Let's talk about the strong civic turnout at the MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization) hearing yesterday, at county hall. Congratulations to the organizers, and especially to Eric Prince who sacrificed an important career event to be there--and still was denied the opportunity to speak on behalf of the hundred plus citizens who took an entire afternoon, braving traffic and other obstacles. Mr. Prince earned our respect, for sure. But what are some of the other lessons to draw from this experience?
Eyeonmiami has written extensively on the CSX rail issue (check our archive feature). CSX is a major railroad operator; it's under-utilitized capacity from the center of the state of Florida, down through eastern seaboard and into western Miami Dade County has become the focal point of land speculators and developers.
Now that the MPO meeting is over and done, what is the appropriate public response to the fact that the MPO board (County commission chair Bruno Bareirro) had made up its mind to deny Mr. Prince the opportunity to make a presentation. Case open and closed? Bareirro represents a majority of county commissioners and other public officials on the MPO who had already made up their minds to reject an earlier decision by the citizens advisory committee to recommend denial of priority for investment in the CSX corridor.
And so it goes, for the public interest in Florida when it comes to growth and infrastructure. Citizens who attended the public meeting yesterday were disgusted. Fair enough.
For most in the audience, it was likely the first time they had ever been to County Hall. But the performance of county "leaders", with the exception of County Commissioner Katy Sorenson and Carlos Gimenez, was utterly consistent and predictable. Former county commissioner chairman Joe A. Martinez plugged for his developer/ campaign contributors. He's the one who got a sweetheart deal on a vacant lot out by the Urban Development Boundary and built his dream home with free services from a prominent member of the Latin Builders Association. Then, there was Commissioner Javier Souto going off on another of his signature tangents, so bizarre and baroque that he might as well be sleepwalking.
But here is the deal and a recommendation to the participants: don't count on the mainstream media helping educate the public. To understand why, take a look at who is advertising in the real estate section in today's Miami Herald.
Note how thin the section is. That's because home sales have crawled to a halt. Still, Caribe Homes, Pride Homes, and Lennar all continue to advertise and all have a big stake in traffic "concurrency" in order to build more tract housing in outlying areas once the market rebounds.
Their lobbyists are the reason that Eric Prince was denied the opportunity to speak yesterday.
They want the CSX rail expansion because they really only have one idea: how to build profits from volume. More tract houses, more profits.
And the only way to create more tract houses, is to pack more sprawl into earlier neighborhoods. (It doesn't apparently matter to the development community that we have already 'built out" Miami Dade, leaving in its wake a degraded quality of life, absence of adequate public spaces and parks, and miserable traffic congestion.)
This is the reason, of course, that Florida Hometown Democracy and its ballot referendum is nearing enough signatures to qualify for a state-wide election, without any significant funding other than the determination and investment of its founders. (But still, more signatures are needed!)
It is the reason that the Florida Chamber of Commerce and former House speaker John Thrasher are misrepresenting, lying, and doing everything in their power to stop the citizen's movement.
The audience at yesterday's hearing needs to understand that it is the goal of the opposition to sow indifference, apathy and inertia.
Yes, the playing field is rigged-- but it is still possible for leadership to emerge and for citizens to use the electoral process to change the people who occupy the office of county commissioner.
But you have to be organized. You have to be smart. And you can't assume other people will do the work for you, of helping to remove public officials who don't represent your interests from office.
Take a page from the Miami Workers Center in Liberty City, an organization that has tirelessly stood up to special interests in Liberty City and is trying to make change happen, to protect the lives of ordinary African Americans in matters related to housing, that the polical elite and establishment (like Dorin Rolle) won't do.
Change is possible. Get involved!
19 comments:
I guess everyone's conspirocy theory about this having only to do with the Ed Easton/Lennar Property was shot to hell as soon as Martinez asked that that "spur" be removed from the project.
Here is the big problem. Every time anything is proposed for that area, residents cry wolf (UDB).
Heck, it could be a 1/4 extension of the Omni Loope on the people mover, and some jackass from East Kendall will claim it's an asault on the UDB.
Mr. Prince did in fact have a good presentation, for anyone who doesn't know the background on this issue.
However, then he has to throw in the UDB/who killed Kennedy conspiracy theory in there and he loses all credibility.
