Commissioner McGee, to lead us in a prayer, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If we can ask everyone to bow their heads. Heavenly Father, we come to you once again to say thank you for allowing us to see another beautiful day, and thank you for protecting our families and our friends of this great state, this great county, and this great nation. And we ask that you continuously do these things. Amen. Amen. Commissioner Regalado, can you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Madam Attorney. Morning, Mr. Chair. Morning. Now would be an appropriate time to extend the reasonable opportunity for the public to be heard. All right, so we're opening up public comments. Any public comments? Seeing no public comments. And obviously, if we have any items that come before us, the public is always welcome to speak up on the items. So seeing no public testimony comments, we will go ahead and close that off. So now we are back on the agenda. We have to set the agenda, correct? Correct. The matters on today's agenda are those listed in the official agenda, as well as the addition of item 3E in the changes memo. Item 3E authorizes the mayor to apply for Florida Inland Navigation Waterway Assistance Program grant. A motion to set the agenda is now in order. There's a motion. There's a first and a second. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, like sign. The agenda is set. Madam Attorney, we're now on the agenda. Is there anyone that wants to pull any items? 3B. Okay, with the pulling of item 3B, is there a motion? Any other motions? Yes, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would like to co-prime 3C. That's perfectly fine. Thank you. Show that done. I'm happy to move the ballot. Co-prime which item? I'm sorry. 3C. I'm happy to move the remainder of the agenda. All right. Is there a second? There's a motion and a second to move the remainder of the agenda. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, like sign. See the agenda all adopted, except for 3B that was pulled by Commissioner Bastien. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to, I have a quick question. In the item, it indicated that the solicitation was canceled because of no bid received, right? But later, it stated that the current low bidder complied with all applicable county ordinances and regulations. Is that a mistake or? Madam Commissioner, the project was put out to bid two different times and received no bids. And so the department negotiated this under the same terms as the solicitation. And I think that's what it's referring to. The department directors here, if you wanted to speak to that. But the reason why it's coming as a bid waiver is that we got no bids on two solicitations. Yeah. I just wanted to clarify because it stated that the current low bidder complied with all applicable county ordinances and regulations. And when earlier, you stated that there was no bid. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. For the clarification. Yeah. Chairman? Yes. Thank you. I actually just want to make a comment on this item. You know, I generally don't, you know, by now I'm not in favor of bid waivers generally. So when I see that, I take a closer look. And I want to make sure that as much information as possible for, you know, why this is in the best interest of us actually supporting. And, you know, after speaking with the department, I absolutely feel comfortable. However, I think that we should be putting more information in the memo so that the public is aware of some of these circumstances surrounding some of these items, such as, you know, who is this company? Have they ever done work before in the county? Well, the answers to those were yes, they have, and they have a good track record. Well, I didn't know that, and it's not in the memo or the memo that I was, you know, received. And I think it would behoove us to have for transparency more information on these memos when they have a waiver. That was just my comment. Okay. Let's go ahead and take care of this item, and let's make a motion. Maybe we can take care of this. I don't disagree with you. I think it's important on the sake of transparency because they were doing the right thing. But it's just when it comes back to us, it doesn't seem like it's very clear. I had the same questions, and we were able to get that addressed. So let's go ahead and any other questions? You move it. Commissioner Bastian moves item 3B. Commissioner McGee seconded. And all in favor say aye. All opposed like sign. See item 3B approved. Now, Commissioner Steinberg. Yes. Let's go ahead and let's make a motion. I guess the motion is just to recommend our park staff to make sure we have a little more information as it relates to these waivers. And it's not just parks. I don't want to single out parks. It's just in general. It's great to have more information when it comes to these items in the memo so that we have it. So, yeah, I'm happy to do that. Madam Attorney, how would you like us to draft that amendment, or how does that work? It doesn't appear to be an amendment, Mr. Chair. It could be a recommendation that you're giving just verbally to the departments if you're comfortable doing that, Commissioner Steinberg. You could also put in a request for legislation. I don't know which. All right. Let's just do the recommendation now. And then if we don't see that it comes back, I'm sure it won't be a problem. I see the director here. Points well taken, Commissioner. We'll follow. Mr. Chair. Yes, ma'am. Could you also clarify the question I posed in the memo also? Thank you. Perfect. I have a request, Chairman. I know that right now we have to