Your government: not telling the truth... CSX and Parkland ... by gimleteye

SPRAWL: WHAT A COOKED ECONOMIC MODEL LOOKS LIKEIf you watch big infrastructure projects unfold in the United States, it becomes clear that the public hearing process is a game played by developers, bankers, engineering firms and insider-driven government agencies to vet decisions that were already been made; how to plow more people into more suburbs.

This model, broke and cooked in the economic crisis, still has energy. It is all they know how to do. Take Florida Power and Light, for example. The electric utility is already charging customers for the $100 million planning effort to put new nuclear reactors at Turkey Point, despite the fact of significant uncertainties: where the cooling water will come from (60-90 million gallons per day) has not been disclosed or permitted nor the pesky matter of providing lime rock fill to raise the height of the reactors' base 20 feet above sea level.

In a fair public process, these details would have been fully disclosed by multi-billion dollar FPL before putting the project on rail tracks to permitting. Instead, and in the particular case of the rock mining issue, the utility prevailed on Miami Dade County Commissioners to allow the project to move forward with a special use permit. The public hearing process was a complete charade. And if you really want to dig deeper, you will find FPL in the process of changing more codes to allow it to rock mine in places the county already decided was a bad idea.

From FPL's point of view, despite the worst economy since the Depression, the corporate growth model is planned on decadal time lines. People come and go, but ultimately the corporate interest is the only enduring fact of life. Besides, a whole set of engineers and planners and lobbyists have very little to do if they can't be employed priming the pump for future profits. And since there is no business model other than jacking up units of consumption-- and since there is no plan to impose real limits through regulations or rules to mandate profit based on conservation-- the legions are not only at work, they are working through the process of using the trillion dollar fiscal stimulus, the centerpiece of the Obama economic rescue effort, to their advantage.

An even better place to view this phenomenon is the fast growing suburb of West Kendall near Tamiami Airport and SW 137th Avenue. The Miami Herald featured this area. (The Herald could have but didn't link the growth of this area in the past few years to the same political/ business interests we describe at length on this blog (see our archive, "production homebuilders", "Parkland", "UDB"). Despite the fact this area is littered with foreclosures, the decadal leap to the next ring suburb is well underway: it is called Parkland and its edge is Krome Avenue and the Urban Development Boundary.

One of the key obstacles to further suburban expansion is overwhelming traffic, a phenomenon that the Herald continues to portray as an inevitable consequence of needed growth. County Commissioner Joe Martinez, whose relationships on behalf of homebuilders is well documented, has made a virtual jihad to use the CSX rail right-of-way to make the traffic concerns "go away". The Parkland developers are prominent campaign contributors to GOP causes and campaigns. One of Jeb Bush's final acts as governor was to initiate a deal with CSX for public access to its rail lines, and although most of its property under scrutiny is in the Orlando area, there is the pesky matter of CSX access benefiting his political base in western Miami-Dade.

If this is how the world continues to work, there is every reason to believe the trillion dollar fiscal stimulus plan will be abused and that the taxpayer will be used to benefit the same interests who fomented the housing bubble and its catastrophic decline. In the first place, they manipulated risk analyses and printed financial derivatives to mint billions in private profit. Today, all they need are government printing presses.



January 25, 2009
KENDALL
Miami-Dade to host traffic project meetings
BY YUDY PINEIRO
YPINEIRO@MIAMIHERALD.COM
The Metropolitan Planning Organization, Miami-Dade County's transportation planning arm, will host a series of meetings this week where road planners will discuss upcoming projects intended to ease road congestion.

On Tuesday, the public is invited to a meeting that revisits the controversial portion of a 2007 study where planners analyzed rapid transit options for the Kendall area. It examines the transportation options along the existing CSX rail corridor from Miami International Airport through Kendall and other parts of Southwest Miami-Dade.

The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Kendall Branch Library, 9101 SW 97th Ave.

If you can't make it, the MPO plans to host more meetings as the study gets underway.

The estimated completion date for the study is sometime in June.

Also this week, Southwest Miami-Dade residents are invited to a meeting that will discuss a draft of the long-range transportation plan, which considers necessary improvements to the county's transportation system through the year 2035.

The goals of the long-term plan are to incorporate highway, transit, bicycle and pedestrian improvements in an effort to increase mobility. The final draft of the plan is due before the governing board of the MPO by the end of the year.

The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the West Kendall Regional Library, 10201 Hammocks Blvd.

There are other meetings scheduled across the county.

For more information on the meetings or a copy of the long-range transportation plan, call 305-375-4507 or go to the MPO website at www.miamidade.gov/mpo.


PALM BEACH POST
Home > Q: The Florida Politics Blog > Archives > 2009 > February > 03 > Entry

DOCKERY PLEADS WITH CRIST TO REDO CSX DEAL
By Dara Kam | Tuesday, February 3, 2009, 10:43 PM

Sen. Paula Dockery is (again) calling on Gov. Charlie Crist to put the brakes on a Central Florida commuter rail deal the day before he is scheduled to hold a press conference touting the project, recently dubbed "Sunrail."

Dockery, a Lakeland Republican, sent Crist a letter this evening critiquing the deal in which the state would pay transportation giant CSX Transportation $640 million for 61.5 miles of track while continuing to allow the railroad giant to operate freight trains on the line. The agreement also gives CSX $400 million for improvements on its other rail lines.

Dockery opposes the deal, in part, because the agreement hatched between CSX and state transportation officials could more than triple the number of freight trains that run each day through downtown Lakeland from 16 to 54.

"Did you know that at $10.5 million per mile, Florida would pay the highest rail-sale price in U.S. history? And that taxpayers would pay for CSX's mistakes on our tracks, even if the freight railroad is grossly negligent? And that the CSX route would only take 3,600 cars off Interstate 4?" Dockery wrote, likening the deal to "the giveaways and corporate welfare that government readily hands out."

Lawmakers failed to approve a bill including the commuter rail project last session but supporters - including House Speaker Designate Dean Cannon of Orlando - are hoping to pass it before this legislative session ends in May.

Crist will be joined by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, a former state senator, a major proponent of the commuter rail project.

'Shovel Ready' for what? ... by gimleteye

The Obama administration is hurrying its fiscal stimulus plan. I've lost count of the trillions the federal government has already spent to deflect the worst crisis since the Depression. At a recent Miami environmental conference, all the talk was of ‘buckets’ of federal money coming to South Florida. The question on everyone's lips: how many infrastructure projects are ‘shovel ready’?

“Shovel ready’ is a message frame calling to mind the garage shovel for snow removal or cleaning out street gutters or the backyard garden. Fair enough. But how does the federal government pour a trillion dollars into the economy without using a very large size funnel? And which, among agencies, is ready to administer and audit such massive doses of currency after a decade when the primary purpose of government was to dismantle regulatory authority; who exactly is left to determine which projects are shovel ready or not?

