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about to begin. Remember to speak into the microphone as this meeting is being recorded for public record. Please stand by. We are going on air in 5 4 3 2 1.
>> Good morning everybody. Have a beautiful, beautiful Friday in Miami Beach. Weather is perfect. We live in paradise. We're here to make sure we keep it that way and make it even better. Uh, a lot going on uh financially, fiscally, especially at the state level. We'll see how that impacts
us. Um, but really excited to kick this off here with our new finance committee. Um I'm honored to be joined by uh two new colleagues up here on the uh FK committee one uh Commissioner Laura Dominguez and also uh we have as a
alternate uh Commissioner Monica Matteo Selenus. Honored to be serving with both of you not just on the FK committee but serving our city as a whole. So I look forward to uh to a great uh year, two years. Um kick it over to you, Mr. uh CFO, Mr. Attorney. I'll let you do the
administrative stuff and we'll get down to business. Thank you. Good morning. Today's meeting of the Finance and Economic Resiliency Committee has been scheduled in a hybrid format with a quorum of the committee physically present and remaining members, staff, and members of the public appearing
either in person or virtually via Zoom. In order to participate in today's meeting virtually, members of the public may dial 1888-4754499 and enter the webinar ID which is 8636059-5462 pound or log into the Zoom app and enter
the webinar ID which again is 8636059-5462. Any individual wishing to speak on an item must click the raise hand icon if using the Zoom app or dial star9 if you are participating by phone. Uh thank you and just a couple of very
quick announcements. Uh item NB10 will be deferred to the March uh FK meeting and we have two time certain up first will be MB5 at 10:30 and then MB6 at 10:35. If chair if I could read in MB5. >> Of course.
>> Okay. So MB5 is discuss refunding series 2015 resort tax revenue bonds. MB5. Uh MB5 is is uh my item. Uh the finance department has worked with our financial adviser. We've identified an opportunity
for refunding. So what we are requesting is to send this back to commission with a favorable recommendation to proceed with the refunding of the series 2015 resort tax revenue bonds. Uh we have approximately $156 million outstanding as of the end of the prior uh fiscal
year. And we've identified savings that we believe would have a net present value savings of approximately $13.3 million or around $8.5% of the refunded bonds. And the total gross savings over 20 years would be approximately $18.6 million. Uh and this when we do do the
refunding uh we would it would not be extending the debt. It would be over the same term. So, it's a pretty short item, but if if the the committee is is okay, I'd like to send it back to commission with a favor recommendation. >> Don't we need to wait till 10:30 to hear it? >> It is 10 Oh, I'm sorry. I said 10. I
said 10:30, meant 10 o'clock. I was thinking the old dates. I apologize. Thank you. That time certain of 10:00 and 10:05. >> Sorry about that. >> Oh, I was working the the old FK times. That's why >> it's fine. Even though we have it listed as a 10:30 time. I said 10:30, but it's
10 10:00 and 10:05 for the two time certain. I apologize. I misspoke. >> Okay, Rick, that's fine because I have it on my uh >> list in writing is 10:30. >> It's not on the agenda itself. It was just some of the notes I gave the
What does that uh account for for annual savings? >> Uh do we I'll actually ask uh Sergio, our financial adviser for what the the annual estimate is. 500 to >> I think it's around a million >> 750,000 something. >> Yeah. Good morning everyone. Sergio Massel PFM financial advisors. It's
about a million dollars a year in annual >> and that is out of our resort taxes. Uh correct. Correct. >> Okay. Well certainly as we're facing some gaps especially in our transportation uh with the new trolley that's uh that's certainly welcome news.
>> Okay. So if we can uh entertain a motion to send it back to commissioner with the favor recommendation. I I'll make that motion. As chair, I don't think you can. Okay. This chair. >> Okay. We'll show Commissioner Dominguez uh made the motion and seconded by uh
the chair. >> Perfect. >> All in favor? >> I I Okay. Thank you very much. Item passes. And if we can, we'll move on to MB6, which is 1005. >> Let's uh let's kick that for a few minutes. Sure. >> Right. How about um because I know it
was discussed at the public safety committee yesterday where both my colleagues were. Uh, Commissioner Dominguez, do you want to take a look at uh, I believe the item is NB14. Um, discuss, take action on the funding and construction of four-legged pickle ball courts at Beayshore. >> Sure, absolutely. Um, so,
>> oh, sorry, can I read the item in for the record? Uh, MB14, discuss and take action on funding and construction of four lighted pickle ball courts at Beayhore Park. MB14. >> So, this came up yesterday uh, in the neighborhoods committee. I know that
this project is over 800,000 and um the parks department has located an area where the lights and the sound would not affect uh the neighborhood residents, but I know we have other capital improvement projects that take priority. I would like this to be
entered into the 5-year capital program so that it's on the list for review, not necessarily a priority. Yeah. >> Excellent, John. And also, uh I don't know if it came up yesterday, it was in and out on the meeting. Is it possible to do it in stages where could we get
pickle ball courts uh sort of right away and then have the lights, which I would assume is a bulk of the $800,000 uh kind of as a more aspirational 5-year project. >> We could absolutely phase a project like this. >> How much would four pickle ball courts
cost? Uh less than $100,000. >> More than a h 100,000. Um I I don't want to I don't want to commit to price. I didn't I didn't itemize it out for for today. Um, but I can certainly get back with you, but more than 100,000. You consider fencing, the asphalt, the surfacing, the benches.
>> I know typical paddle court, which is a bit more elaborate, uh, you cost of about $40,000. >> So hopefully we can do something along those lines. >> Sure. >> Okay. That work for your commission? >> Yeah. So move it to the full commission. Yep. >> I'll move it.
>> Thank you. For clarity, because we've already we've already moved the full project into the 5-year CIP. Am I looking at doing a phased five-year CIP or just keep it where it is for now? We address it later financially. I >> I'd love to see pickle ball courts be
brought there and people can start playing right away cuz I do think you know the full $800,000 is going to be a multi-year more aspirational. Um but if we can get some lowhanging fruit that has a lot of bang for its buck, right? You know, >> so as amended
>> split funding. So if if I can to assist. So the motion is uh this would basically create two projects. One is for the pickleball courts to be in year one of the CIP and year five would be the lighting enhancements. Uh this would be different than the uh uh neighborhoods committee. So I would suspect so there's
not dueling resolutions. It would probably go back as an R seven uh or an R9 discussion take action because you have two different um two different directions from two different committees. So, uh, we can do that if we want to make that motion, uh, to return to the commission with a favorable recommendation to create a new CIP
project in year one for the pickleball courts and in year five, uh, for the lighting enhancements. And then we can, I think, take it as a discussion, take action for the commission to make final uh, since you have different uh, committees making different recommendations. So, if that's the motion, uh, who's making that? >> I'll make it.
>> Okay, we have Commissioner Dominguez making that motion. I'll second, but Commissioner Mateo Selenus, >> I just want to ask a question, John. Is this to clarify? Is this to build new pickle ball courts or is this to have dual use for tennis and pickle ball? >> New pickle ball courts. >> Okay.
>> Excellent. And this is uh planned with uh being respectful to the neighbors for sound. >> Yeah, we're looking to put it um on the east side of the park which is furthest away from the resident. >> Excellent. >> Okay, so all in favor I >> I >> Okay, we'll show it past three nothing. Thanks. And I I want to wait for
Commissioner Suarez Jason before we heard your uh time certain on NB6 the financial policy. So why don't we uh go ahead and do that now. MB6 uh resolution of the mayor and commission uh city commission of the city of Miami Beach accepting the
recommendation of the finance and economic resiliency committee to refer the Miami Beach comprehensive financial policies to the budget advisory committee for review and analysis MB6. So MB6 is an item that I worked on with the office of management budget and the
finance committee heard the original comprehensive financial policies many months ago. Uh what we're returning here is with the recommended adjustments uh recommended by the BAC. Uh so I did work with our office of management budget director. We did present uh the
policies. They were very I think very excited about uh the policies and they had a few recommended uh adjustments and I'm going to walk walk us kind of through through those. Uh maybe just uh since it's been a while we have new quorum up here. maybe just take us uh
30,000 ft high level what some of the uh initiatives here were and then you could talk about where some of the adjustments were. >> Sure. So how this kind of started was uh you know I started about three years ago and in my time as chief financial officer you know I kind of my attention
that when the city has a number of financial policies that go back uh to the 1990s um starting back in '94 was the oldest resolution we had related to conforming the actual budget expenditures to the adopted budget and there was no one
central repository for all of these financial policies. So my interest was to consolidate all the financial policies into one working document uh so that nothing would get lost in translation. Nothing would get lost and be like oh I I forgot there was a resolution said I had to take certain percentage of money and put it here. I
wanted it in one place for the ease of everybody. So what we started was really just consolidating uh 15 different financial policy resolutions over the past 30 years that the city has passed which is what is in the comprehensive financial policies.
This is everything from the 25% general fund reserves policy, the resort tax at 60%, the ability to how do you utilize those funds, uh the use of lumpsum dollars, that's where we got the 20% uh going for certain transportation
projects. Uh it created the uh capital replacement fund, the capital PGO fund. Uh last year we started the streets and sidewalk fund, which I'm going to get to. Uh we incorporated the waiver of special event fees and I'll talk a little bit about that because there was
a a slight tweak or some clarification I'd like to get from the committee on that. Um and it just kind of labels in all of the different policy. We have debt management policy, our water and sewer policy, disclosures, refunding and defeasences and things like that. So the the important ones I would say that came
back is it was you know one of the policies was that the city commission has a policy of funding 5% of its general fund uh for the use of capital projects and the city has had to wave that for quite a while. Hasn't met that goal but it has uh gotten better over the years and I think we were close to 3
and a half% this past year and this is kind of going to get a little bit to the spirit of some of the interest of the BAC. So the first uh modification uh it would be on page 190 uh of the the the book is item number six. It's allocation
of preliminary general fund surplus during the budget process. The general idea is that come June 1st when we have our uh preliminary uh tax numbers come in, we have what we call a preliminary surplus or deficit after we have our current service level. And let's just go
through it top level. We go through that exercise and we say, "Okay, after meeting our current service level, there's a $1 million surplus." And the city commission could do multiple things. You could lower taxes. You could approve budget enhancements to expend those dollars. You could send it over to
uh capital projects to expend towards one-time capital projects. You could put it aside for the city's reserves. And what the BAC has recommended is in any year in which now this is just you know this is just direction on the city administration to prepare a preliminary
budget uh in June and July at the end of the day the commission will always have the authority to do what it what it wants to but this is just kind of the guidance on how we prepare our preliminary budget. So the first is that 50% of that public that surplus would be set aside for
capital projects unless the city has already met its 5% goal of set of funding capital projects. So if we already met that goal >> 5% on an annual basis or kind of a uh >> on an annual basis. So 5% of our general fund being set aside and that's a slide
that OMB always shows in at the the May budget retreat and the budget workshop saying this is our history. This is where we are. >> It's not a cumulative thing. That's each year >> if 5% right 5% per year. So if we've met the 5% goal this first one would become a moot point would not be re relevant. But if we were not, the recommendation
is that 50% would be dedicated to capital projects. The next is strengthening reserves. That 25% of that surplus would be set aside if the city hasn't met its reserve requirements for this upcoming budget cycle. So let's just play this out. There's a
>> How often does that happen? >> A surplus? >> No, that we don't have enough to give to those >> every every year in in in general. How the city usually gets uh up to its 25% goal is in November when we're closing out the prior year, the first thing we do is we top off our reserves. What we
started about 2 or 3 years ago when I first got here when we had a pretty good surplus is the city dedicated uh think around $3 millionish uh to be dedicated set aside to be added to reserves. Example, you have $10 million in surplus and we expend it. We have $10 million in
in things that we b we decide to increase the budget. Well, technically you should put an additional $2.5 million aside for general fund reserves, right? $10 million, 25%. So, we would not budget that $2.5 million. The city has started to fund $3 million towards
that purpose. But in any year in which, let's say it was $12 million or $14 million and we needed to put aside $4 million reserves. I only budgeted $3 million. I'm short a million dollars, which is fine. We would pick it up in the November closeout. What this would do is preunding it as part of the budget
process. Uh again, this would only be as if that budget didn't uh set aside additional reserves required. So in that scenario of a million dollar surplus, we would send half a million dollars over to the capital program, 250 for our reserves, and then $ 250 for let's say
enhancements. At the end of the day, that would just be the city administration's recommendation because we'd be following this policy, and then the commission would discuss and debate that during the July budget workshop. But that was a recommendation of the BA BAC as it came to if you have a surplus, what do you do with it? Um, so that was
that one. The next one I just want to get a tweak on and this is in a discussion with the city attorney and I completely agree with him. It's just clarifying a date in which this policy would be implemented. And on Feb on June 25th of 2025, the commission passed a
resolution that um limited the waiver of special event fees for 3 years for an event if they're outside of the July, August, September window. Uh and there was just a discussion at the BAC about when that would start, you know, about communication. There were some concerns
about communication with those entities and everything. So, we just wanted to get clarification. What's written here is the approval of this policy. Technically, it's already in effect as of June 25th. I would be very comfortable just amending this to just say that this would this particular part of this policy be effective as of June
25th, 2025 to have the date specific on it. So, if the committee's accepting of that, we could just amend that to put the original resolutions effective date in there for that that 3-month waiver. Uh the next one, there's two more. The last one is the big one which I have two slides for and I'm very excited about.
