MIAMI — The Miami City Commission on Thursday voted to delay a vote on Mayor Eileen Higgins’ half-billion-dollar public safety bond, dealing a blow to the mayor as she’s worked to find her footing during her first five months in City Hall.

Higgins had hoped to ask voters in August to approve $450 million in spending to replace the city’s deteriorating public safety infrastructure, including building a new public safety building estimated to cost $305 million that would house various emergency services and new headquarters for the Miami Police Department.

The commission vote blocks the bond from landing on the August ballot, since Thursday was the final commission meeting before the deadline to send referendums to the August primary ballot.

The commissioners, however, said they were open to putting the bond item on the November ballot. Higgins tried to persuade her colleagues to green-light the bond Thursday, even with the caveat that the proposal would go to voters in the fall rather than in the summer. But the commissioners said they needed more time, voting 4-1 to defer to the next meeting.

“When you consider bonding $450 million, it is not something you do between two commission meetings,” Commissioner Christine King said.

Commissioner Rolando Escalona, the item’s co-sponsor, voted against the deferral.

The majority of residents who spoke on the item at Thursday’s meeting spoke out against it, expressing concern that another bond on the heels of the $400 million Miami Forever Bond — approved in 2017 — was fiscally irresponsible.

The commission vote lands amid a brewing power struggle between Higgins and some city commissioners, underscored by a memo Higgins issued Thursday morning announcing that she would be taking over as the meeting’s chairperson.

The move yanked King from her role as chair. In December, shortly after Higgins was sworn in, she had announced that she was reappointing King as chair of the commission. The chairperson position is coveted among the five members of the City Commission.

King was first named chairwoman in 2021 under former Mayor Francis Suarez’s administration, becoming the first woman to hold that position.

“This decision was not made lightly,” Higgins said in the memo. “The voters elected me to lead the City of Miami during a period that requires accountability, transparency, and decisive leadership on issues that will shape our city for generations.”

King told the Miami Herald she was given a heads-up on her commute to City Hall on Thursday morning that Higgins would be chairing the meeting. A spokesperson for Higgins did not immediately respond to a request for comment asking whether King would be reinstated as chair at future meetings.

As chair, Higgins on Thursday held the discussion for her bond item first, limiting public comment to the bond proposal only for that portion of the meeting.

In making her pitch, Higgins gave an impassioned speech. She described deteriorating conditions in police and fire facilities like mold, faulty plumbing and electrical issues.

Higgins said response times in some parts of the city are so bad that “you should be afraid.”

“I view it as a moral responsibility,” Higgins said of the bond, adding that: “One of these facilities will fail.”

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