Cover Story
Politics and Happy Hour
County Commissioner and Downtowner Eileen Higgins
Commissioner Eileen Higgins has one spontaneous and contagious laugh, which can be deceiving. Her affable demeanor hides a multifaceted and relentless persona — what we used to call a woman of substance.
Eileen Higgins took office as Commissioner for District 5 two months ago, having staged an improbable victory over Zoraida Barreiro, wife of commissioner Bruno Barreiro, who had been in office for 20 years. District 5, anchored in Little Havana, traditionally a stronghold for Cuban politicians, seemed at best out of reach for an Anglo (for lack of a better word) with a last name impossible to pronounce for Spanish-speaking constituents. In effect, in Little Havana, she simply became “La Gringa.”
Commissioner Higgins recalls that people she visited in Little Havana never asked about her political affiliation. She is a registered Democrat. Neither did the issue of her ethnicity come up. People were interested in what she had to say about affordable housing, economic opportunities, livable wages, and public transportation. Commissioner Higgins famously moves around Miami Dade County in buses, trollies, trains, all modes of public transportation available to residents. She knows firsthand why the Metrorail is dubbed the Metrofail.
“Riding public transportation can be trying. Some might say it’s horrible!”
“Horrible” encapsulates unreliability, impractical routes, unexpected detours, and sudden cancellations. Commuting from Doral to Downtown can easily take two hours.
A half-cent tax was imposed for an extension of the Metrorail. Instead, the County Commission, with Commissioner Higgins’ vote, just approved the creation of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT).
Isn’t that sort of betraying the public’s trust?
Commissioner Higgins acknowledges that residents were promised a Metrorail extension, and she feels terrible that some people feel betrayed. But elected officials have to make difficult decisions, and determine what helps a greater number of residents… “These are the facts: A 20-mile extension of the Metrorail will cost 1.3 billion and could take up to 10 years to build. BRT, on the other hand, costs $243 million and takes 3 years to build.” And operating this Metrorail extension will consume 75% of every transit dollar in the coming years. “BRT is the more pragmatic solution.”
For years, Commissioner Higgins, a mechanical engineer and Cornell MBA, has been teaching a course in digital marketing fundamentals for small business owners and entrepreneurs. When asked how BRT works, the engineer takes over and professorially elaborates, using beer coasters to illustrate.
BRT, she explains, is designed to improve capacity and reliability vis-à-vis conventional bus systems. The Bus Rapid Transit system proposed for Miami Dade includes roadways dedicated to buses that have priority at intersections. Since it uses platforms with level boarding, passengers, including those in wheelchairs and those with strollers, can access without delay. BRT combines the capacity and speed of a metro with the flexibility, lower cost, and simplicity of a bus system.
The Neighborhood Bar
The popular downtown bar Lost Boy has been in the news lately, where it was described as the “epitome of a neighborhood bar.” A somewhat dislocated urban philosopher and regular at Lost Boy takes offense at what has become a meaningless designation. “One article mentioned that this is the authentic downtown neighborhood watering hole, and five or ten bloggers and journalists immediately parachuted in and started to parrot the first one, without allusion to the social impact local bars exercise.” Perched on a stool, the urban philosopher downs a Guinness with gusto, and concludes, “Voltaire said it best: the first man to compare a woman to a flower was a poet, the second an imbecile.”
A definition is in order. Commissioner Higgins, nursing a glass of red wine, elaborates on the importance of public places to forge a sense of community. People frequent Lost Boy not only to drink but to discuss local issues, get to know neighbors, analyze soccer strategies and, one supposes, fall in love. “It’s not like we have many places for the downtown community to connect — even Bayfront Park is closed most of the time…” Besides, Commissioner Higgins laughs, nodding her approval at a truism: conversations are livelier over a drink.
Downtown NEWS: One of your campaign banners was living wages. How is the commission doing on that?
Commissioner Higgins: I believe that we should pay living wages in all properties and contracts that the County controls. Concessionaires at the Airport, for example. We recently passed a living wage for new contracts there. It’s a small step towards balancing inequity.
DN: The New York Times claims you are part of a New Blue Wave… That a changing of the guard is taking place in Miami-Dade, a lessening influence of the conservative Cuban establishment, and the rising influence of the Florida Democratic Party…
CH: The County Commission is nonpartisan, you know. What we are seeing might be a blue-collar wave.
DN: When we first met, you pointed out that one way out of wages that hardly pay the bills was starting your own business. But, you also pointed out, many failed to become scale-ups because they lacked access to capital or simply didn’t know how to connect with potential clients. Are you still championing business training, what you labeled 21st-century skills?
CN: Let’s face it. Many jobs in Miami are $15 an hour or worse. We can create our own high-paying jobs by enabling entrepreneurs to grow their business faster. The County is very much committed to investing in training programs. And residents have avenues for training: Miami Dade College, CIC, even the Public Library offers many training tools. [Commissioner Higgins’s face lightens as she mentions the Library. She has been selected a Voice for Libraries.] Old conceptions of the Public Library need revising. The Library is not one building. Now it can be anywhere. I ride the bus listening to my favorite audiobooks, streamed from the Library. The Library is my living room.
DN: Historically public libraries also have been community-building centers.
CH: Yes, that is a tradition going back to Benjamin Franklin, but libraries need to be closer to where people are.
Inevitabilities
Randy Alonso, one of Lost Boy’s owners, stops by our table and joins in the conversation about neighborhood bars. He seconds the commissioner. One of the reasons behind the bar was to serve as a place for downtown residents to gather without feeling ripped off. He is right about that. Happy hour drinks are between $5 and $6. Not crappy stuff, these are well-crafted drinks, a must for the modern reincarnation of the local bar populated in great part by millennials.
On the subject of millennials, it must be noted that our commissioners, both City and County, surround themselves with savvy energetic millennials. Case in point: Commissioner Higgins’s Communications Director, Guillermo Perez. Despite his apparent young age, he is a seasoned political operative.
And the inevitable happens. This is the problem with Happy Hour: it’s over before you know it. Time to wrap up the conversation. Commissioner Higgins raises her glass: “Cheers.”
