City Commission Meeting

City Commission Meeting — September 24, 2026 - 8:25 AM

it's an absolutely [Laughter] Beautiful [Laughter] [Applause] SEPTEMBER day. It is an absolutely beautiful SEPTEMBER day. Does anyone agree with me? All right. Well fantastic. Um this morning we have the opportunity actually to think about something extremely extremely important. SEPTEMBER is one of those months um that not only are children go back to school and we begin to accelerate all the activities that lead into the end of the year, but it is also hunger awareness and hunger action month. And so today we it is very fitting for us to think about the fact that many people in our community are food insecure. And so we are going to be honoring the great work of our dear friends at feeding south florida. Uh, for all that you do to keep our community from suffering, uh, food insecurity. Your operation is amazing. Uh, your commitment to our residents is inspiring. And more importantly, you're keeping kids fed as they go and start this first month to school. Um, commissioner rosado, let me turn this over to you because this was your idea to bring this recognition to our city. Thank you, MADAM Mayor and thank you all for for being here today. Certainly hunger is something that affects over a million people within south florida. It's something that we all know is a major, major challenge and feeding south florida has been serving our community for over 40 years. They have pantries in a wide variety of places. I would urge us today not only to acknowledge the wonderful work that they've done, but any opportunity that we can to support a pantry. I think we should we should all do it. There are folks that are within our immediate circles that are going hungry and they don't necessarily let us know. But by serving the pantries we serve our friends. I'd like to echo that in district five when I got elected there was a tremendous amount of food insecurity, particularly with our senior community and every week we would have farm shares in our district and we are continuing to do that because there is such a need and until everyone in our community can afford to live, work and play in the city of miami, we will continue to provide this vital assistance. So thank you for all that you do. Thank you. Likewise. >> thank you very much. We appreciate what you do. I'm always out there when I can doing farm shares with you guys and handing out the food so thank you. It's a good deed that you do. Thank you very much commissioner. Good. All right. And before I turn it over to you to say a few words and tell us how we can get involved because every single person in here can make a difference with feeding south florida. Um, I have spent many a saturday or sunday packing and unpacking boxes in your warehouse and it is always inspiring to see volunteer groups, children's groups, kids groups, um they're doing their part not just donating food but also donating their labor and strength to make sure it's packed up properly. So congratulations tell us how we can help. Thank you very much. Good morning everyone. My name is kozma kumani and I'm the director of strategic gifts for feeding south florida in miami-dade county. On behalf of our team I want to thank the city of miami mayor aileen higgins and the city commissioners and for recognizing SEPTEMBER is hunger action month feeding south florida is the leading hunger relief organization serving palm beach, broward, miami-dade and monroe counties. We serve over 1.7 million individuals annually locally here in miami-dade, we provide nutritious food and critical resources for over 553,000 annually through a network of direct programs and partner agencies. Our work goes beyond food distribution through community food pantries and mobile pantries. We ensure families have access to fresh, nutritious groceries, our school pantry program and summer meals for kids. Make sure children don't go hungry in or out of the classroom for older adults, we provide home delivered meals while our benefits outreach help families access programs like snap to stretch their budgets. We also invest in long term stability with workforce training programs that prepare individuals for careers in culinary arts, warehousing and logistics. Together, these programs reflect our commitment not just to feeding families today but also to building a stronger hunger for south florida tomorrow. Thank you very much [Applause] For everything. Thank you for all you do. Okay. Big round of applause. Oh yeah we need yeah we need. >> to. You get. >> in the middle under the seal. Perfect. Everybody happy? No. [Applause] Well thank you. Thank you for all you do for everyone. Appreciate it. Thank you mayor. Thank you commissioner. Thank you commissioner. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you. Here we go. I'll make sure that one was yours. Thank you. Gracias. Thank. Well good morning everyone. Um, welcome as I said before to SEPTEMBER to our commission meeting and then later today to our budget hearing. Um, before we get started, it's always fitting to say a little prayer to start the day. And this morning we have pastor caldwell from new providence missionary baptist church. So if you would stand as you are able for a moment of reflection welcome pastor caldwell. Good morning, commissioner king commissioner higgins, please bow your heads with me as we seek the face of our creator. GOD of our weary years, GOD of our silent tears. Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way. Thou who has by thy might led us into the light. Keep us forever in thy path we pray. Eternal GOD our creator and our sustainer, we pause before the business of this city to acknowledge that wisdom is greater than knowledge. Service is greater than status and leadership is a sacred responsibility. Your word teaches us to seek the peace and welfare of the city because when the city prospers its people prosper. So today we pray for the city of miami. Bless every neighborhood, every family, every child, every senior, every business owner, every church, every first responder, every city employee, every person who calls this city home now grant these commissioners and this mayor wisdom beyond personal preference. Give them lord GOD courage beyond political pressure and compassion that never allows policy to lose sight of the people where there is division give understanding. Where there is uncertainty, give clarity where there is need, give compassion. Where there is opportunity, give vision and where difficult decisions must be made GOD give them wisdom and MAY miami not simply be known as a great city because of what was built but because of how the people are treated those who live therein. So bless this commission, bless this meeting. We honor you and we give you the glory. In the name of yeshua we pray. Amen. Commissioner pardo, would you mind leading us in the pledge? United states of america and to the [Laughter] Republic for which stands one nation under GOD indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Well thank you um as I said before, welcome to the SEPTEMBER 24th, 2026 commission meeting in our historic city hall. Uh procedures for public comment will be explained by the city attorney shortly. Um as well as swearing in for parties and planning and zoning and quasi judicial items will be explained by the city clerk, uh, show that the members of the city commission appearing at this meeting are miguel angel gabela, damian pardo, rolando escalona, ralph rafael rosado, christine king. Also appearing are city manager james reyes, city attorney george k weiss and city clerk todd hannon. MR. City attorney, would you please state the procedures to be followed during this meeting? Yes thank you, MADAM Mayor. Detailed information about the processes order of business rules of procedure and scheduling or rescheduling of city commission meetings can be found in chapter two article two of the city code, a copy of which is available online at 8@municode.Com ww.Municode.Com. Any person who is a lobbyist pursuant to chapter two, article six of the city code must register with the city clerk and comply with related city requirements for lobbyists before appearing before the city commission. A person MAY not lobby a city official, board member or staff member until so registering a copy of the code section about lobbyists is available in the city clerk's office or online at www.Municode.Com. Any person making a presentation, formal request or petition to the city commission concerning real property must make the disclosures required by the city code and writing a copy of this city code section is available at the office of the city clerk or online at www.Municode.Com. The city of miami requires that anyone requesting action by the city commission must disclose before the hearing any consideration provided or committed to anyone for agreement to support or withhold objection to the requested action pursuant to city code section 2-8 any documents offered to the city commission that have not been provided seven days before the meeting as part of the agenda, materials will be entered into the record at the city commission's discretion in accordance with section 2-33, f and g of the city code. The agenda and material for each item on the agenda is available during business hours at the city clerk's office and online 24 hours a day at www.Miami.Com .The meeting of the miami city commission is a limited public forum. Any person MAY be heard by the city commission through the chair for not more than two minutes on any proposition before the city commission unless modified by the chair. The public comment will begin at approximately 9:35 A.M. And remain open until public comment is closed by the chairperson. Any person making offensive remarks who has become unruly in the commission chambers will be barred from further attending city commission meetings and MAY be subject to arrest. No clapping, applauding, heckling or verbal outbursts in support or opposition to a speaker or his or her remarks shall be permitted. No signs or placards shall be allowed in the commission chambers. Persons exiting the commission chambers shall do so quietly. Members of the public wishing to address the body MAY do so by submitting written comments via the online public comment form. Please visit www.Miami.Com.Com/meeting instructions for detailed instructions on how to provide public comment using the online public comment form. The comments submitted through the comment form have been or will be distributed to the elected officials, their staff and city administration throughout the day so that the elected officials MAY consider the comments prior to taking any action. Additionally, the online comment form will remain open during the meeting to accept comments and distribute to elected officials, their staff and city administration up until the chairperson closes public comment. Public comment MAY also be provided here. Live city hall located at 3500 pan american drive, miami, florida subject to any and all city rules as they MAY be amended if the proposition is being continued or rescheduled, the opportunity to be heard MAY be at such later date before the city commission takes action on such proposition when addressing the city commission, the member of the public must first state their name, their address and which item will be spoken about any person with a disability requiring assistance. Auxiliary aids and services for this meeting MAY notify the city clerk. The city has provided public comment methods to indicate, among other things, a public support opposition or neutrality on the items and topics to be discussed at the city commission meeting and compliance with section 286.01144 c florida statutes the public has been given the opportunity to provide public comment during the meeting and within reasonable proximity in time before the meeting. Please note commissioners have generally been