Mayor calls for canceling Rickenbacker revamp process, starting over

Amidst debate over procedures, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava on Tuesday recommended canceling and restarting a procurement in the existing request for proposals (RFP) to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the Rickenbacker Causeway.

In a memorandum to county commissioners, the mayor argues this path would “allow time to confirm federal funding availability, further develop the project, engage stakeholders, and complete the NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] process.”

Also, the mayor recommended issuing a two-step solicitation, first with a request for qualifications to pre-qualify proposers, and then issue the new RFP and receive detailed proposals with a committed price, the document says.

On Monday, the day prior to the release of her recommendation, Plan Z Consortium, the organization that presented the unsolicited proposal for a P3 to the county issued a letter hours before a virtual public meeting in which two members of the team said “terminating the process would result in the public disclosure of our unsolicited proposal before the commencement of a new process – therefore allowing the whole world to “cheat off our test.”

At a virtual public meeting, residents of Key Biscayne and Miami-Dade County were divided on whether the county should continue with the ongoing RFP and make adjustments to add a prequalification phase to increase market interest or drop the process and start again later. Both options included additional time to “confirm federal funding availability, further develop the project, stakeholder engagement, and complete the NEPA process.”

Those two options were evaluated by Mayor Levine Cava after she released the findings of a Value for Money (VfM) Assessment developed by consultant IMG Rebel Advisory Inc. on Nov. 19. In the executive report, she refers to both options.

“Our village council unanimously ratified a resolution on Sept. 30, which parallels the VfM report and Commissioner [Raquel] Regalado’s request to refresh the entire process,” said Key Biscayne Mayor Michael Davey at the virtual meeting.

“That is why I am asking Mayor Levine Cava to request the Board of County Commissioners to rescind the current RFP and establish a working group of stakeholders to immediately get to work to determine the needs and desired outcome along the entire causeway,” said Mr. Davey.

Commissioner Regalado, the representative of the area that includes the causeway, released a response to the mayor’s report on Nov. 23 and requested to “cancel this procurement and start over.” She wrote the process needed a “refresh” and proposed to create a working group of key stakeholders in Key Biscayne, Miami and Miami-Dade County to set out the priorities and develop a detailed survey of all the elements to be considered in the project.

Grace Perdomo, executive director of non-profit Transit Alliance, said the existing project proposed and RFP can be a win-win for everybody.

“The design of the causeway as we all know has been in the making over the past 10 years. We all know the many benefits that this project will deliver for the entirety of our community,” she said. “Let’s continue with a process that has been transparent from the beginning and has included many that are on the call today. Proceeding with the current RFP can be a win-win for everyone.”

In response to both the mayor’s and Commissioner Regalado’s memoranda and before Tuesday’s new recommendation by the mayor, the Plan Z Consortium praised the findings of the value for money analysis that confirmed a P3 was the best delivery method, but the consortium criticized that one of the paths proposed to move forward was canceling the existing RFP and start over again.

“Scrapping or further delaying the RFP process would needlessly prolong a critical infrastructure project and discourage future P3 proposals in Miami-Dade County,” says the letter signed by architect Bernard Zyscovich and Jack Kardys, retired director of the Miami-Dade Parks, Recreation & Open Spaces Department.

The group says in the letter that it has “invested heavily in preparing an unsolicited proposal in conformance with the county’s P3 process to address a very clear infrastructure need in Miami-Dade County, including the replacement of the Bear Cut Bridge.”

The document also addresses some of the concerns of residents related to the project. The group wrote that the proposal increases the toll for ordinary SunPass users by no more than $2 and said the increase could be less if federal funding becomes available. “The proposal does not include any commercialization of the causeway such as banquet halls or digital signage,” they wrote.

The P3 proposed, they wrote, includes safe overhead access for public school MAST Academy’s users of the roadway, and addresses all modes of transportation while achieving the Vision Zero objectives of the county to decrease and ultimately eliminate traffic fatalities and severe injuries. Also, it offers a park space to deal with the overcrowding along causeway road shoulders.

Among concerns of county residents was involvement of the former director of county Parks, Recreation & Open Spaces Department in the proposal. Alejandro Serrano, a speaker at the public meeting, said “the genesis of the privatization effort is 2007 Miami-Dade Parks Master Plan; troubling is the fact that the then-director of parks department who had a primary administrative responsibility for the study is now a partner in the firm that submitted the unsolicited proposal.”

The consortium wrote in the letter that canceling the process would damage the fairness of the current RFP process, or any future RFP process, and would substantially discourage anyone from using the P3 process to propose a project in the future.

Mayor Levine Cava wrote in her recommendation to commissioners that she looks forward to discussing her suggestion, “which I believe is in the best interest of the county and our stakeholders with the board.”

It is now up to county commissioners to decide the future of the P3 project.