Xavier Suarez makes mayoral bid real - and dumps Gilbert, Higgins

As expected, Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez made his mayoral dreams official Friday when he announced publicly that he was going for the top county post vacated by his nemesis, the termed-out Carlos Gimenez.

“I want to put the resources of this county to work for the residents and taxpayers in a way that is both efficient and compassionate,” Suarez read from a statement. “In the process, I want to reverse nine years of an administration that has been abysmally lacking in either efficiency or compassion.”

No surprise there. Not even in making his campaign an anti-Gimenez referendum. The surprise came when Suarez said he was withdrawing support for Commissioner Eileen Higgins — who he supported in the special election she won to replace Bruno Barreiro, who ran for Congress — and Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver Gilbert, who Suarez had earlier supported for the vacancy in District 1 created by the termed-out Barbara Jordan‘s exit. He says both of them have turned their backs on residents when it comes to mass transit.

Sabrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, who is also running in District 1, was at his press conference in South Miami. X said he had withdrawn his support of Gilbert for that post, because Gilbert, who also heads the county’s chief transportation board, has “abandoned us” on transit.

Likewise, Higgins has drank the Gimenez Kool-Aid and “has bought into the Gimenez idea of the budget” Suarez said, adding that he has been disconnected from residents at the community and homeowner meetings he attends with her. “She has had a hard time with the neighborhoods at recent town meetings. It’s like you’re talking to a wall.”

Worst of all, she has swallowed the “just buses” pill for South Dade, where X is fighting for an extended MetroRail line, as promised to voters who passed the half penny sales tax in 2002.

X is all about the trains. Give Us Trains Soon, or GUTS, will be one of the mantras of his campaign. Because it takes guts to take a stand.

“I intend to reverse nine years of delays, studies, contradictions and purposeful neglect of our existing mass transit system, coupled with misuse of existing tax revenues intended to provide 89 new miles of rail to no less than five new corridors reaching to all corners of the county,” he said. “In particular, under my administration, the county budget will use every penny of the half cent sales surcharge for the intended purpose, which was to complete five rail corridors.

“Any incumbent seeking reelection who has not supported rail for the South Dade Transitway, will not obtain my endorsement.”

Calling himself “the People’s Mayor,” Suarez, also mentioned resiliency, affordable housing and more resources for the county youth — summer jobs, apprenticeships and enhances after school programs — as issues near and dear. And, as usual, he railed against county government waste.

“…the hundreds of millions of consulting contracts, signaling systems that never seem to accomplish synchronicity, $100 million for additional vehicles as well as over $80 million for new furniture to adorn one of the 18 administration buildings where more than 4,000 managers earn more than $100,000 to run an enterprise that has no competition, no research and development, a fixed demand and is able to fix prices for the services it renders,” Gimenez said, calling the mayor’s proposed 20-year infrastructure improvement plan “delusional.”

But traffic and mass transit will be the cornerstone of his campaign. Suarez, and MDX critic who voted against the Kendall Parkway, even promised to continue his fight to remove or reduce tolls on highways.

“The county’s unmitigated waste of resources was the excuse for the Squandermania that divested the half-cent of a billion dollars over the last decade. The resulting abandonment of the SMART plan and related neglect or our existing public transit system is the single most important issue facing our county,” Suarez said. “It is, in my opinion, the litmus test that I will apply to commission candidates I endorse and that the voters should apply to those running for mayor.”

Suarez joins Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava and former Commissioner Juan Zapata, who have already filed for the race, as well as a slew of others who are or could be running but have yet to file any paperwork. That includes former Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez Cantera, county commissioners Jean Monestime and Esteban Bovo and former Mayor Alex Penelas.

Former Congressman Carlos Curbelo said this week that he would not seek the office. Probably because of the news that broke recently about his campaign paying $350,000 for “consulting” to his best friend, a dentist with no political experience who is now his business partner.

In his statement, Suarez takes a stab at Penelas, saying the former mayor “invented ‘business as usual'” at County Hall and said none of the other candidates — official or not — have his experience and track record.

“I urge the voters of Miami-Dade to look at our records and see who has stood up for the people, time and again, as well as for the rank-and-file employees,” Suarez said. “Anyone who has bought into Mayor Gimenez’s priorities, which support a horrendously bloated bureaucracy, diverted funds intended for expansion of our rail system and proposed more toll roads cannot expect to be our next mayor.”

