Another day in paradise by gimleteye

At the county commission on Monday afternoon, daggers were drawn at the South Miami Dade Watershed Study. Then, they were put back in their sheaths.

The Watershed Study, long anticipated, long held out as a sign, a totem, a symbol, a Rorsach test for developers, farmers, and environmentalists, the Watershed Study, finally on the commission agenda, though it was discussed in specifics not at all, though not one of its 68 recommendations to ameliorate or upset, to solve, or dissolve--not one specific was discussed about the plan, roadmap, cypher to a better Miami-Dade County.

The Study had not even been reviewed by the Natacha Seijas Government Operations and Environment Subcommittee. Weeks ago the Study was acccepted and proposed as a resolution with no discussion, no controversy, no mention of dark dealings and language changes and poison pills inserted craftily.

Now County commissioner Carlos Gimenez signaled the displeasure spreading among fellow commissioners, though still a minority, how the appearance of Seijas’ positive resolution had been crafted out of sight with a little poisonous pill slipped in, as though no one were paying attention to the alteration.

Many were paying attention. The whispering had spread. Where to? To Tallahassee? To Washington? Plainly, there had been an escalation of consequences that did not serve the majority purpose well.

Natacha Seijas amended her resolution and withdrew the offensive “whereas”. Just like that, the poisonous pill disappeared into ether.

Then one at a time, the rebellious minority on the county commission leveled their gaze and appreciation to all the citizens who had spent years as “advisory” to the consultants. So did Seijas, who seemed squeamish as though she had food poisoning.

At moments like these, you are not sure whether you are watching a performance by actors who garble their lines on purpose, with language that scarcely fits the subject, (transcribed on video monitors suspended from the ceiling, the language veers wierdly from sense to senseless and back-- one can easily imagine that if a live person were doing the translation, that they would be certifiably out of their minds as an occupational hazard or job requirement) or whether events like this prove the purpose of Kabuki theater: ritualized from the dais, from the podium speakers appear on chamber video screens like characters on daytime TV--predictable to a letter for not the first time and not the last--though the outcome was a little surprise: Seijas and her majority did not kill the Watershed Study outright.

Seijas' footsoldiers on the commission seemed bemused by the weighing of consequences. Tilted back in their oversized chairs, or, on the phone: this matter was not their business.

Certainly, if the bared daggers had been slipped into the Study, as she had said they would be, there would be ramifications. Mayor Carlos Alvarez was watching the drama from TV.

At the end of the day, the gathered forces of the majority opted for a strategic retreat. In other places, their divisions are assembling: a plan by Ed Easton and Lennar to apply for zoning changes outside the Urban Development Boundary in order to put a small city to the west of Kendall, along a future transportation corridor that addresses not a whit the complaint of hundreds of thousands of commuters inside the Urban Development Boundary. Smaller assaults on the Urban Development Boundary, again, by Lowes and by a few others.

None of these would have been well-served by an outright killing in plain view. And so the daggers were sheathed. The lobbying class fled the proceedings darkly.

From the dais, there was no mention—not a word—of the severe drought conditions in Florida, or of a miserable housing market that has turned all the dreams of housing in farmland into vacant houses in subdivisions.

Someone has gotten rich. Someone is waiting to get rich. And someone is always balancing what to say from the county commission dais against what is needed to raise campaign cash, or favors, or trips to Cancun or the Bahamas, Paris, Africa, wherever.

But the bottom line was not the encomiums for the environment or Biscayne Bay.

It was the certainty, expressed by Seijas, that when the planning department returns months and years hence with recommendations to amend the county development master plan based on 68 separate issues defined by the watershed study consultants as worthy of review, those recommendations will be “shredded” by the county commission.

Shredded. We kid you not. After delivering the Study to the planning department with baby powder and a soft pat, Seijas offered the word—aptly chosen—as a promise. She meant to kill the watershed study. Just not today.