Ladra hopes Miami-Dade Commissioners packed a lunch and a snack for what looks like a marathon 
meeting Tuesday that brings back several controversial issues — including transgender rights, the $65 million consolation prize to Oderbrecht for taking away their Airport City hotel, body cameras for cops, the crumbling civil courthouse and millions of dollars in gifted grants to private entities who are trying to drink from the taxpayer trough.
Among the items the Miami-Dade Commissioners will consider today are a study for the incorporation of Fountainebleau Park area, a proposed prohibition for lobbyists to serve on the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, awarding a $600,000 contract to the Humane Society of Greater Miami for a spay and neuter program and their first look at the 10-year countywide transit development plan.
Commissioner Sally Heyman will bring a resolution to ask the mayor to study the body cameras that he wants for police officers and to bring the future expense of such a program to the commission before spending a dime. Commissioner Bruno Barreiro wants to ask the mayor to prepare a report and plan for the use, development and maintenance of county-owned property in Downtown Miami.
Read related story: Commissioner Juan Zapata: Close courthouse if there’s a risk
Commissioner Juan Zapata got four of his colleagues to c
o-sponsor his motion to have the structural and environmental health of the historic civil courthouse on Flagler Street — the one lawyers and judges failed to tax us $400 million to move out of — and close it down if necessary.
But that’s the easy peasy stuff.
Odebrecht USA may not have the super majority vote it needs to pull off a waiver of the bidding process and land a $65 million contract at Miami International Airport that everybody says is a consolation prize for getting the Airport City rug pulled from under their feet.
And Commission Chambers will be packed with conservatives and religious fanatics who want to thwart efforts to add transgender identity and expression to the human rights ordinance, protecting transgender individuals from discrimination. It was a hot topic last month in committee and promises to be again today as many religious organizations and churches have called upon their members to flood County Hall. Let’s hope the commission as a whole has the courage to stand up against this hysterical bullying.
Read related story: Human rights transgender debate becomes bathroom joke
That may take up more time than even the ka-ching items, which are several “waivers of administrative rules” to dole out grants or disbursements or allocations from the Building Better Communities bond fund which are not minimum $10 million grants for game changers of regional impact. These applications have caused a stir already and have now been described — each and every one of them — as “game changers” for the economy and society.
But the two big ones that were spurned at the last meeting — Skyrise Miami and $5 million for rich developer Wayne Rosen‘s charter school in Palmetto Bay — are not back on the agenda. Skyrise will be asking for a zoning variance to have temporary staging barges for the next four years.
The items that are up for grant consideration today are new, different, and they have been spread around throughout the agenda so they don’t look like one big kick in the taxpayers’ collective, um, wallet.
There is a $7.5 million to Neuroscience Centers of Florida Foundation to fund Project Mercy, a world-class ambulatory care center that caters to the 
needs of local patients with Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and who have suffered a stroke. Proponents claim it will create 316 jobs — half temporary and half permanent.
Another $6 million will be requested for Overtown Gateway Partners to fund the Overtown Gateway Project, a $293-million mixed use housing/entertainment/retail complex that aims to create 423 jobs with an average salary of $42,000 in the historic part of the neighborhood.
A grant for $5 million will be requested for Larkin Health Science Education Campus by Commissioner Dennis Moss.
And there are pages and pages of more minutia stuff so, even though they can carry some items over to Thursday, the commissioners may at some point pray that the day goes by more quickly.
And maybe they’re appealing to a higher power already: There’s also a resolution sponsored by Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz and co-sponsored by a whole half of his colleagues (read: it will pass) to put the words “In God We Trust” behind the dais where the commissioners sit.
I know. It seems sacrilegious to Ladra, too.
Busy county commission considers courthouse, cameras, gifts added by Ladra on
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