it multiple times, it's a funding mechanism, but where's the 100% guarantee for covering police budget? I don't see that anywhere in the item itself.

What do you mean by guarantee?

Well, my understanding is that one of the reasons why we would want to do this is so that we are funding police services at 100%, right? I mean, otherwise, what is the protection? You know, we're talking about protection. I'm just curious. To me, protection is making sure public safety is funded at 100%, period. But I don't see that here. This is just a funding mechanism. And then future councils... we'll have to decide a millage rate based on, I guess, presentations by the manager and the major to be able to determine what that millage rate just for police services is, which doesn't necessarily mean that they couldn't say, well, we're not funding at 100%.

The way I would respond is historically with how these dependent districts have worked, it that especially with the fire district, you don't see a situation where you're defunding or lowering that fire district because you'd essentially be defunding the fire district. In this case, you'd be lowering the funding of the police. Those have structurally been essentially insulated from the rest of the general budget fights. Like for example, right now, the county is in significant financial situation. they're not having the same overall conversation about the fire district. They had some last year about whether or not the general fund would cover some helicopter issues, but it's mostly ancillary compared to the rest of the budget. So that's the whole structural protection that you would have is it's very similar to what you would have level for the firefighters, but except here in Palmetto Bay.

Right. I would just say this, the fire, the Miami-Dade fire rescue district, is an actual operating department. I mean, it actually says what the millage is. It says, you know, the amount of the operating budget. This is more of a, I guess, I'm guessing, because I can only read what I see and based on your presentation, it's like a contractual obligation. We're just saying, you know, hey, we support our police. We want to protect them. My question is, are we protecting them at 100%?

And... That would be the hope. And I would just jump in, like, the fire district is set separately every budget session by the county. It's not like the agency, like the fire district can wake up tomorrow and set the millage rate. The county commission has to approve it separately. And that's how it works, just like how it would work here in Palmetto Bay.

Right. So that would be the hope.

Correct, but it would be a special fund separate from everything else, and that's the same protection that the firefighters have at the county level. I mean, there's everything. I mean, even with our own general fund. So this at least insulates them from the separate fights that the county has with their own budget, for example. And with the onslaught coming in November, potentially, with removing homesteaded property tax exemptions, in my view, I think we have to send a very clear message that public safety funded no matter what. And whatever that budget has to be should be set by council, just like how the county sets for the firefighters.

Right. Thank you. This question is probably for Lori or for John. Is there another way of setting this right now? Is there a resolution or is there something that we could do for this particular budget cycle as opposed to an ordinance for future In my opinion, I don't see, I can't hope, I can't put something together, vote for something, and then hope that it's going to 100% fund police services.

I think Lori can chime in if she disagrees, but I'm not aware of any mechanism where we could have it set for this budget cycle. I think it would have to be, anything would be for a future budget cycle.

Yeah, that's correct with respect to the setting of a millage just for fire. This is for police. And just so you also, I don't think it's been mentioned that in a dependent special district scenario, the general operating millage of the village plus this dependent special district cannot exceed 10 mil. So you're looking at a 10 mil cap regardless of whether or not we set this aside for police because it is still dependent upon yours. There's no, you know, separate millage just for the police it it would be included in your total millage it would just be a line item but those two line items in the tax bill cannot exceed 10 mils the day we exceed 10 minutes of the day we double our staff thank you thank you yeah just making sure that you realize it's not an additional millage.

Are there other questions? Councilwoman Mattson? Steve, you have anything? After Councilwoman Mattson, I just wanted to see if you have comments.

Okay. I would just like to ask the major, our new major, and the manager what they think about this.

Go ahead, Major, if you want to go first.

Good evening, Councilwoman Mattson. I should have started with the mayor, members of the council. How are you all? Can you guys hear me okay? This is the first time I use this application with the speakers. So this is something that we had reviewed internally when it first came up that the vice mayor was was proposing it and in doing some research... Is Tony frozen or am I frozen?

It looks like he's frozen.

Okay. Tony, I don't know if you can hear us, but you're frozen.

Closest thing that I was able... Did I lose you guys for a second?

You did. We left you out in doing some research.

