Miami-Dade Commissioners on Wednesday approved a ballot question that would tax residents an additional $18 a year for a $200,000 home in order to 
build a new courthouse.
Where? Don’t know.
Who? Not a clue.
How? No se sabe.
There are absolutely zero details on any of the parameters of the new courthouse, except that the project will cost about $393 million — $368 million for a new building and $25 million to repair Cielito Lindo, the name given to the 1925 tower at 73 West Flagler that is crumbling and has been crumbling for years under the county’s watch (or lack thereof). We don’t know how that figure was derived. It’s not like the project went out to bid. We have not sent out an RFQ to see who would be qualified to do this work. We don’t even have a location identified. There was not a word about an oversight process. And, most importantly, we haven’t exhausted a search for other avenues of funding, though logic tells you there could be several.
In fact, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez was allegedly against the referendum because he thought other revenue streams — including an increase in ticket surcharges and a request to the state to increase filing fees — would be able to accomplish the same thing. Seemingly overnight, he changed his position and recommended the referendum.
What made him change his mind? Did he have a nightmare about the building crumbling on top of Chief Judge Bertila Soto and lawyers and citizens?
There is no doubt that there is a need to (1) rehabilitate the crumbling historic Dade County Courthouse and (2) find and/or build new digs for a growing civil court system that has outgrown its 90-year-old home. But how much of that damage is the county responsible for? I would imagine that through neglect, the county itself has created this emergency situation. So they took the easiest route possible to take care of it. They went to what Commissioner Juan Zapata called the “silver bullet” once again: the taxpayers’ pocket.
Basically, they are asking voters to tax themselves an extra $393 million for a courthouse somewhere, that will look like something great, really, and include whatever we figure out is enough space, whenever.
“Give us $393 million and just trust us,” is pretty much what they are saying. Really? Really?
Trust you?
It is ludicrous to think that this community — already wary of the stadium scam deals and the water and sewer rates that were hiked in another “emergency” created by our inept government — would pass this and Ladra wishes that Chairwoman Rebeca Sosa — who wrought her hands over it, like always, but then voted for it, like always — would have given more time to Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado. After all, she’s been there. She was one of the main advocates of the $1.2 billion school bond that passed in 2012. The difference, Regalado said, is that the need had been in the public’s eye for years and the board had exhausted all avenues of funding, including private donations to the schools in her district.
“I’ve said from the beginning, there needs to be a comprehensive plan,” Regalado told Ladra later Wednesday. “My problem with this is it’s all been very deceptive.”
But in the end, only Commissioners Zapata and Esteban Bovo voted against this money grab. My words, not theirs.
“I’ve been here a little more than two years, and I’m disgusted at the way we are always in emergency mode,” Zapata said. “We’re always looking for the quick hit, the silver bullet.”
Zapata brought up another issue: We haven’t heard about this crumbling courthouse need until they are asking for an increase in taxes? How come? He said that county administrators knew about this issue back in January of last year. How interesting that it didn’t become public then, huh?
The former state rep also said that he was not comfortable with the $393 pie-in-the-sky figure and that there might be money in Tallahassee to fund at least part of the project. And he should know. He’s been there.
“Our responsibility is to make sure that before I put something to the voters of Dade County, I do whatever possible and this delegation can push hard enough,” Zap said, reminding folks of the state dollars brought down for the Port tunnel. “I know they can deliver, and we haven’t asked them.”
“There’s a pattern in county government. Don’t fix something. Put a band aid on it,” Bovo said. Until it comes to a critical point and the county has to act, he added.
The school bond was one of those. The bond for Jackson Memorial Hospital was another. Bovo said residents in his district have asked him about the rising number on their tax bill. “They’re fatigued already. I have residents who turn the A/C off to save the $18,” he said.
Strangely enough, there were some commissioners who seemed to speak against it but then voted for the referendum in the end. Commissioner Dennis Moss seemed to echo Zapata’s sentiment.
“The reasons we have these emergencies is because we don’t want to pay for something,” Moss said. “We seem to only respond to crisis. When we’re backed into a corner, we find the money.”
Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz said that there were a lot of unknowns. “It only behooves us that when we ask the public, it’s very clear what we’re asking them to do,” he said, which apparently means nothing since he went ahead and voted for the referendum.
The people pushing this — Commissioner Xavier Suarez and Soto and lobbyist Jorge Luis Lopez, and it is worth some thought why a chief judge would hire or bring in a lobbyist for this, something that is the county’s responsibility to do– are going to pass out photos of the mildew and mold and flooding and crumbling foundation at Cielito Lindo and, just like they did at Wednesday’s meeting, and pretend it is about that. It is not about Cielito Lindo. Remember, the bulk of the funding sought in this tax increase — because that is what it is — is for new construction of a new courthouse that is yet undefined and TBA.
Because make no mistake: We have the money to fix Cielito Lindo right now. Some commissioners suggested that the county take $25 million from the $78 million in bond money that the mayor said he was sitting on and use that to fix the issues at the building while they take a year to study the building of a new state-of-the-art courthouse — the where, the how, the who pays and who gets how much. Commissioner Javier “El Senador” Souto wondered if forfeiture funds couldn’t be redirected to courthouse costs temporarily, which seems like a good idea.
Judge Soto wouldn’t hear of it. This “crisis” cannot wait, she said, for legislative changes or, apparently, any real thought to be put into it.
“Perhaps that is something in the future. The need is today,” Soto told Souto.
Again, there is no doubt about the need. More than 90 percent of the columns have been repaired due to damage from basement flooding. Some are still exposed. The foundation is not secure. The probate court and multiple boxes of records have been moved out in order to lessen the load. Ladra has heard that the 40-year recertification on the building is overdue and has been avoided because the building won’t pass — meaning a possible evacuation.
But it is not the fault of property owners that we find ourselves here. Bovo and Zapata each said that the county is to blame and it is. It’s almost as if they created this emergency to create the cottage industry and boom first to lobbyists and then to the construction industry that are all on a first name basis and golf buddies with the mayor and some commissioners.
Ladra expects a big push and a lot of non-specific propaganda — again with the Cielito Lindo pictures — with very little details to try to sway voters that this is a safety issue that must be addressed immediately. The proponents, which include the lobbyists and construction industry, will pour up to a million dollars into this effort and there won’t be that kind of money against it.
But we opponents of this obvious money grab say there is reason enough already to vote no: As Gimenez himself already said, the Cry Wolf boy that he is, something will have to be done even if voters say no. The county will have to find the money elsewhere.
Said Sosa: “If the voters say no, we have to come back and find another way to do it.”
Which is what they should have done in the first place: Be leaders.
Miami-Dade: ‘Trust us with $400 mil for new courthouse’ added by Ladra on
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