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Turning a neighborhood into a city is an arduous process, plagued by lengthy feasibility studies, detailed budget planning, and a multitude of meetings, hearings and votes. But Kenneth Kilpatrick, president of the Brownsville Civic Neighborhood Association, is determined to make it happen.
Having dedicated the past 25 years to serving North Central Miami-Dade County’s advisory committees and its communities, Kilpatrick is now leading the effort to give this section of unincorporated Miami Dade the ultimate form of representation: cityhood.
For Kilpatrick, the path to civic action wasn’t just a calling, but part of his DNA. His grandfather, George W. Kilpatrick, was a civil-rights-era activist and owner of Brownsville’s Spic ‘n Span, a neighborhood grocery store that often doubled as a meeting place for civil-rights pioneers. As a kid, Kilpatrick remembers visiting his grandfather who would always quiz him on what he was learning in school before handing him a sausage sandwich.
“I really enjoyed going [to Spic’N Span] and seeing people in the neighborhood embrace my granddad,” Kilpatrick recalled, reminiscing how the store always felt like home and its patrons like family. Ultimately, he said, his grandfather’s community work inspired his decision to devote his life to civic leadership as well.
In the late nineties, then 25-year-old Kilpatrick ran for his first committee position with the West Little River Homeowners Association. He missed the 800 votes required to secure a seat by just a handful, but met many of the people who still work with him today.
In 2001, Kilpatrick was elected to the Municipal Advisory Committee for Model City.
“They gave me a chance,” said Kilpatrick, who was finally able to fill his grandfather’s shoes. “I rolled up my sleeves and I haven’t looked back.”
Soon after, Kilpatrick was made vice chair of the committee. He worked on a master community improvement plan, which included upgrading transportation and strengthening the local economy. He also helped revitalize cultural landmarks like the historic Hampton House, a Green Book hotel where Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Sam Cooke had stayed. In 2014, Kilpatrick officially moved to Brownsville and now, over a decade later, he is spearheading the effort to incorporate the area and its neighboring communities into a municipality, which would give the community more resources.
“If you live in unincorporated Dade, your tax dollars are pooled with the rest of Miami-Dade County, and then, it’s really up to the will of the folks at the top to determine how much of it comes back to that neighborhood,” Kilpatrick explained. If Brownsville were to become part of its own city, taxes collected within the municipality would be used directly to the city’s advantage.
Though the idea has been floating around since the late 1990s, the recent push to make Brownsville and surrounding areas into their own city came after the city of Hialeah proposed to annex parts of Brownsville in 2023.
“It was really a wake-up call for us to focus and do what we need to do,” Kilpatrick said.
To Kilpatrick, incorporation is the only way to ensure future representation for the community.
“You’re taking real resources and pouring them back in,” Kilpatrick said. “I think now when you look at the opportunity to incorporate, it is the biggest stick that you could carry in the campaign to improve the community.”
On January 22, the Miami Dade County commission voted in favor of an ordinance that will extend the life of the North Central Dade Municipal Advisory Committee and determine the feasibility of incorporation– essentially giving the committee the resources to put incorporation on the table.
Though elated by the result, Kilpatrick is also realistic. “It’s really just a step one that the work gets the green light to begin,” he said. “Now, we can roll our sleeves up and really get to work.”
