Holy moly! Wednesday’s Miami-Dade Commission meeting is going to be a doozy.
According to the agenda, the last meeting of the year is heavy-loaded with several big ticket items. According to some County Hall insiders, any one of them could turn into a thing.
There’s going to be some discussion (read: complaints) on the county’s new proposed redistricting map — and maybe some redrawing right there in chambers to stop the whining. Chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz is bringing a change to his public private partnership ordinance — which is fallout from the botched Rickenbacker Causeway RFP. And Mayor Daniella Levine Cava will once again try to justify giving the vendors at Miami International Airport extensions and a retroactive break on rent to make up for COVID.
Drink more coffee.
Ladra suspects that redistricting will be the biggest timesuck of the day (either that, or MIA gifts). There has already been some tweeking and public grumbling on proposed new district boundaries, redrawn every 10 years to accommodate growth and ensure minority representation. Officials use Census population figures and redraw boundaries so that no district is much bigger or much smaller than another one.
Commissioner Sally Heyman doesn’t want one of her historic communities, a close-knit Jewish Orthodox enclave in North Miami Beach, to be divided into two, with Commissioner Jean Monestime representing some of them. Both Heyman and Monestime are termed out next year so there’s no immediately obvious political advantage for them.
Commissioner Raquel Regalado, who is not termed out, is also unhappy about losing part of South Miami to District 6. She says that municipalities should be kept together in one district.
Commissioner Eileen Higgins will likely have to give some of District 5 over to Keon Hardemon in District 3. But not the Freedom Tower, which may be cut out like a little peninsula just for her. Don’t know why La Gringa wants it so bad. But it is a beautiful building with a beautiful story.
District 3 — like Miami’s District 5 (more on that later) — is less black and more Hispanic. So is District 9. That could lead to some interesting debate on Wednesday. Or it could lead to some unfortunate foot-in-mouth scenarios. It’s a roll of the dice.
The districts that have grown the most are districts 8 and 9, so their new boundaries are poised to lose square-footage to districts 7 and 11. Commissioners Danielle Cohen Higgins and Kionne McGhee, in 8 and 9 respectively, are not termed out and also facing an increasingly Hispanic electorate so new boundaries could work for or against them. District 8 is also the most populated district as they are currently drawn. It is unknown if either of them are going to try to make some last minute adjustments.
Cohen Higgins, who has never been elected and was appointed to replace La Alcaldesa, might find herself facing some critics who want the commission to divide Palmetto Bay in half and give them two commissioners. They don’t like her because she wants to build a bridge on 87th Avenue and have collected more than 100 signatures online. Not a big showing. The Village Council is not taking a position.
District 13, which has the smallest population, is poised to get a piece of Hialeah that is currently in District 12.
Read related: More changes, chat coming on flawed, rushed Rickenbacker Causeway RFP
As if all that drama wasn’t enough, the commission is also set to look at changing the deadline calendar in the unsolicited private public partnership ordinance that Diaz sponsored and that got tested, and failed, with the Rickenbacker RFP. This was going to happen even before the mayor issued a memo stating that the value study showed the Plan Z proposal might not be the best thing and that the county could do better by throwing out the RFP and starting over.
Ladra expects a few of the regular suspect lobbyists who love PPPs and this unsolicited ordinance and all the negotiating (read: ka-ching) it can bring to speak on behalf or against the change.
There might also be some pushback on the concessions to the MIA concessions, which come in exchange for a living wage for workers and disguised as COVID-19 relief. At the same time as airport officials boast about holiday numbers and say passenger traffic is almost at pre-COVID levels, the county commission is set to give vendors almost six years of extensions and breaks on their rent.
Wait, not all vendors. There are some that may be excluded and that promises to be a healthy discussion also.
But, wait, there’s more. The agenda is seriously ridiculous.
There are annexations in Miami Gardens and Sweetwater. There’s a new $200,000-a-year lackey for the mayor feel-good squad. There are items on spending $15.6 million on new fire trucks, $4.3 million on beach clean-up and seaweed removal and $24 million on bus cleaning and sanitizing for the next five years. There’s a potential rejection of all bids for providing Kosher meals in corrections facilities.
Oh, and let’s not forget, the recommendation to award a $70 million contract to Magnum Construction (formerly Munilla Construction Management) for miscellaneous projects at the airport over the next five years.
Ladra hopes everyone got enough sleep.
Miami-Dade meets on redistricting, private/public deals, MIA contracts added by Ladra on
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