Ka-ching! Miami-Dade spends $60 mil plus in one sitting

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As I watched the Miami-Dade Commission meeting Wednesday, it sort of struck Ladra that while “we haven’t recovered completely” from the economic downturn, as Mayor Carlos Gimenez and our commissioners love to say, our county is certainly doing its part to help by being a great and avid consumer.

County commissioners spent more than $60 million on everything from “gravity sewer interceptors” to aspirin to police cars to a feasibility study for the aviation department.

Ladra is not saying that all or any of this spending is wrong, per se. I am sure these are things the county needs (read: department heads can justify) and most of it, if not all, is budgeted already.

But is this is “tightening our belts,” as the mayor and our commissioners love to say?

It just looks bad to be throwing so much money around so easily when you are asking employees to make sacrifices and threatening to shut down libraries and close fire stations. And maybe, just maybe, we need to have an independent set of eyes checking out some of these checks the county is writing.

Just look at all the stuff we bought in less than eight hours on one day:

• $500,000 to Jacobs Consultancy for a financial feasibility study for the airport
• $475,000 to Siltek Group, Inc., for a change order for the District 11 “preservation of affordable housing and expansion of home owners project” at something called the Grand Via Apartments
• $4.3 million for 211 police vehicles, including two passenger vans
• $1.4 million for glorified cash registers that can take credit cards for parking garages downtown
• $18 million in medical supplies “needed to provide emergency care to County residents and personnel”
• $13.7 million to Ric-Man Construction, Inc., for what looks like the designing and installation of “gravity sewer interceptors” for the master pump station.
• $22 million for a new pump station in the Brickell area

That last one is a doozy. Because, while we may need a pump station in the Brickell area, the award went to Poole & Kent, one of the subcontractors that worked for Odebrecht USA on the $410-million Adrianne Arsht Performing Arts Center — where damage by heavy rains in 2012 cost the county $3.8 million more last year (more on that later).

And maybe we need that second set of eyes to look over the Jacobs Consultancy work product — because this half mil bring to total more than $5 million paid to the firm over five years. Where was their input Wednesday when commissioners debated the long stalled Airport City project with a five-star hotel and restaurants and shops?

Actually, maybe it’s a good thing the county is stocking up on medical supplies. Because Ladra feels like a lot of people may have heart palpitations when they see the tabs they are picking up for the county, and especially as the municipal budget process starts again this summer.

Or at least a few migraines.

  Miami-Dade budget