About Hector Medina
Dr. Hector Medina is a retired physician with deep roots in North Miami. As co-founder of the city’s Palomar Neighborhood Association, he gained the trust and respect of both residents and city officials. He brought people together around neighborhood improvement projects, raising environmental awareness and civic participation. Dr. Medina’s Medical Career has been one of service. As a young graduate, he worked with the homeless and low-income residents. In 1995, Dr. Medina was living in Oklahoma when a terrorist attack destroyed a federal building in Oklahoma City. As a Disaster Prime Responder volunteer he was immediately on site.
Dr. Hector Medina also has a extensive experience as a multi-agency administrator. Over the course of his career, he has founded and directed half a dozen community health and family planning clinics in New York and throughout the Midwest. Dr. Hector Medina and his wife, Alina, are the proud parents of three adult children and have two grandchildren, and enjoy their dog Luna. Hector has built communities all his life. We need him working for us as our District 2 Councilman.
I became interested in politics as a kid in Puerto Rico, attending rallies with my dad, who was a local activist. While living in New York City in the late 1980s, I worked as a volunteer in the campaign to elect Ed Koch as mayor, as well as, subsequently, in those for Mario Cuomo for state governor and Jessie Jackson for president.
Since moving to North Miami, I became an activist full time, as a response to the daily injustices that my neighbors and I witnessed as well as were subjected to, and the inaction on the part of local institutions of government.
As an active member of the Palomar Neighborhood Association, I led a 3-year fight to shut down an illegally-operating industrial dry cleaning plant, permitted by the City despite multiple code violations. The industrial plant was in an area zoned only as commercial, and adjacent to a residential neighborhood, barely a few feet away from yards and windows. Moreover, across the street there was an elementary school. The dry cleaner produced unbearable air and noise pollution, with constant fumes’ emission, that affected residents’ physical and mental health as well as seriously impacted their quality of life, causing some to move away. After working relentlessly for years — rallying neighbors to attend council meetings, signing petitions to the council and mayor, leading awareness workshops, and neighbors’ meetings, attending court hearings and more — we got the city to undertake legal action. In 2017, we finally succeeded in impeding this polluting business from operating in the neighborhood. This victory was, however, not the end of my activist involvement with the city. I have continued to attend council and other meetings at the City of North Miami, very specially those concerning Land Development Regulations. There, zoning and other rules related to new and old developments are enacted, to make sure that neighbors know what is coming to them, so that they can prepare and act accordingly.
In 2017, I ran as a candidate for mayor, achieving major name recognition and support beyond my district and throughout the city. We know it was a challenge to run against an incumbent who would typically be reelected, but I came out in second place, out four candidates -one of them the sitting mayor, who won. That electoral campaign produced a network and an infrastructure that is allowing me to confidently run again, with ample support.