Billy Corben Instagram – “We cannot afford it”: Miami-Dade interim Solid Waste director demoted after calling out @MayorDLC and @CommishArod’s overpriced real estate scam to pay $205 million (plus $64 million in renovations) to buy a 50-year-old 75% vacant office building appraised at an “ACTUAL MARKET VALUE” of $110 million #BecauseMiami
Last December, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Commissioner Anthony Rodriguez planned to force through a terrible proposal to open a West Dade Government Center at an old FPL complex “without committee review or the detailed look at long-term costs the administration had planned to give county commissioners.” But days before, they got called out by the press, and suddenly backpedaled — embarrassingly announcing that she would renegotiate a deal that she already endorsed! The building last sold in 2014 for $57 million.
Cava’s administration of land hustlers now says the $205 million price from December has been negotiated down 11% to $182 million — still over $70 million above market value according to two county-commissioned “independent appraisals.”
“The cost is too high, and we cannot afford it,” then-interim Solid Waste Director Olga Espinosa-Anderson wrote in an Oct. 16 email to Alex Muñoz, the department director overseeing real estate deals for Cava, concerned that her agency’s rent would double.
According to the Miami Herald, they pay about $1.3 million in rent at a county complex by the MLK Metrorail station, but Cava’s plan would cost them $2.8 million a year.
Espinosa-Anderson wanted to “rent cheaper space off Florida’s Turnpike at a commercial complex called Flagler Station” that would charge about $400,000 less per year than Cava’s proposed government center.
“In March, Cava went outside county government to hire a new director, longtime municipal administrator Aneisha Daniel, who had previously worked as an assistant director in Solid Waste,” demoting Espinosa-Anderson back to her former position of deputy director. | Posted on 08/May/2024 20:08:38