Xavier Suarez, father of current Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, was the first Cuban-born mayor of Miami and served from 1985 to 1993. He ran again in 1997 but the results were thrown out after the Miami Herald found widespread absentee ballot fraud in the commission campaign of Angel Gonzalez had tainted his election. He then lost to, guess who? Joe Carollo.

Suarez was elected county commissioner in 2011 to replace Gimenez, who ran for mayor that year after the historic recall of former Mayor Carlos Alvarez.

The following is his statement in its entirety:

“I take this opportunity to announce that today I am filing as a candidate for mayor of the county in the upcoming election.

As a general proposition, my reason for running is simple: I want to put the resources of this county to work for the residents and taxpayers in a way that is both efficient and compassionate. In the process, I want to reverse nine years of an administration that has been abysmally lacking in either efficiency or compassion.

Ruling in Paul Scwhiep’s Lawsuit

As you might know, Paul has been our long-standing leader on the Citizen’s Independent Transportation Trust. Recently, because he was involved in an administrative challenge to the MDX, the county tried to remove him from the CITT Board. Last Friday, Judge Echarte ruled that the removal was illegal – effectively reinstating him.That ruling, plus the action of the CITT itself, later adopted by the county commission, makes clear that from this point forward no half-cent tax revenues will be used for operations and maintenance of the existing system. The question will be how to calculate that figure; having Paul back on the CITT, as well as Evan Fancher and other members who have aggressively stood up to the administration, bodes well for the future of the SMART plan.

Quick Response to Sewage Spill

Due to past neglect, our sewer system has not been up to par – resulting in a court decree totaling $1.6 billion to repair and replace pipes and pumps. Sewage spills occur while that work goes on; one such spill occurred in the area of the Oleta River; I personally inspected the site and followed the capping and water quality measurements step by step. I am pleased to say that in quick time the rupture was repaired and water quality restored at all points.

That, as well as other good things done by Miami and Miami Beach, and a 5-6 billion dollar capital improvement program, are strong steps towards ensuring a clean environment for our waterways. After years of mismanagement of WASD funds ($25 million a year “borrowed” from water fees to other department needs), we are on our way to true Resilience.

Resilience

I mentioned Miami as an example of resilience efforts for the simple reason that Miami has started implementing close to $200 million in resilience projects, using general obligation bonds. By comparison, the county commission had to struggle to create a $300,000 budget for our resilience department and endure the embarrassment of a court decree to force us to literally clean up our act, plus a legislative mandate that by 2025 the bulk of our sewage must be cleaned up and reused. A bid to change our trucks to CNG (compressed natural gas) has been momentarily shelved by the administration, because it did not seem to provide a positive “return on investment.” Say what?

Two aspects of county government impact particularly the environment. One is our treatment of sewage; the other is our use of energy for transportation and housing.

Mass transportation remains, for that and every other reason imaginable, the key issue facing us, as well as the key failure of the current administration.

As to housing, I have asked the county attorney to prepare and Chairman Moss to schedule, at the next housing committee meeting, an ordinance that will require all county-subsidized affordable housing projects to use solar energy. (This is important not only for environmental reasons, but also to make them maintenance costs as close to zero as possible.)

Preserving the Neighborhoods

The single most important quality of a government is to listen to the people represented. Political scientists call that process “The Great Debate.” I like to say that “THE GOVERNMENT WHICH LISTENS BEST GOVERNS BEST.”

Thus, an important plank of my mayoral platform is to effectively consult the various neighborhoods, implement their priorities, protect their histories, and preserve their quality of life. Let me expand on that plank.

In every district of the county, we have heard from citizen activists who oppose unwarranted up zoning that allows a developer to go way beyond the zoning envelope. In one such case in the Hammocks area, we have seen a neighborhood be rezoned from 2.5 homes per acre to six times that – all under rather flimsy excuses.

In other areas, such as Silver Bluff and Coral Gables, neighborhoods are told that the county will not approve even the most cursory traffic management devices. In Miami Lakes, an area that has only one highway that can be used for ingress and egress is told that pre-existing bridges will not be opened so that they can get over the interstate highway that separates them from their neighbors to the East.

