Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s plan to move Miami-Dade’s Solid Waste Department into a $269 million office complex had an early detractor last year: her solid waste director.

“The cost is too high, and we cannot afford it,” Olga Espinosa-Anderson said in an Oct. 16 email to Alex Muñoz, the department director overseeing real estate deals for Levine Cava.

The objections from Espinosa-Anderson, then interim director of the Department of Solid Waste Management, didn’t gain traction, even though the cash-starved agency in charge of the county’s garbage collection expected its office rent to double after the planned move.

Instead, Solid Waste ultimately agreed to the administration’s plan to create a new suburban government center out of a 1970s office complex once owned by Florida Power and Light. But the deal for Miami-Dade to purchase that property stalled in December after the Miami Herald raised questions about the proposed purchase price being almost double the appraised market value.

After the Herald report, Levine Cava said her staff would renegotiate with the complex owner and come back to the County Commission with a new agreement. This week, the administration said the base sales price of $205 million proposed in December has been negotiated down 11% to $182 million.

Solid Waste currently has its headquarters at a county office complex by the Martin Luther King Jr. Metrorail station north of Miami. It pays the county about $1.3 million in rent, money that partially comes from the $547 yearly trash fee that roughly 350,000 homes pay for garbage and recycling services.

Moving into the West Dade Government Center that Levine Cava wants to create out of the old FPL complex would cost Solid Waste $2.8 million a year, according to an internal county breakdown of estimated expenses circulated in August.

Internal emails show Espinosa-Anderson tried to keep Solid Waste out of that plan. Instead, she pitched the administration on letting the department rent cheaper space off Florida’s Turnpike at a commercial complex called Flagler Station.

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Located outside of Medley, Flagler Station would charge Solid Waste about $400,000 less per year than the department would pay at the proposed government center, according to a Sept. 22 comparison provided by a county real estate analyst.

“Just so you know, I am trying to get us out of going to the FPL building,” Espinosa-Anderson wrote a deputy, Humberto Contreras, in a Sept. 16 email the Herald obtained through a records request.

About a week later, Solid Waste’s chief financial officer, Bolanle Shorunke-Jean, noted that leasing from Flagler Station would probably be about $1 million cheaper for the department than what Solid Waste would pay as an occupant of the new West Dade center. She noted the analysis predicting a $400,000 yearly savings at Flagler Station didn’t factor in an additional $635,000 in operating costs Internal Services would require Solid Waste to pay in operating expenses to keep the new West Dade center running.

“I reviewed this during the weekend and the Flagler Station does look good and cheaper,” Shorunke-Jean wrote in a Sept. 25 email to Espinosa-Anderson.

New office space would let Solid Waste vacate its headquarters at the MLK building, where a garage closed since 2021 for structural repairs has left many managers working from home to avoid parking hassles.

Higher costs are a particular challenge for Solid Waste as the department faces higher garbage-hauling fees following the fire that last year shut down the county’s trash incinerator in Doral. Even before the fire, county garbage fees weren’t enough to cover expenses, forcing Solid Waste to close deficits in its $700 million budget with one-time infusions of federal COVID dollars and loans from funds reserved for expanding landfills and other disposal facilities.

Espinosa-Anderson, who now holds her former title of deputy director at Solid Waste, declined an interview request, saying the department would respond to Herald inquiries. In March, Levine Cava went outside county government to hire a new director, longtime municipal administrator Aneisha Daniel, who had previously worked as an assistant director in Solid Waste.

In a statement released Monday night, Solid Waste said the 11% reduction on the purchase price for the old FPL complex would bring down the higher costs the department faces with a county-owned West Dade center. The statement linked the new county complex to lower overall costs for Miami-Dade government and said that having the agency move to the complex won’t mean rate increases for Solid Waste customers.

“Originally, we were looking to lease office space at Flagler Station, a facility that offered additional parking availability at a lower price point,” the statement said. “We eventually opted to join the County in the purchase of the 9250 property as this is part of a comprehensive county-wide plan to reduce costs for residents overall by moving essential departments to a County-owned rather than rented facility.”

It’s not known when the proposed purchase of the former FPL center will come back to the County Commission for approval. Miami-Dade would borrow money to pay the owner, New York’s Bushburg Properties, for what’s now a $182 million purchase of the 625,000-square-foot complex at 9250 W. Flagler St. An administration memo from December on the proposed purchase said the county would also have to spend up to $64 million in additional costs, mainly upgrades and renovations.

“The re-negotiated price significantly reduced costs compared to their initial estimates,” Solid Waste said in its statement. “The location also covers our main need for additional parking and offers several features including loading docks, generators, and a cafeteria that will greatly benefit our operations and our employees.”

READ MORE: Higher trash fees coming in Miami-Dade, but financial strains remain from garbage

In December, the administration pitched the real estate purchase as a way to provide a modernized home to a county permitting center currently renting space in a Tamiami shopping center at 11805 SW 26th St., plus consolidate other Miami-Dade agencies in one location convenient to residents in the western suburbs.