Yeah, my screen went blank. So... There's no other participation in a special taxing district that our agency participates in. The closest model that I could find was Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. And what I found is that they do have a set millage that is set once a year. It's submitted, I believe it's done through county resolution. And the current millage that they have, which I'm not sure if they send that information to the village or not, is at 2.3965. So I don't know if that's gonna be higher than what the village's current proposed millage is going to be for the 26-27 fiscal year, but that's what was set at for the 25-26 fiscal year. So in a similar fashion to what Miami-Dade Fire Rescue models Our proposed public safety district would be adopted annually by the Village Council as Vice Mayor proposed and would also be based on projected costs for the following fiscal year. You all would have to vote on and pass the recommended village millage rate that will generate the sufficient funds in the ad valorem revenue for the Palmetto Bay Public Safety District, right, as the Vice Mayor mentioned. It is no different and I'm assuming that we would follow what is done by Fire Rescue. However, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, their process, their mechanism is done through the County Commission. And I have a sample of what the resolution is that they proposed last year in the commission. I think it's a rather simple procedure. I'm not going to get into the nuts and bolts of that. I guess that's what the village attorney would do. To kind of put the council at ease, what would be my role as a district major in a law enforcement agency such as the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office is fiscal responsibility extends for me well beyond simply staying within that budget. I'm expected by you all to be a prudent steward of the village's funds. That's not gonna change if a special taxing district is implemented. We're gonna continue to ensure operational effectiveness, which is ultimately our main goal is the safety of the village residents and visitors, right? What are my fiscal responsibilities? Managing the budget, monitoring expenditures, ensuring that spending remains within those budgeted allocations, controlling our personnel, meaning managing overtime, monitoring our staffing levels, reducing backfill. That's how I get graded as a major within the sheriff's office. So do we support it? I think it's a good idea. As the vice mayor was mentioning, it's going to secure funding for us based on what that millage is. Now, I believe that what the mayor was advising would be the proper route to take, is that there would have to be some kind of language or guarantee that that funding is, that we are funded 100% on a yearly basis. If not, there would be potential for cuts there. So I don't know if that answered your question, Councilwoman.

Thank you. Thanks, Major. Yes, it does. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Cody, you can unmute You put the headsets on and now we don't hear you. We could hear you before when you weren't using the headsets. We still can't hear you, but you are unmuted. Might be a matter of changing the device on your laptop. No. Can you detach? Oh, okay. I guess he'll come back. Okay. I hear you now, Steve.

Can you hear me now? Yes, sir. Okay. Can you make me a presenter? Because I also have a PowerPoint, a short one.

I can't make you any. I don't have the ability to do that, but they did it.

Okay. All right. Let's see, I've got to go to permissions. Well, tell you what, I'm not going to share my screen. I'll just wing it. I think this is a bad idea. The blue line is sort of a catchy phrase, but this isn't a very good program idea. As Mark indicated we raised last fiscal year 11.2 roughly million dollars in ad valorem taxes. We spent on the police 11.8 million dollars. We had a police deficit of 550,000 and I believe $577. If this proposal was we are going to dedicate the amount of money to fund the police solely from ad valorem taxes, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Manager, that would require us to go up to the 2.69 mils that we adopted tangentially at our meeting. Is that correct, sir?

It would be 2.605 to fully fund the fiscal year 27 police budget, Councilman.

Okay. And we can't get there unless we have five votes of the council when it comes time to adopt the budget, correct? Okay. So, Mark, if you want this to happen, not only are you going to have to vote to take us up to that level, you're going to have to lean down the dais and convince Marcia that she's going to have to be able to do that. But I do wanna make some clarifications. Your slide that had the 53% little clock graph was not accurate. Our budget does not go around the council. What happens is we have a big cafeteria menu and the manager sits down with the major and they go through that and they decide how much in overtime How much in police patrols? Do we need new license plate readers? Do we need to get funding for gas and whatever in terms of the boat that's going to patrol our canals? And then the manager comes back to the five of us and says, this is what we're going to have to do. Based upon that, the manager came back and told us it's going to take an extra $800,000 roughly Well, that's $800,000 over and above what we have on our millage rate. And if you tell me you want to make this millage rate the exclusive way that we fund the police, I'll vote for that higher millage rate if you vote for it and Marsha votes for it. And we'll lock that in and we'll have the police covered for that. And there will never be a question about it. And I'll do whatever I can for the next at least two years, maybe the next six, in persuading the incoming Palmetto Bay Village Council to also adopt that. But to say that we are going to have an amount of money, we have money set aside through the millage rate when we are over $550,000 in deficit, I think is frankly misdirective. It's something that Harry Houdini would have appreciated because you're getting the people to look over in your left hand when the real stuff's going on in your right hand. If we want the police to be covered, we're going to have to make some hard choices. If we set up this district, there's no way that that district could say by giving them that amount of ability to grab a portion of the military to say, well, that district is also going to be able to reach in and grab a portion of state revenue, sales taxes, or any other funding source and pull it into the police district. That's going to have to happen while the five of us are wearing our special little police hats. Maybe they're going to look like the hats that Bobby's wear in London. That would be cool. But in the end, this is performative. This is not prescriptive to solving a problem. It's just a way for us to grab three balls, throw them up in the air, juggle in front of the residents and say, isn't that amazing? We've solved a problem. We don't have a problem now. We have a problem in terms of how we're going to fund, but setting up an explicit police district isn't the way to do it, or at least to calm people into thinking it. Unless you're going to tell me tonight, and you Marsha are going to tell me tonight, you're going to support that higher rate. Otherwise, this is nonsense. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Other comments? Vice Mayor.