I hpe the residents of Kendall continue to wallow in their "self-inflicted" traffic jam. Because you can't blame anyone else. You moved there. You are either part of the problem, or you are part of the solution. I would say the red shirted folks surely were not offering solutions.
The point has always been to take care of the needs of existing residents first. Who is served by moving north / south, out there?
Take care of the east / west nightmare and earn the trust of voters.
As far as Martinez removing the "spur": it's a flick of the switch to put the spur back in again. Come on. We weren't born yesterday.
I'd like to hear more about Dario Moreno's poll for Lennar, reported in the Herald. What DO people think of development out there and of Commisisoner Martinez? Inquiring minds want to know!
Genius of Despair said...
Dear Not a moderate:
I saw CSX stations on the Providence DRI (Horton Homes) and also CSX in the Lennar/Easton Parkland DRI. DRI's need transportation concurrency to get state approval. The CSX scenario moved people in a more circular route of sort of north east. Kendall is in dire need of WEST EAST.
Having attended yesterday, one comment from Chairman Barreiro struck home. Folks criticized that we don't have the density to make this project work (which is 100% accurate) and Chairman Barreiro said he was planning for the density that would take place. So Moderate...do you really believe they're planning on turning Kendall's single-family residential community into a hub of high density apartments & condos? Or perhaps...could the pressure come from the west. I'm all for a project that relieves the realistic east-west congestion, the CSX component does not do that. Period.
Gosh, Moderate...I love it when you show up because you pose all the questions that we are so wanting to debate in the newspapers in in public forums but are often denied to opportunity to do. I was once like you. believe it or not. I am a recovering conservative, in fact, and it has been painful for me. I am a shadow of my former Republican self and am going through an identify crisis here!
Back to CSX, I tried to like it...after the facts were revealed, I completely agree with the folks who were initially frustrating the hell out of me.
Stick around, though, I love the element that you bring to the blog.
The developers love to go around, throwing their arms up into the air, "it's the NIMBY's", or, "If only the opposition would tell us what they want."
But they have a deaf ear to the business of accounting for the costs of growth where they occur.
It's simple: development impact fees scarcely cover the cost of paper needed to print out all their applications.
What ends up happening is that our tax dollars are used to subsidize their profits.
What we want is simple: take care of the needs of existing residents first! Use our taxes, not to fund infrastructure into outlying areas like Parkland... use our taxes to deliver mass transit that we need.
Solve our existing infrastructure problems first!
What part of that, don't you get, LBA?
What is so wrong with trying to tie exburbs with the urban core? This is what BART does in SF, MARTA in Atlanta etc... Would you want development without transit concurency? This is what use to happen. Sure, we need to take care of current residents but what about good transit planning? What is so wrong with the quiet trains of TriRail? Has any of these NIMBYs used TRIRail or do they just all drive?
Playing with Fire, have you ever used TriRail? If you have, you must know that their system is extremely unreliable with late and cancelled service an almost daily occurence. Same goes for the MetroRail system, despite the 1/2 penny sales tax for the so-called "Peoples Transportation Plan." As it is, the existing bus and train service in M-D Co. has undergone recent cut backs (resulting in uncomfortably packed trains and buses during rush hour)and the physical condition of most trains and buses and stations and bus stops is a mess - with grafitti, torn and stained seats, litter and worse, and Wackenhut guards that are often too few, asleep, or distracted. Why not fix all the problems with our current mass transit system before embarking on high-priced projects of dubious utility that seem tailor-made to serve the interests of land speculators rather than the people of Dade County? Riding the bus or MetroRail can sometimes be so unpleasant, or so unreliable that I avoid it if I can despite working dowwntown and living close to the US-1 corridor. Instead, I ride a bike most days - which, in this town, is really taking your life into your own hands. It's no wonder that it's so difficult to get people out of their cars and off the roads. It's the only place that they feel safe.
Not a Nimby-
I've used TriRail. And as far as I can see, the only reason it's not reliable is because no one has funded the thing properly. It shouldn't be sharing tracks with freight trains. It needs more trains, running more often, running later in the evenings and more often on the weekends. And then the bus routes have to integrate with it better.
