The proposed legislation, with immediate impact in the Grove, would allow city officials to selectively waive rules preventing noncompliant properties from entering the pipeline for zoning changes and other land-use entitlements.
The Miami City Commission is considering legislation that would allow city officials to sidestep its own rules requiring developers and property owners to resolve code compliance violations before moving forward with applications for a range of land-use changes and special permits.
Under existing rules, properties with outstanding violations, unpaid liens, or ongoing enforcement proceedings are barred from entering the city’s development review process. The proposed change would allow such properties to be part of planning efforts or entitlement applications – including those that benefit private developers – as long as the city files the paperwork.
Common code violations include structural damage to buildings, faulty wiring or fire suppression systems, illegal signage and fencing, unkempt properties, and repairs or additions without required permitting.
In addition to zoning changes, the new law would allow development applications to move forward on Major Use Special Permits, Special Area Plans, Future Land Use Map changes and more routine land-use requests such as waivers and warrants.
While the new rules do not alter the requirement that code violations must be resolved before new building permits are issued, it removes a hurdle that city planners say is a needless hindrance to zoning and other land-use changes.
“I literally have every commissioner asking me to do these [zoning-change] plans and to look at them and to study them and come back with suggestions,” City of Miami Assistant Planning Director Sevanne Steiner told the city’s Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board (PZAB) last month in support of the new law.
Sevanne added that “four areas or several blocks within the West Grove” are among the areas that city planning staff have been asked to consider for land-use changes. “This would allow applications that are sponsored by the city to move forward,” she said.
A city spokesperson declined a Spotlight request to make city officials available to answer questions about the proposal, but confirmed that two areas in West Grove would be immediately impacted by the measure, including an assemblage of lots near the intersection Grand Avenue and 37th Avenue, the site of a proposed mixed-use project called 3710 Grove Landing. Another affected assemblage in the zoning-change pipeline, city officials say, is a stretch of Mundy Street north of Day Avenue.
The city commission will vote on the changes at its May 22 meeting.
The amendment is not without critics. Former Miami District 2 City Commissioner Ken Russell, a candidate for city mayor this November, sees the proposed changes as a badly misguided effort to help developers sidestep what he calls a code compliance “quagmire” of the city’s own making.
“If the system is preventing properties from addressing violations and moving forward with applications, start by fixing the system,” he says, calling the proposed changes a “really clumsy, clunky way to solve a problem that they could fix administratively.”
Russell says the new law would undermine the very purpose of code compliance – correcting life-safety, nuisance, and other code violations – by creating a city-sponsored, politically-infused class of exempted properties.
PZAB member Paul Mann expressed a similar concern, telling Steiner during the board’s meeting last month that the new law might discourage compliance by offering property owners – especially prospective buyers – a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card.
“On the face of it, it looks like an absolution of sins,” observed Mann. District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo declined to speak with a Spotlight reporter about the proposed law, referring all questions to the City Manager’s Office. City Manager Art Noreiga did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The City wants to pass a law to give itself special privileges and the ability to favor its chosen developers.
Why am I not surprised?
Kudos to the Spotlight for reporting on this “tweaking” of our zoning code that could have major consequences depending on where and how it is applied once the Commission passes it into law. Russell’s analysis was spot-on, as was PZAB member Paul Mann’s.
It’s a version of “special favors for special people” that is a primary criticism of some up-zonings approved by the City Commission, except this time the “special people” is the City itself. The City has a valid point, that major projects should not be held up by code violations that will be forgiven and forgotten once the bulldozers arrive.
On the other hand, there’s that old adage “Haste makes waste” advising us to go slowly and carefully. These two opposing viewpoints should make for an interesting public discussion at Commission Meeting, unless this proposed legislation passes without any discussion at all.
This is insanity — Grove residents want developers held accountable, not given a mechanism to move ahead despite violations.
Commissioner Pardo should take a lead from Former-Commissioner Russell – oppose this change, and stand up for his constituents’ rights, neighborhoods, and quality of life. 👍