to go ahead we don't have any items uh madam county attorney or mr county attorney shouldn't i don't want to get the i've got the county attorney thing right finally uh and today will we do not have any items i believe is that correct or there are no items there's a special presentation or discussion item if there's no quorum you could still just you could proceed as a sunshine meeting and but there's no reason you know there's right you don't have to do all the regional opportunity of the other actions okay we are there are people here so we're going to start with the and the and we'll give commissioner gilbert time to get here but uh we will and i know commissioner orbis had a family event so she didn't i explained to her that whether she made or not we were going to have a meeting she can review so let's start with the special presentation commissioner regalado on up thank you commissioner regalado and we're thank you thank you thank you well okay i don't want to get in trouble the uh this is eduardo sores uh i think i have to meet your brother yesterday which is good you look a lot like him uh chapter president of miami-dade county and secretary for the florida surveying and mapping society um it it's a proclamation from the commission and i'll read it so my van and white gives it over to you know but this proclamation obviously is signed uh by the chairman it's for all of us and uh signed by the mayor whereas miami-dade county's pride to honor professionals steadfast in their commitment to the safety and well-being of our residents and by the way there's been a lot of disputes in the courts about so thank god we have uh surveyors right george washington was a surveyor for those who don't know but uh professional land surveys play a critical role in the development construction and maintenance of communities by providing precise measurements and mapping that establish property boundaries and support infrastructure projects and the work of land surveyors attributes to the protection of property rights the responsible planning of land development and the safe construction of roads utilities and public facilities and modern land surveyors utilize advanced technology historical research and scientific methods to ensure the accurate documentation and measurement of land helping guide the continued growth of our municipalities and the county and national surveyors week is celebrated annually to recognize the vital work performed by land surveyors and to raise awareness of the profession's role in shaping our communities while highlighting their essential contributions to the orderly development and prosperity to the residents of miami-dade county so it is resolved by mayor daniela levine cava who is our mayor and chairman anthony rodriguez and us as the members of the county commission to declare this national surveyors week and thank you for everything you do there you go there you go i'm i'm good but congratulations here you go as i represent a district where the plots are always wrong so we're always relying on our survey we're both lawyers so don't hold it against us thank you very much on behalf of the miami-dade florida survey and mapping society chapter and miami-dade i just want to say thank you for commissioner bermudas for sponsoring the proclamation thank you uh miss regalado commissioner regalado and the county commission for approving this and the mayor uh we're extremely grateful for this and we really appreciate working with the county and everything you've done for us so now picture you go in the middle you get commissioner bookets oh yes she is more roll call just to be safe and then we'll start the sunshine meeting how's that well we'll do the pledge of allegiance also on the invocation but go ahead and we'll do a one more roll call to be safe in case the oliver is in the house and he'd like to join us mr clerk could you go ahead sure thing um commissioner gilbert commissioner regalado chairman bermudez present the members present we have we don't have a quorum okay let's all rise and we'll have an invocation of the pledge of allegiance okay uh i'm going to open up in a second uh the opportunity to be heard um a kind of i got a funny feeling that it's going to be consistent with our discussion item which is the fog regulation workshop fats oils and grease um and i want to make those comments before and then give my colleague who has taken her time to be here today the opportunity to also comment on this um so i'm going to so i'm going to invert it if you don't uh mr attorney and mr clerk i'm going to invert the process since we're having the sunshine um we've received at least my office has received and i think all of us probably have received so much uh so many emails calls concerns about this issue um and and truthfully it's it's a great concern not only because of the landlord but also uh the individuals who are leasing and opening up restaurants and properties here in miami-dade county um there's a lot of issues uh and i'm we're going to i'd rather our purpose here is to hear from you because uh i know it's tough to get out here at 10 o'clock in the morning on a thursday with south florida traffic which is another issue we have but i thank you so much for taking the time because i've heard some businesses that i don't know why they would even need a grease trap but we're having to get grease traps uh landlords malls that have trouble with kiosk and businesses that are trying to open within the malls um so i think we need to take a hard look at the criteria we're using to determine which restaurants and food establishments need to deal with fog regulations for example if a business only bottles honey bottles local honey i don't understand you know the process why they would need a hundred thousand dollar grease trap smoothies etc uh look and i and i i'm gonna let her speak for herself in a second but i'm sure commissioner regalado shares the same sentiment we are here to make life easier for our residents and our business in miami-dade county there is no county without our residents and our businesses and prior i know there's a consent decree and i've talked to roy and i really appreciate director coley's open-minded approach to this process because we do have a consent decree but that doesn't mean that certain things can't be amended in that consent decree and that there's not room in there to maybe do things to make it better our businesses and our residents are our customers um before we go to the you know epa the fdp um there are things we can obviously improve and talk about um one of the issues that there may be some immediate immediate and we'll talk about that also as we go along because this process is not uh any it's not something we want to finish today you know that we have a report that will come back in 60 days and hopefully we'll have legislation at that point i know your problems are immediate we're trying to do whatever we can as quickly as possible i want to thank many sid back there from the administration also former mayor of miami lakes for also helping us uh move forward on this issue um the policies and procedures also have been a problem we need to communicate better with our businesses and departments even within ourselves sometimes because everybody that knows me knows i hate silos um the only silos i like commissioner regalato was when i went to law school in notre dame they have these big corn silos because it's very nice but other than that that there don't uh so i think and there are going to be questions that we will have uh obviously at least i will have i i'm assuming commissioner regalato will have also um but we're going to have this meeting because you're here and we want to hear from you this to me is an example of an issue that needs to be dealt with to improve miami-dade county not only uh like i said before for our businesses but also for our residents and i'm going to