A little more than two months after Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava floated a $2.5 billion general obligation bond (GOB) referendum during her State of the County address to pay for a series of expansive projects, she’s had a change of heart.
The mayor recently announced her decision to postpone those ambitious plans after running into too much opposition in a year when she’s seeking reelection.
Originally proposed to appear on the November ballot if county commissioners approved it, the mayor wanted the GOB to finance the construction of more housing, septic-to-sewer conversions, park enhancements and flooding mitigation. A list of specific projects was in the works, but the mayor’s office told The Biscayne Times several weeks ago that it was too early to get into specifics.
Then opposition mounted from friends and foes alike. Even Levine Cava’s allies on the commission had complained that public transit was left out of her plans while talk of extending Metrorail south to Homestead and north to Miami Gardens has stagnated for decades as traffic has only gotten worse.
“Over the course of the last 60 days, my team and have had productive and thoughtful conversations … through these conversations with our county commissioners, business leaders, city mayors and commissioners and residents, the need to put forward a transit plan was clear,” said Levine Cava.
The mayor carefully admitted the miscalculation and announced an 18-month postponement in a two-minute social media post April 3, saying a better and bolder plan “will require building greater public commitment to ensure our residents trust the process and the plan.”
She went on to say that although confident her original plan would have received broad public support, she was “equally confident that as we take the next 18 months … convening key stakeholders and the public, we will build even stronger support for a comprehensive proposal to be voted on in November 2026.”
Republican opposition to Levine Cava’s proposed taxpayer-funded “305 Future Ready” GOB was built on labeling it a tax-and-spend scheme. The county’s previous bond program was put forth by Democratic Mayor Alex Penelas as he was leaving office. Voters approved his “Building Better Communities” GOB in 2004, authorizing the county to incur $2.94 billion in debt – roughly $4.8 billion in today’s dollars – for water and sewer improvements, parks, cultural facilities, infrastructure, public safety, health care, public service and affordable housing. Only 197 of the 355 listed projects under that bond package had been completed as of September 2023, something Penelas told The Biscayne Times is not unusual considering the magnitude of some of the projects.
(MiamiFoundationForMentalHealth.org)
A rendering showing the new Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery that, though built, has not yet opened.
“Much like a mortgage that you take 30 years to pay back, these bond issues sometimes last as long as 40 years,” he explained. “It’s an authorization, and you’re not going to build just for the sake of building. You build projects when they’re ready to be built.”
According to the county’s Office of Management and Budget, residents in Miami-Dade still have about $1.68 billion worth of debt under the “Building Better Communities” bond program. Taxpayers will be footing that bill until approximately 2051. Of the $2.94 billion approved through the 2004 bond package, $729 million remains uninvested.
Projects funded and completed under the Building Better Communities bond program in District 4, which encompasses the Biscayne Corridor, include drainage projects and water and sewer enhancements in Miami Shores, Golden Beach, North Bay Village, Sunny Isles and Surfside; a recreational community center at Claude Pepper Park in North Miami; a city hall in Biscayne Park; a renovation of the Northeast Aventura Branch Library, which became Miami-Dade County’s first sustainable public library; as well as Flamingo Park, Normandy Shores Golf Course and Bandshell Park in Miami Beach.
To find out more about projects still waiting and how these GOB initiatives work, read our prior coverage on the subject at BiscayneTimes.com titled, “The Unfinished Business of 20-Year-Old Voter-Approved Bond” which was published last month.