Sustainability and Resiliency Committee - Regular Meeting

Thursday, September 17th. 17th. Just after 12 o'clock. Madam Clerk, please call roll.

Chair Daniel Deitch.

Here.

Vice Chair William Blumenkrantz. Here. Committee Member Rachel Krasna. Here. And then Tiffany Kanava absent, and Delita Fuga absent. Chair, you have a quorum.

I'm not sure if there is a liaison. Do you know if the commission has appointed a liaison?

I don't think anyone has formally been appointed yet for the committee.

Okay, so we're going to forego that. There really are no members of the public that are here, so we can invite any members of the public who would like to speak. Hearing and seeing none.

through the chair for agenda and order of business. Hello.

Hello. Hey. Hello. I'm surprised you didn't make a comment. I'm leaving you alone, I'm sure, unless you want to vent.

You can say that with a knife out of your mouth. I was talking to Michael yesterday.

I do, but. You got time for this?

Yes. But Mayor Dyche asked me to come.

I'm impressed. We're going to get to her item and work it through. But since we have a member of our commission here, has there been any discussion about appointing out a liaison?

Not to my knowledge. So I'm just here in my capacity as a resident slash commissioner, not the official liaison.

No, the mayor has not appointed a liaison yet, and the code says that the mayor is the one that appoints it.

Okay. So, it's an awesome agenda, but how do we submit a request to the commission to appoint a liaison, because it is important to the function of...

I'll let the mayor know.

Okay. Awesome. Okay, we just passed public comment, but we'll go back to public comment.

Oh my gosh, you guys are, you don't waste any time.

Thank you. All right, I want to say hi. I'm meeting some of the board members. Rachel, for the first time, and good to see you both. Yeah. 9148 Froud Avenue. For those of you new on the committee, I used to try to attend these meetings regularly, even though I wasn't the liaison before. And I'm not sure if I'll be the liaison. But in any case, I would like to attend. These issues are important to me. And I just wanted to say at the beginning, thank you for serving on the committee. And if there's anything I can bring before the commission, I'm happy to co-sponsor things with you, even if I'm not in the official role of liaison. I wanted just to let you know about a few things that I'm kind of working on that I could use your expertise on, and perhaps if they're interesting to you, a vote of support from this committee would help me to bring it before the Commission. I have one item coming up on the agenda in October. It's been on the agenda for the past couple of meetings, but we haven't gotten to it, about significant trees in the public right-of-way. And I decided to try to push this issue forward after our commission retreat in July, because the vice mayor had expressed an interest in increasing the number of shade trees in the town. And my thinking was that the first step really ought to be to try to protect the trees that we have in the right of way right now, which I would want to get a formal opinion from legal, but I believe they're ours. I mean, you know, some houses have really significant trees in front of them. I, just on my own, have been taking a few pictures and to give you an idea in case you know the town, on the 9200 block of Bay Drive, there are two mature sea grape trees that are in the right of way. One of them is in front of an empty lot that's for sale. One of them is on the border between that lot and the neighboring house. But I really want to make sure that somebody doesn't buy the lot, develop it, cut down the tree, ask for permission later, and then we're kind of caught flat-footed. So I'm trying to start an initiative to identify the significant trees in the public right of way. I just talked to the manager about it a few minutes ago. She told me that Public Works is on it. They're doing a survey with an arborist. Part of that is that we, I think, need to have some kind of institutional capacity for maintaining them and keeping an eye on them. currently, I think, in our organization, presuming if I'm wrong, who has responsibility for these things. I attended Mayor Levine Cava's recent online workshop about dealing with extreme heat, and they had a discussion about the county's tree canopy program. And they fold it into their parks and rec department. So parks and rec for the county also oversees the maintenance of publicly owned trees. We have no person. I've been talking with the manager and indirectly with Public Works about whether the operations manager might be somebody who we could cultivate in this role. But I want to try to find somebody who can be the point person. Also, this is sort of near your house. board member Blumenkrantz.

Which tree are you going to talk about?

The live oak tree. Next to the pump station with the community garden, there was a live oak tree that got sort of hacked by one of our staff members. And it seems to be growing back. But again, I don't think there was any procedure in place for evaluating the tree. Could we move it? It just sort of got cut up. And I think that's the kind of thing that I think we want to have some kind of formal in-house protection of. So anyway, I'm working on that. That's going to be on the agenda for October. I welcome your input on it. I wanted to let you know on the living seawall, which was something that in the former term this committee considered. I don't know if you've spoken about it.

They mentioned it last committee round, which is a great initiative and we absolutely should be doing it.

Yeah, it's underway and I was at the Florida League of Cities conference just last month and the village or town of Longboat Key near Sarasota got an environmental stewardship award for their living seawall and I was like, you know, it could have been us.

Well, Able's announced that they're expediting permitting for their entire state or town, city, this week. So any project that's proposing upscaling and repairing their seawall with a living seawall with

I think we're still on the leading edge of this trend, but I think we could be doing more to publicize it. I will just say that on our commission, the mayor has said several times, this is no benefit at all for surfsiders because it faces Bay Harbor. And I think there is some work to do selling this project, even among the commission, but certainly to the wider public. And so it's coming. We have the concrete being made. But yeah, I'm just happy to say that other towns are getting good attention for it. And I hope that we can find a way to do that ourselves too. The justification is not aesthetics. Right. Right. Not primarily, but there is, you know, it could create something of visual interest for the kayakers and the paddleboarders. But that's not the driver. It's not the main reason.

