Hialeah Heights is most prosperous part of city — but it lacks police, paramedics and parks
Ivonne García’s husband was not feeling well when he told her to call 911.
She knew it must be serious because he hated to go to the hospital.
She waited more than 20 minutes for paramedics to arrive at their Hialeah Heights home. But they couldn’t save her husband. Joel García, who suffered from leukemia, died of a cardiopulmonary embolism, or a blood clot in the lungs, on June 20, 2019. He was 55.
He died en route to Palmetto General Hospital.
“They were the most agonizing 20 minutes of my life,” Ivonne García said. “The firefighters had to come from Miami Lakes because there was no station here. Now, there is a unit but without paramedics.”
García, who had moved from Homestead four months prior so her husband could receive medical care more quickly, lives in Aquabella, a large enclave in Hialeah Heights, which the city of Hialeah annexed in 2004. With about 16,000 residents, Hialeah Heights is one of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhoods, bordered between Interstate 75 and Northwest 107th Avenue, east to west, and from Northwest 138th Street to the south and Northwest 170th Street to the north.
Yet despite its rapid growth, Hialeah Heights has few city services. It has a fire station, but it’s not staffed with paramedics. It lacks a police substation, a library or parks, and trucks from nearby warehouses cause daily traffic backups, residents say.
“It took six months for the traffic light to work. There is not enough school zone signage. Trucks speed by during the day, endangering our lives,” said Graciela Urdaneta, 57, who has lived for more than four years in Aquabella, which has about 1,700 houses. “The commercial part is not controlled, mainly affecting the residents. There have also been several criminal reports.”
For Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo Jr., “the lack of services” that he found after he took office in November 2021 was alarming. So, “we are making the investments, perhaps not to the necessary extent, but there was a delay of four or five years. I know that we have an obligation to invest in that area,” he told el Nuevo Herald.
READ MORE: Steve Bovo wins election for Hialeah mayor
No paramedics at fire station
One of Bovo’s first actions was to bring a fire station to the area. But Station 9 only has a firefighter team and no paramedic unit. Fire Station 7 is the closest station staffed by paramedics, but it’s at 7590 W. 24th Ave., nearly four miles south of Hialeah Heights. According to city documents, each station covers 2.9 square miles, except in Hialeah Heights.
The death of Joel García left Ivonne, 58, a widow with five children.
“My two youngest children are teenagers,” she said. “They now have a lot of anxiety after seeing their father die without help.”
Eric Johnson, president of the Hialeah Firefighters Association, said the residents deserve the same public services as the rest of Hialeah.
“The standard for stations in South Florida is four people in the fire suppression unit (firefighters) and three in the rescue unit (paramedics),” he explained. “The mayor is creating the necessary services.”
One police officer for 16,000 residents
The administration of former mayor Carlos Hernández said in September 2013 that Hialeah Heights would need 12 patrol officers to guarantee the safety of residents and merchants, according to city documents. However, the area has only one police officer assigned to 16,000 residents.
Bovo said in October that “possibly in the coming months the annexed area will be seeing two to three policemen.” As of early January, however, Hialeah Heights still had only one police officer.
Urdaneta said there have been carjackings in recent months and “even an armed robbery with a girl in the vehicle.”
Carlos Villarreal, who lives in Bonterra, a community of 858 homes, also is concerned about security.
“We need a permanent police and fire station because although we have the fire truck, there are no rescuers. We are not asking for a police battalion, but I know of robberies within the complex,” said Villarreal, 38.
According to statistics from Hialeah police, in the first 10 months of 2022 the department received reports of 37 crimes in the area:
▪ 16 vehicle thefts, 10 of them related to break-ins to take objects
▪ 13 grand thefts, involving more than $950
▪ Three thefts in businesses
▪ Five burglaries in homes
▪ 12 arrests
Thefts in businesses went up 200%, grand thefts increased 30%, and burglaries in homes went up 25% compared to 2021 statistics. Vehicle theft, however, was down 63%.
