Danielle Cohen Higgins

at 1:06:44And so I frankly, strongly believe that, I don't know that this is a philosophical conversation, but conversations where we are asking questions that essentially boil down to, is it responsible for us to keep doing things the way that we always have?

at 1:11:04Whatever the proper forum is, but I, along with my colleagues, believe that there is opportunity for us to do better with the numbers in our budget without necessarily laying off thousands of people and doing any kind of dramatic, you know, sweeping, you know, consequential changes.

at 1:35:01And I think, ideally, we would be putting money away and parking money, frankly, in anticipation of what I think is going to be a reality that we all, and by we all I mean our county and our constitutional offices need to brace for that impact.

at 1:36:30But when we have a charge for departments of don't raise your budgets by more than 3% and growth in the rolls at an average of about 4% or 5%, I'm going to need a lot of explanation as to requests that are, you know, 20%, 21% year over year on budget request increases.

at 1:42:29I also think it's important when talking about what brought us here to understand the expectations, because I talked about the intention of the voters, but I also think it's very important to talk about what the intention of even the advocates that are here were for the vast majority of this entire project.

at 1:48:13And again, as I kind of go through the timeline and kind of laying the groundwork of what brings us here, you know, in addition to take, you know, 16 years of escalating costs that the board supported and literally 20 years of renovation, I think it's important to note that from 2024 to 2021, it was never the expectation of this county to pay anything more than $100,000 a year to operate this building.

at 38:24And key card system B, under contract, is obligated to always give us updates to make sure that we're not using CAT 4 from 10 years ago, but these are software systems that update regularly, and it's within their contract, like the Honeywell contract, for example, that within that vendor, those pieces, those parts, the extension of those systems will always be updated, and we're not relying on data technology from 10…

at 39:25And so for that reason, I am supporting this item because it is literally what we have been asking the administration to do time and time and time again, find efficiencies, find ways that we can save money, find ways that we can do projects at the speed of business and bring it online faster.

at 2:22:53But I think, you know, Madam Mayor is just if that's what's kind of polling the highest, we should certainly expand on that and and dive a little deeper.

at 2:23:30You know, you know, and folks, I think something that's not necessarily being spoken about as much is it doesn't just impact us directly, but it also ricochets or flows into our public health hospital system, which is Jackson.

at 28:21Okay, and is that industry standard for a municipal government to pay $6,400 for a Motorola radio, or whether it's Motorola or whatever the brand is, but the device that we are purchasing as a government, that per radio cost of $6,400 is industry standard?

at 59:58Because if the facts lay out that Camila's housed, you know, a number of our homeless trust facilities and all of the other amazing organizations that do this great work are reflecting numbers of available beds open every evening, it's going to be difficult for me to understand a justification for this item.

at 1:04We're going to commence with a prayer led by Commissioner Gonzalez, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Commissioner Orbis.

at 18:16I mean, looking back at our financials for beyond the last five years, looking into, I mean, is it likely, first of all, is it industry standard to tie operating and management contracts to the revenue generated at the hotel?

at 17:03When we passed the concessionaire extension last year, in that item, there was mention of sort of an oversight of the concessionaire extension program because it's a three-year program with very aggressive timelines.

at 18:02Make recommendations to the board regarding areas for improvement to the operations of the day-to-day experiences of passengers, employees, and visitors at MIA for the overall purpose of ensuring that MIA provides the best airport experience possible.