Carlos Gimenez keeps rejecting voter-approved Pets’ Trust

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Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez was all smiles as he doled out the good news and budget increases last week: Higher property values give the county $120 million more to play with and the mayor recommends millions in additional funds to libraries, parks and programs — including an additional $2 million to the county’s Animal Services department.

But that’s not what voters asked for in 2012 when they overwhelmingly approved a measure to increase taxes for the sole purpose of funding a Pets’ Trust that would make Miami-Dade a no-kill county. And Gimenez continues to deny the voters the right to establish an independent budget and dedicated funding mechanism for the Pet’s Trust Initiative that passed in 2012 with a mandate of 65% of the vote.

That translates to 483,491 people who voted  for the Pet’s Trust Initiative. And that’s more than twice as many as the people who voted for Gimenez — in both 2012 and 2011 combined.

Expect a lot of red t-shirts at today’s commission meeting, at which commissioners will discuss the tax rate and budget publicly for the first time. The Pets’ Trust people will be speaking again about the lack of follow through with promises.

“People voted for it and we are fighting to honor that vote,” said Pets’ Trust founder and president Michael Rosenberg, who mapped out the plan based on what animal services experts — including our own county department head Alex Muñoz — told him would be needed. The main ingredient is massive spay and neutering, not just these hit and miss days that the county has created with puppy photo opps for politicians.

The mayor and some commissioners keep saying that voters didn’t know they were voting for a tax increase, even though it said so in the tenth word on the ballot question. The ballot language was certainly clearer than the FIU expansion question that the mayor and everybody else is trying to take out of context.

Were voters unclear what they were voting for when they passed the school board referendum? The Jackson Hospital referendum? The Children’s Trust? The Homeless Trust?

Did voters know and understand that the 2004 bond referendum for county improvements would include $9 million to a private developer for SkyRise Miami. Gimenez spokesman Mike Hernández said in October of last year that the project is exactly the type that voters envisioned when they backed the bond.

“Miami-Dade voters knew what they voted for in 2004,” Hernández was quoted as saying.

They knew what they were voting for more than they did in 2012?

For some reason, the mayor and some commissioners want us to believe that there was some kind of lapse in the voters’ judgement or that the question was not clear.

Read related story: Politicos pose with pets, insult our intelligence with photo ops

“It was so clear we thought it would lose. The county attorney wrote it. We hated it. We actually had people on our board who quit because of it,” Rosenberg said.

This is the language on that 2012 ballot:

“Would you be in favor of the County Commission increasing the countywide general fund millage by 0.1079 mills and applying the additional ad valorem tax revenues generated thereby to fund improved animal services, including: Decreasing the killing of adoptable dogs and cats (historically approximately 20,000 annually); Reducing stray cat populations (currently approximately 400,000 cats); and funding free and low-cost spay/neuter programs, low-cost veterinary care programs, and responsible pet ownership educational programs?”

And 483,491 people voted yes. Another 266,475 people voted no. Doesn’t seem like a close contest.

It was the fourth biggest vote-getter on the extraordinarily fat and distracting ballot, after president, senate and one of the hotly contested congressional races — even though it was almost the last question on a ballot with 12 amendments and 8 other county questions.

“That means people looked for it,” Rosenberg said. “People went into the voting booth to vote for this.”

The mayor and some commissioners also like to say it was a non-binding question. Well, it has to be. By law, citizens cannot increase taxes through a vote. The vote sends a message to those who were elected to represent us.

“We wouldn’t have done all this work if we didn’t think it would count. They sat there and told us to get the votes and they would do it,” Rosenberg said. “We knew we had to win by more than one vote.”

Instead of acting on the voters’ will, the mayor in 2013 increased the animal services’ $10 million budget to $14 million — a pacifier for the pets people, most of which was spent on staff salaries and benefits.

How much of the $2 million more put in this year will go to additional staff and their health insurance?

One thing is for sure: Voters did not have that in mind when they passed the Pets’ Trust.

A lot of people think it was done. They don’t pay close attention to county politics and are under the impression that the Pets’ Trust was created by the commission and taken care of. In February, the board of the PTA/PTSA voted unanimously to support the enacting of the Pets’ Trust Initiative after they learned the vote, the people’s will, had been cast aside.

“As an advocacy association, one of the key points stressed to our over 50,000 members in Miami-Dade is that if you exercise your vote your demands will be heard by those elected to represent you. In the case of The Pets’ Trust, the will of the people has been absolutely ignored and serves as the greatest reason why we lend our support to this organization,” wrote PTA President Joseph Gebara.

Now that the county is flush with cash from the higher property rates — and before anybody suggests anything stupid like a tax cut or more corporate incentives or anything like that — here’s a golden opportunity to have our vote count: Apply the 0.1079 millage — that amounts to about $15 per average homeowner — to the Pets’ Trust. According to the mayor, we can afford it now.

“We can actually solve the problem, not just put bandaids on it,” Rosenberg said.

Gimenez has apparently refused to meet with Rosenberg or the Pets’ Trust folks. But he has met with Commissioner Bruno Barreiro and the staff of commissioners Sally Heyman, Barbara Jordan, Audrey Edmonson and Daniel Levine-Cava, who was endorsed by them and ran partly on the platform that the people’s vote should be respected.

It will be interesting to see how many of those electeds defend our vote Tuesday.