The Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners met on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, beginning at 9:30 a.m. in the Commission Chambers. The meeting included a special presentation, public comments, and consideration of numerous resolutions and ordinances. Key actions included approval of a transit grant, a piggybacking procurement policy, a retroactive ICE agreement, and a water and sewer payment processing contract extension. A controversial street naming resolution was deferred. All votes were recorded with tallies.
Before we start this morning's meeting, we have the honor of a special recognition, and it is related to education, our children, and our school board. Uh, every year, Miami Dade County and the school board honors one particular teacher for outstanding work contribution and excellence, and we are so proud in district eight that this year a Southwood Middle School music teacher was this year's honoree of teacher of the year. So if you will join me in a round of applause for Miss Vivian Ventura, please join me. We have a member of our school board chairwoman's office. So if you don't mind joining us as well, and everyone that is here for the presentation, uh, please join us. And you know, I have two young children. Uh, they both play uh piano. Uh, and I mentioned that because just last week I went to my uh son's school to give a presentation about time management. He is in our public schools, and he is in sixth grade like your son, he's twelve years old. And I was there for an hour and a half. And I was not only nervous giving the presentation, and I obviously do this publicly all the time, but giving presentations to little people was very nerve-wracking. And I'll tell you, the hour and a half went by extremely slowly. And at the end of the hour and a half, I thought to myself, oh my gosh, these teachers spending all day in these classrooms with 20, 30 kids, God bless them for their patience and for their incredible work. So, you know, we don't have an opportunity at the Board of County Commissioners to honor teachers very often because our purview is the commission and the school board typically is the one that honors teachers. But I wanted to bring your work and your recognition before the Board of County Commissioners and before the county to really take a moment to say thank you. Not only for being recognized as this year's teacher of the year, but you are an incredible woman. It is women's history month, and you are an arts teacher. You are in the area of arts where we are consistently seeing time and time again the area of the arts being cut by way of funding. And I know that music has an incredible impact in young people's lives. And so I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you and to say congratulations on behalf of myself, our chairman, and our colleagues here at the Board of County Commissioners. So I'll pass the mic to whoever wants to share in the congratulations. But from the bottom of my heart, God bless you. Thank you for the incredible work that you do, and congratulations. That's nice. Thank you. Chair, would you like to? I'm good. She stole my line. I was gonna I was gonna segue into women's month, and I'll be able to do it. Oh, you took it. I did it again. She stole the thunder, so I'm done. I'm good. Good morning. My name's Kathy Burgles, Chief Community Services Officer. I'm here on behalf of our mayor. Thank you. I didn't hear that. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Cohen Higgins, um, for bringing this special presentation forward. It is an honor to celebrate an extraordinary educator like you. For more than 20 years, you have been just giving your heart to the work that you do. We are so proud of you. And our mayor wishes you oh, she walked in. Mayor. Thank you. She's coming down. She's coming down. Yeah. Okay.