MIAMI — Extra transit dollars helped Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s 2025 budget win preliminary approval Thursday night, with commissioners securing an extra $16 million for transportation reserves in a year when the newly reelected mayor says finances are the tightest since she took office.

“It won’t be easy,” Levine Cava said as she laid out some of the challenges facing the county in 2025, including higher expenses for spinning off the police department into an independent sheriff’s office, as now required by the Florida Constitution. “But we have to make hard choices to deliver what you deserve.”

Levine Cava used the start of the four-hour meeting to defuse a top source of friction over her proposed $12.7 billion budget. To close revenue gaps, the budget proposal she released in July canceled a planned $16 million payment to transit reserves needed for future expansions, including a new Metrorail line to Miami Gardens.

That cut met pushback from transit advocates and from Commissioner Eileen Higgins, chair of the county’s Transportation committee, particularly after voters overwhelmingly endorsed expanding transit in a straw poll on the Aug. 20 ballot. On Thursday evening, Levine Cava cited the referendum in telling commissioners that she’d find the money to make the $16 million reserve payment.

“Clearly,” she said, “transit remains a priority for our community.”

Commissioners later approved a Higgins amendment to take the $16 million out of property-tax revenue, which is forecast to be slightly higher than Levine Cava’s original forecasts.

A final vote on the budget is scheduled for Sept. 17 after another public hearing.

Thursday’s budget meeting included three hours of comments from more than 100 members of the public. They were each limited to 60 seconds of commentary on a budget with about $3 billion in revenue from the county’s property taxes and another $500 million from gas and sales taxes.

Trenise Bryant, a housing advocate with the SMASH organization, urged commissioners to restore $1 million in funding for eviction lawyers for low-income tenants that Levine Cava proposed cutting in next year’s budget. The current budget is $2 million.

“It is helping families who have been facing eviction to be heard,” Bryant told commissioners. “Continue to fund this program. Do not take any money away from it.”

Behind her, dozens of people in matching T-shirts were representing owners and tenants living in mobile homes at the Soar trailer park in Miami’s Little River neighborhood. A developer plans to build 4,000 apartments there, wiping out the lots for the more than 300 trailers there now.

Speaker after speaker asked Miami-Dade leaders to help Soar residents find replacements for their affordable homes. Moving into Soar in 2011 was a milestone moment for 75-year-old Fred Gadlin and his wife, Gadlin told commissioners.

“Part of the American Dream was owning a home. So I bought a mobile home,” he said. “Now Big Development is moving in.”

The Levine Cava budget has a 10% reduction in arts grants, with a cut of $2.5 million from the current budget of $25.5 million. That reduction came on top of cuts in state cultural grants by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

More than a dozen speakers urged commissioners and Levine Cava to fully fund the county arts grants. That included a literal chorus of advocates for the arts when members of the Vocal Youth Miami program sang several lines of “We Shall be Known.”

“We shall learn to lead in love,” the quintet of teenagers sang before the commission. The designated spokesperson, 17-year-old Hadi Cairo, said in an interview afterward that the bond she shares with fellow youth choir members is a vital part of her life.

“I wouldn’t be myself without them,” she said.

In introducing the budget to commissioners on Thursday in the packed chambers, Levine Cava said she was aware of consternation about arts cuts and said her administration was looking for public and private dollars to close the funding gap. She announced a $300,000 donation from developer Jorge Perez, who is active in county affordable-housing projects.

Eight pieces of legislation were needed to advance the Levine Cava spending and tax plan for a budget year that begins Oct. 1. The closest votes came on increasing water fees by 6% and garbage fees by 27%. Those fee increases advanced with 8-5 votes Thursday.

Four commissioners — Kevin Cabrera, René Garcia, Roberto Gonzalez and Anthony Rodriguez — voted against both fee increases. Commissioner Raquel Regalado opposed the trash fee, and Commissioner Kionne McGhee was the fifth no vote on the water fee.

The higher water fee is forecast to cost the average Miami-Dade home about $40 a year and the higher trash fee, $150. The four property taxes — funding countywide services, municipal services, and the fire rescue and library departments — remain flat from 2024 levels. A fifth tax that pays debt on voter-authorized borrowing is down slightly this year.

While the combined tax rate is down less than a half-percent, the average homeowner will pay more under a Florida law that allows up to a 3% increase in a property’s assessed value each year.

For a home assessed at $202,000 last year — the median value countywide — the 2025 county tax bill would be about $1,500. That’s roughly $57 higher than in 2024.

While nearly $1 billion higher than the current budget, Levine Cava’s 2025 spending proposal lacked the new dollars for nonprofits, housing relief and other programs that made prior budget seasons less contentious for a mayor who was reelected to her final four-year term on Aug. 20.

After taking office in 2020, Levine Cava used more than $1 billion in federal COVID aid to boost spending and secured back-to-back decreases in the countywide tax rate. Those 1% reductions in 2023 and 2024 resulted in a loss of about $41 million in property-tax revenue that otherwise would be generated for this year’s budget.

Now the pot of COVID dollars is nearly empty, and Miami-Dade is facing new expenses in 2025: from a $10.5 million subsidy for the upcoming World Cup matches in Miami Gardens to $30 million in transition expenses tied to the creation of three new independent county offices for sheriff, elections supervisor and tax collector.

The vast majority of comments centered on wanting Miami-Dade to spend more, including on transit, protecting environmental lands, services for tenants and other government aid.

That trend led to the most contentious moment of the evening meeting, after commissioners cast their votes.

“No one asked for less transit. No one asked for their garbage to be picked up less,” Commission Chair Oliver Gilbert said as he seemed ready to adjourn the meeting. “The people who showed up asked us to step in, instead of stepping back.”

That had Garcia talking over Gilbert in a response touting fiscal responsibility, minutes after Garcia voted against the higher garbage and water fees.

“I think governments can do a better job at administering people’s money,” Garcia said.

That didn’t end it, with Gilbert saying that criticism of government spending is easy, while fixing problems is hard.

“This government is not going to function on wishes and hopes and big words like ‘efficiency’ and ‘transparency,’” Gilbert said.

Cabrera joined the fray, calling it wrong to judge public opinion on the budget from who showed up at the meeting.

“There’s people that weren’t able to show up today because they’re working,” he said. “Their voices matter as well.”

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