Redland, the Wades, and the armies of compassion: Part 3 ... by gimleteye

"It is a joy to be here with members of the armies of compassion. I'm really glad you're here and I appreciate your inspiration to our fellow citizens. I believe you are a constant reminder of the true source of our nation's strength, which is the good hearts and souls of the American people." President Bush discusses Volunteerism, Sept. 8, 2008

The following is a work-in-progress. Please excuse the typos and edit issues: we don't have paid editors at Eyeonmiami. (Truth is, we don't have paid anything.) For Part 1, click here. For Part 2, click here. Click on 'read more' for Part 3.

On Monday, I will print Part 4 and on New Year's Day, after revisions, the whole piece.

The fight for the Everglades is not simply to reverse damaged natural resources and habitats and wildlife inside the park boundaries; it is also a fight about what happens to influence the Everglades from outside its boundaries. That is the reason that the fight at the edges of our national parks is the most intense; and it is not a fight about a line drawn along latitudes and longitudes or street grid lines—it is a fight about what should be allowed to take place in buffers between man-made activities and nature. So far, it is a one-way contest.

The abiding interest of the Wades in their community at the edge of the Everglades was the preservation of agriculture and a rural lifestyle; anathema to the development interests who control South Florida, and by extension, the State of Florida during a period when Jeb Bush, from Miami, was governor.

It is hard to grasp through these tangles the intensity of the energy pushing forward a housing boom at the edge of America’s most threatened national park. Don Pybas, the Miami-Dade representative of the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Science Extension Service told the New York Times, that in the 5 years leading up to 2007, the amount of agricultural land declined by “at least 20,000 acres.” Almost every issue the Wades and their allies engaged in, during this time, delineated the outline of a drawbridge held up to keep citizens at bay and the public good from its expression.

One of the clearest examples: the western edge of Miami’s development edge, a roadway extending the entire length of the county, virtually from the top of the Florida Keys to Broward County called Krome Avenue. Krome Avenue is a north-south state highway, also known as SR 997; it extends 37 miles just south of Florida City to US 27, south of the Broward County line; an unlit, two lane road that has been the primary access to thousands of acres of farmland.

At the same time that the Wades and their allies were fighting; for the protection of agriculture, against the reuse of the air base as a commercial airport, for incorporation of Redland, Losner and the Farm Bureau assembled a study group under the auspices of the Florida Department of Transportation.

The Florida Department of Transportation began planning for Krome Avenue’s future in 1996 . It was clear to development interests, that if the Homestead Air Force Base did act as a generator for $10 billion of impacts, that another roadway in addition to the Florida Turnpike would be needed to provide transit routes. But, at the time, the Krome Avenue Action Plan was “to resolve hazardous traffic conditions”.

One of Jeb Bush’s top fundraisers in Miami was lobbyist and prospective developer, Rodney Barreto. Barreto, a former policeman, had established himself as an indespensible part of the lobbying machinery at County Hall. When Bush was elected in 1998, he named Barreto to the Florida Wildlife Commission. In the years ahead, Barreto would, first, lobby to make Krome Avenue safe for traffic by widening the road and, later, as a land speculator who owned considerable property on Krome, itself, purchased at close to the top of the market.

The widening of Krome Avenue served more than a safety purpose, as civic volunteers like the Wades understood from the first. Growth management law in Florida requires that basic infrastructure, like roadways, be available to accommodate the needs of rapidly expanding population. For developers, land speculators and large farmers, the main obstacle to suburban development was the inability to “move” people; if Krome Avenue could be widened, the bottleneck to growth would instantly disappear.

The proceedings were so acrimonious that Katy Sorenson, the county commissioner representing the area, called for mediation. Pat Wade calls the Florida Conflict Resolution Group and the year and a half of mediation, “the biggest joke I have ever seen.” According to Wade, the outcome was predetermined from the first. “I was always asking FDOT for statistics, standard deviations to disprove outrageous statements, but I could never get those numbers.”

The mediation group, according to Wade, was the same group that had been involved in an effort to resolve the incorporation battle with Redland. “They were no more impartial than the man in the moon,” Wade says. “At the end of the day, FDOT refused to answer any more of the Wade’s questions. They just ended the mediation and decided to four-lane it, never providing even the first shred of scientific data.”

The Krome Avenue Action Plan was finalized in 1999, at the same time that the Agriculture and Rural Land Study was being throttled by the Farm Bureau and land speculators, and the fate of the Homestead Air Force Base was tangled up in a new federal review that environmentalists had persuaded the military to do.