But the next one is decrease in geobond millillage. This is something that we've also done since I've been here in a year in which uh the geobond debt service millage goes down. And the reason is we have generally flat geobond uh uh debt service. So any year in which uh our
property values go up I get to decre I could decrease the geo bond millage to pay that same amount of debt. I have more property value to pay the same amount of debt. So what we've done is that and it's usually very small you know 0.002 002 mills we would take from the geo bond debt service and put over
to our capital projects and the uh that is what the city has done over the past uh two years uh which has enabled us to get closer to that 5% goal of of funding capital expenditures for our uh our general fund budget and the BEC was interested in making that a formal it's
something we've been following but like to make it a formal policy uh recommendation that we would have it in our financial policies again the commission will always have the ability to do what feels uh prudent in every any fiscal year. So there's that one. The last one I like to bring up uh I had two
slides to to articulate this. Thank you. >> When did you submit those? >> How many hours in advance? >> Um I submitted those a couple days ago. I think maybe it was a week ago. I think it was a week ago. Thank you. Um, so I I'm going to go back to um the first
time I met the chair and that was as a couple of parents uh at South Point Elementary during the enhancement showcase and I approached him as the city's pretty much new chief financial officer and he was just running for office and we got to talk and first after we got that we're both from Philadelphia out of the way. Uh one of
the things we spoke about was the nuts and bolts of government and that's streets and sidewalks. You're making us sound so cool, Jason. Thank it. It is uh you know, outside of public safety, right? Keeping us safe with fire and police, the things that we do as local
government is making sure we don't have potholes. Again, that's a Philadelphia joke we can make about potholes. Uh you know, potholes in our street and our sidewalks are safe and not cracked. is someone who's both had to take a stroller down the street with our child. Uh we know the you know the the the you
know travails of trying to navigate broken sidewalks and things like that. The city has a general obligation bond in which we have a pile of money for streets and sidewalks to resurface things as we need them to be. uh which we both and if I can which we both agree
is an awful >> financial policy to essentially be borrowing for the future for what should be your breadandut core annual uh maintenance and upkeep. Exactly the conversation that you and I had that first day at South Point. Um and I I
completely agree with you. At the June commission meeting when we talked about the capital room replacement program, uh we were the administration was very much challenged by the commission at the time, very concerned that we were not funding enough to capital room replacement, forgetting even the streets
and sidewalks, just the the playgrounds that need to be fixed when when uh you know uh Rebar is saying it's time to fix the one at Lumis or the one at at Polo Park or whatnot. Having those dollars, there's just not enough dollars to go around. And we were challenged to say
find a way to dedicate dollars without increasing taxes to do that. And I came up with an idea. Uh I discussed this with the city manager, discussed it with OM. And then when this was referred to BAC, I met one-on-one with the chair. I
met with BAC, which you know has uh an ex uh uh CPA excommissioner, uh Commissioner D. We Widenhor was on that and they were, I believe, very enthusiastic about this concept. So here's the general concept and the slides that we have up here is here's my
thought is the city center RDA is kind of on a life support system per our agreements with Miami date county we aren't able to really grow any expenditures and it's meant to build up a surplus to pay that debt off early right now it is uh per the debt it would
be paid off in 2044 the RDA would collapse and the taxes would go back to the governments that which they were dedicating the county would get their piece of the millage. We would get back our our dollars. We would get both the expenditures from the RDA and the revenues.
But because we're generating such a surplus, we are projecting that somewhere around 2035, could be a little bit later based on what the millages, but on the existing millages, we project that we will actually be in a position around 2035 to pay off all of the RDA
debt early and the RDA could thus collapse and all the dollars can go back. >> Would we want that? Um, >> we want to close out the RDA early. >> Well, well, we legally we have to. We all have many different amendments uh to that RDA that are pretty strict with
Miami date county and we are not in a position other than going back and renegotiating that with the county. >> But in terms of closing it out early the the latest amendment uh I think requires us to close it out by 2037 or something like that. Um
>> that's correct. Yes. >> Okay. and we're we're projecting financially around 2035. So that's not that far away. That's only eight now nine you know planning years away. So I had requested uh reached out to Tama was on a Friday night when I came up with this idea and I asked her I
said what was the surplus that we had projected over expenditures when the RDA would collapse and come back and we are projecting to have a net surplus to the city's general fund of $28 million >> at the end of 2013. at the end of 2035. So when the RDA collapses, we take in
all the expenditures which are police officers, code enforcement, cleanliness, things along those lines. We bring those expenditures into our general fund along with all the revenues, but that would be a net surplus of $28 million of which that commission in 2035 or so would have that ability to make that determination
what to do. The recommendation that that that we're making and and was unanimously supported by the BAC is to utilize that to deal with the nuts and bolts. So the first thing is if we can go to the second slide. >> So we're using an RDA surplus.
>> So the RDA become general fund money. So when the RDA collapses, those dollars come back into the into the city's general fund. That millage will all come back into us. So we would be in a position, this is theoretical based on, you know, a 10-year financial projection that we would have a surplus of around $28 million of which we could do
multiple things like I mentioned earlier. >> Can we leverage that today? Uh, no. Because those are RDA those are RDA dollars right now. >> Right. Exactly. So what we're projecting is now we have geobond dollars to deal with streets and sidewalks for the next number of years. So the idea is what we
had projected is we might need somewhere 1012 million a year. So let's say $12 million a year to do every sidewalk when it's supposed to get done, every street when it's supposed to be get done. Not when there's complaints, not when it's really lots of holes. Replacing it when we're supposed to replace it. If I index
that to inflation, uh, at around, let's say, a 3% estimate, we're in a 15 to$16 million estimate of what I might need to put into a streets and sidewalks fund. By doing this, we could put that into the streets and sidewalks fund, still have a 10 to12 million surplus above
that, which we would recommend putting that into the capital the CR program because as of this last year, we were like 20 million short. Um, so that's the really the recommendation. This this sets in motion a policy that in in 10
years and I knock on wood will still be in here in 10 years in the good graces of our city manager. uh you the bureaucrats man you guys was that funny but uh but if I am here and say if not I will be a resident and I will stand at that podium to remind everybody and that
this is the day that the started with the finance committee started with BAC started the finance committee and then on to the commission set in motion how to fund resurfacing our streets and our sidewalks in perpetuity >> which is great because then you wouldn't
have to do another geo bond in order to do maintenance Correct. Now, this is a decision that sets the policy so that in 10 years when I'm putting together that that budget document with the future OM director because she'll be retired by then. Uh this would how we would prepare
it. The commit this does not tie the hands of a future commission. This just directs the administration to prepare a budget based on this. And we believe this is very I believe this is very exciting uh at the end of the day. And not to get off track, but can current
RDA funds go to repairing streets and sidewalks within the RDA district? We are um we have very strict restrictions on what we're allowed to use those dollars for and per the all the amendments that the city commission uh
RDA and the county acting as the RDA uh don't allow for that because they're it's very specifically restricted by the expenditure. So we were not able to add new capital projects at all at this time. Is that a capital project though? >> Yes. And and and this was all >> under streets as a cap. >> Yes. And all of this was under the
specific opaces that because they wanted the debt paid off early. The midday county wanted to uh for this RDA to be finished out and to get their tax dollars back and the city has has agreed to that and that is the that is uh how we're moving forward and that's per
contract per agreement. >> Jason RDAs once this closes in 2035 is it? Can we is there the possibility that we can negotiate with a county to open a different RDA in the future? >> Uh everything is is possible until the the the time the state doesn't allow for
CRAAS or RDAs. I know this year, right? >> Yeah, I know that world may be a little different in in 10 years, but the the city, you know, the city center RDA has really um you know, been pretty successful in in in its operations. >> So, would it be possible though to have a different type of RDA that we can
explore? Would it be financial financially? >> That would be a discussion for because you'd have to meet the needs of whatever an RDA is at that time related to blight and things like that. That would be discussion for them. >> Yeah, I can tell you that the county doesn't they need another RDA like like a bullet in their head. That's literally what Commissioner Regalado told me when
when it cames to RDA. Um but Jason, if we didn't have this um workaround, how what would be the responsible way the government would pay for those the sidewalks and and the streets? Well, there there two ways. Either there's the PGO way, which is what this would do.
This would be setting aside dollars on an annual basis in your capital budget, or to bond bond them out. And those are both credible ways to to do that. They are longived capital assets. You know, the sidewalks are going to last, you know, 5 10 15 years. Sidewalk, I'm
sorry, asphalt, uh, depending on the type of road, might be, you know, six, seven years. Could be as high as 10 10 or 12. Um, so >> but this would only work starting in 2035. >> Uh, yes. Now, the city this past year did allocate $360,000.
I took 3% uh as kind of a down payment on a recurring basis. And the hope is, and we'll see how the budget process goes, is that we would continue to increase that by 3% to to start setting aside uh some money. So, we've already created that streets and sidewalks fund. We've already set aside $360,000 on a
recurring basis as kind of a uh down payment towards that future, but the numbers get very big when the geo bond money will run out over the next 5 or 10 years. And uh this is one way to to deal with it on a recurring basis with with current PGO dollars. John, maybe you
could come up as we're having this discussion. uh let my colleagues ask some more questions of the CFO, but I want to get an update on where we are with some of the um ongoing maintenance with our streets and sidewalks. So, hang tight for a second, but Commissioner uh
Mail Oh, you uh your question was asked and answered on the RDA. >> Where are we, John? Give us an update with getting our street sidewalks up to Miami Beach standards. >> Definitely. Uh John Norris, public works director. I have a presentation for the
sidewalks from another uh committee, but we've made significant progress with the geo bond funding on moving the sidewalks from the poor to the moderate to the excellent condition. So, we're making great strides in replacing the sidewalks
throughout the city. Um, also focusing on ADA compliance because that's a key component to sidewalk replacement and maintenance. So, it's not just maintenance, it's actually upgrading of the infrastructure. As far as streets and alleys, roadways and alleys, we do a pavement management plan which is based
on scientific data of a van basically mapping out every crack within the roadway. It also looks for wheel path ruting, looks for roughness, and it grades all of our streets. We then take that data and we look at what the average daily traffic is on that roadway
and that's going to prioritize roadway. So a neighborhood street might go 20 years without being resurfaced whereas a arterial might be 12 to 15 years for resurfacing. So I feel like same thing we are improving the score. We have what
we call pavement condition index which is 0 to 100 and that score is progressively improving and that's what we want to see. We don't we don't want to have all 100 score roads. I mean that's not our goal, but we do want to have above average. >> So what holds us back from really
accelerating uh even greater improvements? Is it resources or is it funding? >> It's it's both. It's both. When when you have more money, you have more work. Mhm. >> And we are all familiar with the traffic
impacts of any work that is done to our infrastructure in the city. So that becomes an added challenge in Miami Beach that you don't necessarily see in other cities. So there are really three components operationally. Can we manage the work? Can we afford the work? And
can we afford the disruption to the city to >> and I don't want to get off track and talk about every single street anecdotally. Um, but this ties into the legislation I have the put our best foot forward ties into the conversation about the World Cup yesterday. We're right
here in the epicenter of our city where we have some of the most high-profile events in the entire world. Art Basil, we just had the boat show that brings an economic impact to South Florida of a billion dollars. We have the World Cup and this is going to be our our downtown city center.
>> And this isn't you because you're new to the department, so this is longstanding. Why does 17th Street, for instance, look the way it does, right? It it truly looks like a third world country, both our street and our sidewalk. >> So, 17th Street did have a project plan that was a little more extensive in the
past. That project is not moving forward, but we have taken that money and or some of that money to put towards resurfacing and restriping 17th Street. We are, however, waiting till right before the convention center.
>> Yeah. uh hotel is ready to be opened because we would hate to resurface 17th Street, have heavy trucks still going over it, damage the new pavement. We also want it to be in pristine condition once the hotel does open up. >> And I agree with that. Um
but I'm also cognizant I mean other countries they build airports, they build transit systems across the entire country for the World Cup. Barcelona redeveloped their entire waterfront for the 92 Olympics and they transformed
their city. >> And I'm very I'd be very very upset and disappointed if we have the biggest event in the history of Miami come here. >> Mhm. >> And our city center looks like a third
world country. And I get about the resurfacing argument uh with the heavy trucks that are coming through, but we're going to be topping out for the convention center pretty soon, right? >> Yes. >> In July. >> In July. >> Tell me why we can't resurface now. What would
be the expenses of that? Can we work with the RDA or the convention center hotel? Like I'm personally embarrassed, professionally embarrassed. And this has nothing to do with you, right? You you heard it. This is what was mapped out
>> riding down this street. This is our city center. We We need to take pride in Miami Beach for how our city looks. We can't ask spring break visitors or visitors during March, I'm not even going to call them spring break visitors, to respect our city if it looks like we don't respect ourselves,
>> right? and the fact that we're going to have the biggest event in the history of Miami. Come here and you can't ride a bicycle down 17th Street because you're going to break your neck. That That's not okay, right? That's not okay. Talk
to me about the logistics. Like, if we repave it and then the convention center hotel construction happens, does it totally destroy our roads? I I just think we really need to put our best foot forward and have our city looking pristine. Imagine some of these other countries that have built stadiums, have
built entire like micro cities, and we can't repave our main corridor. >> So, the the World Cup is coming in June, July, and then the convention center hotel is supposed to be finished in July, >> topped off. >> No. >> Yeah. >> Maybe we can work with Mr. Martin and
ask him to split the cost of the of the repaving because he's, you know, Mr. Chair is right. It is embarrassing, especially if we have international visitors who's probably never been to Miami before or Miami Beach and then they see the condition it is. >> I think it's we're almost being
pennywise pound foolish if um if we kind of let this opportunity pass. So where where I mean it would only be um high impact right near the right here outside the convention center but I mean the
rest of 17th really needs some that's not going to be affected by the construction. I mean what how how soon could we restripe that now if we wanted to? >> Well I'll take it a step further. I think we need to repave immediately. >> Mhm. >> Okay. Repave immediately because that
has to be done for the World Cup. We could resurface re I'll leave that to you. But our streets cannot look like the way they are. Our streets and our sidewalks on 17th Street. And then if there's damage done through the uh heavy machinery that's coming here for the
convention center hotel, then yes, perhaps you know the remaintenance of that will will have to fall to the developer or something like that. But we cannot have our main corridor 17th Street. >> Mhm. going into the convention center where I'm sure is going to be, you know,
the epicenter of our World Cup look the way it does. >> Y and and forgive me because I do look at things through a different lens >> because we do we often get criticized for >> doing work and then tearing it up. So, we are very >> um cautious about
>> I I get that, but I I've also lived on West Avenue >> and >> it looks like a fourth world country, >> right? So I I I >> and we haven't done that for 20 years because we hear wh >> project starting tomorrow. It's it's
embarrassing, right? We can't have this as our policy. Same thing for Washington Avenue uh that we worked on down south of Fifth. We have these pie in the sky projects that are 10 years out, maybe 15 years out, maybe 20 years out. The West Avenue project was 20 years in the
making. >> And we don't repave our surfaces. And the longer you wait, the the larger undertaking that is. But go ahead. I know I cut you off. >> No, no. And and you're looking at it from a different lens than I am. And and I agree with you. Let me get with uh our
transportation staff. I think we can definitely move this forward. The funding is there for this. Um >> I know that I know at the very least design money was there. Mr. I just >> sorry I was caught off guard a little bit but I believe that funding exists to
resurface. We can resurface it and look at how we could restore whether it's working with the developer to participate in the restoration if there is damage done. >> How long would it take to repay 17? >> We could probably get it on the schedule in the next
>> I asked him how long it would take to repay 17 >> in the next four months. I'm thinking we could probably get that on the schedule to be done. You have 3 months and 20 days. >> 3 months and 20 probably 3 months and 20 days. We could uh >> uh figure that out.
