Years past, residents would come to the Miami-Dade County budget hearings to beg for the restoration of police jobs or library hours or to save grant funding for this or that community-based organization. This year, the majority of the speakers at the first hearing for the $9 billion 2019-2020 budget on Thursday had one request: […]
After eight public meetings that were scantily attended — one person went to the Hialeah town hall — the public will have at least three opportunities to comment on the $9 billion 2019-2020 Miami-Dade budget before the commission votes on it next month. The first look comes courtesy of Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, who has her […]
Last year, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez scolded county commissioners for plans to protect the environment, reduce crime in South Dade, create programs for children and fund fare-free circulators, like the trolleys in many cities, in unincorporated parts of Miami-Dade. We ain’t got the money, honey, the mayor told them. He complained of a five-year budget shortfall […]
Well, what do you know? Pushed into a corner by a majority of Miami-Dade County commissioners and an army of activists and angry residents to restore the funding cuts he proposed for transit services (bus routes and Metrorail hours), Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez suddenly found at least $16.2 million we didn’t have before. More found […]
Speaker after speaker at the final Miami-Dade County budget hearing Thursday night begged Mayor Carlos Gimenez and the commission to allocate more funds to address the climate change and sea level rise that threatens to put much of Miami under water. Some discussed other items — grants for community based organizations, the Underline parkway initiative, […]
Last year, it was libraries and police officers. The year before that, the pets’ trust and firefighters. This year, we’ll likely still see the pet people trying to get the mandate from the people respected by our elected commission, but the new rallying call against the Miami-Dade County budget is climate change. Or rather the […]
As we get closer to the September budget hearings on Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez‘s annual budget, several commissioners are getting ready to make some suggested changes. And the most drastic of these is a call for a tax cut from Commissioner Juan Zapata. Zapata met with Gimenez Wednesday morning to ask for a lower tax […]
Animal advocates who passed the Pets’ Trust Initiative referendum nearly three years ago and have been met with resistance from the county to execute what is basically the people’s will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. And that light’s name is Commissioner Xavier Suarez. Suarez will present the Metropolitan Services Committee […]
You know how they say good news travels fast. Well, it also travels more. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez announced a series of budget town hall meetings, starting next week, where residents will have the opportunity to ask questions and provide input on his proposed 2015-16 county budget. And there are a whole 10 of them […]
Miami-Dade County, accused of wrongly allocating $13 million in federal grants that must be repaid to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, is about to dole out another $12.5 million of the very same Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), Home Investment Partnerships (HOME) and State Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP) monies. How do we know we won’t […]