County Comission Meeting 2/27, PART 1: "No Direction"

At the January 30th meeting of the NE Municipal Advisory Committee (the "MAC"), much emphasis was placed on a February 27th meeting of the full Board of County Comissioners (the "BCC") to discuss issues related to Annexation and Incorporation.  The BCC meeting was so central to the MAC's discussions, in fact, that the MAC decided to have no meeting in February, to await guidance from the county.

Guidance on what?  
As discussed in earlier posts, our area is at a standstill because of the "poison pill" to incorporation (mitigation) which is a huge financial obstacle, and the "poison pills" to annexation (utility revenues, franchise revenues, and mitigation).  The expectation was that some direction would be given, which would (i) give Aventura the necessary tools to conduct a 2014 update to its feasibility study on annexation, and (ii) allowing the MAC to properly construct a budget for incorporation.

The meeting was promoted heavily enough to generate some coverage from the local rag (Miami Herald), who had completely ignored earlier meetings of the issues, and the hearings of the Annexation and Incorporation Task Force.
The story is viewable here.  And for you seriously die-hard followers, the entire 5-hour meeting was recorded, and viewable here.


The agenda was only made available the night before the meeting, and it really is worth a read.  You can find it here, and of the 11 special items on the agenda, none of them addressed the "poison pills", and only 4 of them were ultimately even voted on.


The most notable development was therefore the BCC kicking the ball back to the Mayor.  So here is a summary of all the recent events:

• April 1, 2013: Mayor drafts memo urging elimination of "poison pills"
• Summer, 2013: AITF meets and also recommends eliminating "poison pills"
• Fall, 2013: AITF discredited due to corrupt members (indicted Mayors)
• March 27, 2014: BCC asks Mayor for another report, due in 90 days.

There was a lot of frustration from the audience who came in numbers to protest specific actions related to their specific areas.  The "red shirt" brigade from "West of Aventura" was out in full force, and as you can see in the video link, many of them had their say on the evils being planned and committed.


So Mayor Gimenez will have under 3 months to report and recommend on several key items, including (i) whether additional unincorporated areas should be considered "areas of significance" that should remain in County hands; (ii) whether the area outside the "urban development boundary" should similarly remain in County hands; (iii) whether the BCC should further strengthen policies preferring annexation to incorporation; (iv) whether police and fire services should be considered regional in nature and remain at the county level when new cities are created and (v) whether existing County debt would be affected by additional annexations/incorporations.


The language promoting annexation over incorporation is interesting.  As noted in a prior post, there are 34 municipalities within MDC already.  As the Skylake HOA noted, 17 of those villages have a smaller population then the 18,000 "West of Aventura."   Just open a road atlas and you can see what a patchwork mess MDC has become: 34 tiny kingdoms, each with its own king or queen, and sheriff. Perhaps the BCC recognizes a need to promote sensible annexations over yet more hamlets, since the number could easily exceed 50 municipalities in MDC the way things are going.


So: the first resolution passed at the 2/27 meeting of the BCC was to have the Mayor prepare a report in 90 days.


The second resolution was to create an annexation/incorporation website, to be launched in 60 days.  No controversy there.  In fact, I thought it already existed at: http://www.miamidade.gov/managementandbudget/incorporation-annexation.asp


The 3rd item passed was 
"ORDINANCE PERTAINING TO BOUNDARY CHANGE AND INCORPORATION PROCEDURES; AMENDING SECTIONS 20-6 AND 20-22 OF THE CODE OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA TO DELETE REQUIREMENT FOR REVIEW AND RECOMMENDATION BY A COMMITTEE OF THE PLANNING ADVISORY BOARD FOR PURPOSES OF MAKING A COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION TO THE FULL PLANNING ADVISORY BOARD ON PROPOSED ANNEXATIONS AND INCORPORATIONS; PROVIDING SEVERABILITY, INCLUSION IN THE CODE, AND AN EFFECTIVE DATE."

This basically eliminates a duplicative process, since the full Planning Advisory Board still reviews, but now does it as a full board, and not first by a committee.  

The remaining special items on the agenda, about 7 of them, were deferred (the hope being that the Mayor would address them in his report).  

The next post will discusses the items that were NOT voted on.  Spoiler alert: Annexation with Aventura is almost shot down in flames.