To say that, you know, benefits of a rubber knot surf site is missing the point.

I think so. The chief benefit is to actually keep the water cleaner. Yes. Because it will promote growth that cleans, that filters the water. I mean, that is the main...

Using the right companies or technologies out there, you're enhancing the structure as well. You're hardening it. It will sustain these kinds of issues going forward.

It's just a matter of whether we want to do our part to help the general waterway. Definitely it's not aesthetic.

You can't see it. It's good for the seawall too because of the way it breaks waves.

If it protects the seawall. that would be the selling point for sure.

So yeah, I just want to say I'm following this issue as well, and maybe that's something we can work on is how to better promote it and sell it. And finally, this is more medium term, but I had a helpful conversation earlier this week with a representative of the Fertile Earth. I think they call it a farm, but it's in the composting facility. They have taken over the management of the North Beach Compost Hub on 85th Street. which is a drop-off for food waste that I use. And they have a partnership with the Village of Pinecrest with a compost drop-off site in Pinecrest that is incredibly well designed. They got a federal grant for it. It's a really secure container, and it's been quite successful. I was very impressed. I might ask that guy, Jared Jacobs, to give a presentation to you in the future. I'll sort of keep you posted on that. I've probably talked enough, but that's something I'm kind of looking at for the for the medium term, and I would love to kind of run it through this committee first. Could that be put... I'm sorry.

Is it a small enough thing that it could be put into the garden on 89th Street? For the people with their plots? Could you actually use it? I mean, could it be put there?

Well, it's mainly not for yard waste, but it's for food scraps, vegetable and fruit scraps, and household.

But when it gets composted, it would be used in the garden.

Oh, I see, I see.

Yes, I mean, if so, if it was at the garden, maybe Nathan Dickens right across from me.

Well, this isn't an in, it's not on-site composting yet. It's just a drop-off, and they cart it to their farm. Oh, I see. That's, thank you for clarifying. They're having an issue at the North Beach Hub. with Durham, apparently, because they're claiming that there's runoff from the compost site that's putting nutrients in the bay. And I can't believe Durham would be going after a compost facility, but apparently that is happening. I don't know if you have any information about this. So it's really the best thing we can do right now, the easiest thing, if not the best, is to have a drop off and they cart it away. I was telling the manager because I know that not everybody is into environmental stuff and into composting. For those who aren't, I feel like this could be such a win-win issue for anybody. They said a conservative estimate, 22% of what we cart to landfill is compostable food scraps. It's a much higher number if you put in paper and meat and other things. and yard waste, which is, you know, I'm not even talking about that, but just like the food scraps alone, we could significantly reduce what we're paying tons of money to truck away. So I want to try to promote this issue in my term and it's going to, I think, start small, but I want to try to replicate what Pinecrest has been doing and so I'm looking into that. I've gone on way too long, but as I said, I hope we can lay the foundation here for collaboration and stuff.

I was just thinking, I know when I lived in D.C. at the farmer's market, they would have a compost station that they would then truck off. So it was four blocks from us, not like super convenient or super far, but... an idea that we have our farmers market. I could be one of the vendors.

Yeah, that would be great. Because that could just be a temporary container that they bring back. It's exposure.

They can talk about it on the beach back with folks and we can get them to play with it.

Yeah, no, I love that idea. And you know, Fertile Earth, actually, the way they do it, they have a whole gamification reward system. And you get credits that you can use vendors at farmers markets and so they so they would already they already mentioned the farmers market as a kind of a site for them so I think having a satellite drop off exactly and it brings business you know if someone's going to drop stuff off it brings business to the market as well if I may I know that the tourist board will be discussing or the person in charge of the farmers market will be at the resort tax board meeting next week so it might be something if you want to bring it

Incorporate the compost truck.

Yeah This committee previously made recommendations for all municipal contracts all first like contracts in particular with the farmers market of ways that they can green their operations including Capturing food waste as you know, we have a steward of the community garden So it is because the town you mean the United States? Correct me if I'm wrong working the town still pays for their insurance.

I

I think they reimbursed us $12, but we gave them a reimbursable of $2,000.

So yeah, they have to pay consideration for the use of the site. The town pays for the insurance, but they are the stewards. So it should be relatively easy to engage them to allow composting. And it becomes a community node. Bring people together. Anybody that wants to compost at home can certainly do that. We've also talked about the town leading. by providing composting services within the town's operations to lead by example. Don't ask someone to do something if the town is not willing to do it themselves.

And I think that could actually easily, you know, depending on where we, if we did go with the drop off site, if it was here in Town Hall or nearby, it would be very easy to sort of collect compost waste from town hall and just drop it off. That would be one of the main users of it.