>> Chair, if I could just clarif. >> No, we I think this is an administrative decision we could move forward on. Um definitely taking your recommendation into account. There are some logistics I need to work through to make sure I'm not missing anything because I I didn't quite come prepared to speak on the
topic, >> of course. Um, and I appreciate that, but you have four out of seven here. And would anybody disagree that we shouldn't be moving forward expeditiously on 17th Street? >> If I can just for two things. Yeah. One, I would make part of though it's the
financial policies, but I would add a separate motion part of this just for the record because I think there was a schedule approved by the commission because it was part of our CIP to complete as uh the director stated. So that would shift that schedule. So we probably would want to put something on the record getting commission to give
different direction on that. Uh but just also just one clarification I was just trackable as that is the the convention center is not being activated for FIFA just just as a note >> but this corridor is our epicenter right it is the main ingress egress to our
let's call it our downtown area um next to Lincoln Road >> next to Lincoln Road soundscape park it's how Art Basil hasn't come in and go guys what what are you doing here right we really need to uh
elevate our standards. Okay. If so, if I can, I think it's it'll if it it's okay, I'll I'll frame this as two as as two motions. They're they're because they're kind of separate. So, I'd like it to return to commission with a favorable recommendation to approve the comprehensive financial policy as amended related to the the date on the
waiver and also return to commission with a favor recommendation to proceed immediately with the resurfacing of 17th Street >> and the sidewalks. Yeah. Yes, I'll have to there's not that extensive of work on the sidewalk, so that that shouldn't be an issue. >> And let's be pragmatic and use common
sense. I know there's an office building on 17th Street that's under construction. Don't have to do that, right? But to the extent where I know right on Alton, uh >> it's it's embarrassing. >> Understood. So, we'll show it to um to
resurface 17th Street uh to immediately uh resurface 17th Street and repair sidewalks as needed. Yep. And that funding is already there. We're just moving that up. Correct. >> Yes, that should be there. >> I'm not sure. I'm not sure of that. >> Hold on. We have our OM director here.
>> Yeah, I was just checking. So, we actually unfunded that project as a part of the 26 budget. >> I believe I think there might have been funding for design >> unfunded last year. Um I believe there's some grant dollars for the bike lanes which we had on pause. I don't think we
could use that for the resurfacing. Yeah, we'll have to we'll have to double check cuz I I think that's correct. But I thought we had left dollars for uh resurface or and or design related work, but um we can have this motion go back and uh we'll come back to commission whatever uh actions are needed to
effectuate that whether that's a a budget amendment or whatnot. >> Okay. I'll probably put on an item for this commission meeting just uh kind of uh shore this up. >> Okay, >> great. >> All right. Thank you. I that's exciting to me to think that we'll have 17th Street repaved uh by the
World Cup. So >> So for those two motions, who would make to be making those motions? >> I'll move it. >> Okay. So Commissioner Suarez, seconded by >> me, >> Commissioner Dominguez. All in favor? >> I >> I >> Thank you very much. The item passes.
>> Excellent. Thank you for all the work you and your team on that, Jason. This is, you know, something that's going to be uh years. The impact will be felt for years. >> Thank you very much. I'm pretty excited. >> And Commissioner Suarez, do you want to look at uh
C4M, discuss possible uh institution of a temporary hiring freeze? And why don't you frame it? And I texted Peter to see what was uh if he was available um to give us an update where things are at the state level, right? Even if there
was nothing going on at the state level, I I think this is certainly merits uh discussion and evaluation, but it seems like something is definitely going to come out of the state in terms of property taxes. Uh the House just passed
it uh 8020 to essentially put on a ballot referendum to repeal homesteaded taxes. Uh I do think it's not as far along in the Senate, but if Peter's out there in the universe listening, please come down and fill us in. Uh but Mr. CFO, we just talked about another bill
that's uh uh in the House right now that essentially it actually passed the House, I believe, that does away with all types of uh BTR fees that were charged. And Tamika, I think uh you estimated that that could have an impact
of $6 million, right? And while we all I believe unanimously passed uh operating to a 2027 budget of a rolled back millage rate, we need to start making chunky efficiency and cost savings somewhere. So with that teed up, why
don't you uh give us your thinking uh on this item, Commissioner? >> Uh if I can read in uh NB2 discuss temporary hiring freeze for non-essential positions. NB2. >> Uh thank you, Mr. Chair. So this kind of aligns with my um my idea for the roll
back rate as well. Um plays hand in hand. Um I I certainly think you know if you look 10 years ago we had I think half the amount of employees we do now. Um and at some point we do need to put a
cap on how much or how many people we can hire um that cost the city considerable amount of of tax dollars. So Jason, have you researched this at all? I mean, do you have any recommendations? Um, as far as city
staff, is this something that you guys feel comfortable with? Uh, and any suggestions? >> We have um our HR director, Mara, is is taking this item. I know that she has a a slide that she's going to be sharing that was uh was presented to commission
previously as part of the one of the OM presentations showing back uh a number of years on positions uh how we've had position growth uh going going forward. Um it it it will show that a vast majority of position growth has been in
public safety area and very not very much outside of public safety and and then she can get into uh the nuts and bolts of a hiring freeze which I know the commission had spoken about last year and we didn't uh move forward but I would tell you uh with there's almost an
effect of one in some cases already in the sense that the commission passed preparing a preliminary budget bas So the rolled back rate which could be anywhere from 17 to 25 million. So working with you know the OM director and we already hot and heavy in the
budget process with departments you know we've requested you know for them to make you know pretty substantial reductions and at least initially until we get the final number or the you know preliminary come June 1st and we get how much we actually have to reduce. I can only speak for my my own set of departments that I've worked on. Uh I
have positions that I have frozen. Uh, I've had one I have ones that are not and I'll just very quick anecdotally is I have a capital assets accountant position. The gentleman retired recently. I have to fill that position. I need an accountant to do capital asset accounting for the city with our
billions of dollars in assets. I I need that. That's an essential. There's other ones that I have frozen. Uh there's other ones that I have informed managers that when they're through attrition uh you know that I'm propo going to propose an elimination in this area and you know to to put a freeze in if it becomes
open. So I think the departments are already kind of going through this exercise and that they've identified positions that they would be proposing through the next budget process. So I would suspect the departments are already kind of doing this in that making determination what is essential and non- essential to theirs. But I
think there would be a concern and I think Mara can share it a bit if there was kind of a blanket. You can't hire anyone that's not a police officer as an example. That's something we'd be concerned because the commission has approved a budget with a certain positions and certain budgets and we're living within that. But we are looking ahead based on the commission direction
we've already have. >> Jason in high level are salary and employee expenses uh constitute about 70% of our general fund budget. Uh yes. Yeah. That's about approximately 70%. we are uh especially in the general fund they are as I think I've always said
they're people doing things they are police officers they're firefighters they're enforcement officers uh accountants uh as it were but so to the where I was going with that to the extent that we achieve this rolled back rate >> it's going to be impossible to do so
without scaling back on employee compensation and expenses given the bulk 71% that they constitute of our general general fund. I would very much uh concur with that that it would be extraordinarily difficult to
eliminate 15 to $25 million out of our general fund budget and not have headcount reduction. I I can just tell you just for from from you know one of my departments I have uh we I cut several last year and I am proposing a few more. There's not not a lot I can but >> I don't think this is target of your
department. >> No, no, I'm just using I only want to speak for myself as a as an example and I haven't we haven't met with all the individual departments yet. We've gone through some of them. Uh but there are departments that are you know definitely identifying you know it's difficult as it were but they are identifying uh positions but and do you work with those
departments or you do you just say you know because you are the finance expert right do you go out and work with public works or whatever it may be. I'm not pinpointing John see him right there. Do you say hey let's work together to try and achieve this or do you just leave it to the department heads here we need x
amount of uh cost savings? that we we give them a a direction on on a value. Uh the departments, you know, have extensive experts in their own departments, administrative managers and stuff like that that uh their assistant directors, the directors that know their operations quite well. They're better
prop uh positioned to identify where there could be an efficiency or reduction without having the minimal most minimal impact or to identify okay, if I cut this position, this is what's going to happen or or won't happen anymore. uh but they work with the analysts at the office of management and
budget to go through that reconcile that uh the office of management and budget myself the director and the senior staff in those individual departments we meet for hours on end going through >> advisory >> the recommendation well at the end of the day the city manager makes the preliminary you know budget recommendation so yes it comes from the
the department heads they get reviewed by the assistant city managers we work with uh you know OM to put together that list of possible reductions till we hit that mark and they said June 1st we'll have that So the city manager needs direction then from us, right? I mean it's either there is a hiring freeze or there's not a hiring freeze because I
think what you're telling me is we give a great, you know, we're you're looking into every department. You're giving suggestions on where you can and can't cut, you know, costs, for example, but ultimately it comes down to the state manager. >> Well, yes, and I think the commission has already given direction. The commission gave direction on roll back
rate and as I think the the chair was, you know, very eloquently stating, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to impossible. actually it would be impossible to not be eliminating positions in the upcoming budget cycle to meet that requirement. Um so there's a de facto already being looked at. It's
being targeted, being smart based on every uh director. >> And while I don't want people to, you know, I don't want to create fear-mongering, right? Not saying that you are doing that, but uh before we're eliminating positions, if we achieve that cost savings through attrition, so
people leave and then we don't fill them because we have this hiring freeze. I'd rather be in that position than we get a year from now. And whether it's through our achieved roll back rate or something that the state proposes that we have to do across the board elimination, right?
I'd rather be start making those cost savings now rather than having to eliminate positions in year. Uh Commissioner Mateo Selenus, then we'll turn it over to HR. >> So Jason, it sounds like though what you're saying is that because all the departments are aware that we are
looking at our budget and rolling back and possibly cutting positions that no one's hiring right now. So, a hiring freeze isn't really necessary. >> I I would say a hiring freeze is is is not necessary, but I wouldn't say that they're blanket not doing it. They're being smart about it. Like, and I was just using myself as an anecdotal
example. There are positions that I am not advertising for because I'll be proposing to eliminate those. And there are other ones that are are essential. I I need that for those operations. So having said that then and I appreciate that but having said that because my worry with the hiring freeze is it's it's I I understand the intent and I
understand the concern about our budget but what happens if a department is looking for a specialized position that is non-essential but all of a sudden then they find that perfect candidate but we have a hiring freeze and they need that candidate to perform whatever it is whether it's an engineer or an
architect or an elevator inspector or whatever it is but now we're our hands are tied on the hiring freeze. That's that's where I kind of worry because we might miss out on a really good hire because we're under a hiring freeze and I just don't think any of our departments are saying, you know, let's
just throw money out the window and hire whoever. Woo! You know, I think it's people are being more aware of what we need and and not to spend and to cut back on positions. So, I I I personally just worry about a hiring freeze missing an opportunity of a good employee.
>> Let's uh let's hear from you, Marlo. Good um afternoon or morning I should say. Marla Alpenszer, HR director. Um if I could have the slide please. It's a 10-year look back of the full-time position trend. Um over 10
years, the um full-time public safety position count has increased by 158 positions or 15.9%. The non-public safety full-time position count over 10 years has increased by 32
full-time positions or 2.8%. So this is the context of this conversation. Um we would like to uh recommend uh furthermore what the um CFO has so uh articulated so well which is we would
request um that you allow us to maintain as uh city administration strategic flexibility required to conduct day-to-day operations including the hiring of personnel in order to achieve the goals
that the commission has set in services and in projects. >> The the current budget preparation. >> One second. Um I don't know who's best served to answer this question. Uh what has been our population growth over that
10-year period? >> I don't have that data. I'm so sorry. >> It's a decrease. >> Yeah. I think overall this the the city has lost uh or I think it's probably gone from 90 to 85,000 or been steady depending on it, but somewhere in that game. But I would tell you of these these 32 positions uh which include all
all departments other than the commission uh you know there it's all done through budget enhancements that have been approved by the commission. So this is going to be things like I think the municipal prosecution team as an example uh it would would be something that would be in there. So this is not this is going to you know exclude cops
and firefighters. So a lot of the dollars, a lot of the headcount that has been increased over the past decade by by the city commissions of the past has been towards public safety and there has been a a lag in the non-public safety areas. Um, so you know that whether that
be the finance department or HR or the city manager's office, the city clerk's office, city attorney's office, uh, you know, all of those other departments actually has not shown a very large increase, but we have had a lot of additional services cuz this is going to
include these are all departments. Uh, Tamika, right? These are all departments. >> Yeah. So, you know, one of my issues here is very similar to how we prepare our budget is we just focus on the things that have been added over time, but we don't look back at the cumulative
way that we've got in here, right? So, we could say, okay, well, commission directive over 10 years has through budget enhancements has added those 32 positions. >> I bet we really don't go back and analyze though. Okay. In 2017, we had
those 1142 positions, right? The world has changed. Perhaps technology should have made us more efficient. Of those, 1142 positions that were our starting benchmark in 2017. Is every single one of them still
really necessary? Right? We we just build up and we never go back and evaluate >> the needs. The the the needs. It's the same thing with the budget, right? We just focus on what has been added as an enhancement over that past year. We
don't go back and look at the previous hundred years of cumulative spending that is now recurring that has gotten us to that standpoint. Right? So we could say, "Yeah, we've only added 32 people, but we we've never really gone back and
said, "Okay, well, of those 1142, are they all necessary or do we just keep filling those because that's just the way things are done?" It's the same thing with the budget, right? We we sit here and we go through a month'sl long process to analyze an extra $20 million
of budget enhancements, but we never really peel back that onion and really really go through on a granular level of how we got to a billion dollars and what that entails. >> And Mr. Chair, you bring up a good point that we've lost residents. I think we lost 10,000 residents in the last 10
years, yet we're adding more employees for more service. said that doesn't add up. Um, we should be decreasing the amount of service considering we have less residents in Miami Beach. Um,
okay. Well, Commissioner, go ahead. >> Well, I just want to I appreciate what you said, Commissioner, but I disagree. I don't think we should We have more involved residents. They, you know, we've got our neighborhood organizations are growing. We have some areas where one is split off into two and we have
larger you know 10 years ago I don't know if Sona existed and now they do and they are a very robust neighborhood organization and I'm curious out of these positions how many are commission directed where commissioners have actually asked for more staff um and I could name a couple but I don't you don't it's okay Mara we'll we'll talk
offline about that because I've seen commissioners have new ad you know over the past couple year 10 years where >> in the granular data of looking at these 32 positions and this can be provided to you each each of you as well as the full
commission. Um there's a record of where the positions are added and what budget year they're added and it also reflects in this chart that I'm going to highlight a few things from the where the positions have been removed. In other words, um the concept of is a
position still needed and do we need to maybe make cutbacks in areas that is also reflected in this historical budget chart of headcount. So for example over time um 10 positions were added in budget out of that 32 position and budget I'm sorry building not budget
excuse me my glasses are not working very well in building not uh have been added and that has been a direction of the commission uh over time you know we really needed to enhance our services in the building department in housing there
have been 10 grant-f funed positions added all of that was grant-f funded not budgeted uh funded by the general fund. So that's another 10 of the 32 positions. In um parks and wreck, there were five positions added over time. Um
but there were also five positions removed over time. Sorry, let me say it differently. There were 10 positions added over time, but there were five positions removed over time. So it was driven by what services were needed in those various budget years to see that
net growth of five. um sanitation has had a net uh reduction of 18 positions. So the the gain of 32 is not just let's keep adding the gain of 32 is a net gain where other positions have been removed
over time. And so I do want you all to um when the commissioner Suarez directed uh this this item to this committee the first three bullet points identifying critical positions essential to core functions. Please know that that is
absolutely what we're doing through this budget process just like every budget process but particularly this year uh recommend positions that can be combined, eliminated or outsourced. There is no way we can deliver the budget you have directed us to deliver without doing that. Uh proposing
operational changes that improve service delivery without expanding staff. We are all diligently working on that through our budget process. The item that we are we are asking to maintain some flexibility to strategically hire and maintain our operations and get deliver
the services that we need to deliver. is the blanket concept of a hiring freeze is is not a strategic approach and we we honor and recom and and desire to deliver the strategic approach that we know that you expect of us. We don't think a blanket hiring freeze is the
best uh tool for the city manager to use. >> Yeah. And this is anecdotal. I worked with the neighbors on Sunset Isles and they have this park there. It's not wellmaintained.
