Transportation Surtax Oversight Board Meeting - April 24, 2026 - Apr 24, 2026

okay good morning everyone thank you thanks for coming welcome to the uh transportation surtax oversight board regular meeting for april 24th um i'd like to call the meeting to order and ask for uh mr burnett to do a roll call for us thank you good morning everybody uh debbie madden here douglas schoolman here erdal donnas here thank you phil allen here ramon mick elroy here runner frisier here tracy kaplan here we have one thank you thank you mr burnett um just as we get started welcome we we haven't met yet but i'd like to introduce tracy kaplan professional engineer she's our newly appointed uh oversight board member in the engineering and construction management category welcome tracy thank you anything to say or just get rolling into it we're excited to have you thanks for thanks for serving yeah you don't know about the song okay um do we have any public comment on the regular agenda items yes madam chair we actually do but that person has asked if they could please be um allowed to speak before the item that uh it's a presentation item so they're going to be coming a little bit later but we do have one person um mr vargas is going to be speaking before the sheridan street presentation sheridan street okay great thank you and then um we can move into the regular agenda the first item is the motion to approve the minutes from the february 6th 2026 oversight board meeting do we have a motion from the board sure second thank you all in favor aye aye comments are approved i'm moving the motion to recommend approval of surtax funding in the amount of five hundred thousand dollars within the county's second budget amendment for fiscal year 2026 for two new climate resiliency projects map id co2 and c09 250 000 each for drainage studies and pre-design to be led and delivered by the county's public works and environmental services department and i see mr hui is at the podium good morning members of the board tony hui um happy friday um so this is a request for funding for two projects um these are on third avenue intersections of third avenue and also on andrews avenue um before we get into the nitty-gritties and the details of it i want to talk about i want to explain what these projects are a little bit and place them into context in terms of our overall program this is the first time that the board has seen the c group of projects and to explain the c groups of projects let me go back a little bit to the origins of the surtax of course the surtax was in 2018 when we were assembling the projects together it was in the late 2016 2017 time frame and at that point in time i think all of us know that the rainfall and the drainage conditions are significantly different than versus now um at that point in time we identified and just wanted to explain that in it in in in in that point in time most of the county facilities really didn't have a very significant drainage problem all of our facilities were well maintained and they were generally working pretty well we had some spots that we know were lower and so forth that we knew we had to take care of and we wanted to do it as part of the surtax program so there were a couple projects that we identified with climate we call it climate resiliency related these are the c group of projects of which these are two of them and these projects we think of them or we envision them as being sort of more instead of just the drainage of the particular roads they more more regional a little bit more global in nature they may involve when we get into details of it they may involve um um pumps they may involve raising roads there's certain things that we want to take a look at in these projects so these are the c group of projects and from you know in terms of infrastructure improvements they're probably like the higher level of what we you know had identified as as needs for for our system we also have a group of drainage projects and these drainage projects at that time because we didn't have a significant amount of issues they were generally less improvement intensive and at that point we knew we had some issues of pipes and so forth that we're going to have to replace and so you know from a level of effort the c group of projects the drainage projects okay um well over the last 10 years things have changed significantly and not to the not to the better in terms of drainage um tidal sea level rises the amount of rains that we have seen so our drainage needs have increased significantly and they're probably on the same level what we would have envisioned the sea projects in the beginning and so you know i think um uh the board has seen a number of drainage related projects over the last couple years we've been doing significant investments for our residents and so forth but now coming back to the c group of projects these two uh and what we want to um uh do with these two is that these are projects that are related to broward boulevard intersections on two of these existing projects and we have a very good opportunity to work at other agencies to make to come up with a regional solution um uh to the problem to get a head start on them that's the reason for the request and to get into the degrees of it i want to ask rich tony's uh director of highway construction and engineering who's been involved some of the detailed discussions with the other agencies and so forth to go through the details of it so that's the reasons for the project that's the reason for the c group why you haven't seen it before and why they're coming up now now i have a question yeah i'm sorry um obviously it's a lot of money and this is just for the studies and pre-design so do you have any idea i assume you're going to be coming back to us for the to fix it yeah we we we will i i think it's it's um uh you know we want to we want to study them we want to take that money to you know uh to design them and i think this is a good opportunity that we have the opportunity to work with fdot and then also you know perhaps the city who you know who's also doing drainage in that area that we could perhaps do something collaboratively together but at that point in time we'll definitely come back to the board and identify what the needs are and what the costs are and so is there any chance then that not that some other funds will come from other places other than surtax to actually do the project or not mr kuhlman i can you repeat the question please when you come back to us after we know what we need to do is there any chance that we'll have other funds to help us fix it besides surtax i i think there's a good opportunity for that and this is the reason why we want to do this now rather than later is because others are also working on the same problem and i think we can we can work collaboratively together and then there's going to be um um it is not something that will be that needs to be entirely surtax but i think there's a good opportunity for that thank you thank you all right good morning uh my name is virgin tony i'm the director of highway construction engineering division welcome this morning to all the board members thank you for having me uh actually tony did a real good intro to the project uh he stole a lot of my thunder so i i may i'll go through some of the slides here but they um you know it's it's a great project we think and we hopefully you agree that it's worth the funding request and and to add on to your question there too is we do expect participation from the state um they've indicated that they're going to be a partner in this now and of course we'll come back to uh the board when we have a design that we after the study so a portion of what you see up here for the motion approval for the 500 000 uh it's the two intersections 250 000 each 50 of that of of each intersection thousand where is estimating for study and then from the study we're going to figure out basically from there what type of design that we would go forward with along with collaborating with the state and even the city so tony did mention the city the city is definitely uh studying the same area everyone's studying the same area it was a big problem so i'll go through some of the slides here but that's the ask for today uh let's see here yeah okay if you don't mind thank you well i'm worried oh that's okay all right so uh so these are new projects of course we're just uh introducing them a new actually new category at the climate resiliency uh we're excited because um we were we were looking for an opportunity to show you know that this is this is a really good basically project that we should have in the surtax program and these type of projects are definitely worthy uh seeing that a lot of flooding has been happened recently uh throughout the county so and we alluded to that and you can see there's two projects here um there of course there we're isolating areas of the project so if you look at the project which goes from like the new river uh one uh one of the third avenue goes all the way to basically sunrise boulevard the other one goes to six shrimp boulevard which is andrews avenue but we're really contrary on is the area in and around brownwood boulevard and it is actually one of the lowest areas in that in that whole uh corridor and it it's prone to flooding and i'll show you some slides as you can see this is uh a photo that was taken from the april 12 2023 storm i mean it this it was uh it was significant it was right by really all a lot of activity areas that we would consider important which is the county and facilities the city facilities is in downtown for lauderdale it is a critical infrastructure area that really needs to make sure it's at least not flooded to that extent and here's another slide definitely showing uh you know the flooding after it receded somewhat but we we see this area as probably the the easiest the one that we think we can actually uh provide some relief to so we we think that we can actually provide some decent mitigation of the flooding um if for future storm events okay so we did mention that the state is um you know is definitely looking at actually the state hired a consultant um they paid them about 224 000 uh to do a study of the whole area in and around broward boulevard really more particular and and the city has their own study they're going forward with uh we're having the same consultant um actually because they're on one of our other other teams do um a continuation of study but now more in detail to actually come up with a design so their study is really what can look what we can actually implement the study that the state was doing is more where the problem areas are so now they're going to study what the solutions are and then we can go forward and design and then of course come back to this board for approval for construction funding uh city for lord of the else of course is modeling drainage and and the approval uh these two actually will really give us a chance to provide some relief for the flooding in that area that was it so if you have any questions yes i have a few questions um kind of do you know what the design would look like so when i think of these two intersections a few things come to mind number one they're like in the heart of downtown they're probably like the hardest intersections to use as a pedestrian probably the least safe and they create a huge um north south divide in the city and then additionally i think the lrt one of the phases will eventually run along andrews or third ab if i'm not mistaken right so what what is the confliction of pedestrian safety lrt and like what this will look like okay yeah so uh what we think we probably will do a combination of raising the road because it is a low area in that area and you're right that rail is projected to go at least somewhat in across that broward and and of course andrews and third would be um you know you know an issue if it was flooded consistently uh and also pumping we have pumping stations that we probably are going to need to do and there's going to be more in the line of if you could imagine like uh sewer pumping stations right so we're a series of them so we it can more or less try to get some of that discharge out from uh and and some you know more or less bleeding down some of the flooding because we do expect there'll be some flooding we can raise the road somewhat but harmonization because it's all built out is going to be difficult but we do expect a combination of the pump series of pumps along with um you know raising of a road do you think they'll be able to do so would we we would we during the construction phase depending on how to design it would be like a complete intersection rebuild yeah yeah probably overbuild right basically the curb and gutter and everything yes the sidewalk the bike every yeah that whole and it would extend of course well beyond the intersection so then during this study phase i guess i would like to maybe this is not the right time to tack it on but as a rider it would seem like it would be appropriate to withhold the ballot language of the surtax of making safe sidewalks etc etc that um we would make sure safety was a component of this oh yeah absolutely and we'll take advantage of what that we do to almost every project but this one in particular because of high pedestrian activity in that area we would take the advantage to actually improve the you know more or less the for the bicycle and pedestrian facilities in the area and improve safety sight lines every you know what anything that we think could be done um to improve safety in that area and then of course andrews and third are very close to one another so there's probably it probably be it'll connect together as far as all the roadway improvements we think it'll go beyond just the intersection okay thank you mr trenzy you're welcome uh good morning i have one question i'm curious whatever activities being done in that area to mitigate the flooding um is there some assessment being done to surrounding areas because as you're fixing that area it could possibly impact great great question actually you probably uh took a look at the city study it's the city of the lower deal yeah they they looked at the whole area um and they're they're concentrated on you know definitely the neighborhood flooding well what's happening is all these systems are interconnected the state system the city system so and that's why you know we're all teaming together because it's just that we just can't solve the problem broward boulevard it really or andrews avenue or 30 we it has to be encompassing even the neighborhood runoffs and flooding and that comes from that has to be relieved too so yes we are definitely look we're looking at that as part of the modeling so the modeling that we're doing that we're piggybacking what the state's already done so we saved a lot of money on that end because they've already done a lot of this and the city is doing that so they emerge the city's modeling with the state modeling and they and the same consultant is incorporating all of that together to show the whole area what's happening so when we do what we're doing there it not only provides relief for basically third and andrews but hopefully some of the neighborhoods would not be would be showing some relief too but it's really primarily that we're asking for is third and and andrews because that's a county road and we only could do the county road system thank you richard you're welcome anyone else okay thank you we need a motion for yes we do i'll make the motion for approval second all in favor all right on the agenda is uh the uh motion to note for record fiscal year 2025 the financial audit we have a presenter thank you ashley it's hard to figure out technology well good morning uh scott bassett from rsm uh we're here to present the results of the surtax program audit for the year ended uh september 30th 2025 with me is ashley mcintyre she'll go through our required communications then i'll give a brief uh summary of the financial results for the program for the year into 2025 so ashley if you could do our required uh communications i'd appreciate it good morning uh the following required communications summarize our responsibilities and observe observations during the audit we described our responsibilities under our auditing standards in our engagement letter dated august 2021 2025. we previously issued a separate communication letter describing the plan scope and timing of our audit in regards to the accounting policies management has selected the preferable accounting practice the surtax program did not adopt any significant new accounting policies nor have there been any changes in existing significant accounting policies during our audit we did not identify any significant accounting policies in any controversial or emerging areas with where there's a lack of authoritative guidance we did not identify any significant unusual transactions there were no major adjustments to the trial balance presented to us to begin our audit we are not aware of any uncorrected misstatements other than those that are clearly trivial we encountered no disagreements with management over the application of significant accounting principles we are not aware of any consultations management had with them any other accountants about accounting or auditing matters there were no significant issues arising from the audit that were discussed or were the subject of correspondence with management we did not encounter any significant difficulties in dealing with management during the audit and we did not encounter any difficult or contentious matter that required consultation outside of our engagement team um the next section goes over the shared i guess third i think um there's a section that goes over our shared responsibilities so those are governed by we also attached in appendix a or significant communications which is our representation letter that was signed by management and um lastly as it relates to significant accounting estimates uh investments were significant for the surtax program we tested the values of those investment securities and concluded that the values were reasonable as reported so um once again thanks again to management for making it a smooth audit process and um it was a pleasure to continue yes sir of service to your team thank you i think it's the next uh section there there we go okay um so here presented other financial statements our job as your external auditors is given an opinion on those financial statements rather they're in forming with generally accepted accounting principles and we perform our audit under generally accepted auditing standards rsm rendered a clean unmodified opinion on those financial statements this year um as ashley mentioned the audit went very very well there were no adjustments nothing um to bring to your attention really except those required communications um for the year ended uh your balance sheet which is the next page uh here's our opinion and the next couple pages so we get to the here we go um so this is the balance sheet so this is where the uh assets and liabilities landed as of september 30th 2025 as you can see there snipkin investments um with the total fund balance for the combined funds about 2.4 billion dollars um you know the makeup of the balance sheet very similar to the prior year so so no surprises there um um the next page please um this is the operating statement for the year into september 30th 2025 as you can see the surtax um generated 542 million dollars of taxes um significant investment income and again um the ending fund balance for both funds being 2.4 million dollars so this is the activity for the year this shows the revenue and expenditures as through that operating cycle um again um pretty consistent with prior years and uh a straightforward audit um the balance of the financial statements are just your standard notes to the statements um nothing surprising there as ashley mentioned there were no new accounting standards or any impact to the to the regular accounting of the financial statements um you know when we go through these and we have no adjustments and things so your quarterly monthly reports that you're getting from management are extremely accurate and dependable so we thank management for putting together this it's a nice set of financial statements um again um we come in and we do the audit and we have no recommendations or or anything of that nature so happy to answer any questions that you may have uh for for our engagement um but again thank you for letting us present today thank you i do have a question and i'm not sure whether or not it's to be directed to you but i know that our population ebbs and flow at times um there's a lot of movement with people coming in and out of the county and i'm always curious to know how do we go about forecasting um revenue coming in is there any way are we doing that at all is that something we should be contemplating you know just when i think about the future of the surtax and whether or not we will sustain the momentum of revenue we see coming in you know you hear all the time about um people aren't traveling as much it's impacting tourism people moving out of the county are you the ones that would do that or is that something that we we we tackle separately madam chair it is something that we tackle separately we tend to do that through our office of management and budget but we also do it internal to this agency your support team does work with other um agencies and you know statewide data to make sure that we are also forecasting in fact we just sent in a memo to the office of management and budget last month uh with our forecasts good i'm happy to hear that we're maintaining at least i have a question based on the uncertainty of the commuter rail etc that were obviously there were certain funds set aside in anticipation for that has any adjustment been made or i understand your question about income but are we making any adjustments for changes in potential outbreaks at this time or is it too early that would happen during the budget process not not as part of the audit anyone here um go ahead um madam chair the i'd just like to clarify the difference between the financial statements that we're getting here and talking about here versus the independent audit that we have asked for from the commission auditor's office for performance audit uh basically the question is how are we doing over the life of the surtax approval so that that doesn't really deal with this this is a separate item which is just one component of the overall management of the uh funds so we have can we hit some point in time uh know what the approximate time frame is for uh completing that independent audit by the commission auditors office um yes we can ask what the time frame is for that um either now madam chair or later during non-agenda whatever your preference i think someone wants to answer that i think someone wants to answer sure sure go ahead or don't last one hi laura rogers audit manager with office of the county auditor we anticipate having um the audit completed in a draft this summer anticipate that promise thank you i think we still have um just want to make a statement um you know obviously your responsibilities to make sure that the funds are spent in accordance to the you know the governor laws and also state statutes and it is reassuring for us to hear from an independent body that that's what happened and there's not no issue no notes clean out it and that it's as good as it gets so thank you all right ray on uh page eight what is it i don't really know what encumbrance means um but for all the project descriptions it says construction in progress does that just mean like it's been planned or something not physical construction um well it would mean okay first the encumbrance is um is let me explain this is a commitment to spend okay it goes to the purchase order process and there's a budget for it there's a commitment to spend and then um so you have that budget so whatever that budget may be so say you've committed two million dollars to spend then spent today is the amount that you see on page eight versus that appropriation to spend so that will include like all the all the spending it would as well include construction everything is spending associated with that authorization yes okay and then how did you guys get those category codes is that from us um management prepares the financial statements so they come from management and then we take