There are at least three service providers in Miami-Dade County. Compost for Life, Francisco Torres has previously made presentations to this committee, and they offer a subscription service for anybody that wants to pay the premium to have the Organics Collective curbside. and then five gallon container. That is available. The town may simply want to contract with them. There's lots of ways to do that. Fertile Earth is another, and they have a demonstration actively at South Bay Landfill. And then Soilmate is another company.

And Joe. Well, maybe we should talk about this. I should say, if I'm not the liaison, one advantage of that is we don't have any sunshine law constraints. So I can always meet with you individually to talk about these or any other things.

because you're not voting on matters at this committee.

We can get clarification from the attorney. I looked into that. I don't know. I'm not so sure, but certainly at the moment I'm not. Yeah, but that is something worth looking into. Thank you for the time. Wait, what's the third company? Oh, yeah. What's the third company? Soilmate. And I'll say, just out of respect for the committee and its agenda in the future, I'll try to put these things actually on the agenda, but today I just kind of scramble over here and I wanted to let you know what I was working on. So thank you for the chance to speak at length.

I mean, you represent yourself as a champion. So whether you are a liaison or not, you are part of our Well, we have no other members of the public, so we're going to close public hearing. Approval of the minutes, if anybody has any changes to the minutes, let's hear them now. Otherwise, if we get a motion to approve.

through the chair normally you would because I send out the minutes with the agenda and you would be able to read through them and then come and tell me if you have any changes I'm going to make it simple I'm going to pass the gavel I don't know who the I think

I'm going to pass the gavel to you. I'm going to make a motion to approve the meeting minutes, and I'm going to take the gavel back if we could have a second.

I approve the meeting minutes.

No, you second.

I second.

Oh, I'm the second.

Okay. All right. And if we had enough people here. I didn't know how much you were passing over.

No, no, I took the gavel back. which is Sesame Street.

We got a bigger turnout than almost in last week between Gerardo and Sandra.

All right.

So you have a motion and a second.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Okay. So what is your official title?

Acting Town Manager, Town Clerk. Okay.

The reason that I asked that you attend today is that there are a number of initiatives that were in process or aspirational that are presented in this discussion, Item 6A, in Attachment A. And there's often a lot going on. Sometimes we have the opportunity to be involved, other times not. Like I just came back and I got to walk on the new doom path and it is magnificent. But the more that we know what's going on, the better we can serve the community and also know where we need to push if we don't think that appropriate action is being taken. So what I would love to do is just go through the list and let us know if something is in the works, or if not, and then we can talk about, you know, we believe that an initiative is still important. We talk about what action we should take, whether it's an urgent resolution to commission. This is why it's helpful to have a liaison, because ordinarily we would simply direct through a vote our liaison to bring it forward.

Are we allowed ever to invite the mayor or any other officials to the meeting?

They could come. Yeah, you can certainly email them separately and tell them to attend if you want them to be here.

Okay, and we tried to give these a time frame because we realized it was brought to our attention, we made abundantly clear that the town has limited resources and they can't do all things at once, so we thought about what is the appropriate sequence.

You just want to go one by one?

Let's go one by one. Any interest in hiring a chief resilience officer?

It's not in this fiscal year budget right now. Implement town dunes management. I mean, I'll let Andrew speak if he has anything to add, but apparently it's going to be completed by the end of September. So it should be all ready. I believe we're actually ordering some extra wood posts so that we can close all the diverters because people are tending to walk over them. So we're in the process of ordering those extra posts and roads to just close them down.

On that point, I realize next door is not the town's vehicle, not necessarily the town's vehicle. Well, but there's been questions about the diverter dunes, right? Lots of opinions about what they are and what their purpose is. And I'm not sure that it's the town's responsibility necessarily to set the record straight, but maybe if we had a liaison, that person could say, you know, I noticed what the committee brought it to my attention that there was some question about this. I just want to put on the public record. what the diverter dunes are, why they're there.

Oh, I have a solution. Can the chair of the sustainability committee provide us the benefits of that, and I'll be happy to review and put it out to the community?

Put it in the news thingy, the monthly.

Except you're too good. Which brings us to what we talked about at the last meeting.

who have been generously granted space in the Gazette, that would be a great location to- Well, I'll be happy to also put it in our Friday news as to like, this is the benefit to the town. I mean, I don't know if you also want to speak, there's some questions about there's one specifically that's different than the rest. It's the one that's behind 93 Ocean, right? The reason for that is that they did it separately from us. instead of having a diverter in the middle like the rest of the dunes, there's curves. So there's some questions and some concerns from the community as to why we have all of them the same. It's just that they did theirs on their own.

Are there going to be plantings again in the brushes that were removed? Yes.

They actually start planting.

Cool. Thank you.

So...

The list of vertigines are the circles that are kind of separate, kind of in front.

Right, when you're walking in, it's in the middle, and you have to go either one side or the other.

I mean, I saw them, and I kind of thought to myself, what are they really trying to accomplish here? Even I was a little bit perplexed.

For the benefit of us, we'll put it in writing. Surfside was the... You've been here. many features of our built environment, items were not well maintained, and they essentially fell apart. And that's how we now have no wooden structures and cupboards. Well, when there's an extreme weather event and there's a storm surge, the water is going to rush through those openings. So the dune doesn't provide continuous protection because there are cups in it. So there's an organization called the Youth Environmental Alliance, a non-profit, that we partnered with in at least three ways. One is beach cleanups. They engage organizations, schools, businesses, and the like to install diverter dunes. I'll explain in a minute. And they also partnered with the town to remove scovola, which is a non-native invasive species plant that chokes out seagrass, sea oats, and the like, sea grapes. Surfside, when we installed the first diverter dune, it was the first in the state of Florida. And the concept is, it's just a triangular, a low mound triangular shape that has the bottom of the triangle facing the ocean. That will break, that'll knock down the wave energy. It doesn't eliminate the water from coming through, It simply provides a barrier, and the reason that it's triangular shaped is we also want to allow the water to recede. So it's a really simple concept, low intensity, has the benefit of being secure with COs planted on it. And for example, there was one at 96th Street. We wanted to partner, so we partnered with the Youth Environmental Alliance. We also wanted to partner with Val Harbor. They didn't want to give up any of their beach, which is why it looks like half a triangle. It's still a triangle. It's just a different type of triangle than 96th Street. But it was incorporated into the new operated solicitation so that we would have the benefit of those diverter dunes at every break in the dune.

Great.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

There's no rock in those diverters, is there? It's just all sand, right?

during extreme weather events. So we just have to look at what happened in Nepal. The scouring impact of that sort of extreme event, the boulders will be like a mold ball.

Well, we'll see. When it gets put to the test, we'll see how effective they are. We've done a lot of things that have not been put to the test yet. Well, we don't want to put them to the test. It's all in theory. It's all in theory, but I'll

I mean, these are proven elsewhere in the world. So, like, lots of initiatives. It's nice to identify what are best practices for our circumstance, and then how do we tailor it to Surfside, and we had the benefit, again, of a non-profit that we partnered with that brought it to the town originally at no cost.

It's better than nothing.

Yeah. And with the CO, it will accrete sand, and then

So hopefully we get a year with nothing happening so the COs can take root.

Be true nourishment. I mean, I don't know.

We have contacted the county. They, in turn, had talked to Army Corps.

they currently don't have one plan but they're still looking to see what can be done it's a full court press which is you know has a nexus with our legislative priorities because we need to activate every resource that we have because we're the beneficiaries we don't pay as a town at least not directly so we need to get the federal government the state and the county all in alignment and it takes years for that to happen and my fear is

That kind of connects the two lines down, your increased intergovernmental cooperation. If we go to the climate compact this year, we could get some visibility and talk to them about that.

I just want to mention, I was here when they did the initial beach reimbursement. I think it was in 1977. We were out there. My friends and I were all out there because Now, if you went over there, you were finding shells that you would never see on the beach. We were all collecting beautiful comics and big comics and all kinds of crazy shells. But it was such a difference from what was there to what was made that everybody was so impressed. Now, they're looking at a big beach and they're saying, you know, you got a big beach. What's the big deal? You got 100 yards of beach. But they don't realize, well, a lot of the locals don't realize that it's creeping, creeping, creeping less and less and less every year. But if they ever saw what we had before, they would know.

By the time the water came to the seawall.

Yeah, they would know that eventually if we don't take care of it, it's going to go back to that. Just a matter of time, it will go back to that. It'll go back to nothing. So yeah, it's got to be maintained. And it's just got to be, public's got to be made aware of that. That's a big issue.

At a minimum, the commission needs to be aware and fighting for it. Because our natural beach is not much of a beach. It goes back to the natural state. And the native sand is not what's on the beach.

No, it's not native sand. Although I prefer the native sand over what's there. But what are you going to do?

The next one, I haven't been in contact with Syracuse University. I don't know if they're interested in coming back or what's, I mean, I don't see a comment.

Yeah, so part of it is we, our contact with Syracuse, although I've got to know the dean over the years, he was a member of this committee and he didn't have the availability to serve on the committee. So we lost that connection.

But I'm sure we still have a contact. So we can reach out if that's what you're... We can reach out to him and see.

Yeah, they did so much work. I wouldn't want it just to end with a whimper.

Let's see. Just for context.

Syracuse University partnered also with the University of Miami. They did a design studio imagining how Surfside can transform its built environment to adjust to the changing conditions that we know are going to occur over the next, call it whatever you will, generation to generation, certainly over the next century, as just the global sea level rise continues. So it really was engaging for the town to have an academic institution come in, develop models and a series of presentations

It was like a physical model that they bought?

Because they had teams, and they all imagined how the built environment may change over time. Yeah, it was really, really cool. And the models still exist. I think Roy has them in a trailer someplace.

I'm sorry?

I think Roy, who is the guy, I think he may be storing all of their models locally.

Quick question. Is there a way I could give you a feedback on the rest in writing? My husband was just woven into a procedure. Go take care of your family. Go take care of your family. Put it together. Thank you for coming.

Yeah, hopefully we can bring that back. That sounds valuable.

Some of these items, if I may, I'm just going to touch on. workshop, that's simply a partnership with the county. And we've hosted them in the past. And the more that we meet the community where they are, some people have asked, hey, where do I get a rain barrel? Well, the town can take the initiative to partner with the county or the Walker Extension.

Is it Barb, the woman?

