Let’s examine how it has worked and whether we have to fear unbridled growth, as some would have you believe, so they can expand the membership in their organizations and collect substantial amounts of donations throughout the United States, because most people outside this community don’t know the real facts.  

The Urban Development Boundary Line was established in 1975 and was meant as a growth management tool, which protects our County from unbridled urban sprawl that was rampant in this community in the 1970s and 1980s.  The Urban Development Boundary Line is a growth management tool to allow infrastructure such as schools, roads, water and sewer facilities, parks, fire rescue services and police services to keep pace with residential growth.   What it is not, is the Wall of China or the Berlin Wall, as some extremists have attempted to portray to the public.  

It is a flexible, evolving imaginary line or planning tool, to prevent the unbridled growth of the past.  The idea is to allow most of the larger undeveloped parcels inside the boundary to be used up with commercial and residential construction and then expanding the line to provide more inventory of vacant land that can be developed to meet the needs of the residents of this community, as well as future generations. 

The boundary also allows the infrastructure like roads, storm-water sewers, fire stations, schools, etc. to keep pace with new construction, unlike the growth that occurred in Kendall during the 1970s and 1980s.   In some areas where there may be environmentally sensitive lands and wetlands immediately outside the Urban Development Boundary, the line may never move.  It establishes procedures and standards that have to be met in order to expand development outside the previously established boundary.

The most significant growth planning legislation since the Urban Development Boundary Line was established in 1975 is Ordinance 93-131, which amended Miami Dade County’s Comprehensive Development Master Plan to require a two thirds vote of the total membership of the County Commissioners in office (9 votes) to move the Urban Development Boundary Line or to re-designate to urban use any land outside the Urban Development Boundary.  This Ordinance was adopted in November of 1993 and I supported and voted in favor of this legislation.

The significance of this legislation is the fact that in the 15 years following its adoption, the Urban Development Boundary Line had been moved only four times, with only one of these applications moving the URBAN DEVELOPMENT BOUNDARY for a residential development, which was Cropseyville Corporation at the southwest corner of Kendall Drive and SW 167th Avenue. I did not vote to support this application.

The other three applications approved by the Board of County Commissioners to move the Urban Development Boundary Line were industrial and office development and included Shoppyland Enterprises at NW 17th Street and 132 Avenue; Beacon Lakes on NW 25th Street, immediately west of the Florida Turnpike near the Dolphin Mall; and the application by the City of Hialeah to redevelop 1,000 acres West of the Turnpike at NW 170th Street.  These industrial and office developments, unlike residential developments, allow Miami-Dade County to compete with Broward County in order to attract major national and multi-national corporations that are seeking to relocate their corporate headquarters, thus creating employment opportunities for Miami-Dade’s growing population. We need to attract well paying employment opportunities in high tech industries in order to provide a future for our children and grandchildren to raise their own families in our community. 

Last week two additional commercial applications were approved and the only residential application was withdrawn by the applicant, because it would have been denied by the Board of County Commissioners.  I invite the public to drive out and look at the two parcels in question, because those who listen to the misinformation printed in the newspapers as quotes from some of the extremists would have you believe that these two applications are out in the Florida Everglades. 

The first in West Kendall is adjacent to and would share a parking lot with the Forest Lakes Shopping Center in West Kendall, immediately adjacent to a Blockbuster Video and a Super Publix Supermarket.  This land is also adjacent to a huge residential development and it would provide access to Kendall Drive to thousands of residents that would live immediately south of the parcel.  If you visit the Blockbuster Video Store, you will see kids riding their dirt bikes on this parcel.  I invite you to take a drive out and see for yourself if this seems to be environmentally sensitive land. 

The Second parcel approved last week for the Lowe’s Home Store is located on SW 8th Street and 137th Avenue, at a major intersection where we have now constructed an on and off ramp for a major expressway, State Road 836, which was extended out west to 137th Avenue just last year.  This area is known as a major activity transit node.   Half  the parcel lies inside the Urban Development Boundary Line and the other half lies on the other side of the line.  While half the parcel could be developed without moving the imaginary line, the other side of the parcel could not.  Both side of the parcels seem the same.

