Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins is the invited speaker this week for the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club meeting in Miami Beach.
Higgins is going to want to discuss county projects in Miami Beach, including budget and legislative highlights. But Ladra is pretty certain the crowd will want to know about the monorail project proposed for the Beach corridor of the countywide rapid transit plan.
The newest version of what used to be called BayLink, to connect the mainland to the beach, is a monorail proposal that would cost somewhere around $1 billion, which is twice as much as developers proposed two years ago. It would be the first time a private train is run on public taxpayer money — to the tune of about $117 million a year, according to a Miami Herald story earlier this month.
This is almost as much as the Metrorail extension to South Miami-Dade, which was scrapped because the county couldn’t afford it.
Read related: County commission should rescind mayor’s sweet insider monorail deal
The controversial proposal is still being “negotiated” by county staff to be put to consideration first by the mayor and then the commission. But Higgins, who has been committed before to connecting the museums downtown to the hotels on the Beach, must have something to say, right?
The Miami Beach Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club is a weekly forum of community issues that, most recently, has been hosted by former Miami Beach Mayor Matti Bower. Recent guests include Miami Beach City Attorney Rafael Paz, Marisol Zenteno, a one-time candidate for property appraiser who is now director of the League of Women Voters, historic preservation activist Daniel Ciraldo, and Alba Tarre, director of Housing and Community Services at the city of Miami Beach.
“I think it’s important for our citizens to know what is going on in our city,” she said two weeks ago when the group had political consultant Christian Ulvert discuss redistricting. Ulvert, by the way, represents Higgins.
Tuesday’s meeting starts at 8:30 a.m. at CAO Bakery & Cafe, 1420 Alton Rd. The meetings are also often livestreamed on Facebook.
Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club has Eileen Higgins today in Miami Beach added by Ladra on
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