tell you i personally know of some businesses that have said i'd rather go to broward and that can't happen you know so we need to at least from i believe my colleague shares his sentiment and most of our colleagues do uh there have been co-sponsors of this bill that are that this uh resolution that are not here that um i'm sure we can get their support but we got to start moving it and if we don't start moving um you know uh nothing will happen it'll be business as usual and at least for me i don't want business as usual commissioner regalato before we start taking public comment uh please go ahead you've got the floor thank you thank you um commissioner remuniz and thank you for having this meeting you know we we talked a little bit about this at our last meeting and i think what we need to figure out is what is the best path forward with staff um so we want to hear more about the challenges that folks have um um have encountered we'll say it that way uh i know that i've spoken um to derm and to lourdes about it and we're already kind of thinking about things that um that can be fixed immediately and then what are some temporary fixes and what are some long-term fixes uh and i'm glad that um staff is here um specifically also roy so that we can kind of walk through what our options are because i think everybody wants a resolution right one thing is to like talk about it and the other thing is like what are what are our next steps so this gives us an opportunity to really flush out those uh next steps um and i'm i'm here to to listen to what folks have to say and to work with staff so that um together we can make it easier for folks uh to do this work i think as i mentioned last time that the one size fits all may have been the solution um in response to the consent decree right but i think we're at a point where we could probably figure out a few different paths for people and i think there's been a huge investment in infrastructure um and i think this is a board that no longer i'll say it this way i'll be delicate about it this this is not a board that wants to push off infrastructure costs to businesses right i think that this is a board that is more interested in in meeting folks halfway and i think that that's the right thing i think there was a time where um the idea from the board of county commissioners was that the private sector would kind of do the heavy infrastructure lift and that's not the best right and that clearly hasn't worked out and i think in today's economy as we see more and more restaurants fail um you know there needs to be course correction so i think the timing is good and i think the placement of this administration and this board is one that is open to that change um so that we can give people an opportunity to thrive so thank you again thank you commissioner rigolato and thank you for those uh so timely words and um we are i guess technically can i call this reasonable opportunity for the public to be heard i can do it right there's no rule that says i can't we're going to do it even though it's a sunshine meeting how's that yeah it's a sunshine meeting so it's entirely in your okay perfect so let's call it there we're going to open it up and i'm going to call up uh some of you that have filled out cards um and then roy will go to you i i think somebody's from the miami-dade innovation authority is also planning on being here but they're not here yet they're stuck in miami-dade county traffic but anyways that's just a joke it's not that bad i want all my uh transit friends to be happy so we're going to call up um uh those of you who have filled out a card and if you haven't i'm going to give you an opportunity to speak also at the end of you so choose let's begin by mary alford and then we have carlos gazatua and thomas conway those are the first three good morning and thank you commissioners my name is mary alford i'm here representing the florida restaurant and lodging association um we are here in with a lot of our members hoteliers and restaurateurs obviously we appreciate and applaud the commissioners for taking a step and looking at this listening to our gripes that we've had in the past years too me specifically what i do is i help licensing i do that paperwork and even though that seems more administrative what i have found since moving down to south florida is miami-dade is a whole new ball game it is not like the rest of the state of florida and it's very different when it comes to handling with municipalities the government entities and then the state agencies too and i try to bridge those together and can meet that communication to keep it a simpler process for people to understand we do want to say thank you again for just taking the opportunity to listen to our issues and finding solutions and hope we can continue to partner with the commission on being those solutions and finding a better efficient way some of the items and the problems that we've experienced from our restaurateurs and hoteliers has specifically been i'd like to address on the changes so they're already existing and there's a change in their process whether it's just they're upgrading from beer and wine to add liquor to it or they're changing something within the system it could even be like their dba name surprisingly all those have to go back through this process with their certificate of use your gdo permit the fog review all of it has to be redone to just make sure that everyone's in compliance and again these business owners are not trying to not comply we want to be in compliance that is our goal it does get complicated though when it turns into weeks and weeks and weeks for what might be a simple upgrade a simple change or even just operating in the restaurant to make it more efficient too thank you miss alford i hope you'll continue to be a part of this process through the association absolutely so me me and mary and carlos gazatua from sergio's restaurants me and mary work a lot together and i think she highlighted some points i might go a little longer but i want to highlight that we should always look from pre-construction all the way down to existing restaurants or existing operators so one of the first things from a pre-construction perspective is transparency and that the properties for each property in the county should have a tag and we should know with that property is the grease trap compliant or not so when the county has on the website hey you're going to go into this property or or buy into it you're going to have to do certain things so transparency from a landlord tenant perspective there needs to be some kind of communication so it's not a he said she said kind of thing it should be communicated and full transparency it benefits the tenants from an infrastructure before leasing landlords understand the required upgrades and faster permitting and fewer um issues with uh the county and the restaurants the permitting process right now if a project receives a full review approval for a grease trap intercenter that approval should be automatically satisfied through the gdo permit final review we shouldn't be going back and forth it should we should eliminate any duplicity that we see on the record from that process to reduce permit delays that's one of the number one issues we have in the county is that people are terrified to go into the permit review with derm so we should improve agency efficiencies and go through this redundant review now let's talk about solutions for existing restaurants with older older grease traps we should have the county itself should have control of qualifying for variances if there's operational standards that are met there should be a variance required that if the restaurants or it shows that existing grease trap is operational that there's regular pump outs and service contracts we can also use technology there's new technology now that plasma and aeration can constantly