Yeah, I'll just say that not everything is a con and that the PBA was supportive of this last meeting because they were concerned and so am I. Major storm coming after the November election related to how we're going to be funding our government and to provide them that long-term structural insulation for the rest of our budget, I think, is very much wanted by at least a bit David Greenwell. And also it was supported by the sheriff's office as well. Because again, this is not a new idea. This is not anything other than giving our law enforcement the same exact structural protection as the firefighters. So it's unfortunate that there are some who decide to try and make this some personal dark motivation thing, when in reality, this is doing a public service of protecting the most important line item for our residents, which is ensuring those in blue have the funding they need to do their job. Thank you.

Vice Mayor, just so you know, I did speak with the individual that you mentioned, and he indicated exactly what I just said, which is that they were under the impression it guarantees funding at 100%. I will support if it guarantees funding at 100%. So, you know, to me, that's not just for me, Karen Cunningham, but that's for every future council. Unless someone wants to bring the ordinance back and make changes, then of course that would be in a public meeting. But certainly, you know, I think everybody on the dais, including our charter officers, want... police to be funded at 100%. I think every resident, well, I won't say every resident, but a good percentage, over 95% of our residents would say, please fund our police at 100%. I know that there's Florida statute that says we can't decrease. I think it's more than 5%. A decrease by 5% for me would be an absolute no. It would be an abomination in my opinion. So we are as safe as we are because of the numbers, the dedication, and I say numbers because of the number of police officers we have, the dedication of our police department, the tools and resources that we have, including some that were named previously. But, you know, if... We make a modification, which I'm happy to propose at the next meeting, which I believe we're going to hear this again on the 20th, if I'm not correct. I think I'm correct, 530, I think our meeting is. I'll propose making sure that police services are funded at 100%. If that's a part of the law, that's a part of the ordinance, I'll co-sponsor. I'm right there with you. Okay. Just one, I think the devil is always in the details and making sure that the language is clear. And then when I do step away, at least for me, I'll feel a sense of comfort knowing that the ordinance, the policy that's been put in place, if there's going to be changes made to it, I'll be the first or second one at the podium to suggest not making changes at funding 100%. So just my thoughts. So is there anything else? And thanks for the presentation. I really appreciate the visual presentation as well. You have your hand up.

Go ahead. So two things. One, if it's legally possible, I'm completely on board with guaranteeing that funding. Um, I'll defer to Laurie and John as to the mechanisms there. I'm wondering if it's possibility to add some procedural requirements then to our code of ordinances long term. Um, adopting that funding would look like and how we can actually get there. I don't know what that would look like because my understanding is saying the tax rate and the funding comes from Florida statute. But if there's a way we can procedurally guarantee that or

least make it very difficult not to um so um i'll defer to lori and john on that if that's a possibility yeah i don't think so lori's shaking her head too no no no in fact you can't what you're doing is saying that whatever the budget is For police, regardless, you will pass the military funding at 100%. You can't tie the hands of a future council to agree to fund it at 100% all the time.

Well, if I could use another example, perhaps, and Lori, if you don't mind, because there's a little bit of an echo on your, yeah, thank you, a little bit of feedback. One of the, I know this is not related to this, but I'm just using as an example, one of the charter amendments related to the USDA property basically says, you know, we're going to take every means possible to purchase that property. How does, and John, that would be a question for you because you'd be most closely related, that ties the hands of future councils, in my opinion. So, and if we can do that, then why can't we do this?

Well, I think that's different. I mean, first of all, one item is in the budget silo, and that's got a separate set of laws. The proposed charter amendment is slightly different in the sense that what it says is that the Village will make every reasonable effort to do that. And so what does that mean? Reasonable efforts will be defined by what the Village's budget is, any number of elements that could come into play. but if like if the village village has a deficit I as opposed to a surplus of you know 10 million dollars not that we have that but reasonable efforts would be different in in each one of those scenarios so I think that's where the difference is is number one we're not in the budget silo that we're talking about here and number two it's it's um uh it's qualified by reasonable efforts

Would language such as you just provided, as it relates to, I'm sorry, it escapes me, but you talked about reasonable, would language like that be acceptable in something like this? And my second question is, since our police department has created a good deal of our surplus, thank you, Major, and the Major before you, Can that surplus, can it be shifted to general fund? We might've asked this previously.

