Miami-Dade County residents are facing painful cutbacks to essential social services, including severe reductions at local food banks, and critics are pointing squarely at the wasteful spending and poor fiscal management of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and her County Commission majority. While claiming to prioritize vulnerable populations, Levine Cava’s administration has funneled hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into infrastructure and traffic study programs that have produced little tangible benefit—often resulting in unfinished projects that languish for years without completion.
The County’s approach to waste disposal infrastructure is a glaring example. Under Levine Cava, numerous studies and memos have been commissioned to explore the future of the County’s waste-to-energy (WTE) and landfill facilities.
After the destruction of the Doral WTE facility, Levine Cava vacillated between WTE and landfill solutions, spending substantial sums on studies and consultations only to reverse course and fail to provide a clear path forward—leaving the County no closer to a long-term solution and wasting both time and money. Meanwhile, the “state-of-the-art” Sustainable Solid Waste Campus remains under protracted discussion and planning, with little in the way of completed, functional results for residents.
Large-scale infrastructure projects, such as the South District Wastewater Treatment Plant Expansion, were touted as solutions for regional environmental and capacity issues. However, they are emblematic of the broader pattern—a ballooning $480 million price tag and years of drawn-out construction, with many promised benefits yet to materialize. Traffic and environmental studies continue to consume significant resources, but residents see perpetual congestion and unfinished roadwork as the only results.
Compounding these failures is the County’s admission that only 14% of construction and demolition waste is recycled or reused, a figure that has remained stubbornly low despite years of pilot programs and “best practices”—another illustration of good money thrown after bad, with key ecological and fiscal problems persisting year after year.
These misprioritized investments have real human consequences. While Mayor Levine Cava and her team burn through budgets on studies and half-completed initiatives, food banks across Miami-Dade are forced to cut back services to those who need them most, citing depleted county support. Residents are left questioning why essential aid must suffer while the mayor’s administration continues to green-light expensive projects that rarely deliver.
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After billions wasted on “traffic studies”, Miami-Dade residents still spend thousands of wasted hours stuck in traffic jams and wasted man-hours. The 5-year I-395/I-95 flyover project is now in its 7th year with no end in sight. The entire County waits at traffic lights with unsequenced lights, causing everyone to look at each other with no crossing traffic, only to proceed to the next light 100 yards away and repeat the same process. Reckless driving worsens, exacerbated by these road conditions, while Levine-Cava plays her sad song at commission meetings.
So now the most vulnerable may go hungry as the county food bank dwindles. Perhaps it’s time for a solution-oriented citizen to start the campaign to replace Levine-Cava? Only time will tell, but we don’t think the return of former Mayor and Congressman Carlos Giminez would be the right move, as all of these problems had roots in his time in office.
Winn Dixie in Miami FL 2 Jan 2025 courtesy Wikimedia commons
County Food Bank Warehouse Dwindles
As a Miami Beach resident, we have witnessed the malaise of the M-D County Mayor and Commission in conjunction with the M-D School Board with the 15 year struggle to restructure the traffic pattern around Miami Beach Senior High School for the safety of our students. Levine-Cava has clearly failed our students as have previous administrators. Will it take a fatality to get action?
For many in the community, the message is clear: Under Daniella Levine Cava’s leadership, wasteful spending on infrastructure studies and unfinished projects has directly undermined Miami-Dade’s ability to serve its most vulnerable citizens. The result is a county with less food on the table for those in need and a landscape filled with incomplete promises.
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