She retired, I think. Someone's doing that. And it's fun. You learn about the value of a rain barrel. You They give you the opportunity to paint them, design them, and then you need to take it home at the longest cost. The hard pack is just an ongoing matter, especially with the work on the dune. You can ask multiple town managers and public works directors over there. Because selfishly, I use the walking path with a dog in the hard pack. And after a rain event and the water pools, it is...

Not easy.

Yeah. It's an ongoing, because we do get the sand and we do spread it, but because of some of those development constructions that are going on, we have areas that are continuously getting pulled.

So, and you may not know, Surfside has its own sand blend that it uses more for the upper path than the lower path, but we've been through this so many times that we know, the town knows what works and what doesn't. It's just, it's a maintenance matter. And I don't know, maybe it's a matter for development orders that if a project is going to be utilizing that public asset, that they need to maintain it.

And mitigate it by making additional plantings to retain the water and do other kinds of design alternatives.

So again, we can make that recommendation because the commission may or may not be thinking of it in the moment, but in theory we have the space to say, okay, we can... recommend doing accounts business differently. Sardacian removal, so I did speak with one of your colleagues on the commission, and that's why there's an item in here. And then the sustainability corner, again, it's the challenge. And I think describing diverter dunes is probably a good use of next month, so where are we today is... Next week, definitely, two weeks. Yeah. We just had a deadline last Friday. So it's going to end up being a month out. So, Madam Clerk, if you want to reflect in the notes that I will draft a explainer for the next sustainability corner. And still, I think it will be good because the project will be complete and then we can explain why. And most of these other items, these are either aspirational or practical. I would love to see photovoltaic panels on town facilities. It's something the town can do. The payback period is relatively short. The town, again, it all hinges on an interested commission. Just a simple matter. We just need three commissioners to say yes, even though we're now probably past the budget period. But again, we can privately call for it next year.

I wonder what town hall pays on electric every month. I wonder what their bill is.

I can assure you it is a lot.

They could pilot. They could put it at one of the facilities, even a small classroom facility, see what the benefits are.

On this point, just FYI, the commission is interested in improving street lighting in the residential district. And a representative from, I believe it was Kinley Horn, spoke with us at the last meeting. And one of the options was a solar. It sort of, there's a lot of issues about how this would interact with the overhead wires and I won't get into that. But they seem to be advising against having solar lights. There was some interest in having at least a few that could be functional after a hurricane, but then there was a question of whether the panels would survive a windstorm event. That issue is sort of being discussed by the commission. Just wanted to let you know, in case you have views about it. I mean, there's a way the solar issue has been coming up. I would love to see it on a facility.

I agree. And it's not a new issue. It's been discussed and studied extensively over the past decade plus. But we have the tennis center. And I think that has a standing seam metal roof. Very easy to put solar panels on. We have the new 96th Street Park building. We have Town Hall. We have the community center. We have assets where it's very easy to put solar panels on.

Can I say something on that solar issue? You and I, we both have them on our houses. If someone were to put it on their house on a single lot facing east-west and then next to them on the north side of them, a 30-foot building, a new home goes up, that could cast a shadow over their existing solar arrangement. I was hoping somewhere along the line there could be something, some type of new ordinance put in that you cannot build in a way that would cast a shadow over an existing solar arrangement on your neighbor's house, because you can literally put them out of business. You really could. I mean, that's a big investment. Someone could pay anywhere from close to $50,000 for solar panels, and they all go down close to the southern edge of the roof. You put up a 30-foot structure next to them.

I hear you. Yeah, I understand exactly what you're saying.

You know what I'm talking about. It could really infringe on their investment.

That is a political third round.

Yeah, I know, I know. It's just something I'm thinking about, that the way Surfside is going with the original homes and the new homes, and of course a lot of the original homes have put on their solar panels, it could be a conflict somewhere down the line.

I'm not ready to tackle that. No, I know, I know.

It's something that's not going to happen for a long time, because there's not enough going on. No, but it could. It could happen, yeah. It could happen any day. It could. It could. I know I would raise a beef if someone was going to cast a shadow on my panel. I would try to take them to court and see what I can do. Good luck with that.

I know. I mean, once you start messing with property rights, the town historically has not been shy about raising a stake, though. back to my head well on this item the initiative so the interim town manager will provide us with with the status but think of this as an opportunity to if you're passionate about one of those items put a discussion item together of what you would like to do about it so that we can discuss that future committee meeting and figure out how to advance it We want to make sure that we are not overwhelming the administration. We're in another period of transition where resources, they are what they are, but they shouldn't stop us from pushing appropriately.

Would this also be an opportunity to attach subject matter experts and invite them to speak on one of these initiatives? That would be a good one.

Put it as a package and submit it and it's easy enough to carry it forward. I'm going to move on to the legislative priorities. So it turns out that there were no legislative, correct me if I'm wrong, there were no legislative priorities formally adopted last year.

Through the Chair, no. So there was no resolution passed adopting any legislative priorities. But Sandra, the acting town manager, she asked me to provide you with a list of the initiatives that the town commission discussed in a retreat that they had where they talked about their main priorities and what they envisioned accomplishing in the short term and the long term. So I have provided a copy if anyone would like to look through that.

