Despite a large turnout of opponents to last night's local zoning meeting, Community Council 11 approved and sent to the county commission the Parkland Development of Regional Impact. The best line of the night, from an opponent: "There are more signs for Century 21 and Remax around here than signs for McCain or Obama." Full report, on the way.
33 comments:
Community Council 11 recommended approval with transmittal to the state, 5-1, which establishes that they are either stupid or corrupt (or a bit of both).
Watch Shannon Davis. Something is not right about her. Is there a David Brown connection there, perhaps. Hmmmmm.
I'm disgusted. Absolutely disgusted. Why is it that in Miami the public's voice in the public process continually gets ignored? 37 members of the public spoke out against this development at the meeting. Another 60 stood up to show their dissaproval and only a handful were there in support seeking services to be created which should come on line by another project in the works...Aren't any of these Councilman worried about their home value too?
I found a Shannon Davis that sells insurance. She did not contribute to Joe Martinez's nor Natacha Seijas' campaign...at least not under that name. There is a Shannon Davis who is out of Ft. Lauderdale and is an officer in a roofing company.
Shame on them all. They couldn't care less about ordinary people.
Who is the ONE who voted against it...let's thank him or her...
let's once again thank former county commissioner miguel diaz de la PORTILLA for leaving the legacy of community councils behind. Sort of the corrupt politician farm system.
Yes you could see in the blank faces on the dais, hope that their conduct would be rewarded.
At least the developers are proposing smart growth and would reduce the amount of water currently used.
What do you care if they don't sell or not? This increases the county's tax base and helps the environment.
LAST ANON: How does it help the environment? And, it doesn't increase the tax base if no one is living there. To give them services cost much more than it does to give services to the inner core of Miami. Yet both pay the same for the services. To give services out West takes dollars away from much needed infrastructure updating in the inner core. So, your argument does not hold up.
It helps the environment by:
1 - Being green (light fixtures, lo-flow water, bike paths, proximity to schools)
2 - Using less water than current use and reusing gray water. This in turn helps the everglades which are desperate for water.
As for services:
100% funded waste-water re-use plant, a fire rescue and a police station, and 3 schools.
All of these are funded by the developers, not the county.
As for taxes and increasing the tax base:
Currently this land is agriculture zoned, which means lower property taxes. Residential zoning get taxed higher. However if no one buys the houses, then the developer pays the taxes!
This is not an argument. I am just looking at the facts and relaying them back to you. It does not cost more to get services out to west Miami if the developers are the ones footing the bill.
The developer does not STAFF THE SCHOOL
The school is staffed by the tax payers, but like I said the county will have more $$$ from the increased tax base.
Whats wrong with creating more jobs?
IT's a complete myth: construction jobs are transient jobs. They do not PRODUCE economic benefit beyond the fact of construction, then they are gone. Get real!
What about gardening, school teachers, firemen, police men, maintenance workers for the schools and services?
Are those transient?
No. those are not transient jobs.They are however perpetually taxing on the citizens whose taxes fund those jobs.
And hey who gets to pay for the roads, the hospitals , the assorted infrastructure?
The taxpayer! The same one that suffers from overtaxation , pollution and lack of medical care.
And transit. Convenient how Kathy Sweetapple failed to mention that Parkland is trying to get around the traffic concurrency issue by changing the Miami DAde CDMP itself. Come on, Kathy and Jeff: be honest with your audience. Put the cards on the table, because we all know its a stacked deck anyway.
The best speaker was the UPS guy, who went practically ballistic on the difficulty of navigating through traffic in the area. The Lennar people couldn't care less.
"perpetually taxing on the citizens whose taxes fund those jobs."
So I take it your also against welfare, social security, bailout plans, nationalized health care, public schools, Florida Bright Futures, etc.
Looks like we have a republican in the house.
The taxpayers can't fund NEW school staff. They can't even staff the schools they now have.
Smart growth is not on the edge of the Everglades in the middle of an agricultural area, near the 8 1/2 square mile zone. That is stupid growth and only a lobbyist would say that it was anything other than stupid growth. We don't need another Weston (what Ed Easton wanted to see on this 1,000 acres). I personally will not entertain your fantasy any longer Mr. or Mrs. Lobbyist. Go find somewhere else to push your wares (we ain't buying)...like downtown on 2nd Avenue and bring a barrel of money with you. That should work.
Plans to shift urban development boundary move forward
South Florida Business Journal - by Oscar Pedro Musibay
Efforts to create a new suburb on the fringes of southwest Miami-Dade County moved forward on Monday night.
After lengthy discussion, Community Council members voted 5-1 to recommend that the plan be sent to county commissioners, with a recommendation that they send it to state planners for review.
The Community Council review of the plan, which would shift the urban development boundary for thousands of homes, is the first step for the 961-acre Parkland project proposed by Lennar Corp. and a partnership of local real estate heavyweights that includes Sergio Pino, Ed Easton and Adolfo Henriques.
The recommendation came despite opposition from county staff, environmentalists and conservationists, who worry about the impact of development on the Everglades and surrounding agriculture.
The Community Council review is also the first in what is expected to be a heated battle to move or hold the urban development boundary, which separates dense development from mostly agricultural land.
“There’s no need,” said Mark Woerner, chief of Miami-Dade’s Planning and Zoning department. “If need is determined, the urban expansion area is the area where growth should take place.”
Attorney Jeff Bercow, who represented the Lennar-led partnership, argued that Miami-Dade needs housing for its growing population and Parkland would be a well-planned project.
He said the 7,000-unit project, which would be home to an estimated 19,000 residents, would include schools; necessary services such as fire stations; and 200 acres of parks, wetlands and open spaces.
The county limits construction to one dwelling per five acres beyond the urban development boundary.
