Climate Resilience Committee Meeting

Climate Resilience Committee Meeting — November 2, 2026 - 5:23 PM

[Music] Climate resilience committee. All right. We will start with our our first item which is roll call from our right please. Good evening. Grant mustard. Allison weinstock. Aaron demayo. Averaging nick atkinson office of the city attorney. And because we have sorry. Sonya brubaker chief resilience officer for the city of miami. Miriam flores special projects coordinator. Thank you. We have five members so we need six for quorum. So this will be a workshop this evening. All right great. So we'll move to item two which is public comment. If anyone from the public would like to make a comment now's the time. You have two minutes or are there any online. No at this time. All right great. So we can't do approval of the minutes so we'll skip that for the next meeting and we'll move right into item four which is presentations. So our first presentation of the evening is the miami loop concept overview and summit recap. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you very much for having me. Hello. Good afternoon. Uh, christian molina with the office of commissioner rosado. Um I'm also here joined by giovanni romero who's also with our office and has been very helpful on the miami loop and our initiative. Um so I'm here on behalf of commissioner rosado. He is unfortunately not able to join us. Uh, he is on a trip though he is, uh, you know, very, very supportive of the work you all do and really wants to make sure that you guys are up to speed on the miami loop. So I had prepared a presentation I believe, uh, if we can get that rolling. I can do either. Yes. I can plug it in here. Sure. Yeah. Let's do it. Oops. And just as we set up this presentation, you know as far as relevance for why why this is in front of us today we've seen the commodore trail at multiple meetings in the past the rickenbacker causeway um and land use. We also had the conversations about the greenway and the connectivity report at you know, in the last couple of months. So this kind of ties everything together and it's very important to have non-automated non-automotive means of getting around which allows us to mitigate our impacts. Absolutely. >> so I do want to say I also believe that this is a really good opportunity to to show this to you all because I do think it is a a really good intersection cross intersection between public transportation and climate resiliency, right? Like I think the miami loop is where all of those things meet. Um, and you know, happy to get into it right now before I do so I do also want to say, you know, thank you to to sonia here who has been a part of the miami loop as well and she's part of our our working group and is always there. So thank you to her. Um, so getting right into it um you know what is the loop right there? There's a lot of talk about what it is how it looks there. I think it's very important to distinguish what we're talking about when we talk about it. So there are two separate ideas of the loop. I mean they all work together and they all connect but um there's the outer loop and so the outer loop is what you see on the map in front of you, which is this giant trail that goes from basically um you know, from county line to county line, you know, it goes from our northern county border to our southern county border and connects every trail. You know, it is achievable and some of the trails are done, you know, um but but that is something I think for what our office for what we do is a lot more difficult than what we have at uh, in front of our the palm of our hands, which is much more achievable in our, you know, I guess perception of it, which is what we call the inner loop. So the inner loop is um, the it's the circle within the circle. Um and is what we really refer to in our office when we talk about the miami loop and as you see here on the map, the inner loop crosses all five commission districts, um, which is a really, really unique project because not many projects do that right? Like not many project projects have uh, I guess an ownership stake by every individual commissioner but this one does and it connects um, not only every commission district, but it also connects multiple municipalities. So the bulk of it as you can see is in the city of miami. But as you can see on the southern and western portions you get connections in coral gables, you get connections in south miami and you don't get a direct connection but you just almost touch west miami. So there is kind of a dog in the fight there for them too, so to speak. So so we've had a lot of of collaboration with mayor largo, with mayor fernandez and everyone kind of you know, involved in that to to to kind of get the loop going because it does touch them and trail segments like the ludlam trail trail segments like um, the underline and uh, so that's kind of what we talked about when we say the inner loop. So moving ahead, I think I wanted to really just show you guys a timeline because this has been a really long project kind of coming along. Right? Um, so I think the best way to look at this is starting really we can go probably further than 2014. But I think for our conversation here we'll start at 2014, which is kind of this concept of the underlying gets created. Um so from 2014 we moved to 2016 where the loop becomes an idea. Uh, shout out to victor dover and his wife mary who are the ones who conceived of this idea, saw the images and said, hey, you know what? Like this can actually connect and turn into our version of the atlanta beltline. Um, so from there you go to 2018 where the county bought the land for the ludlam trail 2021. You know, phase one of the underlying um is completed 2024 you have phase two completed. Um, and then in 2024 as well the graham heritage trail which is part of the uh miami loop is awarded its grant to be able to construct the the the graham heritage trail um, 2025. I would consider a