The executive director of the Miami-Dade Commission for Women is about to lose her job, based on a budget decision by Mayor Carlos Alvarez -- with the approval of the County Commission. They seem to find her expendable.

I hope that women rise up and say that she is not. Women who advocate for issues critical to them, volunteers who join women's organizations and the hundreds of thousands of women who benefit from advocacy on access to economic justice, healthcare, education and community resources all have one woman to thank -- Laura Morilla.

She is not just a long-time county employee, she is the face, leadership and motivation for the positive energy that moves the Commission for Women beyond acting just as an advisory board. It is more like a community-engagement generator. How do you place a dollar value on that?

Since the commission has failed to resolve the million-dollar-a-month deficit -- failing to address executive-level salary cuts or caps and failing to renegotiate union contracts -- why must the Morilla and the executive-director positions of the Asian-American and African-American community advisory boards be eliminated, to the detriment of the entire community?

Why not give them, and their boss a 10-percent across-the-board salary cut, but retain them all for this year? The mayor should make it an example for the commission of how to make cuts with a surgeon's blade instead of with a hatchet. I call upon the mayor to keep the positions permanent for this year.

I invite him and concerned residents to the Commission for Women meeting this month, at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 18 at Evelyn Greer park, 8200 SW 124th St., to see how important Morilla is to the work of the Commission for Women and to the women of Miami-Dade County.

Our county's leaders should not set us back 10 years.

CINDY LERNER, mayor, Village of Pinecrest