Miami-Dade rejects mayor’s waste fee hikes, must try again

Written by Miami Today on June 11, 2025

Asked to raise the solid waste fee on more than 354,000 county customers by up to $14 per year, Miami-Dade commissioners took three ballots, voted the increase down 7-6 each time, and then scrambled to set rates by the Aug. 24 deadline.

“What happens now?” asked Chairman Anthony Rodriguez after he and six others voted no last week. “There is a fee. It’s not that it’s dead. It’s not that we shut down solid waste. Let’s not give misinformation. The garbage doesn’t stop getting collected next week, or next August or September, October, November, December. It does not stop overnight. What happens now?…. What happens to the current fee? Does that go away? Does it get reset to zero? What happens now, madam attorney?”

“You still have time” for another vote on a fee, said County Attorney Geri Bonzon-Keenan, but it will have to be “in short order to be able to make the deadline.”

“We are under a time constraint,” said Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins after Commissioner Raquel Regalado suggested “a comprehensive look” at different ways to charge on a new scale based on varying actual needs for garbage service. That concept was not discussed.

“When is this going to be brought back for a first reading?” Ms. Cohen Higgins asked. “I’m trying to avoid a situation where we are backed into a corner and the item has not been brought forward again.”

“We’re going to get the deadline as requested,” said Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. “I simply want you to realize that if we have to do a separate notice [to customers] there is a cost.” She estimated $2 million for that.

The increased fee the mayor requested would have raised solid waste tax bills from $697 per year to $711 for nearly 345,000 of the 354,000 affected households. Other customers with fewer services would have had lower rises.

The requested increase was far less than last year’s, when rates for most customers soared by $150 per year. In approving that jump, commissioners last year asked to base future increases on the Consumer Price Index. The $14 would have equaled that 2% consumer price rise.

Last year’s increase was playing catch-up.

Waste fees in the 320-square-mile area the county serves didn’t change from $439 annually from 2006 to 2017 despite rising costs to provide services, then rose to $464, followed by $484 in 2019-2020. The cities that collect garbage charge their own fees.

Commissioner Oliver Gilbert commented “how history sometimes repeats itself. Last year we had to increase the solid waste fee significantly, and the reason why we had to … was because prior commissions, not ours, did not track the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, what it cost to actually operate the system, with the actual revenue that was generated in the system. So what they did was to keep the rate flat or not raise it enough to match the increase in cost, and so required us as a board to actually make an extraordinary increase. By our votes today we just continue down that path.”

“If we don’t make the fee pay for the system, it’s going to be a problem for future commissioners,” Mr. Gilbert said.

Chairman Rodriguez offered to take a fourth vote last week based on no increase in fee. The mayor did not take him up on the offer.

Now new legislation must go before the commission June 26 for a first vote, then July 15 for a hearing and final vote in order to notify customers with their tax rate notices on Aug. 24 without the cost of a second notice later.