Odd, that being a top ranked government employee is the most secure job in Miami. Only a few years ago, the best and most lucrative job security was being a Developer.
During Miami's housing boom, anyone closely involved with zoning land through government processes became a developer. Lobbyists like Rodney Barreto and Chris Korge lead the pack. Having converted dollars from public works and infrastructure to private gain, they then set aside those trivial pursuits (ie. manipulating the unreformable majority of the county commission) for grander schemes in farmland. Shiver, former mayor of Homestead who was appointed by then mayor Alex Penelas to be county manager as a reward for doing the bidding of developer/ campaign contributors intent on transforming the rural enclaves of South Dade to strip malls and platted subdivisions, tried to become a developer of low-income housing in Homestead. His jump back to the private sector was on the back end of the boom. But to everyone associated with overdevelopment, the back end of the boom in Miami didn't look like the end of anything. just blue sky stretching to the horizon.
Shiver moved to North Carolina for a real estate play wrapped around an amusement park: Ghost Town at Maggie Valley. Then, the real estate markets crashed and all that was left was the roller coaster ride.
Here is a current and rare TV news clip featuring the former county manager, who was once responsible for instilling morale in thousands of county employees. As county manager George Burgess contemplates his own next move, I'm guessing this clip won't fuel his desire to be an amusement park operator. Apparently, no Ghost Town employees feel comfortable talking to the television camera, fearing they would lose their jobs. There are any number of county employees in Miami-Dade who knew how Shiver wielded his authority like a Little Napoleon and feared for their jobs, running point for land speculators, bankers, and political insiders fueling the overdevelopment of South Florida. Under Shiver, morale in environmental protection for instance plummeted as lobbyists cruised the hallways for permits and zoning changes. Special interests ruled. Our archive features have some additional background for the curious. Just click on the tags.
16 comments:
It amazes me that years after Mr. Shiver is out of the political arena, you still have an eye for him. He is the reason this park actually works. If it weren't for him, we would have been closed long ago. I am an employee and have been through several groups trying to make this park work and he is the only one that actually made it happen. Unfortunately, two employees who were fired are the only ones the local media listened to. They interviewed one employee on camera which never made it on the air and there were many employees standing around waiting to be interviewed but they didn't want to hear the truth.
You all really have no clue how tough the tourism industry has been nationwide so Mr. Shiver, from one of your employees that matter and one that represents the majority the media doesn't interview, we love you and want you to know that Maggie Valley is thankful you're here.
After reading about all the local Government salary & pension packages, maybe my MBA was a waste of money!
The memories of Shiver and the former planning head, Diane O'Quinn, the bad zoning decisions, backward analogies to justify the breach of the UDB, housing in neverland, public works zig zag routes to new development, DERM not doing their job (or stopped from doing their job), and the rest of this Miami Dade County hodge podge is almost unfathonable to some.
I guess we're so used to being kicked around by local government, most a numb. And, I love when they say "vote them out", well, the only way to do that would be to reverse a federal order which mandated voting by districts only for Commissioners. Anyone want to give that a try.
Thanks for the Shiver update. I feel bad for those workers, but do agree with him on one issue, it's not like they didn't know there was a financial problem. On the other hand, who knows what Shiver is promising behind the scenes to them. Maybe some type of employee ownership plan?
1st anon, we know how bad tourism is, that used to be our tax base! If Shiver is your saving grace, a back up plan would be a good idea. Maybe the park could work at some point, but wouldn't someone with actual experience running that type of operation be better suited to make it profitable. The build it they will come attitude is a smoke screen. It will leave you with real live ghost towns (subdivisions). Come down to Homestead to see the great job Shiver did. You can pick up a house in a vacant subdivision of 25% or less of what it originally sold for and pay a CDD fee on top of Homestead taxes and School Board taxes.
Shiver was 6 years old when the DRI of the Villages of Homestead had 15,000 units approved and was county manager when the additional units were approved for tim Williams by the Homestead Council. Again nothing to do with shiver. Tell the truth if you're going to continue battling this man
Shiver and his Farm Bureau buddies, bankers like Bill Losne, Mestre, Latterner and Rosen and other big land speculators: are you saying that they weren't all part of a plan to subdivide Homestead and turn it to crap that it has become, take the money and run? What about the Homestead AFB boondoggle? Or the Homestead Race Track? How many tens of millions were lost and squandered, straight into the pockets of insiders? The record reflects the facts.