pretty big milestone. I think our office would to uh that's where commissioner rosado gets elected. Um, you know, and from there commissioner rosado hit the ground running to to kind of turn this into I guess from what it was prior an amorphous concept where you had many different individual projects, um, and combined them into one idea and move everyone along outside of their silos. So that's when in 2025 he came in and created the miami loop task force that is from the city. Um ,for we have our directors and we also bring in the trail leaders, uh, every other month. It was actually supposed to be quarterly, but once we had our first meeting, they specifically requested every other month because they found it so helpful. Um, so that so we have one coming up in DECEMBER as well. Please feel free to join us. But that task force gets created. We've been working on it ever since. Um and through that task force we put I mean ample amounts of pressure bringing in the county inviting them to every meeting and I would say, uh, friendly banter back and forth and and trying to get them to move along with the trail. Uh, they finally advanced it, you know, starting this year. Um, and got the designs going with kimley-horn who had been previously selected and kind of was I guess in limbo for many years. Um, so we like to think that because of our advocacy that kind of moved the project along. Um, and then you know, later earlier this year, later on in 2026, earlier this year we had the first miami loop summit. Um, so I think that brings us to what we have been able to accomplish in the about one year that we've been here working on this project has been like I said, the task force we came in with that. Um, next we we worked on a item to receive $3 million, $3 million from our public benefits trust fund which exists right now. And previously district four had never received any money out of the public benefits trust fund, but commissioner rosado was able to secure $3 million out of it for the entire portion of ludlam trail in the city of miami, which is in district four. So that's $3 million that's going straight to ludlam trail for um for construction and a joint project on the trail that's owned by miami dade county public schools. It's a triple p right public public private, uh, where miami dade county public schools will also be building adjacent to the ludlam trail teacher housing so about 400 plus units I think it's the largest teacher housing, uh, project in the county. Uh, from there we went to the greenway trust fund which we worked with planning to develop a new trust fund that developers could pay into to um, if you are within a mile and a half or excuse me, a one mile radius of a trail, then you can pay in to get uh, not more density but more floor area for your for your units. Um, and so all of that money then gets diverted to each individual specific trail for their design for their construction, for their maintenance. Um, so that really was able to create a vehicle for us to construct these trails which prior had no plan for funding. Um, and then lastly, just recently in one of our prior commission meetings, we were approved another $5 million for the northern parts of ludlam trail in our district, um which are adjacent to robert king high park. So it's actually going to increase the acreage of the park entirely. Um, and be all one uh ,adjoined segment which is going to be really, really I think great for our residents and great for for everyone. Uh, moving on to the summit itself, right? We just hosted on the 10th of OCTOBER the miami loop summit. We were joined by, you know, over 100 residents like real residents of the city of miami of the county that came to downtown miami wolfson campus, um, to talk about the miami loop where we I suppose officially launched the idea of the loop. Um, and we had so many people from, you know, the county join us elected officials, directors. Um, I just put a couple of them here as you can see, you know, mayor cava, mayor higgins, mayor lago, uh, commissioner orvis the list goes on. It was a slam dunk hit I would say. Um and through this we also oh here are some photos so you can see it was a great time. So through this we did a smartphone poll, um at the event where we asked everybody you know what what they felt about the loop it's a little hard to read so I'll kind of walk you through this. Um 91% of respondents said that they would take public transit if it was more safe. Not not because they're not taking it because it's something they don't like, but they're taking it because it's something that they feel at this current moment the infrastructure isn't built for them. Um so we found that to be a very interesting thing, right? Like it's not that they don't want to take it, it's that the means aren't there for them to take it. Um and you know, more more than that we saw actually residents saying that they would uh, you know, want to see the infrastructure connected, they would want to build it out and that we actually had residents showing up to the events from with public transportation. Like we actually saw residents saying that they came from a freebie from the metro, um from a bus all those things, which was really interesting. Um, and then lastly I think there was a comment on the bottom right there that I found very interesting, which was someone specifically said just connect it and worry about beautifying it later something along those lines which I thought was amazing, right? You know, typically perfect is the enemy of good is what we like to believe. So there is a real want from our residents to connect to this whole thing and just get it done right? Because once it's you know, build it and they will come as they say. So just so you guys, you know, just have it in your mind. These are some of the more of the projects that are in the pipeline on the miami loop, um, that we are working on like I mentioned ludlam at robert king high park, um is in district four. We're