Because of the density of the proposed development, the Parkland project is classified as a development of regional impact, which requires more scrutiny from all agencies throughout the state.
Project supporters pointed to the thousands of construction jobs it would create and the addition of retail amenities into the area, which is near Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport.
The Community Council vote will be considered by other boards, regional agencies and, most importantly, county commissioners.
We need to mobilize against the obvious corruption! We had many times the number of supporters. It's obvious they are paid off...we can still win though.
Why did Council Chair Domingo Castillo decide to reduce the amount of time allocated to speakers just before it was time for UDB-friendly Don Kearns to speak? A favor to developers in hopes they finance his run for the State House 119 seat?
People also forgot to mention that this development comes with a lovely change in how we move the UDB so that anything beyond KROME would need a unanimous vote of the BCC. How convenient for Lennar and partners that they should get to build solid to Krome now when a 1st grader could tell you there is absolutely no need, and once that's done no one else will have a chance. Has anyone looked at a map!?! How these people could say that it's OK to build to Krome and this won't impact the Everglades or restoration efforts is just beyond me. And that's not to mention that the new Parkland residents will get to live in feet of saltwater in about 20 years because we won't be able to finish restoration to hold back sea level rise, AND this is in a FEMA flood zone. If I was less cynical, I'd think this was a joke!
These people have no right calling themselves a community council. A developer's council maybe...
Yea! I've never felt so disrespected. The people came, spoke, exercised their political rights, and got ignored. This is the kind of thing the media should be feasting on, but oh yea, the meeting was conveniently changed to the night before election day.
The message must be clear that this is the least green project around. The parks and energy efficient lightbulbs won't make up for 1% of the pollution caused by people driving from the edge of nowhere to downtown, Kendall or Doral. Sorry but we're not stupid enough to think 20,000 people are all gonna work in one hospital and not drive anywhere.
Or is there a magic teleportation device that goes along with this project too? It's about as likely as a new train line or "tranportation center". I'm sure the councilmembers would have bought that nonsense argument too
Here's what you do
1. Join Hold the Line organizationa and make sure you are on a mailing list: www.udbline.com
2. Share this infor with your friends and start email chains.
I am the "lobbyist". Going to udbline.com provided me with more information than just opinions. I am swayed by facts, not ridicule.
"14.2% of existing housing units in the county are vacant"
This would be a better argument (I think THE best argument) against the project. Do we really think that adding almost 7,000 homes will reduce this? I don't think so.
I just try to make lemons out of lemonade.
Voters in west Kendall need to retire 5 of 6 council members.
FACT: Farmland is a donor to the tax base; it uses no services but does pay taxes at an agriculture rate.
FACT: Agriculture use returns between 85-90% of water to the aquifer. A toilet sends 100% of water to the ocean. Re-use of gray water is no re-use of sewage. Bercow forget to mention most of the water used for crops is not lost forever. It costs a lot to re-use residential water.
FACT: Economist Andy Dolkart made the case that agriculture is dead by quoting a study by Dr. Degner of the UF. Degner's "study" was paid for by the Dade County Farm Bureau and was so skewed towards failing agriculture that the farming community questioned his conclusions. Degner "revised" the study to include crops other than tomatoes. The revised study showed agriculture was doing nicely. This was confirmed by a subsequent USDA study and a report on horticulture by UF. Miami-Dade is the largest horticulture producer in Florida and second in the country. Andy forgot all that.
FACT: agriculture is the second largest industry in Miami-Dade and Lennar has no problem killing those 20,000 permanent jobs.
FACT: New construction NEVER pays the true cost of infrastructure. Demand for services outpaces tax income in 2-3 years. Why else are we in such an deficit. If uncontrolled development over the past 6-8 years paid for itself we should be in fat city.
Developers will say anything to make their projects look rosey. Well, it ain't so rosey.
THE CORRUPT CC 11 HACKS MUST BE BOOTED OUT!
IF THE COMMISSIONERS DO NOT REJECT LENNAR'S OBSCENE PARKLAND (ha ha ha!) monstrosity propo$al, THEN THEY MUST BE RECALLED AS WELL!
L PERCIVAL -- A CONSTANT VOICE OR " A PERSISTENT SHILL FOR DEVELOPERS, NO MATTER HOW DISGUSTING THEIR DEAL IS.
NOW WE HAVE TO LIVE WITH THE TOYOTA DEALERSHIP B.S. AND ALL OF THE OTHER ABSURD STRIP MALLS AND SO FORTH! WITH HORRIBLE TRAFFIC AND ECOLOGICAL IMPACTS!
G.D. THESE WHORES!
FOLKS, LET US STOP THE MADNESS AT ALL COSTS!
HOLD THE LINE!
HOLD THE LINE!
HOLD THE LINE!
Why did Council Chair Domingo ('SANK YOU') Castillo decide to reduce the amount of time allocated to speakers just before it was time for UDB-friendly Don Kearns to speak? A favor to developers in hopes they finance his run for the State House 119 seat.
THIS SLEAZY CROOK MUST BE STOPPED! HE MUST BE OPPOSED BY SOMEONE WHO CAN BEAT HIM. HE HAS SOLD US OUT FOR YEARS. IF HE IS GUILTY OF BRIBERY, HE SHOULD BE DEPORTED AFTER DOING 10 YEARS IN RAIFOPRD PRISON. (ALONG WITH HIS COHORTS ON CC 11 AND OTHER CC'S!!!)
KICK HIM OPUT!
Maybe at this point you should save your really good bullets for the public hearings. If you have a lot, break up the comments, print them out and hand them off to people to read. For heavens sake, bring people to the 11/19 meeting. This is the Planning Advisory Board which is made up of citizens. Don't give the lawyers fodder for a rebuttal. (They are already too full of fodder in my opinion)
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