To the poster "Shiver was 6 yrs old", you may want to take off your blinders. Have you forgotten the pre/post Andrew years when Shiver was Mayor? That one DRI was not the issue!
Shiver is not going to be forgotten for a long time. The damage he did to this community. All of us in South Dade and the County as a whole are still picking up the pieces of his mess. Sorry, when the wreckage is cleared, maybe I'll forgive. Or, maybe he can come back down and clean it up himself along with his buddy's.
Shiver does not look like he is starving. He must be back on the weed.
Shiver was not Mayor post Andrew dumb ass. Het your facts straight. He was elected in1993 and rebuilt homestead. What you see today is largly the result of city council approval for tim Williams and steve Losner who was his attorney and councilman ball this density was after shiver left to be county manager, he had nothing to do with the rest.
Other than the fact that he was the lobbyist for Rosen and Latterner after his restriction on lobbying expired. He ran Homestead city hall from 2003/04 until Bell was elected in 07 and Porter, Hodge, Garner and Warren were gone. During those years he got whatever project they wanted approved with impunity. Lets not forget who his sidekick and girl Friday was... Jenn Helms, the "fiancee" of Council candidate Steve Shelley. Hmmm, will the Fab 5 ride again ?
Huh?
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"Shiver was not Mayor post Andrew dumb ass. Het your facts straight. He was elected in1993 and rebuilt homestead."
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Cursing at an anon blog to make a point? Hmmmm. Wasn't 1993 after Hurricane Andrew in 1992? Just asking.
Jim Kunstler:
" It's odd, that in his otherwise excellent blow-by-blow account ("Eight Days," in the Sept 21 New Yorker Magazine) of the September 2008 Wall Street meltdown that left Lehman dead, and AIG croaking in a ditch, and the banking system in general functionally crippled, reporter James B. Stewart never got around to really describing the cause of it all -- namely, the on-the-ground material catastrophe of American suburbia.
It was the worthlessness of the tradable securitized debt associated with all those overpriced (and overvalued) chipboard and vinyl houses, smeared recklessly over the American landscape, that started all the trouble in the first place. And it is our inability to come to grips with that underlying catastrophe that prolongs the resolution of the still-florid banking crisis -- since the federal government is doing everything possible to prop up the failed capital equation of terminal suburbia, and to deny the obsolescence of that version of the American Dream and all the mechanisms for delivering it....
The dirty secret all along was that by 2005 there was no economy left in the USA beyond the suburban sprawl economy with its so-called "consumer" nexus -- largely devoted to the outfitting of suburbia. More mortgage debt (and credit card and car loan debt) will go bad and the investment paper that represents it will go bad and it will eventually destroy our current system for accumulating, valuing, and deploying wealth. It will not destroy the function of capital -- no matter how many angry intellectuals inveigh against the straw man of capital-ism, as if it were merely a belief system - but it will be a long long time before anything sturdy or credible in the way of banking will be reconstructed out of the wreckage."
Thanks Steve for your anon input! Sounds like you're paving the way for a return to South Florida politics and the "growth at any cost mentality". Good luck, the corrupt little City of South Miami needs a new city manager - you'd be perfect for the job - just what the moneyed special interest groups that control the City would want (someone who would slam through 60 unit per acre, anywhere in the City). I encourage you to apply for the pending job application. Just email Horace Feliu the Mayor and he'll get the ball rolling.
What he got away with in Homestead (both during and after his Mayor years) is not funny but you gotta laugh at the 70's porn star style 'stash he is sporting.
Look for Shiver to be making a comeback in Homestead. His dear friend, Steve Bateman is running for Mayor. Bateman is a developer and he is running against current Mayor Lynda Bell.
If you look around homestead, Judy Waldman, another friend of the Steve duo, is running for reelection and her campaign signs are shoulder to shoulder with Bateman's.
PS: WHY did someone have to mention there being a job opening in South Miami to Shiver?
I feel bad for the people working for Shiver, but I feel relief he's running an amusement park into the ground and not citizens and employees of Miami-Dade County.
Here's hoping more County "leaders" decide to follow in Shiver's footsteps. Move up north and run a Ghost Town.
I agree with the last poster. Wasn't the point to KEEP Shiver in North Carolina. Send your checks.
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