They they actually took care of the design, what it would look like, right? Hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent on the design. And John, correct me if I'm wrong, but the park would have been a million dollars or something along those lines, right? There's
probably individual homes out there that pay several hundred,000 in taxes, and I had to go back to them after the budget and say, "No, sorry. couldn't get you to your park, right? We have a billion dollar budget. Uh 71% of that is just
the salaries and expenses. So imagine going to our residents that are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year each of them in taxes and going, "Nope, couldn't get your park that your
children walk by and play in every single day. we're paying 71% of your taxes into salaries and expenses, but just couldn't do it this year. And you know what they're doing? They're going, you know what? Thanks, but no thanks. Just please allow us to fund it
ourselves. So there's hundreds of thousands of dollars they're paying individually on taxes. They go, we don't want to play this waiting game. We're we put together the design. just let government get out of the way and just let us spend our own money to
build a public facility, right? That is a very hard message to deliver that we have a billion dollar budget. 71% go to personnel expenses because we have a finite pie, right? We we don't have this infinite pie. We're not the federal government that can just run up the
trillions of dollars in deficits. So every money, every dollar we spend somewhere comes from somewhere else, right? And where they from our residents. >> Exactly. >> And and it's not just we're not just delivering people services out there
cleaning streets, but parks and capital improvements. So for every dollar in personnel we're spending, that was one for one a park that we couldn't deliver or a road paving that we couldn't deliver. Uh things like that. So, um, Commissioner Suarez, what would you
think about something like this where trying to thread this needle, we heard the feedback from the other commissioners, you know, we talk about accountability, uh, and things like that with city staff where, um, we can term it whatever, uh, we want to, but any
incremental hire across the city has to be signed off on by the city manager >> and by us or or I mean, that that already happens. Correct. >> The commission has already approved the positions.
But I'm saying any fill right now if sanitation wanted to go uh hire somebody that that doesn't need that doesn't get elevated to get signed off on by the city manager. Correct. That that position is budgeted. That can just be filled as is. Correct.
>> Correct. Yes. >> Correct. >> So perhaps if we're saying, you know what, it's just not strategic to doing across the board hiring freeze. We need to be more surgical. Let's put that accountability. Our city manager has heard that that direction loud and clear
from us. >> Then why don't we Yeah. In that same vein, why don't we have the discretion of the city manager approved by us as almost like a budget amendment? >> I me personally, I view us more of a
board of directors and I don't want to get into that micromanagement, right? We we put our trust and confidence in a city manager to carry out the day-to-day operations. The goal and objective is clear, right? It's we do not want to be in a position at the end of the year
where it is uh September and we're scrambling that we've promised a rolled back millage rate and we can't get there because we haven't properly manage our budget. That is going to be his clear directive and each position even if it's
budgeted for has to be signed off on by the city manager. U Mr. CFO by implementing let's just say we went ahead with a blanket hiring freeze. Would that help with the roll back rate
that we've inst we've directed the city staff to do? If the direction is that we are to immediately cease hiring uh any employees uh for the next n months uh then yes obviously that would free up uh
those those dollars in the next budget but obviously would have some potentially serious ramifications uh you know on our ability to deliver services. And that's why our concern here is is to not have a blanket hiring freeze. Uh but
to again the commission has already de facto given us that direction as we are required to repair a rolled back rate budget that's going to be as the chair said require headcount reduction and perhaps significant uh in our general fund. >> Um
>> so it's the same thing right? Right. I mean, you're going to have to eventually do that if that you're directed to. >> But the but what the hope is that and I think that what uh Marlo was stating is if this is something that wants to go back is to to to limit new hires based on our strategic review in the light of
the upcoming roll back rate budget preparation. So what Commissioner Magazine is proposing is any new hires has to be approved by the city manager and the city manager understands that we that he's directed to the roll back rate for year 27. Um if I could just to to
help I think what because of process and timing of when we are hiring I think it might be more advisable at the u applica um the advertising stage would be the same way of going at it but would allow it that that we would not advertise for
any position uh unless the city manager had approved it. That way um at the back end when we you know if we ever gone through a hiring process you know it could be we wanted to be speedy often because sometimes especially on technical positions you might have multiple offers and multiple jobs and to
wait to have time for the city manager review almost on a daily basis perhaps hiring a sanitation worker an officer whatever that might be it probably be more prudent to get to the same exact place that uh the city manager would have to approve the advertising ad. Yeah, I think that's better before we go
through that whole horse and pony show. If it's not going to happen, just >> be more efficient, nip it in the bud, and not even advertise it if the city manager is not going to sign off. >> If if that I think Mara that that would probably work and get us to the city >> from a process standpoint, that is a tighter control.
>> Yeah. So, so if it wants to return to the commission to direct the city uh the administr I guess well I guess the question is this across all chartered offices is this the city administration uh clerks o attorney and the mayor commission which who who's the direction
what positions are are going to get reviewed for advertising um ju just a reminder because we have multiple chartered offices it's not just the city manager >> it should be across all chartered offices >> okay so direct all charter so the commission and I guess we could a resolution that all chartered offices
officers would review uh would have to approve the advertisement of position before it moves forward. Okay. So, if that is the motion, I'm just so direct return to commission with favorable recommendation to direct uh all chartered officers to review uh to
review and approve. Sorry, I'm reading this as we're going all uh position advertisements. I think uh Commissioner Matias Selena's >> I I just uh the the concern that I mentioned about if we find someone who's
incredibly qualified for position that we need how so now this position is not going to be advertised because the city manager needs to so we might potentially lose out on
someone who's incredibly qualified for a position that's not approved. I think by this direction that would never happen because what would happen is is the city manager or the city attorney or whoever would review and say this is an essential position. I really need to fill this position and we would
advertise it. So we would never be in a position where we had a candidate and we'd say now it's being pulled back. We just wouldn't advertise for it. >> And Jason, we're making the recommendation here, but the full commission is what is approving this. >> This would this would return to this is a a committee. So, this would return to
commission with a favorable recommendation to implement all charter officers having to review and approve the advertisement of any positions. >> And this won't be yanking off every single position that's on >> it would be up to that charter officer to review all open positions that are uh
up for advertisement and to set give the go or no go uh on on those. And as as an example, I said that as as my as a an executive uh staff myself, I have positions that I've already personally uh you know frozen. So if those would go, they would even go to advertisement
example. Uh but if they were on the list, uh you know, >> it's just a it's a stop gap, right? It's it's just another stop that has to be reviewed by the charter officer for the hire. And by doing this, it actually accommodates uh Commissioner Matteo
Selenus' valid concern of there could be some essential positions, some extraordinary talent that's not going to get lost. We put our trust and faith in the city manager and our charter officers. They're the ones we have control over hiring. So, we have to put our trust and faith, but also know at
the end of the year that there's going to be accountability if we don't get to the position where uh we've all directed that we get >> right. I think we can I think we can work with with that. So if we return the motion we return to commission with a favor recommendation to direct all chartered officers to approve the advertisement of for all positions all
open positions. >> Yep. And if we could uh Natalie, do we still have on Peter if he could give a quick update uh because we're essentially going through this with the understanding we're trying to get to a roadback millage rate. We could have
much bigger fish to fry, if you will. Um, so maybe we can hear an update uh from Peter about what those fish could look like. >> Peter, please unmute yourself. >> Hi everybody. Could you hear me? >> We can. >> Hi, Peter Lisaragi, intergovernmental
affairs leaison. So to the commission's point, um there's a few significant financial u impact bills happening right now in Tallahassee. Two two bills passed on the house floor. The um the first one was the House joint resolution um which exempts homestead properties um which
exempts homestead property from non-school property taxes and prohibits local governments from reducing funding for first responders. And then um the other um bill is the local business taxes. So this would repeal the current authority to impose local business taxes
and that bill passed the House floor and is actually stuck in its um and on the Senate side it's actually stuck in the second committee. So this is meaningful because it suggests that um given the timing and posture that the policy could be used in as leverage in broader house
and senate negotiations particularly as uh we move closer to to budget alignment between the chambers. So um this is the third consecutive year that the house has moved forward with this local business tax repeal. So, it is a priority on the House side and the Senate's being a little bit more
cautious considering how many other financial um implication bills that are uh that are impacting local governments and and and financially constraining local governments. So, I think it's important for us to be proactive and not reactive um to this knowing that, you
know, it's been policy that's moved three consecutive years in the House side and and it's working its way in the Senate and it could be used in possible, you know, budget negotiations to be thrown in a tax package and passed that way. That would be the local business tax, which as we said could have up to
$6 million impact on on our local government. >> And Peter, how about where things stand for the homestead property exemptions? uh obviously not going to tie you into anything, but give us the latest uh lay of the land.
>> Yeah. So, there's seven um property tax proposals right now moving uh through through the legislative process. All have been pushed forward through the House. Um the one that made it through the floor the this week was was the was the House joint resolution by Rep. Miller. Um but right now the Senate
hasn't um indicate hasn't released any property tax proposal and they're trying to align with what the governor's um intentions are with the property tax proposal. And the only indication that we've gotten so far um between the Senate and the executive branch is that they're looking for a modest property tax proposal that would be possibly
released during budget negotiations. But right now we're just kind of waiting and seeing um what the Senate does um and and their alignment with with um the executive branch. the House was just being proactive and trying to move measures knowing that the governor has made it very clear that one of his
priorities before he leaves office is to eliminate um property taxes now. And what way he's going to do that? He he hasn't released any anything. Pet Peter, wasn't the thought just given this strenuous relationship between House leadership and the governor's office
that the harder uh hill to climb for this to happen would have been passing it out of the house and that's already been achieved? >> No, I would I I would say the hard the the the the harder thing to happen is for the House and Senate to align on a
property tax proposal. So, since the governor hasn't released his personal proposal, like I said, the House is being proactive, but at this point in time, I wouldn't say that the House's proposals are moot, but they're going to have to have some type of negotiations between the Senate to move forward a proposal that would reach the governor's
desk and for them to move forward and sign, which would um then move its way on our ballots for in November for for our constituents to vote on. >> So, uh handicap the odds that there is uh ballot language.
>> Oh. I would say I want to say 70% that at least one measure is going to make its way on the ballot. Now, we don't know which measure exactly, but definitely we could expect one measure um to make its way on the ballot. And the legislator is already preparing for the possibility of a
special session just specifically on property taxes. And when that happens, if that h when and if that happens, it would be because the senate has released their own property tax proposal um specifically aligned with the governor's um the governor's proposal. And that's when the
the house and the and the upper chambers would be kind of fighting out the details to see what's going to make its way um >> on what is the thought that this would be implemented actually if it is voted favorably upon?
Um, I believe it would be of July of next year. >> That that that was a nervous lift for me. Um, >> yeah. >> Okay. >> Like the 28th or 29th. >> Okay. >> How many weeks, Peter? How many weeks of session do we have left?
>> So, March 13th um is supposed to be the final day of uh session, but right now there hasn't been many me measures. I think only three bills have actually passed um the whole committee, the whole like process. Um, we had some bills passed the House side uh this week, but
and some pass the Senate, but in in in in unison, there's only been three bills that have passed um collectively. So, there hasn't been a lot of policy movement so far because of the tense relationship between the House and the Senate and the governor's office. >> Excellent. I appreciate that. Uh, Mr.
CFO, have you and your team done an analysis for the impact of a rolled back homesteaded property tax? Uh yes uh there is a a working group um being coordinated by the mamed county with all the municipalities. We have a a call
that we have some discussions on Fridays and the office of management of budget has done some analysis. You know, the bills obviously move and change uh through time. Uh you know, what one exempts police then exe and fire. Uh but I believe if there was a full homestead
exemption, it was a $78 million 79 mill. It's rounded at 80 uh about an $80 million uh impact uh to the city's general fund. There's another one out there that's pretty popular, I believe, related to exempting it for uh for
homesteaded seniors, uh which was >> 420,000. >> Yeah. Which was a bit of a surprise and significantly lower than I expected. So, we don't have a lot of seniors that are homesteaded, which would almost be a rounding error for our budget. So, maybe this is more for Peter. Is there
anything that proposes an exemption up to a certain threshold? you know, so if your home is valued up to a million dollars or >> I've seen one for uh giving another blanket $200,000 exemption. I've seen ones increasing it by a few$25,000s
once. There's a lot of flavors out there uh at the end of the day and don't know exactly which flavor uh will end up coming, which I think >> and I believe the county's analysis said if this is passed as proposed uh they would lose about almost 30 cents of
every dollar that they collect. they would uh lose about $980 million out of the 3 point uh 3.3 that they collect. Yes. I believe the our analysis was Miami Beach was on the lower end of Homestead. Uh so if it ends up being something from the Homestead perspective
of the 34 municipalities, we were definitely on the the low end of on a percentage based impact. >> Still an impact. >> It will be a huge impact. But for some cities it would be better because of the resort taxes we collect, the tourism uh taxes that we collect.
>> This would also affect the county. Correct. >> This would affect every city and county in the entire state. >> What would I know you you don't work for the county, but what would how would that affect the county as far as our services, bus routes, transportation? >> I wouldn't be I wouldn't be able to
answer that. the county. >> Well, yeah, the uh if if well >> would the CRA would >> it could be if again it depends on which bill comes out. If it it's homestead, is it homestead seniors? Is it an exemption increase? There's lots of different flavors which come out. Uh and once it,
you know, comes out, I think Peter had said it, uh was that something will more than likely come out. uh probably whatever one it seems to be the Senate is in the driving driving position at this point to pick the one that they want to get onto the ballot and then uh the voters would have to vote on that
and hit the 60%. And I I believe I was just reading an article recently that the the last two uh there was an exemption for uh government employees like police, fire, teachers that did not pass and then there was another exemption that did not pass. So I think the last two that came out um
surprisingly did not meet those thresholds. So even if it comes out uh it would um it may be a very difficult uh bar to pass especially if it's a more draconian one like all homestead exemption uh across the board because that could end up especially with the
the the version that is now where it it states that police and fire cannot be touched which make up 62% of our budget. um if if I can't touch uh 62% of my budget, that would mean dramatic de incre uh decreases across all of the
other departments. Uh you know, it could mean shutting of parks. It could mean, you know, so half cuts to code compliance. I mean, it could be quite draconian. >> And here's how the state's messaging is going to go, right? The CFO of the state went around and did the fraud, waste,
and abuse um >> tour, the Doge cuts. >> Mhm. And even now with the sunshine meeting we had earlier this week, right? When they go to when they finalize something and go to put it on the ballot, they're going to go around and
say, "Listen, you're going to hear from your local municipalities. We can't approve this because police and fire are going to be impacted." and they're going to hold up a piece of paper and say, "Nope, it's going to be X, Y, Z, all this frivolous
stuff." Now, the truth is somewhere in the middle, right? And that's the point of it. But, you know, some of the exercises the state has gone through is clearly intended to mitigate that messaging campaign that, well, if you get rid of property taxes, homesteaded
property taxes, you're going to have to fire all your police and fire. they're going to say, "Nope, look at all the stupid things they've spent money on." And then people, "Oh, wow. Why do I want my taxes going there?" Uh, it's going to be a very, if this gets put on a ballot,
even though 60% is hard to achieve, when you ask people very simplistically, do you want to pay less taxes? They're going to say, well, we'll deal with the unintended consequences later, of course. So, I think we need to really be
even more proactive if we're hearing from our Tallahassee legislative person that there's a 70% chance something gets put on the ballot. And I'll handicap myself, but uh let's say there's a 70% chance of that passing if it gets put on
the ballot. Uh it would be a dereliction of duty, especially how quickly it'll be implemented if we really don't start putting a contingency plan in place. So let's work together about I know you have a working group but how we uh really accelerate that
>> and and I think the the commission giving direction to prepare a a you know potential rolled back rate budget is that is really that >> we started down in the right direction but we may actually as hard as that was going to be to achieve we may have to double and triple down on those efforts.
