By the end of business Friday, Miami-Dade’s Mayor-Elect Carlos Gimenez will start his new job.
He won an election on Tuesday night by a two percentage-point margin over his opponent, former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina.
On Friday morning, the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board certified the results, said Christina White, the county's elections department spokeswoman.
At 1 p.m., Gimenez was sworn in during a private ceremony, but a more public ceremony is scheduled for Wednesday at 10 a.m.
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"Now that I have been sworn in, it’s time to get to work. The voters have entrusted me to make their voices heard. I will work diligently and transparently to make this community where I live and work in the best place possible,” he said in an email statement.
Gimenez has offered a plateful of promises, including chopping his own salary and benefits in half. He also pledged to make county government more efficient and less cumbersome.
The mayor’s office, atop 29th floor at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center, has been empty since March 15, when voters removed former Mayor Carlos Alvarez from office after a stunning recall election, in which he lost by 89 percent of the vote.
Alvarez drew the anger of taxpayers after he approved pay raises for some county employees and increased the property tax rate. His support to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars on the new Marlins baseball stadium made many in this community irate.
Billionaire activist Norman Braman was among those who spearheaded the taxpayer revolt, which ultimately ended with Alvarez getting the boot from office.
By July 15, Gimenez must present the county commission with a proposed budget.
He must also negotiate contracts with the county’s 10 unions, but his biggest challenge will be restoring faith and trust in the people of Miami-Dade.
“But there is one task that towers above all the rest: restoring confidence and trust in local government. This will not be accomplished by words; it will be accomplished by actions,’ Gimenez has said in an email statement.
Gimenez will serve the rest of Alvarez’s term, which is until November 2012.
