[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Mhm. >> for April 9th, 2026. I am joined by my colleagues, Commissioner Rolando Escalona, Commissioner Damien Pardo, and myself. The City Attorney needs to read a notice for the record. This is the City Attorney. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chairwoman and members of the Commission, pursuant to the provisions of section 286.011 {parentheses} 8, Florida Statutes, I am requesting that at the City Commission meeting of April 23rd, 2026, an attorney-client session closed to the public be held for purposes of discussing the pending litigation in the matter of Joe Carollo versus the City of Miami, case number 2006-014464-CA01, pending in the Circuit Court of the 11th Judicial Circuit in and for Miami-Dade County, Florida, to which the city is presently a party. The subject of the meeting will be confined to settlement negotiations or strategy sessions related to litigation expenditures. This private meeting will begin at approximately 10:00 a.m. or soon thereafter as the Commissioner's schedules permit, and conclude approximately 1 hour later. The session will be attended by the members of the City Commission, which include Chairwoman Christine King, Commissioners Miguel Angel Gabela, Damien Pardo, Rolando Escalona, and Ralph Rafael Rosado, City Manager James Reyes, and outside counsel Fabian A. Ruiz. This certified court reporter will be present to ensure that the session is fully transcribed, and the transcript will be made public upon the conclusion of the litigation. At the conclusion of the attorney-client session, the regular Commission meeting will be reopened, and the person sharing the Commission meeting will announce the termination of the attorney-client session. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. City Attorney. We are going to begin with our discussion items. The first discussion item, DI 1. Commissioner Gabela, I believe this is your item. Yes, it is. So, uh Do we need the City Manager? I'll give him a call. Mr. City Clerk, can you contact the City Manager to see the Fire Chief is standing in for the City Manager? No, he's tracking down Oh. He's [laughter] like, what? What? He's very talented. >> see the confusion on my face? You You want to take another one up, or we waiting? I think we need him for all of them, though. What's uh Mr. City Clerk, would you read your um sponsorships? Thank you, Chairwoman King. I might have a few sponsor and co-sponsor announcements to make on the record. Um Mayor Higgins will be sponsoring RE1, FL1, and FL2. Chairwoman King will be sponsoring FL1 and FL3. Commissioner Pardo will be co-sponsoring PH13, RE7, RE12, and FR7. Commissioner Escalona will be co-sponsoring RE7. Commissioner Rosado will be co-sponsoring PH13 and RE7. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Our City Manager is on the way, so we'll give him a few minutes. Good afternoon. We are on the discussion item 1, GSA site unsolicited proposals. Yes, Madam Chair. As you know, um our office forwarded a brief summary of the three unsolicited proposals for the GSA site uh with some brief details. None of the three address the specific needs that the city identified of the footprint that's currently there. Subsequent to that, we also got instruction by Commissioner Gabela to move forward with an RFB. Uh we're glad to announce that we have the drafted RFB for the GSA site that will be hand-delivered to the Commissioner's office for a review. So, at this time, we won't We recommend not to move forward with any of the unsolicited, but rather move forward with Commissioner Gabela's request for an RFB for this site. Right. And what I wanted to say was that we were looking here This is a legacy project, so we are looking here to make the best man win. You know, so let everybody come to the table and present, and and then we will all get a chance to to you know, to talk to them, to ask them questions, and uh and and again, you know, I think this is going to be a big deal for all of us because that This is where our you know, the mo- Yeah, the the the motor pool, public works, uh uh parks and recreation, uh uh solid waste, they all have their headquarters, right? And my argument has always been throughout the the uh you know, when I came with this and I saw this that, you know, best site was okay for a different era in Miami a long time ago when dirt uh you know, was very cheap, and you can you can afford to run very inefficient in the sense that every everything's spread out. Okay? And I think the time has come, like I've said before, that we have to be efficient uh with our resources, right? And uh everybody that comes to my office to present this plan, I have told them that they the city needs have to be taken care of. What does that mean? That the GSA, the motor pool, uh the the the solid waste operation, uh parks and recreation, they all have to be located and taken care of, you know, and in the in the plan. Right? And and and so So, that's what we are attempting to do with this, that we are going to create uh a revenue stream, for example, um on the uh there are quite a number of proposals that there's going to be 1,500 Excuse me, 1,000 to 2,500 units, depending on the project that uh we all like. Uh we're going to collect property taxes on that, but you know, right now, we're not collecting any anything on that site, right? Uh we're going to have a you know, a newer and a and better uh working conditions for the the the people that work at GSA that I know you, Commissioner Escalona, have have visited, and I visited that site about a year and a half ago prior to you, and I know you have an interest in it, right? So, so we're going to get a new facilities for them and new equipment. Uh and also, we're going to do affordable housing, right? So, we're going to give uh from 1,000 to 2,500 from all the way from affordable to workforce, uh and a little bit of market rate. So, at the end, it's it's a win-win situation for that uh for that site and for all of us. Anyone else would like to weigh in on this item? Okay. DI 2, the 2025 Annual Finance Committee Board Report. Is anyone here for that? Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Munira Daniel, Finance Director. Um on behalf of the Finance Committee, which is an advisory board that provides um recommendations to the City Commission on long-term indebtedness, uh the city's investment practices for the purpose of enhancing financial policies, minimizing risk and exposure, maintaining principal funding, and improving returns on investments to ensure compliance with the city's um financial integrity principles audit, the deficient anti-deficiency act, investment and debt policies, the Finance Committee met last year in 2025 to review and approve the financing proposal for a board of roller um lease purchase uh agreement. That was the main business that they did in addition to reviewing um compliance with the investment policy. And that was pretty much what the committee did last year. Are there any questions? Thank you. You're welcome. DI 3, proposal from Fast Cleaning Solutions to the Miami River Commission. Yeah, th- that's me. Uh so uh uh Brett is going to be uh doing a presentation and and what I do for I give it to you. The uh chairman of Uh excuse me, the river commission. Mayor Higgins, uh Chairwoman King, commissioners Oracio Stuart Aguirre, thanking Mr. uh Commissioner Gabler for his excellent pronunciation of my name. You're getting better at it. You're good. My classes are helping. While Brett Bebo, the executive director, is setting up his uh computer for a PowerPoint presentation, I'll give you an overview. About 15 years ago, the state of Florida declared that one of the five tributaries of the Miami River, namely the Wagner Seaboard Canal, which is uh immediately uh on the south side of Spring Garden, was the most contaminated body of water in the entire state of Florida. As I said earlier this morning, that contamination does not originate on the Miami River. It originates somewhere northwest of 20th Street. And um it is uh human uh fecal contamination. Unfortunately, because the Wagner Seaboard Canal is very shallow, very narrow, and quite crowded, the extraordinary cleanup vessel that we call the Scavenger, the red boat that's up and down the coast of uh Biscayne Bay and then all the other tributary all the other waterways of Miami River, Little River, can't navigate the Wagner Seaboard. So, Commissioner Gabler and uh the Miami River Commission came up with an idea to find a service provider that creates little gadgets and I sort of refer to them as the little vacuum cleaners, those little round things that all of us have in our homes, that go underneath chairs and underneath tables and underneath counters. And if we could find remote operated vessels like that, little call them vessels, but they're really little drones, then we could clean up some of the contamination, make it manageable, um and that way we could help the situation before it spreads into the Miami River. And that's what we're proposing today. And while Brett is figuring out how to keep how to set that up, I'll keep talking for another minute. >> Uh are you ready? Yes, sir. Thank god. I was running out of text. Yes sir. Good afternoon, Honorable Mayor Higgins, Honorable Chairwoman King, and Honorable City Commission. Brett Bebo, managing director of the Miami River Commission, with offices located at 1407 Northwest 7th Street. I'm joined today by Liber Lopez, Liber Lopez Jr., and Jesus Concepcion from Fast Cleaning Solutions LLC. Wagner Creek is a canal owned by the City of Miami. On the projected map, you see Wagner Creek in Commissioner Gabler's district on Northwest 20th Street in Allapattah, and then it proceeds southeast through the health district into Chairwoman King's district in the historic Spring Garden neighborhood. Unfortunately, Wagner Creek is amongst the most polluted waterways in the state of Florida. For decades, Miami-Dade County's DERM has taken monthly water quality samples from three locations in Wagner Creek, which the overwhelming majority of the time showed massive unhealthy exceedances of bacteria. This slide Okay. This slide is a verbatim excerpt of DERM's quarterly report to the Miami River Commission, featuring DERM's monthly water quality sample results. The maximum highest possible bacteria reading on the testing scale is 24,196. And on this slide, you'll see that in July, August, and September of 2025, there were six separate test results with the scale's maximum 24,196 count of bacteria. While the state of Florida's safe bacteria standard is not to exceed 130. On this DERM slide, in April, May, and June of 2025, there were four separate test results of the maximum 24,196 bacteria count, when