Oh yeah, they would there would be potentially outside of the millage rate going up uh for non nonpropy owners uh outside of that or some mix of those two things. That be something that future commission will have to deal with. >> Okay. So, do we have to vote on anything here? >> Yes. Uh so that would is to return to commission with favor recommendation to
direct all charter offices to approve >> to approve uh the advertisement of all open positions. And who's making that that motion? >> I'll move it. Suarez. All in favor? >> I show pass three nothing. Thank you. So Jason, uh, if we're going to have to
have a, you know, reduction in some of the revenue we have coming in and achieve that, I'm kind of teeing you up here. You can either get there through reduction in expenses or through >> increase >> growth in revenue. So let's hear growth
in revenue. If we can have our economic development team come up. Uh just to go back to the item prior, we do have a project that's separate from the one that was closed for 17th Street. So it has a 1.9 million. >> So it is fully >> 3 months and it's 19 days. We'll see
that done. >> So it'll be funded. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Uh item. >> Yes. >> Uh Stephen, the news is timely. Uh every rich person in the world's moving to Miami. How does that help our
economy? How does that help us? What are we going to do to capitalize? How are we building a real economy for real people to get real jobs for real income? Let's hear some of your efforts and then let's talk about uh you know, I think we
a lot of people assumed we're going to be the beneficiaries uh of some businesses moving from New York. Now, there's been some truly crazy policies that have been proposed in California that have just poured absolute accelerant on not only the Zuckerbergs
of the world, okay? We we can have that philosophical argument, do really rich bros moving here benefit the everyday people, especially if we don't have homestead exemption? We could have that argument. I think that there's good points on both sides, but it goes deeper
than that, right? It's people that are actually now moving companies out of California. And just this week, it was announced Miami in general is going to be a beneficiary of what will be our largest publicly traded company um in Florida with a $300 billion market cap,
which is a AI company, right? So, we uh we've been out in front of this uh about trying to put some incentives to attract AI companies. What have you and your team been doing? >> If I can just read the item in. Yep. So MB4, develop or expand targeted economic incentives to attract artificial
intelligence companies uh to Miami Beach. MB4. >> So thank you, chair, and um good morning uh members of the the committee. Um Stephen Anthony, economic development director. One, I got to give Hoop huge
kudos to you uh uh chair for the efforts that you put forward last year, the expansion of our job creative incentive program. Um the the recommendation on adding more marketing and and dollars to to the efforts that we're that we're putting forward. I think
>> all of us. Yeah. And we certainly appreciate that from from the commission because it's had a really big effect on what we've seen, the activity that we've been able to see. And folks may have seen recently company out of Canada by the name of GFL Environmental Services uh just relocated their executive
offices. Their executive their their CEO moved into Miami Beach. Their executive offices are now set up here in Sunset Harbor. All of that is due to a lot of what's been happening recently. And so we're excited about what's the activity that's been building up and how do we
continue to attract these types of companies. I've always I've had conversations recently. So we we we enacted a outreach targeting program through the business journal specifically targeting uh Washington DC and New York. It is their highest out of
all of the cities uh programs that they've enacted. It is their highest performing one. And so what we've seen is that there are a lot of folks that are now looking from those major markets that are saying Miami Beach is the place that we may want to move our executive offices. I figured that's that's the
biggest target for us, right? So we may not attract a 700 person company that's going to move to Miami Beach. But what we are what we do have the opportunity is to do similar to what GFL Environmental Services did is to move their executive offices here and they
can set up shop right here on the beach. And Stephen, part of what we need to do, and we could do this together, >> is I've come to realize we need an internal communication and marketing plan to our everyday residents about how some of
these things benefit them, right? Because they they read the paper, they go, "Ah, some rich bro that owns a waste company just got an office here. What why do I care? In fact, it's going to be more traffic." Yeah, >> what we need to understand and help our
residents kind of digest is the ecosystem that that helps. Right? So I I I know that gentleman personally, he's a friend. Uh buys property >> on Miami Beach, right? His CFO bought property in Five Park. They are out in
Sunset Harbor every single day supporting a multitude of small businesses, right, across the board. Um, and when we brought something uh like the the company to Lincoln Road and and I think there's going to be another exciting announcement in that same
building in in the next week or two. Um, executive employees that now are living on Miami Beach are traveling to Coconut Grove to go into their offices. Right? So that's cars off the road, people able to walk to work, but those are bodies during the day in some of our commercial
corridor areas like Lincoln Road. And we all talk about, oh my gosh, why is it only Cheesecake Factory? And well, it's because, right, that there's not the people that are eating every single day at those small businesses. And when you have hundreds of employees now that are
working in Sunset Harbor or working in on Lincoln Road or are soon to be working on Fifth Street, that really helps our local ecosystem. And also for the first time, we're having real jobs for Miami Beach residents. Yep. >> Right. We're talking white collar
finance, venture capital, um environmental green energy is what GFL is. Absolutely. Right. Right. Those are jobs that are going to be open to Miami Beach residents. So, uh it really helps us diversify our economy away from uh the
hospitality industry where it's as badly needed now as ever. So, let's talk about some of those efforts uh that you continue to make and in addition to New York and DC, how we add California into the mix of being our target. Yep. So, that's that's our next our next stage is
how do we expand upon the work that we're currently doing? I had to take a look at the budget being fiscally responsible and say, "Okay, where's our first initial targets?" And that's where we're seeing the traction. I wanted to make sure that we gained some traction there first and then how do we kind of dip into some of these other markets as
well and see how do we attract some of those same type of companies from those places and getting them with their eyes on Miami Beach as well. And so that's what happening. And to and to your point um earlier, chair, the we just pulled the latest uh retail numbers. The actual
retail vacancy numbers have actually gone down. And so what you're seeing is that you're seeing more restaurants. You're seeing more folks actually open up on on Miami Beach specifically. And so that's something that's happening. I think also too with the commission and the efforts around permitting and how do we continue to make that process a lot
easier, folks are paying attention. And so those are a lot of the things that you know that we're certainly doing as it pertains particularly to the to the item here um in order to be fiscally fiscally responsible. We wanted to make sure how do we how do we utilize the existing resources that we have but we
want to make sure that we're targeted and so that's why we want to do a refresh of our collateral refresh of our marketing to specifically call out artificial intelligence companies and then leverage our partnerships. So specifically, we have a great partnership with Emerge Americas um and and all of the work that they're doing
where we're actually saying, "Hey, how do we curate artificial intelligence companies and we as a city then have a personal sit down with those companies and talk to them about what their benefits are about moving to to Miami Beach." And so that's one of the efforts that are working right now. Uh, but
we're we're just we can do this administratively, but we're going to do a refresh of our marketing and collateral material to make sure that we're specifically addressing how does that benefit artificial intelligence companies to come to Miami Beach. >> Yeah. And let's uh we had this talk during the economic development committee meeting. Uh we are well
positioned here in Miami Beach that we have an unparalleled access to some of our own residents that have the biggest rolodexes in the entire world. We're talking some of the tech leaders in the world um are front and center at our access. And what I love about Miami is
we are seeing this uh growth and excitement. Everybody seems to want to get engaged to help grow our area. Right there there's this tremendous sense of uh collaboration. And one thing I I really want to do is highlight it was actually through uh in large part the
efforts of uh Commissioner Mark Samuelian that we had some of these office overlay incentives. um he was instrumental in having uh the Alton Road Sunset Harbor office overlay that actually encouraged and incented class A office development. I don't think that
building where we talked about GFL, an environmental uh green recycling company moved into. You have Aries Capital uh a huge private equity firm took 17,000 square feet in there. That is class A++ office space. and it was through uh his
visionary efforts that really helped deliver some of this. Our biggest problem now is as I understand it uh we are close to fully leased at our class A or class X office building on Lincoln Road.
>> We are 100% fully leased at 1800 Sunset Harbor. Um, and we're being close to fully leased at the new class A office building. Uh, that's just about uh completed construction on Fifth Street. And right now, we don't have any other
shovels in the ground. Um, so we're 2 and 1 half to three years away from seeing other office projects come online in Sunset Harbor. There's two proposed. There's a sister project on Fifth and Alton. Uh but right now we're we're kind of uh uh we're resource poor, if you
will. So I I think the free market is recognizing that and is going to take care of that. But let's continue working with your efforts. Um this is generational opportunity. And it's why you not to open this can of worms, but I look at areas like Washington Avenue and
and I see my vision. And I go, we should no longer be sitting here talking about if we have to have barricades up for spring break or not because we don't have that. Our economy now is this great balance of high-end tourism and a better
economy for all of our citizens and residents to essentially participate and thrive from. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. And just one quick note, the Miami Beach Mean Business campaign. Um, so folks got an opportunity to see the uh the initial screenshot of Mika being presented um
yesterday at the at the special commission meeting, but but we're taking what you what you mentioned during the economic development advisory committee uh chair. We're going to take that and we're going to expand that. And so the idea of actually getting those CEOs and having them speak about their experience
about being in Miami Beach, we feel that can be really impactful. >> Excellent. Commissioner, >> thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a couple questions. Hi, Stephen. >> Hi. >> Your department consists of how many people? Five. >> Seven. >> Seven. Okay. And And do you personally do the recruitment of these businesses
or how do you or do you have someone dedicated to that does recruitment all the time? >> So, I'm I'm out and about. I'm having conversations as well as as other members of the team. So, we all kind of do multitask in a number of different ways and we jump in wherever we can.
>> Okay. And then um so when you when you say you're going to refresh the collateral, is that going to be in in your department or our communication department is going to do? >> We'll work we'll work with marketing communications to help refresh the collateral. But we we usually present an idea on what we think it should look like and how we can call it out
specifically and then we'll work with Melissa's team and they do a fantastic job of kind of narrowing our vision down and making sure that it looks looks really good. >> Okay. And then and you work with leads that you have is it kind of cold leads or you have leads or both or
>> we work with all of our partners. So the biggest thing when I when I got here nine months ago was how do we continue to leverage our partnerships? So whether that's the Miami Day Beacon Council, whether that's the chamber, whether it's, you know, like I said, the the Emerge Americas and our partnership there, um, all the various partners,
whether it's the bids, how do we how do we work with each of the partners to understand, okay, who's who's looking cuz I seven member team, we can't be everywhere all at once, but at the same time, how do we leverage them to be able to say, okay, when you're having conversations with businesses, let us
know so that we can then jump in and let those folks know what the incentives are and how can we continue to sell Miami So that's what we've been doing. >> And then thank you for the work that you do. My last question is um so when you have these conversations with companies, ones that that choose to not come to
Miami Beach and they say that Miami Beach isn't a good fit, do they ever share why? Is it because there's not enough office space or they don't have the the the can't source people to work? Is it not you know what's what do they share with
you? Yeah, they so that information hasn't always been shared. One of the things that does come up and the chair mentioned it around the lack of class A office space. That is for office users that is something and you'll see that across the board across the country. That's what they're looking to to feel.
They're looking to move into those spaces. U most of these folks honestly their one of their first priorities is wanting to be on the beach. uh had we had a healthcare company um that ended up choosing choosing somewhere else, but it was because there was just the lack of office space and they wanted to be
close to the beach. So, they wanted to be on that side um because they felt like it would be great for their for their employees. But um but there just wasn't the available space, you know, available for them. So, those are the types of types of things. But typically, if we do hear something, those are the types of things that comes up.
>> I'll tell you what I hear. >> And we and I just want to follow up. So when they say lack of office space though, do they mean new office space? Like they don't want something that was built 20 years ago, 30 years ago, they want the brand new. >> Okay. >> Yeah. They want class A. >> Thank you.
>> And also one of the reasons why we're so almost equipped for the executive offices is what I've heard larger companies trying to have a bigger footprint. It's a lack of housing for employees. It's great for the executives to live on the Venetian, but the people
making 100 150 $200,000 uh they have a hard time recruiting. >> That's the other part that comes out. Yeah. Attainable housing. >> Okay. Excellent. Uh one one um >> I want to hear what she has to say. >> Hi. >> I just had one last
>> Oh, yes, please. Please. I'm sorry. >> It's okay because I it's a fleeting fleeting thought and then it comes and goes. So, you mean to tell me that other So, they they turned down Miami Beach because there's they they don't h they don't have housing challenges in other cities, too. I mean, there's, you know what I mean? Like, I just feel like
housing lack of housing isn't affordable housing isn't our just our issue. It's got, you know, it's so where do they, you know, they go to Iowa? I don't >> So, they they it's not it's not it's a combination of factors. And so while that may be one of the one of the
factors and you you think about it in and the chair mentioned it. So folks have a certain dollar amount that they have to work with and their employees are only making a certain amount of money. It is it is is it easier to go somewhere even further further west
where you can have the class A office space that you're looking for. You can have affordable housing options for your employees >> attainable >> and so attainable housing option for your employees. And so you it's just a combination of all of those factors all wrapped up in one. Sometimes you may be able to get it, but it may not be close
to where folks work. You also have the transportation side of it, right? So folks want to be able to get to work in a in a decent reasonable amount of time. And so those are it's just a number of different factors why folks will say, "Okay, let's choose this location over over this one." So it's it's not it's I
wish it was a one-sizefits-all. It's more of an art than a than a science as it pertains to these things. But um but those are just some of the things that come up in some of these conversations. >> What what were you leading to, Commissioner Mateo Sel? What was the idea behind that thought?
>> I just feel like I I'm I'm trying to figure out what we can do better. You know, maybe we do need to push for building more um class A office space. Maybe that's a fix that we can, you know, to attract businesses and head
folks that want to have their headquarters here. And then, you know, maybe it is building more residential. Um, but I I and certainly it's the public transportation. I think that's actually more of anything else. Um, but you know, so I'm just trying to
understand and so when it's the lack of obtainable housing, I know that housing is a crisis nationwide, so it can't just be that. and you know, so I'm just trying to figure out what the stop gap is. That's all. >> Sure. >> And I'll weigh in and just as a point of
comparison, right? So, this is actually somewhat sad to convey how many threebedrooms in South Beach are currently for sale for under $999,000. >> Two.
