Fight escalates over an electric-bus depot as Miami-Dade mayor issues first veto
Miami-Dade County’s mayor launched her first direct fight with county commissioners on Saturday, vetoing legislation that blocked her administration from building an electric-bus facility on 47 acres that a business group wants for an entertainment village.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava issued the veto message Saturday after negotiations with the legislation’s sponsor, Commissioner Kionne McGhee, broke down over the county-owned parcel outside of Homestead he wants sold in a no-bid deal to a business group out of St. Petersburg.
The county’s transit arm wants a portion of the land for a maintenance yard for South Miami-Dade’s new $300 million express electric-bus line on the county’s busway.
It’s the first project under construction from the county’s 2016 transit push known as the SMART Plan, being built with a mix of federal, state and county funds.
Service is scheduled to start by 2024, running electric buses along the South Miami-Dade busway to new stations equipped for advanced ticket sales, group boarding and other upgrades designed to speed departure times. The property sits outside the Homestead Air Reserve Base, south of Southwest 280th Street and east of Southwest 127th Avenue.
McGhee opposes the project as an unacceptable alternative to a southern Metrorail line but said he’s fighting the bus-maintenance yard because of the location’s proximity to residential neighborhoods.
Instead, the Distrcit 9 commissioner wants an entertainment destination there largely built of cargo containers, with restaurants, bars, performance spaces and facilities for offices and other services. The area would also have soccer fields, skateboarding, tennis and other park spaces.
The dispute is the first time Levine Cava has used her authority as mayor to block legislation since her election in November 2020. A former commissioner herself, she took office as a new commission came to power as well, with six of the 13 seats filled by first-term members like McGhee, a former state legislator.
McGhee will need a two-thirds majority to override the mayoral veto when the commission meets Tuesday. It passed with 10 votes on Jan. 19, so Levine Cava will need to switch some supporters to her side to sustain the veto. The no votes came from commissioners Eileen Higgins and René Garcia, with Javier Souto absent.
Under the framework outlined in McGhee’s resolution, Miami-Dade would sell the land in District 9 outright to Homestead Town Center LLC, a group that a county report said seemed to lack expertise in development, construction or leasing spaces. Partners who attended the Jan. 19 commission meeting where the legislation passed declined to answer questions after the vote.
At the meeting, McGhee said the prime real estate should help foster economic development in South Miami-Dade, rather than be closed off to the public as a bus maintenance yard. “The time is now to bring our community and our children quality activities and entertainment,” he said in a statement after the vote. “For far too long we have been left behind.”
His legislation allows for a portion to go to facilities to charge electric buses but bars the county from using it for bus maintenance. His legislation instructed the Levine Cava administration to negotiate a sales agreement within six months.
McGhee was not immediately available for comment on Saturday.
In her veto message, Levine Cava said her administration has been in talks with McGhee for about a year on his objections to the $56 million maintenance yard.
The Department of Transportation and Public Works compressed the footprint of the planned maintenance yard to fit on 20 acres of the parcel, and her administration presented the commissioner plans on how a mixed-use development could go on the remaining land. She said she wants a “competitive, transparent process” to develop a commercial project there, “rather than a no-bid conveyance.”
With McGhee insisting on the county finding another spot for the electric-bus yard, Levine Cava said Miami-Dade shouldn’t be forced to spend more time and money when a county site is available.
“This impasse has already delayed our progress on this critical project for our bus system by almost a year,” Levine Cava wrote. “Unfortunately, any alternative site will further delay this project and dramatically escalate the expenses to our Transit operations.”