Mayor Gimenez draws small crowd for town hall meeting

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Have all the budget town hall meetings been like the one Thursday at West Dade Regional Library?

The room was packed, that’s for sure.

But if you removed all the county employees, including the seven cops in uniform and the multiple people from the mayor’s staff, the library supporters and three  members of the media, you’d have been left con cuatro gatos.

Michael Hernandez, spokesman for Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez — who has gone from firing 400 police officers to firing none — said the Westchester town hall was one of the best attended. Well, then, basically he’s saying very Joe Publics have opted to go.

Why is that? Could it be because the “moving, living document” that is the budget is constantly changing and people don’t know what they’re going to discuss? Could it be because it’s gone from a $208 million shortfall to a $65 million shortfall and nobody has confidence that there isn’t really a zero shortfall after all.

Could it be because the mayor sits there with pat answers to everything — like a scolding papa who knows what’s good for you when you don’t — and people know that they are not going to be able to make a difference?

The mayor again mentioned how this is a five-year sustainable budget. Ladra asked — and I gotta get him at public events because he won’t return my calls — how that can be when they are working with two-year recurring sources and restructuring debt so they don’t have to pay now (Miami Beach Convention Center CRA, for example) but have to pay double starting in 2017.

Gimenez said that projections for the ad valorem taxes are so good that they can take those kinds of chances. In other words, he said, we won’t find ourselves in the same place this time next year.

This is a far cry from last year, when people packed the town halls and demanded that their services be restored. A few people came on Thursday to make sure that mowing the public grass has been restored (it has) and that mosquitoes would be sprayed (they will).

Someone asked about the new courthouse that the county commission will discuss putting on the ballot Wednesday (more on that later). The mayor said Cielito Lindo, which is what the old Courthouse at 95 Flagler is called, is outdated and can no longer serve the needs of the community. It was built in 1925 and although it will be renovated, he said. “There are private entities who look for these buildings to reuse for retail and residential,” Gimenez offered. But the courthouse operations need to be moved elsewhere. And, according to Budget Director Jennifer Glazer Moon, it could cost taxpayers about $9 for every $100,000 of taxable value on their homes.

Someone asked what the average salary of a county employee was. Moon said it was $65,000. Then they were asked how many people made more than $100,000. The answer was 660 but that is not out of the 25,000 or so employees countywide. That is just out of the employees not covered by a union.

Library advocates in blue t-shirts and white -shirts asked what the county had in mind for enhanced services besides extended hours and Sunday service at some locations. The mayor said he couldn’t say, but he said there will be enhancements. “Because I believe that if the millage goes up, we need to provide more services,” Gimenez said.

But they’re still working on those details.

Maybe he’ll have them down pat by Tuesday, which is the last budget town hall meeting at the North Dade Regional Library, 2455 NW 183 St., in Miami Gardens.

The first public hearing on the budget is Thursday. Might they be as uneventful?

  Carlos Gimenez, Miami-Dade budget