The proceedings this week at the Dade County Courthouse on two applications by developers to move the Urban Development Boundary foreshadow the main event on December 18th at the County Commission: the public hearing to determine if the major development, Parkland, will be moved by the county commission for approval by the State of Florida.
Attending this week's hearings on the last round of applications to move the Urban Development Boundary is like fast-forwarding the Parkland approval process (actually, only two applications were moved forward, rejected by the state and now being appealed by the county attorney).
It is instructive to sit in the audience and put behind the pushing and pulling by corporations and their lobbyists, overshadowed now by the sign above the judge that reads, “We who labor here seek only truth.” If it were only that easy.
There are plenty of shadows obscuring truth when it comes to managing growth in Florida. The record is dismal, and never more so than now in retrospect of the unsustainable housing asset bubble that now scatters misery in its wake.
In the grip of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, we can now clearly make out the faults with growth-at-any-cost, the mantra for Florida for generations. It is as the environmentalists have said for decades: the chickens are all coming home to roost. But not just environmentalists: budget deficits are crippling both local and state governments and for all the talk about infusion of billions if not trillions of dollars from federal taxpayers to cover the shortfalls of state budgets and to stimulate the economy, these leave a haunting sense that this money could be thrown at the wrong things, the wrong politics, and the wrong shape of infrastructure projects.
Why? Because we are expert at making the same mistakes over and over again, expecting a different outcome.
These are some of the shadows cast over the proceedings of trial room 14-2 at the County Courthouse. The way it is put, simply; is an argument over piecemeal planning of development versus comprehensive planning.
State laws are very clear on the priority of comprehensive planning. Yet the visible record of suburban sprawl busting budgets, leaving a trail of woe to taxpayers' quality of life, and permanently wrecking the environment all occurred in real time, in the presence of real, qualified and thoughtful planners who understand how to make planning work.
What they can't cure are the politics underlying the imperative of land speculators and carpetbaggers disguised as property rights activists.
Those politics are not on display at the Dade courtroom where a new Lowe's Home Improvement Store in wetlands and a commercial development at the edge of Kendall Drive are under consideration.
The good news about this week's proceedings is that for the first time in memory, professional agency staff from the county and the state of Florida are on the same side as citizen intervenors with respect to arguing that the two applications from the 2007 period violate the legal requirements of the state-approved, county planning process. Those applications were approved by the majority of the county commission, vetoed by Mayor Alvarez, overridden by the unreformable majority of commissioners, rejected by Governor Crist's administration, and now appealed to administrative court in Miami at cost to Miami-Dade county taxpayers.
The other day, in Natacha Seijas (VNS) Government Operations and Environment Committee, a motion by Commissioner Katy Sorenson and seconded by Commissioner Carlos Gimenez-- to stop funding this legal action against the state by the county-- died for lack of support. This is the merry-go-round Miami's developers have committed taxpayers to.
There has been a continual stream of words on blogs like ours, in the mainstream press, and during the proceedings of the Miami-Dade Charter Review Commission with respect to the politics that keep these applications to move the Urban Development Boundary grinding away at the public interest.
Yet the applications go on, supported by a very small and well-funded coterie of lawyers, lobbyists and engineering contractors. Cheering them on; cement manufacturers, sugar barons, and libertarian think tanks funded by right-wing corporate interests.
Yesterday, the county attorney vehemently objected when the attorney for the citizen intervenors asked whether a witness knew about the upcoming Parkland issue-- a Lennar project that would put 18,000 residents within shouting distance of the Everglades in far West Dade, one of the most poorly served areas of the county but an area nonetheless that attracted land speculators-- some of whom are well known lobbyists like Ramon Rasco, Rodney Barreto, and Sergio Pino. Objection, Your Honor!
But here arises the biggest shadow of all: the enmity of developers to Governor Crist and the Governor's support for the Department of Community Affairs, the state planning agency, led by DCA Secretary Tom Pelham. This is where the rubber meets the road, or, Krome Avenue as the case may be of the outlying transit corridor that people like Rodney Barreto claimed had to be widened for safety but really had to do with turning farmland into the convertable gold of townhouses and condominiums and strip malls disguised as green.
What the Urban Development Boundary really shows in brightest relief is how the politics of growth depend on gaming the system, ands also a reason why the public is right to worry about billions being shoveled by Washington at the economic crisis to "stimulate the economy". Based on the entrenched patterns of denial, so visible at the Urban Development Boundary, there is every likelihood that the scarce resources of taxpayers would be captured by vested interests to do the same, the same way, that brought us to a startled economic standstill.
What do these shadows tell us? We should consider ourselves, served.
No comments:
Post a Comment