>> Oh, yeah. guys. Two, >> he's got to buy one, >> right? Within South Beach, three bedrooms under a million dollar. And we're not talking materially under a million dollars. Does anybody know what the mortgage and HOA insurance on a million dollar payment
is? That's $10,000, right? So, that's not even this super attainable number. But if you go over to Edgewater, right? There's 37. And I know this off the top of my head because I literally just looked at this for this very reason, right? And I'm talking in a 30
block area for Miami Beach versus a 4x4 block area in Edgewater. And the only way to bring down that housing price >> is through supply. >> Yep. >> Right. That when we talk about helping our residents, Yes. the the neighborhood
associations, the people we hear from every day, most of them own, right? Most of them own. But that's not the only people we represent. We represent the people that are out working, that are renting, that their costs are going through the roof.
And imagine being a family and you want to finally take that step from renting to now owning the Miami Beach Dream. You're telling me you have two options for under a million dollars in South Beach? That that's something we need to address.
>> And and and to that point, Commissioner, when I did my analysis for Washington Avenue, there is no more construction for uh units that are attainable between 500 and 800 ft on average. They just they just don't make them anymore. The only the last building that made them,
believe it or not, was Five Park, you know. Um and so you know if Kevin here is telling us that one of the big issues for bringing economic development here is because literally no one can afford and
>> Steve sorry um literally no one can afford to live here. Um you know we we should take that that seriously. Um, it shouldn't just be a place where executives like the Mark Zuckerbergs live in Miami Beach because that's
unfortunately that's what's being built. It's for people of of that uh economic uh tier. So, you know, I hope moving forward, you know, my colleagues in the rest of commission understand that that
if we want to incentivize not only places for people to live, but >> you know, economic development, I mean, it it's it it has far greater consequences um and on how we drive policy and what what kind of development we want to incentivize.
>> May I, Mr. Chair? >> Yeah, please. Um, I just want to also point out though that, you know, people, it's not just an affordability issue. It's also a space issue because some people say, "I want to raise my family with with my kids in a with a backyard or, you know, access to water or a pool
that's a private in my backyard." Um, so afford and I agree with I'm not disagreeing with you, affordability is an issue in terms of housing and raising your family and having families and having three bedrooms, but some people do not want to live and raise their children in apartments. And then the
flip side of that is that some developers don't want to build three bedrooms because they feel like, you know, you can get more bang for your buck if you stick with studios and onebedrooms and micro units and hotel- sized, you know, 400 550 ft units, then
you can build more. And so there it's a it's a very very very deeply layered onion that, you know, I'm sure will peel back. >> And that's why and that's why we incentivize the right development. what we want. You know, right now, unfortunately, it's geared toward ultra luxury rich development. And, you know,
I think unfortunately, it's not just our commission, but it's previous commissions that have really, you know, sort of bent the knee to a lot of these developers to to build high-end luxury. You know, look at 1250 West. you know, we took naturally affordable housing and
sure we we lowered the density, but now it's going to be, you know, 3,000 plus square $3,000 a square foot housing. Why? Because they're incentivized to do that. If there is an incentive to to make a good amount of money where the
average unit size is between 500 and 800 square feet like it used to be like at the courts in South Fifth the Cosmopolitan they they'll we won't necessarily have to deal with the same developers that always come to us like David Martin or
Russell Galbat. will have outside developers who are are just starting and want to actually build attainable housing for uh for people who want to live in Miami Beach. So, it really comes down to policy and how we want to
incentivize the right kind of development. A and Commissioner Dominguez and I just kind of took a cursory look within South Beach. If you want to rent a three-bedroom below $5,500 per month, there are what? Four
three options available. >> Three options >> $5,500 bucks a month and below, >> right? And 370 in Edgewater. If you are a family, if you are not rich, you cannot move to
Miami Beach. And that is not the type of city I want to live in. >> Yeah. >> Right. For sure. >> Stephen, thank you. Let's continue working together. >> Absolutely. Thank you all. >> So, show the item discussed and closed. >> Yes. Thank you.
>> Um, colleagues, any priority items that uh any of you would like to hear? >> Can we just hear my item since I'm here? If you don't mind. Thanks. Thanks, chair. >> But does anybody else have I'm just kidding. Uh which one? NB15. >> Yeah, the dog.
>> Yep. Let's do it. >> All right. We'll show uh MB15 discussion on installation of enhanced lighting at the dog park >> located at 2011 Street. MB15. >> Sorry. Um, so I just want to present
this because this is the dog park that is on Second Street. Um, that's north of Second Street cuz there's two right across the street from each other and it's the one that's on the north end of Second Street. It's the larger one. It's got the water feature in the back. Um, it's it's a very large, very nice dog
park. But the issue is is that at night if you go in there and again in the winter when the sun sets earlier 6:00 p.m. 6:30, you get out of work, you take your dog in there, it's very dark. And so when you walk in, you can't see if
someone is in the back and if that person is alone with a dog, you know. So, and I was actually approached by a resident that lives in the in the area that she takes her dog there and she's scared. So, my idea is actually Hi,
John. My idea was to actually wrap the the the trees with some lighting in there. a couple different of the smaller U trees instead of installing LED mounted black decorative poles with Acorn Luminere at the cost of 137,000.
So, and I don't really care. Whatever is more fiscally responsible really. I don't know if wrapping the trees would be less expensive, but I think that might be a little bit more ambient and appropriate for that space. So, I just wanted to bring that up and see if we could discuss this real quick. that that
way you appease the turtle bro too. Yeah. You don't have these big lights. >> Absolutely. >> It's pretty. >> Um what you're suggesting, we didn't contemplate that when you when we heard lighting. We looked at what would be the appropriate park lighting for that and what an LED option. Certainly take a
look at a more ambient less expensive option. Also reviewed that with our risk manager of course. But yes, what you were suggesting from a strictly cost perspective that would >> it would look even much better >> far more affordable than what we're we were presenting. Thank you. Good. Okay. Cuz you know we're cutting the budget.
>> So do you need me some time? I could take a look. >> We could show the item heard in return. Uh now that there's a different interaction. So come back the value. >> Does it need to come back to finance or do you want to send it to the commission? >> I think it would be might be prudent just to get the value because if the the committee wants to send this to the commission with a favor recommendation
to implement, I think it would be important to know the the values. >> Why don't we quick look at this? >> Why don't we just bring it back to the com to the committee because you need to give us a cost, right? >> Yes, that's what I'm saying. Return it'll return to the committee. Okay, John. And while we're on lighting at parks, just cuz I look at it, so I'm
cognizant of it, can we take a look at the hours we keep Flamingo Park um stadium lit? Uh sometimes it's, you know, 11:00 p.m. it looks like Yankee Stadium. I'm like, are people utilizing it? Then I I assume just because of how
beautiful it is, uh the lighting probably keeping it on is somewhat cost burdensome. So, let's be sure that, you know, we're doing it efficiently. >> Absolutely. We'll take a look. It's very >> I'm not saying that we're not, but let's just look. >> That park could always be used 24 hours
a day. >> If it is, if people are using it, then I I want them, right? I don't want to, you know, be pennywise pound foolish. Uh so, if they're >> if they're using it, then let's keep it. I just want to be sure that it's something that, you know, we kind of
take a cursory look. >> Absolutely. We'll make sure that we're not lighting an empty park. >> Thank you. >> So, um, we got to move it to the Do I need to move? >> No, I'm just going to show the item was heard and a return with an updated cost estimate based on the discussion. Hey, great job today, Commissioner. Good job.
>> See you guys there. >> Um, Commissioner Dominguez, let's hear NB1. >> Okay, MB1. MB1 discuss potential installation of small aeroponic gardens at a location to be determined within the convention center campus. MB1.
So about uh sometime last year, I went on a field trip with the economic development uh department and uh the chair of the convention center uh committee and we had a tour of the Orlando uh
convention center and showed uh their huge um hydroponic uh gardens and how they use it. And um the thought was that it could be something that we could have
in Miami Beach. And the fiscal impact is 35,000 to 70,000. 35,000 for one, 70,000 for two. And there and that's the onetime fee and then an annual maintenance of 55,000.
And the funds would come out of the convention center fund. uh convention center fund surplus usually goes for future maintenance and replacement. The location would be in the rum room so that the organic farmtotable I uh things
that are grown vegetables that are grown would go for use in that restaurant and Heather if you would share more details. >> Uh good morning commissioner good morning chair good morning commissioners and colleagues. Commissioner, you've done so much. You know, there's really
um very little that I can share with you other than say that, you know, our investment in the convention center is also for the community and part of having a aeroponic garden is something that we can share with the community. It's it's an educational program for for our community to see how water can be
used in a better way. And as the commissioner mentioned, um the the fruits of the labor of the gardens would be utilized in the rum room. What we did notice when we visited the Orange County Convention Center is that um it's it's a
great mix of sustainability and environmental um efforts for the community to see that. And it's also something that we can leverage and use for um uh the the culinary experiences for the convention center which we have found that a number of clients are
attracted to our convention center when they see that we have an investment in the community and into in the future of trying to find solutions on how we can be more um sustainable and efficient and also engaging with the community. >> So I'd love to move the item to the full
commission to hear about it as well. That is a super cool item. >> Yeah. >> If if I can is this this is an item because it's a budgetary one and this being the finance committee. I I believe what we do is return the commission with a favor recommendation to consider a budget enhancement as a priority for a small aeroponic garden located at the
rum room as part of the 27 budget process >> and to be used from the convention center surplus. >> Correct. I think that >> and I believe that the item uh indicated that there was one or two option like one or two. >> All right. That that good point is I guess to get clarification as a recommendation.
>> Yeah. Is the recommendation one or two? >> Do the recommendation one at 35 >> one. Okay. >> That that would be the recommendation. >> It's more efficient to do the two. But um >> Heather, do do you think uh there'd be any sponsorship given how I mean this is
a really cool concept, right? if they're farm table maybe restaurants in our city you know like the I don't the pure villa the pure vita aeroponic garden >> or something along those lines >> I think the idea was the rum room to utilize the components
>> I I wouldn't rule it out we can we can explore that we can also explore even with sedexo to see if you know because they they're very efficient at it I mean they're they're also running it in other different areas which was um beneficial to us as well >> okay >> so We can ask. We can always ask.
>> And given that two is more efficient, I'll submit two and the commission as a whole can discuss >> four. >> Thank you. >> Okay. So, we'll show return to commission favor recommendation to consider budget enhancement as a priority for two aeroponic uh gardens located at the rum room as part of the FY27 budget process from the convention
center funds. Uh who made that motion? >> Okay, we'll show uh Commissioner uh Dominguez and Commissioner Mana. I don't think she can. Oh, >> she she uh with Commissioner Suarez out. Uh Commissioner Selenus is the alternate and she becomes a voting member. Uh so
all in favor >> I All right, the item passes three nothing. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Let's hear because this uh dovetales into an item that I thought was a great discussion yesterday. Uh NB11 the put
your best foot forward for Miami Beach uh for the World Cup. Thank you. Uh MB11 discussed resolution directing the administration to put its best foot forward and use best efforts to have municipal and private projects in the pipeline permitted and completed to the extent feasible ahead of the 2026 World
Cup, including the issuance of permits for new businesses MB11. Commissioner Matteo Senus, uh while this is my item, I I've talked a lot over the years about the World Cup. Why don't you give us your thoughts because I thought that was very insightful yesterday >> about what to expect for sure what's
coming. >> So, right. Thank you, Commissioner Magazine. Um, I'm also very excited about World Cup and I've participated in um, you know, watching and the festivities. So, it's a big deal. It's a
really big deal. And I, as I expressed yesterday in the neighborhoods meeting that I was informed that there is a contingent of 10,000 Scottish residents that are coming over to Miami Beach. Um, and they've rented three, they've booked out three complete hotel rooms and they
have 70 of the nice buses that are taking them to the stadium and back. Um, but that's just one country, 10,000 people, and they'll be here for two weeks in June and I think it overlaps into July. So, we're going to have a massive amount of people in Miami Beach
enjoying, you know, the game watches and festivities, FanFests, and I'm just I hope we're ready. I hope we don't have any missed opportunities here. And that's really I'm not concerned so much about crowd control. There will be a lot of crowds. I'm not concerned about um
you know that as much, but I am concerned that we miss the boat on a lot of good opportunities to showcase Miami Beach because we're going to get a lot of eur European travelers and Latin Central American travelers that are going to be in Miami Beach for the first
time and this is our first impression and we want them to come back and tell their friends and family to come back. So, how can we capitalize as much as possible on FIFA and how can we, you know, make sure we're not missing any opportunities and how do we make sure
that our city understands the impact that World Cup and FIFA is going to have on us, our city, on everything for that month. >> Liz, let's hand it over to you >> and tell us where we stand, what we can
look forward to. Um, I'll start with I love what we did on the 17th Street Municipal Garage. That that is so cool. I hope we actually keep that up there even if we have to have different iterations of it. Let's take that concept and idea and extrapolate that
across our city, right? It it's small winds that are just very cool. When you come here during June and July, I want people to know that there's a World Cup here. Even if when it's 7 am walking down the street, right? I I want there
to be activations and uh symbology that shows this is a worldclass world stage. Uh so what else? What are we doing and what else can we uh essentially do at this point? >> Uh good morning Mr. Chair. Lante director of tourism and culture. Um as far as activations, we are working with
the host committee. So as I shared yesterday at the neighborhoods meeting, we have three potential activations. One is a concert on June 11th. It's pending sponsorship as of today. And then also streaming broadcasting one of the matches in Lumis Park Beachfront. Then
we have confirmed uh in North Beach two um broadcasts of the semifinal and final game on July 18th and July 19th behind the Miami Beach band show Sandbull in partnership with the Rhythm Foundation. So the host committee uh the city we're
all together working on that. And that let me uh just keep interject if you will. Sure. >> Um >> is that because FIFA will be having all games broadcast within our city somewhere else? Will they be broadcasting all the games in Lumis
Park? >> No sir. So contractually uh we negotiated what they're able to do through FIFA to broadcast are those three um opportunities that I just shared. So help me understand more the
thinking of why all the games can't be broadcast. >> I believe there's a cost uh to that >> and that's why we wouldn't >> from who? From FIFA. >> Yes. Correct. So the host committee has
to ask the FIFA for the opportunity to broadcast and there is a cost to that. What we are working on if I may is with Lincoln Road. We have put in a request to have the businesses uh be able to broadcast and you know have um the
screens in their restaurants and then be able to do on Lincoln Road proper the semi-final and final games have like a much bigger presence on the road. >> Yep. And I'm asking you to speculate and that's not fair, but help me understand
why FIFA uh would be opposed to us having all the games broadcast. Let's call it in Lumis Park. Sure. Well, that would be a financial impact on our public on our city services on public, >> right? But we said FIFA controls that.