clean the greases you don't have to even clean the grease i believe in that for six months to a year it's happening in spain it happens all over in different countries that they're doing this that they're constantly cleaning the number one issue we have in the county is that people aren't cleaning the grease traps so then we we're thinking about using solid waste spending time and energy and money taking this all the way to be broken down when we can be using restaurants as our own mini plants so that way we pull out the grease into to an oil tank the restaurant can sell that oil tank to shipping yards for biodiesel fuel it makes money for the restaurant we reduce cost for the county with less information and we get certification through the grease companies that are compliant as well as the restaurants to ensure that it's being cleaned thinking outside the box instead of just doing the same old same old finally administrative and enforcement reform before there's any major penalty there should be a technical reviewer we should be looking at the violation that's being issued we should have a technical reviewer because every property is different correct and have a plan offer to do a correction plan and in fact there's a compliance timeline and only then if there's no compliance then there should be a penalty let's this prevent unfair fines encourages compliance i'll give you an example of duplicity and violation that we just had last month fifteen hundred dollars my person who cleaned the grease trap uploaded his document that he cleaned the grease trap but guess what my office forgot to upload it i don't know many other systems that two people have to upload the same document to show compliance but i don't know why we're getting fined fifteen hundred dollars for something that was already uploaded it's just we forgot to upload so duplicity in this the system and finally the triggering of septic tanks and grease traps owners we should need to review the full compliance review of this unnecessary disruption ownership changes like someone got divorced and changed their last name but still the same owner is still the same person if it's a physical person and it's still the same we should not consider them to be a different person okay i think we all can agree on that um there's also restructuring in companies trust are changed same ownership but they're doing this for tax purposes that also is a trigger in our accounting that requires them to change the grease trap and have compliance so corporate restructuring same ownership sale business all these things should should not trigger a change and this is the same thing with septic tanks the simple message is let's provide a balanced system that provides transparency simplifying the permitting process from beginning to end encourage technology as adoption and ensure our environment continues to be compliant thank you thank you mr gazatua uh tom go ahead mr chair that's a lot can we like take up some of those because if not i heard septic tank which was it's a trigger it's a trigger that's a trigger you did you which we all agree on with the trigger yeah let's go ahead we can talk a little about it i just i mean if not i'll just be taking notes like yeah why don't we why don't we wait till everybody else comments uh okay all right there's only about six more people's i will take more notes then all right okay with the minis in terms in terms of septic tank again goes back to if we're not increasing capacity right and i can tell you there's some restaurants that are even terrified to change their roof okay change the roof they're getting hit with insurance costs because they said if i change my roof that my insurance companies require me i'm worried that i have to get a permit and then that triggers something else so these are the small things that we got you we got you we understand thank you both thomas conway good morning thomas conway um i'm a landlord a business owner um i've been involved with a lot of grease trap systems before and um you know uh fundamentally a you know it's funny like during the process the the consent decree always gets shoved down your throat the consent decree this you know over and over and over and over to the extent that i actually read it which is interesting because you know fundamentally what it says is miami county you are uh effectively you know slum lords you haven't taken care of your your sewer systems and you know if you don't get your act together we're going to take it over that's my interpretation of it and so um you know this doc this operating document got put in place and to your point commissioner regalalo uh a lot of the infrastructure burden was shifted away from the county and in in towards these small businesses which is absurd but if we're in it let's do it efficiently right so uh you know at its core at its core uh this is an engineering matter period hard stop that's it anything that's not engineering should not be a part of the equation uh uh for example purposes you have a piece of equipment you have this system you have load what's going into it and you have the capacity of it it is a simple engineering calculation that's it is the load less than the capacity if so it works it's it's it's engineering right it's nothing more than that and so why derm has evolved into you know all these other you know you know uh you know they have their finger in absolutely everything uh and if at the end of the day the objective is to keep grease out of the system out of the public system focus on the engineering you have you have demand you have capacity if your capacity is greater than your demand that's it um you know and so a you know as as my engineers and i uh draw our plans you know we have the mathematical capability to like measure this uh uh uh and we're able to solve these problems in a matter of minutes and if you know we have any questions oftentimes we call the manufacturer of the of the system they opine and it's done so what takes us 12 to 18 minutes takes the county 12 to 18 months and it makes absolutely no sense part of the the reason why it takes so long by way of example is you know uh uh somehow some way uh derm has the ability to opine on land use matters so for example uh if if two buildings that are next to each other owned by the same person under different entities wants to use a single grease trap system you have to get you have to go through a unity of title process with derm well that's interesting because at the municipal level you might have to go through a covenant and loop process so at the local at the municipal level you're going through a covenant and loop because you have two different named uh entities but at the county level you have to go through a unity of title what does that have to do with the calculation of grease going in and out absolutely nothing so if we're going to solve problems let's focus on the problem and let the other let the other departments handle what they need to handle the redundancies of review is unnecessary you have load you have capacity that's it it takes 15 minutes to figure out thank you very much and you bring up a good point time is money so i'm going to ask you guys to if you can within the three minutes uh to and i'm asking the guys behind me to run the clock felix benderski but thank you for those points come on up because if that this is that way i want to get you on the record i don't want you to you know to give it additional context it's like an electrical panel you know you have demand you have capacity there's not some mere you know magical agency that you have to like go to to figure out what it is like you submit your plans to the municipal you know agency they interface with with fpl and you're done good morning everybody i just want to thank everybody in this room right out the gate for getting us this far i know this is definitely not an easy subject to talk