FBI: Read this post on Miami UDB issues ... by gimleteye

The Urban Development Boundary delineates land located outside the urban services area from land inside, where government may be obligated to provide basic services. Moving the UDB, for developers, is critical to the business of shifting infrastructure costs to taxpayers so serve their profit models. The arbitrage between land value inside and outside the UDB is enormous. For land aggregators and developers anxious to build the kinds of crappy subdivisions that sent the economy and housing markets straight down the shitter, moving the UDB entails finessing the political process process. On the other side are citizens maddened by the imposition of costs: traffic snarls that stretch endlessly, overcrowded schools, and inconsistent fire and police protection. For environmentalists, land outside the UDB is the last remaining open space to recharge drinking water aquifers and provide buffer lands between intensively urban, agricultural lands and the Everglades. That's why UDB battles have been for decades the finest bleacher seats from which to interpret the political corruption that is "barely legal" in the truest sense; from county commissioners rolling over to approve sprawl far from their inner city districts-- to raise campaign cash-- to state regulators who take their marching orders from the pro-growth lobby and legislators and governor's office in Tallahassee. (One such battle is going on, right now, over  an application called "Ferro" in West Dade. Eye On Miami is virtually the only place for readers to get an insiders view of the postures and positions.) 
Why do the county commissioners all line up on the side of approving these incursions to create more suburban sprawl near the Everglades? Because there is money to be made. Over and under the table. In the early 2000's I helped lead the effort to stop Atlantic Civil Engineering and its owner, Steve Torcise, to create a monster community at the intersection of US 1 and Card Sound Road in Florida City. It was called Florida City Commons, and the project made sense to Lennar, one of the background players, and to a host of insiders who are familiar names on our blog-- land aggregators like Wayne Rosen and Michael Latterner who made a fortune during the housing boom supplying big lots for production homes in South Dade.


The Florida City Commons project attracted the ire of environmental groups who implored, with only limited success, to stop the relentless pressure to put more than 10,000 new residents in what had been Everglades related wetlands. Memorably, on one spring night returning from a speaking engagement against the project in the Keys I stumbled across a dead Florida panther on Card Sound Road, only a stone's throw from the Torcise property. 

Torcise's primary business is rock mining for limestone to make aggregate for cement and related products. But rock mining is often, in South Florida, the precursor for housing development.What gets zoned as rock mining one day, gets re-zoned to provide platted subdivisions thereafter. This is a prime example of what environmentalists call "shifting the goal posts".

Local authority is not only powerless to stop it; based on the results in Miami-Dade you could say that local authority exists to facilitate the destruction of important environmental resources that are nominally protected by laws and regulations. It is government-designed-to-fail.


But sometimes government-designed-to-fail needs a push, and that is where public corruption comes in. It is not much of a secret that the lubrication of the gears of the Growth Machine and its constituents is an important feature of campaign elections at the local level. This week the Miami New Times reveals the bare bones of an investigation by the FBI of Florida City mayor Otis Wallace, who along with his sister County Commissioner Barbara Jordan, and their lobbyist sister, were driving forces to first annex the Torcise property from the county into the city and then to move the Urban Development Boundary so that re-zoning would be a "local issue". Although the Florida City Commons project finally died of its own massive weight during the housing market implosion, one suspects that it like so many other properties purchased at the edge of the UDB for speculative purposes is waiting for new highways, new buyers, and time to re-tread the blown-out tires of suburban sprawl. (for more information, put "Atlantic Civil" in the search bar of our blog)


Here is an excerpt on the story of Florida City's mayor-for-life Otis Wallace, from the Miami New Times. Congratulations, New Times for picking this up:

"Baldwin began by describing how Wallace had allegedly sold his vote to Steve Torcise Sr., a real estate developer who owned land in Florida City. According to Baldwin, the two made a deal: If Wallace voted to rezone 100 acres of land — and convinced commissioners to do the same — Torcise would sell the mayor a chunk for the cut-rate price of $100,000. Once rezoned, both men would resell the land for a huge profit. "Torcise gave the mayor ten acres of land in return for [getting] the other hundreds of acres rezoned," Baldwin told investigators. "The mayor, in turn, after he got it rezoned, sold it for a million dollars." Baldwin's testimony didn't end with accusations over a shady land deal. He also claimed developers and businesses routinely were asked for bribes. When they needed permits or contracts, businesses would approach the community development director, Bill Kiriloff, and he'd refer them to Tomas Mesa, a former building and zoning director. Mesa then demanded anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 to ensure the deal went through. Some of the money was then kicked back to the mayor, Baldwin alleged. Often, Kiriloff would bypass lower bids to reward companies that paid bribes, Baldwin continued. The corruption was easy to hide, he testified: "For various reasons, if they didn't dot an i or cross a t or they left out a paper, they'll disqualify someone." Finally, Baldwin told investigators that Mark Ben-Asher, the finance director, was complicit in the scam, falsifying documents to benefit the mayor and funneling illicit funds to Kiriloff and Mesa. "He's the right-hand man to the mayor," Baldwin said. Wallace fired Baldwin a few months after he went to the feds. New Times was unable to reach Baldwin for comment. The mayor strongly denies all of his former employee's allegations, dismissing them as "sworn testimony by a liar." He says he fired Baldwin because electrical parts went missing on his watch — not for ratting to the feds. "Just because a guy that I fired wants to connect me to a land deal doesn't mean that I should know anything about it," Wallace says. Mesa, Torcise, and Ben-Asher also deny their alleged roles in the schemes. Yet the investigation didn't end with Baldwin's claims alone. Although public records don't show Torcise directly sold Wallace any land, they do show that in 2002, Torcise sold two parcels for $233,100 to a company called Avenue B St, Inc. The land was rezoned for residential in June 2003, just weeks before Avenue B St sold it to another company for $810,000 — a hefty fourfold profit. The vice president of Avenue B St is none other than Mesa, who at the time was still zoning director. Torcise admits to selling the land to Mesa but says politics had nothing to do with the deal. "I sold a piece of surplus land to Tom Mesa and he got it zoned," Torcise says. "I had nothing to do with the rezoning."