In March 2001 Barreto’s nephew was killed in an horrific auto accident on Krome Avenue . Barreto became an outspoken advocate for the four-laning of Krome, a measure approved by the county commission in October 2002. That December, state planners endorsed the contentious plan to widen Krome Avenue in December 2002, saying “they did not expect the decision to encourage urban sprawl.”

Barreto, a few years later, would become a principal investor in Krome Gold, formed at the height of the housing boom; an investment costing tens of millions that would profit from the widening of Krome Avenue.

In 2002, the Wades and Sierra Club filed an administrative court challenge against the state plan. They were represented by the Everglades Law Center. The main legal hook was a state requirement that roads like Krome Avenue could not be used to induce sprawl outside the UDB. After a protracted, multi-year court case before a state administrative law judge, Wade and the environmental allies tried to reach a settlement agreement with Miami-Dade County planners. What they agreed to, simply, was a provision in the measure that the addition of traffic capacity through the widening of Krome Avenue would not be used to justify additional development permits.

But when it was time for the agreement to be presented to the county commission, the county administrators who had negotiated with the civic activists, Pete Hernandez, failed to appear. “When county attorney, Dennis Kerbell, started talking about the agreement that had been hammered out after years of effort, the then chairman of the Miami Dade County Commission, Joe Martinez, went ballistic. ‘Who did they (Kerbell and Hernandez) think they were, that they had permission to negotiate anything.” The year was 2004; at the height of the construction boom when more than a dozen applications to move the Urban Development Boundary in West Dade were being readied by lobbyists and production homebuilders like Caribe Homes, that had sold Martinez a home lot at a half what Lennar, Miami’s corporate homebuilder, had paid for 200 lots of varying size in the same development.

In 2004, the number of new single-family homes jumped 40 percent. “It’s a very, very strong market right now,” Stuart Miller, CEO of Miami-based housing giant Lennar told The Miami Herald, “The only limiting factor is land availability.”

From one courtroom to the next—from the fight to incorporate Redland to prevent the widening of Krome Avenue—the Wades and their allies had been thwarted. The poisonous rancor over the fate of the Homestead Air Force Base was literally dissolved by the antidote of repeated interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve—allowing environmentalists to win the battle and lose the war against sprawl--, and , a pro-growth governor Jeb Bush who lead the charge of bulldozers and graders, pipes and wastewater infrastructure, in the domestic version of let 10,000 subdivisions bloom.

Still, the Wades fought on. They aligned with the “Hold the Line Coalition” to stop developers from moving the Urban Development Boundary and helped organize public participation at community council meetings, then meetings of the planning advisory board, and finally; public hearings required to be held by the Miami Dade County Commission. The campaign included public opinion polls—showing an overwhelming majority of voters in primarily Hispanic districts, on the order of 70 percent, opposed moving the UDB. It also included the publication and distribution of “Limite Urbano”, a free giveaway newspaper in Spanish that mirrored the political pamphleteering distributed through Cuban American coffee shops throughout Miami.

An editorial in “Limite Urbano” was titled, “A question of leadership: It is time for new leaders to emerge in Miami-Dade where county commissioners are failing to represent the public interest. …. What the public wants is good planning—a goal that is constantly undermined by county commissioners who see their primary purpose as adopting zoning changes that big developers want. They should spend half as much time making it easier for small developers and for people to understand the importance and need to increase density where infrastructure already exists. But no, that is not what their big campaign contributors want. They want more green fields and wetlands to build in. Without a doubt—until Governor Jeb Bush put his foot down—our county commissioners were moving forward to reward special interests by moving the Urban Development Boundary. What citizens and voters want is for the county commission to address existing problems first, before creating additional costs for taxpayers. This view falls on deaf ears. Last December, the county commissioners rudely signaled their intent at a meeting chaired by a county commissioner, Joe Martinez, the leader to move the urban development boundary. The county commission is so convinced that it is right, and that the public is wrong, that they voted to take taxpayer money to fund their own media outlet, blaming as usual citizens as being “misinformed”. Mayor Carlos Alvarez chided the county commission for not taking on the issue of the Urban Development Boundary directly and rejecting the applications outright, including one by the Latin Builders that would have had the effect of entirely cutting out the public from future debates. Governor Bush is from Miami. He knows that our local elected officials have dodged their responsibility related to investment in water supply. For many, many years, citizens have protested to the county commission about the security and safety of our drinking water supply. But the key county commissioners in charge, especially Natacha Seijas, dismissed their concerns. In particular, Seijas liked to walk off the dais or rudely interrupt whoever was speaking from the floor of the chamber, and mocking their point of view. It turns out that citizens have been right all along, and that commissioners like Natacha Seijas can no longer hide behind false arguments. Commissioner Joe Martinez rudely dismissed Commissioner Katy Sorenson from the regional planning council: she is the only county commissioner who has consistently aligned her positions with Hold the Line and the public interest. For incumbents who are now in office, and facing reelection in the November 2006, it will be interesting to see how the explain their votes. No doubt, they will defend their votes to send UDB applications to Tallahassee as “preliminary”. They will say that they know better than the state of Florida, better than the federal government, better than citizens who have to live with the frustrations of commuting and bad water quality. The question is: where are the citizens and when will they step forward to offer a better vision for leadership, as candidates for public office?”