We know how to re-pave highways and interstates, or re-build bridges. We know how to build an asset bubble from houses and stocks. If we put enough billions together, we can even put tunnels under cities and build imaginary bridges of financial derivatives from suburbs in Atlanta to housing developments in Phoenix and Tampa and Minneapolis that all look so similar you might forget what city you are in should you ever get lost without directions home.

But if these investments—or the debt they represent—were real economic growth the US economy would not be stuck today on the coral reef, waiting to be looted by pirates. So let’s take a look how the fiscal stimulus is likely to proceed.

The broad devolution of federal authority has turned federal agencies into caretakers. Today, the only way to distribute massive amounts of federal stimulus money is through bucket lists developed by states, filtered through decisions of local power brokers at the municipal and county level.

Several months ago at a meeting of the Miami-Dade County Commission, I watched the results applied to a $62 million dollar grant from US Housing and Urban Development for the purpose of purchasing low-income apartment building foreclosures to benefit Miami’s swelling ranks of poor and disadvantaged. The hour-long debate from the dais wrapped the thirteen county commissioners, elected by single-member districts, into instant acrimony along ethnic and racial lines despite the fact that professional county planners and staff had clearly organized their presentation to provide objective data and information about need, availability, demographics and location.

In this respect, the $62 million HUD grant was a test-run of what happens when the federal government gives money away to local jurisdictions. We’ve already seen what the banks have done with the first installment of the TARP plan: they squirreled it away into their own books. Without audit and regulatory controls, the only way that the trillion dollar fiscal surplus will reach the states and into communities is through the same channels that proved so inept in protecting the public interest.

In fast growing states like Florida, ‘shovel ready’ depends on whether or not permitting for specific infrastructure projects is complete according to local and state laws. Here is one thread, one specific case, that easily traces back to spool from which it unwinds.

Kendall is an amorphous patchwork of platted subdivisions and home to more than 250,000 in west Miami-Dade County. Its traffic infrastructure is a nightmare. Most residents travel to jobs east then north to jobs downtown, joining a flood of hundreds of thousands of additional commuters in cars from earlier ring suburbs closer to Miami. Although Miami is less than fifteen miles away, the work commute by car is often more than two hours a day. This will sound familiar to tens of millions of Americans, trapped in suburbs and cars of their own.

During the building boom in Florida, land speculators and developers made a fortune in thousands of scattered low-density areas like Kendall; building and profiting from leap-frog developments in platted subdivisions to sprawl further toward the Everglades and into important watersheds, even as the state and federal government was trying, year after year, to cobble a plan together to revive the faded and dying River of Grass.

"You can't stop it," said Al Hoffman, the most influential developer in a state crowded with influential developers. "There's no power on earth that can stop it!" Hoffman, the energetic leader of WCI Communities Inc., knows a bit about power. He was co-chair of George W. Bush's presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee's finance chair. Now he's the top money man for Gov. Jeb Bush -- a former developer himself -- and heads an exclusive council of CEOs who advise the governor on policy. A scribbled note from the president hangs on his office wall: "You are the man!" So wrote the Washington Post in 2002. "The unstoppable force Hoffman was talking about is the runaway development marching from southwest Florida toward the Everglades. The Naples area was the second-fastest-growing in America in the 1990s. The Fort Myers-Cape Coral area is not far behind. And the gated golf course communities that have come to define this subtropical mecca are spreading east. "It's an inevitable tidal wave!" declared Hoffman, 68.” (‘Growing pains in Southwest Fla.’, Washington Post, June 25, 2002)

In Florida, former Gov. Jeb Bush put Al Hoffman at the head of the business Council of 100 in 2000. Hoffman’s enthusiasm was reinforced by the unspoken, certain awareness that massive infrastructure projects were in the pipeline to accommodate Florida's growth—from trans-state gas lines to feed new power plants, to new highways bi-secting undeveloped portions of the state, and plans for new airports to benefit large landowners like the St. Joe Company.

Suburban sprawl relies on gargantuan scale to deliver both profits and political orthodoxy. That scale needs to be continuously replenished by 'shovel ready' infrastructure. Although the housing asset bubble began to collapse in 2006, the big infrastructure pieces promoted by Hoffman and his council friends—highways, water, airports, ports, electric utilities—are all on decadal permitting timelines. Many of these projects were conceived in the full bloom of the housing asset bubble. According to the Washington Post, in 2001, Hoffman’s former company sold $1.1 billion worth of homes. Today, it no longer exists except as a shell of its former ebullient self. But the projects advocated, planned and put in motion by state agencies at the direction of the Florida legislature at the direction of the Council of 100 collectively, or individually in their own communities, are very much in the pipeline.

If they are not 'shovel ready' now, they will be among the first to be 'shovel ready' as soon as the federal money starts landing in the hands of local decision-makers. It goes without saying that in Florida, these projects were conceived by GOP contributors from the development and real estate industries. Here is a specific example.

West of Kendall, some of the most powerful Republican development interests in the state—who exerted their influence as lobbyists or campaign donors or behind the scenes—were pushing for new infrastructure along the western-most boundary of the county, a two lane road serving farmers called Krome Avenue. These political entrepeneurs made huge speculative investments adjacent to Krome Avenue and outside the Urban Development Boundary.

Data on these investments are publicly available through county tax rolls and real estate listings. One recent listing is for a 49 acre parcel for sale outside the Miami-Dade Urban Development Boundary at $1.7 million or $34,694 an acre. But during the building boom, high land acreage just inside the Urban Development Boundary, where local government was committed to providing infrastructure like roadways, sewerage, water, and schools, was selling for nearly $1,000,000 an acre. On the other side of the UDB, prices in anticipation of zoning changes had soared from only a few thousand an acre upwards to $100,000. The difference? A zoning decision to move the Urban Development Boundary.

South Florida's lobbyists-turned-developers purchased Krome Gold Ranches (Rodney Barreto, Agustin Herran, Armando Guerra) at the peak of the market in December 2005 for $44,608,600 for 466 acres, or, $95,726 an acre. Baretto is a top recruiter for Republican causes and candidates in Florida; former Gov. Bush appointed him to the Florida Wildlife Commission where he is now chairman. Baretto has been a primary force behind planning and efforts to widen Krome Avenue; a purpose that would serve requirements of Florida growth management law requiring that traffic infrastructure should be in place before major development.

Just east of this property are 125 acres owned by Neighborhood Planning Company (Armando Guerra, Agustin Herran, Ramon Rasco, Carlos Garcia and Sergio Pino), bought in July 2005 for $15,000,000, or, $120,000 an acre. Krome Investments, LLC (Sergio Pino and Armando Guerra), in the same area, bought 59 acres in December 2005 for $6,621,440 or $112,227 an acre. Pino was a Bush-Cheney "Ranger" for having raised at least $200,000 for the president's 2004 re-election campaign and, according to the St. Pete Times, "is a major donor to Gov. Bush's non-profit educational foundation."