So to answer the second question, if it is in a dependent taxing district and you have a surplus, no, I don't think you could then shift it into your general fund. I think you could utilize it for future years or utilize it for whatever might be going on that year. In terms of could you qualify it with the first question, I would have to research that unless Lori knows off the top of her head whether you could put in sort of qualification in it that they would use best efforts to fully fund it. I just, I'm not sure. I'd have to look into that, but Lori, I'll let you chime in if you know.

Yeah, I don't know about it being fully funded just by ad valorem taxes because what you're

You got muted. Lori, you're muted. Sorry. It's a funky platform.

Yeah. So what I was saying, if you do make that determination to fully fund police through the Athlorm tax, what you're doing is taking away from your general millage. So that means you will Always fully fund your police first and then fund the rest of your millage. You don't need a special district to do that. But what, and I agree with Mark, but once you do that, you can't move the money freely back and forth.

For me, that creates another set of problems. I don't know if it would create one for Nick, but I think it creates another potential issue if you can't move surpluses back and forth. And I appreciate you mentioning because that's what I had asked previously. And obviously, and maybe I just didn't articulate it properly. Won't be the first time. Definitely won't be the last time. Sometimes those thoughts get stuck somewhere up here. Yeah, the difference is You mentioned doing that. We can say we're fully funding police services without doing the ordinance. That's what I heard you say. And that's why I was asking, is there a way that we could be doing that? I mean, I've been committed to that all along. As a matter of fact, we've increased our numbers in terms of the number of police officers we've had since I've been in office. I think by four, and I want to say two of them were sergeants, but don't quote me on it. And I'm sure that the next council, whoever they might be, would be supportive of that as well, I would assume, because it's a priority for the community. But not being able to move money around, I think, handicaps the manager. Again, just my opinion. You don't have to respond, Nick. And then if we're already able to say, hey, we're funding at 100%, we're funding at 100%.

What it does is it's a policy decision and a commitment on behalf of the village. If you do it as a special district, it is going to tie your hands a little bit more by saying, We're fully funding this at three mills. That means that you could only levy seven mills for your general operating. And if you have a surplus from the police district, it cannot be moved over to the general fund because what's in the district, the district's created is not a general municipal entity. It's its own special entity. It can only be used for that type of thing. And once the money gets put in there, it can't go back over to the general millage. But you can take general millage and put it to the fire, to the police. Correct. It works that way. It's just a mechanism. of not being able to take away from the police. But it does lower your ability to do the general millage. And if there are any surpluses, one way you could deal with surpluses is that you would lower the millage the next year and use that revenue as a reserve almost.

I will tell you the optics of that for a future council will be disastrous as well because people will not understand why you're lowering the millage rate because there was a surplus with the police department. That's just my opinion. It's a political conundrum, honestly. Mark, Vice Mayor, sorry.

Yeah, two things to that. On the obligation front, John, feel free to jump in and also if you're able to answer this as well, but in our actual interlocal agreement with the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office, section 7.5 of that agreement says that the village is required to pay for the actual cost of the local patrol services. So regardless of what we put in to the ordinance itself, We still carry that obligation to pay for the actual cost of local patrol services. And that's a separate agreement that we have with the sheriff's office as a requirement for them to provide the public safety that they do to our community. They want us to pay that actual cost, which we have to carry that guarantee within that contract language regardless. So the question is, how do we go about funding that as a community? And that's why this special district is so important is that we're able to essentially fund that fully in those contractual obligations fully and protect it from the rest of our budget. And I think that for reserve, there's many uses for that reserve that we could have as a community. Specifically, if we have a named storm come through our community that requires additional overtime for our officers or we have some kind of crisis or event, That's when that reserve would hopefully be able to come into play. We would be able to fund whatever those costs are through that district in that scenario. So that's the idea here is to essentially structurally insulate whatever the costs of the police are for the rest of our budget and vice versa so that they have that available. And I do foresee, I mean, this is Florida. We're in Miami. At some point, we will have a major storm that we have. That's when those reserves will really come in handy.

Okay, thank you. Anything else? Okay. Well, thank you all. I think that is let me just do a double check. Yep. That's the last item on. Very good. Our next meeting is October 13. For the Committee of the Whole. There's a move to adjourn. Is there a second?

Second.

All right, second. All those in favor? Aye. All right. Good night.