Levine Cava also said the property has enough vacant land to create both the West Dade Government Center and build affordable housing.

Two appraisers hired by Miami-Dade estimated the current value at about $110 million, given only about a quarter of the building is being rented by commercial tenants who would have to vacate once the county takes over. The appraisals also included an estimate of what the building would be worth if rented by a single tenant, like Miami-Dade. That value came in much higher, at about $191 million, only 7% below the original proposed price.

The administration needs enough revenue from agency budgets to pay $25 million in debt payments and operating costs tied to the new complex, according to an Aug. 25 county analysis. With Solid Waste occupying about 52,800 square feet — roughly 11% of the almost 500,000 square feet of office space, not counting the cafeteria, hallways and lobbies — the agency would contribute about $2.8 million a year, according to the summary.

Some in the agency were warm to the administration’s plan to move into a new West Dade office complex as the proposal took shape last summer.

Contreras, Solid Waste’s facilities chief, wrote in an Aug. 25 email to a county real estate administrator that the closure of the MLK building’s garage over structural concerns had left the Department of Solid Waste Management eager for new quarters. “DSWM has a need to relocate,” he wrote, adding in underline text: “We [would] very much like to be part of the 9250 W. Flagler Project,” referring to the old FPL building.

In a June 2 email, Espinosa-Anderson wrote she preferred the Flagler Station office but wasn’t sure she could sell it to her boss. At the time, Espinosa-Anderson was a deputy under Solid Waste’s then-director, Mike Fernandez, who would resign the next month.

“If it was up to me, I’d negotiate with these folks and move in,” she wrote of Flagler Station’s management. “Although I think our Director is leaning towards the old FPL building.”

In an interview Friday, Fernandez said he was initially open to the administration’s plan for a new headquarters but didn’t have all the information needed for a recommendation. He said Solid Waste’s main priority needed to be keeping costs low — even if that meant remaining at the MLK building.

“My goal at the end of the day was to reduce our operating expenses and save money for the rate payers,” he said. “We did not have to move.”

On Sept. 22, Alan Quiroz, a leasing specialist for Miami-Dade, wrote Espinosa-Anderson with the latest financials for Flagler Station, a building at 10451 NW 117th Ave. He said while Flagler Station wanted rent of about $34 a foot, the old FPL building at 9250 W. Flagler St. would cost Solid Waste about $41 a foot.

“The offer is significantly better than 9250 Flagler,” Quiroz wrote.

“When you compared the two, it didn’t make any sense,” Quiroz said Friday in an interview.

He left his county job at Internal Services in December and now works remotely from Miami as a chief financial officer for a Midwest real estate firm. “It seems like my concerns fell on deaf ears.”

Because the county would be such a reliable tenant, Quiroz said the Flagler Station landlord was eager to sign a lease “at market or below.”

The offer included rent rebates for the first year and money to customize the space. His email estimated the savings to be as much as $1.5 million compared to the old FPL building over five years. That had extra appeal to Espinosa-Anderson just a few weeks after she narrowly won commission approval for a 7.5% rate increase on trash collection for 2024.

“She was trying to do the best for her constituents, which were the customers of Solid Waste,” Quiroz told the Herald. “How do you increase rates on your customers on one hand and then justify a large capital expense on new office space?”

Even so, pressure was building on Espinosa-Anderson to endorse a move to the old FPL building.

On Oct. 18, she received an email from an aide who relayed that, while Levine Cava hadn’t made a final decision, her office wanted each agency slated to move into the West Dade facility to provide a document with “numerous reasons as to why it makes sense from their Department’s perspective.”

That didn’t sit well with Espinosa-Anderson, who contacted Daniel Borges, a top administrator under Alex Muñoz at Internal Services, to raise her objections.

“I just spoke with Danny Borges and advised him that I do NOT want to [go into] that building unless the Mayor says we have [to] go there,” she wrote in an email to Contreras, Solid Waste’s facilities chief. “He is going to talk to Alex and get back [to] me. We will not be providing them with any language [at] this time.”

Yet hours later, without explanation, Espinosa-Anderson did provide that supportive language requested by the administration.

“After some additional thought about whether DSWM should move to the 9250 building,” she wrote in a 12:15 a.m. email to Borges, “I have decided that it’s in the best interest of the County and for the community for us to move to this site.”

That morning, Muñoz, the Internal Services director, wrote back: “Great to hear.”

Solid Waste’s potential for a cheaper new home, the Flagler Station option, wasn’t mentioned in the Levine Cava memo touting a purchase of the old FPL building released on Dec. 7, days before the planned commission vote. The proposal bypassed the normal process of having a committee hearing before a final vote.

There also wasn’t a mention of Solid Waste facing a $1.5 million increase in office costs by moving out of its current headquarters at the MLK building.

“It will be more than double,” Espinosa-Anderson wrote in an email hours before writing Borges that she supported Solid Waste joining the West Dade Government Center. “I asked Danny who was going to explain that to the Board after we just begged for a fee increase.”