A long-stalled mental health center for criminal offenders on Tuesday won approval to open from the Miami-Dade County Commission, which opted to put off decisions on how to pay for the facility once one-time revenue sources are exhausted.
Championed by Steve Leifman, a retired judge, the Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery is now on track to open in 2027 in a renovated state building at 2200 NW Seventh Ave. in Miami. The annual budget for the facility is expected to hit $25 million after five years, with a projected funding gap of $12 million to be absorbed by Miami-Dade’s already strained general budget if Leifman and other supporters of the center can’t find other dollars to make up the gap. That deficit would have been larger, but the administration of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava reduced the planned security budget for the seven-story building from about $3 million a year to $1 million.
Approval of the operating agreements needed to open the county-funded building means Leifman finally has the green light to try and reshape how Miami-Dade handles chronic criminal offenders who also have mental illnesses. Leifman has been leading the charge for a facility that judges could use as an alternative to Miami-Dade’s jails for people whose mental illnesses seem to be the main driver behind their lawbreaking.
“Locking up sick people is a disservice to taxpayers,” Dulce Martinez, a mental-health advocate, told commissioners in the public comment portion of Tuesday’s meeting…