‘Deplorable conditions’: Miami mayor pushes $450M bond to fix police, fire stations
Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins is beginning a push to get voters to approve nearly a half-billion dollars in spending to address “critically deteriorating” police and fire facilities — an ambitious proposal for the city’s newly minted top elected official.
On Wednesday, Higgins announced her proposal for a $450 million general obligation bond, dubbed “Safe and Ready Miami,” to repair and replace the city’s aging public safety infrastructure. Next week, the Miami City Commission is slated to vote on whether to send the proposal to Miami voters on the August ballot.
Citing leaky roofs, mold, subpar living conditions for firefighters working 24-hour shifts, and plumbing failures so severe that portable bathrooms were required to remain operational, Higgins said improvements are urgently needed. In addition to repairs, the proposal also involves building new fire facilities and a new Miami police headquarters.
Higgins, who was elected in December, said the issue came to her attention when she toured the city’s public safety facilities.
“We need to fix this situation,” she said in an interview with the Miami Herald. “We can’t wait. I can’t have employees working in these kind of conditions, particularly the people who literally will save your grandmother’s life when she has a heart attack.”
By green-lighting the bond, voters would give the city the ability to borrow the money on the municipal bond market, leveraging property taxes, to fund “renovations, modernizations, and new construction” of the city’s public safety facilities.
Higgins’ proposal lands nine years after Miami voters approved the $400 million Miami Forever Bond, championed by former Mayor Tomás Regalado and meant to address flooding and fund affordable housing.
What problems would the funding fix?
One of the main goals of the Safe and Ready Miami bond is to replace the downtown Miami Police Department headquarters, which has been affected by “decades of deferred maintenance,” according to the legislation underlying Higgins’ proposal.
The 1976 facility was designed to house approximately 560 officers, according to the legislation, but it now serves nearly 1,400 sworn personnel and 400 professional staff, “far exceeding its intended capacity and limiting its ability to support and expand modern policing operations.”
The proposal also cites outdated electrical systems and leaking roofs stuck in a “cycle of frequent and costly emergency repairs in a 50-year building that has exceeded its useful life.”
Higgins said the conditions are so poor at the police headquarters that employees will be “in the middle of doing an investigation on the third floor, and it’ll rain in the middle of the desks.”
“There’s no running water on the bottom floor, the showers don’t work,” she said. “There are stories of sewage running through parts of the building. Windows are leaking. There’s water intrusion everywhere.”
The new police headquarters could be constructed on the Miami Freedom Park site, home to Inter Miami’s Nu Stadium and the future home of Miami City Hall. In late 2025, under the previous administration, the City Commission passed legislation directing the city manager to approve the site as the police headquarters, “subject to the results of a traffic study analysis.” Higgins said the “process of scoping all that out is underway.”
Higgins said selling the current police facility would free up funds to purchase new vehicles for fire, police and sanitation.
The bond proposal also looks to build three new fire stations, Higgins said.
Of the 17 fire stations that operate in the city of Miami, eight were built more than 50 years ago, and two were built more than 60 years ago, according to the legislation.
Modern equipment, like fire engines and ambulances, is much larger than what was in use when the original stations were constructed, resulting in Miami Fire-Rescue storing equipment outside or at distant stations, “impacting readiness and response times.”
In addition, the firefighter training center is a 100-year-old building “that has experienced such severe and persistent plumbing failures that it has required the use of portable bathrooms in order to remain operational.”
“It would just be complete negligence to not do this,” Higgins said of the bond. “ ... We have to do this. We cannot continue in this fashion.”
District 3 Commissioner Rolando Escalona, who replaced longtime Commissioner Joe Carollo, is a co-sponsor on Higgins’ item.
“This bond is an investment that reflects my commitment to making public safety a top priority,” Escalona said in a statement Wednesday, “not only critical for supporting our first responders, but for protecting our residents and improving response times.”
The proposed ballot question reads as follows:
“To enhance citywide public safety by improving critically deteriorating facilities for firefighters and paramedics through renovations, modernizations, and new construction, and by building a modern, mission-ready public safety headquarters for police and first responders, shall the City of Miami issue $450 million in General Obligation Bonds, within maximum lawful interest rates, payable from ad valorem taxes, with no increase to the current capital projects debt millage rate (0.5935), and an independent annual audit?”
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