How the radical right destroyed Florida ... by gimleteye

I don't even know where to start, with this morning's "Air Force Sues Homestead farmer, city", in The Miami Herald except: good for the Air Force.

I spent six years of my life, hard time, coordinating the battle to protect against the conversion of the Homestead Air Force Base into a major commercial airport benefiting insiders who used political doilies like Natacha Seijas and Alex Penelas to rest their plans for billions in profit. So today's story has special meaning; especially the non-stop effort by land owners/speculators/farmers to convert their property into subdivisions.

The salient point in the news report, "Alger said he doesn’t plan to pave over his crop field anytime soon, but having the option makes his land more valuable as collateral for farm loans." If you could point in Florida to a single stain that spread into the worst housing crash and collapse in the economy since the Great Depression, it would be the unrestricted delight in which banks-- from top to bottom-- lent based on speculative value to farmers the way crack dealers front for addicts.

If Alger is right-- that farming can't be done unless he can borrow money at speculative prices for his land-- then he is in the wrong business and banks are in the wrong business, too: none should be allowed use the speculative value of land to borrow or to lend, because this practice instantly defaults to "useful" economic activity that destroyed Florida: the use of subdivisions as the foundational element of growth.

If you look at the economic history of Florida from the 1980's, when financial derivatives based on housing became a multi-billion dollar industry for Wall Street and created enormous pressure (because the activities were so incredibly profitable) to use "demographics" to justify unsustainable levels of risk-- the pressure of speculators in farmland turned the entire economy of Florida into a craps table. A craps table that was rigged and always delivered a winning bet, so long as the players toed the line and played their part while the marks-- those would be taxpayers-- stood by witlessly. The wealth accrued to a small class of land owners/speculators who nonetheless control local legislatures and the state capitol. The wealth conferred so much privilege-- up and down the Growth Machine, from small gears to the big cogs-- that a gambling mentality became ubiquitous and atmospheric, enveloping everyone and everything in its path like a cloud of poison gas. We are living with the consequences but reading from them, the wrong results. To read the Herald article, one might think of the Algers: dear, they have been wronged! Dear, give the poor multimillionaires their zoning! Dear, get government off their backs!

I have given up hope that reason can prevail in the United States, based on the mob that controls the GOP and Congress. In Florida, the close cut haircuts, wing-tipped and dapper Republicans are out to destroy every kind of regulation that is meant and intended to protect the public good. You heard it more than a decade ago, from Jeb! who talked-- at the instigation of the Karl Rove/Grover Norquist "shrink government so it can fit in the size of bathtub"-- "government must be limited from serving a bigger role than it can fill": these mealy sounding cliches gave birth to enormous deformities in the United States.

Just watch: state authority for land use planning in Florida is about to vanish. Local zoning, in the hands of local politicians, will be whatever big campaign contributors want it to be. The free-for-all will include full scale gambling in Florida and why not: the landscape has already been planned out as a gambling venue. And that's what the really big landowners-- compared to whom the Algers are pikers--, like the Sugar Baron Billionaire Fanjuls, want. They've laid down the pipes and the high voltage wires and rock mines across their 700,000 acres and now wait like foreigners at the edge of the Arabian desert for the mirage of water on the horizon to turn into the real thing: new cities to reap their billions on the back of taxpayers. (click, to read the Herald article)

Read more:



Posted on Fri, Feb. 25, 2011
Air Force sues Homestead farmer, city

By Christina Veiga
The Miami Herald


TIM CHAPMAN / MIAMI HERALD STAFF
John L. Alger, 52, (right) and his son John W. Alger, 25, (left) stand in a field of sweet corn with the Homestead Air Reserve Base tower in the background. The elder Alger says that the US Government is taking away the value of his land by changing the zoning from " 1 on 5" to a clear zone because it is near the base and that will take away his ability to borrow money on the land to run his farming business which has been in the family for four generations. Febuary 25, 2011.
The Alger family has farmed for 50 years in the shadow of the Homestead Air Reserve Base, where jet engines roar just hundreds of feet over the rows of sweet corn.
It’s the sound of American freedom, said John Alger, current president of Alger Farms.

But the third-generation farmer says he’s been left to defend his own freedom: the right to develop his land after the U.S. government recently sued him and the city of Homestead.

“The freedoms they stand for are the ones they’re offending right now,” Alger said.

On behalf of the Homestead Air Reserve Base, the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed an appeal on Feb. 18, asking the Miami-Dade Circuit Court to reverse a City Council decision that allows Alger to build homes at the end of the base’s runway.