So, what's FIFA's agenda for not allowing us to is it because Bayfront Park has the true rights and they don't want people >> That's correct. And I did ask that uh I spoke with our um you know the CEO of
the host committee here and they explained that you know FIFA is very strict especially with broadcasting rights and they do want Bayfront Park to be the main thing. Uh they are working with them for the concert part uh to kick off on June 11th uh to have that be
a premier event as well but they they have been very strict with with uh the allowances. Remind me how much money we gave to FIFA. >> We gave to FIFA. It's 1.5 plus uh 500,000 in city services. >> So, I'll propose a motion
>> to convey my disappointment that I want you and your team to convey that we're only having a public broadcast of three games. >> Understood. Um to be transparent. uh even though it is relatively uh a lot of money for our
city they are receiving much higher you know over 20 million from the >> I understand I don't think that having a Lumis Park activation cannibalizes Bayfront Park >> right and I guess that's where FIFA is
going with this um you're not going to see thousands of people that are staying on Ocean Drive all of a sudden ah they're they're not showing it uh here I'm gonna get in my Uber and go drive 45. We live in I mean there's going to
be a significant enough amount of people here that we can have both of those, >> right? >> I have a question for clarification, please. Um when we say the the the streaming rights to show a live broadcast, it's not like on Fox Sports,
what am I missing? Like we can't just put on the sports, >> right? So, let's say, you know, you can see the Super Bowl at a bar, but if you're going to have chairs, if you're going to have something bigger, then that would require you to to have rights to broadcast. So, it has to do with something with that. >> So, the bars on Lincoln Road, they can
show it. So, what we're negotiating now or requesting from FIFA proper through the host committee is to allow the businesses to have um to broadcast within their restaurants all the matches all summer to kind of engage, make sure people are staying in
the restaurants and walking in Lincoln Road and then having a broadcast of the semifinal and final games, you know, with screens on Lincoln Road outside of the restaurants to engage more folks. >> Okay. But but
we need to get FIFA's permission. We're negotiating with them just to get the the bars on Lincoln Road, Washington, Collins, North Beach, everywhere. >> Absolutely. Because they have a zone of exclusivity. So, you know, like similar to Super Bowl or our Basel. And so any type of activations that is connected to
their event, they need to be notified. >> Okay. So, they can't just turn on Fox Sports on their TV. >> They can inside, but I think they want to have it a little bit outside. to so people are walking and they actually see that there's that they're offering that. >> Okay. Cuz I remember watching the World
Cup in I think it was like 2014 on Lincoln Road. >> Did we was that >> if Yeah, it probably was there. Did we do the same thing back then? Do you know? >> I can't speak to that today. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Vice Mayor. >> Thank you.
>> So, help me out with that. How about for the Super Bowl? Right. If I'm a bar owner on Lincoln Road, I have to ask the Super Bowl or whoever it may be, the NFL for permission to show a game that goes on to what? Just a public right of way.
Um, what if I have a private outdoor area? I can of course view the game on my property. How does that work? >> I can't answer that question today, sir. >> Yep. >> But I can definitely look into that. >> Yeah, >> but they do also have a zone of
exclusivity. So, um I can I don't want to misspeak today. >> Yep. Um how I'm hearing it. Okay. We agreed with this contract with FIFA and does does that mean we've because of
that zone of exclusivity, we've restricted our businesses from being able to, you know, show the game? Um >> no. No, I don't think it's that extreme. Uh I think it's what I'm saying. behavior having >> like some sort of public right of way.
>> Yes. Mhm. >> Um uh okay, let's let's follow up on that. >> Absolutely. >> Um and I don't know, can we make a motion maybe urging FIFA to consider >> having more public viewing opportunities
for Miami Beach? >> Second. >> Yeah, >> second that. Oh, actually I can make the motion. >> Yeah. >> All right, I'll make the motion. >> Okay. So, >> so I'm sorry. Yes. Thank you for that, Francis. So, we just want to clarify is the intent for the city to host the
watch parties for FIFA or for FIFA to activate because the watch parties that are being considered now, the large the the concert and the the watch parties in North Beach, those are being run and produced by the FIFA host committee, not by the city.
>> Yep. So I know uh for instance for the Copa America final uh we had it was last minute came together with them last week we had Argentina versus Colombia. Um I learned my lesson. I go oh wow I'm a gringo but I have a Colombia jersey.
I'll wear it up to North Beach. I'll be widely accepted. I was 90% Argentina. And they started booing me. I'm like guys I tried here. Okay. I'm trying. Um but that was an incredible incredible event. a thousand people that just came up at the last minute and that's a
microcosm fraction of what we're going to see for the World Cup. Uh so to think that we're just going to have the band shelf sit there empty x three games uh >> is upsetting you know and not at you just how this all kind of came to
fruition. >> If I may let me speak to them because I and I think it has to do with cost with getting broadcasting right so I can find out let me do some due diligence and get back to you. >> Okay. I appreciate that. >> Of course. Yeah. >> So, is there is there a motion being made or is this just discussion? There's
some discussion for Lette to look into and get back to you. How how do you how does the committee want to proceed? >> And if I if I may, I believe this identical item was heard at neighborhoods yesterday. >> Yes. But this was not a topic that was discussed. >> Right. So, just this might be like the other one is if we have an identical item of two different committees with
two different directions, uh you probably wouldn't come back with a resolution. You would end up with a discussion. So, the commission can make it gets a little messy. So, I I didn't know if you want how did you want to proceed. >> Um, >> I have some more questions. >> Yeah, may maybe we don't need a motion,
but I think you hear us loud and clear. Maybe absolutely >> we could have our our mayor fill him in on the situation. Um, >> and have him reach out in official capacity. >> Okay. >> Uh, let's get some more updates though, right? So, for instance,
>> today we we all talked collectively and said, "Wow, this World Cup's coming. Let's pave 17th Street. What else? Not just within tourism and culture, but through permitting and through what are we essentially sitting here doing and
saying we have this worldass opportunity, generational opportunity coming up. So, we are doing this for it. Fill in this. >> Yep. Please. >> So, I see in the item it says that um public works will implement a
construction moratorum. So, John, I'd like to hear from you. Um, and additionally, economic development, um, it says, "Hi, Stephen. Um, the economic development department has begun to meet with all business improvement districts and the and the chamber of commerce as well as the GMCVB. And so, I'd like to
get an update on that too, what those meetings have have uh entailed." And so, and then John, let's start with you. Also, have you worked with utility companies to cuz we really do need any type of constru. We need to open up Meridian back up. Like, we need to open up everything. Let's open up West
Avenue. Let's p pave it. And tell me what what's going on, >> John. Anything orange I see, I'm throwing in the ocean. Uh, sorry. Sorry, Sophia. Uh, clean Miami Beach. But any orange cone, any digital billboard that is sitting there stuck in the middle, it's in the ocean. and I'll deal with
the cleanup uh Miami Beach afterwards, but um I I I do not want that. >> Fair enough. Public works director John Norris. So these the moratorium would be very similar to what we would have during Art Basil or spring break. There would be no closures allowed except for
emergencies which do happen and city projects. But I will tell you on city projects, we really try to minimize closures as you noticed during what was the last big weekend? I'm I'm got a blank, but uh
>> Boat show. >> Boat show. Yes. We we opened up everything that we could. There was one project on Pine Tree that we absolutely couldn't and and we just notified the public to let them know. The utility companies typically work with us. FOT will work with us. However, they have
projects they need to do. You remember they were doing a lot of curb work along Collins where the boat show was near the Fountain Blue. They wrapped all that up beforehand, the 41st Street Bridge. They just couldn't. So, that that did remain closed. So, we really do work hard communicating with all the utilities,
all the agencies to make sure that they are prepared because the last thing they want to do is try and complete work when you have so much traffic and crowds. It's just not a safe environment. So, it's in their best interest as well. >> And John, I know there's a cost associated with it, but I really want to
emphasize on elevating things to Miami Beach standards and and let's start with the World Cup, but let's continue this. So, for instance, >> for the boat show and for our Basil, I guess it's part of traffic and not all of this falls on you. I'm talking comprehensively, whether it be Jose or
or our police as well, right? We're going to put our best foot forward, pave this area, but then down 17th Street, not to harp on this, but we're controlling traffic by blocks long of the big orange traffic cones. >> And if we need to have that as traffic
mitigation, we have to do things in a more aesthetic manner. Right? We are Miami Beach. We're Miami Beach. And this is our the artery of our town, the oxygen of our town, front and center. what's going to be shown to the world.
We can't be welcoming tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the world and and they come down here and it looks like a construction site, right? Even when there's not one, just because we're doing these traffic mitigation efforts, I I don't know if
they're palm tree cones. Something has to be done in a way that achieves the practicality but elevates our standards. Not Bob's barricades. I even know where we get the barricades because I looked up if any city employees have relatives of Bob's barricades because I go that
that's the only way that we're using so many of the somebody's uncle must be Bob and you're all cleared. I I didn't see any ties, but that I bet somebody that at least $50 said one of our directors their uncle is Bob. >> It's every city. They're in Jacksonville. They're they're everywhere
throughout the state. But uh unfortunately MUTC manual for uniform traffic control devices dictates exactly what we have to do down to the taper, the spacing of the cones or the barrels and the barricades. We really are very
very limited on how we can make it more aesthetically pleasing because they want them to be seen. I mean they have that's the whole point of them. The reflective tape on them all of that. So, >> so tell me for the boat show on 17th Street why we need those orange cones.
>> I'm trying to think of the location exactly >> right out in front of city hall right from let's call it >> oh that was limiting convention center >> that was to close off the turn to the convention center >> that was the the the left turn lane was closed by police. they were manually
inter um operating that intersection and then for safety uh reasons it requires a closure and cones to restrict certain movements >> and if we close that lane there then we're mandated to have the cones as is
not we choose but we're mandated to have that. >> Yes. Then listen, I I I think we we really keep in mind any traffic patterns that we're going to implement that it comes with the cost, and I don't
mean financial cost. I mean the aesthetic cost to our city of what that entails, right? If we Oh, yes. Let's close Convention Center Drive to lefthand turns. Oh, okay. Maybe that makes sense. But does it make sense if that means in the heart of our downtown
area that we're welcoming thousands and thousands of people that it's orange cone city right uh I always use the example of of Singapore it was the third world nation and uh their prime minister famously said we are
going to make our airports the most beautiful thing in the world right we'll clean it with a toothbrush why because that's the first thing and the last thing people see, right? And that is the the impact that stays with them long after they leave
here. So when people enter our city in the Venetian and they come down 17th Street, the first thing you see is those orange cones, I don't get the sense that, wow, I am in paradise. I'm in Miami Beach. Right? So to the extent that we're choosing some of these uh
traffic um dislocations, we need to be even more certain that that is truly required when we know it's coming with the cost of ugling our public rights of way.
>> Understood, Commissioner. It's a very valid point. will coordinate with police in terms of those interventions and closures and restrictions of uh traffic. >> How many buses are we going to see wrapped for FIFA, Jose? >> For FIFA, >> all of them. I mean, some should have three wraps.
>> My goal, but yeah. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Thank you both. Stephen Anthony, if you could give us an update on economic development and reaching out to the bids. >> Sure. And and and Lette and thank you. Thank you uh commissioner U and let's
mention a piece of it. The bids um particularly Lincoln Road had already started uh started working directly with us and looking to see how do you activate those spaces for that so that the businesses can be able to offer the games on on the outside um and so forth
and that conversation has also um also come up with uh Ocean Drive Association as well. Um, but we've had conversations with each of the each of the respective bits. So, 41st Street, Washington Avenue, um, as well as Lincoln Road, of course, and then also with the Ocean Drive Association, also had conversation
directly with Miami Beach Chamber. Um, and just figuring out different ways in which we can help them figure out how do you support the businesses during during this particular time? how do we help them attract more customers, which is why they're having a conversation around how do you um be able to watch the games
um in a way that's conducive to the contract um that we have with with FIFA and so forth. Um so our biggest thing is making sure that we're just in a position of support. >> Do you think they're prepared for what's coming? Do you think they understand? I think that the from the conversations
with the biz, they're absolutely looking forward to what's coming and they just want to make sure that they they can attract um as many potential customers to their business. >> So, that's not going to be an issue really cuz they'll be there. Um, I'm
more concerned about are they ready staffingwise because summer people usually think, "Oh, summer's dead. You know, we don't need as many people and they're they're going to really have problems if they cut back on staffing or they don't keep their staff or they I know a lot of restaurants drop down.
They'll have folks that work 5 hours a week and then they'll drop them down to four during the summer. That's going to be a huge mistake." So, it just to get that message across to them that they they're going to need to be fully staffed. Um, you know, and obviously we can't control that, but I think that they really need to be prepared.
>> No, well taken for sure. >> Thank you. And I actually have one more question for Lette. >> Yes. >> Will Ocean Drive be closed for that month? Do you know >> that is not anticipated at this time? >> I make a motion to close it.
>> Permanently, I'd say no. Uh let's make that uh if we get favorable votes here, let's refer to the full commission for Tuesday. Kim, >> if I may do the chair, just I want to correct I said 1.5 that that was the
original asked and then when we went through budget it went down to 1.25. So I just want to clarify that. >> Yeah. >> Uh for the >> we have the FIFA >> and then for the Scots uh we are in communications with them. uh vice mayor.
They my understanding from DEM is that the majority of them are staying in Hollywood hotels, but we are talking to them that they want to do some type of activation here with the the Tartan Army. And so we have scheduled a meeting with PD and and you know fire and our
department with a local resident who's you know taking the charge literally with uh the Scottish uh fans that are coming. we we are aware of the of these um attendees >> and I do think that we should all collectively prepare and I I don't know
the way to go about this but expecting anticipate like anticipating unpermitted unforeseen organic uh gatherings, right? Like 10,000 Scots.
They're going to all gather and they're they're going to stand in the middle of Washington Avenue or or wherever it may be. Um, and we want to promote a fun, festive atmosphere, but we also want to be sure that we're doing it in the right way. So, uh, I'm sure those are conversations going with your department
and >> Sure. And we we started that on January 20th through, uh, my colleagues, uh, from DEM, fire, police. Uh, we have a tabletop exercise. We're working, you know, we also join, I think there's bi-weekly or monthly meetings that the county does at that level. And these
have been going on I want to say since last June that it's a multi-municipality multi- agency. There's different ones. There's one that's just communications and marketing. There's one that's just transportation. So just and there's one that's police, you know. Uh so just be mindful of that that these conversations
have been going through many months uh in preparation for that for the whole of South Florida. Great. Are you aware of any other country that's bringing a contingent of 10,000 people or somewhere roughly similar to that? No one else has reached out. >> Uh I don't but you know uh there's a big
Latin American contingency. You know we have Brazil Col apparently it's Colombian. So we understand that. And so we're not only preparing for the three events that we're talking about here. We're talking about all the matches all the matches that can have organic uh you know gatherings just like we've
experienced with Copa Cup in the past. So we are aware and we are preparing for that. uh again and you know we can give you more information from our dem >> colleagues. >> Excellent. I appreciate it. >> Oh, I think >> in response to your earlier question, uh
Mr. CFO, um the administration would need to prepare an addendum item if you wanted to get it onto this next week's commission. >> We wouldn't want you to have to do that. >> We are happy to review it. >> You would have to do anything. >> We would review it. >> Let's do that. Yes. So, uh there there
so there is actually just there is a motion to return to commission with a favor recommendation direct administration to close ocean drive during the month of FIFA games in Miami. >> Yeah, there is a motion for that. >> I'll second it. >> Okay, that's being made uh by >> I just want to make one more comment.
