What’s in Miami-Dade’s just-approved $9 billion budget? Higher fees and COVID relief

Miami-Dade County will give employees raises; boost staffing for social services, building inspectors and environmental regulation; and bring shore power to PortMiami under a $9 billion budget approved Tuesday night that keeps taxes flat and spends hundreds of millions in federal COVID-19 relief.

The most contentious part of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s budget proposal — higher water fees — passed by a comfortable margin at the second and final hearing on the budget for the 2022 fiscal year, which begins Friday. It almost failed to advance at the first budget hearing earlier this month after objections from commissioners, but the proposed 3.7% increase passed on a 10-3 vote shortly after 9:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Instead of a fight over fees, the most dramatic moment Tuesday night came when Commissioner Keon Hardemon tried to strip $500,000 in immigration aid from a charity run by a political foe. Levine Cava proposed $500,000 for the Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center to help Haitian immigrants apply for temporary protected status, an initiative of Commissioner Jean Monestime.

Sant La’s executive director is Gepsie Metellus, who ran against Hardemon, then a sitting Miami commissioner, for the open District 3 County Commission seat in 2020. She filed an ethics complaint against campaign ads about a tax form Sant La filed involving distribution of $120,000 in county grant money for Haiti — dollars another nonprofit declined to accept.

Metellus called it an administrative error caused by a local church unexpectedly declining to serve as an intermediary in distributing aid to Haiti, telling the Biscayne Times it was a hiccup “weaponized” by the Hardemon campaign to disparage Sant La, a longtime provider of county-funded services.

On Tuesday, Hardemon pointed to the ethics commission report clearing him of lying about Metellus as proof Sant La shouldn’t be receiving county money.

“My concern is this is being swept under the rug,” Hardemon said.

Monestime objected to the last-minute change, calling Hardemon’s allegations unfounded. “We all have been through elections. ... We all have come here with bad blood,” said Monestime, who arranged for Sant La to distribute the Haitian relief money. “But the community shouldn’t pay for it.” In a statement Tuesday night, Metellus said: “My comment is, ‘Just wow.’”

Hardemon was the only one to vote for his motion, leaving the Sant La funding intact. The brief blowup — Chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz noted: “This is very awkward for all of us” — was the outlier in a meeting that saw few objections to Levine Cava’s first budget proposal since taking office in November.

Diaz joined commissioners René Garcia and Joe Martinez in voting against the water-and-sewer rates, the most “no” votes in a series of budget ordinances that mostly passed unanimously.

Higher water fees received support during the three-hour public hearing held before the commission votes, with advocates saying Miami-Dade can’t continue delaying upgrades to a sewer system under a federal court order over spills and other failures.

Rick Crooks addressed the board as part of a local association of engineers and architects and urged them to approve the fees helping fund a $930 million budget for the Water and Sewer Department.

“It protects our drinking water,” he said. “It protects Biscayne Bay.“

Beefing up the budget didn’t require higher tax rates because of more than $700 million in federal COVID-19 relief from the 2021 American Rescue Act, on the heels of Miami-Dade County’s government receiving about $1 billion in pandemic-relief money from the 2020 CARES Act and federal programs for Miami International Airport and the transit system.

In the final days of the budget process, Levine Cava peeled away some of the money from the $121 million in American Rescue Act funds previously allocated for converting septic tanks to hook-ups with local sewer systems. The septic-conversion budget passed with $108 million, after Levine Cava proposed a string of different expenditures in a memo released Tuesday afternoon — including $2 million for parks in Sweetwater and $5 million for the Ludlam Trail recreational project.

Commissioner Raquel Regalado won approval for a trust fund to preserve the remaining septic-to-sewer dollars as Miami-Dade seeks state matching funds for the projects. “I had to stop the poaching,” Regalado said.

What you’ll pay

While Levine Cava presented a flat-spending proposal in July, the commission’s new Office of Budget and Policy Analysis found tax-supported spending would be up 4% in 2022 if not for offsets from the federal aid.

Levine Cava said she’s not concerned about cuts in future years after the county exhausts federal COVID dollars. She said with revenue projections improving, Miami-Dade can sustain recurring expenses in the 2022 budget.

“This is a very responsible, sustainable budget,” she said. In a statement, she touted the new budget process she launched in early 2021, with town hall meetings and workshops followed by a canvassing operation on priorities called Thrive 305.

“I want to thank the thousands of residents and hundreds of community organizations that participated in the months-long public engagement process,” she said.

The 2022 budget’s flat rates for property taxes funding government operations — along with a 6% increase in the tax to fund voter-authorized borrowing — total $9.80 for every $1,000 of a property’s taxable value. That includes the county tax charged outside city limits for municipal services, but doesn’t add in the property taxes for the school system and other government expenses outside Miami-Dade government.

Expenses

Miami-Dade’s new budget includes $20 million to expand bus service, $3 million for economic-development projects along the Northwest 18th Avenue corridor and $1.5 million for the new Redland Farm Life School.

The most expensive change from Levine Cava’s original budget proposal involves raises being negotiated with county unions in the first three-year contracts of her administration since the Democrat and labor advocate took office in November.

In early September, she added $47 million to cover a 2% bonus and 2% cost-of-living increase for county workers, on top of the 1% increase in the original budget.

For shore power at PortMiami — a $121 million upgrade the county had ignored until a Miami Herald article detailing the pollution caused by cruise ships running generators dockside — Levine Cava’s budget moved up the schedule to spend $55 million in 2022 instead of just $4 million.

County departments with the largest increases in operating expenses in the mayor’s budget include Community Action and Human Services, with a 9% boost that includes a new Office of Neighborhood Safety to focus on quality-of-life issues in high-crime areas.

The operating budget for Regulatory and Economic Resources is up nearly 22% in the budget, with new positions for regulating water quality, pollution and extra staffing for building inspections after the June 24 collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium tower in Surfside. Levine Cava also secured nearly $3 million extra for her office’s budget, a more than 50% increase.

Housing funds

Housing advocates failed in an effort Tuesday to sink one element of the budget proposal: draining $26 million from the county’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund and moving it into a pool of dollars available for new county housing projects.

The trust fund was created to preserve privately owned affordable housing, but has struggled to activate its plan to hire an outside lender to start distributing funds. County leaders said the trust dollars will be replenished while the fund pursues its first project.

“It’s extremely short-sighted to take all of the money out now,” Reinaldo Bonachea, a volunteer with the MIAMI Pact advocacy group, told commissioners. “This move will destroy it.” Commissioners passed the budget with the transfer intact, sponsored by Commissioner Eileen Higgins.

Water fees

Some of the objections to the higher water fees during the first budget hearing on Sept. 14 centered on the county’s 18-month-old moratorium on cutting off water service during the COVID-19 pandemic. Commissioners asked why some residents should pay more in 2022 while others could leave bills unpaid without consequence.

In response, the Levine Cava administration agreed to end the moratorium while instituting a payment plan for overdue bills that begins Oct. 1. Service cut-offs resume in December for people who miss their first two months of payments. The Water and Sewer Department also plans to assist customers with overdue bills to apply for a state assistance programs for people who can’t afford utility bills during the pandemic.

Reinstating water cut-offs drew some objections during the hearing, including from activist Jenneva Clauss.

“We shouldn’t be shutting off water during a pandemic,” she said in an interview. “People should be able to continue washing their hands.”

This story was originally published September 29, 2021 at 6:00 AM.