Miami Tree Ordinance Advisory Committee

Miami Tree Ordinance Advisory Committee — November 2, 2026 - 1:49 PM

so we need roll call taken. Good afternoon everyone. This is the NOVEMBER 2nd. 2026 meeting of the city of miami tree ordinance advisory committee. My name is melissa fernandez and I'm an assistant director with the building department and I would like to call the meeting to order and I'll now. >> start with roll call. >> chris parlato. Present diana bell llewellyn present lindsay . >> corrales previously advised she would be. >> absent aaron dimaio present risa fernandez. >> previously advised she would be absent averaging. Present thomas lawrence previously. >> advised he would be absent. Mariella. >> lopez de alvear present. >> andy parrish. Andy. Parrish .Present ian. Wogan present MADAM City attorney do we have quorum? Okay. >> 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 the related city requirements for lobbyists before appearing before the tree ordinance advisory committee. A person MAY not lobby a city official, board member or staff member until. Registering a copy of the city code section about lobbyists available in the city clerk's office or online on municode.Com. Any person MAY be heard by the committee for not more than two minutes on any proposition before the committee. Additionally, the city will accommodate any speaker designed to appear in person when addressing the committee, the member of the public must first state his or her name, his or her address or what an item to be spoken about. A video of the meeting MAY be requested at the office of communications are viewed online at w w miamigov.Com. Please silence your cell phones and any other noise noise making events any person with a disability requiring assist. Auxiliary aids and services for the meeting MAY notify the city liaison. Please note that the committee members MAY have been generally advised on the items before the agenda today and in order to ensure that the public has plenty of ability to view the meeting, the city's communication department will broadcast the meeting. The meeting can be viewed live on miami tv. Miamigov.Com backslash tv comcast. 2077. >> within the city of miami and the broadcast will also have closed captioning. Thank um if I can ask do we have uh I think we know the answer but is there any member of the public who would like to offer. Comment later in the meeting? Okay. Welcome everybody. Thanks for coming. Um, so just going over the. Agenda before we start the discussions, there are two big pieces to today's meeting. At your last meeting you started putting ideas on the table under the first category of issues that we've talked about. Regulations code chapter 17 miami. 21 variety of other uh city. Provisions that govern what can and can't be done with trees. We're going to continue the first part of the. Discussion continues. That we've. Taken the. Potential recommendation ideas you put on the table at the last meeting put them into worksheets. We'll look at those worksheets first, see how you feel about those ideas. Flesh them out, add. Detail add other potential. Implementation approaches. If those are ideas you want to. Continue considering. And then we'll ask you are there other ideas in that. Category that you'd like to put on the table at this meeting for. Continuation at the next categories don't go away after they're introduced they you continue to discuss them, detail them and you can add ideas to them at any time. We'll then move on and that's probably about half the meeting. We'll take a break as needed. We'll move on after that to the second category of. Issues processes. Three principal processes in there uh development review uh tree. Permitting and code. Enforcement. >> and those are all about the how the city does what it does, um implements the regulations I should say. And there are a fair amount to talk about there. We'll have the same kind of. Discussion about those that you had about the regulations last time putting ideas on the table. Hal and I will take those and turn them. Into uh worksheets for you to use at the next meeting to develop them further and then the meeting after that will take up the next category of items, those things that the city does directly and will proceed through and overarching items will proceed through those, um, through those categories and continue to add and refine. But that's the overall uh, process for this group. We're hoping that provides a structure that lets you keep track of what you've talked about, refine it as you go along and at the end of your meetings and there won't be that many of them have a set of recommendations with a clear sense of which ones you support strongly and which ones. Um. Still have some some work to be done on them and maybe which ones are nonstarters from your perspective. So that's the overall agenda. There are a couple of other things in there that we really want to talk about. The last two meetings we've really asked staff to hold off on answering your questions. We tried to record them, but we really wanted to ask you to focus on the ideas you wanted to move forward. Staff has been noting those questions and they have a little write up answering those. That process will continue to. But we've left that to the end of the meeting because we really want to get your discussion focused on, you know, the substance of your work, but you need those answers and we'll present those toward the end of the meeting. The other thing we will need to talk about, um, before the end of the meeting is scheduling. You now have a complement of ten members, ten of the 11 positions. Um scheduling continues to be a challenge and we'll ask you a couple of questions about that. There are some members now on the on the committee who are having real trouble making daytime meetings. We floated the idea of nighttime meetings or saturday meetings with you early on and got no. Enthusiasm whatsoever. >> for that. But