about and it's definitely a lot of waste of a lot of paperwork and clerical work but i really do appreciate that we're even at this point talking about it while in the last couple years everybody's been you know suffering over it so my name is felix benderski and i own fmb hospitality brokerage and i represent most of the restaurants in miami-dade county obviously you know i'm the one that watches the restaurant sign leases never make it to opening only because you know they don't know how to navigate the system they you know think they're buying a restaurant or being reassigned a restaurant when they didn't expect the grease trap situation you know everybody here knows that something needs to be done i'm not here to cry about it you know we're here to come up with some solutions so here we go first going is one of the biggest complaints i get from restaurants is the multiple offices that that's what one of the deal breakers is where you know it should be you know just one office one reviewer same thing cuts the time down tremendously the second which i think is really important um some sort of tup temporary use permit for a tco once the grease trap is installed many of the times a lot of these restaurants are waiting another six seven months to actually get that final paperwork approved now if it's being done properly with proper engineers and properly by code the tc tup tcl should definitely solve a lot of that bleeding it could save them six seven months of paying rent which i think would be huge next being you know gdo permits gdo permits are only 67 65 75 a year when i reassign leases you know first question is your gdo permit updated with that a lot of restaurants are able to reassign leases you know when they hear how much the price of that fee is you know they they're like oh that's it okay we can absolutely pay that you know if you need more money for inspectors in the city that's definitely the way to go you can double that number you can triple that number that will get you bodies of inspectors on the street third being sorry one second i used to own a grease trap cleaning company and since 2020 the dumping fees at the waste water facility have gone up 35 percent the reason why sorry i just need to take one more time the reason why a lot of the restaurants are not getting the traps cleaned as much as they should and the reason why a lot of these situations are happening is partially that if we can reduce the price on the waste water dumping the grease trap cleaning companies can pass that savings on to their customers some who are have to get it pumped every month for the smaller traps and some who are spending thousands and thousands more dollars off of their bottom line than they should right now the margins are razor thin guys we live in the greatest city and right now the message has been the last couple years that miami-dade is not open for business you know we need to show everybody why miami hospitality is the greatest city in the world and there's obviously more things that we can do we'll save it for another time but really think that there are solutions we can do something and just want to thank everybody again for getting us to the goal line thank you very much felix uh andrew platt good afternoon commissioners uh my name is andrew platt i reside at 160 30 northwest 83rd avenue i am here and i thank you guys for coming together as a board even though it's a sunshine meeting especially the county uh the the director of the team from durham wasa everybody's here and i think i've met with everybody in this room individually or in some capacity over over the last couple of years so thank you for that and i think what we need to do here right is there's this is not a one-size-fits-all approach that was put into the consent decree right so you have hyper grease producers low grease producers extreme grease producers all of these things and we know that so one of the biggest challenges that we do face in the county is certain parts of the fog program especially at the airport falls under its own rules and there's subsections within section 24 i've brought that up to different county employees and they brought it up to some of you sitting on the dais today and what we need to do is it's not a one-size-fits-all it's a one size needs to go to everyone so if you have a smoothie shop which i see there's a lot of operators or an acai bowl restaurant or even a wing restaurant you know you the systems are the same and obviously uh derm may come up and say well you know there's different capacities and different flow rates and different things but effectively it is a three-phase system so if we can take an approach that one we all can appreciate this that the wastewater part of derm or the gdo or fog program is understaffed right felix brought up increasing fees if we were able to increase the amount of reviewers or inspectors looking at this file by increasing the permit fee by 10 percent 20 percent if you took it from 100 to 160 dollars a year and there's 9 000 gdo active permits in miami-dade county that is nearly 900 000 in revenue coming into the tax basin how many reviewers or inspectors can we add to the system how many people order from uber eats the 12 cheeseburger but by the time it hits your american express it was 22 it's convenience it's time it's money i can people can appreciate we have septic issues miss uh commissioner regalato's favorite topic we have other issues that are a lot greater than us we have malls that are being fined because the mall owns the grease trap we have people who aren't pumping out because they can't afford it but at the end of the day we have to do something that works for miami-dade county and what does that mean by taking this a pragmatic approach instead of a one-size-fits-all doing a one-size-fits-your category right if i need to have a gb 75b in the ground because i'm serving acai bowls and smoothies why does another restaurant that has 40 seats with fried chicken alitas de pollo masita de puerco yuca fried this that have the same system i have to pump out and spend 350 a quarter for somebody to stick a vacuum mr gazatua talked about technology in spain and europe and south america that can aerate and basically destroy the grease before it enters our system the other thing that we need to employ is we had somebody when this consent decree was in place we had carlos uh jimenez who is now our us representative sitting as the county mayor let's employ him his team to advocate for us at the federal level in washington dc to go to the epa and say help us because miami-dade county is not different than any other county in miami-dade or in the state of florida yes we have the biscayne aquifer monroe county is part of the biscayne aquifer and they just now got new legislation into their fog or waste oil uh treatment so what we need to do is as a board create this tiered system low medium and high right go back to the low grease producers to the above ground shear makes a 99.9 efficient above ground grease trap system that is allowed in minneapolis toronto and in miami-dade county those three municipalities and cities are the ones that have the most stringent wastewater uh policies so let's take a picture out of their book let's take a page out of the airport that allows people to go above ground and let low grease producers be above ground instead of being underwater in finances thank you thank you andrew thank you very much i like that impassioned and informed which is good double eyes so uh next will be abe ing from sushi maki hey if you know your handwriting was almost as bad as mine i just want you to know that but thank you um abe ing from sushi maki and canton restaurants um been serving miami-dade county for uh over 25 years uh family started canton over 50 years ago and my point of view you know not to repeat what anybody else says is um a story from a restaurant that we had