And what I would love to do, because it's September, legislative session is right around the corner I would love to have an agenda item next month where we we can just focus on sustainability and resiliency related matters but we could recommend legislative priorities considering what the retreat priorities were so that we speak with with one voice what we think the town should be advocating for expand the definition but my operating definition of resiliency isn't just solar panels or you know better dunes it's what brings the community together because when When a bad event happens, that's the fabric of the community. That's what holds us together. I've heard talk, I don't know how serious it is, about repurposing the community garden site. That would be devastating because the community garden brings people together in common purpose and it makes connections. I would hate to see that go away.

priorities think about what builds community as well as Yeah, the second bullet item I know a company that was approached by Sun Isles in fact to do a permeable pavement Issue I don't know if they successfully launched their pilot yet But they would be a tremendous value here they're called aquaphoric technologies

put an agenda item together and have them come speak and then we, you know, part of this, we want to build consensus and speak with one voice with recommendations to the commission. So, to the extent that we can.

And if a neighboring town is already experiencing a positive relationship with the deal with.

And I think that there may be others, they meet with other units of government on matters. to learn on the political side how to work and how to help.

Would we need to do anything differently if we're going forward? This was my item at the retreat. And it's been picking, one of those things that's been on my commissioner to-do list for years. I had a conversation with the prior public works director, Randy Stokes. He was involved in the creation of a permeable pavement parking lot in Hallandale Beach. And has some expertise in the area. He's now at Bay Harbor Islands. But I know that Chair Deitch knows him well, and maybe some of you do as well. But maybe you know people at Hallandale Beach as well. So that was kind of the inspiration for this at first. It was like, oh, we have the expertise in-house. Maybe we should... We do that. Yeah, and now, to be honest, I've lost track of the issue, but I put it on this agenda because it was on my long-term to-do list. So if you can help me bring it back somehow or have any ideas, that would be great. But Hallandale Beach was the inspiration for me.

Okay, so our action item is, for next meeting, we'll put a discussion item on it. slated priorities to advance to the commission. The next item relates to sargassum management. So I think most folks are aware of what sargassum is. How it affects us, it's complicated because embedded in the sargassum are microplastics and other materials that are not hazardous waste, but hazardous to humans. And arsenic is naturally occurring in the marine environment, so arsenic is a consideration. It's sitting in salt water, so salt is a consideration. that the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority has been looking at opportunities to manage sargassum. It's certainly on a lot of these websites, you know, federal government, state government, right, so various organizations or units of government are looking at this through a work interaction last week or two weeks ago. There are solid waste service providers that are looking at ways that they can manage it. Composting, it may not be the most effective because they're not eliminating some of those problematic material. that limits what it can be used for. But based on a conversation with one of your colleagues on the commission, I wanted to bring this to the committee and see if this is something that we want to champion, because it certainly is impacting the enjoyment of the beach, even though it is natural. It is much worse than it would otherwise be because of human activity.

We could use some education communications around this issue because people will say, well, can't we just truck it away? And I just don't think people realize in June and July, or July, how much of it there is and what that would involve, what the constant truck activity would be and the exhaust. It's such a mammoth problem. And that's not to be defeatist about it, but people think there's some easy solution to this. Get rid of it.

There's partnerships that we could have locally within South Florida. So there's a company called Sea Lumber. They make bricks with it. There's, I won't call it a pharmaceutical company, but like a skin care product thing. They repurpose Sargassum. And then there's one in Tulum. And they've worked with the state of Florida a lot. But I'm kind of careful.

And biofuel is a potential. Possibly. But again, you're dealing with emission issues. Yeah. So, you know, in order to convert it, there's going to be error missions, and they're very mindful of what their funding commissions are. I don't know if you may be aware, years ago the state decided that a great An innovative and great way to deal with waste tires was to tie them together and you can create an artificial reef, which they did off of Fort Lauderdale. But it's now a scatter field of tires. And when the county looked to the real operator, which used to be a waste energy operating division of waste management, offered to process it at their facilities, both those that manage municipal solid waste and just vegetative debris that's north of here. They ran into permit conditions with salts. So I would imagine Sargassum's got a similar challenge with conversion technologies. But the question is, how do we carry this forward? It requires some research and an action plan. My feeling is, because there will be a financial component, is that something that the commission would want to address? And I agree.

If Bell Harbor is sort of trucking it away, why wouldn't they want a company nearby to truck it away into their facility?

There was an article in Miami Today about a year ago that talked about a pilot that Miami-Dade County was involved with. And this is where we should be looking towards other units of government that we can partner with to be part of whether it's a pilot project or a full-scale project. But I'm a firm believer that we need an action plan that sort of lays what the objectives are and what the path

This is the kind of problem that needs 10 different solutions because it could be skin care, it could be fuel, it could be compost. It's probably all of the above. There's so much of it. And we need to see which of these initiatives actually works. So you've got to try a whole bunch. But I actually, when you say this, it occurs to me that this needs to become part of our lobbying at the state of Florida. We need to be investing government resources at a higher level in research and mitigation here, because it's going to choke our economy in the summer. A lot of people who came for the World Cup were posting on social media about how disgusting the beaches were. That's really bad.