a look we would audit the presentation of those to make sure it's accurate okay because isn't this kind of similar what we're working on these category codes to understand like the sidewalk breakdown the bike lane breakdown etc are they using the same system as us we're all in the same financial system so we all use people soft as our centralized financial system but there are some nuances to the types of category codes that we use for you all with respect to this program whenever possible maybe as like supplemental material after the meeting could you provide the how we're category coding them versus how we're doing it maybe your your finance manager says yes she can't do that thank you if there are no other questions thank you thank you have a great weekend we appreciate your time sure thank you can we have a motion to approve no no nothing we're good no motions needed on any of the notes for the record okay okay good all right can we invite our next presenter it's you so the next three items are just motions to note for the record this is based on requests that the oversight board has made in the past so that this is these are actions that the county is taking using money that has already come to you through a budget process in a bucket and in this particular instance that bucket was associated with the automated people mover at the fort lauderdale international airport also known as our broward county aviation department and they received notification that fdot had some additional funding available at the end of their fiscal year and that they could access that money if they were able to bring a 50 50 match so the county prepared an agenda item that's already gone to the county commission to bring that 9.46 million dollars of surtax funding so that they could get additional 9.46 million dollars from fdot that's towards a project that you have already seen and that remains part of the surtax program the next two items are motions to note for the record the application for funding and actually um corey cup lonergan is going to be coming up in just a few minutes she's going to give you a little more detail on both of these these are both grants that are going to the federal government using surtax as the match one is for the low no emissions grant which is something that we've been successful with in previous years and again she's going to talk a little bit more about that and the other is for the build grant which is a competitive grant to the u.s department of transportation and this is to augment funding that exists already with the copens operations and maintenance facility and if there are any questions from any of you with respect to these feel free to share them now and i'm sure corey will speak to them in just a few minutes anyone all good i have a quick one um the low and no emission uh for action item five federally i thought they were getting rid of a lot of those grants is that still these grants are still coming out every cycle so we've been applying for them and receiving them we've been actually doing very well ever since we got the surtax oh very good corey good morning corey good to see you good to see everyone again happy friday i am i'm really happy to be here today and see you all and i'm here to talk about two things the grant application and um the tri-rail collaboration between the various uh entities on the uh commute rail efforts and and lastly there was a request to talk about state funding uh and where we are with that and stuart's going to come up here from our intergov uh department and really get into more details about that so i'm going to defer to the expert on that uh he'll give you a great legislative update so you know everything that we know at this point um so first of all i'm sure that many of you are aware that yesterday was national take your son or daughter to work day and so we had a wonderful opportunity to host about 31 children from our respective employees and they had some very clever exercises that they uh worked on uh yesterday um advancing so this is an example of some of the work product that um our our future transit employees were able to pull together and i just want to introduce you to one of them that caught my um and this one actually is a um a flying bus right so that's what it does it flies and it's also filled with um we're going to serve popcorn and cotton candy on it so that's the future of transit um and you know but in all seriousness uh these these children have active imaginations and i want to thank luke and evan fernandez uh who are the sons of janelle fernandez you know actually runs our procurement um portion of our department and then uh gianni and lilian diaz vilma diaz who's one of our um manager of our scheduling department uh so those are the four children responsible for this but why this is interesting and timely at the same time is that it's not only imaginative but this is getting ready to happen the um governor de santis i'm not sure if you heard about this but just signed a bill that will allow state funding in the event that the federal funding doesn't come through for vertiports and these funding sources will be used to accelerate research and development in vertical transportation so i remind you the jetsons are real and so is this bus okay so moving on please to the next slide another couple of things since uh we last met that i wanted to share with you is that um one of our employees i always love to talk about oh we're going back a little bit um we are let me just back up i'll get there in just a second um so we are advancing the transit 2040 program that we shared with you the vision plan um we are out in the community having conversations we have been to three of our commission districts so far all of our commissioners have been attending those meetings as well and so far we have been in commissioner davis's senator rich's and commissioner fisher's districts um we have had attendees at these events very high numbers um well one of them not as high but overall there have been over 100 people that we have actually come out and learn more about transit 2040 vision plan and we're getting a lot of insights into you know what the community is looking for um bottom line is they're looking for reliable service they're looking for more frequency you know all the aspects that we had already um recognized as part of the transit uh forward plan um the other thing just a reminder that i really need all of you to send all your good juju out to our mechanics team because next month they're going to be competing in the equivalent of our industry olympics and what a better place to have that is in the home of winter olympics and that is the city of salt lake uh in utah and so our mechanics were the second place winners of the entire state for um the mechanical challenge in that olympic or rodeo activity and um we are really proud of the fact that they um were second place in the florida triple crown rodeo which was held in florida so now they're going to be competing internationally so we have um organizations from uh the u.s and and and abroad that will be competing and we have three uh members of our mechanics team who will be going through an assessment so you probably say well you know we're used to seeing skiers and we're used to seeing ice skaters and we're used to seeing people that you know do sports stuff how does this work for mechanic well it's really interesting what they do is they actually have a written test that they have to do in a timed environment as part of that written assessment they're giving certain scenarios where they have to identify what the solution is so they're they're tested on that then they have a couple modules they're given an entire bus they don't know what's wrong with the bus but they have a certain period of time to figure out not only what's wrong with it but to also fix it and then there's a couple other more system specific repairs that they're encouraged to or tested on rather and so those are also time um and i'm so proud of our team for winning the second place uh for the state of florida we've competed this is the second year um that we've competed in this in this event i think we did compete like many many years ago and that no one seems to have a recollection on how we did um but no one's saying that we placed either so i'm assuming that we didn't get second place i know that last year we got seventh place and now we've got second so we definitely improved and and typically when you go to these events the more you have an opportunity to participate the better you get um and so again i i i ask you all to help me send all the best wishes to our team because the next time we meet it is my hope that i'm sharing with you that we won so fingers crossed okay um the other thing is next slide please we have um i've always come in and i'm really proud of our workforce because as we've talked about often we are the sometimes the first line of defense when and when a member of the public is having a medical incident you'd be surprised how many times people will come to one of our depots uh and say you know i'm having a medical problem and i need help or they'll get on our buses with medical problems and they need help and so we are always it's a daily event almost that we are somehow helping someone that's having a non-bus related incident that they need assistance with and having said that though then there's those other employees that um work in other parts of our organization or uh tina ortiz nunez who actually works in our customer service department who was on her way to work with her normal morning morning commute um just kind of minding her business driving along the road she saw an accident and the accident involved a vehicle that was overturned now you know a lot of people would have dialed 911 right most people would have done that um just to get some help from professionals but tina also took the additional step of getting involved and helping to pull that individual from the car um and so we are so proud of her uh and her contribution contribution to the community both in her personal life as demonstrated by this uh amazing heroic activity as well as her day-to-day involvement with our organization next slide please okay tina we're going backwards i think we have we have to celebrate the goodness yes let's celebrate tina yes thank you all right so um gretchen mentioned some of the uh grant applications that we have in uh in with the federal government we have three that are pretty substantial um one is the low no emission grant that you've already talked about today um i know that there was a question about whether that those grants have been eliminated that's not the case um they are still out there and they're still getting funded um and uh we are we are taking advantage of every opportunity to be able to bring in new equipment to our system now you may have heard that our electric vehicles kind of made the news along with miami-dade um and you you all are aware of of where we are with that and the fact that many of our counterparts around the country are also in the same boat um with the uh unfortunate uh failure and unreliability of the praterra uh buses that we all purchased um and that was about a billion dollar investment uh across the country and those uh vehicles a lot of that was underwritten by federal government through these exact grants um and other local funds that helped to support that bottom line is um we have uh changed our strategy in terms of our fleet um uh diversification because we need to be uh more able to have different types of uh vehicles out there rather than relying solely on electric when the market matures and we can see that the market is is able to support electric vehicles we can visit revisit that but as you know that was one of the strategic uh visions of our county commissioners uh from some time ago and um it's just not the time to really advance that so instead of going for additional electric um which would be no emission we are going for low emission uh vehicles and so we are looking at hybrid buses to be part of our fleet um and in this case with this grant we're going to get about 19 of them we're asking the federal government for about 20.4 million dollars and we are asking um for a local share match which we always do of about 20 percent of about 5.1 million which would become which would come to the grant through the surtax um the grant application supports not only the procurement of the buses but a kit of spare parts that we'll be able to use and as soon as they come in it also has some workforce development training included in there and um it's really important that we have the full package so it's great that the federal government recognizes and this is coming from the federal transit administration under the department of uh transportation it's it's great that they recognize that we have to also maintain the buses after we buy them and by allowing us to buy those spare parts in advance and they also recognize that you know with this new technology in some cases it's we need our workforce to be able to successfully be able to fix it and operate them and so this workforce development training is an important component of it as well in addition to the next slide please to that grant application we are also seeking to um get about 20.6 million dollars from the uh uh build grant um and this grant is part of the department of transportation grant that's available to all modes of transportation for the most part um and these funds are being requested to support our uh integrated command center um and so we have to have a nerve center just like air traffic control we've all heard about that right you know um we have to have our our equivalent of air traffic control to operate our buses throughout the county um and so um our our current situation quite frankly is is old it's dated it's not functioning efficiently as as well as it could be with some of the new technology and so what we're doing is as part of the copen's redevelopment effort we are outfitting the new command center to make it an integrated command center and follow the best practices in the industry in this space and so um i know that you all know that i came from metro in washington dc before i came to beautiful briar county um but i went before i left we had been working on an integrated command center in washington dc um and i have to tell you uh it was fresh off a conference and um it's not often that european uh transit systems come to the u.s to see what the u.s is doing it's it's it's not we usually go there right um because usually they're in the in the forefront of um what's happening if you've ever been to paris and you've been on the subway it's absolutely beautiful um and it functions very well and so the the city of the the paris transit i don't know how to say that in french i'm sorry um came over to meet with lamada actually to kind of look at the system and see you know what we're doing in this space and so while i was recently in dc at a legislative conference i was able to tour it because when i was there it was under construction it wasn't done and now it's done and uh it is a site to be seen it's an actually at a very amazing facility they have all the assets that are necessary to respond to the day-to-day service as well as um emergencies in one space which before in our industry you would have your bus uh air traffic your air traffic control your bus traffic control unit in one place you'd have your rail in another place and you'd have your customer service and your your communications team in another place and you would have your police in yet another place and um and so what they've done is they brought all of these resources together in one room um and uh set up a way that they can be more responsive to emergencies because of the collective efforts of everybody knowing what's going on real time and being able to respond to it what that means to the riding public is that they get information immediately when something happens because it's not whisper down the lane we're in the room we're crafting the message and we're getting it out um and so for uh the paris uh transit system to uh come and see uh momada or metro um and dc metro it has it is definitely a a mark of achievement um for an organization that in the past would not have had that level of interest so i just wanted to let you know that taking that strategy and bringing it here we are moving in the direction of rail we are moving in the direction of bus rapid transit and you know at this point in time we're outfitting this facility so that we will be able to take that on in addition another topic of of interest uh that happened at this at this conference is the conversation around automation and autonomous vehicles this is real it is real in the transit space it is happening it's actually happening in jacksonville jacksonville jta jacksonville transportation authority uh has been able to convince and bring in um a automation a a um autonomous vehicle manufacturer which my understanding is about a hundred million dollar investment from the private sector into their community that is focusing on autonomous vehicles not only for um primarily for the transit space but also for others and so right now where we are with autonomous vehicles in the transit world is we're looking at small buses like the like the paratransit buses you know the small ones that we have we're not yet in the big ones in the 60 or 40 foot space but we're going to be there and we're going to be there soon um and so one of the things that we are going to be doing with our integrated command center is making sure that we have the capacity that when these new vehicles come online that we're going to be able to welcome them into our system as seamlessly as possible next slide please okay so i know one of the questions has been okay what's going on with tri-rail um uh what's uh happening with brightline uh and what's happening um with fdot uh with when it comes to sfrta which is uh tri-rail so let me start with um brightline uh brightline from what i understand is seeing some very interesting ridership um happening on their system they're saying that they're posting high ridership numbers and we are collaborating with them on uh on the uh broward commuter rail south project along with uh the miami dade uh is also doing the same and i will tell you that all of us miami dade brightline and uh bct and the county are very much at the table with our county attorneys um looking at these agreements that we are working through so everybody is running full speed ahead we recognize and it's no secret that the florida east coast railroad owns that right of way they need to be part of the conversation the county has been working with them um i'm not at liberty to kind of get into some of those details i'll let kevin do that if it's appropriate but i will tell you that there is definitely a window of opportunity that we are very much hopeful that we are going to see the commuter rail project come to fruition we do have a grant application with the federal government right now for the commuter rail south project which is uh includes just as a reminder hollywood um fort lauderdale international airport and south fort lauderdale it's about 11 miles it's going to connect to the northeast corridor which is the miami portion which is six stations there starting in aventura and going into miami central miami-dade is also moving forward with their conversations and uh negotiations with brightline on the implementation of commuter rail on that northeast corridor so for us like i said we have a 5 000 page i think i shared this before grant application there are multiple models that we also submitted and so that is right now with the fta and uh i know that it has a couple additional steps that it goes through we are asking to be given the opportunity to move into the next phase which is the engineering phase and um fingers crossed that we get good news there as well that application represents about 49 percent of the project cost which is roughly about 700 just north of 700 million dollars so um again just uh hoping that we are successful with that and we're continuing to plug along uh to uh come to some resolution about access to the tracks uh operation agreements uh and how we're going to coordinate between the two counties in terms of operating and maintaining uh the system the other thing is um go back uh the tri-rail so i know that everyone i think in the room there's a tri-rail is um is is is is is struggling um we uh are concerned about the future of tri-rail under the current um um situation that they're in i will tell you that the three counties broward miami-dade and palm beach county at the highest levels have been working to solve this problem with fdot um the florida department of transportation um provides roughly just in operating expenses a little bit north of 60 million dollars a year to tri-rail um statutorily uh they're only required to put in about 42 million they also fund a significant portion of their capital budget they've indicated that they really want to move beyond move away from supporting the operations and focus more of their resources on capital improvements um and so uh we have been trying to figure out what that future split looks like between the three counties and fdot um so that we can keep tri-rail running the other side of that is that we have had a consortium um of the three three organizations the three counties up in tallahassee lobbying together along with tri-rail on behalf of tri-rail to try to get a carve out for dedicated funding for tri-rail um and so i you know they're entering the budgets um sessions now um and so at this point we do not know where that's where that's gonna land but we do uh and stuart might uh speak a little bit more about that also when he comes up um i think i covered that slide next slide please um okay so this is the post legislative i'm not going to talk about the state stuff i would like to though share with you some of the things that are going on at the federal level um i mentioned to you that i was just off of a conference um we have our american public transportation association um that's an organization that all the transit agencies belong to it's an international organization and um the bottom line is our our focus is the focus of that organization is on um advocacy right um for transit at a national level at a policy level as well as supporting us in terms of research and development and things like that um we did enjoy last year a uptick in the president's budget for transit so last year um president trump went a little bit gave us a little bit more for transit particularly in the project development space um and it was uh you know i think i've shared this with you it was a surprise from the perspective that typically when there's a republican uh administration you'll see some shrinkage on the um on the uh on transit but um when there's a democratic uh administration you'll see more investment in that um and so that's kind of been the the normal cadence last year president trump broke the cadence and gave us more money um this year however there was a shift and um we we learned that the president has uh changed uh the uh funding allocation for transit and so now we're in the space of um hoping that congress will help us support more funding than what was proposed um which is typically what happens there's a little bit of give and take and at the end of the day between the two branches of government we get to a place that's a little better than where either party started um and so we are um in that space anyway long story short um this year's budget is about 23 percent less than last year's budget overall which is about 16.3 billion that we're looking at um there's also the capital investment grants this is the cig program that's where new starts and small start grant applications lay live and that is where we are applying for the funding for the broward commuter rail project uh and all of the other primo projects will fall into this cig application pool um we are uh right now uh what the president has proposed is about a 63 percent cut in that budget um and the in congress is looking at appropriations that are much higher than that that cut um and so hopefully they'll come to some agreement on what that looks like but that's what's out there there's another um uh legislative national legislative um uh act that we are had enjoyed additional funding through which is the bipartisan um infrastructure