Miami Beach pledges millions to the county for homeless funding. Will it be enough?
Aaron Leibowitz, Douglas Hanks
November 15, 2024
Miami Beach officials agreed Thursday to direct $10 million to Miami-Dade County for homeless services and provide additional funding in future years, a response to county commissioners’ demands after the city pulled a question about implementing a tax to fund those services from the Nov. 5 ballot.
City officials expressed frustration with what they characterized as retaliation by the county, but Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner said the offer was being made in the “spirit of compromise.”
“This notion that Miami Beach does not carry its weight or pay its fair share is not true,” Meiner said during Thursday’s meeting.
The $10 million would be paid by the Miami Beach Redevelopment Agency, a city-controlled taxing district around the Lincoln Road retail area that is funded with a mix of city and county property taxes.
The Miami Beach City Commission on Thursday also endorsed a plan by Commissioner Joseph Magazine to direct a 4% hotel bed tax to the county for homeless services once the city’s Convention Center hotel is completed around 2027, which would provide up to $5 million per year until 2039.
The Miami-Dade County Commission is expected to discuss the city’s proposals on Nov. 20.
Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust Chairman Ron Book told the Miami Herald on Friday that he and county officials are analyzing the proposals.
Behind the city-versus-county standoff are political feuds and disagreements about how to address homelessness and the role of the Homeless Trust, which stood to receive millions of dollars annually from the 1% tax on restaurant bills that Miami Beach residents expected to vote on before city commissioners revoked the question. While Miami Beach devotes significant resources to homeless outreach efforts, the city has also ramped up arrests for “camping” in recent months.
“We see things very differently,” Meiner said. “That’s ultimately the issue.”
In a message to residents after the meeting, Miami Beach Commissioner Alex Fernandez said he was “deeply frustrated that Miami Beach taxpayers are being forced to shoulder the consequences of political gamesmanship.”
Fernandez, who voted against rescinding the ballot question on a 1% food-and-beverage tax, added that the city’s proposal Thursday was “a price we could have avoided by simply letting you vote.”
Since the city’s decision to rescind the ballot question, county commissioners have discussed making up the funding in a variety of ways, including through the Miami Beach Redevelopment Agency; a separate taxing district for the North Beach neighborhood; or the city’s general fund reserves, a pool of money that is essentially the city’s savings account.
At a meeting Monday, Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins put Miami Beach on notice that the county wasn’t giving up on its request that the city turn over $10 million from the redevelopment agency to cover county costs for homeless services that would have been covered by the tax revenue from Miami Beach.
County officials have estimated that the tax would generate at least $10 million a year, while Miami Beach officials say the number is closer to $7.8 million. Higgins said Miami-Dade would ask for $20 million from Miami Beach to cover the missing dollars until 2026, half of which would come from Miami Beach’s reserves of unspent city dollars.
For leverage, Higgins said Miami-Dade may rewrite the rules for a redevelopment district that the County Commission had previously approved for the city’s North Beach area. The County Commission holds authority over local redevelopment districts — which use tax dollars to pay for improvement projects in distressed neighborhoods — and Higgins said Miami-Dade could pass rules to limit the North Beach agency’s ability to launch large projects by barring it from borrowing money.
“They can come up with a plan to get this money to us,” Higgins said of Miami Beach city commissioners. “Over the next two years, they should be able to find a way to help.”
Miami Beach City Commissioner David Suarez, who proposed the move for Miami Beach commissioners to rescind the ballot question last month, railed against Higgins’ comments but said he was “confident that the county’s reasonable voices will recognize this as a fair, balanced approach that ensures a productive partnership and a sustainable path forward.”
On Saturday, Higgins told the Herald that the plan put forward by Magazine, which included the $10 million in redevelopment agency funds and the hotel bed tax, was “an excellent solution that reflects the Miami Beach residents’ desire to humanely assist individuals experiencing homelessness or domestic violence in our county.”
“I congratulate him on identifying a new way forward for long term collaboration,” Higgins said in a text message.
City leaders told the Miami-Dade County Commission last week that they plan to bring a revised restaurant-tax proposal to voters in a 2026 referendum, giving Miami Beach residents the chance to create a new revenue source for homeless services, which Miami-Dade has demanded for years. But the Miami Beach commission did not move forward with that approach on Thursday.
Suarez said he couldn’t see himself supporting the measure, given that it would affect small businesses.
If the referendum had passed, the 1% tax would have been collected on all food and beverage sales at businesses that sell alcohol for on-premises consumption and have gross annual receipts above $400,000. Facilities in hotels and motels would have been exempt.
Suarez also said he’s opposed to directing funding to the Homeless Trust, suggesting Book has failed to make good on a past pledge to reimburse Miami Beach for its own citywide homeless outreach services if the city moved forward with the 1% tax.
“That promise was broken,” Suarez said.
Book told the Herald that Suarez has misrepresented the situation. The Homeless Trust made an offer to the city in 2021, Book said, when Miami Beach was contemplating a straw ballot question about the tax, but Book said city officials never responded.
He added that the decision that a previous group of Miami Beach city commissioners made last year to put the question on the ballot this year was the result of negotiations between the city and the county, not the Homeless Trust.
“I didn’t lie, I didn’t cheat, I didn’t mislead,” Book said. “People can judge for themselves who’s got integrity or not.”
This story has been updated to include a comment from Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins in response to the plan approved by the Miami Beach City Commission on Thursday.