This property is near Lennar Homes proposed 1000 acre development called Parkland. The bulk of Parkland property was purchased by Ed Easton--a close Bush associate--as trustee for Krome Gold Land Trust; approximately 614 acres were purchased in late 2004 for nearly $65,000,000 according to County Property Appraiser records. Easton, a close Bush family friend and major polical donor, and others, including Pino, appear to have paid over $100,000 per acre for this property as well.

Assuming that current market value per acre outside Miami’s Urban Development Boundary on Krome Avenue is $34,700, then these four investments cost about $132 million and now have a paper loss of more than $88 million. The only way these investors, or their banks, can begin inching back to their original investment value is by securing zoning and permitting changes. And what these GOP contributors need most of all is for transportation needs to be met by public investment.

In Miami-Dade, County Commissioner Joe Martinez has been doggedly pushing for the expansion of the CSX rail right-of-way despite the fact that citizens and residents are strongly against the measure because traffic infrastructure to get people from where they live to where they work is abysmal. Parkland is bordered by a rail line owned by the CSX Corporation. In the final months of his tenure as governor, Jeb Bush made a deal with CSX for its rights-of-way. Most of the public attention is to the CSX issues in the middle of the state, but CSX remains a subject of considerable sensitivity to the former governor.What the CSX project would do is make it easier for Parkland and other land speculators in the area to make the claim for traffic "concurrency" and meet the state planning mandate.



Citizens have fought in one public hearing after another, to prevent the use of the CSX right-of-way and Krome Avenue widening, both, as a justification for more 'shovel ready' sprawl. In a January 5th 2009 public announcement, the local transportation planning agency issued the following press statement: "The Miami-Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) has initiated the CSX Rail Corridor Evaluation Study to further address issues arising during the Kendall Link Study (2007), which analyzed rapid transit options for the Kendall area. The CSX Rail Corridor Evaluation Study’s goal is to examine the feasibility of a broader set of transportation options along the existing CSX rail corridor from Miami International Airport to the South Dade and Kendall areas. In addition to this meeting, the MPO will also be conducting periodic public meetings throughout the study, which is scheduled to be completed in June 2009."

Barry White, a Miami resident and board member of Citizens Against Nonconcurrency Task Force, wrote a stinging rebuke to county commissioners: "How can they propose such a study except as part of a comprehensive plan for Kendall and the area? Wasn't that what the MPO was instructed to do? What is the impetus for such a narrow and specific study and effort? Who's ox is being fed? What about (mass transit) on SW 137 Ave? What about (mass transit) in the whole area? What about MDX's proposed extension of SR836 south around SW 162 Ave. No funds or energy should be expended on the CSX red herring until an overall plan is prepared. MPO already wasted almost $900,000 on studying this area."

The lesson of West Miami Dade is clear: when the Obama White House turns on the fiscal spigot, the flood of money will find a way to accrue, first, to relieve the financial pressure on private investors and land speculators whose claim on local authority is still secure and tight, notwithstanding dire economic circumstances. Widening Krome Avenue and the CSX right-of-way issues will be pushed deeper into the permitting pipeline controlled by political appointees whose job security depends on a political order that may be down on its luck but is very much intact; the revolving door between lobbyists, big engineering and planning firms, senior government agency staff and public officials.

The other side of the argument is that environmental regulations are adequate to the purpose of protecting the public interest. If this is true, why is staff morale at agencies like Miami Dade Environmental Resource Management or the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in the pits? Why is there no connection, whatsoever, between state transportation planning and environmental permitting agencies? Why, then, between 1999 and 2003 in Florida, did the US Army Corps of Engineers approve more than 12,000 wetlands permits and reject one. During the same period, 84,000 acres of wetlands vanished. ("They won't say no", St. Pete Times, May 22, 2005)

The unwritten, and mostly untold history of these agencies is how the housing asset bubble required the mission of these agencies to be thwarted and deformed to suit the needs of builders and developers. A Republican legislature and county commissions dominated by development interests literally threw gasoline on the fire of unsustainable development, permitting sprawl as fast as Wall Street could finance it, showering fees, commissions, and billions in compensation along the way; all based on persuading distant investors who didn't give a damn about the Everglades or anyone’s quality of life so long as their principal and interest was AAA rated and insured.

The reality is this: Florida politics for the past decade was organized around the principle that massive public investments (through bonding and debt creation to benefit dealers, brokers, and local operators)—like airports (St. Joe Company) or highways (Miami-Dade County) could be steered to employ public resources for private gain. The essential feature was to misprice risk, through fealty to a regulatory regime that served the zoning and permitting processes benefiting an insulated political and economic elite.

The shovel ready’ plans that the Obama White House will find at the local level were created through a planning and regulatory regime that served very different masters. Some of those masters are gone. They banked their profits. But there are others who want their game back, and they did not necessarily vote for Barack Obama. How ironic would it be if their best laid plans that had gone to waste through greed and hubris would be delivered by a Democrat in the White House? After all, who needs ficticious debt created by Phd mathematicians housed at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and Mother Merrill and Citigroup, when the doors to the public treasury are wide open?

Get the nail guns going: that is the political artifact of the housing boom.

Without audit standards or control even to control the TARP, it is clear that billions of dollars will be channeled exactly as they were before the asset bubble crash, mainly because the purpose of government these long years has not been to innovate the economy but to bulwark and to protect zoning councils responsible to development interests who fund political campaigns.

Here is what should happen: the strings attached to the trillion dollar fiscal stimulus should prevent investment in infrastructure that simply seeds a failed model of economic growth: suburban sprawl. What Miami Dade citizens have said for decades, and what public officials have neglected for as long, is simply this: take care of the needs of existing residents first. Protect the quality of life and enhance the livability of places where infrastructure deficits are enormous; especially related to mass transit serving urban areas of the nation.

President-elect Obama administration must understand that his best efforts to rescue the US economy from the deepest crisis since the Depression will be steered by the political artifacts left by the asset bubble related to housing. Why is this important? If recalcitrant operators, in states like Florida for instance, are able to steer the hundreds of billions filtering downward in ways that simply reinforce a static order-- like trying to put humpty dumpty back together again-- citizens and taxpayers are at high risk for the worst of possible outcomes.

Something is Very Fishy with Transit. By Geniusofdespair

This is a subject I don't usually follow but it is getting too good. The Feds downgraded our North South corridor for matching funds. All hell broke loose with most Black County Commissioners (Jordan, Edmonson, Rolle) who have been waiting for this rail since forever -- well at least since they have been in office. Mind you, these are the same County Commissioners who always vote to move the UDB line Westward. You would think they would make the connection that if you put people and infrastructure out West, it is going to effect people in the urban areas.