There is no wall dividing the two parcels, with environmentally sensitive land on one side and not the other.  In fact, the entire parcel is overrun by a nuisance melaleuca tree forest, which has drained the land dry and poses a threat to nearby sensitive lands. 

In approving the imaginary line to shift a few hundred feet west, the land can now encompass the entire parcel and also accommodate the construction of a Charter Senior High School, which will alleviate overcrowded conditions at Miami Coral Park High School, Sunset High School and many other overcrowded schools.  

According to testimony provided to the Board of County Commissioners more than a decade ago by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, former Dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture, who is widely recognized for her urban planning, the best location for nodes of employment like industrial, office and commercial development is at the Urban Development Boundary Line, because it helps contain residential development within the URBAN DEVELOPMENT BOUNDARY and at the same time it creates counter flow traffic as residents travel West to seek their goods and services and to their place of employment, which alleviates the prevailing East bound traffic congestion.

It is interesting to note that no one talks about Broward County which does not have an Urban Development Boundary Line and which has in fact allowed residential developments right up to the actual swamps.

If you examine the decade prior to this legislation and prior to the tenure of the current members of the Board of County Commissioners, you will see that between 1983 and 1993, previous County Commissions approved 28 applications to move the Urban Development Boundary Line for residential developments (many of these in Kendall) and 11 applications to move the Urban Development Boundary Line for Industrial and Office uses.

In the ten years preceding my tenure in office, the Urban Development Boundary Line was moved a whopping 39 times with many of the developments that spread zero lot line developments throughout Kendall and created the traffic congestion and poor urban planning consequences that we suffer today.  

Instead of misinforming the public, these so called environmentalists should be praising the current Board of County Commissioners for Miami Dade County (a majority of which are Black, Hispanic and Women) for strengthening our growth management tools with such measures as the requirement for a two-thirds vote of the Commissioners and for their judicious expansion of the Urban Boundary Line for a handful of commercial applications, unlike their predecessors on the Miami Dade County Board of County Commissioners or their counterparts in Broward County.  

The handful of applications that have been approved  serve the needs of the surrounding residential communities,  alleviate traffic congestion and motor vehicle emissions by reducing the need for the residents who live out west to travel east to communities like Westchester and East Kendall to find a Lumber or Home Decorating Store, a Restaurant, a Shopping Center, a Mall, etc.  This reduction in motor vehicle congestion and emissions also reduces the greenhouse effect and protects our environment.  These commercial projects also will create jobs for the residents who live out west, further reducing rush hour traffic traveling East in the Morning and West in the afternoons.  The nation is currently entering recessionary crises and we live in a community starved for employment opportunities. 

This group of environmentalists claims that although these two commercial applications really don’t have a negative effect on our community or the environment, they have to oppose them because there are thousands of residential applications lying outside the Urban Development Boundary Line waiting to come before the County. 

First, if the national recession has brought the housing and real-estate market to a screeching halt and homeowners and developers alike are unable to sell the thousands of homes currently on the market or under construction as we all know, then why do these handful of individuals continue to claim that there is an army of developers at the gate waiting to enter.  We may not see a boom in the residential real-estate market for many years, so this imaginary threat is not even based on fact. 

Furthermore, if the current members of the Board of County Commissioners, unlike their predecessors have shown a longstanding history of opposing the expansion of the Urban Development Boundary Line for the construction of residential developments contrary to the myth spread by this handful of extremists, then why in the world would the approval of these two commercial applications lead to the unbridled approval of residential applications outside the boundary line?

Examples of the intellectually dishonest accusations that you hear is that you need to push for more construction in the urban core and less commercial or residential construction in the Western areas of the County because our precious water supplies are diminishing.  Common sense tells us that building businesses or even low density single family homes out West consume less water than building high density urban centers around Dadeland Mall, around the South Dixie busway, along the Miami River, in Downtown Miami, and throughout the City of Miami.  When you have streets lined with 10 story high rise buildings containing hundreds of apartments with multiple showers, toilets, dishwashers, etc., this density is draining more water from our underground aquifer than any low density single family neighborhood, then any office building or than any retail store. 