in miami dave uh and we've been open there for over 20 years um and there was a breach um that was on the side of the tank uh it was repaired um an engineer uh certified that it was holding uh water and that the grease was being trapped but the rigidity of the policy was that the tank had to be replaced so we went and tried to talk to um you know several departments and at the end of the day um we ended up had having to replace the grease trap um you know there was so much value uh destruction uh that that happened uh digging it up tens of thousands of dollars and you know what is the heroic goal is it to keep grease out of the system and uh this is a a fix that you know in my career has has has often been done as long as you can get an engineer to sign and seal that the grease trap is holding it was accepted so just i think that seems and feels like a common sense approach so existing grease traps there was no change no remodeling no adding of seats you know patio none of that was was done it was the same exact use thank you very much and those are the type of stories that bring to light the issue uh howard rafael by the way one thing howard before the individuals that have spoken on all parts of the county north south central west go ahead good morning commissioners thank you for taking up this important uh item uh specifically i saw this on on social media and it just hit me i'm like i am actually going through this right now i'm currently in the process of opening our second tropical smoothie cafe in uh cutler bay and i was really literally right in the middle of trying to figure out how do we get through this uh these this checklist of going through wasa and grease trap and and i'm wondering why is it so complicated and where's the road map so um to kind of touch on some of what has been said by felix and andrew first of all thank you so much for bringing this up and and really fighting for this but we need to have simplification is what we're looking for just as business owners from just to be pro business to get us open as quick as possible when we're dealing with our landlords and trying to figure out we have a short period of time where we have to get open before we have to start paying rent so when we get bogged down from technicalities dealing with the permitting and inspections and going back and forth it's just not clear i live in raleigh north carolina i flew in this morning just to make sure that i was here to hear so you could hear my voice as well but literally we're literally at the end opening in cutler bay and it's it's become problematic at least in trying to figure out the right ways to get things done so a clear road map would i think help all future businesses to come thank you thank you harvard thank you for taking the time to come down from raleigh is there anybody else that would like to speak at this time uh on any of these issues come on up maria good to see you your name and address likewise maria prado i am with miami international mall i'm with the simon property group um i really appreciate it uh what you're doing and what the the commission is doing and to listen to all the experts because these guys really deal with a lot of the stuff that we get to see um but i wanted to talk to you a little about the mom and pop um and how it's impacting some of the smaller businesses too um and we understand the need to have this we're not disputing the the need to be able to have this code and being able to work with the county on these things but there's some stuff that doesn't make sense to the smaller business and it's really affecting how businesses operate in miami and if they want to come to miami to do business because it's so costly with this issue of the whole derm and i'll give you two examples i have two kiosks one sells hot dog the other one was doing empanadas and they were all pre-cooked they came in they did their annual inspections requirement is that they have to install a grease trap a grease trap is running in the area that they're in for a kiosk for about 40 50 to 60 thousand dollars a business in one year cannot absorb that with a deadline of put it in place for 180 days or we're going to close you um this is this is uh and for you to understand these are businesses that have been established they've been there for years working off a two compartment sink um you know doing what is it the hot dog is doing for grease it's condiments mail you know and and it's it's become that type of issue for us um in addition to that the process that we see as far as time consuming is the inspections when they're coming onto properties like our centers like regional malls that we have communal systems that are connected 20 people you know 20 different businesses are loading their grease into our system we're cleaning it when they are coming out they're giving violations to every single one of these tenants in the common area they're not talking to management or or treating malls different than they are businesses out there and um when we talk about our our process we're cleaning and we're taking responsibility for that process they're literally asking every one of our tenants to take our information our vendors are what we're doing and to submit it into the computer system or they're going to be able you know they're going to get fines and it just goes and escalates into this whole thing of layers and layers of paperwork my request has been allow us to be the point person to submit this paperwork one entry applies to everybody that's tied to this they're not able to do this is what they tell me and the thing is that we're not just one mall it's simon and we have many malls and we're doing this in many places it would save you so much time to allow us to do this because they don't have to go and spend a whole week inspecting tenants that are not cleaning their grease traps because we're responsible for it and i think that's an area that we need to look at is the efficiency of the process because we're trying to treat everybody the same um and there's no way to budge within that system because the code is the code and they're unable to change that so i leave it in your hands and hopefully you guys can think of a better way and anything that we can do to help and explain what we do and how we work with the rest of the group we appreciate it but we really do not want to put small businesses out of business they're they're the core and and we want people to come to miami and do business with us not be you know not tell us that it's so hard to open a business here especially in the food category okay thank you very much thank you maria um if there's nobody else and i'm uh commissioner regalado oh there's one come on up we got one more person that's why we're here we want to hear you good morning it's for the name and address for the record uh it's smoothie squad uh located on ufc kendall you uh ufc kendall on 88th and 107th um i'm the owner of smoothie squad a small bar located inside ufc jim kendall we focus on healthy smoothies and acai bowls our business doesn't cook food use fryers to generate grease a way traditional restaurants do mainly blend fruit ice protein powder and try our best to use plant-based ingredients because of that requiring a grease trap similar to a restaurant creates a financial heavy burden for a small business like ours we are currently on a six-month extension with durham i'm simply asking the county to consider a more reasonable solution for low grease trap businesses like ours we want to fully comply with regulations but in a way that makes sense for the type of operation we run thank you for your time consideration thank you very much okay commissioner there's nobody else i know we've got some i've got some comments but certainly i know you've been waiting and you heard the uh the magic words i can start you can start i got my notes oh you can go you can go you got you heard the