Levine Cava looks to Denver and picks new transportation director

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava plans to appoint Denver’s public works director to oversee transit and transportation in a rare hire beyond South Florida for a top job in county government.

Friday night, Levine Cava’s office announced Eulois Cleckley would be the county’s next director of Transportation and Public Works, a department that oversees the country’s 18th largest transit system. He replaces Alice Bravo, who resigned shortly after Levine Cava took office in November.

“He’s a forward-thinking leader who led the integration of transportation and infrastructure in Denver, driving forward the city’s efforts to make transit more efficient, reliable, and people-friendly and prioritizing projects for safer streets and expanded mobility options,” Levine Cava said in a statement.

Bravo left in February, and Jimmy Morales, the county’s chief operating officer, has been serving as acting director while also overseeing multiple county departments.

WHO IS MIAMI-DADE’S NEW TRANSIT DIRECTOR?

While the Denver area has a robust network of rail and bus offerings, they’re run by a regional authority and not the combined city-and-county government where Cleckley has worked since 2018. Denver itself only recently created a transit director post under Cleckley to pursue transit options within the city to supplement the regional authority’s routes.

But in overseeing Denver’s road system, Cleckley was part of the city’s creation dedicated bus lanes — a transit-friendly tactic that’s mostly in the planning phases in MiamiDade.

“They’ve started dedicated lanes in downtown Denver — in one area, it’s actually a double lane,” said Jill Locantore, executive director of the

Denver Streets Partnership. “They’re starting to flex their muscle — as owner of the public right of way — to prioritize transit.”

Locantore said Cleckley’s department also has been active in creating bike lanes and improving bus stops served by the regional buses. The city also runs circulator bus service in some neighborhoods. In Denver, Cleckley commuted by bike and bus, attracting attention in 2018 when he arrived in Denver and opted to live in the city without a car.

“It’s interesting — when I tell people I take the bus to work, they act surprised,” Cleckley said in 2018, according to Streetsblog. “Well, I can get to work in like 20 minutes. And I can listen to music or relax or get ready for work and I’m sure that you’re frustrated behind the wheel.”

It’s rare for Miami-Dade to see someone from outside South Florida hired as a county department head. The most recent prominent example was former federal housing official Michael Liu’s hire by then-mayor Carlos Gimenez in 2014 to run the county’s housing department.

Levine Cava’s hires for directors in her new administration have all been local: Miami Beach’s Roy Coley for Water and Sewer, and existing county administrators for Budget, Internal Services,

Information Technology and Regulatory and Economic Resources.

Cleckley, director of Transportation and Infrastructure in Denver, was formally offered the Miami-Dade job nearly two weeks ago. A May 12 offer letter lists his salary at $270,000 a year.

Cleckley takes over in Miami-Dade at a contentious time for transit projects. The Levine Cava administration is negotiating with the Genting casino company for a potential tax-funded monorail that would connect Miami with Miami Beach, and is dealing with a troubled bidding process for electric buses for a new rapid-transit system in South MiamiDade. The county also is awaiting elevated-rail proposals for a potential Metrorail extension along Northwest 27th Avenue.

He’ll also oversee the county’s Public Works division, responsible for roads, bridges, sidewalks, stormwater drains and traffic lights throughout Miami-Dade.

In Denver, Cleckley was the first director of the city’s Transportation and Infrastructure Department, which took over from the former Public Works Department. It was created by voters as part of an effort to make transit more of a priority in Denver, which relies on the Denver Regional Transportation District for bus and rail service.

A 2017 transportation study noted that while Denver’s combined city and county government “does not operate transit service in the city, [it] can play an important role in improving access to the transit system and enhancing the overall passenger experience.”

In an interview last year, Cleckley emphasized the value of small changes made quickly to improve transportation.

“We have to have a mindset of making incremental changes and modernizing the entire city and transportation system…and moving into the next generation of mobility, which I think is really going to be focused on multimodal options for people,” he told Denver’s 5280 magazine.

“The primary reason for creating this new department was really to change our mindset and our philosophy about how we

Eulois Cleckley, public works director for the city of Denver, is Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s pick to be the county’s next transportation director.

build out design and our city infrastructure, including streets, bridges, sidewalks, and everything in the right of way.”

In Denver, Cleckley oversees 1,300 employees and a budget of about $340 million, according to his biography on the website of National Association of

City Transportation Officials. In Miami-Dade, he’ll oversee a budget about twice that size and a payroll of roughly 4,000 people.

Before Denver, Cleckley worked at Houston’s regional transportation planning arm (the equivalent of Miami-Dade’s Transportation Planning Organization) and in senior positions in Washington, D.C.’s municipal Transportation Department