On July 11, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava sat with me in the Miami’s Community Newspaper Studios for a nearly hour-long discussion of her tenure as our County Mayor. I started out by asking her to describe the things that were on her immediate radar as important tasks and projects.
“Housing is always on my mind.” DLC went on to say, “We live in paradise, and we are the most recovered economy in the country, and unfortunately the cost of living has gone up and we have to find a way for people to afford to live here.”
The mayor passionately spoke about improvements at Miami International Airport.
“People are regularly contacting us about MIA and I am working very hard on what I inherited,” said Cava. “There was a lot of deferred maintenance (going back many administrations) and I had to replace the existing maintenance company that did not work 24/7 with one that did. It took us 2+ years to get the new company in place after some legal battles, but we are now down to 9 percent of equipment down on average. (This is much better than before) and the industry average, but we have a better goal in mind.”
“We are the fastest growing airport in the country,” said Cava. “We had 53-million passengers last year and anticipate 70-million by the end of the decade, so yeah, with 10 percent year-over-year growth, it is extraordinary. One of the most important focuses is on conveyances (elevators, escalators and moving sidewalks). The other day, I saw a 69-year-old escalator at our airport that was broken. Parts are no longer available, so we need to revamp the entire area, and we are doing that.”
200 bathrooms are being replaced, better signage is being installed and the mayor spoke about a deployed ‘Lightning Team’ that runs around doing the smaller jobs to make sure the airport runs smoothly and gets attention quickly, when needed.
“We are the first airport in the United States to have autonomous wheelchairs,” DLC said.