Never mind what Mayor Carlos Gimenez promised. As the Herald reports, there is no precise place for the location of the massive SR 836 extension into the wetlands, last remaining farmland, and open space of Miami-Dade. Yet, tomorrow the Miami-Dade county commission may give this black hole its blessing to move forward.
How did it happen that the county commission is set to a final vote, tomorrow, on a plan for a roadway whose precise location no one has seen?
Before answering, rest assured that MDX and its spokespersons and advocates have covered their bases well; they've done the bare minimum (with costly powerpoint studies and robo calls to Kendall residents) to plausibly claim the time for voting is now.
But, as any citizen who pays attention to civic affairs, the devil is always in the detail and when the detail goes AWOL, you don't have to stray far from the story-line of our political status quo.
Here is the rub: once upon a time, before the governorship of Rick Scott, there was a state planning agency whose legitimate and important purpose was to reconcile economic growth with laws to protect the environment. The big builders, big agriculture, Florida's utilities all despised the Florida Department of Community Affairs. They claimed it represented "burdensome regulation", a "drag on growth and jobs". DCA, over time, rotted from within; dominated by special interests.
For many years, both political parties took pot shots at the Department, staffed by top ranked planners who did their level best to protect the agency's mandate.
Gov. Rick Scott and the Republicans, though, finished the job started by earlier leadership including Lawton Chiles in the 1980's: he killed the one state agency whose mission was to dive into the details where the devil lives.
So there is no state agency, today, with the budget, staff and power to counter Miami-Dade's transportation plan, including the extension of SR 836 into the last developable private property in the county. There is nothing new in politics following cash, but the vote on the extension of SR 836 shows what happens, exactly, when there is no countervailing force of common sense and expertise.
The death of DCA (it exists as a shell of its former self, advisory and in name only) allowed Florida's counties free reign so long as they generally adhered to growth plans approved by the state. To informed civic observers, this did not bode well and it hasn't. Jockeying by the lobbyist class delivered the shipwreck that DCA meant to protect taxpayers from.
The political status quo in Miami-Dade pats itself on the back for digging a very deep hole for taxpayers in respect to transit deficits. Many of the incumbent county commissioners are part of the Unreformable Majority that Eye On Miami has ranted about, for more than a decade.
Unless the county commission votes, tomorrow, to defer pending further study and evaluation, it will have just dug that hole a lot deeper for every resident and visitor; everyone except rock miners, property owners, and land speculators at the proposed new highway's exit and entrance ramps.
How did it happen that the county commission is set to a final vote, tomorrow, on a plan for a roadway whose precise location no one has seen?
Before answering, rest assured that MDX and its spokespersons and advocates have covered their bases well; they've done the bare minimum (with costly powerpoint studies and robo calls to Kendall residents) to plausibly claim the time for voting is now.
But, as any citizen who pays attention to civic affairs, the devil is always in the detail and when the detail goes AWOL, you don't have to stray far from the story-line of our political status quo.
Here is the rub: once upon a time, before the governorship of Rick Scott, there was a state planning agency whose legitimate and important purpose was to reconcile economic growth with laws to protect the environment. The big builders, big agriculture, Florida's utilities all despised the Florida Department of Community Affairs. They claimed it represented "burdensome regulation", a "drag on growth and jobs". DCA, over time, rotted from within; dominated by special interests.
For many years, both political parties took pot shots at the Department, staffed by top ranked planners who did their level best to protect the agency's mandate.
Gov. Rick Scott and the Republicans, though, finished the job started by earlier leadership including Lawton Chiles in the 1980's: he killed the one state agency whose mission was to dive into the details where the devil lives.
So there is no state agency, today, with the budget, staff and power to counter Miami-Dade's transportation plan, including the extension of SR 836 into the last developable private property in the county. There is nothing new in politics following cash, but the vote on the extension of SR 836 shows what happens, exactly, when there is no countervailing force of common sense and expertise.
The death of DCA (it exists as a shell of its former self, advisory and in name only) allowed Florida's counties free reign so long as they generally adhered to growth plans approved by the state. To informed civic observers, this did not bode well and it hasn't. Jockeying by the lobbyist class delivered the shipwreck that DCA meant to protect taxpayers from.
The political status quo in Miami-Dade pats itself on the back for digging a very deep hole for taxpayers in respect to transit deficits. Many of the incumbent county commissioners are part of the Unreformable Majority that Eye On Miami has ranted about, for more than a decade.
Unless the county commission votes, tomorrow, to defer pending further study and evaluation, it will have just dug that hole a lot deeper for every resident and visitor; everyone except rock miners, property owners, and land speculators at the proposed new highway's exit and entrance ramps.
