On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., announced more than $23.86 million in funding for the city of Miami last calendar year.
“My constituents sent me to Congress to deliver results they can see in Miami,” said Salazar. “I am enormously proud to announce that I have secured nearly $24 million for our district. This means better infrastructure and investment in innovation that keeps Miami safe and competitive. I look forward to continuing fighting for District 27, the beating heart of freedom in Florida.”
The FL-27 community funding projects in the FY23’ Appropriations Package include:
1. $2.5 million to the Banyan Community Health Center. The Banyan Community Health Center – Little Havana Campus is a specially designated Federally Qualified Health Center that serves as a safety net for Little Havana’s medically underserved community. This project expands the facility which will provide pediatric primary care, women’s health, OB/GYN services, pharmacy, lab, dentistry, outpatient psychiatry, and other community resources for over 20,000 patients per year.
2. $4 million to the City of Miami 8th Street Neighborhood Flood Mitigation Project. This project will fund flood mitigation efforts in the Little Havana neighborhood where the community experiences significant flooding during king tides, rain events, and other weather events. The improvements will include the creation of hybrid seawalls, living shorelines, rain gardens, blue streets, and bioswales.
3. $4 million to the City of Miami Jose Marti Park Flood Mitigation Project. The funds will assist mitigation efforts to harden infrastructure at Jose Marti Park located on the Miami River in Little Havana. The project will help with flood mitigation while also adding a new riverwalk, refurbishing existing buildings, and integrating native tree canopy.
4. $640,000 to the Village of Pinecrest Lateral Connection Project. Currently, there are hundreds of homes located in Pinecrest that have no access to potable drinking water. This project will help install pipes at many of those homes and allow them to be connected to the city water supply.
5. $4.4 million to the Cutler Bay Marlin Road Improvement Project. This project will upgrade a stretch of Marlin Road to reduce congestion and improve public safety. This includes installation of 10′ wide high-visibility crosswalks; pedestrian refuge in the median; installation of 5′ wide sidewalks and ADA ramps; installation of bike lanes or share-the-road signage; and installation of pedestrian lighting, as feasible.
6. $650,000 to the Florida International University Small Business Accelerator Program. The proposed project would dedicate business consultants to municipalities within District 27 to provide hyperlocal consulting and training to businesses in key areas, such as government contracting, access to capital, financial literacy, and startup assistance. The project seeks to assist and train over 1,000 businesses in the district during the project period.
7. $1.3 million to the Florida International University Enhanced Domain Awareness and Security Research Hub. Led by FIU, this request would formalize a growing relationship between SOUTHCOM and FIU and ensure Miami continues to be a research leader. The request will allow for the Security Research Hub to grow, incorporating additional research jobs and collaboration between entities, with a greater focus on Central America and the Chinese Influence in Latin America. The Enhanced Domain Awareness (EDA) takes a whole-of-hemisphere approach, bringing together the best from across academia, government, civil society, think tanks, private sector, and multilateral organizations to provide data and analytic power to support the U.S. Department of Defense and partner nation decision-makers with real-time information and analysis.
8. $420,000 to the Miami-Dade County Stormwater Drainage Improvement Project. This project is located in southern Miami Dade County along SW 216thstreet between Old Cutler Drive and SW 87th Avenue. It will improve stormwater management practices in the area by implementing engineering strategies to reduce and treat stormwater, thus reducing runoff and improving water quality.
9. $3.75 million to the Miami-Dade Police Department Platform Upgrade. This project ensures Miami law enforcement has the latest and most up-to-date equipment to protect and serve our community. It replaces the department’s outdated Mobile Computing laptops with Samsung smartphones and its DeX platform for in-vehicle computing. Doing this would provide officers with access to all applications on the road while seamlessly transitioning to an office environment by docking to a desktop setup. This project achieves public safety efficiencies by equipping officers with an arsenal of investigative tools at their fingertips and immense cost savings by using smartphones instead of pricey laptops.
10. $1 million to the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital for a Mental Health Facility Expansion. This project helps improve mental health services for children by expanding the existing pediatric mental health facility at the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital from 20 beds to 40 beds. This is vital to address the growing number of children with mental health concerns.
11. $450,000 to the Nicklaus Children’s Pharmacogenomic Testing Program. This creates a drug testing program to reduce adverse patient reactions and greatly improve patient safety. Pharmacogenomic testing allows for your doctors to pre-screen patients to determine what medicines would be best suited to treat individuals based on their genetics. This project would fund the development of this type of testing for every patient at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital.
12. $750,000 to the University of Miami Rosenstiel School Aquaculture Research Project. This project allows the University to expand its unique aquaculture campus in Key Biscayne to include an inland grow and research facility. Currently, this facility must work with foreign partners. This project would lead to greater food sustainability, grow domestic aquaculture, and reduce reliance on foreign growers for cobia and other saltwater fish.
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