Most Miami-Dade budget cuts didn’t last: $12.7B plan passes with restored spending

With reshuffled dollars for senior tax rebates, arts grants and eviction lawyers, Miami-Dade County commissioners on Thursday passed a $12.7 billion budget for 2025.

The budget that passed shortly before 9 p.m. reversed most of the scattered cuts and spending reductions Mayor Daniella Levine Cava first proposed in July in what she described as the most challenging budget process since she took office in late 2020.

With federal COVID dollars tapped out and slowing growth in property values this year, Levine Cava initially proposed a slightly leaner spending plan than the version she brought to commissioners after hearing funding pleas from various groups at the first budget hearing two weeks ago.

“You were heard,” she told a packed commission chambers at the start of the 5 p.m. meeting.

READ MORE: Crediting voters, Miami-Dade mayor backs off transit funds cut. Restores $16M in budget

Thursday’s budget vote followed two hours of public comment from more than 90 people who signed up to speak. Several urged Miami-Dade to provide more help for low-income residents who need an affordable place to live.

Brian Douglas stepped to the microphone to share his story of how a newly funded county program helped him keep his bed in a low-cost Miami rooming house that wanted him out.

“I was about to be homeless,” he said. “But I was saved by the bell — by the eviction-diversion program.”

Multiple charities urged commissioners to keep their current funding in place or increase it — with a focus on a $2.5 million cut in county arts grants that Levine Cava switched to just a $950,000 cut.

“I was a young sixth-grader failing every class but guitar class,” Gabriel Pierre, 25, said of the Guitars Over Guns charity where he was once a student. He now serves on the board of the county-funded nonprofit. “I’m pleading with the county that we go ahead and give the full arts budget.”

Levine Cava said she had raised another $400,000 in private donations to boost the county’s grant program, with the hope that more donors will close the gap entirely.

By shifting millions of dollars set aside for septic-to-sewer conversions and other projects, Levine Cava this week presented a revised spending plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. It keeps property-tax rates flat and now has pockets of money to address many of the complaints and pleas at the first budget hearing on Sept. 5.

The proposed changes were all approved Thursday and include:

• Doubling the planned $100 county rebate on property taxes paid by low-income seniors. The cost for the extra relief is $3.8 million. Homeowners are generally eligible if they’re over 65 and their household income is less than $37,000. Though higher than in Levine Cava’s early budget proposal, the grants are still far less than the more than $600-per-home rebate commissioners passed last year when the county was still flush with federal COVID dollars. Those senior rebates cost about $19 million this year.

• Rolling back part of a nearly $2.5 million cut in county cultural grants, with Levine Cava’s change restoring $1.5 million in cuts. Now the pool is about $25 million.

• An additional $1.9 million operating subsidy for the county-owned Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, on top of the $6.9 million already earmarked for operations in 2025.

• An additional $1 million to match this year’s $2 million grant for nonprofit eviction lawyers representing low-income tenants, including Douglas.

• Multiple spending boosts across county government, including more than $2 million to increase the frequency of grass cutting at parks and along roadsides and more than $2 million to help with the county’s overcrowded animal shelter system.

Money to reverse the cuts came in part from pockets of surplus funds that budget analysts said were assembled from unspent dollars this year. Dollars are also being pulled out of projects that don’t need the money in 2025, including $24 million to connect the county’s sewage system to neighborhoods still using septic tanks.

After the meeting, Levine Cava said the septic-to-sewer dollars came from one of the county’s last pots of federal COVID dollars and will be replaced by other funding sources once the work is ready to begin.

“It’s not affecting any projects,” she said. “We have other dollars for septic-to-sewer.”

Multiple speakers at the hearing used their allotted 60 seconds to criticize Miami-Dade for continuing to purchase bonds from Israel amid the humanitarian crisis in Gaza following Israel’s military response to last year’s Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.

“Shame on you, mayor, shame on you, commissioners, for funding death,” said Wilfredo Ruiz, communications director for the Council on American Islamic Relations in Florida.

After the time for public comment ended, Commissioner Micky Steinberg asked for a moment to read a prepared statement supporting the $76 million Israeli bond portfolio, which has Miami-Dade collecting regular interest payments from Israel in exchange for an upfront outlay of county dollars.

“Our investment in Israeli bonds supports a vital ally,” she said.

Passing the yearly budget requires multiple pieces of legislation, and the item adopting a 6% increase in water fees was adopted by the narrowest margin, with a 7 to 6 vote. Voting against were Commissioners Juan Carlos Bermudez, Kevin Cabrera, René Garcia, Roberto Gonzalez, Kionne McGhee and Anthony Rodriguez.

Holding a glass of tap water after the close vote, Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins said to the chambers: “Cheers.”