Miami Commission Turns Its Back on Citizens

The Miami City Commission has lost sight of its responsibilities to its citizens - ALL of them.

Commissioner Marc Sarnoff's incredibly bad proposal is this; to combat the problem of feeding the homeless of Miami, make it illegal to feed them. Instead of helping voters and taxpayers help the less fortunate, he's chosen to punish them. And that is not the purpose of government.

The intent of the ordinance is to stop various independent charitable groups from picking random locations around the city to do what the city is failing to do itself; prevent homeless people from starving on our city streets.

From Miami Today News:

The proposed ordinance would require anyone who wants to feed the homeless to get a license, and would also mandate how the food is to be handled, that trash will be removed, and that portable bathrooms will be available.

Next month I expect the county commission to take on those frickin' Boy Scouts who help old ladies cross the street. How dare anyone try to help others! There are paramedics relying on scraping grandma off the street to earn a paycheck.

That's not to say that there isn't a problem being created by the way groups feed the homeless at random spots around the city; there is. But criminalizing good deeds is not a reasonable approach to the problem. As the New Times points out, the commission's actions reduces the status of homeless people to that of pigeons.

Who cares about human decency and hunger if it gets in the way of pretty sidewalks, right?
-- Miami New Times/ Riptide

To be fair, the city has setup some shelters; there are just not enough of them. And with a flagging economy and slashed budgets, that's not going to change anytime soon. The commission should be praising these groups for stepping up to take up the slack, not turning them into criminals.

So instead of trying to arrest people who are doing the right thing the wrong way, the city should build help them partnerships to solve the actual problems.

Obviously, there are groups willing to FEED the homeless, but this is resulting in trash, and according to Marc Sarnoff, public defecation. Let's create sites near where these activities are taking place, and put in the necessary support systems. Get someone to underwrite the costs of port-a-johns, and someone else to underwrite the costs of garbage collections. The commission needs to be PRO-active, not RE-active.

The Miami Commission, and Marc Sarnoff, appears to have forgotten that they are elected to serve the public, not to hinder them.

The sad part is that these kinds of ordinances are overturned with some regularity; the city could choose to provide a small amount of funding instead of spending millions defending against a civil rights suit. But I guess it's not their money, why should they be expected to spend it responsibly just because we elected them to do just that?

Who Spent the Money? Souto Did. Moss Did.

Where did all the money from the 1/2 cent tax go? It was supposed to expand mass transit.

But now we're facing budget cuts and routes being shut down.

SOUTO TOSSES MONEY DOWN THE TOILET

One of those routes is Route 82. It wasn't added as the result of studies showing it was needed. It wasn't the result of taxpayers clamoring for service along that corridor.

No, Javier Souto demanded the route. When the transit authority tried to close down the money-wasting route, Souto stopped them.

''They're killing bus routes!'' said Souto, who voted against the sales tax in 2002. "That's not what the people voted for! If you expand, you don't kill what you have. You expand.''
-- Miami Herald

I just want to make sure you understand this: Souto didn't want to pay for the expansion in the first place, and then demanded the addition of a route that didn't service the community. And when it was discovered that no one was riding this route, he overrode a decision to axe it.

So we've spent $1,080 a day for the last two years, servicing about 35 riders at a cost per passenger of $30. That's 13 times what's spent elsewhere around the county. That's your money, wasted by order of Javier Souto.

The problem with Miami-Dade County is the Miami-Dade County Commission. They micro-manage. They interfere. The spend your money like drunken sailors on leave. They bicker. They demand. They spend more money.

Mr. Souto, we didn't ask for random expansion; that's stupid. We want better service. We want routes that get us from where we are to where we want to go. You don't do that by dictating a bus "here" or "there." And if you're too stupid to see that, you're too stupid to sit on the Commission. Take a hike.

RUNNING ROUGHSHOD OVER THE LAW.