We should put up signs and... They can't point a finger at us or even Miami Beach. I feel bad for them.

But they can point a finger. If we're not proactively exploring opportunities to mitigate the impact, to the commission to discuss this and figure out what they want to do, or do we need to do more research and then present a more thoughtful?

Yeah, in your agenda plan, management fund would present universities actively locally working on this issue, present technologies locally that have solutions and capabilities, and then reach out to the right parts of Miami-Dade County who either invested their own resources or time and have a Rolodex.

So we don't have a consultant that we can task to do that. It falls on us. Any volunteers to do exactly that?

Yeah, happy to.

Awesome. And we don't have legislative researchers, so you are the experts that we rely on. So yeah, and I actually think even the small-scale projects, um help draw attention to the issue and help you know what i mean so even if we had a small business that was doing something interesting with it that's a worthwhile initiative you know it's just good publicity for the town it gets people thinking about this and you know i think ultimately if you're going to have some massive you know investment in biofuels or something it's going to have to come from the state or federal government but we can we can do little things you know and i would love to put

Yeah, there is going to be a change in administration. But this is, I mean, Florida has more coastline than most other states. And tourism is our economy. So the interests align. Even if politics don't align, the interests and the economy, it does align. So without a time frame, but if you could report back next month, and I will let you know. It doesn't have to be a whole academic exercise, but sort of the contours so that we can discuss it, and then if it's right, push it on to the commission so that they were recommending actions and outcomes, but they're the ones that have the power, influence, and authority to deal with it. And if there are folks at the state level or county level or even industry that have ideas or want to share what they're doing, we have that ability to invite folks.

Through the chair, so committee member Cresson will be bringing an item on the sargassum? Yeah. Okay, so that's the... Yeah, the framework of an action plan.

Okay. Okay. in your business.

Yeah, I just think, as of now, there really is no foolproof method yet. I mean, everybody's trying to find a solution to it. Countries in the Caribbean, Mexico,

To my knowledge, there's three things that happen. One is nothing. Second is to till it into the sand, and the third is to haul it away. I don't think that there's much going on with beneficial use, but hopefully we will learn more.

I don't think there's any up and coming miracle solution. Throw it back into the ocean.

How about that?

Wait for an offshore wind.

Throw it back in. Let it go back out to sea. Okay, so again, with discussion items, anybody that has items of interest, feel free to put together a discussion item and just get it to the clerk in time to make the agenda. And we'll keep moving. So the acting county manager will provide us an update on the various initiatives, which we'll then a liaison so that we have somebody that is part of our team that is a straight line. But feel free, you can speak to any commissioner on any matter. Just don't fall into the trap of being a conduit between two elected officials. Next month I'll have another item on for legislative priorities, but we will go through that list and we will pare down the list and we'll then transmit that to the commission. and build a framework for sargassum management. I will let the other commissioner know that we're moving forward with this. And our next meeting is October 15th. How does that look for folks at this point?

I'm here.

I wish that I weren't going to be here, but I think I have to.

And then on the comment in the initiatives for the climate compact, that might be something we encourage one representative from the commission, from the mayor's office to attend, just because it's, I'm pretty sure it's one focus. It's Miami, you know? Or is it further away?

Is this the climate summit that's in Broward? I think it's in Broward.

Broward, okay, yeah.

I just asked Sandra for permission to go. Great. So, you know, I had a meeting with her and I forgot to ask her about it, but I emailed her during this meeting. So I'm going to see if, climate leadership summit is the one we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to try to go. So let's see if she approves.

Because there's several folks who, again, are good subject matter experts that could help a lot of these initiatives that are in attendance there. Yeah.

In case anybody goes, Wednesday is apparently their innovation day. I don't know what that means, but they have a lot of presentations about a lot of new ideas. And then the sessions are Thursday and Friday.

Can I just make a mention of when you were talking about the trees at the very beginning? I have a vision that someday when we get rid of the power lines, we'll be able to plant trees where those power lines are currently located and eventually get should be a selling point to put the wires underground.

Because everywhere where there's a pole, there could be a trade. Actually, Bill, you need to maintain access to the channel. And actually, they don't want you to plant over the line. So it's actually not as good as you may think. It doesn't work out that way. One of the trees that I actually have a photo of, it's not native, but it's a Poinciana tree, so the royal on Froud Avenue in front of 8850. And it's on the side, even with the overhead wires, The side that doesn't have the transmission lines has a lot more ability to plant canopy trees because the, you know, the wires don't run north-south, right? So there's a huge canopy tree there. And it's like, we could have many trees like that, even with the existing overhead wires.

It takes a long time to get that big, though.

Oh, I know, but I'm saying, like, yes, but... Yeah, for our kids. I'm saying the overhead wires aren't... A total obstacle. They are on the side with the wires.

What about on college? Like just selfishly pushing the stroller to get to and from school for three blocks. I'm dodging traffic, I'm dodging construction, and then I'm like baking in the sun. That would just be a great shade exercise for the city.

You know, I've been taking pictures for this discussion item, you know, and this is a really nice example. Yeah, right, like this is a, I don't know if you can see, like in front of the magazine. They have low-level silver buttonwoods. This can be done.