only 130 is the safe standard. And on this final DERM slide, in October, November, and December of 2024, again, there were four separate tests of the maximum 24,196 bacteria count, when again only 130 is the safe state standard. For decades, DERM, the City of Miami, Miami-Dade County Department of my of Water and Sewer Department, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, etc., have searched for the sources of this excessive bacteria contamination in Wagner Creek via smoke testing, dye testing, two multi-agency physical searches, and more, while we continue receiving DERM's monthly water quality sample massive failure results months after the samples are actually taken. While the City of Miami's contracted Scavenger water decontamination vessel provides excellent services along the Miami River in Biscayne Bay, it is unable to navigate beneath Wagner Creek's low fixed bridges at Northwest 11th Street, etc., therefore is unable to provide services in the subject area. Fast Cleaning Solutions LLC owns and operates the Bacterial Managed Water Cleaning Machine, BMW. The BMW oxygenates the water with ionized air and uses various filters, killing bacteria, which makes the water quality safer for both the public and marine life. In addition, separate water quality testing devices sample for six parameters with results available real time online. Thankfully, Fast Cleaning Solutions LLC operated one device free of charge for an entire year from April 2024 to March 2025 in the general area of DERM's water quality testing location, Wagner Creek. Two. This table There's Let's see. Here's the bubbles in the water. Here's the machine that shoots the bubbles into the water. Here we go. This table shows DERM's water quality testing results from the testing location every month from April 2023 to March 2024, which was before the device was operating. Next to DERM's water quality testing results from the same location every month from April 2024 to March 2025, while the device was operating. And as you can see, the E. coli bacteria reduced by 82% while the enterococci bacteria reduced by 76%. The proposal is to deploy seven devices in Wagner Creek, plus two additional devices, and three water quality testing devices, which would cost $360,000 for 1 year. We appreciate the City of Miami taking direct action to provide desperately needed reduction of unhealthy bacteria violations in Wagner Creek. Thank you. Are there any questions? I I just [clears throat] have one. I'm wondering, you know, we've been looking at different kinds of systems to be able to do just that. And are you Do you familiar at all with Seabin? Seabin? Seabin? Are you guys familiar with Seabin? S E A B I N. Okay, never mind. It It's not seen commonly here, but I was curious. Thank you. Yeah, so so uh Commissioner, what we went out there and I would urge you to >> fully supportive. Have you seen their their results in Yeah, I know. I'm fully supportive. Yeah, when when you get there when you guys if you go, you'll see the difference from 50 ft, you know, from the middle. You can see night and day It goes to the mouth of the river, too. So, the Scavenger and they they operate in the district. I'm fully big fan. Okay. Big fan. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. So so city manager, we were wondering uh if you can we can find funds to to fund their their project with the six I believe it's six, right, Brett? Is it six uh uh Uh the current proposal is a total of nine machine nine uh water quality improvement machines and three devices that test the water quality. Okay, and what's what's the total cost? $360,000 for 1 year. For 1 year? Yes, sir. Commissioner, I'd like to sit down with them and discuss where they're at in terms of even perhaps where they're doing business other places. Do we have an opportunity to piggyback off a contract or something like that. So, I think it warrants us meeting. So, maybe next week or the week after? Absolutely. Yes. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Our next discussion item is Downtown Development Authority. Commissioner Scola. Commissioner Rosado. You are the chairman of the DDA, right? Awesome. I won my election in December. I I think it was last month that I requested a meeting with the executive director of the DDA. The day before the meeting, I look at the calendar and I see that a district 14 is added to the meeting. The meeting didn't occur. Then we had a sunshine meeting because I have questions that I just want to have the proper information because DDA overlaps over my district. For that meeting, you were I know you you had you had a compromise, you couldn't come. I was informed by the clerk. The executive director didn't come, either. My only question is, who is going to answer the questions that I have about the DDA. Hello Commissioners, Christina Crespi, Executive Director of the Miami DDA. I'm joining on Zoom. Thank you for allowing me to do that. I believe Chris Molina's passing out the responses to Commissioner Escalona's questions. Awesome. Um Christina Crespi, the Executive Director Oh, right. I I I got that. You go what? Chris While you were getting these papers, the Executive Director of the DDA is on Zoom. Okay. But I don't know what the questions were that I didn't get the questions that you were asking. >> either. So, I'm not sure. Commissioner Escalona, I I don't know the >> Yeah, no, no, no, well, now that I have Oh. These today was about exactly these. So, now I need time to go over all of these, and I would like to have a meeting with somebody from the DDA. Do we have to do this again for me to have a meeting either with you or with the DDA Executive Director? No. So, Commissioner Escalona, I think this is one of those situations where like two wrongs don't make a right. The You had a request with the to meet with the Executive Director. Made me a little bit uncomfortable to not have somebody present. It wasn't noticed, so I had my staff was going to participate. Uh I should not have had that canceled on you. That being said, then a Sunshine Meeting was set up, and I I had said we should have a Sunshine Meeting cuz there is overlap between the DDA and our individual district responsibilities and independent public work responsibilities, right? We all have people running around doing different things. There's essentially three sets of bodies doing stuff that overlaps, and we should be more efficient. Um unfortunately, the meeting was set up even though I would had said I wasn't available at approximately 2 weeks in advance. I was actually like very clear about that, and yet the meeting to I I understand, but the folks setting up the meeting reached out. I wasn't available. Somehow it went forward. I tried to contact you the day before and say, "Hey, as a reminder, I'm still not available, but it's not been rescheduled." I didn't I didn't hear back. That being said, let's move on. Happy to work with you. I know you care a lot about your district. Uh I certainly care about downtown as well. We all care about the city. I'm sure we can work together. Awesome. >> You have my commitment. Thank you. You got So, I'm going to go over these, and then I'm going to send an email requesting a meeting with the DDA. Yes. Either it could be you, it could be Christina. It doesn't matter to me who the person is, but it has to be one of you that can we can go over some of these. >> Okay. I'm happy to to meet whenever um available. Thank you. Um DI5? Oh, I'm sorry. >> You know, it's okay. I was also going to say we're extending an invitation to each of you to the next board meeting because three commission seats overlap with it as well. We're also doing, which we've been announcing uh more via social media, every other week we're walking a different neighborhood in the DDA sort of an alternating basis. We're noting things that need to be fixed. We're discussing discussing policy changes. We'd love everybody to have the same vision ultimately. Okay. The next discussion item is DI5, permitting. Yeah, actually that's mine as well. And I had a brief conversation with uh the manager about this. Uh this is a result I know a number of us have been working on permitting issues, including the mayor and and Commissioner Escalona and myself and each of you, really. You care about this issue tremendously because it's something that we all get complaints about. So, I'd like to formally make a couple of requests. Uh one is something that I know or two things, actually, that I've heard the Miami-Dade County does very well, and it it irks me to hear that the county is ever better than us uh at anything cuz we're smaller, we should be more efficient, more nimble, etc. Um they have these periodic teams meetings where uh Jimmy Morales and a series of department heads are on there, and they have the meetings for approximately 2 hours, and the format is typically the same each time. The first half hour is, "Here's what's going on new in county permitting. Here's how to pull this particular type of permit, etc." and then they open it up for Q&A in general. And so, I'd like to see us do that, but with a few conditions. Number one, that at least for the foreseeable future it be done on a monthly basis. I don't think we're at the point where people feel comfortable and are okay with it being quarterly. So, I'd like it to be monthly. I'd like the manager to be on there and for him to decide who else to include. Obviously, the appropriate department heads make a lot of sense, but I think the manager should be there to hear the kinds of things that we hear on a pretty continuous basis. So, there's been a number of improvements again, thanks to to the mayor, Commissioner Escalona, and others, where a number of improvements have been made in the recent past, in the last few months. I don't think the general public, I don't think the development community, I don't think the everyday citizen is necessarily aware of some of these things. So, that'll provide a 30-minute, you know, format approximately at the beginning to say, "Here are recent improvements and how they benefit the public." And then again, open it up to to Q&A, and I think you'll get a sense of what are the complaints that folks have that maybe should be prioritized. Um the second thing is creation or assignation, and I've I've heard internally that there's already somebody that could take on this role uh of a sort of ombudsman, which I know is is not a word that folks will recognize, but it's basically an advocate for the public. So, having somebody with a phone number who's uh well publicized and an email address along the lines of, you know permithelp@miami.gov I think will go far. So, if somebody feels like, "Oh, I'm being mistreated," maybe they are, maybe they're not, but if they have