At the April 8th, 2024 council meeting City Manager J.C. Jimenez informed the council that FPL had overpaid Miami Springs $800,000 in franchise fees that they shouldn’t have. And now they want the money back! He stated that FPL had been under the impression that the city had successfully annexed the area that the city had been trying to do for decades, before ultimately failing. It was also said that other cities that had failed in their annexation attempts were also wrongly paid franchise fees that would have to be returned.
This latest screw-up begs some critical questions. How could FPL have been so ignorant of the fact that the annexation attempt had failed at the county level? How did our previous city manager, who was also the finance director, fail to detect that we were taking in hundreds of thousands of dollars that we shouldn’t have received? Were there proper financial audits being done, and if so, why didn’t they detect the overpayments? How did the unwarranted payments escape the attention of our city law firm?
One of my main points of contention over the last few years is that our councils have continued to lavish undeserved praise and votes of confidence on our city lawyers and the previous city manager despite their many mistakes and failures to protect the interest of the residents. While it appears that there is plenty of blame to go around this is yet another failure of our city management.
City Manager Jimenez ended his discussion on the matter by saying that the $800,000 would have to be repaid to FPL out of the city reserves and that it would drop the reserves below the threshold deemed safe and healthy for emergency financial needs. Perhaps councilwoman Jacky Bravo summed it up best when she stated; “Thanks for the dagger.”
Jim Llewellyn
Miami Springs Resident
Nothing goes right in this city, and yet the residents keep voting Republican. It’s the definition of insanity.