very excited by that one. Um, it's it's about I would say a little less than a mile of of the segment we have what we call casa ludlam, which is a teacher housing project I was mentioning which goes between um flagler to eighth street. Uh, we have the underlying play street which is a segment of park that we are building adjacent to the underlying in district four that is going to be seamless. No no barriers so you can walk from underlying to the park and vice versa. Um we have the I-90 the I-395 pedestrian bridge which is a connection that we are going to be constructing. Well first we're going into design right now because we were just awarded a find grant from the florida inland navigation district to connect um you know the northern and southern parts of the 395 bridge which has no walking connection at this current moment. Um and then from there we have, you know, the final phase of the underlying which should be finishing up here in DECEMBER and the graham heritage trail which um you know, I think is a little bit further away now that we have lost the grant funding and we're kind of figuring out what we have to do there to to get it to get it going. Um, and so in closing, you know, I think I just want to say that this everything is there for us to be able to build something that that can be historic and like leave a legacy for for our time here. The residents want it. People are asking for it. We already have the plans for everything individually. It's just about connecting those those little connectors, right ?And if you're able to connect this we we have the data from other places like the atlanta beltline, right where as soon as you get people off the streets you're lowering emissions. Um, so this connects with not only climate resilience, you're connecting with public transit and then you're connecting with public safety as well because you also get this component of vision zero where you get people a safer path on these trails and so you see less accidents, right? And this is all data that we've seen from the atlanta beltline which is a very, very similar um infrastructure project. So that's kind of the whole gist of it, uh open to questions but but very happy to have been here and thank you for for having me. So I was just. With um, one of the um, I guess it's the right hand to beg on the underlying under presentation and so everybody knows the underline is actually ten years ahead of schedule. Yeah it's pretty phenomenal. One thing that I didn't know and fully appreciate and I think they should talk more about that the committee has heard about the whole thing is a sponge park. The entire underline is a sponge park. So we saw that sponge park presentation. So they've looked at all the the planting the you know the the collection of water obviously the programing along the way. So I what a great example. Um so sponge parks for us are really important because it's water retention, it's water storage and then all the plantings add to the green infrastructure and um are you guys looking at the best practices? Is everybody saying hey underlying kind of did it right or yeah. So I think that's a great question by the way. I think that's a really good point. So one of the reasons that we put together the task force initially a year ago was because there's a lot of brain power in you know, each one of these groups individually that doesn't get tapped into by the others. Right? So and specifically in the miami loop, uh, summit we had panels and we talk about this individually in the meetings but also at the panel. What we did was we had a specific panel called lessons learned from the underlying right where we wanted to pick the brain of um, everyone involved, right? Whether that was you, liz, meg, meg daly, christina white everyone, um, dpw so what were you know, like you mentioned from from conception to to finish I mean underline finish in what is essentially lightning record speed, right? Like as far as infrastructure projects, there's nothing that finishes that fast. So there's a lot that we could learn for segments like ludlam which are now going into design right now by kimley-horn and specifically one of the things that was mentioned was the sponge park aspect of it, right? Which we are advocating heavily for. Um and I and I'm certain is going to be part of the final design is that that that take on the same idea of being a sponge park to um kind of help with our flooding issues, especially in flagami right. Which I think is our the like the western the northern part of ludlam the western part of the city has a huge flooding problem. So if you are to be able to turn that into a sponge park, it could go a long way. Right? And then I'll take it even a step further. I know I'm filibustering here so I apologize but I'll take it a step further. We are currently looking into redesigning all of robert king high. Um and so we are considering I think it would it would behoove everyone if we could have uh kimley-horn design robert king high at the same time that they're designing ludlam trail. Um, right. Like have the same designer do it and do the same thing with a sponge park and robert king high adjacent to uh ludlam so I hope that answers the question. Well regardless of whoever designs it. Um, along those lines for me it's I love the sponge park concept and the, the flood mitigation aspect of it, but also water quality, right? Because everything that happens on land ends up in the bay and we've all done a lot to get to get less nutrient pollution into biscayne bay and the county is currently and they we we've we've we've been hearing about this reasonable assurance plan and the need to reduce nutrient pollution loads from everyone like all cities the county included. And as we're looking at these stormwater improvement projects we should be getting we should be, you know, taking account on whether we can get credit for some of these initiatives if we're if we're in incorporating nutrient pollution reduction