we MAY have to revisit that just in the interest of making sure that all members have a chance to. Participate or just find some other way forward on scheduling. So we'll talk about that toward the end of the meeting. We'll now stop dropping. Materials or at least try to. Any questions about any of what I've said before we jump into the substance? Okay, great. If not then. Um I'm going to call up the worksheet packet. And um you should have received this I believe everyone did. Is there anyone who did not receive the worksheet. Packet and who has not had an opportunity to to look at it before today. All right so just for the record the. Worksheet packet. Um. My apologies here um need a better set up for this. Um the worksheet packet includes four worksheets. There were four clearly. Articulated possible. Recommendations you discussed last time. So we've taken those and put those in here along with your rating scale which we've. Discussed a number of. Times um in general terms for those who MAY be hearing about this for the first time online or in the audience, the the rating scale is from wholehearted support. This is what you would do more or less to support. It MAY not be exactly what you do but it's good you can support it to minor reservations. You MAY. Eventually support it but you need more discussion, refinement. Detail whatever it might be, it's not there yet for you and major. Reservations if you understand it. Correctly it's not something you can support as it now stands. So we asked you to take a look at those four ideas and just jot down your notes about how you would. Individually rate those each of those ideas and I'll go over the four. Ideas and before we do any before you open it up to any discussion, we want to get your initial. Ratings as you understand those ideas now that'll help us understand which ones you're really good with if any at this point and which ones you need to focus your discussion time on. I'll point out two of the idea in these. Worksheets is that um. The recommendation. As you. Articulated it at the last meeting is pretty general in most cases and it's here in the row called core conceptual recommendations. So here you see our interpretation of your. Discussion about revising the zoning code to provide incentives and. Flexibility to preserve trees in. Redevelopment of single family houses. Right. You also discussed one way to do that aaron's flora or aaron's and the. Resilient climate resilience committee's proposal called flora. Um which would do that it's one way to do that but it would do that it's fairly extensive and detailed proposal. So that's here under additional detail or implementation approaches there MAY be other ways you want to talk about to do that for today we're only going to ask you to rate the core conceptual recommendation. We'll keep talking about implementation approaches. You'll rate those at some point but because they're not as fully. Developed and you need to talk about them more if you're really ready to rate something. Flora's well developed. Some of the others aren't as fully developed. We can do that. You'll certainly do it later, but at a minimum we want you to rate the core conceptual recommendations. So that was one of them. The second one was revised chapter 17 to require mitigation that considers the height and canopy of trees removed not just the trunk size and that replicates within a specified period of time a specified. Percentage of the canopy that was lost because of the tree removal. A lot of words but we thought all of those were necessary. And then you also looked at one way to do that in less detail than you looked at the florida proposal. But um chris. Outlined one approach to doing that. It's here you received material on flora and on chris's approach since the last meeting. So you've got a lot of language there. Um the third one was revised city codes as needed that probably city codes and procedure this overlaps the process. Category but revised city codes codes as needed to increase the cost to. Violators of illegal pruning or removal of trees or of. Disregarding development order conditions requiring the protection of trees. You talked about some ways to do that, but there wasn't a clearly. Articulated or crisply. Articulated approach to doing that. But the notion was that the current. Structure of. Mitigation fees, fines. Etcetera isn't sufficient to deter these things from happening. So that was the idea. And then the fourth one was for homesteaded properties reduced the number of arborist reports and other paperwork needed to prune or remove a tree and provide exemptions or flexibility in the criteria for doing so. Um this was addressing the discussion you had on if you were just a home, a homeowner living in that. Property. >> it can be difficult to understand the process difficult to comply the process with the process even when there are very. Legitimate reasons for pruning the tree or even removing the tree. So and that was probably the one you developed least but it was there. So those are the four we heard coming out. Let me go back here and we're going to. Record because um we want to just sort of get a sense of where you are on this and who has the reservations. This is a public forum so we're just going to go through and ask you each to rate each of these as you understand it now there's no magic to that. You'll notice in caps at the bottom ratings are not votes. You MAY think you like something now based on your. Understanding and then you really understand it later and you don't like it as much that's fine. You're rating can come down or vice versa. You know you don't you're not comfortable with it now but maybe you get comfortable with it. So this is just a snapshot. It's a tool for guiding discussion. It is not a vote but it will give you a sense of where you are on these things. Chris do you have a question? It's a thoughtful look. Yes. Are we voting as. Individuals appointed to this