magic words i knew that was going to trigger you it's true it's okay it triggers a lot of us so it's okay i'm going to talk about a lot of other things before i get to the subject tanks so so i took notes on some of the points that were that were raised i'm going to start with the easy ones and then we'll get to the ones that are a little bit more complicated but i want to thank everyone that came down and i want to thank you for bringing solutions too right because a lot of times especially when it comes to this area like all we get is complaints and no solutions so i i really want to thank everyone that spoke because i think you all came with thoughtful ideas right that we can that we can consider so i'll take up the the easy one carlos mentioned access to the information so two two ideas okay the idea of us doing like a website well first i think we all agree that there is a there's not enough information when someone goes to rent right they don't know about the grease trap unfortunately they are educated about the grease trap way late into this they've already negotiated a lease term right so we'll all agree on that now my concern you know we could house the information but i know our county attorneys are going to say that we don't want to be responsible for the veracity of that information right so we can always house information uh but we're always going to disclaim it right for and and also how do we get people to give us information um uh commissioner bermudas you and i worked on it was your it was your item and we talked about a long time creating the website so that people would put you know their financials right and we included uh hoas because obviously we have condos but then we have a lot of hoa issues in your district and in my district and then you know created the website you know everybody went through it and how do you make people comply right because it's always the bad actors that don't comply the good actors will comply the bad actors are the ones that don't comply so then are we going to fine them you know how do we extract that fine so so there's all that i'm not saying that we can't do it it just gives lord is like another thing to do and there is some issues with maintaining the veracity of that and there's always going to be like a disclaimer okay um i i looked at that when i was working at first on septic tanks and what we did is we passed on that obligation to the property appraiser so we actually brought an item that said the property appraiser has to list the um the septic tanks and the permits and the reason i did that is because people are more likely when they're leasing or buying a property to go on the property appraiser site you would have to know that there is this site for septic tanks so that you could go into an r er you know and look for it there so i believe that all these things are better on the property appraiser side right but again that creates another thing for the property appraiser to do and he i mean i know the guy well but i would have to talk to him to see if he's cool with that uh you know uh he's a great guy so i i think he'll be i think he'll be for it because that site actually gets more traction than any other site any other government site that is the site that gets the most traction so that's the place where i think you should house that information what can the board do when i dealt with this on the septic side i brought an item that required a rider so right now if you go to buy a property because we had a lot of people who were buying residential homes and the way they found out they had a septic tank is when they went to apply for a permit you know and all of a sudden they're like what do you mean i can't build there and you're like yeah you have a septic tank and that's a berm so you know um the rider was important yes there might be some disclosure somewhere inside the document but having a separate rider that they have to read and sign has really been impactful and it gives people information so i think the easiest thing we could do is a rider i don't think that that's onerous at all you know and in that rider we could specify the age of it right and and the status and the permit number so that that way when you lease a property or you buy a property at least you have some information about this infrastructure that you now have inherited right because a lot of people don't even know like where to start um so yeah so our rider so we do have a rider for this and it's but it's for lease or just for sale sale and lease okay so why aren't people getting that rider and what's what's the issue when was that when was that done the ordinance was passed in 2023 okay and um the rider's limited it doesn't require all the information you just said so you know basically it says land involved in this transaction has a fog generator it alludes it provides the code citation provides a definition of fog generator and kind of gives a a caveat that regulations do apply to it that's kind of useless i mean obviously you're buying a restaurant you know you have a fog like that's that's the state of your fog is really what you need to know right not you know not that you have one i mean okay so the county has a start right so um so i think um commissioner bermuda is we should probably amend that and provide more information that's an easy one right that's not roy doesn't give us heart heartache right it's even easier that it already exists so we have to amend that um and then the other one that that came up is the above ground so i think the above ground is a good idea i think the fact that we do it in um at the airport allows us some information right um so to staff what is our appetite for doing in limited situations on above ground and how is it that we do it at the airport and how could we kind of parlay that to other areas because we have a lot of acai bowls a lot of juicers a lot of places that they're just not they're not cooking chicharrones folks good morning commission um so to the point of above ground um fog devices those are allowed and when there is no option with respect to space the code does allow for that type of situation i think there was a couple mentions about capacity and whether the type of flow and how big um those are all things that are accounted for and a part of the design and the construction but yes what what you just said and what we see at the airport for many reasons it is allowed by code today it's great okay so yeah it makes common sense which sometimes is not too common means that if we allow it at the airport then right so right so for those types of for the folks that are here like how can they how can they do that because we've we've talked about above ground it's come up a few times why aren't they applying for it so i'm just looking behind me really quick to see okay so eddie's here and lerdas are here so yes that is something that can be it's a case by case so we gotta the we by the county side when they're looking at it at construction or whatever the input into the system is where they're evaluating these things these are things that they consider that they can consider and can apply they would just have to look at it on a on a case by case basis but it's not applied right now to the cyrus smoothie bowls right it can be i know of one particular site that can be utilized unless unless it's that they actually do have space somewhere to put it in um the the simple answer is yes it can be applied we would have to look at the specifics of that particular application i think one of the things that we could do is possibly look at legislation and i think roy will get into this a little bit later that we can actually either be flexible enough to give you guys flexibility um because truthfully you know it shouldn't be based just on space it's also on use that's my opinion you know and i think that that's the that's where this whole you know it's kind