Miami-Dade keeps Plan Z’s rejected toll plan a secret, but some finances revealed

While still a county secret, the toll increases considered as part of the rejected Plan Z redevelopment proposal for the Rickenbacker Causeway became a bit more transparent Wednesday when Miami-Dade released a less redacted version of the project’s financial plan.

In early 2021, the development group behind Plan Z proposed taking over the county’s toll operation for 99 years in exchange for a privately funded upgrade expected to cost about $500 million. Miami-Dade commissioners opted to formally reject the idea on Jan. 19, lifting public-record protections for a proposal first submitted to Mayor Daniella Levine Cava in February 2021.

Plan Z lawyers, however, declared the proposed toll increases on the Rickenbacker “trade secrets,” and threatened legal action in a letter to the Levine Cava administration Wednesday if that information was made public.

“If you refuse to maintain the protection to which this information is entitled,” Plan Z lawyer Melissa Pallett-Vasquez, of Bilzin Sumberg, wrote county parks administrator Christina Salinas Cotter, “we will have no alternative but to pursue all of our rights and remedies at law.”

The confidential information is the latest controversy for Plan Z, which filed its documents last year using county rules for unsolicited proposals that temporary shield them from public-record rules.

With that shield lifted by Miami-Dade’s decision last month to cancel a bidding process for private development of the Rickenbacker, critics of the effort want to know how much it would have cost causeway drivers.

“I really think it’s critical for people to know what it is,” former Key Biscayne Mayor Mayra Peña Lindsay said of the proposal’s finances. “To know whether it’s a good idea for the community. I think they’re going to bid again.”

While the proposed Plan Z toll increases remained blacked out in the documents Miami-Dade released Wednesday, the latest version reveals enough information to allow for a rough idea of what the proposal would have cost drivers on the Rickenbacker.

When Key Biscayne leaders were on the verge of defeating the plan in early December, Plan Z released a letter to Miami-Dade commissioners rebutting claims by some of the plan’s critics. That included rumors of $15 tolls.

In the Dec. 6 letter, Plan Z disclosed that the current $2.25 toll on SunPass customers — the bulk of Rickenbacker drivers — would not have increased more than $2 during the first year.

The higher toll would have started after the group finished upgrades that included new cycling structures over Biscayne Bay and replacing Bear Cut Bridge. The proposal predicted construction would have taken between two and three years.

No mention was made of how much those tolls would have increased in future years, but the newly released version includes that formula.

The proposal said tolls would have increased annually by at least 2%, but would rise with inflation if that rate exceeded 2% any year. (That would mean a big spike if the Plan Z plan was in effect today, since inflation hit a 39-year high of 7% in 2021.) Tolls also would be pegged to yearly economic growth if that ended up higher than 2% or inflation.

Applying a 2% annual increase to a starting rate of $4.25, the new Plan Z toll would have reached $5 after 10 years.

Key Biscayne residents would likely have seen their annual pass price increase from $24 to about $45. That matches the 89% increase in the first year for SunPass payers if their toll went to $4.25 from $2.25, the county-set toll that’s been in place since 2017. The proposal released Wednesday said all toll payers would have seen the same increases “in proportion” to the SunPass holders.

The newest release of Plan Z documents also reveals what Miami Beach commuters and visitors would have paid under the original plan, which included a private operator for the Venetian Causeway as well.

Residents on the expressway between Miami and Miami Beach quickly thwarted that portion of the plan, and county commissioners voted to drop the Venetian from the redevelopment effort in October.

With most of the original proposal’s upgrades aimed at the Rickenbacker — including a new span for bikers over Biscayne Bay and pedestrian overpasses along the causeway’s bayfront parks — tolls wouldn’t have risen as sharply on the Venetian.

The newly released version said the current $2.25 Venetian tolls would have remained flat in the first year, then risen at least 2% in future years.

Also blacked out were the financial figures for Plan Z, including development cost. In October, a county consultant reviewing the bidding process estimated a proposer would spend $497 million to upgrade the Rickenbacker based on county specifications that were largely modeled after the Plan Z proposal.

Monica Rizo, the assistant county attorney handling public-record requests for the Plan Z documents, said the county was following Florida law in not releasing the un-redacted proposal after the developer asserted trade-secret protections.

“It is not what the County is ‘accepting’ as much as it is what rights Plan Z is exercising,” she said.

This story was originally published February 3, 2022 at 6:00 AM.