After the Fourth of July boating accident that killed four people in Biscayne Bay caused a renewed demand 
for the county to put a fire rescue boat in the water, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez hunkered down and refused to refund the fire boat, saying that it probably wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.
“There are people dying all over this town,” Gimenez said in the interview with Jim DeFede. The mayor also said that he “can say with 99 percent certainty,” that a fire boat would not have made a difference in the most recent boating death.
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But what about that 1 percent? What about the other dozens of boating deaths? Isn’t the minority what fire rescue on land is all about anyway? And wouldn’t it be wise to put a fire boat and rescue staff on the water just for Labor Day weekend? You know? Just in case? Better safe than sorry? Labor Day and Memorial Day and Fourth of July. That would be wise, no?
I mean, isn’t that why he announced stepped up police patrols on the water targeting drunk boaters?
Gimenez said Wednesday that a multi-agency Boating Under the Influence (BUI) law enforcement task force would raise awareness on water safety and the “dangers of mixing boating and alcohol” on one of the busiest water weekends of the year.
But the mayor told Ladra Thursday at the town hall meeting in Westchester that he was comfortable with 
the other boats from other municipalities that were in the water.
“We’re working with other departments I believe are going to have boats in the water,” he said.
But Ladra was told that only the city of Miami has a rescue boat on the water this weekend, able to respond. Plus, if the county unit on standby at the Port of Miami goes out on the boat, like the mayor has proposed, that causes another nearby unit to come cover the Port, because that has to be covered 24/7 and that causes that other unit to go out of service for its area. It’s a vicious cycle that seems to put people at land at risk as well as those at sea.
The mayor said that the BUI patrols are strategic. “What we’re trying to do is prevent the accidents from happening,” he told me. Ladra has to ask him questions in public because he doesn’t return my calls anymore.
“There are 480 square miles of coverage,” he said, and I assume he means water. “We couldn’t possibly have all boats covered in the water. To have to boats 100 feet from each other doesn’t do any good.”
But everyone knows that having a rescue boat patrolling high-traffic areas ready to respond is better than 
not having it.
And you’re putting how many police boats over 480 square miles of coverage to check for drunk boating?
“You’re going to be giving tickets, but doing nothing about the rescue needs,” said Al Cruz, the president of the Miami-Dade firefighters union.
Cruz applauds the increased patrols. He knows that drinking is the number one safety hazard on the water and that weekends like this increase the chance something will happen. There are 900,000 boats registered in South Florida, the majority of those in Miami-Dade where there are 84 miles of seashore to cover from Golden Beach on the Broward County Line to Black Point Marina.
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That is also, however, why it would just seem smart to have a rescue boat already in the water, ready to go, if only on these long watery weekends.
But this isn’t about safety. It’s about Gimenez having the last word. In that TV meltdown he had with 
DeFede, the mayor’s true motivation came out.
“You just can’t buckle to whatever the unions want,” he said. On camera. You can still see it online.
So that’s what this has become about: Denying the fire boat funds because he doesn’t want to give the union what it wants, which is to utilize a resource that the county has already invested millions of dollars in to save lives.
Let’s hope nobody else dies this weekend. Because that person would likely become another member of the mayor’s 1 percent.
Gimenez ups Labor Day water police patrols, not rescue added by Ladra on
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