The Underbelly of the Urban Development Boundary Vote. by Geniusofdespair

Here is another translation of an article from El Nuevo Herald about the UDB line vote. I like this Shoer Roth guy, he really gets to the heart of the issues, exposing the crap.

TRUTHS IN DISGUISE by Daniel Shoer Roth

Moments before the Miami-Dade Commission traded our environmental health for more stores outside the urban boundary of the County, two opposing groups of restless residents exposed their respective sides of the coin at this reunion.

The first group mentioned the rich biodiversity of the Everglades National Park, its designation by the United Nations as patrimony of the world, water shortage due to climate change, the excessive urban sprawl…

The second group mentioned the need to build a high school on the western part of the county with fewer students per class, and a $7 million new highway to alleviate West Kendall’s traffic congestion…

Anybody might believe that the controversy about the expansion of the UDB is about a school or a highway. But that is not true.

This is how these urban projects are twisted in ways that astonish us when they get the OK from the authorities:

The promoters persuade neighborhood groups by promising them public works that are the sole responsibility of county government, so that in turn they put pressure on their commissioners so that they have the perfect excuse to grant a final blessing to more urban sprawl.

This is the technique of disguise that in the Greater Miami, although it escapes the eye of the majority, is notoriously popular.

In this occasion it is a Lowe’s Home, a mega hardware store to be built at 8th Street and SW 137 Avenue, that knew how to seduce the parents concerned about their children’s education with a new school that, according to them, would offer excellent academic results.

In fact, an anonymous e-mail was circulated among parents living in the county’s southwest area promising that the future school “would compete academically with Belen…” and urged them to “convince one more commissioner to vote yes on the Lowe’s project”.

The second approval last Thursday corresponds to a 600,000 square feet commercial and office center, on the corner of SW 167 Avenue and Kendall Drive. Traffic is so terrible in this latitude that who would not have been hooked by the offer of a new highway?

“This is the level of corruption that the situation has reached”, said Patricia Wade, an environmentalist and agriculturist from the Redland. “It is no longer the petition [to move the limit], but what they [the developers] can provide to the people in order to get their support, which is not necessarily what they are requesting on their petition”.

But, watch out, once the limit is expanded for one project, there is no guarantee that developers will fulfill their promises.

At least that is what experience has shown us. In 2005, when a milestone was reached with the first time approval of the expansion of the UDB in Hialeah, one of the enticements was a treatment plant of water from the Floridan aquifer, which gave the impression that the developer was going to pay for. The City of Hialeah attempted to negotiate with the state, but last year Tallahassee rejected the $3 million requested in the budget. Who will carry the burden? Miami-Dade County.

County Commissioners are so myopic that they have come to believe that no one is paying attention to what they do, but they have on them a national magnifying glass.

On Monday, in a report that calls South Florida “Paradise Paved”, Time Magazine wrote that the Miami-Dade Commission “has for a long time been considered the builders’ most avid accomplice”.

The prestigious magazine mentions with first and last names Jose "Pepe" Diaz, ‘who is under federal investigation for allegedly receiving gifts from developers whose plans he'd voted for. (He denies any wrongdoing.)”

Another, according to Time, is Natacha Seijas, ‘who at one commission meeting voiced her dislike of manatees … and faced a recall vote in 2006 (which she defeated) due to public complaints that she also was too cozy with developers”.

Other Commissioners in favor of “the school and the highway” were Joe Martinez, Audrey Edmonson, Rebeca Sosa, Dorrin Rolle, Bruno Barreiro, Barbara Jordan and Javier Souto.

How lucky they were that their names did not appeared in Time!