BOUNDARIES OF STUDY AREA
The issue Collier had been called in to address was the issue of boundaries: many of the "NO to incorporation" people live in the condominiums in the SW part of the study area (the study area map was posted way back in the first post here). At a 2013 meeting, MAC member Rochelle Matza had suggested a change to the boundaries to exclude those areas. The MAC was told this was not possible, until it was discovered that the current county laws have NO prohibition against "creating an enclave," at which point the MAC asked for a legal interpretation.
The thinking was: if the condo-owners were "excused" from deliberation within a new city, they would stop the lawn signs, distributing leaflets and worrying about their future in general. This would allow the homeowners (who have a whole different set of concerns, crime and safety being #1), to consider the issue without all the theatrics and distractions.
Collier said that although there is currently no LAW against creation of an enclave, there are GUIDELINES (and also a proposed law), that would have the effect of not allowing the MAC to sever off the condominiums. Also the Planning and Advisory Board ("PAB"), and/or the Board of County Commissioners ("BCC"), would probably not allow the exclusion, since the condos (while not necessarily an "enclave") would at the very least be difficult to service.
Also, it was pointed out that if the condos were excluded, many revenues the new city would depend on (which are per-capita based) would be diminished to the point where the "new city" may not be financially viable.
MITIGATION
The issue of mitigation and its central importance to the creation of a new city is discussed in the April 12 post here. Here is where a MAC member really got into a cross-examination of both the County Attorney and Office of Management and Budget representative Jorge Fernandez.
It was noted that the most recent incorporations (new cities) were the cities of Doral, Palmetto Bay and Miami Lakes. Each of those cities was nailed with a 1 mill "mitigation payment" that was paid to Miami Dade County, and might have been paid to the County forever, if extraordinary actions, including a County task force and a lawsuit, hadn't put them to an end. To give an example of how mitigation worked: Doral was paying $5.546M in 2006, with annual CPI increases for inflation: that's over $23 million in total, paid to the County, in return for very little.
If our area had succeeded in 2004/2005 in creating a new city, we too would have been assigned a 1 mill mitigation fee [source: PAB Report, quoted in the April 12 post - hey, I told you to go read that post!]. And if so, we would have likely been involved in litigation just like Miami Lakes, Doral and Palmetto Bay to make it go away, and after 7 years of paying about $800,000, we would just be emerging from that heavy financial weight in 2011. So perhaps it was a good thing we didn't succeed....
... Or was it. The hope was that by now, after recommendations by both the County Mayor and the County "Annexation and Incorporation Task Force," that mitigation would be off the books, but as noted in the April 12 post, mitigation is still on the books. So in that sense there's been NO progress. A new city WILL likely have to make a mitigation payment, but the question is: how much and for how long?
This was the question posed, several times and in several ways, by MAC member Robson, but no answers were forthcoming - the answer was "we don't know what the PAB and BCC will decide is an appropriate millage rate, and we won't know it until after the MAC decides whether to put the issue to a vote." That stinks. If the 2004/05 is a precedent, we should at least have the answer before voters go to the polls, but that's no help to the MAC.
I would suggest to the MAC that a solution may lie in making a contingent recommendation: in its report, the MAC could say "we support a vote on a new city, but only if the PAB does not assess a mitigation payment" or "... only if the PAB does not assess a mitigation fee greater than '0.X' mills, and for no longer than 'Y' years" Just a thought.
"NEW CITY" BUDGET:
Because the decision to create a new city is largely a financial decision, budget was as usual a major part of the meeting. The newest version is below:
The big question, asked at the MAC meeting, is: if the major reason to form a new city is to "retain tax dollars and put them to work locally", then "where's the beef?" (since the above shows a balanced budget). The answer, from MAC member Glenn Gopman, is that the benefits are spread across the various "expenditure" items - for example, more money is budgeted for "Public Works" than is currently spent by the county.
To see if this is so, a side-by-side comparison with a budget delivered by the County in 2013 is required, and this will be done in a future post (because this one is already running a little long).
Next MAC meeting scheduled for May 22nd.