investment jobs act it's called iija um for short uh this was uh an act that was um signed into law by uh president biden and it did increase a lot of funding for transit and passenger rail and um roads and bridges as we all know our infrastructure is aging and in some cases falling apart uh and this uh this um act or this law allowed dedicated funding to be uh available which everybody knew year over year what it would look like um and that ends in september of this year so we don't know what it what's next or what it looks like if there's going to be an extension if it's going to be reconstituted um but it to be frank with you from a capital project delivery perspective that's a blow because we now don't know year over year what's going to be available and so that um is unfortunate but we are here um and so i did have a chance to talk to the brow workshop um the other day and uh asked them to you know help us uh get the word out about some of these changes in the federal um allocation uh process and they have agreed to to help us with that um they've asked us to provide some talking points um to have help them with the conversations with legis various legislative branches uh as they have them through their normal business um channels so uh we're also going to be talking to the um chambers i know that uh the apta has been working at the national level with the with the chambers of commerce to uh get the uh get their support there's a whole coalition of supporters from associations that actually benefit from transit being in place and i and i have to it's a funny and interesting fact a lot of times people think of transit as simply a way to move people and there's sometimes there's a perception that the people that are moved are from our social disadvantaged communities the reality is in many communities that is not the case that is a full representation of all types of incomes all types of people that are riding transit and so the the interesting fact is that 77 of these federal dollars that we're talking about they don't go directly to the passenger they actually go to the private sector who then supports the industry so the private sector supports us in very obvious ways they manufacture things right they also build things for us they do engineering and consulting services and so it's a very interesting conversation when you're talking about the economic value of transit and federal investments compared to looking at it from a social perspective and so i just um the apta has been doing a lot of research in this space um you guys have heard this before for every billion dollars of investment and capital programs over 20 years you end up with about 41 000 jobs created north of four more than 40 000 jobs created um and so it is by far not only a social opportunity for people to move and improve mobility but it also is a great opportunity for us to spur economic development and we have seen it when we build it and particularly rail they come and there are lots of um advantages to having a fully funded and viable transit uh property in your community not to mention the lower emissions and the mobility options and all the other ancillary benefits that are equally as important as some of the financial next slide please oh no i'm done right okay um all right so i just wanted to kind of give you that uh federal perspective and uh before i go and um and open this up for questions i just want to um acknowledge direction for all of her hard work and she's been a true uh colleague and a uh advocate for uh the surtax and transportation and an absolute pleasure to work with and we are so going to miss you but we wish you the best in your next chapter thank you all right thank you we concur we concur now corey i i do have some questions and i don't know whether i'm any of my colleagues too but i see some lights are on so one of the questions that i wanted to get some answers to was regarding the autonomous vehicles have we done any kind of as are are we planning on doing any kind of community readiness assessment to just gauge whether or not our community is ready for autonomous vehicles because i'm scared of them i know i know and it is it's a scary thought they you know um we do have them here already we have them in south south florida whammo is in a is in miami-dade and um boca also has autonomous vehicles and um that's a thought uh we i'll take that back and see if we should be looking at you know if we can look at it from that perspective as well the um um they're coming i know but i know i think about the folks that are riding on our buses and um you know the demographics of of that community you know the writers need to be considered and i think we need to make sure that before we make a big investment in this that they're ready to get on a bus understood and you know before we and that's an excellent point that people need to feel comfortable with you know someone operating the bus now no one at this point is envisioning it as being completely autonomous even the ones in jacksonville are still going to have a person on it so um it will you know there'll be someone maybe operating uh the bus in from um from a command center but there will be a human on board that will be able to intervene and talk to passengers and help them with issues etc so um the uh so that's that's the jacksonville model um but you're right we need to see uh do a temperature check with the community and see if there's if we're ready right now right now probably is no right but 10 years from now um and and given our you know we were earlier adopters which is a good thing for the electric vehicles we you know took a little bit of a risk to go in that direction along with others and i know that at the time that the decision was made that there were multiple um um multiple uh vendors that were tested here in broward before the decision was made to go with pratera um and so given that kind of uh history for us we're not doing anything at a mass scale until we are absolutely convinced that the technology is proven reliable and it works so i think that was one of the additional lessons that was learned and fully adopted when it comes to the pratera investment absolutely and that was part of my contemplation and of course i'm always concerned about people losing their jobs you know the more we automate the more jobs go away and i'm not sure you know how much as a society we are really working to reskill folks as we automate as rapidly as we are i feel like you know we really need to so i am now on a national um committee that's looking at autonomous uh vehicle implementation and adoption in the u.s and uh one of the number one things that we are having conversations about is what do we do with the workforce and how do we keep people employed as the technology changes and shifts in the direction that it's going um and i am pleased to say that all of us and it's mostly ceos from around the country on this committee that are saying we need to look out for our people um and that's a priority for me i know it would be a priority for you and i can only imagine although i haven't had a direct conversation with our commissioners about it i would believe that it's a priority for them as well yes it has to have positive economic impact for taxpayers who are paying into this um surtax we want to make sure that we're not creating something that's going to cause a lot of people to lose their jobs understood and heard received and a believer all right thank you next um i'm not sure phil was it you or ray hi ray hey corey i uh of course i have some questions um i appreciate the the high level oversight the granular detail at the federal level it's interesting information um just to pull it back down a little bit more granular a little bit more local i wanted to ask so this grant is a competitive grant for the buses it is it's a discretion it's what's called a discretionary grant and it's a competitive grant are we gonna go ahead with the purchase if we don't win the grant regardless um we have to so good question so um we have a requirement actually a federal expectation let's put it that way from a regulatory perspective to um watch how we manage our fleets and to not have them go beyond their useful life which is defined as 500 000 miles and i think seven years of 12 years thank you 12 years of service and so regardless of whether this grant comes through or not we still have to replace our equipment and given the board's interests to uh still pursue low emission opportunities we could go with it we would go with this technology um we are actually in right now buying low emission buses that's already been approved um and so this funding which is simply offset that investment okay this is a question maybe you could email later um it doesn't have to be now i'm kind of wondering where we are at our current frequency levels with a lot of the routing i know protero kind of dug us in the hole i've looked at the capital plans to understand where our bus purchases are now but i want to know are we back on track are we still with those decreased frequencies that we had yeah let me let me get back to you but the frequencies um are still we have not put our service back to what it was before but i'll get you what it was compared to now okay so on most of the routes um for like the breeze and the let me let me get back to you yeah yeah i know this is granular route stuff but yeah i think i would like to see as a board i would like to make sure that we're spending all this money that we're making sure the current service is as good as it was before these buses and it's not as good and it's no fault of anyone's but if that means we need to ask the county to supplement additional fundings of their own outside of the surtax because the surtax ones are earmax earmarked or something of that sort um i think that needs to happen i i want to make sure this money is not coming in and we're bankrolling it for these big future projects when the current service isn't there um and and this is this is going to be a big question but i like how do you what are your thoughts like how do you feel about transit forward 2040 like personally i love the concept i would like to see an accelerated timeline i think i've probably told everyone that multiple times i think this is the small nuts and bolts of what moves people in our county more than an lrt line more than a commuter rail it's the transit forward plan uh transit forward so like what are your thoughts on the 2040 is it well of course i think it's great just kidding um excuse me thank you for your question um transit 2040 vision plan contemplates that primo is in place too thank you um and so excuse me we um i do think that in particular one of the things that i love about the transit i love the whole thing but what i really appreciate is our movement to solve the transit desert challenge that we have there are parts of our county that we have no ability to get transit into um the roads won't cooperate the ridership isn't there um it's not an efficient opportunity or our investment um and so those locations there's still people that want to move that don't have access to reliable transportation or their own vehicles um and so of all the things in the plan i'm you know reducing the frequency improving um the connectivity all those things are great but i think the marquee um initiative is leveraging micro transit for those of you that don't know what micro transit is it's very it's last mile first mile movement um and it's it uses um on-demand services like an uber or lyft to move people uh within a certain geographical area which is geofenced so they stay there or to have them connect directly with fixed route high capacity high premium transit to go even further than where they're trying to go so i hope that answers your question yeah yeah that answers it in a sense for me it's it's concerning the timeline the the 2040 aspect i feel like we can accelerate that i think high frequency quality bus service is the brick that you lay the other bricks upon i don't think it's the brick that comes in at 2040. i think it's fundamental for all our investments that we're doing um that's just where i stand so just so the board knows that's my position i think it should be accelerated thanks cory thank you ray thanks anyone else ergo could you update us on the status of um electric you know buses you know which we currently you know own or you know in the process of being delivered there were some bankruptcy issues and so forth and how many you know buses we have now operating and and what happens to the the future you know orders i think they were converted from regular bus to electric or now it's hybrid options are you know considered you know just for our information sure so um pratera was the uh the manufacturer of the buses that we purchased uh pratera is now bankrupt um they served they sold their interest to an outfit called the phoenix motor coach company which was supposed to kind of infill and um support their the investment that pratera made um in this in this industry um unfortunately the buses were not reliable um uh the they didn't work i mean i don't know how else to say it i think that early on the um pratera was in the garages across the country supporting the um the the challenges the mechanical challenges that that all the agencies were suffering from but then as they progressed through the bankruptcy and on to leaving and exiting the industry um they uh stopped giving us those resources and as a result of that phoenix was supposed to backfill and they didn't um it just didn't happen um and so uh the uh we were supposed to purchase 42 and we ended up getting about 31 we stopped the bleeding uh so to speak when we when it was clear that there was no way that they were ever going to catch up or be able to solve the problem i mean there's a there's a very um nuanced part of this which is not only pratera it is also the fact that they're suppliers they used specialized suppliers to um to to provide uh parts uh for these vehicles and those suppliers um are no longer interested in providing the parts either so that is kind of compounding the challenge that we have in terms of making repairs you don't have the parts to make the repairs can't make the repairs so you already have reliability issues now you have parts that aren't available and the only thing you know what we don't want to do is put equipment out there and then have it you know stopped on the side of the road and not going anywhere um and so that's that's where we are with it so our our buses are parked they are away from our facilities um we are right now requesting forgiveness from the for the feds uh on the uh federal investment because we they're not going to live to their useful life um and we are also uh asking for the ability to dispose of them before the end of their useful life at which time we are still exploring various options for how to dispose of that equipment um but typically what we do is we would put it up for auction uh and do a divestment that way um other people i mean sometimes they want the tires sometimes they want the seats sometimes they want the steering wheels you know they take it they some of the parts kind of thing um i don't know that they're going to be able to get on the work i mean we tried our darndest to make this work um and uh didn't work out for us the cost of innovation i guess comes with a price um the part of the master plan for copeland's included you know um bus yep yeah i guess solar power our charging stations uh are we still so what good question so what we're doing is we're putting the infrastructure in right so we're going to put the conduit in um and we'll be ready to pull cable at the point in time where the market catches up with the um with us uh so there have been some glimmers of hope i will tell you in this space um you know the uh 60 foot buses down in miami seem to be working okay on their bus rapid transit line i'm still waiting to see more before we because ours were working pretty good first too um and there are some systems that have had other suppliers that seem to be doing okay so there's hope but again like we need to see other places be successful for a long period of time before i think we pull that trigger thank you thank you i think tracy hi welcome thank you um i just have a quick question about the integrated control center you described in dc everybody that was in there but who what entities are you putting in the copens one so we similar we would have our security in there um we'll have our so we don't have our own police force metro does are you from the dc area don't you know about it no but i've been there yeah yeah okay no um so i do so the police well we don't have these but i mean the security resources would be in there our communications resources will be in there for public facing communications our bus operators eventually we have rail they'll be in there um we'll have uh because of rail we'll need to have a fire marshal um and so we'll have somebody in there that does that um and it and our uh maintenance way um management for rail will be in there as well okay and not a question but i'm going to dc in two weeks for acec to advocate for more funding for the transportation bill so well thank you thank you thank you uh we appreciate you ride metro while you're there i will are there any other questions no you're pretty quiet there doug what's up thank you cory i've had a lot of briefings from corby corby anyway thank you thank you thank you all right um next um we have the office of economic and small business development good morning sure good morning everyone good morning happy friday and i also would like to echo corey's remarks when i to congratulate gretchen on her retirement i told her we're not gonna let you go uh it's been a pleasure working with you all these years and uh i know you started when you're a baby 30 years so again congratulations we're definitely gonna miss you next next and uh we would like to offer uh basically an update of our data from our last meeting uh here you can see all the projects that have been reviewed hundreds of projects and how uh we're averaging on the recommended small business participation goals for our county projects we're at 29 and for our municipal projects we're at 33 percent and i wanted to remind you that these are recommended goals when the cities and the county go through the procurement process the primes are able to commit to the exact goal we recommend or in many instances whenever the primes are certified businesses or they have a really strong team of cbes they may offer a commitment goal that's higher sometimes a little higher sometimes a lot higher and that will be the next slide which is the actually awarded projects and here you can see how we're averaging on the actual commitment so this is the fact when those contracts are awarded this is what our primes are committing uh in terms of using our small businesses so for our county projects you can see we're averaging 38 small business participation goal and for our municipal projects we're averaging 39 percent small business participation goal which is exceeding your 30 percent um goal which we're we're really you know excited about um and we have more really good news to share with you if we go to the next next slide um last meeting you really wanted us to share with you what are the industries that these projects are really utilizing right so here you can see um approximately 17 million of all these are all closed projects so the vast majority of projects are construction of new highways and streets so these are all our construction projects uh you can see that basically the next level is a and e and related services approximately three million four million uh average there and then all other support uh services associated with landscaping um services uh professional services etc and this is again for our closed projects so we wanted you to see and here you can see not only the industries but you can see the cities which was another request for information we received from you at the last meeting so if we go to the next slide uh you can see how are our cities and county projects doing so i'm really happy to report that 93 percent of all the projects that have been closed out are exceeding our small business participation recommended goals and here you can see the list by city um that means um basically 29 out of the 31 we have two additional projects that the cities met the goal that was recommended and then we have two projects that did not meet the goal if we go to the next slide you're able to see the actual type of projects for each one of those cities right and the county projects uh so basically you can see the diversity of projects most of them of course in the construction and a e industry categories wanted to share that um again this is just proof that the goal you have tasked us with right to ensure that our small businesses are you're being utilized as part of our goal assignments and goal recommendations those goals are not only being met we know they're aggressive goals they're not only being met but they're being exceeded which is uh and again a testament to how well the outreach is working the commitment of our cities our county agencies and our primes uh to support the use of our local small businesses and the next um ask that we received from this board was basically um tell us a little bit more about the modeling right the information you share with us related to modeling here you can see the numbers so the model that we use is implant and that stands for impact analysis for planning it is a sophisticated economic uh modeling platform that uses input output analysis to calculate how the money moves through a specific region um for reporting purposes it basically takes takes the data is a great data driven at how municipal and county contract spending stays within brower county and it supports local businesses and local residents uh beyond the initial project site construction um implant basically synthesizes the data from sources like the beauty of economic analysis and the census to report results in four key areas and you can see them here basically employment that's the total full-time and part-time jobs that are supported and again remember this is a projection economic impact analysis the labor income basically the total wages the benefits the payroll taxes that are paid out from the primes uh to their employees and the subcontractors the value added and does the project actual contribution to brower county's gdp and here on the illustration you can see those numbers um as it relates to jobs created basically the millions paid on wages to employees but also the spent by the vendors on materials that are purchased additional millions that are generated when that those dollars are spent on material services etc and then lastly wanted to share um basically how the economic impact is calculated the software tracks the ripple effect of how these millions of dollars through these three distinct layers which is direct impact which is the immediate spending on the project itself the indirect impact which is the secondary spending uh basically that happens when we're basically uh paying the contract subcontractors suppliers buying equipment and then the induce effect which is that third impact uh when the workers of these projects are spending the money on our local economy going to the gas station buying groceries supporting our other small businesses so wanted to give you a general overview of the economic impact and analysis that we do the model that we utilize as we continue to update the projections as we receive new projects and now i can open it up to any questions one question i do too as it relates to this chart here are you able to list the various businesses one of those categories the actual businesses that participate in yes we can definitely pull that data thank you we'll make a note and we'll definitely be able to pull the data on the primes and the self-contractors that were certified small businesses that have been used okay tracy do you want i just have a question about the small businesses um has the county or are they considering upping the criteria for the small businesses what i mean by that is the like the to become a small business i don't remember the exact number in briar county but it was very low it's like three or five million gross over three years and nationally i mean it's so low that it prevents growth in small businesses actually and there's not enough