Wetlands veto battle gets bogged down in blame game

After a veto by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava of a county vote that would have allowed development in the wetlands, commissioners last week debated the procedures of the battle, chalked up the fight to their own political interests, and voted to reconsider the issue in March.

Commissioners said the would-be developer outside the Urban Development Boundary, Kelly Tractor, had made concessions that included additional onsite wetlands preservation that could be worked out with the administration before the March vote.

“This is a Solomonic solution to allow the staff and the administration to deal with the issues that some of my colleagues brought up so eloquently,” said Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez, who is supporting efforts by Kelly to build a headquarters near State Road 836 in an area that now bars development.

“I appreciate that additional concessions are being offered,” replied Mayor Levine Cava. “I have not been presented those. Nobody has approached me to say, ‘This is what we’re offering in consideration of the points you have raised.”

Commissioners had originally approved by a 9-2 vote the Kelly development that the mayor then vetoed. Rather than try to override her veto last week, the commission voted to move the matter ahead to a March reconsideration.

The mayor asked for more than a few weeks to work out the issues.

“I need time to consider what is being proffered,” she said. “We’re talking a month. This is a project that would be over a decade. This is not a short-term project. I think it’s appropriate to allow me and the community and concerned citizens and businesspeople and everybody to see what is being proffered.”

“I don’t think a month is enough time,” echoed Commissioner Raquel Regalado, who had initially voted for Kelly’s application but reversed herself before the meeting to support the mayor’s position, making it more likely that the veto might be sustained if it came to a vote.

But one month is enough to consider crossing the Urban Development Boundary, Mr. Bermudez said, adding that “it was never meant to be a permanent line.”

The line’s permanence is being tested right now in Tallahassee, noted Commissioner Vicki Lopez, pointing to legislation by Rep. David Borrero of Hialeah that could eradicate the wetlands boundary line, which does not exist in either Broward or Palm Beach counties.

“Let me tell you something,” she said. “There’s a bill, unfortunately, moving through the process in Tallahassee that says we will not be able to do anything that is more strict than what the state says.”

Two days after that commission meeting, that House bill advanced, moving to the agenda of the State Affairs Committee. The bill as it stands would ask the state’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability to study the effects of removing the Urban Development Boundary “or similar boundaries in Miami-Dade County and other counties.” That report would be due Dec. 1.

The commission debate bogged down in what procedure should have used to seek to build across the boundary line. Kelly used what’s known as a text amendment, which opponents – including the mayor – said was the wrong way to go about it.

“It didn’t follow the proper process to allow us to do the full evaluation because of the text amendment,” the mayor said.

Proponents said the county itself had advised Kelly to take that path, with an unnamed county official giving Kelly advice to proceed along that route. County officials said they knew nothing about the advice and that they couldn’t find such an employee.

Chief Utilities and Regulatory Services Officer Roy Coley said he had gone through all the staff and couldn’t find anyone who said it.

Commissioner Oliver Gilbert III expressed strong doubts about that query.

“If I were someone who’s working in a cubicle right now and I admitted that I told them to do this text amendment, there’s a certainty that their job – they would be, like, ‘Oh, man.’ Nobody’s going to admit to this right now because we’re talking about it at a county commission meeting. No one’s going to admit to telling them about a text amendment,” Mr. Gilbert said. “It’s pretty clear that they [Kelly] didn’t go down this road – I’m going to spend these hundreds of thousands of dollars – just because. That didn’t happen.”

“I don’t think as a board we should enter a staff witch hunt” to find out, Ms. Regalado said.

“You definitely knew from the beginning that all of this was not done properly,” Ms. Lopez said, “and I don’t know about who told who and I agree he said, she said, we’re not going to get to that. I agree, no one’s even going to admit to it. But, again, it was a judgment call … probably not a good one.”

“I do think that this process brought up more questions than answers in a lot of ways,” said Commissioner Micky Steinberg.

Chairman Anthony Rodriguez looked at the issue practically: “We’re going around in circles and in the end we all need to vote our conscience or what favors us politically on this board.”

Said Commissioner René García, “It’s politics. It is what it is.”