In Their Own Words: Miami’s Two Mayoral Candidates

Mayoral candidates Emilio Gonzalez and Eileen Higgins answered questions last week at a political forum in Little Havana sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the ACLU of Florida. The runoff election is Dec. 9.

Voters in Coconut Grove were sidelined this week when a planned political forum featuring Miami’s two mayoral candidates was cancelled. 

The Monday night forum at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church was scratched after former Miami City Manager Emilio Gonzalez bailed on the event, citing a conflict, and former Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins chose not to take the stage alone.

The event may be rescheduled. In the meantime, here are some highlights from last week’s forum featuring both candidates on stage at the Koubek Center in Little Havana.

Opening Statements

Higgins, an engineer who served as the director of the Peace Corps in Belize, was first elected as the District 5 Miami-Dade County commissioner in 2018.

“Since that time, I have put my engineering skills to work. I have been building affordable housing, expanding mass transit, implementing resiliency measures, and most importantly, also in most of our local neighborhoods, supporting small businesses,” she said. “I am a person that basically sets the alarm every day, goes to work, (and) tries to work for you to make our community a better place.”

Gonzalez also leaned into his experience, in local government and the U.S. Army, where he served for 26 years and retired with the rank of colonel.

“I am pretty much an army officer, an over-educated one,” he said. “I have had the privilege of being the airport director, I’ve had the privilege of being the city manager, I’m in private business now, I am a partner in an asset management company, and I felt the call to step up and do what’s right, particularly because everybody in this room knows what is going on in our city.”

Question: Affordability. “Many residents are afraid they will be priced out of the city. What specific policies would you champion as mayor to make sure this doesn’t happen.” 

Gonzalez: “I want to create a city where we’re not a city of renters, we are a city of owners, and we need smart growth. I have no problems with high-rise development.”

“Our young people need an opportunity to stay here. They can’t stay here. Which is one of the reasons that I’m so into the idea of doing away with ad valorem property taxes, because you can put more money in people’s pockets. Young families that are struggling to buy a new home – imagine you don’t have to pay taxes.”

Higgins: “I think everybody in this room will agree, our top priority is getting the cost of housing under control… That will be a priority for me as mayor, to look at every piece of city-owned property and say why aren’t we using that for housing.”

On the Freedom Park soccer stadium now rising on the site of the former Melreese Golf Course next to Miami International Airport: “I would never, had I been mayor, approved that deal without a single unit of housing on all those acres.”

On City of Miami permitting: “We need to accelerate permitting. The permitting system in the City of Miami is absolutely outrageous. It can take a year and a half, two and half years to break ground on a new affordable housing project.”

Question: Permitting. What’s your plan to fix it?

Higgins: “The city has a system where nothing is done in parallel, everything is done one after the other, and if the person reviewing (the permit) for step 4 finds something wrong, it goes back to the beginning.”

“When I arrived at the county, the permitting system was just as broken. I passed legislation and all the funding to build the computer systems necessary to accelerate permitting.”

“I secret shopped both systems. I put one project that was available for county zoning in for permitting and one in the city. The county’s project was permitted in 107 days. This is low-income housing for seniors. We’re talking people who can only afford to pay $200 to $300 a month in rent. The same project submitted the same week to the city took over a year and a half. We are literally keeping people out of housing.”

“We need to look at the systems, we need to make sure we are deploying the technology that is being used all across the country, to make this happen, and we also have to figure out why there are staffing gaps.”

Gonzalez: “I have spoken to numerous small businessmen and women in this town… One hundred percent of them tell me that the biggest issue is permitting. I know small businessmen that refuse to expand their businesses because of the permitting issue – businessmen that would rather expand in Broward County.”

“I am almost to the point where I think if we abolish the permitting system altogether and take a step back and see what happens, it would be better than what we have right now.”

“We have to be smart. Any number of cities in the United States have better permitting than us. If you’re building an addition to your single-family home to take care of abuela or abuelo, and you have an architect, and you have an engineer who is licensed, and it’s only one story, do it. The city should then be the repository of the plans. They shouldn’t be sending 14 different inspectors to tell you what you did wrong.”

