Miami Dade Urban Development Boundary: a low day at the County Commission: regionalism takes a nose dive, by gimleteye

Yesterday's vote to "transmit" Lowe's and other applications was an important step, but not a victory--since there are higher thresholds the proposed developments must cross. Unfortunately common sense isn't one of them.

It is really the utter disregard and absence of substantive dialogue at the county commission that brings to mind "Night of the Living Dead" and the classic quote by Commissioner Katy Sorenson that the applicants to move the Urban Development Boundary have come back again "like zombies".

There was Joe Martinez leaning over a paper map proffered by the developer on the dais like Captain Queeg, scrutinizing the all important "school" that has attached flimsily to the proposed zoning change. It was a staged act in anticipation of other staged acts, all in service of putting more suburban sprawl into wetlands and open space buffering the Everglades.

It is too bad, really a shame, that the Miami Herald has given up on analysis-- sort of shrugged and walked away from the story. So Eyeonmiami will fill the gap for you.

What the application by Lowe’s represents, beyond the matter of shopping for light bulbs conveniently, is the pulverization of regional consideration as a determining factor in zoning decisions by local government.

Miami is a place where universities sponsor regional think tanks, land use innovators, and some of the brightest minds in community planning anywhere on the planet: but that doesn’t make a dent among the majority of county commissioners.

What the Miami Dade County Commission has presided over, mainly, is the triumph of parochialism: the Balkanization of South Florida’s most politically influential county.

At a recent County Charter Review Commission meeting, land use attorney Miguel De Grandy articulated the principle. He defended single member districts against the call for greater sensitivity to regional considerations by the county commission. He practically blessed parochial districts as a tenet of the US Constitution and the manifest desire of the Founding Fathers.

Parochialism rules.

The Growth Machine cannot embrace a regional perspective, if by embracing it means releasing the chokehold that land speculators, land use lawyers, and developers have over zoning and permitting decisions.

What the Growth Machine needs is control of those decisions, and keeping 13 county commissioners marching in step is easy work when parochial politics define the boundaries of acceptable behavior.

The pipeline must always be filled, even when it is filled with the dregs of mortgage fraud, liar loans, worthless securitization of underlying debt and glue gun housing.

Need a new highway interchange? Let developers pay for it, in exchange for moving just a little closer to the Everglades. "It's what my constituents want." And the more constituents closer to the Urban Development Boundary, the more pressure to move it the next time, and the time after that.

You could almost hear advice to Pepe Diaz, the district county commissioner, from the developers, bankers, and lobbyists: explaining how to gain fellow commissioners' support.

Say that you “know your district”. Emphasize that you are in favor of quality of life, “for your district”. We’ll take care of the rest.

“The rest” would be the steps necessary to put pressure at the right places in Tallahassee for state approval of zoning changes in farmland, open space or wetlands.

The rest would be, the glaring fact that water resources don’t and will not exist to support moving the UDB for many years, notwithstanding the much-heralded water use permit from the state.

The rest, would be what Pepe Diaz and many others on the county commission aspire to: to be near the centers of power and wealth, whether in Washington, DC, Baja Mexico, Puerto Rico, or the Bahamas.

The rest would be delivered far from public view in Miami. The rest would have to do with different order of influence and horse-trading, like the shoving between an ambitious House Speaker from Miami and Governor Charlie Crist.

Pepe plays his role: advocate for his district. It’s not hard because it’s true: he’s served as a councilman and mayor in Sweetwater, and as county commissioner.

He built support advocating for much tougher flood control—never mind that the Everglades were there before his district was and flooded most of the time.

He claims to be a “supporter” of Everglades restoration. But that would only be true if restoration is defined as primarily serving the needs of cities.

Parochialism is a flexible servant. (And yesterday, the interests of parochial harmony kept Natacha Seijas quiet in her seat, despite the appeals to her sympathy--apparently--for the cause of adapting to climate change.)

