FYI Miami: June 29, 2023

Bellow are some of the FYIs in this week’s edition. The entire content of this week’s FYIs and Insider sections is available by subscription only. To subscribe click here.

WARNING OF COUNTY SHORTFALL: Four Miami-Dade County departments with higher-than-anticipated operating costs may require the county in amend its budget at the end of the fiscal year to find money to fill the gaps, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava warned commissioners last week in a required quarterly fiscal report for January through March. The report doesn’t say how much the shortfall could be, though it lists detailed expenditures throughout the county. Nor does it tell commissioners where the money to cover the shortfall could come from. Coming up short are police, fire, the Corrections and Rehabilitation Department and Internal Services. Police and fire shortfalls are both explained as “higher than anticipated operating expenditures,” with no detail. The corrections shortfall is attributed to “the increased of inmate food services.”

GARBAGE TRAINS SIDETRACKED: Hopes of using freight trains to carry waste from Miami-Dade to a landfill or resource recovery plant elsewhere were sidetracked twice in two days last week. On Wednesday the county commission set aside the concept put forward by Commissioner Raquel Regalado because the Transportation Planning Organization was to consider new freight transportation operations the next day. Then the planning organization set waste hauling aside because a study the planners ordered is to look first at passenger rail additions and then at freight, but only existing freight services. Trains hauling away garbage has been a hot topic because the county’s resource recovery facility that handled about 80% of its trash was closed after a devastating February fire and is not expected to reopen but to be replaced. Whether that is at the present Doral site or elsewhere has been heatedly debated.

BRICKELL CONTROLS: Miami-Dade has advanced a shift of 18 sites near the Metromover in Brickell to county control of functions that cities normally handle. The city and county are in a conflict resolution process over such control shifts. The county would take jurisdiction over regulatory decisions, comprehensive planning, district zoning changes, special exceptions, variances, site plans and approvals, issuance of building permits, building inspections, fire permits and inspections, compliance with the fire code and the Florida building code, subdivision approvals and more. Documents with the proposal, which advanced 9-0 last week, say the county aims for increased density and transit-oriented development near mass transit. The county seeks the highest level of development density and intensity in the area. The county’s Chairman’s Policy Council is to hear the matter Sept. 11.