Finally, those of us who have resided in this community for a long time know that the unbridled and haphazard development of Kendall occurred in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, when high density condominium canyons were being built up and down Kendall Drive West of the Baptist Hospital area, where you still have single family homes.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s you began seeing homes with no yards with the advent of zero lot line homes and twin homes to go along with town-houses. This is the period of time that led to the creation of the Kendall Federation of Homeowners, which under the leadership and civic activism of people like former State Representative Art Simon, Dorothy Cissel, and most recently Miles Moss were able to bring about change and halt the unbridled growth in Kendall.

In my tenure in office, we have been able to eliminate these zero lot line homes and replace them with houses that have front and back yards and green space in between other homes. We have imposed standards that require sidewalks, street lights, landscaping of streets with canopy trees, hedges to cover community perimeter walls and obstruct graffiti and other recognized standards of proper urban form.

Under my tenure in office, we have adopted legislation that require developers to pay mitigation fees for the impacts of their developments on County services like schools, roads, parks, police and other public facilities and services.  We have required that developers set aside land for schools and for parks or make a corresponding financial contribution so that the County and School Board can purchase new schools and parks.

During my tenure, we have also been creating opportunities along transit corridors for infill housing. We have provided incentives for higher density along mass transit corridors, which has the dual benefit of encouraging residents in condominiums and apartment buildings to use mass transit to commute to work and also benefits the County Transit Department by concentrating potential customers along the transit lines as these expand and grow west and north.

Mass transit works in cities where the service is a short walking distance from the customer, so we have to increase density along these transit lines, which will also reduce the pressure to expand the Urban Development Boundary Line.

I am pro-environment. When I joined the Board of County Commissioners in 1993, I was concerned with the amount of litter and debris lying along all our roads. I organized weekly volunteer clean-up outings with most of the schools in my district. I realized that most of the trash along the roads was concentrated along the bus stops, so I began purchasing litter cans using my own office funds and over the past 10 years I have installed over 400 litter cans in my district, which are maintained by my office personnel. These litter cans remove thousands of pounds of debris from our streets annually. In 1993, when I arrived I also realized that outside of Coral Gables and Miami Beach, the streets and highways in our community were barren of tree canopy and landscaping. In 1994, I persuaded then County Manager Armando Vidal to landscaped the first street in Unincorporated Miami Dade County, which was SW 87th Avenue from Flagler to Kendall Drive in my district. We also landscaped the first highway, the Palmetto Expressway from Kendall Drive to Flagler, including the median in front of Tropical Park between SR 826 and SR 874. 

Thanks to these initiatives, the face of Miami Dade County has been transformed form barren asphalt to beautifully landscaped roads and expressways.   I also re-claimed abandoned parcels of land that were overgrown with cane grass throughout my district and planted shade trees to create tree canopy. These parcels were converted into mini urban forest and adopted and maintained by nearby schools. Both these efforts have led to the re-forestation of our community, which protects our environment from the effects of vehicle emissions and also cool the earth’s surface. 

I have a strong record of supporting the environment dating back to my service in the Florida House of Representatives and the Florida Senate, where I supported growth management legislation and solid waste legislation. It is clear that I have a record of actions in support of our environment and would never place our environment at risk. I support all these environmental groups and I understand their noble mission to garner support to protect our natural treasures. However, when the cry wolf and draw attention to a non-issue in order to garner media attention, new memberships and monetary support, they hurt the environmental cause, because they leave themselves vulnerable to attack as misguided extremists.

So, it is obvious that there is disinformation and misinformation and political agendas.  What’s important is that there has to be good planning and a constant watch.  But to say don’t touch the UDB ever is to show that those who repeat that like a mantra, don’t understand the whole problem.  This line cannot be touched is to show a lack of understanding of the whole problem.  Where are the future generations going to live?  Clearly, there has to be a case by case study and firm control, but population control and controlled areas belong in totalitarian countries, not in the USA.