Community councils that were set up to determine zoning matters at the level closest to the people are either overruled or simply dysfunctional.

And the entire language of planning and zoning is so arcane, so confusing, so convoluted that community leaders like Mike Rosenberg calls it “government speak.”

We have to make government easy to understand and transparent. That applies, in a special way, to our procurement processes.

Procurement/Unsolicited Bids

The county spends countless hours on management contracts and other “negotiated” or “unsolicited” bids that exemplify a procurement system that is a constant, wasteful embarrassment.

In the most recent act of procurement negligence, which I call GULP (for “Genting Unsolicited Link Proposal”), the county’s mayor has accepted an unsolicited bid from a foreign entity that wishes to finance, build and operate a transit connector between downtown Miami and south beach, costing some $400 million and involving a land swap of some sort, which we are not allowed to comment on, but might well involve (as reported by Mr. Hanks of the Miami Herald) a forgiveness of approximately $55 million in payments which Genting is under contract to make to the county for building above a transit station adjacent to their property.

This bizarre deal, if it’s ever approved, caps eight years of procurement shenanigans that have embarrassed the county so often and so definitively that they threaten to make us a laughing stock, instead of a sober manager of almost $9 billion dollars in taxpayers’ money each year.

The Rank and File in Our Workforce

While managers diddle and fiddle with incomprehensible “negotiated bids” and bid contests, with lawyers and lobbyists galore, the rank and file are told that budgets are tight and that their health insurance premiums must be deducted from their stagnant salaries.

One category of employees interacts the most with the public: the first responders. We have a quality corps of police, fire and corrections officers. I am proud to say that police interaction with youth in our community has been improved greatly through the implementation of a police-youth program designed by my staff (Sara Odio in particular) a couple of years ago.

Effective policing needs to be complemented with jobs; in Miami-Dade, when I was elected in 2011, there were no significant summer jobs programs for youth. Now, let me cover quickly what we have done

Summer Jobs for Youth

I am particularly proud of one initiative that involved a summer jobs program for youth. Starting at zero, we engaged three entities: the county, school board and children’s trust – ultimately funding 2,700 paid summer jobs for youth. Russel Benford and Evan Fancher were instrumental in that effort.

After-school Programs

Working with the school board, and with then-city commissioner Francis Suarez, we have initiated no less than 20 free, quality, after-school programs consisting of STEM/Martial Arts/Music – with startling results in two schools that have now climbed to “A” rating.

One of those is Carver Elementary and its principal, Patricia Fairclough, joins us today.

Apprenticeship Programs

Inspired by a conversation with Luther Campbell, and working with Career Source of South Florida and the school board, we have initiated four apprenticeship programs at inner-city schools, as follows: Edison, Homestead, Carol City and Coral Gables High.

All industry surveys show that bulk of future jobs are in paraprofessional fields that can be filled by young people who have learned the basics of computers, medical and dental devices, accounting, health care administration and communications. I plan to tap into state and federal initiatives to supplement the local effort. In that connection, I intend to resubmit the grant application we filed last year jointly with Miami-Dade College, seeking no less than 12 million dollars to replicate the self-funded program that Norman Braman has made into a national model.

Housing

The typical resident of Miami-Dade spends more than 62% of his/her income on housing and transportation. In order to ease the housing crunch, I have proposed using 1% of the county’s operating budget, or $50 million, on affordable housing. The administration has blocked that, and even reduced the allocation to about a fraction of that – enough to build two units! Thanks to colleagues such as Com. Barbara Jordan, we have started building up a housing trust fund that now approaches close to ten million dollars. That is clearly not enough to reach the goal announced by Com. Moss, of building 10,000 new units of affordable housing. But it’s a start.

Streamlining County Government, Particularly Double Taxation

Middle class folks who don’t use Jackson Memorial or the airport or seaport, and live in one of thirty four cities who pay separately for their water utility and garbage pick-up, are left wondering what exactly they get for their real estate taxes. In the meantime, the county spends enormous sums on “management contracts,” consultants and unneeded furniture and automobiles.

