BVEHNA General Meeting Minutes - 9/13/2025

The meeting took place at Jass Kitchen and they provided coffee and lovely pastries for everyone. Please remember that Jass Kitchen offers a 10% discount to neighbors.

After Eileen Higgins' discussion with participants we were able to address community business.

1. First point was to alert everyone that we have board elections coming up in December, so for everyone that wants to be more involved and wants to run for the board please know that there are four seats available on the board this year as well as a member-at large-position.

   If we do need an election, it will be held at the next General Community Meeting on December 13th. Just a reminder that if there are just enough candidates or less than, we don't have an election. We only have elections if there are more than 5 candidates. 

Comment from Resident: I'm suggesting that in the month of November, you send an email so those people who are interested are reminded.

Response: Yes, the Bylaws state that the email must go our in November and the election is held in December. 

2. We are working on changing the website and specifically the way dues are paid via our website. Many of our residents are confused about which year they paid for, if they paid, if they haven't paid, so we're creating a subscription 

   model on the website,  You will be able to sign up and join as a member and your account profile will state when your dues are up for renewal, send you renewal reminders etc. The year will run from October 1st to September 30th. So if you sign up in September for the next year, you'll get the full year. If you sign up in December, you'll get December to the end of September..

3. We've also looking to add more benefits for dues payers. The ICA is expanding the benefits our level of membership will receive. The membership you get as a dues payer is called NEXT. You already receive benefits like invitations to exclusive events such as VIP opening cocktail receptions and intimate gatherings during Miami Art Week, plus access to members-only viewing hours and curator-led tours. Members also receive North American Reciprocal Museum (NARM) and Modern and Contemporary Reciprocal (Mod/Co) privileges, a 10% discount at the ICA Miami Shop, free parking, and discounts at Miami Design District retailers and restaurants.  The discounts to the retailers and restaurants are what is currently being expanded but as an example, already include 15% discount at Michael's Genuine.

   We are also expecting to have another mixer at the ICA in January. The ICA membership cards are now digital and downloadable on your phone.

Comment from Resident:  I did go on the website and it said you can send a check but it seems you are trying to get rid of check payments.

Response: An email will go our with the process for signing up for the website account. Anyone who has already paid will get specific instructions and the payment will be reflected in their online account already. The process for check payments will be similar. As soon as we receive your check we will update your account to reflect your membership validity.

4. The memberships online will also create a paywall type scenario where you will only be able to access certain information if you are a member of the site. We will now be able to hide from the general public certain information like our financials and things like that that we don't want anyone outside our community accessing. 

5. You may have noticed that the city has been in our neighborhood fixing the sidewalks on the right of way which was an initiative generated by our feedback from our last meeting. Shortly after our meeting , the city took all of that onboard, we walked them through the neighborhood, they identified the problems areas and they fixed it so that was quite a quick turnaround from the city. We need to look at getting the city more involved in more projects like that. 
   

6. Street lighting, I think we're okay on now, if there are any issues, please let us know.
   

7. Trimming of the trees is the next thing as well as maintenance of the swales.

   
   

8. County: We also had a meeting with Commissioner Hardiman's team, and it was a bit frustrating because you had to explain all the issues that we've talked about for the last two years. But I raised my concern about the widening of 46th Street in our neighborhood. And obviously, the safety issues on North East Second. Their mitigating action on North East Second is to put a traffic light at 46. And I said to them, we would normally support that, but that would sort of help them with the expansion of 46. So we said, we would have to revisit our support for that because of the issues we have with the expansion of 46th Street.

   We want to reiterate that we want more medians and pedestrian crossings on NE 2nd Avenue. We will provide an update at the next meeting.

Comment from Resident:  Did you talk about flipping the parking from the east side to the west side of NE 2nd Avenue?

Response: 

Yes, we talked about flipping the parking. They're going to go way... and go back again and look at the original plans. The other thing was that they were going to look at what happened to the promised tree planting along NE 2nd Avenue.

This would at least help in providing a shaded walk to 41st street where the closest parking garage is

9. Other projects they are working on which we requested updates on include: For instance, they're working on a proposal for a T-junction at 36th Street where it meets NE 2nd Avenue. They said the traffic light on 46th Street is 30% in progress in terms of a steps i.e. nothing has happened so far.

   They're going to come back on the the new on-ramp that was proposed off N Miami Avenue going east. You know, the mess that is the off-ramp onto North Miami, they want to create an on-ramp onto...

10. We have requested signs like they have in other neighborhoods 'Welcome to Buena Vista East' The city needs to find the budget for these and will depend on Commissioner King's priorities.

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11. We do have some funds in our bank accounts in excess of $40K.

    
    
    
    

Comment from Resident:  What are we going to do with these funds?

Response: 

 So this is the question. We have a separate money market account where the funds are earning interest. We will look to put together a questionnaire requesting opinions on what to do with the funds. There was a suggestion to change the historic sign to create a nicer entrance to our neighborhood. That was one suggestion. We need to look at other suggestions and agree on what projects to fund. So any ideas? Feel free to send us an email with any ideas on that. 

Comment from Resident:  And just another thing, my personal experience, I'm trying to save money with insurance. My personal experience is that a new company has entered the market. Especially for like historic homes. So if you're stuck with someone like Citizens and then your other insurance company for your other stuff, it can be quite expensive. They also require flood insurance now. So there's a new company called Frontline Insurance that's coming to the market. I don't know if it's available to every broker, but it is something to talk to your broker about. Wind and general insurance together without flood insurance. And it is a lot cheaper than the two policies combined. So I saved a lot of money by just using this company.

Response: 

It would be great to get that broker at one of our meetings where everyone can potentially benefit. It is things like that, hurricane windows, roofer etc. projects that

we think that we all need, where we can potentially negotiate in bulk and maybe negotiate discounts for our neighbourhood if we have X number of projects, 

Suggestion: To that point, about the bulk discounts or whatever, it would be really nice, I think, as a community, if we had some sort of shared document of, like, people we would recommend as contractors or whatever - we will request from neighbors.

Thank you for attending our meeting.