to do the work and you are forced to stay small has briar county considered upping that that gross number that's an excellent question actually our small business development advisory board had these discussions over a year ago uh and at that time they decided not to recommend increasing the numbers in our office we've been looking at it more recently because as you know the cost of materials the cost of living uh all of that have increased significantly so we've been uh considering increasing that and the current board has been discussing that as well so i know they're going to be bringing it up for discussion i mean the small business development advisory board so our staff is going to be working closely with them to start looking at recommendations moving forward because those thresholds have not been updated for over 10 years now excellent question all right i have a couple of questions um i first want to start by just celebrating the accomplishments here because in terms of the percentage goal um attainment across the county and you know even seeing so many of our municipalities are stepping up to the plate this is a lot to celebrate so i'm grateful for that that but i also have some questions regarding um the uh projects awarded amount in the various municipalities i notice i'm not seeing cities like city of lauderdale lauderdale lakes um the city of fort lauderdale i i didn't see anything there and i'm i'm concerned about um and i know not all the projects are being done at the same time but i'm mindful that some of these cities have some of the highest levels of unemployment and i want to make sure that we are utilizing some of these dollars to help uplift that community i'm also looking at even the indirect impact with respect to employment again um is there a way for us to track where we're we're employing from we have high unemployment in a lot of these cities and i don't know that we are being intentional about making sure that um folks have access to these jobs that are coming it's a lot of money being spent and i want to make sure that everyone in the county um will be able to have access to the economic wealth and that we have a way of tracking that can you speak to that thank you for that question um so these projects that you're looking at are it's only the closed projects that have been completed right but we have hundreds of projects that are in the pipeline that have been are going through procurement process or are being awarded right so those are the additional projects that you may not see here that includes the cities that that you have shared and we can definitely look into those areas as well to provide additional information we'll make sure that our team uh looks at all the projects that have been reviewed so you can see all the the the projects in the cities where those cities are are the projects are located um as it relates to actual data tracking of their actual jobs um that's why we use the modeling because as part of the project implementation and reporting for the county we're not asking we're not able to request for them to report to us who they hired the zip codes and all of those things uh those projects those those um projects where you request that um usually is projects that are associated that includes community benefits reporting and requirements that that the primes need to report who are they hiring from what zip codes how much they're paying and all of those things those are not requirements as part of this funding so we're not able to ask the primes to report we're not able to require them to report the jobs and all that information um so that's why we have been using the modeling aspect but we can definitely go back i can go back with my modeling team um to you're challenging us to see what can we do what can we do to make sure we're able to look at that type of information maybe working with some of our community partners and our cities uh to really evaluate um where are the jobs being created in what industries etc excellent excellent question thank you i looked at this chart until i saw the word closed i got a little upset next time put that in red or bigger because this is only a piece of the puzzle only a small piece of the projects completed we wanted to make sure you saw the actual data of projects completed with dollars paid out that's really important so you can see what has been completed what has been paid out um we can always give you the projections of course on all the projects so you can see the bigger picture and we will continue to update you regularly as this project is completed how we're doing making sure that our businesses are being paid uh that we're hiring locally and that we're supporting not only our local small businesses but our local economy as well yes thank you tracy go ahead sorry i have one more question um i'm sure you guys know you don't work with dbes but dot does on a state level um the dbe program was is gone and everybody's in their recertification process but in that time has your office increased the sbe goals to try to help out the dbes who are no longer certified or you has there been great question and i'm glad you brought it up um so basically the way remember the the goal assignment is based on the type of funding right so for my local funding my surtax funding i have my 30 percent at least 30 goal right on eligible projects for my local uh general fund i have my at least 25 on all my county projects and we're exceeding that as well on our uh general fund funded projects and then under my federal program we assign goals based on the availability of certified businesses under the federal program many of you and we discussed that at the previous meeting are aware that the federal government changed my federal requirements october of last year where they changed the federal program is no longer a women and minority owned program is now a race and gender gender neutral program this is now nationwide so all dbes and acdbes nationwide must go through a re-evaluation process where we're basically they're submitting updated information where they need to demonstrate that the business is economically or socially disadvantaged and it is no longer associated with race or gender our office is already working on re-evaluating firms we're working with the other certifying entities in this state we have nine certifying entities in the state the way the federal rule was written all certifying entities in each state must re-evaluate all dbes and acdbes before we can start assigning goals again yes so um what we're doing is working closely very closely and very aggressively with our eight other entities to make sure we're all moving as quickly as possible through that re-evaluation process proper county to delete and we did training to of all our certifying entities and we have done training of all our dbes and acdbes to make sure that everybody's ready and getting re-evaluated and we are pushing all the other eight to re-evaluate their firms as well to ensure that we can start assigning goals again however in the meantime we're while everybody's working on that we are implementing our federally authorized small business element under the federal program and that is also a race neutral program so that's going to uh we're going to start doing more uh promotion of this and implementing this through the procurement process this summer and this is going to allow us to work on all these federally funded projects under the airport transportation um to ensure that we are encouraging the use of our formerly dbes and acdbes cbes and sbes of the local level we're encouraging all of them to get certified under the small business element uh that is going to allow us to uh uh recommend the use of again federally certified small business element uh firms for these projects but the dbe and the sbe criteria is different it is but there is a maximum so so we can use both our local are eligible and also our dbes and acdbes are eligible so they all can um be certified under our fairly um a federally mandated small business element so then all these federal projects federally funded projects will have the use of local small businesses uh as part of that that certification and we're already if you go to our new business management system you'll be able to see the federally certified small business element we're uh building that as companies are getting re-evaluated under the dbe and acdbe we're encouraging them to also get certified under the small business element and also the local cbes and sbes we're encouraging them to get certified as part of the small business element and we're going live with the small business element this summer excellent question because we want to make sure that before all other certified entities finish their process we're still affording opportunities to our local businesses and the small business element is going to allow us to do that that's quite an undertaking but i know you guys are up to the challenge so thank you thank you for doing an excellent job thank you thank you all right next i believe we have public works up next oh we we do okay good morning madam chair and good morning members of the board thank you for the opportunity for us for me to be here uh and i i guess welcome to miss kaplan for i guess being the new volunteer a new member here of our board uh for for this board i also want to thank brower county and mainly the public works department because uh it began as one of your meetings here about two years ago that you asked the public works and the community to talk on how to improve the sheridan street project improvements so this has been almost a two-year process and uh and we have had uh quite a few one-on-one meetings with uh technical staff of before i go there let me introduce myself my name is her vargas i'm a professional engineer in the state of florida i'm also a uh licensed real estate broker i'm a member of or a director of the phase one perron falls board not the master board but the phase one hoa i'm uh also a resident of perron falls which is the community that's just south of the project so like i was saying i want to thank the county for the meetings we had we had we had they were not uh easy meetings they were very contentious with lots of attendance at the penultipine city hall and as well as the southwest public library because the community is not is in favor of improving improving the corridor because we need improvements we must have improvements we have a huge traffic congestion there but not in favor of the six lane and we have been working with them quite a bit on that with the community so as the last meeting the county shows an alternative which you will see later on during the presentation by public works and in the alternative they are still proposing the six lanes and also they had a traffic study to go with it and the traffic study they compare the six lanes with the four lanes but without the four lanes did not have all the improvements on the west side so it was not really an apples and apples comparison that's why the measures of effectiveness on the on the traffic study showed that the six lanes work a whole up there on the four lanes so i'm i present a letter to probably once this week which you get a copy asking uh probably words to please evaluate the four lane alternative including improvements to the notes to the intersections because uh the deficiencies that we have on the corridor are at intersections not on the main lanes but they are at intersections the biggest one is flamingo and uh and cheridan uh even the improvements that we can physically or feasibly make are not sufficient for the traffic demand that corridor has so it will always be about neck whether we put six lanes or we put four lanes that bottleneck will stay there we can put triple left it involves going over uh weatherways more environmental impacts uh flyovers which will be very expensive but we but if we just want to do the improvements that we can do right now with the monies that we have uh then the four lanes will just work fine if you just do the math four lanes times the 40 percent of green light uh i mean two lanes times the uh i mean three lanes times the 40 percent is a whole lot less than the two lanes at full capacity so uh the two lanes will work just fine however we are asking also for the county to consider adding dual lefts on northwest 146 and northwest 136 that way you get more green light for the main corridor and you get less delays on the skews uh in essence uh this this alternative will provide less impacts or has less impact on the community for both air quality and noise and it lowers the project cost because you don't need to go six lanes it also will be shorter duration to build because you don't have to focus on doing the major improvements throughout the corridor you only focus on the intersections and you only need the payment we have on the rest of the of the corridor so uh you know well i really want to thank you for considering this alternative and uh you know i think if you have any questions i'll be glad to answer uh one last thing i want to acknowledge that this is not an action item in your agenda it's just an update and that's what i wanted to give you was just an update of where we are in the conversations with the county in my point of view and i would like to continue those conversations by them doing an analysis of this alternative on the traffic modes i really want to thank you for the time if you have any questions you're welcome thank you thank you for the update anyone has any questions i mean you're going to stay during the presentation right excuse me you're going to stay i mean he's yeah i'll stay i'll stay i'll stay during the presentation after the presentation too i'll be glad to okay address any questions after i have i have i have a question um this letter is dated the 23rd but have you been in discussions with the the county about this prior or for the last two years for the last two years yeah all right but it appears and it was made very clear to us at the meeting at the public library where they told us the decision has been made this project is a six lanes so it looks like the negotiations coming from the county was already in the preconceived answer that this is a six lanes project while we at the community we're still trying to see if the four lanes is a viable alternative so that's i think the biggest so have any of yours during any of these conversations have you been successful in getting any changes made or are these things still no by far we made huge changes if you remember you were here i think two years ago if you remember the project limits were only from 146 to 125th thanks to you the project has been expanded to go east of flamingo thanks to you the project not only it's not only six lane widening now it addresses the bottleneck of flamingo road so the flamingo road intercession is being approved that was a huge win and it could have been done unless you guys intervene at that meeting at that meeting you gave the direction public works to talk to us when we met with public works they saw the need and they thankfully added that to the project so now we have come a long ways from the beginning the conversation i guess the last question before we hear the other side of the story yeah is are these recommendations cost savings or are these recommendations going to cost more if they were implemented it depends how it's approaching the negotiations the widening on 136 and 146 require right away that right away belongs to the penal falls hoa master board and not on the on the master board i don't think it would cost any money just a yes or no in your yeah the answer the answer will be it's a savings huh it will be a savings okay thank you i have i have one question i see you're a pe and based on your recommendations you seem to be very understanding of how i work in the whole bit so what kind of pe are you okay um sorry i'm going to go to belong on this yeah i'm a professional engineer in the transportation field i have managed uh quite a bit of the miami day transportation miami express with authority programs i'm probably the guilty guy for raising the tolls if you want to call it but also i'm the guilty guy for miami being what it is because we increase the infrastructure quite a bit i've been a municipal traffic engineer city traffic engineer i have dealt with traffic signals traffic intersections highway widenings nodes transit studies i did the regional transportation our study for miami day brower and palm beach county 20 years ago i've been chairman of city traffic engineers association southern california so my experience is uh very extensive it's uh almost 36 years in the field and i'm very happy with that has allowed me to accomplish in my professional career well it's good to know you're just not just a citizen you're an expert huh i believe i am and that's why i'm fine because the issue on sheridan street is that if sheridan street were your typical arterial with dryways coming from businesses i would have agreed with the county recommendation all the way let's explain it because we have all this friction alone like you do on pines boulevard but if you drive with sheridan in this segment there are no dryways there are only one intercession at 136 you have 1.8 miles of unimpeded no friction at all corridor it's almost like a small freeway or rural highway so you don't need the six lanes the four lanes will work because our bottlenecks are flamingo road and i-75 and unless we improve those two why are we wasting the money to put the six lanes i think we'll work just fine for the next 25 30 years until we do something with flamingo and and sheridan you know if we don't improve flamingo and sheridan it's a waste of money to do the others thank you sure all right tony i believe you're up good morning again the members of the board i just want to follow up on one question that mr cooman asked earlier um we um just received there is the letter from mr vargas we have not um had the opportunity to evaluate them before but i do what i do want the board to know is that we have been working very closely with the homeowner association of the entire community and in fact the homeowner association and and mr tony's will go through and and explain what the issues with the homeowner associations are and the homeowner association has asked that we recognize them as the official representative of the entire community so with that i want to um ask mr tony's to come up and give a presentation an update on where we're at and our dealings with the homeowner association uh richard tony's again director of highway construction engineering uh thanks for having me back so i'm back for part two here and um you know like tony was saying we're going to go through some of the outreach that we've gone with the um homeowner association and in the general public too uh so pembroke road is i mean uh sherry street is basically a two-mile section um and it's it starts from i-75 to flamingo and as a point to mr vargas there he did recommend going further east we did incorporate that that was a great suggestion there we did expand the intersection which is a bottleneck which is part of our project so just want to let you know that we have looked at all input from everyone um specifically specifically from the um the hoa the hoa we feel speaks for the community so uh but we do you know hear from others that um that if they have a good point we actually see if we can include it um so we go here we're going to look at basically what we're trying to do so we're going to reduce traffic congestion um and then of course improve safety for all users so you know have the for the best pedestrians and bicycle uh bicyclists we definitely want to make sure we do that um also too we're going to restore the existing pavement if the pavement's not in good condition we're going to mill and resurface that and that that is part of the project um in that regard too we would have to include that as part of the project too even if we just did minor i mean the limited improvements that mr vargas said we'd have to expand it beyond that just because the pavement is in bad condition um there's also drainage improvements which is throughout the whole corridor and that needs to be improved too so that would actually still be part of the project um and then we get optimized like we talked for pedestrian bicycles we'd still have to provide for the for the bike for the bicycles and for the pedestrian and that still would have to be part of the project so you know it's a project would definitely expand beyond just um one segment okay so this gives you a kind of a a look of what it could look like so it's widening a sherry street from four to six lanes like we said uh install new drainage mill and resurface install a 10 foot wide uh sidewalk on the north side and then uh replace existing span wire systems and well that that's specifically at flamingo road uh so that one there we can replace the others are mast arm boat we're gonna have to relocate uh some of the polls uh for that okay actually gives you a little bit of a rendering here uh just to look what it could look like um we are going to keep the existing median which is nicely landscaped and irrigated and we you know that's important and the community did voice that opinion that they would like to keep that and we are going to do that um also as part of the landscaping too we're going to enhance a lot of landscaping in on the south side for the community um which is they they asked for and i'm going to go through some of the the um the questions and requests that the community had uh later in this presentation and okay uh so uh we're going to go through is and i'm going to go through part of it and then some of the traffic elements ming tengli is going to go from traffic engineering he's going to go through some of that uh but let me just at least start with saying that we we do appreciate the input from the community uh that was important uh you asked us to you know to do that in in in some ways you know throughout the process and we are happy to um to continue uh basically communicating with them and making sure they're they're okay with basically as some of the design that we come up with uh of course we're going to accommodate as many as the requests as we can there's some we might not be able to do uh so there is uh some concerns that came from the public meeting uh i just want to go back yeah yeah just yeah sorry yeah so there is some concerns that did come from the public meeting uh and that's the traffic data support roadway widening that was that's from the public meeting the hoa their concerns are the six concerns that you'll see as i go through that and then other agencies is about the sidewalk and multi-use path on the other side that is actually a town south-west ranchers they oppose putting a shared use path uh there we it's it's a requirement number one of the county to actually install this and actually it's the right thing to do we need to provide access for pedestrians and bicyclists so we we are including in this part of our project okay now we're going to go through the traffic elements and mainline table is good i have a question oh okay sure um regarding the beautification component um i don't know how much we're spending on that but shouldn't that be covered by the city uh okay so in every project that we have we do put a certain percentage um that it's usually no more than ten percent but usually between five and ten percent is what we do with for landscaping and irrigation and that what happens is the cities actually are required to maintain it so we beautify a county roadway but the actual maintenance of those items are not going to be done by highway and bridge maintenance it'll be thrown through an agreement with the municipalities uh so this so it it's really a cost for the city once we install it and it really it's going to provide shade for pedestrians in areas where they're going to be walking hopefully and some buffer landscaping buffer but we do include as part of every roadway project but a certain percentage you know of course we're limited but we're not spending millions no no we're not sending spending millions actually we're going to be taking trees that uh from pine island road we have some mature trees that are in another project that we're going to relocate and put it in this project so instead of just cutting them down at least some of the smaller ones we're going to be basically taking them and planting them