briefed by city staff and city attorney's office on items on the agenda today. Anyone wishing a verbatim record of any item considered at this meeting MAY request that the office of communications or view it online at www.Miami.Com for the planning and zoning items. Items shall proceed according to section 7.1.4 the miami 21 zoning ordinance parties for any items including any applicant, appellant, appellees, city staff and any person recognized by the decision making body as a qualified intervenor as well as the applicant's representatives and and any experts testifying on behalf of the applicant. Appellant or appellee MAY be physically present here at city hall to be sworn in by oath or affirmation by the city clerk. The members of the city commission shall disclose any ex parte communications to remove the presumption of prejudice pursuant to florida statute section 286.0115 and section 7.1.4.5 of the miami 21 zoning ordinance, the order of presentation shall be as set forth in miami 21 and in the city code staff will briefly present each item to be heard. The applicant will present its application or request to the city commission. If the applicant agrees with the staff recommendation, the city commission MAY proceed to its deliberation and decision. The applicant MAY also waive the right to an evidentiary hearing on the record for appeals. The appellant will present its appeal to the city commission followed by the appellee. Staff will be allowed to make any recommendation they MAY have. Please silence all cell phones and other noise making devices. This meeting can be viewed live on miami tv, the city's facebook page, the city's twitter page, the city's youtube channel and comcast channel 77. The broadcast will also have closed captioning. Thank you MADAM Chair. Thank you MR. Clark. Thank you chair. The procedures for individuals who will be providing testimony to be sworn in for planning and zoning items and any quasi judicial items on today's city commission agenda will be as follows the members of city staff or any other individuals required to be sworn in who are currently present at city hall will be sworn in by me, the city clerk immediately after I finished explaining these procedures. Those individuals who are appearing remotely MAY be sworn in now or at any time prior to the individual providing testimony for planning and zoning items and or quasi judicial items. Commissioners, are you comfortable with all the notice provisions set forth in these uniform rules and procedures we have established for this meeting? Yes. Chair MAY administer the oath of the planning and zoning items. Yes please. >> thank you chair. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. If we be speaking on any of today's planning and zoning items those are the items MAY please have you stand and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give at today's hearing is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? And your response is thank you chair. All right. Thank you, MR. Clerk. Um, MR. City manager, are there any items that need to be withdrawn deferred that you are aware of? Okay. >> good morning, MADAM Mayor. Commissioners MR. City attorney, MR. City clerk at this time the administration would like to defer the following items please one to be indefinitely deferred, one to be indefinitely deferred and two to be indefinitely deferred. Pge2 to be indefinitely deferred. And that concludes our list of items for today. >> okay. Well, that's a short list. Um colleagues do you have any thing to be withdrawn or deferred? Nothing. All right. Seeing none. Chair, my apologies for the interruption. I just need a couple of read a couple of statements into the record. Sure. Um there are some sponsor and co-sponsor requests. Commissioner pardo will be co-sponsoring re9 and fr two commissioner rosado will be sponsoring re1. Additionally for agenda item re6 commissioner rosado will be submitting the following documents into the record as backup documents for re6dd resolution number 59 forward slash 2026. Flagler business improvement district resolution number 2025 forward slash 26 hyphen 013. Both of those resolutions are in support of re6 in addition to a letter of support for re6 from the brickell homeowners association, the backup documents do not amend the legislation and finally, pursuant to section 62-22 of the city code indefinitely deferred action initiated by the city will cost the city mail noticing advertising and posting of properties as applicable. Thank you chair. All right. Do I have a motion to set the agenda second? Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye show the agenda set. Um colleagues before we do public comment we have our newly sworn in um miami-dade public school superintendent as well as the chair of our school board who have a personal appearance and presentation. So I think we'll take that out of order if you don't mind, so that they can get back to the important work of teaching our children. So welcome so much we're we're happy to have you. I believe your presentation is just a little bit um less a little bit more than five and a little bit less than ten. All right. Thank you. Good morning, MADAM Chair and MADAM Mayor, it is such an absolute pleasure to be here with all of the commissioners. Good morning to each and every one of you. What an honor for us to be here and especially for me as your proud chair of the school board and your district six representative. But the fact that I now have right next to me our new superintendent of schools who was just newly elected into the position homegrown from miami dade county public schools south miami high school home of the cobras if we have anybody here from there and um, truly someone that has served in every capacity in our school district, we're very happy to have him at the helm. So I wanted to start off by introducing him to all of you. His name is MR. Rafael villalobos and thank you all for welcoming both of us this morning. With