Amid all the Marlins’ Stadium hoopla, I almost missed a very good column by Fred Grimm in the Miami Herald today on the Urban Development Boundary's bizarre Trial (Administrative Hearing). If you remember, I went to the trial and reported that it was the County against the State of Florida. The State rejected the County Commissions vote to move the Urban Development Boundary for a Lowe’s Big Box Store and a separate application for a shopping center. A few classic quotes from today's article: Fred Grimm: “Here was the scenario: The county attorney's office, appealing the ruling with legal help from the developers, was up against the Florida Department of Community Affairs, the regional planning council, Mayor Pizzi (representing a conglomeration of angry citizens) and a coalition of environmental groups represented by the Everglades Law Center. Mostly, the county was up against itself.” and: “Miami-Dade County, defending a decision to allow developers to breach the Urban Development Boundary, was up against damning evidence from compelling experts. Those experts just happened to be on the county payroll.”
Mayor Michael Pizzi: “Our star witnesses were on the county staff.”
Robert Hartsell lawyer for Everglades Law Center: “We didn't need to hire a single expert witness of our own.”
4 comments:
Wasting money on this for their developers friends who keep them in power is all for show. This is the BCC in all of their glory, how foolish. Take all of the court costs and legal fees from their discretionary funds and you would have seen a quick end to this fiasco.
Florida Hometown Democracy needs just a few more petitions and they are on the ballot for 2010.
The intellectual crowd who care about the environment and their neighbors have already signed. Now it's time to appeal to the rest. Send out an email to anyone in Florida who is:
1. jobless
2. homeless or soon to be
3. stuck in traffic somewhere
4. has children in a Florida
public school
4. trying to sell their home
5. postponing retirement another
10 years
Yup...they would definetly be victoms. Although the economic meltdown has been caused by many factors, over-development has played a major part in the suffering in Florida. Why else do you think President Obama was in Ft. Myers? Florida could be the stepchild of over-development.
Revisit your emails, bloggers. Who did you forget to send this link to?
http://www.floridahometowndemocracy.com/
Amazing. Laughing through my tears.
Amazing! No one -- from within the sphere of influence -- seems to realize that the party is over. They better start accepting that we are living the "new day"... Nothing is, or will ever be, as it was. They are part of the past, and the past ended with George W. Bush. We are starting a whole new era, just like it happened in the sixties, and the twenties... and now. Saturn conjunct Uranus is the prelude to every revolutionary new era, and the first impact took place on November 4, 2008. Remember what happened on that day? Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. That's one hell of a start for a revolutionary period!
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