there so uh they get the benefit of a mature tree right and we don't and and hopefully that's part of a cost savings too right i just want to make sure you know there's no no i i yeah no it's not a big it's not a big number no okay good thank you you're welcome thank you richard uh good morning i'm madame chair madame vice chair and members of sport minton the ball county traffic engineering divisions over the next couple of slides i'm going to walk you through the traffic data supporting the widening of sheridan's tree from four to six lengths but first uh let me give you uh some history uh give you some background on the history of the projects uh the widening project was first identified by ball mpo uh at generalized planning level in 2016 and the project has been subsequently included in the surtax capital plan in 2018 the county has conducted a traffic study in mid 2025 to reevaluate the traffic conditions on sheridan street and verify deficiencies and improvements to accommodate projected future traffic this uh the figures on the slides are compiled using the data uh obtained from the uh from the county study and the figures show the annual average daily traffic that is aadt from 2015 to 2025 and as well along with the projected 2045 aadts at the locations near the project terminal the labor service threshold a labor service d threshold for four lands and six stand facilities are shown on the figure as well as you can see that the historical aadt on sheridan street generally exceed the level of the threshold of level service d standard for foreign facilities and the roadway cannot accommodate the projected traffic without widening the road it is worth mentioning at this point again that the data and finding introduced today had been shared with the local homeowner associations and neighborhood groups next uh let's i have a question on the traffic data supporting the widening mr vargas are you in agreement that this road needs to be widened no okay so we have a basic first of all let me preface this by saying that i believe our challenge is making sure our surtax dollars are spent wisely uh this is a very unusual situation where we're i'm not a traffic engineer or report to be but so the basic premise as i understand you're objecting to is widening the street correct well i mean as a as a planner i'm having a little bit of difficulty because the whole premise of this is it looks like the science says it needs to be widened to help congestion work out and i don't know exactly how to approach this other than the fact that my second question was of the six you've listed 14 items here the research shows that there are six concerns of the neighborhood are those questions for tony are those six concerns of the neighborhood being addressed by your plans the yes we are addressing the six issues raised by the homeowners official okay so the six issues that were brought up yep have been addressed by the plans that you're proposing yeah yes okay and and richard will go through that in details that is not related to the correspondence we recently received from mr vargas we frankly have not had a chance to look at it yet okay thank you certainly the way peril falls is established we have a master association which is the one that the county has been dealing with in addition to that we have what we call phase associations phase one phase 4a and phase seven which are separate legal entities are right next to the project and the three phases opposed the widening opposed the things uh as a matter of fact it has caused some struggle inside the association how the master board is taking over which they have done at the meeting at the library they have said they are talking for all the residents which is not true because phases one and 4a don't feel they are being represented by the master board maybe that's an that's another issue so it will be good for the county to also meet with phase one 4a and phase seven maybe a better question would be if the plan is with the six improvements that the official improvements are made uh will that address some of your concerns uh it will address i'm trying to think about the comments they have said that they will address the 136 intersection it addresses that comment i think the other ones don't address the basic bond which is uh air quality congestion and noise congestion on uh on sheridan next levels first of all i do appreciate the public's input i've always welcomed that but i personally am being put in a very difficult position because the way this is being presented my only comment would be is maybe there needs to be one more go-round between you and and tony if but i have a difficult time not believing that the road doesn't need to be widened number one number two they have addressed the six official concerns and trying to be right now i would have to support the recommendation of staff uh i'm not trying to belittle anything you're saying and i i honestly appreciate you being here but i don't know what else to do well uh other than suggest a little more dialogue and out of that hopefully will come a little more improvements but it looks like we can't do everything for everybody all the time yeah i would agree with all your statements 100 percent uh and that's why in the letter i'm not saying this is the solution what i'm asking is for the county to look at this alternative and use the their model they have like we discussed with economic development model we also have a transportation model which they have developed which i have reviewed it and it looks like it has been properly calibrated so now if they put this uh these uh comments i made on the letter into that model then that model will show you i think that the four lanes will work just fine as the six lanes because the bottleneck is pines excuse me sheridan and flamingo and the other one is it's like picture that you have a bottle a coca-cola bottle that's this thick with a little hole in there if you make the valve bigger the little hole still there so whether you have four lanes or you have six lanes the little hole still there so the model is going to show that if we do bigger and we have the little hole the congestion will be right next to the homes the mobility the the air quality the delaying the queuing and all that stuff will be right next to the homes but if you have four lanes then you're moving the delay the queue closer to the i-75 interchange by northwest 146 where you have businesses you have uh uh car dealerships that don't necessarily get impacted by all this air quality all these impacts of people staging to go from the six lanes which is for a short period the six lanes only over i-75 west of i-75 is still four lanes east of flamingo it's still four lanes the whole thing's four lanes so the six lane segment is only along i-75 traffic comes from the freeway they need to get in order to get to the four lanes and it's easier if that traffic comes to the flamingo bottleneck only as four lanes further than six lanes that's where i'm coming from and i think the travel demand model the traffic operational model they have developed will show that so that's why i'm asking the county to please evaluate this alternative in the model and then they can come back later on and show us the measures of effectiveness i'm not recommending that i do it i'm asking them to do it because that would be you know the stuff thank you i'm it's too much detail for me to respond i have to go back to the fact that uh it appears that the road needs to be widened they've addressed the six things it's going to be an improvement and i've probably taken up too much time but i do appreciate your comments thank you madam chair i just have one clarification it appears that this the letter was written yesterday so uh i don't know whether the county has responded to these items or whether several of these items are also included in the six recommendations or what have you so there's a little confusion for me i hear that some of these things have been accepted as a part of the homeowner's association or what have you or anything you haven't responded to this period at this point tony no it's just a very quick answer to your question first we have not we just received this a couple days ago but i think i i think both um very good questions are raised and i'm not sure this is the forum for technical discussion of traffic data um so you know in all of our projects what we try to do is not know what we try to we what we do is we work with representative of communities official representatives of the community uh in most cases homeowner associations that's in charge because then we can work with them because it's best that the homeowner associations with their elected officials best represents the community in this case um we've been working with the homeowner associations for the last several months i think they have a little different setup in this case here they have a master home association and then they have sub divisions underneath that reports to the the master homeowner association so we've been working with the homeowner association which by the way um has some very qualified technical people on the board of the homeowner association one of them is a respected member that works for a governmental agencies that's very experienced with traffic data so we've been working with them um instead of this what is right what is wrong i can see the difficulty that you guys may be in what we would suggest is is that if mr vargas if he wants work through the homeowner association because the homeowner association the president personally has spent a lot of time going out to the community working with the community consolidated the commons and and gave us six concerns that the entire community had which we have been trying to which we are trying to address so that's what we've been doing and this is a perfectly appropriate case situation that mr vargas should work through his homeowner association if the homeowner association decides that this is a and something else beyond the six concern that we should be addressing we will work with the homeowner association on that uh so you know if i may the suggestion this is is that mr vargas work through the homeowner association that we've been working with anthea can i have a question i agree um go ahead uh tony so one of the other confusing parts to me is this almost looks like two different projects like the county is approaching it through a road widening project but when i see mr vargas's list everything is an intersection related is there the last part please um this list looks exclusively like intersection expansion from mr vargas where the county's approach is just roadway widening and keeping the intersection the same so why is there two different completely like um theories or methods or approaches like why i don't understand why that why there's such massive massive divergence of what the solution is i i do not know mr bogus suggestions um like i'm not clear it's in in our capacity improvement projects we typically improve intersections we always include improving intersections what along the way as part of the project i'm not clear on mr vargas suggestions yeah it seems like it needs to go back a little bit yeah yeah just let me it was always a roadway widening project it was two segments combined into one so if when it came to the cert and was in the surtax program in our 30-year plan and when it came to the this this board for approval it has always been a widening project it was never intersection project if you could go back in time and choose an intersection improvement project and put it under that category do you think that would lead to a better outcome because like no no based on the traffic analysis we actually compared it's not in this presentation between flamingo road widening it's pretty similar to which mr vargas was saying versus like intersection widening versus the whole corridor and it came out that it was from a cost-to-benefit ratio to widen whole road because as i pointed out before we still have to mill and resurfaced to a road we still have to put bike lanes there we still have to put sidewalk we sell improve the drainage now you're talking about a little bit of widening for definitely an improvement in traffic conditions so so it's been analyzed and we did present it to the community showing the two alternatives showing the time savings and showing that there was a benefit for the full widening versus intersection only okay yeah all right appreciate it all right thank you okay uh let me continue uh uh just with one more slide uh so let's take a look at uh uh simulated uh travel time reductions uh that also obtained from the traffic study that county recently completed uh for the build that is six lands and the nobio that is a foreign condition in 2045 uh as you can see in the table on the slides there are significant travel time reduction at uh various percentages especially for the westbound traffic in the am peak and the eastbound traffic in the pm peak with that i turn the floor over to richard to continue presentation thank you okay thank you uh so yeah now these are the six concerns that the pembroke falls hoa had the light spillage into residential properties it's primarily along the south side so um they're concerned about that they're also concerned about noise and and levels of increased noise based on traffic conditions uh speeding too and there's safety concerns um it definitely something that we really paid attention to and incorporated in our design that was one of the s that they they they wanted us to do is basically improve safety along the corridor access challenges that was more in line with uh 136. i think mr vargas mentioned that as part of his you know it's on his list of improvements we actually incorporated uh to add another left turn lane and to improve traffic conditions at that entranceway um air quality impacts too of course um you know there is problems with you know as more as idling cars sit there in traffic they're definitely a problem with air quality so we're going to go through that in construction impacts they wanted to make sure that we can build this as quick as possible and no impact to of course to the community as much as we can so we we're going to go through all these conditions and i'll actually go through in detail okay so in the lights village there there is lighting now that's on the south side that uh we're going to keep in place so we're not moving it any closer to the residence we're also going to put shields behind it so on the light luminaire itself to block any spillage of light into their residence um so and you know we'll upgrade it to led in that regard too so there's really no change actually it'll be an improvement of light spill so there's no increase so it actually be if anything a decrease in light spillage so that's something we already incorporated increased noise levels there so there is a slight barely detectable increase in noise now it doesn't meet the threshold for a noise wall or anything like that but there is a slight increase in noise so what we're to mitigate some of that and the community asked us to is to put uh attentive landscaping in that one area so that's where that we were talking about the landscape and where is it going is probably it that's the most probable place for us and that's where the mature trees are going so we'll put that there but also in that regard of reducing noise the new pavement uh will create will have less noise creation from it because right now it's old and it's worn and you you definitely get increased noise with older pavements so you'll have that so for the most part the noise um should be at a minimum a barely deceptible from you know basically from a resident there and plus we would also say that we be able to decrease the noise level okay speeding okay so this is an issue too um in that whole area and um we you know it's 45 miles an hour it's posted now there now but uh we're trying to calm down the traffic to at least abide by the speed limit because it seems like the you know the 45 is is is not what they're going they're going of course increasing beyond that so we're going to do uh some counter measures which include speed radar signage some feedback signage we also we're going to actually change a little bit of the curvatures and some of the curves it's the rose curve site and we're going to tighten it up a little bit so it's more uncomfortable for them to make that turn so hopefully slow that down and we're looking at some maybe texture pavement at the intersections and and other counter measures as we go forward but the really the primary uh thing that would actually really create um a nice safety improvement for them is the curb and gutter so the air and vehicles that are going there and lose control this will this will actually redirect them into the roadway and actually protects it's like a little bit of an increased barrier right now it's just it's basically asphalt to a swale area so there's really nothing in the way of a vehicle from continuing uh towards the residents okay access challenges yeah i just talked about that that's 136 and general street and that was was mr vargas had in his one of his points there and we were including that that's actually uh something that should be done the hoa did ask for that and um we thought it was a great idea so we incorporated on design air quality and impact so as i mentioned before uh we did uh you do have an issue with that when you have idling vehicles and we actually um went through with a consultant that has more expertise than us you know internally and in uh in highway construction engineering as far as as far as modeling and figure out what type of air quality uh improvement that we can get in and they they went through the actual what's done by epa there's a simulator that they worked through and then the analysis came out that it was 30 reduction so you know so it's that we thought that was a great benefit for the community and the construction impacts as we said before that um we're still in the design phase we're about 60 percent done right now uh we're going to start to um incorporate some of the ammo the the mates of traffic and the shifts and trying to see if we can create a less of an impact and maybe where the contractor doesn't open up the whole roadway for two miles where we can keep you know so it's not like you know they start one area and there's no activity you know a mile down the road so we're going to try to see what we can do to to basically limit the work areas but still have to move pretty quickly through the construction and um this is the issue that we have from the townhouse with ranches um definitely they they had some concerns about having a sure use path on the north side they didn't think it was needed we we number one absolutely think it's needed and number two more importantly it's required so we we're gonna it's incorporated in our project and and uh we you know we we understand their concerns but we need to incorporate it and pretty much like i said designs around 60 still progressing pretty well by the end of this year we should have design complete um and then the summer of 2027 construction and we're going to continue just so you know we have meetings that we'll be scheduling up next month with the with the pembroke falls board to go over some of our designs before they get complete to make sure at that point they're comfortable with that we address their concerns not just say hey we'll do it and just trust us no we're going to actually have a meeting at our office here to go over it with them i have a question uh on your second and the third page of our handout there's a plan of the roadway going i'm assuming from east to west with the left side of the sheet keep going the the plan this the cross section oh right here that plan with a section north is to the up on the sheet right right correct on the section where is east to west on it it's a pointing east so yeah because if you notice on the north side of the roadway is no housing cool on this section here is that the left side the left side yeah so if you go to the next because i guess they're also asking they were asking for okay so so the south yeah right on the right side if you see that that's the south side that's the pembroke fall side yeah they were asking for a bike path to be at it looks like on the south side and eliminate the one on the north which makes i like the one on the south but i don't know why you would want to eliminate one on the north where i would think most people would want to ride their bike anyway simply because of how it's located but my i guess my point would be for mr vargas i think he needs to go to the hoa meetings because i can't expect anybody to to build consensus with every individual citizen so my comment to mr vargas i appreciate him here but i would suggest you spend more time with the hoa people because i don't know how to react to other than it looks like they've addressed everything they possibly can without going to every individual who lives on the street uh thank you mr krumman uh just to clarify i was the president of the master board hoa back in 2019 2020. during my tenure there uh i saw uh addison h back then trying to do some studies so that's when we just got into our radar that's when we approached the city of penopines and we opposed it we opposed the project so this has a long history uh then in fairness to my family i decided not to be on the chair of the master board anymore so i remain as a director in my face phase one which is the one that's right next to sheridan and phase four eight and phase seven are both our hoas that are next to sheridan uh unfortunately the chair of the current master board is way north of where the impacts are and uh and i wish you could see the videotapes of the town hall at uh city hall and the town hall at southwest ranches where the residents were invited i would probably say that 90 percent of the residents or 95 percent of the residents were speaking the way they really feel and the chair of the master board was booed because he wasn't really representing the feelings of the people so the uh i agree with what you're saying and i'm going to go back to my community and this is a videotape it will be a public record and i want our residents to see how damage how much damage is the master board of the hoa really doing because he's they are not representing the people we had a petition signed we had 1100 petitions that we gave it to the brower county board personally 1100 petitions signed by the residents of perron falls against the six lane so it is uh and mr torres can verify this at the meeting at the library the people don't want the six lanes because they understand that the issue is uh flamingo and sheridan and the issue on the north side sidewalk that was another example that was presented as a sidewalk not necessarily as a bikeway only but that issue and this was from southwest ranchers but the people in perron falls also agree that doesn't make sense who is going to walk 1.8 miles in the sun to go from flamingo to the lows there's no other place to go there are no destinations in between so it doesn't make any sense and there are standards on how to wait mr vargas um you are the one resident that has been coming here representing the voices of all of the residents of the falls um i think it's a good idea to try to build some collaboration with the hoa or get some of the other neighbors to come in and speak because we're getting one perspective and it's hard for us to make a decision just based on your voice alone but we're getting contradictions i tried to do that but i was requested uh by staff that the the room is not big enough to bring the people that we have well more than one you can bring at least five or ten we have a lot of npcs we i can bring 300 people easy okay because that's how many people maybe a thousand i'm just saying i think in order to expedite some of what you are trying to accomplish it makes sense for you to build some coalition around your ideas or concepts so you can have a stronger voice sure uh you know to be fair because i don't want to bring the 300 people because we don't have the room but i'll ask phases one four eight and seven for their boards or their representatives to be here okay because you need to hear from them not just from two individuals on the matter so let me just suggest that again not this is not the environment right this is not where did you that's why i didn't bring them and it should be done in the community meetings where the other hoas are present and not here this is an update on a project that's already been deemed eligible has already received surtax funding has been part of the surtax program for several years it's appropriate for the oversight board to receive information about the project so that they can transmit recommendations about delivery or ways of trying to coordinate more with the community which you all have done multiple times very successfully but i would not suggest that this is the right forum to have individuals come to oppose the project i agree with agree with you and that's why my recommendation would be if it's possible that you ask the staff to evaluate this alternative i gave them with their model and then to present the results to the community meeting not just the hoa because the hoa is not presenting us but the community because the residents are the ones that have to hear it not from me they have to hear it from you from the from the county okay that would be my recommendation thank you thank you okay all right tony were you done all right go ahead phil i moved to accept a report of staff on the status of the project and proceed and continue to proceed forward with the development of the project there's no action item this was just a presentation and an update so thank you staff and thank you i just want to add and i i agree with doug you know we always want to hear from uh people in the community if they have concerns we want to hear about it and if there's a way that we can lend our voice of advocacy to support we want to be able to do that but again to your point uh gretchen there's a time and place um you know if if if i'm invited to attend one of those meetings and time permit i would i would be present just because i want to understand exactly what's happening and it's sometimes not always clear we definitely want to hear from our residents so thank you for coming in i think it's time for our lunch break or it's lunch time all right thank you thanks everyone uh okay Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. All right. All right. Welcome back to the second half. And our next presenter is Stuart Rimland. Thank you for being here, Stuart. Yes. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present this legislative update to the board. I appreciate the invitation. And we will get right into it. Oh, my name is Stuart Rimland. I'm legislative counsel for the county's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. We're going to do an update, talk a little about state, a little bit on federal, because I know Corey had mentioned some of this stuff earlier, and then appropriations as well. So on the budget update, I'm going to talk a little bit about current events, because even from the time this got sent out, we've gotten updates as of yesterday and today related to the state budget. So the proposed state budgets that had been discussed as of the end of March or mid-March were falling into the $113.6 and $115.1 billion range. That was the negotiations that were ongoing. We just found out basically as of today that it looks like the total budget is going to be in that $104 billion range. So you can see that's a pretty significant decrease from what we've anticipated. We don't have the details yet about essentially where that money is coming out from, but it does mean that they're anticipating a tighter budget. And so as we get those details, we'll have to figure out exactly what silos that affects and to what extent that could affect transportation in the state. So yeah, last year's budget was $115 billion, and this year's budget is anticipated to be about $104 billion. That's the total budget. So that would be a significant impact. We don't have that for sure yet. What we've received is allocations, which is general revenue allocations. And those are about $52 billion, and they've indicated that's about half of the budget. So there could be some wiggle room when we get that overall number. We don't have that detail yet. So the question I have, last year we had a budget of $114? $115.1. Okay. And then this year they're projecting it to be $9 or $10 billion less, right? Correct. Now why is it projected to be less? So the legislature has said it's due to basically reduced receipts from a tax position. So from their general revenue, the revenue that they're bringing in has decreased, and therefore they're going to need a tighter budget. I mean, but what revenues? With all the people coming in and everything is going on, I don't understand where the revenue went down. Yeah. I mean, some of this is anticipated revenues as well, but I know what they've said is the anticipated or the receipts starting at the end of last year going into the beginning of this year are lower than anticipated. And therefore, they've been talking really from the beginning of the legislative session that they're looking to be more conservative, put additional money into reserves, and to reduce the state budget. And they're required to balance their budget, right? Yes. Okay. Thanks. So we still have a lack of clarity, like I said, about the budget at this time. To give a timeline of what we've heard, so May 12th, Florida's going to have a special session on the budget. They're going to have negotiations between the 12th and the 15th, at which point they're going to come back probably around, I think they said the week of May 26th, and then hopefully have the final budget passed by May 29th. So by that point, we should know all the details of what's in the budget and we'll get more clarity starting the week of May 12th. Speaking of lack of clarity, on property taxes, there's been a lot of ongoing discussions about what the state is going to do property tax wise. Now the House passed HJR 203 during the legislative session, but the Senate did not take up a property tax cut like that. That bill, the House passed, would have a significant impact to the county, estimated north of $600 million. So what we know is that there still seems to be a strong push, definitely coming from the governor and the legislature to do something on property taxes, but there's been a lack of an agreement about what that resolution would look like. And just so the board knows, this resolution would have to get passed by 60% of both the House and the Senate. It would then go on the November ballot and have to be passed by 60% of the electorate. Could you explain what non-school property is? For sure. So for property taxes, I think generally it's about somewhere north of 60 to 70% of your property taxes is going to go towards schools. I think that's maybe dependent on the county, but I think Broward County, something north of 60%. And then the remainder is a portion that would go towards, could be local governments, cities, counties, or special taxing districts and stuff like that. So when we're talking about the elimination of non-school property taxes, you would still owe property taxes related to schools, but not related to the remainder. And this is just for homesteads as well. So it would mean for homesteads, they would not owe any non-school property taxes. So that's only passed the House, right? Correct. Yeah, so that bill is not in effect. This is the only proposed legislation on property taxes that passed either chamber during legislative session. As I said, the Senate didn't pass a similar bill. They haven't shown an appetite to pass this one, but nonetheless, it's the only one that passed one of our chambers. I wanted to set it forth and talk about what the projected impact of it was. Yes? Is it still a possibility before June 30th in the Senate to come up with an alternative legislation? Yes. So there's been ongoing discussions about a special session on property taxes where either the governor would call the legislature back or the legislature themselves would agree to come back for a special session. They could do that. They would have to make sure they do it in time to make the November ballot. And likely what would happen is we'd learn about those details as they'd come out with some agreed bill that they're actually looking to pass. But there really isn't clarity about what agreement and what specifically they're looking to do on property taxes. Thank you. Oh, one other thing I wanted to note about special sessions. So, and again, a lot of this isn't in the presentation because these are all changes that happened pretty much this week, this week and last week, end of last week. So there is a special session coming up next week on three topics on congressional redistricting, on AI regulation, and on medical freedom, which is generally related to vaccine restrictions and regulations and exemptions. So we still have yet to see the congressional maps. The legislature is waiting on the governor to submit what maps he's looking for to redistrict the congressional districts. As far as the AI bill and the medical freedom bill, there is a bill of each that passed the Senate during the regular this past legislative session. The House did not take up or pass either bill. The Senate has already announced they're going to refile those bills that passed the Senate to try to pass them again during this upcoming special session. The House has seemed to indicate they don't necessarily have an appetite to pass that legislation. So it's unclear whether those will cross the finish line. And we'll have to see if the House decides to change their tune at the upcoming session. So a federal update. Let me make sure I don't have anything else. Okay. So turning to a federal update, 11 of the 12 budget bills passed with one remaining, that is the DHS bill. And we're actually in an ongoing DHS shutdown that's approaching about 70 days. The Republicans have signaled that they are going to pass that bill through a reconciliation process. They're essentially looking to do some sort of three-year extension of funding through that process. A reconciliation bill is essentially a way for Congress to pass a bill without having to deal with the filibuster in the Senate. There's some other technical specifics to a reconciliation bill, but I try to keep it brief. So we are going to keep an eye on what's happening with that DHS funding bill and see whether it gets passed through reconciliation. That seems to be the most likely way that the final bill from this past year gets passed for government funding. Related to the upcoming 2027 budget, we're already starting those discussions, and there's going to be appropriation committee markups through the end of June. Related to transportation, housing, and urban development, they're going to have a subcommittee markup May 21st. And then June 4th, they're going to have their full committee markup and from bill to make their recommendation for the House floor. We'll then eventually take up that budget bill and we'll get more of those details as well. So this is something I do know that Corey talked about a little bit, which is the expiration of the bipartisan infrastructure law and how it relates to surface transportation reauthorization. So to keep this slide short, I'll just say that it is likely that surface reauthorization is going to happen sometime after the election, mainly for political reasons. So we'll likely see some sort of extension of the BIL and then they'll take off the entirety of surface transportation reauthorization next year. Yes. Sure. So BIL is the bipartisan infrastructure law that was passed in 2021. And it was a lot of money for infrastructure related to transportation. It's a five year bill. So now it's 2026, it's time for its expiration. And as it indicates, $650 billion was for surface transportation authorization with another $550 billion for transportation and other programs. So without some sort of significant, either a extension of the BIL or some other surface transportation program that essentially has a significant amount of funding over, over and above kind of the general recurring budgetary funding, there would be decreases to funding for transportation projects because you wouldn't be able to rely on those federal dollars at the same levels. Uh, capital, uh, talking about capital investment grants, um, especially as a, well, I'll just briefly mention what that is. I think Corey, Corey talked about this in a little more detail. Um, CIG grants are something that the county was likely, uh, going to look for as far as Broward Commuter Rail South, um, in, in competition to compete for those funds for rail. And one of the significant threats is in the president's proposed budget. I apologize, by the way, for the small font on the slide. Um, but I knew these would be shared. So you would have these details if you'd want them, um, related to CIG funding. The president's budget proposes a substantial cut. And while the president's budget is, is a non-binding proposal, nonetheless, it signals kind of where the administration's appetite is for certain programs. Um, and so we'll have to see kind of where the, the legislature and Congress lands as far as funding for CIG grants. But, um, obviously the substantial, substantial cut would mean a lot less funding for rail projects. So this is talking more about the president's proposed budget. And I'll, I'll keep this brief as well, because I know this was touched on. Um, but if we look at the top line requests, there was an increase of 6.2%, but most of the increase was for highway and freight spending and transit and rail face steep cuts. And that's really the underlying concern, um, cuts to CIG grants, as well as cup to build grants, which were formerly, uh, raised grants. Um, so that's where we stand as far as the Trump administration's proposed budget, President Trump's proposed budget. Um, one appropriation I wanted to talk about. This is an appropriation, the county, a federal appropriation the county submitted. Uh, Congressman Moskowitz, um, did submit this project for funding. Um, the county is seeking a $2.5 million, um, request for a federal appropriation. This is for the Copen's control center. Uh, it's an integrated control center, uh, which basically at the operations and maintenance project site, and it's going to be in a central hub for monitoring, dispatching, and managing transit services across the region. So what's happened at this point is we submitted this to Congressman Moskowitz. He selected this as one of his projects to submit for an appropriation, and it'll be going through the process and we'll wait to see whether it gets selected by the committee as an appropriation and at what level. So we requested it at 2.5 million. There's no guarantee that's going to be the level, but, um, we'll keep an eye on that. And that would be great to bring back some dollars to the county for a transportation related project. Okay. That concludes my, uh, brief update. Uh, if there are any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Do you, do you see that? Um, I think it was a memorandum or something issued by, I think it was Secretary Duffy about going forward, all federal funding. They wanted to focus it on, um, roads only at the expense in that bicycle and sidewalk infrastructure. If it was taken up right away, wouldn't it be prioritized? Do you remember seeing that? I, I know, I know generally that is kind of what we've been hearing from leadership, but, uh, the question is, go ahead. Yeah. No, I mean, I'll submit it to Gretchen. So Gretchen saw it. So I'll, I'll try to find it to share with the board. It's a really interesting statement. The freedom to drive. Say what? Freedom to drive. Yep. Freedom to drive. Freedom to drive. I think it would be worthwhile to understand this memorandum or what it means at the federal level to make sure that our investments locally, uh, maybe have to change percentage wise of how they're allocated. If the federal government wants to make sure everything is only for roads to make sure we're continually bolstering, uh, the other stuff. Anybody else? Yes. Yes. Okay. Go ahead. Oversimplified. What's your, based on your knowledge of what could, might happen. How does that affect Broward County? Are we looking at having to work harder for the same amount of money? Or are we looking to get less money regardless of how hard we work and lobby for it? And what's the status of our surtax projections, Gretchen, for the same time period, same up, down? When we just did our projections in March, the, what we're seeing is kind of flat, right exactly where we thought we were going to be. So the office of management and budget, as you all know, when we come to you each year with our budget, annually, we say what we think we're going to collect in surtax revenues in future years. And the 26, uh, collections look to be right around what we expected them to be in 26, um, at this point in the year. Do you have anything to add to that? I think that sums it up well. And then as far as impacts to the county from state and federal budgetary changes, property taxes would really be the cut that could most substantially obviously hit the county budget. side of that, as far as the lower state budget, there's going to be impacts, but those will likely be a little bit less direct. And, um, so it's, it's, it's like to a different degree of impact. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Stuart. Thank you so much. Okay. Next. All right. The bicycle and pedestrian project visualization, uh, proof of concept. Who do we have presenting on that? Thank you. Oh, so I'm going to introduce the, what you're looking at and just remind you why you're looking at it. Um, and then I'm going to invite the team from our innovation, uh, office to come up and talk a little, uh, more technically and specifically about how they did this. And, um, and then present the, the proof of concept to you. So over the last few oversight board meetings, we've had various discussions about what exactly are we building? So we come back, we tell you that we completed a bicycle project. We, we completed a multimodal enhancement. We completed sidewalks where there were gaps in sidewalks, uh, or we completed a, uh, a huge project that would have previously been referred to as a complete streets project. That has lots of different elements in it that are intended to create a safer, um, more comprehensive and connected approach for all modes of movement. And what we've heard from you consistently is, but we'd like to see that. We'd like to see what you built. We'd like to understand what that looks like. And we would also like to understand what the facility looked like before the Surtex came in there and made that investment. Uh, what it looks like now and what it's connecting to, because the whole idea of the program was to create connectivity. So we've spent a lot of time, um, looking at off the shelf products that we might be able to use to create these types of visualizations. We have a great team of people internal to map administration. That's also creating completed project visualizations, but in, in an effort to see what was possible. We also talked to our friends over at innovation. They have, um, you know, 3d animation and drones and Lidar and all kinds of cool stuff that we thought, well, maybe we can, we can kind of lean on that and see what's possible and bring you. A proof of concept for you to react to. And so we want to really hear from you. I know you're probably, uh, this is the wrong time to do it right after lunch, right? But we'd really like to hear from you about, is this meeting your needs before we start down the path of trying to do this type of work for, you know, 38 other projects? Um, is there something that you would, you know, prefer to see or a different way of looking at it? So with that, um, I'm going to ask, uh, Phil McChesney to come up, introduce his team and talk a little bit about their approach and how they actually created this. And then we'll show it to you. Thanks Gretchen. Good afternoon. I'm Phil McChesney, Deputy Chief Innovation Officer for, uh, Broward County. I work under Lenny Villalpondo, who's also our department director, but, uh, the Chief Innovation Officer for the county. Um, with, with this specific project, we've been working with MAP, speaking with, with Gretchen and the team and talking about different aspects of visualization. So we have a couple of things we're looking at. One, you heard, um, the utilization of 3D animation. You've seen some 3D animation projects that the team has done in the past. Uh, so for larger, larger projects and visualization that you might have multiple needs of, of communicating, especially to the public that don't necessarily understand looking at maps and what those might be entailing, but putting it in ways that they can appreciate what the before and after looks like. That's, that's a kind of a different but similar stream of effort, uh, that we're undertaking. For this, as Gretchen was talking, for these 38 projects, we wanted to be able to show something that consistently we could, um, allow the board to look at. And not like from one project to the next that it's viewed differently that you kind of be, are able to look and say, Oh, this is project one. This is project two. And that they all kind of flow sequentially. We work closely with the team. They've done a lot of visualization. And what we, um, have is a very short, um, before I show it a very short 90 second segment, just of the, um, Pompano beach project, uh, along Dixie highway and Atlantic. Uh, and, and so what we wanted to do is show a prior to, uh, to project construction. So we're looking back, um, and even though we've got drone flyovers and we've got stills and the like, we wanted to give the same visualization. So we actually utilized, uh, Google earth, looking at it from an angle. So it's sort of like, as if you're driving or flying above the roadway that you can see what it looks like at the beginning, all the way through to the end. Start point and point of the project, identifying what the changes are. And so that you can see, and then looking at the same stretch of roadway where the improvements are, as well as having static imagery that will give you kind of closeup pictures of what it is. And for each project, we want to start with kind of a placeholder template at the beginning. So you, cause otherwise you're looking at roadway after roadway after roadway. And we wanted it to be clear that the board can see this is project one. And now here we're starting project two and here's the before and here's the after. So without further explanation, if we can just show the little 90 second clip here for you. So this is kind of the cover sheet that would be in front of each one of the projects. This is a before view, as you see, looking more, this is identifying where the bike paths are afterwards. And then it's moving further along Dixie Highway before and after. And then this is showing closeups. And so you can see the bike paths in much more detail here after. Again before, and then showing where the bike paths have gone in afterwards. And then again before, and then afterwards, this might be the final stretch before. And here the bike paths aren't showing as white because in some area they're actually the dotted lines. We also included some construction photos to show the work that was actually taking place for that project. And then some end product renderings as well. And so this is a proof of concept. It's again to get impressions back from the board to say, hey, I'd like to see more of this. Or I don't understand what I'm looking at. Or I'd like it to be a closer up view. But just to understand what's going to best meet your needs. And then once we have a good idea of that, we'll make those modifications. But then begin to render for all of the other projects. Because what we envision as being is one consecutive slow video to be able to go through that could be paused anywhere along the way. But for you to be able to see all of these projects. Again, this is not the same as a 3D rendering that we would do on a major project like the Griffin Road, Sheridan Street, sorry, project. That's something different. And we would utilize our 3D artist and animator to create some renderings for that. So I have with me Michael Haneke, who's our project coordinator for this project. He worked with a small but mighty team in developing it. But we're here to hear any feedback that the board might have. Interesting. I have a question. I'm just curious to know, how are we making decisions about where we want to put bike paths? Is there a rhyme or reason for putting a bike path in