like a clear point person, I think that's helpful. Right now, and I can't speak for my colleagues, but I suspect it's the same thing. If if somebody contacts us with a permit issue, we go directly to the Assistant City Manager. That is not an optimal use of his time. He has many responsibilities. So, if we have like one clear point of contact, where if somebody feels like this is taking too long or I'm not being treated well, etc., we have a person that can help them uh go through the break through the gridlock. And then finally, having a dedicated person for affordable housing projects. I've been I I think sometimes that may have been done, but I I've heard it enough from the affordable housing community that they would like one person that helps them with their permits. I've heard it enough to know that it's it's either not publicized well or it's not being implemented that fully. I think these are three things that will get at some of the the pain points that we have. But I want to make sure that you all know I really appreciate uh Assistant uh Manager Marrero and the fact that he has always been willing to listen to our complaints, certainly my complaints, and assist with anything that we have thrown his way. So, thank you all for the efforts you've done. I think I think there's certainly a willingness. These are some things that I've heard work well in other places that could help us as well. Madam Mayor. Yeah, if I may comment, um thank you. Commissioner Escalona, I like all of us have been very concerned about permitting. But I I want to make sure we're giving the administration the time to implement the changes, many of which have already been implemented, and others that they are literally working night and day all week long to implement including acceleration of affordable housing permitting. And I can tell you the way I did it at the county was not by having one person in charge of it. It was by fixing the entire system. So, I think you'll be very pleased to know that um the team is already working uh almost on a daily basis on the new Oracle system. Right now, we have eight points of entry. We're going to have one. Thanks to the manager. He aggressively accelerated that contract so that it would be implemented sooner rather than later. I am extremely nervous about taking our staff away for monthly meetings because every time they're away for monthly meeting, they are not in the office working. And you know, I know when the manager and I got here, even just getting ready for these meetings, we had Commissioner briefings over 4 days and then commission over five. That meant I had the entire administration, the managers, the the highest level people sitting here in City Hall, away from their teams, away from operations, away from the garbage trucks, away from the police stations, away from the fire stations, away from permitting. And thanks to your efforts, we've consolidated the Commissioner briefings to 2 days and then commission to one, which has freed up 4 days a month for actual work. So, when our residents say it's hard to get things done at the city, in part it is because we, the elected officials, have asked too many times for senior-level people to be interrupted for a meeting this month, that month. And so, I'm very, very nervous about that. I have no issues um and obviously, the manager will make the decision and and with your input, I have no issues if we want to have some kind of permitting input. I think it's much better to do that in a focused in a in a in a formal focus group setting, which I have done. Um matter of fact, we have a task force, thank you, Ace, um working on the affordable housing covenants. The permits are not the hardest part to get. But once you got your permits, it can take up to 18 months to get an affordable housing covenant out of us here. By the way, that's just typing, people. There's nothing hard about typing. In the county, that process takes 2 weeks. And here, it can take 6 months at a minimum, 18 months. You can't break ground cuz you can't go to financial close. But what I can tell you is every day we have teams of people working on this. Let them work on it. And 6 months from now, let's then see how the people feel about doing this. But don't take people away from the work. Let them work and help you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I think that concludes our discussion items. We have a pocket item, pocket item two, Mr. City Clerk, would you please read the title for the record? Yes, ma'am. A resolution of the Miami City Commission issuing a fireworks display waiver pursuant to chapter 19, section 7 of the code of the City of Miami, Florida, as amended, titled fire protection, manufacture, sale, time of display, and discharge of fireworks to allow for a fireworks display in connection with the implosion demolition of the Mandarin Hotel to be held on April 12, 2026 on Brickell Key, Miami, Florida. I hope I didn't let you down, Mr. City Attorney. At this time, I would like to open the floor for public comments for anyone that would like to speak on behalf of this pocket item. Seeing none, public comment period is closed. May I have a motion? So moved. Second. I have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. And this shall conclude the City of Miami Commission meeting for April 9th, 2026. Thank you all for your advocacy. See you in a couple of weeks.