Many of you have said: Hey, Genius, I don't want the Urban Development Boundary moved but what should I say when I write to the Dept. of Community Affairs? Here is one letter forwarded to me as an example...it is long but it might give you some ideas:
Dear Paul.Darst@dca.state.fl.us and Charles.Gauthier@dca.state.fl.us
Kindly step in where our elected officials are afraid to tread:
We have long known that our Dade County commissioners as a body are not about to break rank with the building industry lest they step on the shiny imported shoes of those who continue to get them and their cronies elected.
Please be aware of our lackluster status quo as citizens, and realize that you are the only hope for those of us who crave any quality of life.
We have long ago passed the stage where growth is good. It has become, in fact, a cancer - causing many longtime Floridians to flee at any cost for a better, more wholesome, standard of living almost anywhere else.
As a Realtor, I have 21 listings. Virtually all of the families that I represent are leaving South Florida if not the state. The reason is not our lousy weather. It is the fact that the gridlock we have created from paradise precludes any measurable quality of life. Whether it is the hours long and increasingly expensive commute to work, jammed schools, the lack of employment affording a livable wage or prospects of a middle class existence, the absence of healthcare for all but lucky corporate employees, the result is the same: regular hardworking families have been robbed of the American Dream. Worse, they are trapped in their concrete cells which are worth less than they paid just a year or two ago.
These folks are competing with investors who bought in new developments which will never become communities. Instead, they are surrounded by vacant foreclosures and subsidized rental properties.
I assure you, it is nearly impossible to find a buyer who will risk his or her family's assets in areas like this. Worse, the mounting foreclosures (one property in every thirty in Dade County), put the hapless seller in competition with institutions with far deeper pockets.
You can drive the areas of South Dade's newer developments for miles and possibly see just a few occupancies per block. Of those, few are owner occupants. It would be criminal to offer up ANY precursor to additional development in Dade County unless and until ALL land within the UDB is totally built out with proper infrastructure in place (schools, police, fire department, roads, water and sewer, trash, etc.), essentially, not before 2015 or later.
It is unfortunate that you of the DCA are put in the position of exercising the common sense that our local officials have chronically lacked. Nonetheless, please know that the buck stops with you and that thousands of citizens are counting on you to do what our elected officials have failed to do for years. Thanks in advance for stopping the idiocy.
Thanks Kay, the important thing for the rest of you: Get a letter to the DCA ASAP! There are 3 applications trying to move the UDB Line: No. 5 which is the Lowe's Home Center Store. No. 8 which is a commercial development where the developer (Brown Brothers) is dangling a carrot: A road so they can built their shopping center (a mile from the existing Kendall Town Center). There is no need for this as there is plenty of land for commercial within the UDB line. But the road is the sticking point, the county wants it. Greedy. No. 9 is a change from Agriculture to Residential. Bah! We don't have the water as our consumptive use water permit was based on NOT moving the line and we all know there is PLENTY of residential within the line, as Kay, so kindly pointed out.
4 comments:
Good letter from the heart.
Here is our letter:
It seems that every year the citizens of Miami-Dade County have to defend the unwanted and unnecessary extension of development beyond the Urban Development Boundary that our elected officials seem eager to accomplish, in spite of recommendations to the contrary by the County’s own departments (Planning, Water Management, Police, etc.)
Extending the UDB will produce another rush of construction in an area already overbuilt. This will exert even more pressure on the existing severe water shortage, as well as the already overburdened Everglades ecosystem. More streets have to be opened for the resulting heavy traffic that the new construction will bring to the area, converting it into concrete deserts the luscious vegetation that now exists. The tree canopy destroyed by past hurricanes hasn’t been replaced and here we are eager to destroy what little was left by Mother Nature.
Traveling along US 1, between Naranja and Homestead, there are several dilapidated, vacant constructions that can very well be refurbished by Lowe’s or any other of the commercial petitioners of land inside the UDB that would not only eliminate the need to extend the UDB, but will also eradicate the slums that the County has permitted to exist on a well-traveled area, heading to the Keys. Having sufficient land inside the UDB to develop it will be irresponsible to move the UDB to further the destruction of the quality of life of the residents of Miami-Dade County, already affected by the past housing binge that has left thousands of unsold and unoccupied houses and condos.
For all the above, we respectfully request that the State bring some common sense to the apathy and irresponsibility demonstrated by our local officials by opposing any of the projects sent to you that will extend the Urban Development Boundary.. The Urban Development Boundary should stay or go based on a consensus of the residents, not the whims of a small group of commissioners that appear to represent builders and developers not the citizens of Dade County.
Good one thanks reader. One note --- they want the Lowes out west Near 8th street so a store on the road to Homestead won't help them. The key to the lowe's store: They already have enough acreage inside the line to build a store. So the community does not have to do without a big box store, it just has to be designed for the plot they have available instead of putting a cookie cutter store on it.
Kay for commissioner! I don't know where she lives but she can replace any one of them and we will be ahead of the game!
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