The Environmental & Land Use Law Center wrote on behalf of environmental organizations, Sierra Club and 1000 Friends of Florida: “We will not belabor the need to keep suburban development far away from active agricultural lands and lands needed to restore the Everglades, which is well – documented. In short, it makes little sense to allow the conversion of any farmland to other uses at the same time the County is struggling to ensure the existence of the “critical mass” of farmland to sustain its agricultural economy. As for the Everglades, obviously, the unprecedented federal/ state project to the restore the Everglades is designed to bring about significant economic and other benefits to Miami-Dade County in terms of public works contracts, a more secure long – term water supply, the resolution of many flooding problems, and the positive economic impact of visitorship to two National Parks.”

In a Miami Herald editorial, the county commissioner whose district is most impacted by changes to the UDB, Katy Sorenson, wrote:

“Now, some developers want to move the line. They tell us that, in order to let families experience the American dream, we need more land to the west and south. Unfortunately, their vision of that dream is simply a house with some grass around it. There is another American dream, however, and that's the dream of having a home, not just a house. It's the dream of a home in a walkable community where you know your neighbors, a home that doesn't require a two-hour commute to get to work. A dream of homes in communities with clean water, free of pollution, with shared open spaces. Some developers don't have room for all this in their concept of the future of our community. They just want more houses on more land. We hear that moving the line will create jobs. While it's true that any concentration of new residents will create the opportunity for more service jobs, this would happen anywhere. If we provide more residential development inside the UDB, we will create these same job opportunities. The problem with building beyond the UDB is that, while you are creating new jobs, you are also destroying existing jobs -- agricultural jobs. Our local agricultural industry is Miami-Dade's third largest economic engine. Moving the line will hasten the demise of local agriculture, taking jobs away from farmers, agricultural workers and other ancillary industries. These jobs can't move into already developed areas. Once they are gone, they are lost forever. Some developers claim that building more houses will make housing more affordable. With more land open to development, the argument goes, an increase in the number of housing units will bring home prices down. This isn't true. Over the last three years, over 60,000 new units of housing have been developed in our county. Has anyone noticed housing prices going down?”

The entreaties fell on deaf ears. On December 1, 2005 the county commission finally voted on the contentious slate of applications by developers to move the Urban Development Boundary. The Wades and environmentalists who testified from the speakers podium were verbally attacked by Chairman Martinez and commissioner Dennis Moss for “spreading lies” about the issues and resolved to create, with taxpayer dollars, the county’s own newspaper to “get out the truth”, in anger—no doubt—to the Spanish language broadside.

The majority of commissioners voted to move the Urban Development Boundary, for nine development applications. Despite a veto by Mayor Carlos Alvarez a few days later, the Miami Dade County Commission quickly met to override the veto by a margin of 12-1, with only Commissioner Sorenson dissenting.

During the ensuing five month period, the state of Florida and Governor Bush raised serious objections to the applications to move the UDB, centered on the single question that connected to the underlying reality of overdevelopment in Florida’s most populous county: water supply. Except for one application—a development proposal outside the UDB in Hialeah that guaranteed to provide water at its own cost, outside an extant agreement with the state for consumption; in the end, the pro-development forces were able to muster a majority but not the supermajority that Miami Dade law required to move the UDB.

For activists on the ground, news that the state was taking a tough stand against the Miami Dade county commission was a hopeful sign. But it wasn’t enough. For Wades and like-minded activists, they had experienced everything that Miami-Dade could throw at the public interest, and they had enough.

This is where Wades really distinguished themselves: they had asked themselves the question, when every course of action to access democracy is thwarted, when courts of law prove insufficient to protecting the public good, what next? They decided it was time to take on the worst politics in Miami-Dade County, sallying forth into the most partisan and politically charged municipality in Miami; Hialeah.

In early January 2006, buttressed by a small group of like minded people, including Michael Pizzi, Hank Hamilton, Millie Herrera and a few others, the Wades formed ‘The Committee For Recall of County Commissioners.’ The political action committee had a goal in mind. They sought to do the truly impossible: recall the incumbent county commissioner who stood for, represented, and embraced every excess of land speculators, developers, and industrial farmers: Natacha Seijas.