The application by Lowe’s, a major public corporation, is not about a hardware store “within a three mile radius of retail opportunity”. In two previous attempts, the company had failed to persuade the county commissioners to move the Urban Development Boundary beyond the 16 acres it already owns inside the UDB to an adjacent 30 plus acres it owns outside the UDB.

This particular application has come before the county commission twice before and was turned down each time. In 2005, the denial was during a hyperventilating boom in construction, employing traffic planners, engineers, and legions of lobbyists. So what changed?

Now is a "better" time to move the UDB?

No. The best reason to hold the line on the Urban Development Boundary scarcely crossed the lips of the county commissioners. Silencio: today's S&P/Casey Shiller housing index shows Miami very nearly number one in the nation in housing price declines, quarter over yearly-quarter. Not a word.

The decline in Miami housing prices is more than twice the national average. Commercial construction is not far behind. But none of economic reality mattered a bit.

Florida may be in the midst of its own historic drought, but common sense is far away as Australia or India or South Africa.

The application to move the UDB by Lowe’s is about a large, well-funded corporation tasked with building a constituency for more of products by mobilizing residents for further incursions against the Urban Development Boundary in the future.

If it was really about another Lowe’s, then long ago the corporation would have started to build a store on its 16 acres of adjacent land WITHIN the Urban Development Boundary. That's right: Lowe's owns 16 acres--more than enough to put a new store--immediately next to its property outside the UDB.

Lowe's and the Growth Machine it represents seek to move the UDB line on PRINCIPLE.

In 2005 it was Lennar, in Florida City outside the UDB, trying to zone a small city into wetlands critical for restoration of Biscayne Bay. But that was then. In the meantime, Lennar’s stock value has disappeared in a puff.

It’s Lowe’s turn. (And Parkland, the proposed major development way out west surrounded by politically connected land speculators.)

There are several phenomena worth note in the outcome of the vote to adopt and transmit (a technical term that means to conditionally approve moving the UDB, pending an evaluation by the state of Florida) the Lowe’s application.

The first, how the African American county commissioners representing inner city, poor neighborhoods all fell into line behind Diaz, in favor of adopt and transmit (they could have voted only to transmit, without recommendation) except for Dennis Moss.

Parochialism works especially well in the inner city districts of incumbent county commissioners—who are not elected so much as anointed by a political status quo.

Diaz’ message, delivered with sincerity, is one heartily embraced by the majority of others: that if you leave my district alone, I’ll support whatever you do in yours.

Another phenomenon, is how the county commissioners representing poor districts will always support zoning measures at the fringe: expansions of required services that actually hurt their own constituents because existing department budgets are stretched and eventually require increased taxes.

Another amazement: that at a time of extreme budget crises, because of falling revenues from housing and construction—after two previous, failed attempts to pass it through —that this time the county commission approved adoption and transmittal to Tallahassee (by a 7-6 vote).

The key, apparently, admitted by Commissioner Diaz, is that the application is not “about” Lowe’s at all: it is really about a new school promised by the corporation on part of property it owns outside the UDB.

In other words, a regional issue—the integrity of the Urban Development Boundary (for a host of reasons—the Everglades, climate change, transportation, consistency with state comprehensive land use planning) is sacrificed for a parochial one, a “charter school”: a pattern that reinforces in exact shape, form and content the intent of the Growth Machine, where risk is always socialized and profit is always private.

If, at a time of economic budget crisis—as we are now experiencing in municipal and county governments across the state-- a regional perspective cannot prevail at the County Commission—then it never will.

Since the mainstream media doesn’t deal with substantive matters, it is hard to see how anything will change in Miami-Dade County: perhaps paying county commissioners a living wage will help. But it might not.

Parochialism was on fully display during the public hearings on four applications to move the Urban Development Boundary. How the state of Florida responds will be interesting.

The final public hearing for the applications to move the Urban Development Boundary will be held in April, 2008.