As if eight years of wasteful spending were not enough, the outgoing mayor proposes a 20-year “infrastructure improvement” fund that includes substantial sums for improving the most unneeded of the 4,500 properties owned or leased by the county. A recent post by Elaine De Valle (Political Cortadito) shed light on the strange, long-term infrastructure pln. It is really delusional to propose, when you have a little more than 12 months left in office, a spending plan that proposes to use future impact fees and other revenues to upgrade buildings and furnishings that might not be needed, with funds that might not exist.

I don’t want to belabor the hundreds of millions of consulting contracts, signaling systems that never seem to accomplish synchronicity, $100 million for additional vehicles as well as over $80 million for new furniture to adorn one of the 18 administration buildings where more than 4,000 managers earn more than $100,000 to run an enterprise that has no competition, no research and development, a fixed demand and is able to fix prices for the services it renders.

The county’s unmitigated waste of resources was the excuse for the Squandermania that divested the half-cent of a billion dollars over the last decade. The resulting abandonment of the SMART plan and related neglect or our existing public transit system is the single most important issue facing our county. It is, in my opinion, the litmus test that I will apply to commission candidates I endorse and that the voters should apply to those running for mayor.

G.U.T.S. (Give Us Trains Soon)

I intend to reverse nine years of delays, studies, contradictions and purposeful neglect of our existing mass transit system, coupled with misuse of existing tax revenues intended to provide 89 new miles of rail to no less than five new corridors reaching to all corners of the county.

In particular, under my administration, the county budget will use every penny of the half cent sales surcharge for the intended purpose, which was to complete five rail corridors.

Through our efforts with the Citizens Independent Transportation Trust, which manages the half cent, we have successfully established the principle that no funds should be spent for operations and maintenance; that will soon free up as much as $100 million a year from the $275 million that the half cent generates. Using the historical 18-to-1 multiplier for bond issues of the CITT, that will provide enough funding for both the north corridor and South Dade corridors, using elevated light rail or equivalent.

Any incumbent seeking reelection who has not supported rail for the South Dade Transitway, will not obtain my endorsement.

No MoreTolls

Next year, under my administration and to the extent that I can influence our legislature, there will be a renewed effort to stop using tolls to build new highways.

This has been a battle that I have been waging for more than a decade; I first engaged in it when the expressway authority insisted on spending $27 million on a new toll booth and adjoining highway “improvements” on SR 836 and NW 17th Avenue. I fought with the then leaders to stop that colossal waste of money, arguing that the revenues derived, at rates current at the time, would not offset the amortized cost of the new toll booth; and further arguing that the day of toll booths was ending, due to technology that could read plates.

I continued that battle with every new toll and every new toll increase. And I opposed the idea of building the so-called Kendall Parkway using additional new tolls in the approximate amount of a billion dollars.

The people of SW Dade need relief from traffic congestion; that can easily be done with excess tolls already collected; alternatively, we can ask the state to stop tearing our existing roads and use the approximately three quarters of a billion dollars a year they collect from our county to build the East-West Connector. This was the expressed intent of both the county commission and the legislature when we (and they) approved legislation that would allocate excess toll revenues for that purpose.

Based on the above planks and priorities, I wish to make a second announcement today. I will be endorsing Sybrina Fulton for District 1. I am convinced that she will not buy into Mayor Gimenez’s view of more tolls, and more buses, where our people were promised rail. She has pledged to support the reallocation of the half cent to its proper purpose, and to implement the SMART plan.

None of my announced opponents have my track record in support of the above issues. Others have not been around to establish any kind of record at all. With the exception of Monestime, who voted against GULP, my opponents are either classic proponents of “business as usual,” or, in the case of Penelas, the person who “invented business as usual.”

I urge the voters of Miami-Dade to look at our records and see who has stood up for the people, time and again, as well as for the rank-and-file employees.

Anyone who has bought into Mayor Gimenez’s priorities, which support a horrendously bloated bureaucracy, diverted funds intended for expansion of our rail system and proposed more toll roads cannot expect to be our next mayor.

We will no longer swallow that view of the world, supporting “GULP” while not having the “GUTS” to solve our traffic problems. We insist on NoMoreTolls. And when I say “we” I mean no less than seven new commissioners. Maybe eight.

Imagine what that will do for our county, if we elect the right ones plus the People’s Mayor to lead us.

Imagine Miami.”