of not matching up but uh i don't see any reason why we couldn't maybe even look at and i don't talk to the attorneys but maybe look at what we can do to amend the if there is a way to do something uh legislatively that will give you the option to uh not have to interpret it as let's call let's call it give you the flexibility to be able to take this that is being done at the airport because i i don't see the difference well this goes back to the county's inherent desire to have people invest in infrastructure so if you buy a space and it has one of these systems and you have a system for like a restaurant but you're not running a restaurant the county's going to say fix that system because they want you to fix the infrastructure so i think we need to amend the rule to say that it is driven by use and not by size and that means that they could they could discard the fact that they have space for a let's say lexus of a grease trap but they only need like you know a fiat like can you just let them have a fiat right like they don't have to invest in the monstrosity and and fix it they're not going to be using it you know now that means that that space has now limited its use and future users will have to figure out what to do with that but that's like somebody else's problem so if if if i may commissioner i can give you a little bit of background and i'm going to try not to go into the rabbit hole when this fog ordinance was established and enacted it was very prescriptive very i mean if i tell you prescriptive of all the codes that i know in chapter all portions of chapter 24 this is the one that is the most prescriptive to the point of you know the amount of days i heard the magic number of six months it's written so specific and so prescriptive that it does not give staff the flexibility to allow anything else one of the things you touched upon which i technically i would say from my technical background do not disagree is that we don't have a manner to categorize um actually andrew did a great job in explaining the same model of grease trap for a smoothie shop and a another one for that generates more grease at the end of the day they're looking at the output and the code today does not read that way i believe that we can come up with those relief points in the code today to make those kind of recommendations to both the state and the federal government that we believe that we could still protect the infrastructure the county's well not just the county but all the utilities infrastructure but still provide some relief points to ensure that grease doesn't go down the system so i mean those are all good points i think this would be something that we would compile and obviously share with the administration and with the commission i got one more question for you real quick um these above ground systems do they uh do they need to is the uh epa or the florida department of environmental protection involved in any way when you have that above ground system um when you mean are they involved um how so is there any besides our uh are we interpreting that because for let's exclude the consent decree okay is there any requirement that they go to the f you know to either of these entities they do not what the consent decree did is essentially put the county on notice that we had to you know uh comply with xyz you know um uh requirements one of those requirements was to enact a fog study as a result of that fog study the ordinance was born that ordinance was was approved by both the epa and dep and really that is the only thing that they have you know to to call it anything else is the hook the code itself is where they their hands off as long as that code is in is intact if there's any change that's the only you know uh entry back is that they would have to approve those changes but the day-to-day operations and what's going on they do not get involved the only thing they get involved with and you look at it um if there is a sanitary sanitaries who are overflow caused by a fog uh break or something to that effect that's where they get involved and they find the utility you know the appropriate utility not just wasdi but the 15 other ones whoever is managing this the system okay okay thanks i uh before roy commission regalata you anything else we'll go um i have two more things and i gotta go soon but i have two more things and listen i think since this is a sunshine meeting i think you and i can work on this yeah we can yeah i think that's a that's an easy one so we'll get into the holes and all that other fun stuff um later but right now we'll just say on the record that we're we'll work together but there's two other things that were that were mentioned that i think um are important um and that is the idea of a separate section for malls so um the issue there is like if they're going to be responsible like how do we hold them responsible right so that's kind of the the idea what are your thoughts on that because that came up with simon's right come on down if it's okay yeah yeah i definitely have opinions on it um there there is something that you know she brings up a you know simon mall is actually a great example um of that systematically in our permitting system you are able to we are you can create a you know and i'm going to probably mess up the terminology but a generator and a gallo can you help me on generator and an operator that's a perfect example of a generator and operator and actually most malls work that way there is a fog system that services the entire mall and then you have individual tenants i.e a food court right every single one of them every single one of them do not have a fog system but they essentially buy into the fog system so what and i think her name was maria maria brought up is an excellent point she is absolutely right simon mall is responsible for the farm system for the for the mall and the tenants are essentially just the the the the components that fall that that go in there and you can link those permits that way and then have the operator be responsible for essentially everything and then on the regulatory side and compliance side you just make sure that all the tenants are doing exactly what they said they were going to be doing but yes that's a very good point i believe it just requires some tweaks to our current it system but it is absolutely something that makes sense so that is something that we can do without going to the consent decree because what i'm thinking is okay what can we do without the consent decree without the consent decree we can fix the rider without the consent decree we can talk about a website and without the consent decree we can fix your little technical problem over there at simon's right i'm going to say that even the code today hat keeps that um relationship it it speaks to that and allows for that so we wouldn't have to change anything i don't think okay so is this the it part we just got to figure out the it part and and obviously educate other people about it because like if you own like a strip mall right you could also do that technically technically right yes on a strip mall you could do that if they have the same type of system correct yeah so okay and then the last one which is you know um i love the idea of reuse um a little bit more complicated um but the idea of collecting the grease you know and selling it to someone and and reusing it that's a little bit more complex obviously that requires a little bit more regulation uh thoughts on that i know i saw your face i saw your face when it happened so so you may or may not know there's many types of grease um grease is a commodity in all sense you know it's funny we we talk about yellow grease and you know fritura and you know uh maduros so yellow grease is a commodity and i think many of the restaurant owners here know that it's a commodity it's collected you guys you know i'm the guy that goes to a restaurant