have real good reasons to request that an item be put on the next agenda. But for item 3E, there is a cycle for the grants, and we don't want to miss the opportunity. So I request that we make a recommendation, and we'll send a memo to the Chair's office asking to please have item 3E move to the next BCC. That's fair. Is there a second? Second. There's a second. Let's see that item move to the next BCC with the memo stating the time constraint that we're under, correct? Thank you. Perfect. And with that, there are members. Oh, there's a first and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. See item move to the next BCC, and the Chairman will make that determination at that point. Members, before I do adjourn, I would like to try to call Christina White, our Director of Parks, to get an update on all the advancements that we're doing at Amelia Earhart Park, especially with the tree planting and all the projects that we, the investment that we have, about a $14 million investment that we have at the park. Good morning, Mr. Chair and Commissioners, Christina White, Prose Director, happy to be here with all of you. Yes, Mr. Chair, with Amelia Earhart being our largest regional park, we do have lots of planned improvements over the next several months. And as you say, to the tune of almost $15 million. So we are currently working on, and hopefully by the end of the summer, we'll have additional trees planted coming in through the entrance and around that beautiful lake. There's a walkway that we're planning to put in. This is something that's a little further out, but a walkway around the lake so that people who are frequent walkers throughout that park can have a better area to walk on, and also trees all throughout that. We're planning two new entrance signs. With it being a regional park, we want to make sure that it has that big, impactful signage on the way in. There's a bike and pump track that is planned, so for not just the mountain bikers, but now also the, you know, sort of an obstacle course for our skaters and bikers. The barn at the farm village is something that we're talking about. Again, that's something that's going to take a bit longer, but certainly that park is due for some improvements, and they are being planned. Thank you, Madam Director, and I appreciate the work that you're doing in the park, because we have to, the park for many years has somewhat been neglected, and I appreciate the work that we're doing now to make sure that we get this park up to par, and something that everyone in Miami-Dade County can be proud of, not just Northwest State, since it is the largest regional park. So I appreciate the work that you're doing at the park. With that, Commissioner Regalado, you have a question? Two things. First, I want to take the opportunity to mention that this weekend, Parks actually got their autism-friendly designation. So as many of you remember, we started training all of our different departments in 2021, and the Parks Department just finished theirs, and they got their designation, which I think is amazing. So I want to thank everyone for that. I'm sorry, everyone for that. It was really a wonderful event. We did it at the Autism Bike Ride, and I know that Parks has been working very hard for the designation, and I think it's really important for all of our families to know that the people that work in our Parks Department and public spaces are all trained to deal with neurodivergent adults. So that aside, the other thing that I wanted to mention is at our last meeting, we talked about the Wi-Fi, and one of the things that came up was the limitations of Article 7 and sponsorship. But since then, I did speak to our attorneys, and they said that you could have Wi-Fi be sponsored by someone, and that that would not be a violation of Article 7. So I mention this all because I think at some point we have to start talking about the budget and different solutions to cover some of these costs. And I firmly believe that Article 7 is important, but it is also hindering us from doing a lot of things to the benefit of our Parks Department. No one here is interested in selling or leasing parks, but there are sponsorship opportunities that would allow us to provide better services at our parks. And I think we need to be looking at those more closely to alleviate the issues that we have in terms of the general fund. And I feel like currently we have a very black and white kind of approach to it. We're either completely leasing for 99 years, like it's gone, you know, and we're doing something extreme, or we're doing something that is so small that it really doesn't even, you know, make a dent. And I think that there's a middle ground, but in order to get to that middle ground, we have to have policy conversations on this. And right now we've been doing it item by item, area by area, and that kind of whack-a-mole approach is not helping us because it leaves it to the commissioner of the district to either want to do this or not want to do this. And then what happens is those of us that are literally being punished for doing it, and the people who are not doing anything are taking from the general fund. So I think we need to kind of change this because, and I know that Christina and Roy, like I know that everybody gets it, but they can only do what the commissioner of the district brings to them, right? So we're in this weird place where unless we make policy determinations across the board, we're going to keep playing whack-a-mole. And I think that this is the place to at least start those conversations because right now, sitting on this dais are the three largest regional parks. You have