The Climate Resilience Committee (CRC) met on June 1, 2026, to discuss greenway development incentives, sponge park initiatives, budget recommendations, and tree policy. The meeting included public comments, two major presentations, a vote on a sponge parks resolution, and planning for a budget workshop.
Now and we have to be prepared. Go to Miami.gov. Welcome to the City of Miami's Climate Resilience Committee for June 1st. We have a packed agenda, and uh the most people here that we've seen in a long time. So thank you for your attendance. All right, we'll get started with a roll call from our right. Good evening, Grant Muster. Allison Weinstock. Saray Perez. Aaron DeMeyo. Wayne Pathman, Pathman Law. Avery Chain. Thank you. Nick Atkison, City Attorney's Office. Hi, Sonia Brewbaker, Chief of Silence Officer for the City of Miami. Mayor Flores for the Office of Results Sustainability. Welcome, Nick. And um and thank you to Gigi, who is uh still here with us this evening, but has served us for a while now. So thank you so much for all your service and help. So we'll move to uh item two, which is public comment, uh which is limited to two minutes per person. If anyone here would like to make a public comment, please approach the question. Hello, good evening. Um, I'm Katrina Morris. I live in Coconut Grove. Um, and I'm asking that the CRC gets involved with the tree uh committee for chapter 17. Um some oversight would be greatly appreciated. Um I'm also really happy to to look at the the greenways and the sponge parks. Um I think these are real, you know. I think that green infrastructure at this point. Um the the verdict is in, the studies have been done. Green infrastructure is cost effective and um creates benefits for humans' mental and physical health, and um really helps in an urban environment to keep us, you know, breathing and drinking clean water and not flooding and not having runoff into our uh bay every time it rains. So I appreciate the work you're doing. Thank you, Katrina. And just one moment, we'll do another roll call for Silvio, please. Silvio Pupo Casco. Thanks. Uh good evening, Chairman, members of the board. My name is Mel Meinhardt. I live at uh on Virginia Street, but I'm here representing Friends of the Commodore Trail, which is the five and a half miles of potholes and death-defying crosswalks through Coconut Grove. But we've also been an active uh participant in the Greenways uh registration that you're going to have that you're going to hear from today. But it um we are supportive, but we want to make I'm here today. We're very supportive of the of the effort. But I want to make it very clear, and I would like the board to ask the city staff to make sure that on the record we have some very clear understanding of what is involved, especially with respect to NCD three, that's coconut grove. We have worked with city staff to ensure, we hope to ensure that the upzoning or the additional bonus height that is part of the greenway's program has been cut out of the NCD 3 T5 and below uh measures so that we are protecting Coconut Grove from being upzoning. We understand there's a trade-off that we won't receive funding from that program, but that's an active piece that we're doing. I ask then that you ask the city staff to describe exactly where within the coconut grove area, NCD 3, that upz that bonus height would be available under the T6 provisions of that uh of the proposal. So we're asking, we understand that the bonuses are available only in T6, which is a very limited set of properties, and we expect then that they'll be able to produce a map that shows where that is, and those areas we expect are already in areas which have very high buildings and are fully built out already. And those areas we expect are already in areas which have very high buildings and are fully built out already. So we were most important is the priorities throughout the city of Miami to protect the local neighborhood character. Because if we lose the local neighborhood character, then what's the point of all these build of all this good intention anyway?