Today's Miami Herald “Protesters to join tax-cut debate” reports that a fair number of citizens being bused to Tallahassee to demand property tax reform have been paid for “by mortgage brokers and the Latin Builders Association, who see the House plan as a sure-fire way to revive their struggling businesses.”
As housing markets crash and property taxes remain very high, it is important clarify that the struggling business--indeed the economic model for growth of suburban sprawl in Miami Dade-- was built on subprime mortgages in former farmland, liar loans signed by mortgage brokers and bleak, platted subdivisions advocated, lobbied for, and promoted by leadership of the Latin Builders Association.
These are the struggling businesses that state tax policies and the Florida legislature is meant to “revive”?
In the past five years, low quality suburban sprawl has lain waste to at least 20,000 acres of farmland and open space, making a few landowners, lawyers, and lobbyists very wealthy and leaving infrastructure nightmares in their wake.
Big farmers are on the same side of the equation as the mortgage bankers and the Latin Builders Association. That is the point of last weeks’ story in Miami Today, “Development threatening crops, agricultural experts say.”
The appropriate context of this story is in combination with an entirely separate story in today’s Miami Herald, “Drought may force Glades action”.
South Florida water managers are warning Governor Crist that the historic drought we are now experiencing “has all the makings of becoming one of the worst in state history”. Lake Okeechobee, for this time of year, is lower than at any time in recorded history. Water managers are concerned about salt water intrusion ruining municipal drinking water wells.
In combination with a ruinous business model--that lead to oversupply of suburban platted subdivisions in aquifer recharge areas--the drought would argue for Miami-Dade County to take emergency measures to protect all farmland that protects aquifers, but big landowners, mortgage bankers, consultants, engineering companies, development economists, lobbyists—the list goes on and on—are amassing yet again to petition the county commission to move the Urban Development Boundary.
Politically connected developer Ed Easton has one such project—planned in conjunction with Lennar—to bust the Urban Development Boundary in far West Kendall.
Consultants have been making the rounds of business executives making their case, again, that “market forces” require moving the UDB.
In Miami Today, county commissioner Katy Sorenson says, “County commissioners are "treading on dangerous water" by allowing development so close to agricultural areas …"This is a compatibility issue," she said. Agriculture "is an important industry for Miami-Dade. It would be tragic to create residential [development] where we have a thriving industry.”
But it is hard to keep a thriving industry going when subprime mortgage brokers and the Dade County Farm/Development Bureau is lobbying to kill the Watershed Study and every other measure that might protect farming.
Some of these interests actually WANT angry neighbors in platted subdivisions next to row crops. And some of those neighbors might be the same ones being bused to Tallahassee by the Latin Builders Association today.
3 comments:
See if only the Dutch government had bought more tulips after the bust then we would all still be flipping tulips instead of stupid housing plats. So much easier to carry around.
My first comment on Eye on Miami!
Great summary Gimleteye. I want to point out that Radio Mambi (WAQI 710) has been announcing these free bus rides to Tallahassee by the Latin Builders Association with full support for Marco Rubio's property tax reform plan.
They've been in full force around Rubio's plan, and leave little room for opposition. No question that they are packing the buses for Republican support.
The Latin Builders Association has persuaded themselves that property tax reform is what will "revive" their crumbling market for single-family homes in platted subdivisions in the hinterlands.
They've run out of mistakes to make, and the ideas that they have, people aren't buying. It is amazing to see.
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