committee or on behalf of. Constituencies we represent? You are rating first of all not voting. You are rating these for purposes of today's discussion as individuals you're being you're on this committee asked to exercise your your own judgment right. And you MAY be members of several different. Constituencies with uh. Complementary or competing. Rating which is not. How how you need to step to the mic. Sorry. You're not adopting these or anything. This is really a discussion. Guideline we need to understand of where to spend your time. If you have concerns and questions we can answer that help build your support for something. That's the point. So as. Individuals what you think and what. >> you need to talk about on this one. Okay, so let's just do that real quick and then see where you are and then see what needs more development here and then we'll move on to new ideas. So revise the zoning code to provide incentives and flexibility to preserve trees in the redevelopment of single family houses. The way you talked about doing this was flora, but we're asking you to think about the concept and just what's your reaction today. And I'm going to go down my list. You're in alphabetical order on this list on screen by last name chris. Where are you using that scale? Look at the first page of your packet. Where are you? Oh wholehearted support. Okay..Um uh dina. Okay. Um. >> who's. >> elsie? I'm drawing a blank. Oh, lindsey, she's not here. Apologies. Um. Aaron it's. I presume I know your answer but wholehearted support. Okay. Oops. There's no three in there. Um raisa who is a new member um is not was not able to attend today as well. We'll talk about scheduling. >> later um avra. Wholehearted support okay. And tom is. >> not here today as well mariella. Full hearted. >> support okay. >> andy. Wholehearted support okay and ian wholehearted great. Okay we'll come back to this in a moment. Um revising chapter 17 to require mitigation that considers the height and canopy of the trees removed and not just trunk size and that replicates. >> canopy, you know. Um chris. Wholehearted support. Dina. Wholehearted support um. Aaron wholehearted support. Uh. Wholehearted support okay. Mariella wholehearted. Support .Andy. Wholehearted. >> support and. >> ian wholehearted support. Okay great. Um revising the city codes as needed to increase the cost to. Violators of illegal pruning or removal um or of disregarding development order. Provisions. >> uh, requiring. Protection of trees. Chris. I believe I provide wholehearted support. >> but I'm not clear. I understand. How this is articulated. Okay, so I'm going to put you down for w and m I minor. Reservations to because you need more detail on how. >> it's going. >> to work. Um okay dina wholehearted support. Oops. >> um. Sorry about the caps variations here. Okay. >> um aaron. Wholehearted. >> support. But it needs more work through okay. Um. >> abra wholehearted support with a comment that. >> there. >> should be a distinction between. >> removal and pruning. Okay we got this is recorded so we'll have to comment but we want to make sure we've got it on notes as well because we'll work with. >> those later. Um. Mariella. Full hearted support with minor reservations as well okay. And andy support with minor reservations mainly because I think. >> the residential should be bifurcated from the commercial. Okay um ian wholehearted support with uh a caveat to. Include uh definition of violators whether it's property. >> owners or or the. Professionals actually performing the violation. Okay. how do we. >> have. >> those three. Reservations enough to come back to them? Okay. All right. The last one um for homesteaded properties reduce the number of arborist reports and other paperwork needed to prune or remove a tree and. >> provide exemptions or flexibility in the criteria for doing so. Chris. Same as last time. Wholehearted support with a. >> little work on the. Articulation which we can discuss. Um, dina I would say. Support because. Pruning. >> should be. Separated from. Removal of a tree. Okay. I would support if. Pruning and. Removal were separated. I don't think that um pruning a tree without a. >> permit would. >> be so. Severe as removing a. >> tree without. >> a permit. Okay. Um aaron. Standard support. With additional. Consideration needed. I think this is a broad. Category that has a lot of. >> nuance to it. Okay. >> avra uh support like dina this. Differential between pruning. >> and removal. Okay. >> um mariella support with minor. Reservations as to details. >> that need to be lined out. >> to be more specific. Okay. Andy same as mariella support with reservation minor. Reservations depending on what. >> kind of incentives. >> we can build in. >> to make people do the right thing voluntarily. Okay. >> how are we? We good. Okay. >> indian. >> uh. Support with additional clarifications. Okay. All right. So this is your first time through this and it gives you a sense of how this will work. You've got two two. Recommendations here that were wholehearted support all the way across. Um. I can go back and find them the revision to the zoning codes. And uh to chapter 17 to require mitigation that. Considers height and canopy. Those did not register any none of you registered uh, reservations about those. Um. Strong support but with a lot with a number of. Clarifications needed for revising the codes to increase the, uh, the cost of violators and we'll come back and explore what that might mean. And then um, the last one. Probably again, it was the least development developed last time. And so there's a variety of strong support or just support and minor. Reservations that that will need to be addressed. So um, kind of marching you through this and then we'll get to new ideas. I know there's at least one that needs that a member wants to put on the table. Go back up to the first of these. Um. That certainly looks like it'll make it through as a recommendation at