MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — Ready and waiting to open, but still closed, is Miami-Dade County’s first of its kind mental health and recovery center.
“It really shouldn’t be that difficult to do something so good,” said Judge Steve Leifman with the Miami Center for Mental health and Recovery.
The facility was voter-requested and 20 years in the making, with the intent to finally stop the county’s jail from also being its psych ward.
“We identify 16,400 people over the last five years, they spent 1.2 million days in DCJ, cost taxpayers $414M, and they all get released,” said Leifman.
The holdup comes from some of the 13 county commissioners who all say they support the project, but have hamstrung the opening with questions about long-term funding.
They are important questions, except they’ve been answered, again and again.
Federal grants and opioid settlement money pays for the two year pilot, by which time, the facility pays for itself, and then even recoups $32 million a year for a cash-strapped county. The University of Miami will be tracking that.
Law enforcement members want it open, and other counties have toured the still-closed facility, hoping to build their own.
Still, some commissioners stall, ask questions, then cut the mics for time.
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