It's a picture of a silver buttonwood tree that shades the sidewalk beautifully.

It's a relatively low tree. It was really well placed and yeah, just something like that would be amazing.

And it doesn't take, that's doable. If you go to Coconut Grove, they have all the big shade trees in the sidewalk. You go to Town of Surfside, you've got the date palms, which really don't offer, they're beautiful, but they don't offer any shade.

So there's been a transition. So all new development has to have mature, non- Aesthetic trees. Yeah, not the, whatever they're called.

The palm trees. The generic palms. They're not even native to Florida.

Folks could do whatever they wanted, and then we started transitioning to a better condition. So that was Guillermo. That brought that initiative forward. That is critically important. But years ago, the town conducted a tree survey was part of us becoming a Tree City USA from the Arbor Day Foundation. Do you know if that GIS layer exists and is it being used? And the reason is, not just as a baseline to what the current condition is, it ties into our participation in the biophilic cities, our compliance with being a Tree City USA. In the event of an extreme weather event where we lose tree canopy, the basis for reimbursement, because we know what the as the canopy was, and it can be part of the initiative that people like to be able to see what the progress is and if we have metrics of where we are today and what we've achieved. And the same thing, there's been at least two rounds of tree giveaways, three rounds if you include the citrus canker from years ago, and we all have access to the county-wide tree giveaway, even though there's not been a close giveaway spot recently.

any street and it's a change that's incredible how much greener we are today than just even 40 years ago. We've done very well.

Do me a favor. Just put a discussion item on that just so that we have the public record of what that history was because it helps us tell the story. meet people at the top of the Grand Beach Hotel, until I realized the drinks were the same price as the surf club. But when you're looking down from 12 stories, it looks like Surfside has an incredible tree canopy, but it isn't necessarily the right trees in the right location, because part of building resiliency is reducing the island effect. to keep island effect and to make our streets more inviting for walking. Not only that, I don't know if anybody realizes how many birds we have in town in the spring.

Not right now. It's not so much now. When they come back in the wintertime and stay maybe through March, April, you get up in the morning and you hear nothing, nothing but birds. And I think that's attributed to how many trees we've put into this community. They've Take a notice.

They really have. It really helps to plant natives. I helped sponsor the last tree giveaway, and I was a little heavy-handed in a good way, I think, about the species because it makes a big difference what you plant. Oh, yeah. You plant it, and they will come. Yeah. If you were going to do anything about the increased canopy, which I think would be a great topic, have a look at some of the historical photos that are on display on the walls outside this room. The town was clear cut when it was developed. Oh, I know. Oh, I've seen it. Oh, I know that. You can see it. It's like before they built, they just... So we have come a long way from 1935.

And I'll also say, I'm just thinking about, there's so many interconnected threads that I will say, for the record, I was not pleased at how it came to be, but I am very pleased with the result. All of the palm trees that are planted downtown was through a negotiated arm-twisting proper with the surf club. But what that does is it creates stickiness. It used to be a speedway. In some respects, it's still a speedway, and we have plenty of issues with double parkers. But the trees themselves... slows people down. So through using the built environment, it sort of changes the conditions. So the two banks that are on the north end of 96th and Harding, those facades were done intentionally to sort of define our business district. Then with the palm trees, it creates a little bit of excitement and slows people down. Especially when they're lit at night. Yeah. Never mind the electric usage, but we can offset that with some solar panels. But these are all connected elements. And if you've only been in town for the last 10 years or more recently, you don't understand what it was and why these initiatives are important. I remember a conversation at the commission 20 years ago about the great boulevards around the world and how we have an opportunity, because we knew that development was going to happen, particularly on the Collins Corridor, how that can be leveraged to make it more exciting than just trying to get from one side of town to the other. I mean, I don't know about you, but with the Cirque Club, with the tree, the K-pop tree, and through the design, it becomes interesting. And then you've got the historic district across the street. It's more interesting and it slows people down.

Like I said, I worked in Coconut Grove for sure.

Go down Main Highway in Coconut Grove and everybody just gawks at the trees. It's so beautiful.

Nobody speeds down Main Highway. It's amazing. They all go slow looking at the trees.

And we have that opportunity. Yeah. Okay. All right. Very good. Any further items? I think we're good. Madam Clerk, if you could, as you have done in the past, just send the draft meeting now to release the action items so that we stand a fighting chance of not just relying on our notes, but what we've committed to, and I think it will help us stay on track for meeting our commitments.

For submitting the action plan and the framework, I send it to you directly, not to the group.

Yes, Chair, I make You could send me the email and you would have to adhere to the deadlines that I had provided last time. Okay. That tells you when I'll post the agenda and when you should submit it. Okay. And then the action items, was there a specific timeframe again to send that out to the committee or just?

Not at your earliest convenience. We know that your plate is full. Okay. As long as it's not the day before.

No, I'll give you a reasonable amount of time, so I'll do that. Thanks.

All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for your time today and for your continued commitment to the work that we're doing. And thank you for showing up on your personal time. I will try to be here for all of them. Thank you for helping keep us straight about what's really going on. I thought it was a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. For a second.