this point if if your understanding of it doesn't change wholehearted support there from all the members present the um the approach you talked about last time flora, you've all received the slides. What additional discussion do you need on this either to understand the. Concept or to understand flora um, let me just go down the see what. >> questions you have and then we just. >> open it up to whoever wants to to talk to it. Yeah. I have a luxury of being familiar with flora through the crc. It's a. Really good. Program and you know when I would say to aaron, are there ways that we can even. Expand it to to make it really I think the trick here is to make the. Opportunity the. >> incentive. Opportunities as clear as possible. Okay, okay. Um, seeing heads nod at the other end of. >> the group. Andy any questions? I'll try to keep this short. Um again more and more I'm saying that the commercial properties and all the residential and apparently the residential is 70% of our our area of the city uh are going to need separate treatment. Um and I also more and more seen because enforcement always seems to be a problem for the city that we really need to give really. Substantial um, incentives carrots instead of sticks and how are we going to fund those? Apparently there's millions of dollars being funneled into the tree fund and more and more I'm depending on if we can pry that money loose from the city, it can be. >> the source of the. Incentives to make people. Voluntarily do the right thing. Okay, let me ask for a clarification on one of the things you said. You said. 70% of the. >> city did you say is commercial? Is that no it's residential. Residential okay. And there needs to be a bifurcation between how residential and commercial is treated. This applies. >> only to single family. Houses um as as. >> written does it need to apply to commercial as well? No no I would say let's me I would .[Laughter] Rely on the. >> expertise of the people we've got here. Okay dina has it. I just wanted to make sure I. >> understood the direction there. Dina um this flora concept like I said last time it's refreshing. It's very clear. Um I think. Flexibility because not all properties and not all districts are the same. So that's going to take. >> some ironing out within the planning and zoning department. What sort of. Differences would matter their size of lot um if let's say for. Instance you're building a brand new single family home and the tree is positioned in the buildable footprint, zoning. >> setbacks will have to be. >> relaxed. >> maybe height restrictions. So okay, it's going to take into. Account the surrounding. Neighbors their input. Are they going to be opposed to having a taller building next to. >> them. Or closer to their property. >> to. >> save the trees? Okay. So right lot right. Okay so lot size and there MAY be a couple of. Variations on the. flexibility. >> the height and the setback. They MAY be subject to different constraints. Um and then the neighbor input it's an open question if you adopt this how much that can weigh. But those are all. Considerations and there are closely tied. >> to lot size. Okay thank you mariella. Okay. I think that um in terms of the incentives and the flexibility they need to be designed specified like give an example what would be an incentive? What would be a flexibility? And also if these homes are in historic designations of not historic designations would be would they be aligned all. >> the same or would that change if they're in a historic designation? Thank you. It's another. Consideration. >> chris. >> I continue to say flora is one of the most intelligent solutions I've seen. Uh, to address this problem I share some of my. Colleague's comments. I think we need to look for other means by which we can provide incentives. I also believe we need to find some means by which to. Integrate neighborhood. Assessment of this so that we don't get pushback without making it onerous to to. >> permit and implement. [Laughter] And I don't know how we do that. That's something we might want to discuss. Okay. >> thank you ian. Yeah. I'd love to see a project built as a as a testament to the. Applicability of the. Concept. >> um, as a bit of a proof of concept to offers point on on what the roi looks like, what the cost is to to build around a specimen tree. Um, it takes takes considerable effort to protect. Trees that are in and around construction zones. Um and so one that is built within the footprint of of a proposed house. Requires extra attention and preservation efforts throughout the process. Um but I think I think one of. >> the best ways to to move it forward, but would be to have an example of it. Okay. Thanks. Aaron. >> each of the ideas that we just discussed of those nuances I think would be helpful and there's a couple others also that we would actually list them here and I think that we should each be able to rank the .Potential options for what we just discussed. I think that would add additional. Clarity on things that we MAY or MAY not agree on on those little nuances. And I think it would also because there's there's a lot of nuance to actually implementing this that I have full confidence that the planning team will be able to do. Themselves or to outsource with. Collaboration because they're going to have to test this across different lot sizes and different neighborhoods. And there's probably going to be some nuance to this for different areas. And I think if we kind of chart some of those. Ideas and vote on each of them, I think it would help the public. Process in when the public receives the report that we is generated from the end of this committee's work to see that we've considered those. >> different things and what the. >> different takes were. So okay. Thanks, oprah. Yeah. A question to aaron because he spent so much time on it. The other thing that would be helpful is if you have um vetted this at all with planning and. Zoning. >>