Hallover, you have Amelia Earhart, I have Crandon. We have the three largest regional parks. So, you know, the only one that's missing is tropical, right? I mean, so, and then after that, it's Chapman, which is also in my district, right? So you start looking around and you start realizing that in terms of large parks, and I think there's a lot of things that some of us are doing that other ones could do. So I'll give you an example. At East Matheson, we were charging parking during the weekends, and, you know, we had this conversation about parking, right? So you, me, and Steinberg had this conversation about the regional parks that charge parking. Obviously, Crandon charges parking, and I'm not changing that, but I was looking at East Matheson because when I looked at the numbers, they really didn't make a lot of sense, right? So what we're doing is we're doing a farmer's market at East Matheson. And the permitting daily for that farmer's market is more than we were making from the parking. So now we're not charging the parking, but we're doing the farmer's market, and that park is doing better. So I think that there's things like that where we can kind of change some of these things and figure out what works best for that park. But there needs to be a policy determination separate and apart from the park-by-park whack-a-mole that is driven by the commissioner because a lot of these countywide assets are impacting our bottom line. And in two months, we're going to be looking at a budget, and she's going to bring us a list of stuff that we're just not going to be able to do. So really, we're running out of time to come up with different revenues for parks because we know that the general fund is not going to have the necessary funding. And I can say this, and I appreciate you bringing that up. You know, when tough times come, I think it's good for us to see these tough times because we can be innovative. In the good times, we're not. It happens to government all the time. It happens to us in our homes, too. You know, so we, and I point to the back because my chief of staff, Ida Mendez-Cartaya, we have been working on a piece of legislation to try to monetize some of our assets. How do we do it? And when you say monetize, it sounds so bad. But see how we can have. Public-private. Public-private. Public-private partnerships. You know, maybe that's better. Public-private partnerships to make sure that we can help our parks department or any other of our assets to try to have some revenues coming in. So maybe when this legislation, the chairman's office releases it, maybe I would love to be more than happy to work with you to see we continue this conversation because I agree with you. Because when you're asked to do some things and you do them and then others criticize it, then that's – we should have a general policy across – I don't disagree with you. Yeah, and I think we need to give the department directors the tools to solve some of these issues. And a lot of our policies prohibit them from having these tools. So we end up in a very vicious cycle. So I think it's something that we need to consider. And not everything works the same in every single location. So I think – but we need to give them the flexibility to be able to say, actually, this would be better for revenue and not deter access, right? So I give the example of a farmer's market because parking can deter access unless you have a park that is self-driven. So Hollover and Crandon, parking does not deter access. It is not an issue. People complain about it, but it's not – it doesn't deter access. But in other parks, you may have a deterrent. And maybe there's combinations of these things that we can do where we have activities and permits that either enhance or replace something that might be deterring access that is providing more revenue for the parks. And the Wi-Fi thing, again, I think it's just a perfect example. I think you have a great idea of providing Wi-Fi. But if she can put something out to solicit a partnership for it, then that eliminates the draw that that may have on the general fund because that could help her purchase some of the infrastructure that is needed for that connectivity. Absolutely. And when Commissioner Regolato mentions we've had conversations, we've had conversations on the dais. So I just want to make sure we put that out there. Okay. Anything else that come before the parks? Just on a nice note, I want to thank the Parks Department and Durham and everybody. We had an amazing Bonanza event this past weekend. And, you know, it was a culmination of so many different efforts. Everybody brought their A game. It was incredible. I just want to remind everybody to continue those efforts even when it's not Bonanza. Thank you. And make sure that we continue those efforts inland as well because whatever happens inland ends up in our waterway and on our beaches. So congratulations on that great job. Madam Director, congratulations. It was a great event and continue the work that we're doing to make sure that we keep our community, our beaches, and our waterways clean. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioners. Yes. So I also wanted to, I just want to add my voice to say thank you. I had a big delegation for Mass Academy. I actually, I wasn't aware that they had seven different campuses. Yes. Yes. So I was very pleased to hear that and the students who were there bright and early working very hard. It was great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Commissioners. Anything else to come before the good of the order? With that, Commissioner, I'll write a lot of moves you rise. Thank you. Thank you, members.