It is the first time the Air Force has been “forced” to bring a law suit against a city, said Air Force Lt. Col. Tom Davis, a base spokesman.

Alger’s farm lies in the flight paths of F-16s, F-15s and other warplanes that pass 750 feet overhead while coming in for a landing. Air Force officials say putting homes on 250 acres closest to the landing strip, which council members last month voted to allow, would put lives at risk.

“We fought long and hard to not come to this place,” Davis said. “But the paramount issue of the base is we have to protect the lives and safety of the people.”

Military planes have taken off and landed in Homestead since 1942. The base has been leveled twice by hurricanes, and was demoted from an active military installation to an Air Force Reserve base after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Today, base officials feel under threat again — not by Mother Nature, but by urban sprawl.

Over the years, many of Homestead’s fields of beans, tomatoes and other produce have been paved over to make way for residential communities and the strip malls, schools and office buildings that accompany them.

“Try to figure a point in time when you say, ‘We have to stop,’ ” said Jeff Porter, immediate past president of the city’s Military Affairs Committee. “Don’t continue to let people put other people in harm’s way.”

For years, the city has worked to strike a balance between property owners’ rights and state-required safety rules that limit development near the base. After two separate studies, and countless meetings with air base officials and community members, the city council in September 2010 passed new restrictions that regulate the type, height and density of development in areas near the base that are most at risk for accidents.

But landowners complained their rights were being taken away unfairly. So the council voted to grant three developments vested rights — basically exempting hundreds of acres from the restrictions.

To be exempt, the city asked property owners to prove the following:

• The city gave the petitioner prior development approval, such as OK’ing site plans or issuing building permits.

• The petitioner moved forward with this approval, for example spent money on construction, to such an extent that revoking it now would be “highly inequitable.”

Alger Farms met neither criterion, according to Homestead city staff reports.

But, wearing a checkered shirt, light blue jeans and muddy boots, Alger stood in the City Council Chambers and begged members to reconsider.

The city’s Future Land Use map designates Alger’s property as agricultural, and allows for building up to one residential unit per 5 acres of land. The new rules would take away that ability, Alger said.

Alger — with his Cornell degree, deep community ties and genteel manor — swayed the council. They ignored staff advice and voted to allow him to build up to 50 homes in an area at risk for what Davis called “catastrophic” aircraft mishaps.

Alger said he doesn’t plan to pave over his crop field anytime soon, but having the option makes his land more valuable as collateral for farm loans.

“Who wants to buy a house at the foot of the air base? Nobody,” Alger said. “Do we have intentions of building here? No.”

Added his son, John W. Alger, 25: “If we can’t finance the farm in order to operate, there may not be much to inherit. So it’s pretty bleak.”

The U.S. government is now asking the court to order Homestead to follow its own procedure for granting vested rights.

If the base’s appeal is successful, it would essentially revoke Alger’s newly recognized development right.

“If it suits the airbase best that it not be developed, then compensate me,” the elder Alger said. “This facility is something that benefits the United States of America. But why should one family have to pay for it?”

If the courts come down on the base’s side, Alger said he’ll have no choice but to go after the city, since it was the council that passed the new restrictions. He claims his land, with development rights, is worth more than $6 million.

Alger’s attorney, Amanda Quirke, points to the Bert J. Harris act. Passed in 1995, the act allows property owners to seek remedies — including payment — against new government regulations that result in an “inordinate burden” imposed for “the good of the public at large.”

“The city has faced some tough decisions. But the regulations proposed by the Air Reserve Base are extremely harsh,” Quirke said. “It really prohibits any future use of the property.”

But Alger may be left empty-handed, and with hundreds of acres of land that can only be used for agriculture.

The U.S. Constitution generally forbids government agencies from taking away private property rights without paying a fair price. But in this case, there may have been no rights to take away in the first place.

Not only did Alger not meet the vested rights criteria, but the city’s Future Land Use study doesn’t grant development rights, according to Homestead staff reports and the U.S. attorney’s lawsuit. Those rights are subject to zoning ordinances, such as the new restrictions council members accepted last September. Also, city staff and city attorneys said the Algers lost any development rights after their property was annexed into the city in 1996.

“If he never had the right to develop the property in that way ... then what the city gave him was worthless,” said Michael Allan Wolf, a local government law professor at the University of Florida.

And property owners can’t be compensated for a worthless right, Wolf said.