After collecting the needed number of signatures from eligible Key Biscayne voters, Betty Sime Conroy said she feels confident a referendum will be placed on the Nov. 3 ballot.<\/p>\n
The initiative gives Island residents a chance to opine on the Village’s spending practices on major renovation projects, such as the current stormwater discussions.<\/p>\n
“We did extremely well and did it by a large margin,” said Sime Conroy, a former two-term Council member and part of a group of residents who worked on the Village’s incorporation 35 years ago. “We feel good that it will be put on the ballot.”<\/p>\n
Sime Conroy was joined by fellow Key Biscayne Neighbors Association board members Servando Parapar and Dr. Josie Valdes-Hurtado last Thursday (two days before the deadline) at the Village Clerk Office, where they submitted the signatures to be turned into the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections. It will take about 20 days before that paperwork is validated.<\/p>\n
Needing at least 839 signatures, or 11% of the Village’s 7,628 eligible voters, Sime Conroy said they collected “much more.”<\/p>\n
“We had like about 43 days, so it was really, honestly, amazing to do this,” she said. “It shows, to me, how popular this issue is.”<\/p>\n
The “issue” is that some say the Village has been overspending, especially when it comes to the stormwater rebuild to thwart flooding from high-impact storms and major rainfalls.<\/p>\n
Earlier this spring, she told Islander News, that with $8 million having been spent on consultants and a Zone 1 project estimated “around $83 million, but that’s without a shovel in the ground, so that’s always more,” the concern is additional spending.<\/p>\n
“The problem is, it’s really unknown. They are just estimating,” she said.<\/p>\n
In the current context (ballot wording would be much shorter), the Key Biscayne Neighbors Association petition reads, in part:<\/p>\n
This change shifts the ultimate decision-making power for major multi-million-dollar drainage and flood control investments directly to the residents, ensuring taxpayer oversight on the Village’s most expensive infrastructure commitments.<\/p>\n
The amendment requires that any large-scale stormwater or flood prevention efforts must be approved by a majority of voters if the total cost is estimated to exceed $50 million over a three-year (budget cycle) period.<\/p>\n
With the recent Council approval<\/a> to choose an injection type of pumping system from GIT Consultants, LLC over a more comprehensive plan proposed by AECOM’s engineers, “We don’t know how much it’s going to cost (without the final plans),” Sime Conroy told Islander News on Friday.<\/p>\n Recalling the days she’d stand outside the Winn-Dixie store collecting signatures, Sime Conroy said, “It was really easy to get people to sign. A lot of education was already out there about the ‘Big Dig’ (a term coined to encompass both the stormwater piping and utility under-grounding). Most of them knew something about it, but some didn’t know anything about it, so it was a good way to educate them, and how the referendum makes really good sense.”<\/p>\n She said she has not faced any friction from either Village staff or the populace since announcing the referendum endeavor<\/a>.<\/p>\n “This is not an anti-government move by any stretch,” Sime Conroy said. “But it is (for) a smart growth requirement and ensures that Key Biscayne has a plan which is environmentally sound and technically complete.”<\/p>\n In the 2020 election, Key Biscayne voters<\/a> approved a referendum<\/a> for the Village to use a $100 million GO (General Obligation) Bond, if needed (up to the debt cap), for planned resiliency projects. That item passed with a 56.54% approval.<\/p>\n Should the current amendment get placed on the Nov. 3 ballot, Sime Conroy’s work isn’t done.<\/p>\n “We would have to promote it before the election,” she said. “You know, they say a referendum can be divisive, that it divides the community, but actually it’s a useful tool so that taxpayers are represented.<\/p>\n “We feel really good about it … and doing it in such a short time. It’s like a miracle, a grass-roots thing that’s worked (so far).”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After collecting the needed number of signatures from eligible Key Biscayne voters, Betty Sime Conroy said she feels…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102216,121749,126,123,125,124,60772,25681],"class_list":["post-287531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-betty-sime-conroy","tag-josie-valdes-hurtado","tag-key-biscayne","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-november-ballot","tag-voters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}