one area as opposed to another? Because I know in previous years we've had conversations about it. Some bike paths are used to just enhance neighborhoods and it's more recreational and not so much just because people are really trying to get from point A to point B. I want to make sure that however we're creating this network of bike paths across the county that we have a real sense that people are going to be utilizing it. So I'm curious to know, how are you defining where these bike paths should go? Madam Chair, one of the projects that you all approved surtax funding for is the Low Stress Multimodal Mobility Master Plan. And we've talked a little bit over the years as it's progressed and actually are planning to bring back a final product later this year. And the whole point of that master plan is to look out 20 years in the future and it's been a collaborative effort with other county agencies, FDOT, the Broward MPO, obviously many, many municipalities. Lots of outreach, feedback input, public input. And the goal there is to look at what is already being planned by FDOT, by the Broward MPO, by certain cities because cities have their own master plans to do these types of multimodal enhancements, the county. And make sure that we're also taking into consideration what's happening with Primo. And so you have to overlay all of these various plans and visions that people have for the future of transportation here in Broward County. And then decide based on that information and right of way, right, and what you can actually build safely, where you want to put these bike lanes and how you can utilize other options. And I look forward to hearing from Josette Severin, who's our multimodal mobility administrator, to talk about how they make those decisions between having a bike lane that's maybe in a corridor or using a different method like a greenway or a multi-use path that's perhaps separated from the road. Yes, I remember that conversation, but I asked the question because I wanted for us to revisit it so people understand that there was a concept to it. I didn't quite remember exactly how we arrived at all of it, but it's important. You know, we're looking at this isolated situation. I wanted people to be clear that there was a system to it. And so that's why I wanted to have you speak on it. And I think for transparency, so I'm answering your specific question, which is how did this particular project and the projects that Phil and his team are visualizing come to pass? They were in the original surtax plan that went to the voters. As a follow-up to that, is the plan identified so many miles of bike paths or X. Where are we today percentage-wise in accomplishing what's shown there? And how long will it be before the system is 100% complete? Great question. We are making very good progress towards our multimodal enhancements. I think I showed you in the matrix when we brought the performance audit matrix to you in February. We were showing you exactly how many miles of sidewalk or linear feet of sidewalk or, you know, miles of bike lanes we had done. And we are making excellent progress, but those are things that the county auditor's office is going to be reporting to you independently about whether or not we're actually making significant progress towards those goals. Obviously, the things that were in the original surtax plan are the things that we're focusing on early in the program, and we're trying to make sure that we deliver on those. And then there are things that maybe we didn't anticipate. We wanted to do a master plan so there weren't necessarily projects identified back in 2018, and that's where Josette's master plan comes in. But all of that's going to be coming back to you all in, you know, every one of your meetings. All right. So I think, Ray, did you? Okay, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to say I think it's excellent. I thought you did a nice job capturing what the bike lanes and pedestrian paths would look like if you were actually on the ground. And I don't know if videos are going to be, like, the right form at the end of the day. I was kind of picturing, like, if I'm at home and want to plan a trip, I want to go to this Publix or I want to go to Las Olas with my son from my house. Is there, like, a GIS-type format where you could click through and see, like, okay, Andrew's Bridge has a protected crosswalk where I can go with a child versus, like, 7th Street has one where it's in the street. You know, the bike lanes and the street. So for our projects, could there be some kind of place where you could go to plan a trip? That's a thought. That's a good one. So I don't know from a MAP perspective if that's planned. What I can see is, and, of course, MAP has their own GIS analyst, but I also work closely with our GIS team. And so that's something that we could certainly undertake as a project to plan that out because we know about bicycling in South Florida, and, you know, you want to kind of plan your route accordingly. Great. So I'm Josette Severin. I'm the Multimodal Mobilities Project Administrator. And I actually – that was one of the visions with this project. We tested having the consultant do exactly what you're trying to say. So what they did was they built a data bike, which has cameras on either end of the bike, and it collects data while they ride. And this was modeled after the Des Moines MPO, who has partnered with Google to upload all the imagery to Google Street View. So we did a test run for that for our Southgate Greenway, and the imagery came out great. And so if we're able to move forward with doing this again, then there is an opportunity to potentially build it into Google if that's what we want to do. But check out the Des Moines MPO's data bike initiative. That one's a great example to look at. I have one more detailed question. I have some friends that ride bikes, and unfortunately there have been a lot of accidents on our Baskill Bridges because of the – whatever you want to call it, the holes aren't filled. Are you guys addressing that at all? In other words, the Baskill Bridge has got this metal grid, and if you have a small-tired bike, you're in trouble, even a medium-sized. So I don't know if anybody's identified that, but I would hope that we need to be conscious, especially if we're making this map that shows these trails. We don't want to be running people across this accident-prone bridge design. Well, I'm sure that Tony Huey and Richard Tornese and Anton, who is the director of our Highway Bridge Maintenance Division, and he was here in the room earlier, but I don't see them here now. But I know that they're monitoring, and they're always listening to what you all are saying, and I'm sure the next time you see Tony and his team, they'll have an answer for you. Yeah, I agree with all of the board. Those are all excellent. I think, yeah, this has been a focus of this board for a long time, is the bicycle connectivity and making it the best. I'm sorry, I don't know, but what is this data going to be used for? Because I would agree with Debbie, like a first-person view of the bicycle, as Justine was saying, is like the best. But what is this for? Is this to show us? It's for you. So you all, in your oversight role, this was not built for the public necessarily. Not to say that we wouldn't put it on our public dashboard, because another thing that you asked us to do is when we complete a project, have a link that people can go to to see what the completed project looks like. That's how you demonstrate that you actually did something. So we intended to use it to show you what we built at your request and then also build it into our public dashboard so that when people want to know what you say you completed it, but what does that actually mean, they can see it. And we have a team of folks over here that are listening to you, listening to your comments, taking in your feedback, working closely with Phil and his team to try to come up with different tools. Because, you know, what Debbie is suggesting is a different tool. It has a different purpose. And it would take a lot longer for us to build something like that and probably need application developers and external support. But for the purposes of what did you spend Sirtex money on, where, and what does it look like, and what does it connect to, we just want to make sure that this meets that need. Because that's the need that we were trying to address. So, okay, that makes sense. I personally would like to see way more photos. I mean, the aerials are, they're a little tough to understand, especially because there's so much going on. I mean, photos are the only way to have real context of what the change is. And by photos, you mean like more on the ground photos of like various segments of the project? Yeah, I know like a lot of our completed projects, we can't get the before photos or maybe we can only rely on Google, Google history or whatever. But, yeah, going forward, a lot of before and after photos. I mean, building a rich data set. I think this is probably known though, but I think building a really rich like photo gallery is going to be important. And I would just ask just for additional clarification because I know for myself, I don't live in this arena. And like looking at that and adding in a bike path that's this wide can be difficult. So, would you rather see more close-ups, maybe one long view, but then where it's a little easier to understand what you're looking at? Yeah. We did do some close-up. And if that's sufficient or we can do more of a zoom in to give you that as well as more photos, we can certainly work on that. I think this is probably kind of a tougher angle to see, right? I think zoomed up is probably better. I don't think we had a before of the, what it looks, a photo of the before. We had a photo of it after. Correct. The stills, the before, to your point, was somewhat difficult. But we could go back and see if we can find some out of maybe the same Google view that we're using here. Yeah. I mean, I don't think you have to, for me personally, overly focus on the aerials. I can't really tell what's happening, honestly. I just, there's so much. Well, and with this one, it's nothing's happening since, but once you show the after is when you actually will see the bike path. But even at this level, it's very narrow. And if you're not familiar with looking at a map, you don't recognize, oh, that white thing is the bike path. I get your point. That makes sense. We'll continue working on it, but thank you for your feedback. Sounds great. Thanks for doing this, giving us some perspectives to what to expect. All right. I think next we have the internal dashboard review, surtax, programmatic, and financial data tracking. Is that you, Gretchen? Well, it's all of us. It's your team. So more stuff that you've asked us to do. And at our last meeting, we showed you some, again, some prototypes. We put some screenshots of the internal dashboard up on some PowerPoint. And the feedback that we got was, no, we want to get into it. We want to see it. We want to spend more time with it. This is what we should really be doing as oversight board members. And we want to, you know, have the opportunity while we're here inside of our servers with access to this type of Power BI data. We want to look at this and talk to you about it more. So we wanted to give you adequate time and to be able not just to talk to us, but to talk to each other about whether or not, again, these tools are meeting your needs as oversight board members. Lots of questions over the last year about how are we spending the money, how total surtax revenues, where can we go to see exactly how much we've received and how much has been appropriated, and where it's going, what types of projects are we funding, and how much is going to transit versus public works versus municipalities, and how many completed projects do we have, and in what categories. So I've heard all of that. My team has heard you. And we're trying to build these tools to address your questions so that you have kind of a one-stop shop that you can go to, click a button, and we can drill into it. So what I'm going to do is just ask that the team start moving through. And we're going to go from the revenues through the budget into right now we're not going to get into expenditures because we just showed you the audit. There's a lot that you can get already. We're not trying to recreate the wheel. So if there's information in the county's budget books that are already published online or information in the audit that you just received, we're trying not to recreate that. We're trying to give you the type of information that you don't have ready access to on the web. So total surtax revenues, since the inception of the surtax program, you can kind of get a sense of, and Doug, you just asked this question, what did we think we were going to get versus what did we get? And since we get that question from you all relatively frequently, we wanted to give you a way of seeing what did the county think they were going to receive in revenues versus what they actually received. These are all audited, obviously, except for 26 that we are in right now. And lots of disclaimers, as always. That's good. Okay, you're happy with this? This is meeting your needs? Okay, wonderful. So we're going to go back to the homepage, and we're going to go into the appropriations area. Now, this gives you a sense in a very, very broad way. This is all data, okay? So it's all years, all entities that are receiving surtax. And I want to just emphasize that this is capital. We're still building operating, operations, and service. We're going to focus on capital for today and make sure we're meeting your needs there, and then we'll build out the operational side of it. So just to give you a sense of all in, if you were to look at all years, all types. Now, what if you wanted to just look at all years for transit? You could do that, and you could see the buckets for capital for transit. And if you wanted to look at public works, you'll see there are a lot more categories for public works than there are for transit in capital, because most everything that you see for public works is in a capital category. Now, with respect to municipality, if you move into the municipality area, you can see that it's very similar types of categories, because public works and the municipal projects are typically road projects. However, you will note that in the municipal bucket, there are a few transit-related projects. What are those? They're related to their community shuttle. So they're improving a bus stop or a shelter or some type of amenity that's associated with their community shuttle service. Would you like to – this is for you. Talk to me. So a question. Full-time modal enhancement is the big category here at $68 million. What is that? Okay. So you know how we were just talking during the last presentation about what we used to call complete streets? So complete streets was a category that was part of the original surtax program. And when the MPO was providing surtax services to us, they were ranking, recommending projects from the municipalities in a category called complete streets. And because we don't utilize that term anymore, that's transitioned into multimodal enhancements. And the reason that you see such an emphasis there is because it's a lot – the work mix is large. So you might have drainage, bike lane, sidewalk, resurfacing, milling and resurfacing, lighting, all in one project. So it's a multiple mixed project. So obviously the cost is going to be higher. We've had quite a few of those. One you just looked at, that Pompano 002 project that you just saw the visual of, was a $40 million project with MPO money, GEO bond – I'm sorry, FDOT money, Pompano general obligation bond money and surtax money all coming in to make that project a reality. Hollywood, their downtown, they had a huge complete streets project. So those projects just have a higher dollar value because they tend to have a lot of components to them. So they're going to be – Multimodal. Other categories. But they're not counted twice over, right? No. Okay. So a sidewalk or lighting or landscaping project is completely independent. That's correct. There's no duplication here. We have to make a lot of subjective determinations internally. We have an engineer and a planner that kind of look at everything and try to say, okay, what is the primary purpose of the project or what is the vast majority of the money going to? And if, you know, it's 80% sidewalk, then we're going to categorize it as sidewalk. Can we – and then you can click into those, I guess? Yeah. Like, can we click into bike lane? Sure. So here's the level of detail, I think, that you were asking for, Ray, at the last one, where, you know, what exactly is behind each of these? How are we categorizing things? Where are they? What is the work mix? Is it in planning? Is it in design? Is it in construction? We're trying to show you real things. What you'll notice, too, here is that you are not seeing future projects. So we are building everything that's been appropriated through 2026 first. It's not to say that we're not going to capture all of the information that's in the five-year plans that we bring to you, but those are just plans. So we're putting all of our energy and effort into making sure that we're looking at inception through 26 first. That's really good. Did you hear that, guys? It is exciting. Did you hear that? It's really good. It said Mr. McElroy. It's excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent. Okay. So that's what we want to hear. We want you to know that we are listening. We're trying to capture all of your feedback every time that you share with us that you need something in order to feel more confident doing your job. We're working on that. Is there anything with respect to this particular button that you want to see more of? Do you want to go year by year? Well, I'm interested in seeing matching dollars. If you can showcase. Going to go to the leverage button. Leveraged, yeah. Leveraged matching dollars. Oh, there is one. Oh, wow. You thought of everything. I see. That's good. So you can see that we're making incredible progress. I mean, we're only in the seventh year, and we're at over $800 million worth of leverage towards a $2.5 billion goal in a 30-year program. So I just want to say, none of that happens without our partners. None of that happens without our cities and our county agencies constantly going after every grant that they can. And that's not easy. It's time-consuming. Writing the grants is hard, but managing the grants is even harder. Tracking the match. Thank you, Nick. All the stuff that we have to do to get these grants and then manage these grants, it's a lot of work. So, yay. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. I love it. This is really good. It's really good. We need to give this a little more accolades. Yeah. The tax, the penny for tax has become a penny and a half. This is really something. It is. It really is. You know, I don't mean, this is my last opportunity to just tell you how proud I am of my team. Like, this is three people. It's amazing. You guys are so great. You guys are underpaid. You hear that, Gretchen? You guys are underpaid. I mean, you understand it's just a team of 13 people here. One person is on contract and everybody is, we're not using external resources. We're not hiring people, like, we're building this ourselves and we're doing it, like, cheaply to try to be responsible with the taxpayer dollars, but also responsive to your needs. And so, I know it means a lot to them to hear that you're impressed with it and it's meeting your needs. It is extremely impressive, yes. Let me say that for the record, this is extremely impressive. My, it's user-friendly. It's user-friendly, yes. Would you like to see the completed projects before we leave here? Yes. Okay. Well, let's go through the whole thing. Well, I love this one because it has the new project category. So, we've worked really hard with you all and your feedback. Thank you again. And all of the folks that are stakeholders in the program that have talked about, like, trying to come up with symbology that tells a better story. And when we're going out and talking to the public, doing grassroots outreach and talking to kids, you know, what picture actually makes sense to them? Like, what is telling a story? And we feel really good about the symbology that we've come up with. You're going to notice that the symbology is going to get translated onto the public dashboard also over the next couple months. Even Nathaniel says it's cool. So, and you'll also see that it's categorized by color. So, that like projects that are in a particular category are all yellow, multimodal is all green, bridge and resilience is, and drainage, and now climate resiliency with the two new projects. They'll all be, you know, in a different color. And then we have our transit because we wanted to be respectful of the branding that BCT has already implemented. So, their stuff is all in their Pantones, and we're hoping that that helps to tell the story and also visually cue you all with, like, what you're looking at. There are a couple of things that are outliers, as I know oversight board members are aware. There are airport projects that are part of the surtax program, and there are also some projects like Pat Salerno Interchange, or things that just don't kind of fit into the typical buckets that we utilize. So, we have those as in the black right now. Multiple project mixes that we just can't fit anywhere else. We have a couple of those. Sorry, Ray, you were going to ask a question? No, it's so good. So, what's our access going to be our access to this again when we're in here on the iPads? So, you're going to have unrestricted access when you're in the county. If you're in a county building and you're inside of a county server, there's no issues, because there's a lot of data that's coming through our financial system, so there are some security concerns. We are going to try to make as much of this data available publicly as everyone in our organization feels comfortable with. So, as soon as I get the okay from folks in accounting and budget and county administration, we are going to make this tool available to county administration so that they can be responsive also to commissioners. Commissioners ask a lot of the same questions you all do. We want to be responsible to our elected officials. So, this is a tool that we expect to continue iterating and building out. This is kind of, you know, the first time you are really seeing it on the built-out level, but we have to get the operations and the service and, you know, some of the other pieces of it done and added before we do that. Probably within the next few months, though. Mai, can you go to the area where she wants to be able to see which cities? There you go. No, you're good. It's all municipal projects. Access to this. Limited. Limited. So, it's primarily going to be for county administration, you all, the county commission, and then there will be pieces of it that will be publicly available, yes. Good. And would you like to see the completed projects? We haven't done that part yet. Okay. Any questions or anything you want to drill into, feel free to just let Mai know. Is this set, the 359 completed projects, the same as what we saw in the CBE? Like, do those match? So, that's a really good question. No, they don't match because there are projects that have been completed that have no CBE goals associated with them. And a lot of the transit infrastructure, like bus stops and shelters, they're very small dollar value. They wouldn't, you know, necessarily lend themselves to that. So, when OESBD shows you completed projects, it's completed projects that had a CBE goal on them, which is a smaller universe. How do we celebrate some of the accomplishments from the county with respect to the contracts and some of what we saw from Maribel earlier? Would that be something that's included but not yet ready for public view? So, we have a beautiful annual report that is one of the ways that we celebrate all of that. And I do want to just do a shout out to that team, too, because they, and our Office of Public Communications, that went to print without, like, literally two days, which is unheard of, so that you could get a copy. This is a limited run just for you, we only did 20 copies, just in case there was an