Although residents say there is an increase in crime, statistics from the Hialeah Police Department show that violent crimes in Hialeah Heights are low compared to surrounding neighborhoods. In 2021, there was only one domestic violence shooting.
“What I am not seeing at this time is that the crime rates in the annexed area are alarming,” Bovo said. “It’s not that I don’t want to give it importance, but the rates haven’t shown me a huge problem.”
Hialeah-Miami Lakes bridge eases some traffic
The quick development in Hialeah Heights has been driven by a shortage of large industrial vacant lots and distribution center-type warehouses in Miami-Dade County, city officials say.
Hialeah Heights is strategically located in the northwest part of the county, between two highways, Florida’s Turnpike and Interstate 75, but access was restricted to the main road, Northwest 97th Avenue.
There’s now a second route, across the Northwest 170th Street Bridge connecting Hialeah to Miami Lakes, although it took more than four decades for an additional route. But residents say the traffic flow in and out of the area is insufficient for an area with more than 8,000 personal vehicles and a truck fleet in the commercial zone.
Luisa Tobonen lives in Aragon, a 585-home neighborhood in Hialeah Heights.
“What bothers me the most is commercial traffic, trucks that represent the space of five individual vehicles. They are a danger to the community, they pass by at all hours, at full speed, without any type of control,” said Tobonen, 37. “We are demanding that another road be used for the transit of those trucks and leave the main avenue [Northwest 97th Avenue] only for residential traffic.”
It’s outrageous, she said, that “private vehicles and trucks converge at all hours on the only main road in the annexed area. You also have a school. During rush hour, this road collapses.”
Villarreal acknowledges that the bridge’s opening has improved traffic slightly, but it mainly benefits residents who have children in schools in Miami Lakes.
Illegal dumping
Another area of concern has been unsightly trash.
Last May, Mayor Bovo said at a news briefing that the city was spending $100,000 to clean up the area, which has been plagued with illegal dumping.
At that time, the mayor warned his office would work with police in surveilling the area. Yet the accumulation of trash continues.
“We have a garbage dump in the neighborhood, and the streets are full of holes. I don’t understand why it takes so long to solve the basic needs of the area,” Urdaneta said.
“At the beginning, the situation had improved,” Bovo said. “I’ll have to drive through the area one more time, but this is extremely difficult because they have to catch people right when they throw garbage.”
More taxes for less development?
On average, a house in Hialeah outside the annexed area costs $259,000, generating a property tax payment of about $2,641.80 a year. Meanwhile, in Hialeah Heights, homes range from $475,000 to $950,000, with annual property taxes ranging from $4,845 to $9,690, the highest in the city.
Tobonen said the property taxes she pays are similar to those of the City of Doral, without the same benefits.
“We pay a lot of taxes,” she said. “We have to pay about $7,000 and we don’t see where they went. We don’t see it reflected in the area.”
Villarreal has the same complaint. “I pay more than $8,000 in property taxes and we don’t receive what’s necessary in the annexed area.”
Urdaneta complains about the municipal slowness. “Why is there so much bureaucracy to help the people who live here?” she asked. “They take six months to fix a traffic light, put up a signal or repair a hole. Where are my taxes going?
Bovo explained that although he has not done a financial analysis to know how much of what residents are paying is being reinvested in that area, “it’s worth doing it. But when that area was annexed, it was talked about as part of the growth of the city globally,” he said. “I can’t fall into the trap of saying that what an area produces must be reinvested in that area.”
Police and fire station, library still a year off
Hialeah’s 2023 budget mentions the need for a substation in Hialeah Heights “due to the fast growth in the area, to provide city services for residents and businesses in that area, including firefighters, police, parks, recreation, library.”
But it is a plan that will have to wait at least a year to materialize.
Building a substation, which the city says would cost about $10 million and would include both police and fire, won’t happen until at least 2024, the city says. Same for a library, which the city estimates would cost $1 million.
The substation is needed, in part, so paramedics can work from there.
This story was originally published January 11, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