“The permitting issue is drowning our local business economy, and we have to take drastic action.”

Question: Accountability. “How would you make sure that resilience and infrastructure funds (from the city’s $400 million Forever Bond program) work to serve the whole city, not just the affluent parts?”

Higgins: “I represent Little Havana, and I can tell you the city has neglected that neighborhood… I had to go to FDOT (Florida Department of Transportation) to get them to finish the flood projects on Calle Ocho, right there by the Sedano’s…because it flooded all the time.”

“The Miami Forever Bond, which we voted on when Tomas Regalado was mayor, we don’t know where that money has been spent, how it’s been spent, they haven’t even started the projects they claimed they should be doing.”

“All of that needs a deep dive, so that everyone benefits.”

Gonzalez: “This is indicative I think of why we are running. To your point: $400 million that we all voted on… where is it? I remember. I was the manager then, and we use to have these huge fights on the commission because everybody had an idea on how to spend it (but) nobody wanted to talk about spending it on behalf of the city, it was always, let’s spend it on behalf of my own district.”

“I think first, as mayor, we need to find out where our money is, once we know what kind of money we have, then we can start prioritizing what we need to do for the city.”

Moderator: If you were the city manager, you would have known the $400 million was coming in for the Miami Forever bond, correct? So, who would have been in charge in 2018 when the money came in?

Gonzalez: “The money came in, it was voted on and it came in, and then all of sudden, it came down to, OK, how do we spend it, and who decides to spend it. And we spent weeks if not months trying to figure out whether we are going to put together a citizens commission on spending the bond money… we went through this whole period of wasting valuable time.”

Moderator: How can voters trust you now? 

Gonzalez: “What I said I will do, day one, is do an audit. I want to do a deep dive. It’s not unreasonable as a taxpayer and a city resident to ask, what did you do with my tax money… Right now, our city is overtaxed and underserved, and that’s something that I want to address.”

Question: Public Trust. What makes you the best candidate to restore public trust?

Gonzalez: “If you as a city employee do something unethical, you’re gone. No discussion. You’re gone… We need to have a mentality where nobody will get a second chance, stealing money, abusing people, being corrupt…”

Higgins: “There are (city) employees that are making well over $100,000, some of them over $200,000, that have second jobs. Doing what? So, all this outside employment, number one, has to stop… that’s leadership. That can happen on day one.”

Question: Political Reform. Where do you stand on issues like changing the city’s election calendar, expanding the number of commission seats?

Higgins: “I have said on the record many times that moving elections to even-numbered years is a must-do for me… the idea of moving to more commissioners, to nine commissioners, to me is a good idea. It means we would have better neighborhood representation.”

Gonzalez: “With the seven or nine commissioners, I defer on that. I don’t think we need more commissioners, we need better commissioners… Our city needs a healing period of maybe one or two terms. You know what, let’s talk about this in ten years.”

Elections: “I agree with that, but I am also concerned with that, because what will happen is if an election lands in a presidential election year, were going to have a 14-page voter sheet where Emilio Gonzalez or Eileen Higgins running for commission is going to be at the very bottom (and) we won’t be able to raise any money because people will be tapped out.”

Question: Immigration Enforcement: With the expansion of ICE, how would you ensure that Miami residents still trust government?  

Gonzalez: “I will always defend my community, I will always defend my immigrant community, but I will never ever defend rapists, thugs, murderers and child molesters.”      

“My expectation would be that anybody picked up would be treated with dignity and respect, which we all deserve.” 

Higgins: “Well, they told us they were going to go after criminals, but they are going after everybody. Every single person in this room believes that if you are a criminal, law enforcement should be dealing with you. But that’s not what’s going on.”

“They built, for hundreds of millions of dollars, cages in our Everglades to lock people up. This is wrong.”

The forum was hosted by the League of Women Voters and the ACLU, and moderated by Nicole Perez at WPLG Channel 10. You can watch a video of the forum here.