Joe Martinez and Pepe Diaz have been working at cross purpose to the black commissioners on transit, yet the black commissioners don't make the connection. Why? Greedy? Stupid? I don't know. they couldn't possibly have watched Joe Martinez pushing the East West corridor with an iron hand these past few years without realizing something was going terribly wrong for their corridor. I think they just didn't care and all the fuss now is just show.

Larry Lebowitz touched on some of the controversy but there is so much more to this story. Here is an excerpt from his February 4th article in the Miami Herald "Metrorail mess is just around corner":

Tuesday is lining up to be an ugly one at County Hall for Metrorail riders and Miami-Dade taxpayers who supported the half-cent sales tax for transportation in 2002.

The U.S. Department of Transportation will announce it is lowering the rating on Miami-Dade's $1.3 billion Metrorail North Corridor plan to a level where it doesn't qualify for up to $700 million in matching federal money.

The black community, which has been waiting for this Metrorail line since the late 1970s, will be justifiably livid. Expect Commissioners Barbara Jordan, Dorrin Rolle and Audrey Edmonson to throw plenty of heat.

Even if Miami-Dade Transit and the Carlos Alvarez administration can get their financial house in order, restore the rating and eventually win the federal funds, the damage to their collective credibility is already done.

There will be large pockets of the black community -- some of them demagogues and conspiracy theorists, others rational and battle-scarred by past injustices -- who will believe the county purposely tanked the numbers at this critical juncture.

Their logic: Harming the North Corridor now will make it easier for the mayor and the Cuban-American commission majority to justify killing the North and making the East-West Corridor the top priority.

The logic is flawed -- but that doesn't really matter in the swampy thicket of Miami-Dade ethnic politics.

Here's why they're wrong: the Federal Transit Administration will be lowering the rating because of the county's inability to maintain and modernize the entire system after 2015. If the county can't afford to pay for the transit system after the $1.3 billion North opens, why would it be able to do so for the $2.2 billion East-West?

The North Corridor fireworks will probably overshadow an issue that is no less important to the future of public transportation."

Who is the spin Doctor on the CSX: The Herald Reporter or the County Commission? Guest Blog by KoncernedinKendall

The MPO meeting last Thursday was one of the most chaotic and confusing meetings I ever attended. As a result, many of those who attended exited the meeting wondering out loud “What just happened? Did they accept or reject the fixed rail options for the CSX corridor or not? This confusion no doubt extended to the press, as Friday’s (Oct. 6, 2007) article in the Miami Herald Metro section entitled “County Adopts Long-Range Rail, Bus Plan for Kendall” gave the distinct impression Joe Martinez has won and we would have commuter trains on the CSX corridor very soon. Not true Miami Herald!

For the record:

The MPO board never did vote on the original proposal to accept or reject the results of the Kendall Link Study relative to the five options identified as the Preferred Rapid Transit Study, included the fixed rails on the CSX. Leading up to the confusion there was about 3.5 hours of intense debate among board members and Commissioners. And yes, it was hard to understand which board member was for or against the original proposal, except of course for the biggest bully in the room, Commissioner Joe Martinez.

In his impassioned address to the MPO board, he wanted the MPO to simply rubber stamp all five options and move forward to the next phase of the project (implementation, building, etc). Then came one of the smartest Commissioners in the room, Carlos Gimenez!

Commissioner Gimenez asked the question: If I vote yes to this proposal, what am I voting for?

That was the key that unlocked the door. The answer given by Dr. Mesa, (Director of the MPO), of course ultimately showed its face…that is, all five rapid transit options in the preferred strategy would go forward and no other technologies would be considered.

Commissioner Gimenez did not like the answer and neither did a number of other commissioners. In fact, Commissioner Gimenez basically discredited the Kendall Link study by pointing out the obvious fact that the study had a pre-determined conclusion to only consider fixed rail for the CSX corridor. Thus, a friendly amendment was offered to continue studying the situation but this time all rapid transit technologies for the relevant travel corridors should be included.

The debate continued for a while with other commissioners adding a few more details to the friendly amendment. Commissioner Pepe Diaz asked that this next study also needs to include an evaluation of a possible southern extension of the Penasaco rail cargo corridor (runs parallel to 836), which now terminates at the concrete factory, to go south to the Rinker Rock pit. This later request was key because this would allow a Cargo Consolidation strategy to be implemented by the Commission with CSX for the right of way to the entire corridor, thus allowing all possible technologies to be considered. Commissioner Souto also asked that the FEC corridor be added to this new study and evaluate possible extension to the MIA (I thought the FEC corridor had already be designated as a linear park and bike path, but what do I know). That last suggestion drew a rather stern reaction from Commissioner Sosa, as this corridor goes right through the middle of her District.

There was only one vote taken at the end and it was not on the original proposal, it was on the friendly amendment which essentially dumped the Kendall Link study results and started all over with a new study to include all possible rapid transit technologies on the relevant travel corridors. Oh yes, words like implementation and building were to be excluded in the language used. There was also some discussion that a “New Consultant” be selected given how the last one had been controversial. In any case, the FRIENDLY AMMENDMENT was voted in 15 to 1 (at least the Herald article got that one right) but this clearly did no adopt any part of a long range strategy, as the Miami Herald article declares.

Commissioner Sorenson still wanted the bus rapid transit part of the preferred strategy to be acted on and was the lone dissenter.

So, you tell me fellow bloggers, does this sound like a victory for Commissioner Martinez….by the way, the Hispanic TV and radio shows ALL repeated the SPIN that Commissioner Martinez had won a great victory and everything that happened at the meeting was of course his decision. The problem is that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth…Hitler was a great example of this. The Herald needs to write a retraction.

The fact remains that the fixed commuter trains down the CSX corridor were neither accepted or rejected by the MPO board—no transit options were. They are going to do a new study which considers all rapid transit technologies on the CSX corridor, on Kendall Drive, on SW 137th Ave, and parallel to the Turnpike from FIU to Kendall Drive. Of course these facts will hopefully be reflected in the written version of this friendly amendment, so all of us can see exactly what was voted on and what was not. The Country Attorney who’s job it is to draft the friendly amendment, hopefully after referring to his notes and viewing the VHS tape of the meeting, said a written version of this amendment will be available to the public sometime end of next week. stay tuned!

Reap what you sow, the case for civic activism by gimleteye

Let's talk about the strong civic turnout at the MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization) hearing yesterday, at county hall. Congratulations to the organizers, and especially to Eric Prince who sacrificed an important career event to be there--and still was denied the opportunity to speak on behalf of the hundred plus citizens who took an entire afternoon, braving traffic and other obstacles. Mr. Prince earned our respect, for sure. But what are some of the other lessons to draw from this experience?

