We've spoken before in this blog about the Village Codes (well, Gary Kuhl and Sira Ramos have spoken about them), and we're about to do it again. We're having some "issues" about the Codes.
There is one main purpose of municipal codes. They are to restrict what people can do. Without codes, anyone can do whatever he or she wants. And there are two reasons to restrict people's choices. One is to ensure stability of structures. If you need a reason that a municipality should have a say in how stable your house is, it's so your house doesn't blow apart or fall apart, into your neighbor's house. The other reason to restrict choices is to create and uphold a style and a standard for how a neighborhood looks. What's the reason a municipality should have that kind of prerogative over your private property? Because. You live among other people, in a shared place, and many such places have decided long ago that it's fair for you and your neighbors not to disturb each others' senses of place too much. And to make you feel better about BP, in some places, you can't distinguish your property at all. My ex-mother-in-law lives in a development where I have to remember her address, because I would never be able to find her house by looking. They are all identical. Even here, some decades ago, but within the residency of some people who live here now, all the houses were white, except those which were faintly off-white. Well, times have changed, but you still can't simply do whatever you want with your property. There are some color schemes you don't like, and the occasional zero lot line monstrosity which totally disrespects the concept of setbacks, but by and large we respect each other.
In fact, the whole neighborhood has a kind of theme and style to it. As a frame of reference, not only was it this way when each of us chose to live in Biscayne Park, but in many cases, it's the primary reason we chose to live here. We're essentially all residential, we have very few apartment buildings, and we have nothing greater than two stories. That's all in our Code. Also in the Code is that no one can have a fence in the front yard (though there are several or many that were approved somewhat informally decades ago, and now there are slightly looser provisions in the updated Code), and no one can have a metal roof. Even those metal roofs that look like concrete or terra cotta flat or barrel tile are not permitted. I personally worked hard to get that restriction lifted, but those who make decisions wanted it the way we have it. So it remains. The Code requires a level of maintenance of property. Right, your private property cannot be kept any way you want to keep it, whether you just like it unkempt, or you don't care, or you can't afford to keep it better. It's part of the price you pay for living in a municipality, instead of living in an unincorporated place out in the middle of the state somewhere.
As I said in the "Planning and Zoning" post, there's a balance to achieve in crafting and enforcing codes. In a neighborhood like ours, we want a standard of physical decorum, to keep a level of charm and style (let's call it class, for purpose of discussion). But we also acknowledge that people have different personal styles and preferences, and we want to accommodate a degree of individuality, too. Those are the finer points, and it wasn't my intention to dissect them too much in this post. What I do want to address are the larger themes.
Had it not been for a change in the Village Code, we would not have approved a school of any kind in the Church of the Resurrection. But our planners told us (some believe they were either mistaken or manipulative when they told it to us) we were required by the State to permit a school here, and the current Commission agreed to approve a facility of a limited type. Depending on what kind of facility the operators of the school decide to install, this addition creates a potentially significant change in the Park. Some feel the change is for the better, and some feel it's for the worse, but most agree it's a significant change. And it depended on changing the Code.
Some of us are now considering the idea of annexing an unincorporated area east of the railroad track, from about 122nd Street to about 117th Street. Most of this area is now commercial, though there are about 1000 residents, almost all renters, and there is a development that will house about 400 more, also renters. The idea, for those who favor it, is to increase tax revenues. I would say increase revenues to the Village, but with annexation, that area becomes the Village, too. It's no longer the Village as we know it. It's this plus that. It's no longer a municipality that has no commerce. It's no longer a municipality that is 70-80% homeowners. It's no longer a municipality that exists physically within a discrete upside down triangle bordered by 121st Street, the railroad track, and Griffing Boulevard. And it requires a change in the Code, as well a change in the Charter.
The proposed annexation affects the Code in another way, too. The area under consideration is not "to [our] Code" as it is. It includes tracts of land that are paved in ways our Code doesn't permit. No one would change that, and these properties would be "grandfathered in," but it creates a different look and feel than we have now. We would also have to adjust the Code to permit commercial properties and retail, since they exist there now. This in itself may seem like a small matter, since the area is not contiguous with the upside down triangle, and it's invisible to us, unless we go out of our way to go there. And we can still write a Code that prohibits commercial property in the upside down triangle.
But here's the big deal. We're looking at increasing the population of Biscayne Park by about 1400 people. They'd all be residents of Biscayne Park, just like you and I are. I have no idea how many vote, but let's say, again for purpose of discussion, it's half. So that's about 700 people. We've never gotten 700 voters in our best year under the old local voting regime. It'll get better starting in 2014, when the new system takes over, but still, 700 people is a lot of new voters. And these voters are content to live in the kind of area where they live. They're not looking for anything nicer, or better. And those residents may or may not care much about how a neighborhood, or this neighborhood, looks, but they have no reason at all to care about property values. They're renters, not property owners. Renters do not want the same things property owners do. Their stake in the neighborhood where they live is much different. They're often not looking far ahead. And the people who own rental property aren't looking for much, either. In many cases, it's been very difficult to get the owners of rental properties in BP to attend to required maintenance here.
So once they can vote in Biscayne Park, they can vote for everything the rest of us vote for. Not only Commissioners, but Code referenda. And not only do they vote for Commissioners, they can vote to become Commissioners. We've seen already what a small group of people can do to an election when it's small scale. Given enough of the right amount of organization, and an election that is small enough to manipulate, they can vote in the most improbable whack jobs you can imagine. You think 700 people who don't want what you want can't do that? Think again. They can have their way with the Codes.
I will confess to being one who would like the Codes here to be clearer and more stringently enforced. Or, in our new, friendlier parlance, better complied with. I agree with Gary Kuhl. And with Sira Ramos. And with Barbara Kuhl. And Bob and Janey Anderson. And Gage Hartung. And Andrew Olis. Obviously, they were all mistaken when they thought metal roofs wouldn't look good, but I forgive them, because what they all want, and what I want, is the best Village we can have. To get that, we have to step it up. In my opinion, expanding the church by adding a school, and annexing what's east of the tracks, is stepping it down. Is a school in the church an extra convenience for some? So some say. But with so many schools very near by, it isn't much of a convenience. And it expands and complicates the flow of traffic, which some in the Park worked hard recently to constrict and simplify. Does annexation bring in more revenue? Maybe. It depends on the tax rate. There are some envisioned rates, included as part of the planners' presentation, that result in our losing money with annexation. (If the rate remains at about 9.5 mills, we get about $280K more in ad valorem taxes per year. If we lower it to 7.5 mills, our overall increase is about $140K per year. At 5.5 mills, we start collecting less in taxes than we do now. And none of that takes into account what it costs us to have new territory to manage and monitor.) And all of this becomes harder to control once we reflect the implications of it in the Code.
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