The Transportation Surtax Oversight Board held a consolidated budget workshop and regular meeting on September 5, 2025, to review FY2026 recommended budgets and five-year plans (2026–2030) for Broward County Public Works, Transportation Department, Municipal Surtax Program, and Support Services. The board also discussed proposed updates to the county administrative code and ordinance following the Third Amendment. Key presentations highlighted accomplishments, small business participation, and new initiatives. The board approved all proposed projects and expenditures as statutorily eligible, and also discussed quorum rules and the hiring of an outside auditor, reaching consensus on a majority vote requirement.
Okay, I know it's just about 9 32, and um Alan will be on his way, but we're gonna go ahead and get started. Uh good morning, everyone. So good to see so many of you here. Um I I just want to uh thank you all for your participation, and um for those of you who are here uh in person and those who are virtually um chiming in. Unlike recent years, we have um consolidated the annual budget workshop and the fiscal year 2026 budget approvals into one meeting. So it's going to be a long meeting, so we want to try to get through as much as possible um today as quickly as we can. Members, I just want to remind everyone to speak directly into your microphone for the recorder, so we can make sure we can capture your um comments verbatim. Um if you are not speaking directly into the microphone, then it means that we're gonna have to ask you to repeat yourself, which is only gonna delay um our meeting today. So just to get started, Roy, um, do we have anyone sign up for the general public for comments? Uh three uh three individuals signed up. We have three for mobility related topics. All right. So can you go ahead and call? Yeah, we'll start with uh Marco Fernandez from Pembroke Falls. Okay. Are you interested in good morning? Thanks for the opportunity to speak today. Um my name is Miguel Fernandez. I'm here representing Pembroke Falls Homeowners Association. Um the reason I'm here is we will be um impacted uh in all ways with the sharing expansion project that is uh taking place and being uh considered. I want to make sure uh we set the record in terms of we have uh we're a large community, 2,000 plus homes, uh several thousand uh residents, and even though we we are being affected, we have a group of people that are really don't like the idea there against, but we also have a group of people that are excited and would love for the project to move forward. So my my point is we would like very much to be part of the conversation, to be engaged to see how we can work together regardless of how the committee and and the department decides to move with the project that we're considered and that we can be part of any solutions or recommendations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And next we'll have uh Herbert Vargas from Pember. Thank you. Good morning, uh Madam Chair and members of the other side board. I really want to first of all I want to thank you for the work that you do. It's very important that somebody's looking over how our tax dollars are spent. My name is Herb Vargas. I live at 12507 Northwest 18th Manor in the community of Peru Falls. But I'm here more as a technical person. I'm a traffic engineer. I've been uh in in transportation for the last 34, not the last for 34 years, the last four years in real estate. But before that, I've been three or four years in the transportation business in the states of Florida, California and Texas. I've been in a traffic and transportation business in the states of Florida, California, Texas, Colorado, and many, and Virginia and so on. But I bring 34 years of experience. Um my main topic that I want to talk to you guys today is that your focus is mobility, mobility advanced program. In mobility, what we uh technical people are aware of is that we want to address the nodes, the intersections. Not necessarily the expansion of the of the links of the highway links, because the links may have plenty of capacity, but when you get to an intersection, and intersection is a bottleneck, all we're doing by building the link, well building a beer parking lot that causes more pollution more idling. Well, if you take care of the node, you make the cards go through, you reduce delays, you reduce congestion, you reduce pollution, and you save gas and all those things. So I I bring that up because of the issue of Sheridan Street. In the past, you allowed me to talk to you over the phone, and I want to thank you for that. But Sheridan Street's a good example that the priority of Sheridan Street improvement should be on the intersection of Sheridan and Flamingo. We need to take care of the node. Because if we we don't take care of the node, we don't take care of the intersection. Doesn't do us any good to add three lanes in each direction of Sheridan Street. So that issue will be it's I was hoping that by now, because we've been working on this for almost a year, year and a half uh in many ways. With the city and then with the county, that uh I was hoping that by now we will have a budget as part of the resurfacing project between 126 and 145th, because we have path holes, it's it's really about state.