that said, I want to start off by stating that to us. We know that teamwork is what makes that dream work. We cannot do it alone and all of you that are here in government as well as the members of our community that are here truly make a difference in investing in education and there is no better return on investment than than investing on the children the future of our country. And so with that said, I want to start off by letting you know that I am so proud to be part of the team that leads over 300 000 students and a rated school district for the past seven years graduation rates at over 95% never seen before in the history of our school district. More choice options for families than ever before and a plethora of other accolades that I would love to be able to talk to you about, but we simply don't have the time. I know that you have been given a document. Each one of you should have it. So I'm going to try to very briefly try to go through some of the highlights that we think are important that you all need to know. Um all of our students who are in the vpk programs, those are the programs for our little ones past what we call the florida class assessment. And this demonstrated that high quality learning in the early years is critically important and that's a fact from 0 to 5. Those are the years that children are like little sponges and by the time they get to third grade they have a foundation necessary to succeed. It's like a home a house. If you do not have the foundation that house will crumble. Well here's the same thing the early years is where they get that foundation so that they can succeed. By the time the third grade we have more than 16,700 students who are participating in our dual enrollment programs and this provides them an opportunity to earn college credits while they're still with us in high school. Very significant and we have access to 96 cambridge programs and 24 international baccalaureate programs. Not everyone wants to go to college. Some of our students have decided that they want to go into different careers. So we have the technical uh with over 60 career paths for students that would like to go in that arena instead and this would include the apprenticeship opportunities and different pathways to high demand and by the way, extremely well-paying careers for those students. Our student safety remains our number one priority and therefore we have our very own police department with 500 men and women that serve miami-dade county public schools. I don't believe that anywhere in the entire country. Does anyone else have that? We have over 18,000 surveillance cameras throughout our districts and a plethora of other initiatives so that we can do whatever we can to avoid an unfortunate situation from occurring. Um, I also have there for you in the packets that you have received information specific to the city of miami and this includes 47 public schools that are in the city of miami. Uh, and information that we have ranging from pre-k through 12th grade just letting you very quickly that approximately about 80% of the schools are rated a and b by the state. And again, this is a testament to the hard work done by our teachers, by our administrators and the entire mdcps community. But it involves all of you as well. So um as we move on I also want to state that we are looking forward to remaining very engaged in our ongoing discussions with the city regarding the master joint use agreement that would provide opportunities for community use of our school play spaces after hours and on weekends, which is so important because that's when we would avoid children from getting into trouble if they are able to use these facilities and um take advantage of those opportunities. Thank you for keeping that door open and we will continue to work very collaboratively with all of you on that. And I would like to state um commissioner rosado um thank you sir for funding the adult citizenship courses that the residents of the city are able to have very, very significant for us and as a school district we have many opportunities again for our students from early childhood all the way to adulthood. And this is something that we're very proud of. But there's a new program and it's called the sprouts program and this is for our babies our pre-k three students. And again this is where the foundation is formed and many families here in the city of miami will be taking advantage of that opportunity as we move on. So, um, as we go through, I'm just going to condense because this is a very long presentation and I know we don't have the time for that. Um, I do want you all to know that we have a lot of high demanding, uh, industry jobs that are available for students that go through our adult and technical colleges and we have seven of them available. So please if you can help us get the word out for those that don't necessarily want to go just to uh, regular universities, this is available to them and very significant. So as I get ready to close, I would like to just let you know we are going to have a referendum that is going to be coming up in front of the voters. Our superintendent is going to take a deep dive. I'm just very generally going to state for the record as a former educator but a former teacher myself for many years, I can tell you that our teachers do GOD's work on earth each and every single day. And um right now there is a crisis nationwide with reference to the teaching profession. Our teachers need need to be able to live, work and play in the city of miami and in the entire county and if we cannot compensate them accordingly, uh, we are going to have a serious issue on our hands. So the referendum is going to address the teachers getting the proper um salaries that they deserve, uh and at least making it above the national norm. And the other part which is the most important to me and I'll conclude with that because a superintendent is really going to tell you much more about the referendum