Eyeonmiami has written extensively on the CSX rail issue (check our archive feature). CSX is a major railroad operator; it's under-utilitized capacity from the center of the state of Florida, down through eastern seaboard and into western Miami Dade County has become the focal point of land speculators and developers.

Now that the MPO meeting is over and done, what is the appropriate public response to the fact that the MPO board (County commission chair Bruno Bareirro) had made up its mind to deny Mr. Prince the opportunity to make a presentation. Case open and closed? Bareirro represents a majority of county commissioners and other public officials on the MPO who had already made up their minds to reject an earlier decision by the citizens advisory committee to recommend denial of priority for investment in the CSX corridor.

And so it goes, for the public interest in Florida when it comes to growth and infrastructure. Citizens who attended the public meeting yesterday were disgusted. Fair enough.

For most in the audience, it was likely the first time they had ever been to County Hall. But the performance of county "leaders", with the exception of County Commissioner Katy Sorenson and Carlos Gimenez, was utterly consistent and predictable. Former county commissioner chairman Joe A. Martinez plugged for his developer/ campaign contributors. He's the one who got a sweetheart deal on a vacant lot out by the Urban Development Boundary and built his dream home with free services from a prominent member of the Latin Builders Association. Then, there was Commissioner Javier Souto going off on another of his signature tangents, so bizarre and baroque that he might as well be sleepwalking.

But here is the deal and a recommendation to the participants: don't count on the mainstream media helping educate the public. To understand why, take a look at who is advertising in the real estate section in today's Miami Herald.

Note how thin the section is. That's because home sales have crawled to a halt. Still, Caribe Homes, Pride Homes, and Lennar all continue to advertise and all have a big stake in traffic "concurrency" in order to build more tract housing in outlying areas once the market rebounds.

Their lobbyists are the reason that Eric Prince was denied the opportunity to speak yesterday.

They want the CSX rail expansion because they really only have one idea: how to build profits from volume. More tract houses, more profits.

And the only way to create more tract houses, is to pack more sprawl into earlier neighborhoods. (It doesn't apparently matter to the development community that we have already 'built out" Miami Dade, leaving in its wake a degraded quality of life, absence of adequate public spaces and parks, and miserable traffic congestion.)

This is the reason, of course, that Florida Hometown Democracy and its ballot referendum is nearing enough signatures to qualify for a state-wide election, without any significant funding other than the determination and investment of its founders. (But still, more signatures are needed!)

It is the reason that the Florida Chamber of Commerce and former House speaker John Thrasher are misrepresenting, lying, and doing everything in their power to stop the citizen's movement.

The audience at yesterday's hearing needs to understand that it is the goal of the opposition to sow indifference, apathy and inertia.

Yes, the playing field is rigged-- but it is still possible for leadership to emerge and for citizens to use the electoral process to change the people who occupy the office of county commissioner.

But you have to be organized. You have to be smart. And you can't assume other people will do the work for you, of helping to remove public officials who don't represent your interests from office.

Take a page from the Miami Workers Center in Liberty City, an organization that has tirelessly stood up to special interests in Liberty City and is trying to make change happen, to protect the lives of ordinary African Americans in matters related to housing, that the polical elite and establishment (like Dorin Rolle) won't do.

Change is possible. Get involved!

The MPO Meeting Thursday Sucked by Geniusofdespair

Read Gimleteye's post yesterday so I don't have to explain the whole issue again. This post begins where that post left off. (above photos: Neighbors against the CSX)

Why do I go to these county meetings? Am I a masochist? They make me angrier than a rabid dog. The big question is, how does Carlos Gimenez and Katy Sorenson sit through these meetings day after day? I would have to slap most of them if forced to listen. You see their lips move and you know the words were planted, because they all say almost the same exact thing. Sosa sounded like Edmonson and Diaz sounded like Martinez. It is so obvious they all conspire together. Sorenson wanted one person, out of the 200 or so people that showed up from the community, to be allowed to make a presentation. This courtesy is usually afforded a Commissioner. Commission Chair Dim Bruno Barreiro cut her off at the knees refusing to let citizen Eric Prince do a powerpoint he painstakingly had prepared. All these Commissioners always say: "I have to do for my constituents." But, with all these people in the audience, this time they were saying: "I have to think about what's good for the entire county." Very convenient.

I have so little tolerance for the county commission, and now for North Miami Mayor Burns too, who is also on the MPO committee. What happened to you Burns? You have no busway, no trains in the North, why don’t you concentrate rail money where the people are, like in your backyard where you have density, not by the Metro Zoo. They need an East West corridor not a North South in Kendall. Who are you talking to Burns, Kathy Sweetapple...I noticed she was at the meeting (the traffic planner for many, many, many bad development proposals beyond the UDB and the traffic planner who first mentioned the CSX line be used for future commuters traveling from proposed developments outside the UDB line).

We all want mass transit but mass transit that makes sense. This CSX line doesn't make sense unless you are a developer with a few hundred acres that you want to develop. Burns: You know better, especially since you were wearing that FP&L protest button, you know how things REALLY are.

All the County Commissioners (besides Katy and Carlos), led by Martinez, were going to vote to have a study done with the CSX line as the preferred alternative. They used this bullshit excuse: we aren’t approving it now, we are just going to do a study of it and then vote on it later. Well, if you only study one thing, what will happen? One by one I could seen them falling into Martinez’s line. Bruno said his usual: "We can't stop growth." Then came Souto, our senile Commissioner, talking about liberty and democracy and for 20 minutes no one knew what the hell he was talking about. Everyone got up and took a breather. One lady said to me: “Why doesn’t anyone stop him?” I said: “First time at a Commission Meeting?” I said "This is your government in action, you should be ashamed of it, you should care, this is how they always are." She said she didn’t have time with the upcoming presidential election. Well f—-k lady, that is why we have such a horrible government in Miami Dade County.

As I was leaving, despondent, Gimenez dropped an effective monkey wrench into Martinez’ well laid plans (which he has been laying out for 3 years). Gimenez said to the MPO, why are we going to study the CSX as the preferred alternative, let’s study more alternatives. And then I left. I don’t know exactly what happened but I think Gimenez put a big enough amendment on the resolution to dilute the CSX “only” scenario. They will have to make comparisons now. I really thought the CSX line was a runaway train. Maybe not.

I like Gimenez.

P.S. In case you were wondering where the vile one was, County Commissioner Natacha Seijas is on a Bad Will mission in India buying yellow cakes so she was not at the MPO meeting.