methods. Right. Um, but [Laughter] Sponges want another example, especially if it's right on the river. Yeah. >> right. >> I absolutely agree with you. And so I think that's why for us the greenway trust fund was such an important um, milestone when we passed it because what it what it does is creates a vehicle for us to have that the money that would otherwise not exist for those projects, right? So like let's say there's well, let's not say that there is a ton of development in downtown, right where we have almost all our seawalls right along the bay in the river. Um, to fix those aging seawalls tends to be very difficult, especially on portions that are owned by the city. Right? So now we've created a vehicle for that money to come in and it gets specifically used on those portions of the trail, right? So if we wanted to we could identify that funding for the seawalls renovate them, bring them up to speed even if we if I mean we have still no idea how successful this is going to be. Um, it's a long term project to see but if it's very successful, hopefully turning some of those seawalls into living seawalls, right? So that's kind of the idea and that's why we were so I guess moved when it finally passed unanimously. The chair just I just want to make sure that whatever we're doing, we're going the city gets credit for it, right? You know, if we're reducing. That every day. Yeah. >> no, but if we're reducing nutrient pollution that we're getting credit for it because it's a regulatory [Laughter] Process that we're we're we're going under yeah and. Not right right. So so as we're as we're moving forward with these these great concepts and ideas, I love the living seawalls. All of that is under dep right now and hopefully the coastal resilience bill will make things easier. Yeah from a permitting perspective. But having said that we do we should have some sort of accounting and maybe this is where our committee can continue to work on this. On what projects can we get credit for from the state as we move forward and are these projects part of that list? We have to provide a list to say we're going to meet these targets by x date and as we can get more into it later but I just wanted to put that on the record. Agreed. >> isn't that our is the resiliency whose job is that to keep track the resiliency office who's supposed to keep. Track it's term. Durham's keeping track for. What durham durham is right now in development with with the state developing a reasonable assurance plan. Right. >> which is a better way to plan to meet those targets rather than the state putting a concept over us. Right, right. >> but who's reporting to durham what we're doing like how do how do we get credit. >> for this? So durham. Or sonja. >> or. No yeah. >> isn't it. Host meetings with municipalities okay. Right. >> and you're are. >> we bring in our public works. Okay. >> um because they're the stormwater utility. Yeah yeah for sure. Yeah yeah. So I know the public works has been attending those meetings, but are they also like are they also incorporating some of these things that we're doing now too? And I don't know if that falls under public works or not or maybe it falls under your office. That's that's that's kind of what what I want to do holistically, you know, there's stormwater projects, you know, which is infrastructure and then there's these other green initiatives that I think will get credit as well. Yeah. >> and that is what that is. What my office does is work with all the departments and make sure that everybody knows what everybody else is doing. Um yeah because public works you know they have transportation, they have stormwater near the parks. They have the parks with the sponge parks and the living shorelines. And so um, you know, we hold monthly meetings where we bring everybody together to talk about everything resilience in the whole city every month. To the mic. Yeah, yeah, we're. >> a part and they're reporting and you guys then turn around and make and let them know so that we get the credits that we need to get. Yes. Yes for sure. Christian that was an awesome presentation. Really appreciate. Of course of course. Thank you guys so much. Again story and sharing with us and I the just connected part I think is brilliant. You know especially on the ludlam trail I think those connections are probably a lot easier to do than some of those crossings on the underline. So I'm really excited to to use it and thank you for everything d4 is doing and commissioner rosado it's really impressive and we're happy to continue to support these great efforts. So thank you for being here. Of course. >> thank you guys for having me. Thank you. All right. [Laughter] Just connect it. Then perfect it right. Was that the second part? Okay cool. So let's move to our second presentation of the evening which is designing with water flood adaptive buildings and resilient urbanism. Uh we have vincent lee here which I'm very excited to to have this conversation. I think it's very timely given recent events, uh, which we'll talk about later in the agenda and as I've mentioned in previous meetings during future agenda topic, this is part of, uh, you know, our expert panelists on the subject of of ground floors, ground floor design, freeboard height adaptive buildings because this is something that I've been looking at for a while at the city and I think it's something that we need to look into improving it. So um very excited to have vincent here. Thank you so much for for joining us this evening. Okay. >> good evening all. Uh it's working all right. Great. Well firstly thanks aaron for inviting me to speak. We've had some exchange talking about sponginess and sponge parks. Um ,and then in that conversation we sort of talked about flood resiliency and he learned about some of the work that we had been doing, um, which I'll talk about and share with you all. Um so thanks also for taking your time this evening to sort of hear about some of the things