But while Souto thoughtlessly threw your money away, Commissioner Dennis Moss demanded that the Transit Authority violate county law. He forced through a bus line to a trailer park outside the Urban Development Boundary. The County had established that bus service would only be available inside the Boundary.

"These are working-class people out there saying, 'You passed this tax. You're running service, 24-hour service, all over the county. Where's our service? How about us?'"'
-- Miami Herald

How about you? You chose to live outside the UDB. You could have chosen to live inside it. Even I don't think we should run buses everywhere. That's crazy.

But in spite of Ross's claim that there was demand, these working-class people never rode the bus. An empty bus would make the trip every 20 minutes. Way to go, Dennis. We could have done something useful with that money, but you threw it way. $2000 a day, for over a year, gone forever.


Tired of your money disappearing? Tired of waste? Don't return anyone to the Miami Dade County Commission. Time to start from scratch.

Could we really do any worse?

On Political Power, Clout, and Compromise

When George Herbert Walker Bush was running for President, he made a promise that swept him into office:

“

And I'm the one who will not raise taxes. My opponent now says he'll raise them as a last resort, or a third resort. But when a politician talks like that, you know that's one resort he'll be checking into. My opponent, my opponent won't rule out raising taxes. But I will. And the Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say, to them, ‘Read my lips: no new taxes.’

”

Of course, he did sign the largest tax increase in US history up to that time. It cost him much support during his administration, and utterly destroyed any chance at a second term in office.

Arguments have been made that he had to sign the bill into law in order to hold onto his political clout; after all, it was clear that Congress had the votes to override a veto. Presidents whose veto gets overridden, we are told, loses political power.

But the man made a promise, and the bottom line is he broke his promise. And people who break promises don't deserve any support from anybody.

Why am I bringing this up? Isn't this water under the bridge? No, not in light of recent events.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez made a promise to the people of Miami-Dade County. He promised that he would fight urban sprawl and stand against the corruption of out-of-control developers. And he faced his greatest test so far with the incredibly stupid request to move the UDB (Urban Development Boundary) farther west.

Despite the fact that State and County regulatory agencies recommended against the move, and a lack of support in the community, the clowns in our county commission voted to do it anyway. Alvarez warned that he would veto the move, and the overwhelming majority of jackals on the commission retorted that they would overrided.

They voted for the move. Alvarez vetoed it, and the Commission, unfettered by intelligence, common sense, or decency, overturned it.

Some might argue that this cost Alvarez some political capital; they would be wrong. The fact that Alvarez kept his word knowing that he would ultimately lose the battle only underscores the strength of his integrity and the courage of his convictions. When you give your word unequivocally, you can not compromise.

Plus, when the Commission is forced to spend tens of millions of dollars defending the lawsuits that are being filed as I write this, the guy who tried to stop them is going to be the one standing on the moral high ground.

Mayor Alvarez is absolutely correct when says that this defeat is Miami-Dade County's. And as long as Joe Martinez, Natacha Seijas, Audrey Edmonson, Rebeca Sosa, Dorrin Rolle, Bruno Barreiro, Barbara Jordan and Javier Souto continue to sit on the Commission, we will continue to be the losers.

Lowe's and the Miami-Dade Commission Fuck Us Over.

That's right. Lowe's and the Miami-Dade County Commission decided that access to paint and pesticides is more important than your drinking water.

In the coming years, as the cost of our drinking water skyrockets and half the plants and the animal species in the Everglade dissappear forever, remember that the loss was gifted to you by Lowe's and the following morally bankrupt commissioners:

Joe Martinez, Natacha Seijas, Audrey Edmonson, Rebeca Sosa, Dorrin Rolle, Bruno Barreiro, Barbara Jordan and Javier Souto.

Not one regulatory supported this decision, and most spoke out against it; it's bad for the environment, it's bad for our drinking water supply, it's bad for traffic, it's bad for the tax base, it's simply bad.

Can anyone seriously doubt that these nine scumbags weren't paid off? I hope someone's probing their financial records; we deserve to know what our future sold for.