Dream houses, CSX Rail and Joe Martinez, by gimleteye

For years, county commissioner Joe A. Martinez has done the bidding of his main supporters: production homebuilders who have no market, today, because the housing markets crashed, of their own excesses and greed. Maybe he wants to be the next police officer to rise from the ranks to be a lobbyist and wealthy player.

But reality hasn't caught up to the district commissioner, who received free construction work from a prominent member of the Latin Builders Association, and a great deal from another production home builder for his home lot on which he built his own dream house: all chronicled in The Miami Herald.

The building boom is over. Done. Kaput. It's not coming back in 2008 or in 2009, and if the Wall Street Journal is right, it may never come back. The reason is that Florida has despoiled itself with suburban sprawl which is, exactly, the case in Miami Dade County.

In today's Miami Herald story, Martinez says, "I would appreciate it if the group that has come out against this would just say they don't want it because it's in their backyard," Martinez said. "The railroad tracks were there before they were."

Well, here's some news, Commissioner Martinez: Miami's quality of life was here, before you were.

Martinez' insults and condescending bravura are well known: during the last round of hearings on the Urban Development Boundary, he regularly used the dais to intimidate citizens who disagreed with him, calling them "liars", and used his authority for the county meeting agenda to keep citizens off guard, changing meeting dates, using his power as then chairman of the county commission to thwart the will of people. Tens of thousands of constitutent contacts to his office were disregarded.

And as a result, in part, the county commission voted to fund its own propaganda vehicles, using tax dollars to promote schemes rooted in the dreams of their campaign contributors.

The bright fact is that the CSX rail will be used to justify the state concerns for traffic concurrency, putting more pressure on capable county planners. What people care about is that traffic capacity in the east/west corridor, not north/south and not diagonally across the fringe of the county.

Today the county commission, sitting as the Metropolitan Planning Organization, will take up the highly controversial CSX rail issue. It's clear what Martinez wants to do: override all public objection and give his friends what they believe is their due: the right to sell off land outside the UDB purchased at highly speculative values during the building boom: until zoning changes are in place that land is un-saleable at any price close to its carrying cost.

It's a dream to think any good will come to Miami Dade from this.

There's something about county commissioner Joe A. Martinez that just begs a return to the private sector. Enough, already.

Showdown on growth, by gimleteye

Depending on your point of view, it’s either a slowdown or showdown that accounts for the decision by the Federal Reserve to cut the benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points yesterday.

The mainstream media reported the depth of the cut as a “surprise”, following the same script that appeared to follow on nightly news: that consumers will be encouraged by the interest rate move to keep the merchandise moving.

Surprise? Come on. The news has been filled with bated breath about the "need" to cut interest rates. There's Jim Cramer ranting and raving about it. It's been a chorus since mid-summer, when the crisis in world credit markets finally revealed itself through the tip of the iceberg: subprime mortgages turned rancid.

So it wasn’t a surprise so much as a foregone conclusion that “something had to be done” about the worst crisis in housing and construction in many decades.

What the Fed knows, is that job losses in the economy have only just started to accumulate and that news in the next few months will be grimmer than it has been to date.

So it is with a certain amount of frustration to note that the business of growth-at-any-cost continues unabated: rock miners waving signs in Doral, dismissing the conclusions of a federal judge about violations of federal law by the US Army Corps of Engineers, county commissioners poised to consider expansion of the CSX rail to meet the needs of politically influential land speculators outside the Urban Development Boundary, and FPL planning two new nuclear reactors at Turkey Point with infernal schemes for “air cooling” on a new, multi-hundred acre building pad built twenty feet into the air.

The economist who seems to have the best sense of what is going on, is NYU economist Nouriel Roubini. In his blog today, Roubini writes:

“… today we have a credit crunch – on top of a liquidity crunch – that is caused by the fundamental insolvencies and distress of many over-leveraged households, mortgage lenders, home builders, some financial institutions and even parts of the corporate sector. You cannot resolve fundamental insolvencies with monetary policy injections alone. Those insolvencies and financial distress will take time to work out and will imply tight financial and credit conditions regardless of what the Fed does.”

That certainly seems to be the case in Miami, where condo foreclosures are about to blossom like frangipani in February and inventories are astonishlngly high.

It would seem to be a good time to pause, and to reconsider the growth policies that have brought us to such a point in time. There is no doubt that re-priming the growth machine pump is exactly what the economic elite wants to do.

But the overhang of massive debt is stronger than any logic of homebuilders, engineers, and their lobbyists.

So as you contemplate a time-out, you will likely be doing so from the comfort of your car on your commute to work.

That brings me to the other news of the day, from the Texas Transportation Institute that released its conclusions (an annual event) that traffic has gotten worse. No kidding.

The report concludes that we are spending about a work week per year, in our cars, in delays: for the Miami area, that sounds under-reported by at least a third.

At any rate, arguing about how much traffic there is, is like counting angels on the head of a pin: until there is fundamental reform of the politics of growth in Florida, we are underwater.

What's worse is that people really believe there is nothing we can do about it: about the traffic, about bad government and politics of growth. That is not how democracy is supposed to work. It is closer to tyranny.

Commissioner Martinez: Why is Everyone Ramrodding That CSX Rail on Us? Guest Blog by KendallKop

(There is a very important CSX story in the Tampa Tribune Tribune Investigation-Last Stop In Rail Plan: Tampa and guess who they picture in the story: Our own Miamian, Armando Codina! - Genius)

As a long-time resident of Kendall, defender of the rights of citizens to hold their elected representatives accountable, I wish to question the bizarre, perhaps bordering on the perverse, push behind the CSX railroad/commuter rail proposals, which have been ram-rodded through by the MPO, its consultants, and its staff.

A very narrow vote excised the CSX proposal, but additional votes are coming before the Metro Commission, and until the puppeteer pulling the strings is exposed, anything can – and in Miami-Dade – usually does, happen.

For almost a year there has been suspicion about the political motivation behind the CSX proposal. Is Miami Dade County Commissioner Martinez the man behind the scenes pulling all the strings?

As it turns out, Lennar has bought/or has an option on Ed Easton's mega acreage: Parkland (not sure how they are connected but they are). Parkland is currently in the pipeline as a development of regional impact (meaning it is really BIG). It is west of the present Urban Development Boundary (UDB) line – the line beyond which no county services are provided (I believe it is one house per 5 acres) but Parkland developers are trying to get very dense zoning on this buffer land and they need to show State regulators that they have transportation out there.

While the advocates of the CSX line claim the line will run from the Zoo on Coral Reef to – at first Miami International Airport – but recently cut back to Kendall Drive – in reality their plans indicate the line will run west of Tamiami Airport, cross the UDB, and – coincidence of all coincidences, the CSX line just happens to border this Parkland DRI!

