One would guess at either of those price tags, that that Roscoe Warren Park in Homestead would be the park to end all parks. Officially opened to the public on October 1, 2011, the community was looking forward to enjoying the latest park in Homestead’s park system.
Environmentally, it was good thought --- the reclamation of a landfill for public use. It also has a much used tot lot and if you can stand the mosquitoes, probably a wonderful place for a brisk walk. However, look at the photos, it also has lakes. Lakes that are not supposed to be there.
Last weekend’s rains put much of Homestead under water including this brand new park. After spending a time locked up in the house, I thought a trip to the park would be a fun way to end our soggy three days. It should have been a great idea as it is a lovely open space with opportunities for a nice sunset view, however, as I witnessed, it has no drainage.
I did see a drain, unfortunately it was under water. I didn’t notice any fish, but I guess those take time to evolve. I am presuming that there will be much finger pointing about the lakes; however the damage to the park and its features will be done. When it is all said and done, it will be the tax payers who will have foot yet another bill for this park. Oh, there was a bill for it before it was even begun - to reclaim it from a landfill. All of us in the rest of the county helped pay for that cleanup. The County contributed about $3.5 Million through Building Better Communities to this under-water passive park.
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You can't have normal drainage through a capped landfill. This will forever be the case for this park when you get higher than normal rainfall, and although probably a story repeated at many parks and streets in Homestead and Florida City due to the extremely heavy rains (flood advisories had been issued by the NWS), other open spaces will drain faster because the rain can percolate through the limestone substrate.
In this park, you have to go out of your way to avoid this type of drainage because the landfill gunk will create a plume of ammonia that will spread out from under it.
So either it got reclaimed as a park or remained forever a capped landfill. Either way it is an expensive lesson in "cheap" waste disposal.
Interesting observations mr. Sunshine… clearly above Youbetchas intellectual pay rate.
$7,500,000 just for the cleanup, the actual park had a budget of $6,000,000, the cost overruns were out of sight. A single change order two months after Mayor Bateman gave the go ahead was more than $3,000,000 for the first phase budget of $3,200,000. Then all record keeping went away for over a year. Mestre sent bills in they were stamped and paid, $2,000,000 for stormwater control, how's that working out?
$21,000,000 may be low balling it, nobody knows anything in Homestead.
You get a lot of ask the mayor and the vicemayor when asking staff anything.
Now they had the grand opening but there is a kids playground, basketball court and four soccer fields.
No tennis or racquet sports, the volleyball court is not there, no dogpark and the playground is now two years old and surrounded by water.
The project is a scam, the city is currently doing work that should have been done by the contractor Thomas Mestre. They are pumping the stormwater out, they added sand, sod, fill and this was all done by the city to cover up the incompetence of both the contractor and the city.
I garantee if you see the public records you will find out that more than $6,000,000 was paid for friends and family.
I know exactly what i'm talking about. Let Mr. Brea show the records he had before this council, or call Shehadeh and Faddis and ask them about the original estemate of $7,500,000 including a building.
Now no building and the cost is this high.
This is crazy
In Homestead the city attorney works hard to make sure there are no public records. As a matter of fact there is a council member who converts any emails sent to the city public email address to private email for responding purposes.
Of course this avoids the public records laws but our great law enforcement from the State Attorney's office and the much worse Ethics Commission were too busy to ever do anything about it. But maybe somebody who reads this will. Many thanks.
If I got paid I would be smarter? The land fill (mini mount trash more) is to the east of this sector of the park...
And the whole park was flooded... Not just this western segment... I have other photos of the other areas of park under water... This was not a simple mud puddle...this was multiple ponds...
There is drainage in the area where the flooded roads were...I took a photo of one of those, and it too was under water...
I am positive they could have done better with drainage... They do protect other environmentally sensitive lands from bad stuff.
Since everyone responding to this has so much information. Why not send your information to the Justice Department for review. All talk no proof.
Justice Department? No you have to use the Attorney General of Florida.
Great idea.
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