Late contract decisions are worse than a 54-cent mistake

When Miami-Dade moved too late to stave off rising costs to pay water bills, it tapped an underground cash stream flowing to those in poverty rather than make the public pay for the county’s washout.

It was an understanding, caring and charitable step that could have been avoided if officials had followed policy that the county commission had set up years before. 

As Miami Today outlined in January, the county faced expiration last September of a two-decade-old contract with a firm that processes 71% of water and sewer payments, totaling a whopping $690 million annually. 

As the county dithered over whether to renew, find other bidders or handle payments itself, time ran out and it had to keep using the firm. The provider for the first time in more than a decade raised charges to process credit card payments, up from $3.95 apiece to $4.49, amounts customers pay with their bills as so-called convenience charges. Since the contract had expired, the company didn’t need permission to raise costs, so it just went ahead.

Although provider ACI raised those charges in September, commissioners weren’t asked until this year to approve a one-year contract extension to ACI while officials figure out what to do next and get it in place.

It never sits well with commissioners to sign off on something that is locked in before they even find out about it. They’re right. It shouldn’t sit well. But it happens a lot, and that needs to be fixed. Commission approvals are required, not optional.

This month commissioners had to find a solution. They politely asked ACI not to raise the credit card fee, which had been the same since 2014. The company politely said no. So commissioners were caught between a rock and a hard place, because without ACI it can’t handle 71% of water and sewer payments.

If the fee isn’t increased by 54 cents per payment to ACI, commissioners were told by Amanda Kinnick, the water and sewer director, “they will no longer be able to provide the credit card and debit card processing for the department.” If that happened and customers accustomed to using credit and debit cards then didn’t pay, they would face a water cutoff, a $23 disconnection charge from the county and then another $23 to reconnect, she said.

“I choose not to believe that this government, the largest in the state of Florida outside of the state itself, will allow that scenario to occur,” said Chairman Anthony Rodriguez. “The mayor has emergency powers.” If ACI doesn’t renew its contract, he asked, “will we shut people’s water off?”

“Certainly not, Mr. Chair,” Mayor Daniella Levine Cava replied.

Having gotten past the specter of water shutoffs and back to the 54-cent monthly increase to pay by card, commissioners tapped the emergency fund in the county that will be asked to pick up those 54-cent payments if customers request it.

As they debated, commissioners discovered that the 28% of water and sewer customers who pay by credit cards create added costs. Credit card companies exist on those fees, said Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez. “If you use a credit card you have to pay.” 

Commissioners were also cautioned that while ACI hadn’t raised costs to the county for 20 years, it’s not a charity that will forever keep costs constant. “To ACI,” said Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins, “I don’t fault you at all. You’re a business; you’re here to make a profit.”

The nub of her concern, she said, is “we were retroactively being asked to approve that increase.”
“We are here,” Ms. Cohen Higgins said, “because the board was not notified prior to the expiration of the contract, which placed us in a bind, kind of forcing us to sign on to the approval after the fact, and that’s what we took issue with.”

“What I am not in favor of,” said Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, “is becoming a rubberstamp and just having this board be a group of elected officials that will allow bureaucracy to make decisions.”

In 2023, the commission approved a measure by Ms. Cohen Higgins that made it policy to not wait until a vital contract is set to expire but to seek a new one at least two years in advance. If the county falls behind, she noted, the legislation said that one year in advance “you let me know, like send up a warning flag, jump up and down. That resolution was entirely disregarded from 2023 until, here we are in 2025.”

Because the county didn’t send up the warning flag, she noted, residents were paying extra. Finding the poverty slush fund fixed that.

But it didn’t fix the real problem, which is a whole lot more costly than 54 cents a month. 

The real problem is letting vital contracts tick down to where they must be renewed as emergency measures until the county can get its act together, and doing that without raising that warning flag to commissioners until they have to become rubberstamps. That’s what triggered the 2023 warning resolution and what triggered the 2025 panic over 54 cents.

The mayor was in the room and heard commissioners’ legitimate complaints about rubberstamps and warning flags. The ball is in her court. Don’t wait two years to swing at it.