What Happens Next For Biscayne Gardens, After Incorporation Vote Loss

Miami FL

11 November, 2021

9:49 AM

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By Mark Sell, Miami Times Contributor, the Miami Times Nov 9, 2021 Voters last week overwhelmingly defeated a move to incorporate Biscayne Gardens as Miami-Dade's 35th municipality. With all nine precincts reporting, 2,732 voted against incorporation and 565 supported it, for a preliminary total of 3,297 voters, or 17.54% of Biscayne Gardens' 18,800 voters. Despite the lopsided margin, pro-incorporation leader Bernard Jennings is undeterred and inclined to press on with his next option: to gather 3,800 signatures, or 20% of Biscayne Gardens' registered voters, to place incorporation on the ballot for the next election on Aug. 23, 2022. In other words, the petition effort will require more signatures than the number of people who actually voted this time around. "We intend to do the right thing," said Jennings, president and CEO of the Biscayne Gardens Chamber of Commerce. "We're focusing our efforts on the silent majority of the 15,500 voters who didn't vote. That's who we represent." Once Jennings gives the county notice, incorporation organizers have 30 days to gather signatures. Starting this past May, anti-incorporation advocates waged a disciplined campaign with simple messages. Jennings' main contention is that the county's previous studies' value of Biscayne Gardens is $2.1 billion, roughly double the 2014 values the county was using in its September 2020 staff study. The election in this five-square-mile community was vigorously contested and often bitter, with a strong and vocal anti-incorporation movement active as far back as May. Like most incorporation elections, the real deciding question came down to pocketbook issues and value. Voters were not persuaded that the benefits of incorporation would be worth the extra 10% they would pay on property taxes, and many residents were unconvinced that the relatively modest projected municipal tax bill of $4 per $1,000 assessed valuation, or 4 mils, would be enough to run the city. Taxes are significantly higher in surrounding municipalities, with baseline millage rates of 6.2 in North Miami Beach (7.348 with debt service), 7.5 in North Miami, 9.65 in Opa-Locka and 6.94 in Miami Gardens (7.66 with debt service). Jennings asserts that Biscayne Gardens' present-day $2.1 billion taxable worth, is nearly double the 2014 figures the county had used in making its analysis, and that the community is more a donor than recipient city. He did acknowledge, however, that only a successful signature drive would prompt the county to include those figures in any pre-election analysis. In addition, issues of race, ethnicity and corruption repeatedly bubbled to the surface, in public and behind the scenes. Advocates were eager to build a Black-governed city and opponents pointed to either financial or political troubles in nearby North Miami and North Miami Beach as cautionary tales. Biscayne Gardens – also known as Golden Glades as a Census-designated area – is 70% Black (40% Haitian), 19% Hispanic and 7% non-Hispanic white. Advocates and opponents of incorporation encompassed most racial and ethnic lines. Despite the lopsided result, the election left a bitter residue. "My first lesson is I learned the true character of some of my neighbors, and it was not pleasant," said Jennings. "Some are unscrupulous, some are not fair and some are liars." The Miami Times is the largest Black-owned newspaper in the south serving Miami's Black community since 1923. The award-winning weekly is frequently recognized as the best Black newspaper in the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.