Dear Friends of District 8,

As we prepare for the discussion around our next County budget, I wanted to share with you my thoughts on how we need to better integrate resilience into our community.  Resilience is all about preparation, response, and recovery from outside “shocks and stresses.” And we can look to our Countywide experience with Hurricane Irma to see opportunities to improve – starting with this year’s budget.

It is clear that we have improved upon our ability to respond , but we still have a lot of work to do to prepare our community for inevitable hurricanes and other potential “shocks.” We were quite fortunate that the storm’s worst punch landed west of us. The winds were at a minimal hurricane strength in Miami-Dade and not the terrifyingly powerful Category 5 inflicted on other parts of Florida, yet nearly everyone lost power, roads became impassible for days, and communications systems were rendered useless when we needed them the most. While heroic efforts are still underway to restore Miami-Dade’s power grid and road network, Irma laid bare our continued vulnerability to these inevitable events. 

I’m especially concerned about how dangerously under-prepared and ill-equipped the nursing homes and assisted living facilities in our community were to handle this storm. We absolutely need to insist on greater protection for our most vulnerable residents.

I want to thank our amazing first responders – our police, our firefighters, our emergency managers for an amazing job in helping our community through the recovery . I am proud to acknowledge and thank the many other critically important and often under-appreciated County staff – our Water & Sewer employees that kept the water safe and available with hardly a “hiccup;” our Solid Waste workers for feverishly working to clear piles of debris before landfall and who are still hard at work now clearing the mountains of downed trees and broken branches from our county; our Transit employees who were the lifeline for so many trying to get to safety, and our Public Works crews that worked around the clock to clear our roads and fix our traffic lights.

We should assess our priorities within this budget to see if they indeed align with the need to become more resilient as a community and as a government.

Does our budget put enough police and fire resources in the community?

I have been advocating for more resources be dedicated to community policing and doing more to backfill the deficit in the number of County police.

Are we investing enough in our Transit system to not only provide a convenient alternative to driving, but provide a reliable connection to safety for our residents? 

A seamless rail connection from Florida City to the County line would be a strategic investment in greatly enhanced evacuation access for a huge proportion of our population. With a rail connection to Miami International Airport, and with the future “Brightline” high-speed rail under construction, the majority of the population of Miami-Dade would have a non-car escape route from the southern tip of Miami-Dade to Orlando and beyond.

Unfortunately, the proposed budget cuts transit funding at the same time we’re working on a planned expansion.  This is wrong, and I will continue to press to reverse the cuts to Metrorail that serves so many South Dade commuters.

Our solid waste system is overtaxed from years of cost-cutting and it shows. Illegal dumping has become a scourge throughout the County, but most troublingly in South Dade’s agricultural area. Illegally dumped construction, landscaping, and other trash exposed many homes and businesses to terrible risks during the storm.  I will continue to fight for more aggressive illegal dumping enforcement while engaging our community in more resilient solutions to prevent and protect our property from such abuses.

From my time working with our amazing nonprofit community on relief efforts this last week, it is clear that we need to invest more in the planning and collaboration with these great community partners to improve the prospects for so many thousands of people in Miami-Dade who are struggling under normal circumstances and suffered tremendously from this storm.

I look forward to your continued input as we prepare for this budget discussion and to continue to press for greater investment in community resilience in the years to come.

Yours for a more resilient Miami-Dade,