June 7, 2008
With a stealth normally reserved for military maneuvers, the Facilities Planning staff of Miami-Dade Public Schools began work on a clandestine operation in February 2006. Dubbed “HHH1”, the project aimed to wedge a potentially controversial 2,000 student high school in the middle of a quiet, rural subdivision. Under a cloak of darkness, the department quietly labored to find suitable acreage, draft site designs, and invoke the use of eminent domain to condemn the requisite property—all without alerting nearby communities nor seeking public input. So efficient was this campaign, residents only learned of the project two years later, when bulldozers appeared this past April to begin clearing a nearby forty-acre farm. The former agricultural field is now secured behind a chain link fence with signage that advises would-be trespassers to avoid stepping foot on Miami-Dade School’s newest conquest.
The need for such discretion is certainly understandable. Only last month, the chambers of the Miami-Dade County Commission became a pivotal battleground between builders seeking continued westward development and those advocating sensible growth. At issue were several proposed exemptions to allow for development west of the Urban Development Boundary (UDB), in violation of policies set forth in the county’s Comprehensive Development Master Plan (CDMP). Such proposals inevitably raise the ire of many, who correctly view such transgressions as blatant kowtows to influential development interests. Because the proposed location for HHH1 also violates the UDB, Miami-Dade Schools certainly had reason to keep their actions to themselves.
The county’s growth plan sets forth policies regarding allowed development both east and west of the line and clearly stipulates that high schools are not to be built within one mile of the UDB. The rationale is simple: improvements in infrastructure and public services in close proximity to the boundary provide incentive and enticement for continued western development. The boundaries of HHH1, as well as the signalization, roads and lighting that will accompany the project, lie wholly within this designated buffer. Operational transparency and public comment would have certainly exposed such concerns, so strategists in the Facilities Planning Office had little recourse but to avoid the limelight.
Requisite public notification was buried in miniscule classified advertisements in area newspapers or published boldly in obscure local periodicals. Zoning notifications were nonexistent. Community groups and leaders were not contacted. Though recently propagandized as a “community benefit”, Miami-Dade Schools clearly failed to acknowledge that residents are the ones best equipped to decide what might truly benefit their community.
To the contrary, evidence continues to mount that the Facilities Planning Office breeds little regard for those in the path of their perverse “manifest destiny”. Administrative Director Fernando Albuerne proclaimed proudly at a recent public hearing on the project that his office was under no obligation to notify the public of their activities. Following a meeting of the Miami-Dade School Board in April, Planning Officer Ana Rijo-Conde insisted little interest on the part of the public resulted from the apathy and indifference of the community, not her failure to publicize the project. And a recent letter from Chief Facilities Officer Jaime Torrens underscores the department’s prevailing attitude that the office is free to flout policies set forth by the county in response to Florida statute. Such attitudes smack of a department lacking sufficient oversight and clearly of the opinion that they remain well above the law.
The shadowy practices of this sorely misguided public agency have now left us at a most unfortunate impasse. The Facilities Planning Gestapo has been allowed to wrest private property from owners through the heinous use of eminent domain. Considerable time and money have been spent designing a project that the local community has vocally opposed. Most importantly, the project would literally pave the way for massive growth to the west through its violation of the UDB, a proposition in no one’s best interest.
Lennar continues to seek an exemption to the CDMP to construct Parkland, a community boasting over 6,000 homes on nearly 1,000 acres just one and a half miles north of the proposed site for HHH1. Last month, County Commissioners approved a similar exemption for the construction of a new Lowes largely on a promise from the home improvement giant that a new high school would be built. At its present location, HHH1 would serve as a shiny new enticement to approve Lennar’s outrageous request.
Facilities Planning has drawn a line in the sand, behind which they’ve entrenched themselves in their commitment to seize whatever property they wish, steamroll whatever projects they see fit, and perform the bare minimum in the name of public engagement. On the other side of that line, stand those individuals who demand accountability from their publicly funded agencies and call for adherence to sensible growth policies. To that end, HHH1 must be moved from its proposed location to an alternate site in strict consultation with the communities it is meant to serve. It is incumbent on the Miami-Dade School Board and Superintendent Rudy Crew to reign in this rogue department and impart to its officers a badly-needed lesson in public service.