In other words:

We taxpayers are being asked – indeed pushed – to pay for refurbishing of CSX tracks (so the railroad can more efficiently run its freight trains – and at night, too – all night, in fact), install a so-called commuter line which would pick up a very few number of passengers – and open land for already rich developers that have a transportation concurrency problem to fix. CSX is the fix.

The point being that once an infrastructure is in place, developers will call for the right to build.

The outside consultant, Mr. Stiles, the inside pusher Mr. Fernandez, continue to doggedly, and as was written above, perversely call for this CSX nonsense. It must be stopped.

Everything is wrong with the proposal such as:

First, it runs at right angles to the problem. The problem is 65,000 cars running east-west on Kendall Drive. The CSX answer runs north-south.

Second, the original heavy train proposal was scrapped hurriedly in the face of TOTAL resident opposition, and replaced with a lighter diesel component, going only so far north as Kendall Drive. The train would then turn east at 97th Avenue, going somewhere near Dadeland. This train would have rails embedded in the ground, providing a slick surface, on which Miami drivers would skid during and after every rainstorm.

Third, passengers would have to exit the trolley/train in the center of Kendall Drive, and would surely be killed before getting to the safety of the sidewalk.

Fourth, the turn eastward would completely duplicate another foolish approach by the consultants – that of a dedicated busway on Kendall. This busway would not allow normal automobile traffic in its lane, would also pick up and discharge passengers from the center of the street, and would take up at least three (3) lanes of traffic, one each way, plus the bus stop itself. Miami has already had the distinction of having the rudest drivers in the entire country – don't even think for a moment that those same drivers will understand or care about a bus or trolley passenger getting off in the middle of Kendall Drive.

The ONLY viable answer to the east-west congestion on Kendall Drive, one which would allow left turns in both directions, one which would accommodate the handicapped, one which would not remove necessary driving lanes, one which would accommodate 15,000 riders daily, is an extension of MetroRail west on Kendall.

Please think about this, and suggest it at the September 19th meeting.

Again, CSX rail and Miami suburban sprawl by gimleteye

We are going to break up our posts on the highly controversial proposals gathering momentum for a fake transit solution around the use of the CSX rail line.

Let's be clear: this is not about the CSX rail line (and the inter-local agreement between CSX, the state and the county--one of Governor Jeb Bush's final acts as governor): it is about moving the Urban Development Boundary (UDB).

The plot is simple enough: in recent years, land speculators bought property outside the Urban Development Boundary on the premise that friendly county commissioners (like Joe Martinez) would vote to move the boundary and allow them to reap vast profits, once zoning was in place. The promise--more suburban sprawl in farmland--is hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars of development value.

But in the face of a housing market crash, the promise doesn't matter so much as the cost: the carrying costs for developers of undevelopable land purchased at outlandish prices is enormous. Think of your anxiety, if you are a homeowner, of paying for a mortgage set at a value that you won't be able to realize in the open market and multiply it, one hundred thousand times.

From here, what you smell is burning cash, fed every month by worried land speculators to cover interest payments on undevelopable property. Never mind the Achilles heels of future development: water and traffic: just get the zoning changed.

The county commission is dealing with future water issues by refusing to deal with them, as suggested by the majority's antagonism to the South Miami Dade Watershed Study that will be the focus of their ire in early May.

Never mind that South Florida is in the grip of a drought that, in so far as Lake Okeechobee levels are concerned, is the worst in recorded history.

As for the daily traffic nightmare inflicted by the development community on hundreds of thousands of Miami Dade residents in Kendall and South Dade, developers are pushing the CSX rail conversion to commuter traffic purposes as the "solution".

But it is NOT existing residents who are going to be served: where does the CSX rail line go?

Developers need the CSX rail to speed the movement of the Urban Development Boundary and end the crisis of serving bank loans for land outside the UDB bought at highly speculative prices.



What you see on the above graphic, is a map from the Parkland Development of Regional Impact (Ed Easton and Lennar--indicated on the map as "site"). Look closely, and you will see Metrozoo: that's the furthest south extension of the CSX rail line according to the COUNTY.

The map does not include the UDB line, but the 'site' is outside it.

Also, what you don't see is 1) property ownership along the entire proposed route outside the UDB-- ie. who benefits, and 2) that the PARKLAND development WEST of Metrozoo, outside the UDB, depends on the CSX rail line and its EXTENSION to the Metrozoo.

If you click to the next page below, what you will see is how the timing of public meetings has been crammed close to upcoming hearings on the South Miami Dade Watershed Study, also forced into position (by Natacha Seijas) to align with new applications to move the Urban Development Boundary. One of the recommendations of the extensively researched watershed study: that no movement of the UDB is necessary until at least 2025. (While scandals rock the Performing Arts Center, the Miami Dade Housing Agency, Miami International Airport, on and on: this is what your county commissioners are focusing on.)

Housing market sales are suffering their worst collapse since the Great Depression, with no end in sight. Where is the water going to come from?

We don't take pleasure in pointing out that the building boom of the last six years sucked all the oxygen from the county commission and replaced it with laughing gas. The boom was built to a large extent on fraudulent mortgages, liar loans and relaxed lending standards, a euphemism for the collusion between lenders and builders that created a vast mismatch between supply of single-family, production homes and demand.

It is just unbelievable: you would think that elected county commissioners would take a close look at the unfolding market implosion and say, whoa we're going to take a step back. We're going to listen to our planners who were derided by high paid lobbyists and fancy power point presentations by engineers and consultants in the 2005 amendment cycle.

But that is not what is happening. Yes, the housing boom is over. Done. Kaput.

But in the alternate reality that prevails, everyone wants back in the game. It was so good while it lasted! It can't be over!

So what you are going to see, in the coming months at the county commission, goes like this: it's as though you were at a Miami Heat game, the clock expired, the game is over, the arena is empty, and the players refuse to leave the court.

Our unvarnished view is that we have blundered along with Miami's building and development community long enough, and you won't read that view in the Miami Herald or Miami Today.

