A citizen petition drive that aimed at limiting big stormwater projects in Key Biscayne appears to have collected enough signatures to go on the November ballot, the Elections Department said Wednesday.
“Wow, great news!” said Ceci Sanchez, who helped gather signatures with other supporters and the Key Biscayne Neighbors Association. “It got the community together,” she said.
A preliminary review showed 913 signatures were accepted, higher than the 839 that were needed. Elections spokesman Juan Mendieta cautioned the result is not yet official. Supporters had turned in 1,150 signatures, but officials rejected 237 signatures for various defects.
A November referendum would ask Key Biscayne voters if they wanted a provision added to the Village Charter that would require a community vote for any stormwater project in excess of $50 million over a three-year period.
Mayor Joe Rasco, who had made starting flooding projects the centerpiece of his two terms in office, did not return a call for comment. If the petition is certified, the Village Council will have to meet and determine the exact ballot wording.
Council Member Ed London said he no longer thinks amending the charter is necessary, because the Council voted 7-0 to kill the “Big Dig” project and move forward with a different approach to controlling flooding. But he said the fact that citizens had to organize a petition at all shows distrust in local Village government.
“It does,” he said. “We were going forward with something that people thought was not necessary ,” London said. He continued: ” “It kept going higher and higher, and nobody was stopping anything.” London predicted that an alternative plan to use shallow injection wells to tame flood waters will come in under $50 million.
Council Member Fernando Vazquez said residents have a right to bring matters to the ballot. “Elections are political; flood control is not,” he said in a statement. “South Florida’s storms and rainfall patterns are not going away, so we should be careful about creating unintended obstacles to solving those problems.” Vazquez is an environmental engineer who at first supported – and later opposed — the design his former firm, AECOM, had presented to the Council.
Key Biscayne has added spending restrictions to its charter before. A “debt cap” was added in a special election decades ago that places a limit on borrowing. If the past is any guide, the stormwater petition could erupt as a campaign issue, because the mayor’s office and three council seats are up for grabs.
In 2020, Key Biscayne residents overwhelmingly voted for up to $100 million in borrowing for resilience projects, but so far, that borrowing power has not been tapped by the Council.
London is term-limited, but Vazquez and Oscar Sardiñas, the vice-mayor, would be eligible for re-election. Sardiñas did not return a call for comment.
Sanchez said the support for the petition shows that many residents want the Council to be more independent of the administration.
“Don’t let staff decide what we want in our community,” she said. “The people are at the top of pyramid. The manager needs to remember that.”
This story was originally published in the Key Biscayne Independent, a WLRN News partner.
