To the Editor:
Substitution ordinances – changing legislative language prior to a binding commission vote, as described in a recent Spotlight story – are a major problem because they undermine the public’s trust in a City administration that is already very short of that.
The citizenry needs to believe their government officials have the public’s welfare as their first concern, and not their own re-elections when voter turn-out in local elections averages less than 15% and campaign funding comes largely from development interests. “Minor tweaks” to Miami 21’s zoning ordinance are always suspect when they happen without adequate notice to the public.
What are possible solutions to this Achilles Heel of representative democracy?
Let’s first look at Commission meetings. Citizens get 2-minutes each to give their opinions (provided their “item” hasn’t been deferred at the last moment) and the “public comment” portion of the meeting can last 4 hours as it has recently with major zoning changes happening. With lunch breaks lasting often until 3 p.m., that doesn’t leave enough time for the commissioners to do “the business” on the agenda. Result: mass approvals of items lumped together by staff. That doesn’t help the public’s trust.
One solution would be to empower the three most important citizen boards – the Planning Zoning and Appeals Board (PZAB), the Historic and Environmental Preservation Board (HEPB), and the Urban Development Review Board (UDRB), to do more than make “recommendations” to the City Commission. In other words, to delegate to these boards more of the responsibility to listen and be accountable to the public, even though their members are appointed by commissioners and the mayor.
How could this be done without undermining representative democracy?
Answer: By making these board votes harder to override at Commission. For example, let’s say PZAB votes 8-3 to deny a proposed zoning change. That recommendation of denial then goes to Commission. To override it, the Commission would either have to have a super-majority vote, or defer the item.
The public’s voice is louder, trust in government is enhanced, and citywide administration is more efficient, all by further empowering the citizen boards to listen to the public as envisioned by the City Charter.
Commissioners would be required to vote on the legislation exactly as it was voted upon at the board hearing, unless openly amended at Commission. No “general purpose” substitutions allowed, unless done in the Sunshine.
Unfortunately, this writer believes the chance of this change being approved by this Commission are Slim and None, and Slim just left town. Which is why this writer also believes we need to change the City Charter to have nine Commission Districts instead of the current five, and that is a whole ‘nother subject.
Andy Parrish
Coconut Grove
I couldn’t agree with you more, Andy, especially on the nine Commissioners. I’ve also seen the lobbying for developers from the dais from citizen boards. Developers control almost every governmental board in Florida now, including the Florida Wildlife Commission. It’s really gotten out of hand. I predict Florida is about to go the way of China, which is now entering their fifth year of a housing market free-fall when their development shell-game started to fall apart. This level of development is unsustainable for our ecosystem and for our municipal budgets. And now we want to give developers tax breaks and FAR and height variances if they promise to build 40% off a building as ‘affordable’, which an 80-120% of a $90k AMI qualifies for! It’s utterly preposterous. And then this city government has the gall to tell us we can’t afford historic preservation. Their priorities are so out of whack. I swear, they’re hypnotized by wealth and celebrity.