We agree with blog readers who have piped up in comments, asking county commissioners to solve existing east-west transit and the problem of Metrorail, first, invest and fund real solutions before a single decision to bail-out land speculators.


http://www.miamidade.gov/mpo/m9-study-kendalllink.htm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 30, 2007
Media Contact: Elizabeth Rockwell – erock@miamidade.gov305.375.4507
TRANSPORTATION PLANNING BEGINS WITH YOUR OPINION(S)
Kendall Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis (Kendall-Link Study)
Miami, FL – The Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), the agency responsible for transportation planning in Miami-Dade County, is inviting residents to attend an open house meeting to obtain information on, and provide input to, potential rapid transit options being considered for the Kendall Corridor. These meetings are the third series of workshops for this project and are intended to focus on the detailed evaluation results. The Kendall-Link Study's purpose is to develop short, medium, and long range rapid transit recommendations in the greater Kendall area which stretches from SR-836 to the north, SW 152nd Street to the south, US-1 to the east, and Krome Avenue to the west. Alternatives under consideration include bus service improvements, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) along Kendall Drive and SW 137th Avenue, Diesel Multiple Units (DMU) along the CSX rail corridor, and Metrorail extensions along Kendall Drive and H.E.F.T., and other supportive roadway improvements.
What: Open House Meetings for the Kendall-Link Study
Who: Miami-Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization
When/Where:
TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2007
6 PM to 8 PM Kendall Village Center 8625 SW 124 Avenue, Miami, FL 33183
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2007
6 PM to 8 PM Country Walk Homeowners Association Clubhouse 14601 Country Walk Drive, Miami, FL 33186
Why: To encourage citizens to provide input to the potential rapid transit options being considered for the Kendall Corridor.
To learn more about the Kendall-Link Open House meetings, please call (305) 375-4507 or visit our website at www.kendall-link.com.
It is the policy of Miami Dade County to comply with all of the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The above facilities are accessible. For sign language interpreters, assistive listening devices, or materials in accessible format, please call 305-375-4507 at least five days in advance.
# # #
Metropolitan Planning Organization
111 NW 1 Street – Suite 910, Miami, FL 33128 - (305) 375-1881 FAX (305) 375-4950
WWW.MIAMIDADE.GOV/MPO
305-375-2836 or Fax 305-375-3968

Middle Leg of CSX Rail Line Ownership By Geniusofdespair

This map of ownership was produced in August 2006 from County Property Appraiser online records and it is not totally accurate. I believe that Henry Wolff property is now owned by Horton Homes (they had an option to buy it at the time of the map). This needs updating. Hit on map to make it larger. One thing you will note on the two maps here (see next post too), most of the land changed hands in the early 2000's.

Property Ownership along CSX Line (last leg) by Geniusofdespair

Property Ownership as of 8/06 along the last leg of CSX Rail line. Hit on illustration to make it larger.

If you look up the Corporations that owns this land along the CSX, you will note the officers have very familiar names. For instance the officers of Neighborhood Planning Company, LLC are:

GUERRA, ARMANDO J
HERRAN, AGUSTIN
GARCIA, CARLOS M
RASCO, RAMON E
PINO, SERGIO

CSX rail line, the Miami housing crash, and more Miami suburban sprawl by gimleteye

The news is filled with dismal tidings from the housing industry. You would think this would be a time for city and county government to take a breather from the boom of the past six years. In Miami-Dade County alone, the infrastructure deficit has piled up to more than $7 billion. But if you think government cares at all about the housing crash, or, the matter of taking a rest from listening only to the speculators, you would be wrong.

In the past six years, huge bets were made by land speculators, including some of the most politically connected developers in the county, outside the Urban Development Boundary. Land prices increased ten times, a hundred times, in anticipation of a development gold rush. Of course, there is no end in sight for the housing market crash-- it may only be just beginning--but changing the zoning and the Urban Development Boundary is absolutely critical to realizing some value from investments that have turned out, so far, to be bad bets indeed.

In the 2005 applications cycle for the county master development plan, every application by developers for land outside the UDB was rejected except for the Hialeah application.

It was a convoluted and highly manipulated process, stage-managed by then county commission chair Joe Martinez, who took apparent pride in trashing citizens, including thousands from his own district who took the time to write him and urge his opposition to moving the UDB.

Martinez was steaming mad--calling his opposition, liars and worse from the dais, and egged on by Natacha Seijas.

Although a majority of county commissioners voted to move the UDB, it was not by a majority capable of over-riding a promised veto by Mayor Carlos Alvarez. Moreover, Governor Jeb Bush put his foot down and informed Miami-Dade County that the applications would not receive state approval even if they were passed, on the basis of water availability and what we all know to be the killer of quality-of-life here: traffic.

Natacha Seijas was so contrite that she fired Bill Brandt, the director of Water and Sewer, for "not telling her the facts" about the water crisis. Of course, the last time Brandt had tried to tell her the 'facts' about water issues (asking for a rate hike to be applied to the rock mining industry, to build a new water treatment plant to account for cleaning up water polluted by its activities) Brandt was knee-capped by Seijas and the majority. (Anyone who paid attention knew that Brandt had done his level best communicating the dire condition of the county's water infrastructure. He took the fall and took a high paying job in private industry.)

Faced with limited water supplies, big developers suddenly got religion on the water re-use issue. Hialeah's application passed because the City of Hialeah and Armando Codina promised to put in its own water reuse infrastructure. Other developers are now singing the same tune: we will develop our own reuse capacity if you will only rezone our property outside the Urban Development Boundary.

What about traffic, the second Achilles heel of Miami Dade County?

Two years ago, Joe Martinez began touting the CSX rail line as the "solution" to Kendall's transit woes: it wasn't a true solution then, and it isn't true now because CSX take a very long and circuitous route to get anywhere close to where jobs are. But that is not going to stop the big developers, including Ed Easton, from claiming it to be so.

Engineers and consultants are busying and preparing plans for the next round of applications to move the UDB, due in only a few days. (The Easton project, in conjunction with Lennar, is moving along a separate permitting/planning path.)

You see, the game in solving the traffic problem is to claim that new capacity, like the CSX rail line or Krome Avenue, will absorb current needs (which are desperate) and future growth.

What is this all about, in the midst of a housing market collapse?

Politically connected land speculators are desperate to derive value from land purchased outside the UDB at the top of the housing boom: investments whose carrying costs are enormous.

Please help us, they will be saying to the county commission.

If we were to guess: the county commission will oblige, even though the county's own planning and zoning department, and the South Miami Dade Watershed Study, offer evidence that no expansion of the UDB is necessary--even to accomodate population growth--until 2050 at least. (Which is a main reason why Natacha Seijas is trying to kill the watershed study.)

The CSX will be held out as the "solution", and the developers will all claim to be 'green builders' now that the development patterns they crammed through local legislative zoning processes have throttled our quality of life, the environment, and even business investment.

We are now beginning to see that the building boom held as such a benefit by the South Florida business community during the past six years was based, to a very large extent, on fraudulent mortgages, liar loans, and outlandish land speculation.

But the big speculators who were frustrated by the decisions to reject the last round of UDB development applications in Miami-Dade County are readying their next assault on the process: we may be in the middle of the worst housing market collapse in modern history, but the land speculators are tied up in knots over their carrying costs.

Liberate us! will be their call, trotting out chamber's worth of citizens (paid, mostly) to attest that one more Lowe's is needed in far West Kendall, etc. etc. etc., fancy maps will show how the CSX rail line is the solution to the hundreds of thousands of commuters who spend hours a day locked in their cars in traffic.

Just wait a few weeks: you will see.