I'm sorry, Jason, are you >> making You're making the motion. Okay. And seconded by the chair. Okay. You want to vote or you want to ask question first? It's unrelated to all in favor. >> I >> All right. Pass three nothing. >> I just want to make the comment that
Thank you, Lette. Um and thank you team. So, you know, we're talking about this Scottish contingent that's coming with their 10,000 people and they're staying. I know they've booked out one hotel here and others in Hollywood. Um there's 48 countries playing.
>> Yes, absolutely. Uh also, >> so that's a lot of people. And the bandell just sent me an update that they are looking at other dates that they're trying to >> show screen matches inside the band shell. So they're they're working on that, you know, through the breeze line and you know the post committee. So I
just wanted to give you that update. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Of course. >> Commissioners public comment. >> Yes, please. >> Mitch Novik, please unmute yourself. >> Mitch, are you offering up the rooftop of the Sherbrook for a public viewing area? Cuz count me in.
You're on mute, my friend. >> There it is. I just received the unmute prompt. Uh yes, I'm opening up the rooftop. But more more importantly, I'm against these Ocean Drive closers closures. They're very disruptive to uh
my business, especially Ocean Court. it becomes a traffic sewer and uh I don't think it's at all necessary to close the street uh ever. Uh quite frankly, thank you. >> And this will go to full commission,
Mitch, if you want to pick my ear and give me more comments there. Um I I do feel somewhat strongly about the closing, but uh um that's your area, so I'm always open to uh receive feedback and have a back and forth there.
Okay, also next item. >> Yeah, next item. Uh perhaps I I think we have Commissioner Bot on the phone for NB12 and I apologize for uh for keeping you delayed, Commissioner. Um but if you're still with us, let's uh let's
turn the floor over to you. Uh M MB12 discuss the allocation of funds to implement a comprehensive, regularly scheduled crate management plan, MB12. Commissioner Bob, please unmute yourself. >> Hi, thank you for uh letting me chime
in. Um I'll let John Norris talk about this, but basically the idea is to do a hopefully one time only major um pruning of the sea grapes from tip to tail from 1st all the way to 87th. Um it hasn't
been done. It is um a recurring conversation among neighbors who who live adjacent, but more importantly among our police officers who um recognize that that is a very common hiding place for people who are doing
things they're not supposed to be doing for homeless encampments. It's unsafe. It's overgrown. Um and it's probably not in the best interest of the plants themselves to go untended like this. So, this item would be to um prioritize
allocating the funds to do a one-time major haircut and then our staff could just um maintain it going forward. Um but with that, I'll turn it over to John who can talk about it in more detail. >> Thank you. And John and Amy, are we
talking is this primarily or mostly or all along the beachwalk? >> Yep. Yes, sir. All along the beachwalk. There are some areas that are already cut up or brought down, but this is the majority of the beachwalk the entire length. We would utilize this one-time
contract of 180,000 to have a contractor coming through and bring everything up and down and and back a little bit. And our regular maintenance contracts that we already have maintain them to a normal degree, but this is more of a hard cut back. So once it's a hard cut
back, the maintenance contracts would take care of the ongoing maintenance. >> Do we have any visualizations? Because I think how I'm envisioning it, I love this, right? In fact, I often I walk the beachwalk quite often and I find myself
asking areas, let's call it by the sitai, >> have this beautiful view, this beautiful view into the ocean, right? And onto the beaches. And then other areas it's very encumbered and I wanted to bring it up
but then I'm like there must be an environmental reason I'm gonna ask I'm gonna get myself in trouble. I'm gonna sound stupid like Amy bless you. Um why do some areas look very well trimmed and maintained uh that we have this
beautiful view from the beachwalk onto the beach into the ocean and other areas are just very it just looks unckempt. Is that for environmental reasons? Is that for almost like a dune protection? Or is this essentially what we're looking to
achieve here? >> Amy. >> Sure, Commissioner. Um Amy Nolles, chief resilience officer, and you're correct. It's not so simple. It's a combination of our beach reourishment, our dune program, um storm safety, storm surge, and and uh sea level rise over time. So
essentially we have a dune management plan which was approved in 2016 and that really um governs how we trim and handle all of the landscaping within the dunes. Um we didn't have dunes back in the 70s. They were built um in 75 through 80.
They washed away because they weren't vegetated and then FD came in and rebuilt them and vegetated them. So we are responsible for maintaining that. Um the way things are need to be trimmed are done very carefully. Um they have a great result when they are trimmed. Um I
know John mentioned um the way the sea grapes are trimmed so that there is no homeless issues. We've had great success through SEPTA. That's crime prevention through environmental design where we lift the sea grapes that are near the rope and post so you can see through them. But the >> Tell me that acronym again because I
think we need that all over the city. >> Yes. Yeah. No, it's something that we >> No. What's the acronym? >> Um it's SEPTAD. Crime prevention through environmental design. >> Go ahead. I I'll try and get that. But yep. >> So, we've um done that very successfully here in the hotspot areas. Um my team
worked with Alba and PD to really walk the whole beachwalk a couple of years ago and had several targeted um interventions. Um, but to your point, the sea grapes more in the middle of the dunes, there's a certain way that if they're bushes, they need to be trimmed
because what we really do want is to maintain the height of the dunes and they grow over time. They're supposed to trap sand and get taller to protect us. So, it's it is a balance. Um, to to your point, >> do they protect us gradually over time? Do they protect us in the event of a
storm? >> Yeah, there's a huge amount of protection and it is well documented through the Army Corps of Engineers. There's a lot of studies um for example one showed that about $20 million a year of production is provided from the dune system. Um and then that's also equated
to economic development and economic recovery and protection. So there's a lot of good stats from the Army Corps on that. >> Okay. So it's not just in the event of a storm they provide a additional layer of barrier of protection. It's uh it protects through the constant erosion that would occur without them. It's it's
widely seen as the most successful beach renourishment and dune system in the country. >> Do we have visuals of what we're looking to achieve here? >> We actually have examples from other restorations and trimmings that have been done where you can see the before
and after um of the trimmings that we could provide. Uh we did a bunch of uh sections in 2023. >> Yeah, I I love the item. Is this something that again we can achieve by World Cup? Well, if I if I may add, there's no
funding identified for this. So, it's typical for as a an unbudgeted item. You know, the administration would recommend it be considered as part of the 27 budget process. >> Tell me why this has to be outsourced. >> So, we only have about uh 14 field personnel in green space and they're
spread out throughout the city taking care of smaller projects. I I call them punch list projects that need to be completed uh very quickly. This is a huge undertaking. If we were to maintain our workload and try and do this inhouse, it could take years. And plus,
they're probably not as well trained at the pruning as Amy alluded to. There are specific uh procedures they need to take to properly prune these. So, we'd want it done. Absolutely. Right. I'm not saying we couldn't be trained, but along with all the other duties that they
have, it'd be very difficult. question. >> Is there a way? Yes. Uh I'll ask this. Is there a way where we could kind of identify um where we're expecting the most crowds?
And I guess that would typically be from what uh 15th Street maybe up through like the Fina area. Uh if I think about like the hot button tourist areas where where people are really using that. Um, could we use that as a proxy to achieve
internally? Um, so instead of 87 blocks, let's call it a 15 block hotspot that we could use our green management team in place to get done within the next four months. I mean, we're talking about what 15 blocks. That's uh it's one block per
week. >> It'd be very challenging. And these >> challenge accepted. These people already have, you know, tons of work that keep them busy all week long. I I I would be very concerned that uh we'd be dropping the ball on
other uh duties. >> Be with you a couple minutes. >> What would we be dropping the ball on? >> Just general, >> right? What are they? >> When bushes get hit by vehicles, trees get hit by vehicles, trees need to be,
you know, transplanted. We get a lot of requests for just little odd things. I mean, as you can imagine, we have a lot of landscaping throughout the city. We do have landscape maintenance contracts, but they're on a regular cycle. So, we get a lot of requests just to take care
of different items here and there, and they are spread very thin. I I I'm I'm willing to stretch our capabilities as much as we can, but that's a very very small group out there. Let's see what we can do. >> True. The chair, if I might just
interrupt. I'm so sorry. Julia's doctor is about to walk in and I just want to share a couple thoughts. I I applaud your effort to try to do this internally as much as possible. I had the same conversation with John. I think this is a you know, I don't want to pick winners
or losers in our city of what gets um treated first. Um I think it is a public safety issue. I think increasingly um especially as our city is going to be over you know um uh a big part of the the FIFA World Cup activities. I think
we want to make sure and we know that bad actors prey on tourists. I think we want to make sure that the beachwalk is incredibly safe. People look at it and they come into town and they don't think that maybe they should leave the beachwalk at 11 o'clock at night. um if we're sending police out to do rescue
calls out there or or deal with criminal activity out there, we do want to put our police force um at risk. I think this is a wise use of money for public safety purposes as well as all the other ancillary things um in terms of long-term dune protection, um shore
protection, etc. Um I think that it will be critical that John's team is trained in order to um maintain this on an ongoing basis, but we've never really done this as a holistic exercise. And I think this is the time to do it before
we start welcoming tens of thousands of visitors. We want to make sure they they stay safe and we know that more visitors equal more criminals praying on them and we would like to avoid that. I also want to just mention, Joe, if you um want a crash course in SEPTED, reach out to
Officer Julio Blanco, who's the NRO for North Beach. He is he's he knows this stuff inside and out and he's a very good tutor. >> Yeah, appreciate Commissioner Bot and and I'm fully aligned with you. I'm just thinking actually from a timing
perspective, Mr. CFO, tell me how this would work. Given there's no funding in place, we would have to put forward a budget amendment that would go forward to the entire commission and we wouldn't be able to execute a contract until that's in place and we're kind of getting up to the World Cup. So while
for the comprehensive project I I agree that we can't handle it internally, right? I just don't know if we go through the proper channels and protocol to do this outside if we'll be able to achieve it by the World Cup. So, I
guess, excuse the pun, just looking to see if there's some lowhanging fruit that we can get done internally uh by the World Cup. But correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm off on that timeline about having to put forward a budget amendment and then go out, get the contract.
Rodney, welcome you. >> Sure. And if you're volunteering to do, awesome. Yes. Um, motion granted. Hi. Rodney Nolles, the assistant director for the public works department and former green space management uh division director. Um came down when I
heard the conversation of course and I wanted to just backtrack just to fill um the body in on the things that green spaces typically uh responsible for. Um we have the emergency response items that they're always um deployed to take
care of. uh there small projects, infill things to um enhance uh what we're seeing around as people drive through the city. Um it's related to what you said with uh the airport for uh Singapore. We're taking care of a lot of the um the small projects we don't want
to contract out. We have highly trained staff inhouse that are just going in and they're beautifying because they understand that this is the impression that a lot of our visitors and guests are going to have. So we have all those things going on. I think to divert staff to trimming the dunes. It's a colossal
effort. It will be basically a full-time thing that they're engaged in. So, um I don't think we have the bandwidth internally to take care of that. The good thing is that um the quote that we got is from a contractor that's currently um involved with the city. Uh so the agreement is in place. It's just
a matter of engaging them for that ancillary service. So I think the turnaround time provided that we can identify the funding they're ready to go um within a week or two weeks of being notified. Um part of my concern with um just identifying
certain areas to perform the trimming so we reduce the scope is that we have some um property owners in the city uh that well I can't attribute it to them. There are instances in the city where people have taken the liberty of performing the
trimming themselves which is very concerning. We don't want that. >> I was going to ask if that was a good or bad thing. >> It's a bad thing. >> Okay. >> Because the trimming needs to be done properly. It needs to be done in accordance with the dual management plan and we don't want anyone going out and they're cutting the vegetation down to
12 in or 18 in which is a gross um butchering of of the landscaping. So, we need it done um to the specifications and um I think that the contractor who has them, it's part of the contract uh that they're signed to. So, they have
all the parameters in there so they know how to do this and do it properly. >> Mr. CFO, how does the timing work on this? >> Yeah, if this return to the commission with a favorable recommendation to appropriate dollars through a budget amendment to proceed with this project, uh then we would proceed to the next
commission meeting with a budget amendment which, you know, could could hold this out to April. But if the air if the interest is and this is a question I'm going to pose for you to Rodney is if those dollars appropriated in April and you're able to get that mobilized would you be able to between April and June over that two-month
period be able to at least target the hotspot area I think that the chair may be um asking about >> absolutely if we we can get we can prioritize the effort so that we're getting the maximum effect as soon as possible and we can just it's just a scheduling thing after that. So, so what
it sounds like is that timeline will work. We could return this to the commission public works would bring this back uh for March commission meeting, come back April, do the budget amendment. They would rock and roll the day the day after. They'd have that work order ready to to go uh for the day after. They'd have two months to before FIFA even starts. Uh and they would
target those hotspot areas, but they would have the full funding to do the entire city and then target the areas during the FIFA area and then just keep on uh moving down the line. Yep. So, it would work for >> the chair if I may. Go ahead, Commissioner. >> Thanks. Um, could we not I mean, it's a
pretty simple item. It's not a huge amount of money. Rick, could we not um add this on to the the agenda for next week and hopefully it'll get heard and we can just expedite by >> doubted tell Rick doing another >> I think the administration would need to prepare an item.
>> I think Rick was >> we would be happy to help. >> If if the direction through public works would would um could prepare this item immediately. I guess it would have to be today um this afternoon. >> Couldn't we just take take the memo that's that was prepared for this and
slap a new title on it and enter it? >> Yeah. So, if that's the direction to return to commission with a favorable recommendation to consider a budget amendment uh for the uh cate uh management plan as presented public works uh for and to be on the February
25th commission meeting. uh public works can I'm speaking for public works I guess public works would love to prepare that immediately and have that as an addendum uh for that and then we could return uh an OM in March which would then give you over three months to get that work done. Is that the is that the
motion? >> Yes sir. >> Okay. Uh who'll be making that motion? >> I'll make it. >> I'll second. Okay. So uh all in favor? >> Thank you colleagues. >> I >> I >> Okay. All uh item passes three nothing. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you.
>> And I think uh I think we can wrap up from here unless any of my colleagues have any uh mandatory items. >> Yeah. So, we'll show the uh a motion to Rick Rick's going to be here burning the midnight oil with those two addendum. So, let's let him get back to that. >> I I I I would love to entertain a motion
that the city attorney will take those two attendees. I think we'll take a a motion to to adjourn the meeting. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Meeting adjourned. Thank you very much.