Miami-Dade Fire’
Posted by Admin on Sep 9, 2025 | 0 comments
Air Rescue Drama at 2 a.m.: Union Wants Millions, Mayor Says “No Emergency”
It was way past cafecito time — about 2:20 in the morning — when the real fireworks started at Miami-Dade’s first budget hearing. After hours of testimony from nonprofits and residents, the firefighters’ union came in hot, demanding millions more to cover the countywide air rescue service.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and her ally, Commissioner Raquel Regalado, thought they had smoothed this out already with a compromise deal. Half the $28 million helicopter tab would go back to the countywide budget this year, and the rest in 2026. The union flat out rejected it. No half measures, gracias. They wanted all of it shifted off the Fire District and onto the general fund — now.
By then, even Oliver Gilbert was rolling his eyes. “We’re going to change everything because they’re essentially throwing a fit,” he said.
The mayor, for her part, was clearly done. “I think we’ve all established there really isn’t an emergency here,” Levine Cava said, reminding commissioners that the only pot of money left is the county’s emergency reserves. “And if there is a real emergency, there will be less there for an emergency.”
But at 3 a.m. politics has a way of bending. Commissioner Eileen Higgins made a surprise motion to have the mayor go find the rest of the helicopter money in the general fund anyway — essentially siding with the union and against Levine Cava. The mayor was not pleased. Her body language said it all: this was not the olive branch she wanted handed back to her as a club.
Residents who stuck it out to that ungodly hour warned against raiding the hurricane stash. Lanette Jones from Miami Gardens reminded everyone that emergency funds saved her after Irma when her insurance wouldn’t cover roof repairs. Another resident, Kerri Sauer, skipped the niceties: “We’re screwed! … Shame on them.”
Levine Cava later doubled down, calling it “irresponsible” to gut the reserves at a time when FEMA has become stingier about reimbursements.
Still, commissioners voted to tell her to cough up the rest of the $14 million from somewhere — anywhere — before the final hearing Sept. 18. Which means this isn’t over. Expect another round of air rescue drama in two weeks, maybe not at 2 a.m. this time. But then again, this is Miami-Dade. Ladra wouldn’t bet on it.
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