MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — During a Miami-Dade County budget meeting, Susan J. Rubio Rivera told commissioners on Thursday about how access to therapy had helped an 8-year-old boy who was raped and a 12-year-old girl who was also a crime victim.
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Rubio Rivera, who lives in southern Miami-Dade, said therapy helped the boy to understand that what happened was not his fault and healing was possible. It also helped the girl to get support as she faced her abuser in court and testified.
Rubio Rivera, the executive director of Homestead-based nonprofit Mujeres Unidas En Justicia Educacion Y Reforma, or MUJER, said the organization has been helping victims like them for about 21 years.
“These are not just statistics. They are real people. They are our neighbors, and their stories were changed because Miami-Dade County chose to invest,” Rubio Rivera said about the county’s community-based organization, or CBO, grants program, which the county’s office of management and budget runs.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s proposed budget did not increase funding for CBOs. Rubio Rivera was among the members of the Advocacy Collective, a group of more than 60 organizations asking commissioners to increase funding for CBOs by 3%.
“Last year was being proposed to cut all CBOs at one point, and we fully funded them last year, and we are fully funding them this year,” Anthony Rodriguez, the commission’s chairman, said during the meeting. “We are in a real financial deficit guys, and I keep hearing like asking for increases … We kind of got to be realistic here with ourselves.”
Hours later, Rodriguez was pushing for the commission to allocate $5 million to the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, a marketing organization that works to attract tourism. The Miami Herald reported that GMCVB gave Rodriguez’s political committee free skybox seats for a FIFA World Cup match.
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The $5 million boost for GMCVB was a decision that Commissioners Oliver G. Gilbert, III, Danielle Cohen Higgins, and René Garcia supported. Commissioners Raquel A. Regalado, Micky Steinberg, and Juan Carlos “JC” Bermudez opposed it.
Like Rubio Rivera, Tina Brown, the chief executive officer of the Overtown Youth Center in Miami, also wore the Advocacy Collective’s blue and white “Caring for Our Community’s Most Vulnerable Members” T-shirt to ask commissioners to invest in needy children and families.
“As needs continue to grow in Miami-Dade County, we have deployed more than $1.6 million in rental assistance to help families remain safe,” Brown told commissioners. “CBO funding is not just another line item. It puts resources directly into communities through organizations that are already on the ground, already trusted, and already doing the work.”
Commissioners did not increase funding for CBOs. They did include the $5 million for the GMCVB in the approved , while keeping operating property tax rates flat at 4.57 mills, during the meeting at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in downtown that ended on Friday morning.
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Related social media
Miami-Dade Chair Anthony Rodriguez said he wants to send $5M in mostly property-tax dollars to Miami-Dade’s tourism bureau. The GMCVB gave Rodriguez’s PAC $38K worth of World Cup skybox tickets in June. The board already gets $37M from county hotel taxes https://t.co/Tl6uVskyHt
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