error, but we wanted you to have that. These are the ways that we tell the story of the program. Obviously, Maribel does an amazing job with her whole team of celebrating the accomplishments of Office of Economic and Small Business Development. They do a lot of outreach events, some of those we do with them, some of them they do on their own, but, you know, we also share each other's social media, and we do the same thing with transit, try to make sure that we are spreading the word as widely as we can. I think it's worth noting that our Office of Public Communications at the county identified Matt Broward as one of the agencies that had the highest growth in followers on our social media platforms. So, when we are sending things out, when we are celebrating, when we are communicating about anything we're doing or many partners are doing, it's reaching a lot of people. And I don't know, Tashauna, if you want to tell me what the numbers are, because I don't remember what the growth in that was. Good afternoon, Board. I'm Tashauna Wilson, your Public Relations Manager. But, yes, I am sourcing through my emails quickly to give you the exacts, but our Facebook, as well as our Instagram accounts, were noted as the top two highest netting growth of all county agency accounts. In a social media report that was released just about two weeks ago now, starting the leading of this year. So, the Office of Public Communications gave us high praise and acknowledgement, and so I'm really proud to share that. Again, two-person team, my Public Information Specialist, who's running the audio-visuals for this meeting, Katia Bordy, she has put in the work and the time and the visuals and creativity to really highlight a topic that's not the most, we say, sexy. But making it engaging for the public and bringing it to a layman's view to bring forth a new perspective to the taxpayers, the residents, and the visitors alike of what their penny is doing in the community. So, really proud of the work, and I hope you all enjoy this fiscal year 25 print version of the annual report, a video version, is on the way, which should be shot out to you all via email. I also wanted to highlight that we also celebrate the successes of these CBEs through email newsletters. I know OESBD has the BAW, sorry, I don't know the exact spell out of the acronym, Lorena, BAW Business, the BAW Weekly Newsletter. Business Assistance Weekly, thank you. Thank you, thank you. See, exchange of praise. So, we fire off on all cylinders to make sure the public knows that's really important to us as part of our outreach and engagement plan. So, I know this may, I'm not sure how the county will react to this, but, you know, Gretchen has been serving this whole mission for quite some time. And now she's leaving, and I feel like there should actually be some page dedication, but I know you probably can't, right? Stay tuned for the map annual report video. If I could have my way. If I could have my way. Because, you know, the start of this whole penny tax oversight board and it being launched was really very taxing for you, I'm sure. And for many of us who were there in the beginning, just trying to figure out where we go. And the fact that you are leaving, to leave without some serious acknowledgement of the history of this work that you've done and the way you've led your team, that would be my wish. If we could add something. Stay tuned for the annual report video, because we are including interviews from all of our agency partners. We had Maribel. We have Corey included. We have Mr. Adam representing the Broward County and City Managers Association. I'm talking on the municipal end, as well as Monica from County Administration, former FY25, then Mayor Beam Furr, and Gretchen as our sign-off to introduce and close out the first of its kind annual report video, including interviews and a little word from all of those partner agency directors, including our own. So, you'll see here. Thank you. Great job. Excellent job. Excellent job all around. All right. I think we are at that point where... Last but not least. Last. The municipal surtax program update. Okay. We have some shy ones. I'm just trying to make sure that, you know, as we are in early stages of implementation of the Third Amendment, that you all are receiving some updates about how that's going with the 2026 formula-based allocation, as well as, you know, where we are with respect to some new components of that program. As we've shared with you before, the Third Amendment added the opportunity for municipalities to competitively, to seek surtax competitively, and then use the competitively awarded surtax to seek competitive grants and appropriations. We did have, really, 13 municipalities applied. We were able to give awards to nine of those, and most of those are under agreement at this point. We just have one municipality that has not actually received their grant award, and so we're just waiting on that. And then we have the new component of the municipal surtax program that includes microtransit. So you can see here that there were some cities that chose to add microtransit into their programs. We have quite a few cities that have decided to either defer all of their money or just a portion of their money from 26 so that they would have a little bit more in the future so that they could do a bigger, more impactful project for their communities. And if you have any specific questions, let me know. Shout out to Nathaniel and his team for all their hard work because, you know, it's not just getting all of these projects reviewed and under agreement, but still working diligently to try to get all the Cycle 1 projects that were outstanding under agreement. So a lot of work there. Thank you. All right, so I think we're at the chair report segment. And so I just wanted to kind of piggyback on some of what I was saying earlier regarding this board and its commitment over the last several years to being good stewards of tax dollars in providing vigilance and how these dollars are spent and making sure that we're asking the right question. Sometimes it's a tough question. Sometimes we're not even sure about some of the things that we're asking about, but our instincts are saying we need to question this. And that is to be applauded. It takes courage sometimes to step out and speak up for whatever it is that you feel very strongly about. So I want to start by just commending all of our board members. We've lost some since we started, and I want to acknowledge those individuals as well. But I feel really sad today that Gretchen is leaving. You have been, I feel like, a friend to all of us because we came into this business sometimes just really not knowing a whole lot about this whole world of transportation and taxing and taxation and so on and so forth. And you've schooled us. You've guided us and provided the support that we needed. And to have you leave is heartbreaking for me, and I think a lot of us. But we did not want this moment to pass without just celebrating you a little bit more. So, Roy? Gretchen, do you want me to come over there? Oh, you want to come over here? I don't know if they can hear me. I figured we could stay here and then have a picture taken. No, we want you to come over here. I'd be able to read this. I just wanted to take this moment, Gretchen, to celebrate you and to thank you publicly for your extraordinary dedication to this work. And this is just a token of our appreciation for your transformative leadership and the lasting impact that you have made on the people around you. I invite other members of the board, if you'd like to say a word, to Gretchen. Thank you. Can you join me? I know you're one of the assistants. We're taking pictures. Let's all take pictures. She's like, what did I get myself into? What did you do now? No, the new board member. You didn't get in it? Come on. Come on. You should be in it. Come on. One more. One more. This is it. You don't have Nathaniel in there. It doesn't work if you're not here, Nathaniel. Okay. It's an honor. Stay happy. Where's Roy? Come on, Roy. Thank you. Roy, Roy, Roy, Roy, Roy. Roy, like, help me. Make it stop. I just want to take this point of privilege to invite other board members to just say a few words, if you'd like. Gretchen, I have your thoughts as well. Chair, I would like just to congratulate Gretchen on such a wonderful job over this time period. And I've been here a long time, so to watch this organization evolve and to look at the way you have put everything into this electronic format is just astounding, you know? And I guess your staff just deserves the ultimate praise, you know? Yes. Congratulations. I'll go briefly. Just thank you, Gretchen. Congratulations. You've done a wonderful job putting this program in the position it's in today and making sure everything's successful. So, we'll miss you and really appreciate all the education you've given all of us. Thank you. Great. Doug? I'm going to do this under member reports. Is that okay? No. Do it now. Her bus is here. I mean, I can save my member reports for this for later? Say it now. Well, we wish you all the best. And I'm sorry you're leaving before I am. But, uh, I don't know what, you know, a few of us have been here since day one, including you. Yes. And it's been a learning experience and it will continue to be. And I understand you're happy with your replacement, if that's correct to say. And I would like, besides thanking you personally, I'd like you to say something about where you're going. Hawaii. Huh? Hawaii. All right. Well, thank you very much. And, uh, I'm not sure what we're going to do without you, but we'll learn just like we did with you. Thank you very much. Anyone else? Go ahead. Gretchen, it's going to be really difficult, you know, seeing, see that spot, you know, without you, you've been part of this organization from the beginning. You were the chief architect, you know, building a new organization, something tried for so many years, so many attempts, and finally it's happening and, you know, having that responsibility over your shoulder and just managing it and organizing it and meeting expectations, especially on top of that we went through a COVID year period, which was a challenge by itself for everybody and you did it so well with class, grace, knowledge, expertise, and discipline. Um, I wouldn't take anything away from, you know, staff, but you really, really, truly, you know, deserving, uh, if one medal to be given to anybody, a special medal is you, you know, for Broward County transportation and, and the improvements that will be in our history, you know, books for many years to come. Thanks for everything you've done for us, so, and, and also best of luck. I just want to say, Gretchen, thank you. Uh, I know I can be frustrating sometimes, and you're very impatient with me, and you keep me guided on where to keep the focus. Uh, I think the work you did was noble. I think it was intrepid when you worked in the beginning of this project that you're resilient, making it get on the ballot multiple times. Um, I have my critiques of the program, but I know overall, every single person in Broward that walks, bikes, drives, uses transit will literally and truly be benefited because of the work you did, so it's, it's honestly, truly quite the impact you're going to have, you've had, and your impact will only be magnified, so, I mean, applaud you on some seriously great work. Thank you. Thank you. Well, Gretchen, it's been a lot of years, uh, before we, you, we even knew what, uh, MAP was. Uh, I would like to thank you for always being a friend, a colleague, more importantly, a colleague. Uh, I can't say a whole lot more than what's been said around the table. You are the ultimate professional. I know it is tough in your mind to, maybe not so tough, but at least going forward from here, uh, well, thank you. That's all I can, that's really all I can say. The formation that you and management of the development of the MAP program and how we as a board would interface, uh, throughout the years, it's been exceptional, so thank you, and I'm going to miss you. You're up next. Um, I've known Gretchen the least amount of time, so I will spend the most amount of time talking about her. Um, so when I joined, uh, this program, I remember the first meeting that I had with Gretchen, and she asked me, why are you here? And I gave my usual answer, and then she goes, no, no, no, but, but why are you here? Um, she has not fulfilled my expectations of either, um, an express train from my house to the office in downtown Fort Lauderdale or the helicopter, but, uh, if there's one thing that I can say about Gretchen, it's, she epitomizes, uh, what was told as a joke by a politician in, in the 1980s, and, and for Ray, the 1980s are also known as the late 20th century, so, uh, but this was told as a joke. Um, you know, what are the nine scariest words in the English language? Um, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help. Um, those are not the nine scariest words in the English language, and Gretchen fulfilled that every single day that I've ever worked with, is she was always going out to the public, to the cities, every agency, and she epitomized the saying, I am from the government, and I am here to help, and there's nothing better that I can imagine for somebody who has taken up this line of work, so I will miss you terribly. You know, I'm not one to cry, and you guys are making me cry, and I've been trying not to get too emotional about this, because Gretchen knows that she holds a very special place in my heart. Um, I feel that over the years, we've developed somewhat of a friendship, and it's, it's the briefings that we get, and just the guidance that you continue to give. Um, I, I really want to declare, uh, Gretchen Cassini Day in Browd County. I know I'm not the commissioner, but if I could, that's what I would do, because, you know, this entire mission is historic to this community, and it's something that will last for a very long time, and your, your fingerprints are all over it. You have built a foundation that, you know, our children, children will benefit from, and if this oversight board, um, administration was not managed well, the future would look very dim, and you create a really solid foundation, and you guided all of us in helping to strengthen that foundation, and this is why this whole thing is really hard for us. Um, it's hard to see you go, but I know you're a wise woman, and so I trust that your decision is what's best for you, and so as much as we are saddened by you leaving, I want you to know that we send our love and our support with you, and we will stay in touch, my friend. I like to think of you as my friend, and, uh, we just wish you success. We wish you success in everything that you do, and you will never be forgotten, Gretchen. Thank you for all that you did for the folks in Broward County. Okay, so, would you like to say a few words? Yeah, sure. There we go. Push the face. All right. So, um, thank you for your very gracious, um, and kind words about Gretchen, um, and I apologize to have my back to those in the audience, but, um, this is a very bittersweet, um, moment that we're going to share later on to celebrate, um, and really thank Gretchen for her service, and it goes well beyond math, as you all know, and have appreciated, and seen this evolution of this amazing program, and you've all said it, she was from the very, very inception, going to the community meetings, going to the cities to educate, um, the community, um, and really has been a very steadfast voice to ensure the integrity of the intent, and where this program goes, and where it continues to go. So, she's been nothing, um, less than, and a stellar representative of this program, um, and has really completely led the group, a small and mighty group, um, uh, of the MAP team, um, and, and beyond the walls of, of that group is through all of the touch points in our county government, um, and how we interface with our municipalities, um, and the rest of the community, nonprofits, and all the like, because all of these projects do touch everybody, um, and like you said, for generations to come. Um, so, she will be sorely missed. She is the consummate professional, um, always keeps her cool, no matter what, in the face of adversity, or challenges, or, or, or disagreements with, um, individuals in the community, just sort of misunderstandings, always correcting the record to ensure that the education is there, because it is ultimately, from the county perspective, uh, so important that we are transparent, and we're communicating, and she's done that stellarly. So, I want to thank you, Gretchen, and certainly thank the board here for your acknowledgement of her tremendous service. Um, and so, we have, um, right, you know, she was here before I was, um, in the county. Um, we shared, you know, a couple offices away, uh, at different times in county administration, um, and, and her evolution to be the administrator of MAP is really, um, it just really exemplifies the leadership and the trust that we have in Gretchen and have had in Gretchen, uh, from the county perspective. So, thank you for your support of Gretchen and her leadership, uh, and, and we will, uh, miss you greatly. I've always told her, and I will tell, let's say this publicly, that yes, we have someone that she helped, uh, introduce us to, um, to come and be, um, the next MAP administrator, uh, but should her path find herself back in Broward County, we will absolutely welcome her with open arms, uh, because she is a very valued member of our family. So, thank you, Gretchen, and thank you, Oversight Board, and for the community. Thank you. Thank you, Monica. Our esteemed county administrator, thank you for being here. I really appreciate that. All right, uh, next member report. We'll just transition there. Seeing the county administrator is here, I, I have two things. You know. The first one has to do with mobility and congestion, specifically at the airport, and I think, I know that there are surtax dollars currently allocated for the connection between the port and the seaport, and I would like to bring it, at the next meeting, I'd like to have more discussion of that, because I think we need to, that's one area where I know there's money allocated, but maybe there needs to be more. I don't know, but that needs to be solved. I know it was one of your priorities, and I hope it stays that way, because I've been in and out of that airport a lot lately, and it's crazy. I know we're going to have a people mover, but getting across the FEC is, needs to be done, and we need that connection from the port and the airport, and I don't know what we can do to it, but we need to make it a priority as far as relieving congestion in this county. So that's what I'd like to talk about at the next meeting. The other thing, and maybe it's because of your departure, Gretchen, but according to Roy, it's the first time in many months and maybe a year or so that we had a hundred percent participation in the pre-agenda meetings. I challenge us all to do that in the next quarter, so we'll see how that goes, and I want to just say thank you again. You're going to be missed, and I wish you all the best, whatever it is. Whoever, wherever you're going, they're very lucky, okay? Thank you. Monica, I'm glad you're here to hear that. Awesome, and thanks for bringing up that point about 100 percent participation in the pre-board meetings. Those meetings are really invaluable because it allows us to become more informed prior to coming here, and I say this all the time. Because you've asked a question during those meetings, it doesn't mean that you cannot still ask those questions or at least some questions here because some things need to be on the record, but we also need to be mindful of everyone's time, and we also need to recognize that we have a team of employees at the county and just county administration from the commissioners down that are really intentional about supporting this work, and we need to always remember to stay collaborative in everything that we do. So I'm glad to hear that all of our members are actively participating in those meetings. Anyone else needed board member report? Any other reports? Nothing else? There's no other interest in reporting on anything? General Counsel, I think you're up next. Very briefly, but I also, since I had never seen the internal dashboard before, you all saw it today in this format. Even though it absolutely has nothing to do with the law, I just wanted to thank staff. That was probably, that is one of the most intuitive, easy to understand, creative, and just informative websites that I could have possibly, actually I couldn't possibly imagine having done it. So I just wanted to pass my own thanks along to them because that really does help tell the story and allows you to get down to the specific levels, especially with the questions that the oversight board has asked over the two years I've been here. So many of those things can be answered now with, it looks like just a handful of clicks. So I just wanted to pass that along and kudos to the team for doing that. Yes, I think that was a gift to Gretchen. They wanted her to leave knowing that you don't have to worry. We got this, we got this. But yes, excellent, excellent, of course. Tracy, you know, I didn't have you say anything. I know it was your first meeting, but about Gretchen. So just in case you wanted to say something. I just want to say thanks for having me. I'm, you know, excited to be on the board and I learned a lot from this meeting. I'm excited to hopefully add some value. And I should have said goodbye. It's nice to meet you. And I've actually known you the least amount of time. So I can keep going on and on and on. But thank you for everything for getting me started and welcoming me. Awesome. And I think our last report is from the board coordinator. Literally. So I just want to say thank you to all of you, to all of the people who have been on this board from the very beginning, who have been so patient. While I learn, I learned so much from each of you, from my colleagues, people who have gone, people who, you know, retired before me, so many people in the community that it took me to took me aside and were like, Okay, let me just explain this. So I, you know, I am so grateful for the opportunity. It's been an honor. It's a privilege to serve in a place where you were born and raised and be able to come back and feel like you did something that matters and that people appreciate it. It's very meaningful. It's very rewarding. But as you all know, none of it gets done. But by me, you know, there's a huge team of people all across this organization throughout this community. Thank you to the leadership of the county. I mean, it's impossible for me to do this job without support above me, below me, beside me, all around me. And, and I just I can't say enough about how much I care about all of you. And that's all I can say. I wish I could sing a song or something just to close us out because, but I believe, um, I think a video may just tell the story for after. Okay, we'll do that after. Anyway, so I will accept. Is there anything else? Doug, you seem like you want to say something. All the people that are left in the audience, are all of you county employees and been working together with us for all this time? Most of you. I mean, could you stand? I'm just curious. Are you all, how many people are here that are, Monica, you better stand up. Wow. Good, good, good. Wow. Wow. Well, you're, you're kind of, it's probably as sad as some of us are. All right. Sorry about that. Yes. No, no, that's, that's okay. And it's good. I'm glad, I'm glad you asked that question because we, we need to always acknowledge the team, um, at the county because we couldn't have this opportunity without all of the work that you do, um, sharing the information that you do every time we have a meeting. And I know it's a lot of work to just prepare for these meetings, you know, and so I don't take that for granted. But with that, I want to go ahead and close out this historic day, um, as far as this meeting is concerned. And to just continue to, um, I just want to thank all of our board members for their continued dedication to this work. Gretchen, I'm going to say it on the record. We love you. And with that, I'm going to ask for a motion, uh, to adjourn. Do I need a motion? No, no motion, no motion. The meeting is officially adjourned. Thank you.