Spotlight 194-260327

Good morning. What we’re covering in today’s Spotlight:

The Salaries that Drive Miami’s Budget Growth
Reaction to Last Week’s Old Smokey Ruling
Where We’ll Be: A Guide to Upcoming Events

Inside City Hall: Miami’s Pay Raise Machine

With salaries and benefits consuming most of the city’s budget, a tangle of automatic and discretionary increases is quietly pushing costs higher year after year.

By Jenny Jacoby & David Villano

While campaigning for the Miami mayor’s seat last fall, Mayor Eileen Higgins called for a “deep dive” into Miami’s swelling operating budget, which in the past five years has jumped 57% to over $1.8 billion.

A quick look at the numbers suggests the answer may not require much digging: just follow the paychecks.

While overall spending has climbed across city government, the most significant budget increases are concentrated in employee compensation — the single largest and fastest-growing cost driver.

Grove Residents Cheer Judge’s Decision in Old Smokey Lawsuit

Current and former residents who are suing the City of Miami over the potential harm caused by the Old Smokey trash incinerator on Jefferson Street notched a victory last week when a circuit court judge certified their lawsuit as a class action.

By Jenny Jacoby & Don Finefrock

Coconut Grove families who lived for years in the shadow of Old Smokey are one step closer to winning compensation for any harm to their health or property caused by the trash incinerator’s toxic smoke and ash.

Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Spencer Eig ruled last week that a lawsuit brought by current and former residents against the City of Miami can move forward as a class action. The ruling, delivered Friday, capped five days of public testimony in the case.

“The Court finds the plaintiffs have sustained their burden of proof,” Eig said. The decision means affected residents can combine their claims in a single lawsuit, rather than through individual lawsuits.

Where We’ll Be – A Grovite’s Calendar

Between Code and Calm

The week finds a kind of shared ground between the creative frontier of A.I. and the quiet clarity of meditation. One asks what it means to make something at all — who holds the authorship, where the boundaries sit — while the other steps back from all of it, if only for a few minutes on the grass.

Between those two, everything else starts to fill in. New work takes shape in small theaters before it’s fully formed, rhythm carries a room without asking permission, and a film flickers to life outdoors without much buildup. It’s a week that doesn’t push — it just opens a few doors and lets you decide how far in to go.