and then takes his entire family down the alleyway to see things so i show them you see here's the yellow grease container because there's actually value it's a commodity can be reused you know there's a there's that could also be said for other types of grease i think carlos mentioned an idea that you know the late great carlos hernandez um probably contemplated one day actually he looked at me and said you know i should turn my swimming pool into a grease pool because of biodiesel you know my kids couldn't swim in it but i i understood it i think there is a concept there it's an innovative concept um does the code speak to that today no but if you turn anything into a commodity it actually fixes any problem that you know anything you can keep out of the system would but does that does that trigger the consent decree or is that something that we could do separate and apart i think i think you separate and apart and apart so i think that's something that we could do the the the code today all it really cares about is keeping the grease out of the system if you come up with another market that is a brown grease market or any kind of grease market i think that is something that is a fair game well you know how i feel about waste so i'm all in i'm all in all right so um uh man of attorney we'll we'll put a hold on that and we'll do it that one sounds like a fun one um all right um and and then obviously septic sewer i could go on for another two hours but i gotta go and do it just one quick thing and before we uh roy and commission regalado is here maybe i have no problem with co-priming it so we can work on all these things together i just want to point out um by the way lord is an eddie thank you for being here so you don't get sensitive on me thank you very much for being here uh the um the only thing i want to say and commission regalado has touched a lot of very important points i want to thank all of staff for being here um time is money you know we're both lawyers and as lawyers we know the six months can kill a small business that's just the way life is and we've got to do everything to make sure a small business survive in our community uh technology is key across the board okay and not just our own it department which i think commissioner regalado and i have commented on in the past but there's a lot that we can do uh and certainly technology as carlos mentioned that is being used in other in in in other places and uh you know one size does not fit all i think that's the other thing that's come out of this whether it's at international mall whether it's any of the assignment malls uh or whether it's in a side bowl you know and and uh listen this is a great opportunity for us to do what we should be doing which is think out of the box to make government better and to work with the community that's impacted by this the end result will still be the same okay it's still going to be environmentally we're going to protect the environment we're going to be environmentally sensitive but roy i think this gives us and to the uh staff and also to the attorneys this is a perfect example of something that that is really impacting businesses in miami-dade county and we cannot uh not be up to the task as public policy makers as administrators uh as lawyers to do the best for our community so roy i i know you by the way i thank you because you've been open to these discussions is there anything before we wrap up that you wanted to say i know we gave you a lot of information but mr chairman thank you for bringing the subject to the forefront i i would like to share with you that mayor kava has directed me to oversee a process of reviewing the consent order reviewing the code to determine you know what could be done to make it better and still protect the environment that we're supposed to be doing uh along the way of what we've done so far i can share with you some of my interpretations of the consent order and the code and what we're working towards i mean obviously yes one of our speakers said it very clearly the reason we're under a consent order is many years ago probably 30 or more it was determined miami-dade county wasn't doing a good job managing its sewer system and had too many overflows and that's the genesis of of the consent order and included in that is a requirement for fog but part of that requirement is at our south dade uh wastewater treatment plant we're going through building a fat oil and grease treatment train right now at a cost of about 50 million dollars to our rate payers that will only treat fat oil and grease it's under construction probably a year away from opening so that's one thing uh but the consent order did require the county to develop a a code and develop a a plan and the county did and it was approved by the consent order both the state and the feds now as i interpret the consent order it anticipated that the fog rules from time to time would need to be reviewed and changed based on uh practice and technology and specifically says in the consent order they do not consider changes uh in the fog to be material for the purpose of the consent order and the county is authorized to submit requests if we want to change things uh the way things are done submit information there's a there's a prescribed way for us to do that we submit that to the epa for their review uh so i know there's a system in place and we just need to identify all the things that we think we could do that would help our businesses and still protect our environment and that's exactly the charge of duty mayor cobb has given me to oversee and and we're so happy that uh that that the board here is going to help push that along with us because it's certainly going to require legislative change we can come up with the recommendations that'll be derms role but this board would have to adopt them and then we would have to submit them to um epa for their approval mr chair no i was just going to say um thank you rory and and look i think we should also tell the attorneys that um we want our staff to be able to meet in the sunshine too so that we can move it along faster right um so i think the two of us you know can do it but then they can also do it um and that way you know to the point of you know people have had enough uh i'd look forward to the the administration's um recommendations but i think these are some easy things that we could start with like i don't think we have to like wait around for a memo i think we just like get going um you know and um and i think that there's there's some there's some things here that at least can alleviate the situation um i don't like doing piecemeal stuff but in this case i think we just start start somewhere and and start moving the ball forward and give everyone a little bit of relief so um thank you again mr chair thank you i think staff is has heard that clearly and i think first of all i want to say one last thing before i thank you again uh as i understand it was the nspd is collaborating with the innovation authority on a fog challenge so to speak uh it's just it's not official yet but just want to let you know so it's to find new technologies to help our small businesses and county infrastructure so i'm sure roy when we're ready for that challenge we'll let everybody know and and uh i want to thank all of you for taking the time to be out here today i know it's not easy to be here at 10 o'clock in the morning on a weekday all the way from raleigh in some cases flying in thank you so much it is your input that leads to change and this is a perfect example of it so uh on behalf of myself commissioner regalado and i i think all of our colleagues uh we certainly and i'm sure the mayor thank you so much for uh being here and you know these you know your business is better than we do so that's why we should listen to you thank you very much have a great day have a great remainder of the week thank you