Voila! Libraries are magically saved… but what else could be?

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Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said in July, when he presented his severe budget cuts at a county commission meeting, that he was no magician.

But it turns out he did have a few tricks up his sleeve.

It’s really no surprise to anyone that no libraries are closing. We heard the drumroll as we saw the countdown coming.

First it was 22. No, 16! No, four! No, none!

Voila! Somehow, the county bean counters found the money necessary to keep every single one of the 49 libraries open in every neighborhood, at least part of the time.

Hmmm. Well, Ladra has one thing to say: Keep on looking! You know, if I found a few million dollars looking through my proverbial couch cushions, I’d check the other furniture, too, and under the area rug.

Why this doesn’t surprise me is surprising in itself. But why should we accept that our “Golden Boy” mayor can present a Dooms Day scenario of shutting down almost half the county’s library facilities when, voila!, he can change that when the community riots against ig? Should he be given that much wiggle room? Isn’t that like a bait and switch? Shouldn’t they have done everything possible to present it this way in the first place? Are they not doing their jobs?

And, the most glaring question of all: What else could be saved — or, dare I ask it, improved — if our bean counters under the guidance of our jet-setting mayor would really look at the figures with this much scrutiny all the time?

There’s also been a countdown on fire rescue units. Only three, as opposed to six, will be taken out of service. Yet only three is still unacceptable. It is too bad that the Miami-Dade Public School system, which announced it would open some school libraries to fill in the county’s miserable void, doesn’t have its own emergency medical and fire trucks.

This Dooms Day turned “saves the day” strategy is not only good to get a good number of critics off his back at least, if not downright flipped, it also turns Gimenez into a hero that “listened to the people” and did what had to be done to save libraries and paramedic units. It is part of his trying to solidify his shaky stand for 2016. It makes for good campaign material.

But it should not have come to this in the first place. And Gimenez should feel embarrassed, not heroic.

Ladra urges all the people who pressured to keep the libraries open to keep on pushing. Don’t stop now.

If the mayor and his administrators could find that many millions of dollars in six weeks — voila! — imagine what they can do it they keep at it. Maybe they can even keep the 160-some employees who are still going to be fired and stay open the 400+ hours they propose to lose anyway.

Who knows what else can be saved.

  budget cuts, Carlos Gimenez, firefighters, Miami-Dade budget, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue