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Meeting Minutes - October 4 20181 Mayor’s General Obligation Bond Advisory Panel Meeting Minutes October 4, 2018 City Manager’s Large Conference Room Chairperson Karen Rivo called the meeting to order at 4:06 p.m. Attendance was taken. Mayor’s General Obligation Advisory Panel Members in attendance were as follows: Last Name First Name Present Absent Phone Not Sworn in Rivo Karen X Breslin Ray X Glottman Jack X Gross Saul X Jones Carolina X Leibowitz Debra Libbin Jerry X Malakoff Joy X Meiner Steven X Peter Marie X Ramos Margueritte X City of Miami Beach employees and City of Miami Beach residents present included: John Woodruff, Chief Financial Officer Tonya Daniels, Marketing and Communications Director Adrian Chamberlin, Aide to Mayor Gelber Claudia Rodriguez, Community Outreach Coordinator Roll Call Attendance of the Panel was taken. Everyone introduced themselves for the record. Minutes from September 6, 2018 The minutes were reviewed. Motion by: Former Commissioner Joy Malakoff. Second by: Ray Breslin. All in favor of minutes being approved. Voter Education a. Projects by Area handout b. Voter’s Guide update c. Website update d. Media plan update 2 e. Talking points handout Chairperson Karen Rivo said she had the opportunity to meet with the editorial board of the Miami Herald with Mayor Gelber and she was pleased that they recommended all 6 of the City items on the ballot. John Woodruff spoke about the handouts that were given to the Panel that are listed above. He said there are some new things available on the G.O. Bond website and he went through those on the screen, including the interactive map of projects and various project lists. He also presented the new on-line calculator and the amount of money people will be pay for the G.O. bond based on the taxable value of their property. Some examples were given to show how the calculator works. He said we should promote the calculator since it seems to be a very effective tool. The amount that property owners will pay is phase-in between now and 2030 and after that date the amount that the property owners will pay stays the same until 30 years goes by. Discussion on the website was held, for example, how many views of the website there have been. The calculator is being pushed out on social media. Jack Glottman said if the City can send him something he can send out, he is willing to share information and meet with people to educate them. John Woodruff said we have multiple things that can be sent out to groups such as neighborhood associations. Marie Peter said we need to gear towards who is in charge of the condominium, for example, and send it out through there, because we may be missing the right people. Ray Breslin said to let people know if they are in doubt everything needed to make an accurate decision is in the voter’s guide in the latest MB Magazine. Discussion was held again about the straw poll that Marie Peter did at the SOFNA meeting and the members discussed what they are hearing residents say their concerns are. The Panel suggested highlighting resiliency for residents. The Panel said we need to let the residents know that the City will be accountable for the projects and that an Oversight Committee that includes residents will oversee every part of the G.O. Bond program implementation. The Panel said points that are on the talking points handout can be extracted and sent to people. Residents still seem to be concerned that the 1999 G.O. Bond did not get completed. The Panel feels we need to still educate residents about this. Tonya Daniels said for a lot of these things we do post a lot on social media to help people understand the issues. She said the private conversations help a lot too. The one on one conversation helps residents understand better than just posting about things. It is importan t that the Panel members are out there educating residents like they have been doing. Discussion was held regarding some of the concerns that residents have been mentioning, including traffic and that the City should post on some of these things. 3 The City needs to be careful about what is posted because it could be conveyed as advocating and that is not allowed, the City is only allowed to educate people. Other entities can post on social media about certain things. Discussion was held about how to reach residents who are senior citizens. Tonya Daniels went through the list about marketing materials that we have been giving out to people and what advertisements have been put out in the Herald, trolleys, etc. She also discussed what the City has been promoting on social media. Discussion was held about reaching the seniors, the Panel members said certain people seem to have control of votes in the buildings and they need to be reached out to. Discussion was held about reaching out to the millennials group as well. Discussion was held regarding some of the neighborhood meetings that have taken place and how the attendance has been as well as the feedback. Carolina Jones thinks that North Beach is likely to vote yes on the G.O. Bond ballot items because they are desperate for services and improvements. Chairperson Karen Rivo said her goal is for these items to pass because they are great projects. Discussion was held about making a one pager to talk about the projects in the different neighborhoods instead of giving out the 57 project list. The Panel thinks it would be beneficial to separate them by neighborhoods, North Beach, Mid-Beach, and South Beach, so residents understand what they are gaining. Discussion was held about people voting for or against the G.O. Bonds and what projects will reach the heart strings of residents. Discussion was held about shifting from asking the City for help to maybe the Chamber of Commerce and some other entities that can openly advocate. Discussion was held about recruiting people to go to elementary schools for example and talk to parents who knows other parents in the school. You want to go to places where there are a lot of people present. Chairperson Karen Rivo mentioned that Commissioner Arriola asked her to co-sign a letter to the editors on behalf of the Panel. Discussion was held regarding highlighting certain things in each category of the G.O. Bond projects. The Parks and Infrastructure categories need additional focus. Chairperson Karen Rivo said she is disappointed that we have Commissioners who are speaking out against the G.O. Bond. Community Meetings Update John Woodruff, Chief Financial Officer, spoke about the community meetings and said there is one left. He thinks they have been pretty successful with the turnout. Since the meetings ended up being smaller they were able to get into all questions people wanted to ask and he thinks they have been mostly successful with giving decent answers. He found out that a lot of people just don’t understand what G.O. Bonds are, so educating has been a little bit of a challenge. He thinks having an Advisory 4 Panel member at the meeting helps a lot with the perspective of a resident instead of just having staff explain everything. He also mentioned that the Mayor has been great in trying to attend all the meetings. Marie Peter spoke about a straw poll she did with the SOFNA about the ballot items, 27 people answered. Inspector General- 89%, Use of money from Hotel- 67%, Hotel-81%, Public Safety-60%, Parks-30%, Infrastructure-41%. Discussion was held regarding the results of the poll Marie Peter did. Discussion on Parks was held. Discussion was held regarding cards put out by the groups telling people to vote yes on the ballot items. Chairperson Karen Rivo asked if it is too late to put out new information to people in regards to resiliency. She doesn’t think the message is out there that we are taking care of business. She said some of the common things she has been hearing is how can we deal with this if we haven’t dealt with stormwater, the City is not dealing with resiliency, and also how are we going to deal with traffic. Discussion was held regarding traffic and the other common things that have been t alked about by residents. Neighborhood Meetings Schedule Adrian Chamberlin, Aide to Mayor Gelber, spoke about the neighborhood meetings schedule. He mentioned that there were only a few meetings left and residents appreciated the attendance of the Mayor’s G.O. Bond Advisory Panel members to hear the perspectives. He thanked the members on behalf of the Mayor’s office. He said since there are only a few meetings left he encourages members to go because it is important for residents to hear the perspectives of the members to understand about the bonds. Discussion was held about who can attend the few last meetings and about how the past meetings went that were held. Discussion was held about how the Mayor’s Office reached out to all neighborhood associations to speak about the G.O. Bond and the other items on the ballot. Adjournment Discussion was held regarding the scheduled November 1st meeting and if the Panel would like to meet. The Panel would like to meet after the election. Motion by Ray Breslin to not have any more meetings before the election. Second by Carolina Jones. Information can be disseminated if anything comes up and members can forward to others. The Panel members agreed to have one more meeting after the election is over. Meeting date will be changed from November 1st to November 15th at 6 p.m. Meeting adjourned at 5:32 p.m.