Does anyone even care anymore? With all this talk about global warming, alternative fuels, and the trimming of every government budget due to major financial cutbacks, you’d think the community would be up at arms about an approval to build even yet more development on our western fringes. Ecosystem destruction? Check. Vehicular-oriented development? Check. Massive unnecessary infrastructural strains on the County? Check. This approval falls in line with every single reason why living in South Florida has become extraordinarily difficult for the average middle-income family.
I’ll tell you this much, I’m fed up and Transit Miami is going to do something about it.
For those of you who are still out in the dark, the County Commission moved the UDB boundary again last week in order to accommodate some projects in the name of the community saving special interests. Disgustingly, the 9-4 super majority vote is enough to override the impending veto by Mayor Carlos Alvarez. In doing so, our incredibly intelligent elected officials have defied the opinion of local planning experts (not just us), most County residents, and State growth management officials.
But the county commission overlooked those pleadings Thursday when it approved two controversial applications to build outside the UDB — one for an office complex, another for a home improvement center, which includes plans to build a new high school. The state, mayor and planning and zoning board’s pleas also were ignored.
Big box retail and absurdly placed office complexes (with plenty of parking), just what nature called for along the edge of our shrinking everglades ecosystem. 600,000 square feet of office space in a river of grass would equate to something like this:
The county planner said construction outside the UDB isn’t necessary because there is enough space available inside the boundary for several decades.
Sorenson stopped her colleagues before the final vote, warning of a long fight in the courts if the state finds the county didn’t comply with growth management law. Addressing Assistant County Attorney Joni Armstrong Coffey, Sorenson asked what would happen if the county was not in compliance with state growth laws.
”We will be in litigation,” Coffey said.
Where is Norman Braman when you really need him?
Let the lawsuit begin (Note: yet another strain on the public financial capacity…)
In a time when the school district is cutting back on programs left and right because of funding shortfalls. Schools are being told that they cannot afford substitute teachers this next year and they are even considering firing some teachers and closing schools, and yet the county seems to have the money to begin the long process of fighting a court battle over bad decisions. Why not just leave the UDB in place, take the money they would have spent on the court process and invest it in either transit or schools?
Plus there is no plan for a school. Dade County schools has said several times that they don’t want or need a high school in that location (plus the schools own rules against building outside the UDB). Plus the developer isn’t even providing anything for the school but rather is offerring to sell land to the County for a school. So unless some private entity comes along and builds a private school there, there will be no school.
This is one of the stupidist things that the m-d commissioners have ever voted for. Please is there really no where else to put those buildings then outside the UDB? Do we really need a new high school? when there are plenty of county school that are under utilize. On one hearing they where say that if you planed it right you could build a Lowes inside the UDB. It would take time and good planing which some off the commissioners most likely don’t want to deal with. It will be just easier for them to put outside the UDB. But on a lighter note I do congratulate the commissioners that did reject the vote especially Mayor Alvarez for aleast trying to get his veto to go through.
Is there anyone that the common citizen can reach out to to let the commissioners know that we’re against this?
Aah, the annual UDB fight. Has no one thought of a long-term, win-win solution? Oh, Rural Land Stewardship, adopted by law or policy in many Florida counties. Farmers sell their development rights, developers move the rights to more appropriate places, and the county is actually forced to do real long-term planning to determine “receiving areas” that are corridors of higher density, transit, and infrastructure. Read:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-167419351.html
I agree with you guys 100% and I support your battle against them. Hopefully, it’s not to late to reverse their action. It’s not final yet, is it?
There are several options on the table now. Mayor Alvarez will veto the decision, but if the vote continues along the same lines (9-4) then the super-majority will override the veto. The only remaining recourse is to take the decision to court where its anyone’s ballgame. The importance of this battle lies with the precedent it sets up for the next round of UDB applications in two years. The more protracted and politically exhausting these applications become, the less likely developers will be to continue to push and politicians will be to touch the UDB issue.
“The next round of UDB applications?” Why isn’t anyone trying to stop this fight once and for all? The line is irrelevant. The real question is what will development eventually look like inside and outside the line? High denisty urban everywhere inside the line, and one house per five acres over 400 sq miles outside the line? What about planned corridors of density, infrastructure, and transit, regardless of some imaginary line? Villages like in the Dutch or English countryside? Where is the vision?!
While everyone wastes their energy fighting about a line, another year of bad development happens, both inside and outside the line. It’s like with the stupid Hometown Democracy folks: they want to cling to existing land use regulations, but what’s so great about existing land use regulations?! Most of Florida is zoned based on failed ideas. Sometimes I think “concerned citizens” like to fight about “holding the line” to distract everyone from the need to put high density TOD near their home in Coral Gables.
Kodor. I think that maybe you are confused about what hold the line really means. All of the good planning we regularly talk about still applies, and is exactly how we make the hold the line argument. We don’t need to go west if we build around transit. The hold the line argument is about how far west we want our city services to extend. and what that means to our urban centers.
Boycott Lowes