When I was using TriRail for my commute, the problem wasn't the train; it was GETTING to the train using Broward County's lame excuse for a bus system. Dade County's system is marginally better downtown. MetroRail's biggest problem is that it isn't big enough; it barely goes anywhere useful. Extending it to Kendall is not only a good idea, it's a necessary to make the system a viable alternative.
GoD is wrong when he states that the rail line doesn't solve the traffic problems: traveling east and west only gets people to where they can travel NORTH; the rail line parallels the the TRUE direction of travel: from Kendall to the Miami, where everyone is working.
I do believe that the UDB should stay where it is, or moved further EAST; we don't need to develop new lands, we need to properly utilize the mess we've made of what we're using. That means funding rail lines into suburbia to connect it to the urban centers.
Apparently you all missed that Pepe Diaz inserted the west spur into the study at the eleventh hour. Martinez did not reject that suggestion like he quickly rejected Sorenson suggestion to move forward with the busway on Kendall. Make no mistake, CSX is all about penetrating the UDB both on the west and the south. The only hope to kill this thing is to beat Martinez in his upcoming election next year; then the CSX will go away! Any takers?
What comes clear in these comments, from observers who are knowledgable enough to use Eyeonmiami as a forum for this discussion, is that people will be amendable to a conversation about future transit needs for future density in outlying areas, when all the transportation needs of people whose quality of life has suffered, already, are funded, implemented, and maintained.
This is one of the worst aspects of the current county commission: the majority--led by Natcha Seijas--simply refuses to come clean about the backlog of infrastructure maintenance and improvements necessary to bring Miami-Dade County's livability standard forward.
Instead, they are obsessed with these schemes to allow campaign contributors and lobbyists to continue to dime the public interest by plowing new tract housing out west, new density, new problems... and entirely skipping over the current generation of taxpayers and voters.
That's why, when there is a chance, people have to pull their neighbors together and vote out of office the public officials who caused this mess.
From Palying with Fire
Yes, I ride TriRail and I know all about the delayed trains. However, I also know that with mass transit in America sometimes it is better to take what you can get and not work against what is offered because often what you can get is the best you can hope for. When you look at other cities, often even the best mass transit systems are all about political patronage and paybacks - it is the same story everywhere, everybody likes to point to W. Europe, but it is the same story there. The sad story is that if environmentalists veto this working with nimbys then they will get nothing. The nimbys just want to keep on driving or avoid the "noise" from the trains, they are not are friends and not interested in building a walkable human scale urban city.
This morning The Miami Herald reported on an east-west option for mass transit, as if in response to the withering criticism leveled against the proposed CSX rail expansion.
When the needs of existing residents are served by mass transit, fully funded and implemented, then it will be time to discuss north/south at the western fringe, serving outlying areas.
The paper reported 2016. So be it.
We all understand that traffic congestion affects the quality of life. While mass transit alternatives should always be considered, sometimes, the costs of implementation go beyond the benefits. That's why we need to follow Commissioner Gimenez's lead on this and study all viable alternatives, through a feasibilty study. This study would analyze all the transportation mode alternatives, and determine which makes most sense (if any) taking into account the cost of the mode and the predicted ridership. The public needs to be more supportive of Commissioner's Gimenez and Sorenson. They need help on the Commission. If we can remove a few of the Commissoners, we can see Chairperson Gimenez in 2008. I for one would love to see that!
Check this link out youlle find it on the right side of the screen, fifth one down.
DeFede: Joe Martinez: "I am Not a Crook"
Helps to clear the water.
That switch is connected to a 40 amp breaker.
Chairperson Gimenez! Who do I make the check out to. I was impressed with his unwillingness to be steamrolled.
I would be willing to bet my HOME that other then Soreson and Martinez, (who have vested interest in the plan) Gimenez was the only person in that room with a CLUE of what they were voting on. Especially clueless was the head of the MPO. (I thought I could see strings running from his chair to Martinez chair)
Your right, Gimenez is not going to be steamrolled by anyone on that dais, and, if the votes were based on intellectual arguments, not political considerations, he would win ever time. What we need is to throw out every other incumbent that is running in '08 except for Gimenez, and then he will have a much better chance of leading the new BCC towards a better and brighter future. Furthermore, if that happens, he may think twice about running for City of Miami Mayor in 2009.
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