Two Miami-Dade commission incumbents won last week with little oppositional pressure and/or much fanfare.

Commissioner Keon Hardemon fought back an attempt by former Commissioner Audrey Edmonson to grab her District 3 seat back, winning 61% of the vote. And Commissioner Roberto “Rob” Gonzalez — appointed by the governor to replace suspended Joe Martinez after his 2022 arrest on public corruption charges — beat back two challengers, including teacher Bryan Paz-Hernandez, who will hopefully run again — to finally be an elected on the dais, getting 57% of the vote.

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Voters in Miami-Dade District 7 were reminded Wednesday about former Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner‘s sometimes stormy disposition.

Lerner, who is running again for county commissioner against incumbent Raquel Regalado, has famously lashed out at residents — losing her temper, shouting, cursing, banging her gavel, rolling her eyes and walking out of the village meetings in a huff.

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Round 2 mayoral group has incumbent Daniella Levine Cava confirmed

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Video ties Regalado to recently tainted politicos

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It’s no secret that former Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner has been waiting for Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez to be termed out or make his move so she can run for the district seat.
On Monday, she made those intentions clear when she filed documents Monday at the Miami-Dade Elections Department indicating she had opened a campaign account.
Read related: Cindy Lerner confronts Rubio, Bush on climate change
In a statement released Monday afternoon, Lerner — who has kept active on issues, particularly sea level rise and infrastructure — made reference to broken promises and traffic.
“I am pleased to announce that I am a candidate to represent the people of Miami-Dade County Commission District 7. I grew up in Miami-Dade County and raised my 3 children in District 7. During that time, I have fought to make our community a better and stronger place for people to live, work, raise their families and enjoy a quality of life. The time has now come to act and address the serious threats to our community that require bold action by the Miami- Dade County Commission.
For too long, leaders have danced around pressing issues from traffic gridlock causing frustrated residents and workers to spend too much time traveling to and from their homes, work places, schools and other activities. For too long they have paid lip service to the real threat from sea level rise and flooding. For too long they have ordered studies to deal with the real danger to our drinking water and public safety from failing infrastructure.
I am running to represent the people in Commission District 7 because we can no longer afford hollow promises that simply waste taxpayer dollars and provide little results. We need new leadership for the district. In my vision as a county commissioner, the Commission and County Government work together and collaborate with the leaders of the many municipalities to implement solutions to the threats we face in District 7 and in Miami-Dade County. I am running because the clock is ticking and it is Time for Action.”
This sets up a contest between Lerner, a popular Democrat who was also a state representative from 2000 to 2008, and former Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado, a popular and moderate Republican who forced Mayor Carlos Gimenez into a runoff in 2016.
Read related: Political musical chairs: Recycled electeds vie for 2020 county seats
Regalado, who briefly ran for Florida Senate and then U.S. Congress last year before abandoning both, switched to the county commission bid and started fundraising in February. She has already raised $19,000 for her county commission bid, according to her last campaign reports. That includes notable small bundles like $2,000 from Norman Braman, $2,000 from lobbyist Jorge Luis Lopez and $3,000 from lobbyist Eric Zichella.
Of course, more candidates are expected in this open seat.
Scratch Coral Gables Commissioner Vince Lago off he list. He is said to be looking at a mayoral run in the City Beautiful in 2021. But former Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff is still in play.
District 7 runs from the southern tip of Brickell Avenue all the way to Miami-Dade College’s Kendall Campus. It includes all of Key Biscayne, Coconut Grove, South Miami, Downtown Dadeland and Pinecrest as well as  large parts of Coral Gables and East Kendall near Baptist Hospital.
 

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Pinecrest voters rejected a plan Tuesday that would seek $15 million in bonds to pay for approximately 18.5 miles (98,000 linear feet) of pipeline infrastructure so 739 properties can connect to Miami-Dade County water.
The vote came down to 63% against and 37% for taxing themselves an additional 23 cents per $1,000 of taxable value, or an average of $158 a year — of course, some homes would pay much, much more — for the next 20 years so that every property in the village would have access to county water.
Not even the promise of an additional 208 fire hydrants — which are not necessary to cover water needs according to the fire rescue guys but good for drumming up fear votes — could sway villagers who made the decision via a mail-in ballot only.
According to Miami-Dade County’s elections department, 5,720 of the 13,083 registered voters in Pinecrest returned ballots. That amounts to practically a 44% turnout.
The village undertook an aggressive “get out the vote campaign” that included eight — count ’em, eight; two per week, including the last one this past Saturday  — public workshops for residents and property owners to learn about the project and see the map. They were not very well attended.
The village slapped posters in public spaces and sent postcards to all registered voters and a letter from the administration explaining what the financial impact would be.
They got one of those FDOT-like signs with the blinking lights to remind folks to vote — and they hired a guy with a spinning sign on U.S. 1.
Read related: Pinecrest voters to decide if they’ll pay extra taxes to get county water
The two recurring themes among some of the 3,593 who voted against it were (1) a reluctance to subsidize the water hookup for homes of multimillionaires and (2) the concept that it should be a responsibility of Miami-Dade County, which would retain the infrastructure and derive all the profits from the water sales. Those were exactly the reasons that Councilman James McDonald voted against putting the referendum on the ballot and campaigned against it.
The red properties are the ones that need lines. The yellow properties already have lines and will have to pay for hooking up to water in addition to the additional tax.
Miami-Dade County policy dictates that the cost associated with new water infrastructure be borne by private developers/private property owners. Revenue from the sale of water to existing customers can only be used to fund expenditures and improvements to the existing infrastructure, not new infrastructure — not unless, of course, they can cover it with “economic development” like the megamall in Northwest Dade.
But the county has paid for some of the hookups.
When Pinecrest first incorporated in 1996, about 1,500 homes were on wells, without any way to hook up to the county water supply. The 2004 countywide Building Better Communities bond referendum supplied the village with $4.3 million and a Florida state grant gave another $1.5 million for the water pipeline infrastructure up to the sidewalk. That work was called Phase I and Phase II and was completed about 10 years ago, said City Manager Yocelyn Galiano.  Property owners still had to pay for the service hook-up connection from the public right of way to their homes/buildings, she said.
More than 2,100 people voted in favor, including, we suppose, advocates like former mayors Evelyn Greer and Cindy Lerner and former Councilwoman Cheri Ball, right, who basically stepped down to push for the measure and served as treasurer of the Pinecrest H2O political action committee.
Ball and her husband also happen to own a two-story, 6 bedroom, 4 bath house they bought in 2016 for $1.6 million — that doesn’t have access to county water.
Some might think this is over, that the referendum was a way of putting this long fought issue to rest. But Ladra knows it’s never that easy. Ball and the other proponents are unlikely to give up. And while it’s not a big county issue — only 2,000 people lack water access countywide compared to hundreds of thousands on septic tanks (more on that later) — there may be other places to turn to for funding.
“We’ll just keep looking for the funding from the state legislature, which we’be been doing but we keep getting vetoed,” Galiano said. “Maybe with this new governor…”

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