Herald recommends: In the County Commission District 8 race, ‘aggressive agenda’ pays off | Editorial

Incumbent Miami-Dade County Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins, appointed in late 2020 to fill the vacancy when Daniella Levine Cava became mayor, is asking voters to give her four more years.

District 8

Danielle Cohen Higgins, an attorney, has two opponents: neighborhood activist Alicia Arellano and former hospital emergency room director Karen Baez-Wallis.

The South Miami-Dade district includes the municipalities of Cutler Bay, Palmetto Bay and parts of Homestead. County Commission races are non-partisan.

Cohen Higgins has never before faced voters in an election, something her opponents both noted. County commissioners appointed her, on a 10-1 vote, rather than hold a special election.

The appointment gave Cohen Higgins what has essentially been a 1 1/2-year audition. In that time, the Miami-Dade native and child of Jamaican immigrants scored some wins as she pushed what she called an “aggressive agenda.”

Among the accomplishments she cited: helping to secure $3 million in state money to improve the South Dade Trail, getting an additional 154 parking spaces at the public Black Point Marina and pushing for construction of the 87th Avenue bridge — though that project angered Palmetto Bay residents who said it would cause a traffic nightmare.

She said the top issues now facing the district are traffic and transportation, public safety and environmental concerns, including Biscayne Bay. Cohen Higgins is chairwoman of the Biscayne Bay Water Management Advisory Committee.

“It’s the community where I was born and raised. I don’t just know the issues — I’ve lived the issues,“ she said.

The same could be said for Arellano. The real estate agent and swim coach has laid a grassroots foundation to run for public office. As vice chair for the Hammocks Citizens Advisory Committee, she meets with residents monthly to discuss community concerns and the role of police in the community.

That’s valuable experience and it shows in her good grasp of the issues. She said the district needs better transit and increased police and fire services. Citing “rampant overdevelopment” in the district, she also wants to focus on smarter development and a hold-the-line approach to the Urban Development Boundary, which divides Miami-Dade’s suburbs and its agricultural belt.

“We need a plan for the future and not just homes for today,” she said.

She decided to run, in part, because of her own experience attending County Commission meetings but not always feeling heard: “We give up a day at work, we sit in traffic . . . and we spend the entire day there and we get two minutes — if we’re not cut off — and they completely disregard what we say.”

Baez-Wallis, who worked at Jackson South Medical Center, part of the county-funded Jackson Health System, also was motivated to enter the race by seeing the need for greater advocacy. As a healthcare professional during the pandemic, she said she saw outreach to communities on vaccines not working very well. That led her to realize she wanted to play a bigger role in advocating for her community.

She said she hopes to push for “responsible growth and look at innovative solutions and different problems from a different perspective, from the perspective of the healthcare worker and the nurse.”

She said her health background will provide a “different perspective to the commission and to problem solving in general.”

Baez-Wallis easily identified key issues in District 8. In Palmetto Bay, she said, it’s bridges and traffic. In Homestead, it’s workforce housing and in the Redland, it’s lot size and rezoning.

Baez-Wallis would join Arellano in stopping any expansion of the UDB, while Cohen Higgins said she is not completely opposed to the possibility of some development but wants a case-by-case evaluation. Overall, she favors the most recent approach by the county of increasing housing density as a way of creating more housing inventory and, with it, more affordable options.

All of the candidates recognized that, as the district grows, public transit is key, notably Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT. The futuristic electric bus network planned for a 20-mile stretch of U.S. 1 in South Miami-Dade is now delayed by about a year, until early 2024.

Arellano said she’s anxious to see the project finished, but that South Dade still needs better east-west connectors to public transit, while Baez-Wallis said she wants to see the county work on fixing the transit it already has running. Cohen Higgins called it a “very, very important project for South Dade” and said she had recently visited the construction site to get a firsthand update.

And on the election of a county sheriff in 2024, an issue that all commissioners will face, all of the candidates worried about how the new system will affect police service and response time. Cohen Higgins said that law enforcement officers have told her they want to stay under county control and “that’s going to carry tremendous weight.”

For the last 1 1/2 years, Cohen Higgins has done the work to stay on top of complex issues facing the county. Despite a misstep when she pushed the 87th Avenue bridge construction through the commission too quickly to allow her constituents to be heard, she has taken the job seriously, grounding herself in facts and accomplishing tangible results. She has Levine Cava’s backing as well. She has earned the right to ask voters for four more years.

We commend her opponents for their willingness to work for the betterment of their community and hope they continue to seek involvement in the political process to gain more experience for possible future runs.

The Miami Herald recommends DANIELLE COHEN HIGGINS for Miami-Dade Commission, District 8.

This story was originally published July 28, 2022 at 7:59 AM.