Under normal circumstances, the best of circumstances, the Village of Biscayne Park is a unique and tiny enclave, self-contained and self-supporting, nestled between North Miami and Miami Shores. It has a moat, the canal, on one side, and a battlement wall, the train track, along another. It's quiet, "100%" residential, with small streets, lots of STOP signs, slow-moving traffic, and a jumble of closely set homes. It's big feature is a park and recreation center in the center of "town." And for effect, and old-time charm, it has a real log cabin, still in use for Village administrative functions. Quaint, quaint, quaint. And a little bit insular. Our idea of combativeness is to threaten to ticket drivers if they "even think about speeding." Even that has a perverted quaint charm to it.
Well, circumstances stopped being normal some years ago. We never really managed ourselves well, and the stakes were getting higher. Because of our unique arrangement, we were self-dependent, and we had to be more careful, and use more judgement and expertise than frankly we had. So we decided to turn ourselves over to professionals for management. But even that wasn't enough, and we continued to eat through what fiscal reserve we had, and hadn't yet squandered. And we had longer range needs for which no provision at all had been made. With the economic crash of late 2007 and following, we couldn't replenish the reserve. We cut services, but we continued to take on water. It was clear we could not stay afloat indefinitely unless we did something a bit drastic.
One drastic idea was to over-tax ourselves. We live entirely on what we collect from ourselves, even taxing ourselves at the highest rate known in the County wasn't doing it, and we had to consider getting heroic. But our elected decision-makers were firm in refusing to raise our taxes to a level that would allow us to continue to support ourselves, so we got really drastic. We began to consider annexing neighboring revenue-rich territory. It's the equivalent of those companies that need more money than doing business can raise, so they sell stock. Now, they have investors: outsiders, strangers, people who can have a say in the company by having a vote. But without those investors, the company cannot reach its ambitions. For us, the ambition was to stay alive, as the unique and independent municipality we have been for 80 years.
It seems that most of our current elected decision-makers don't favor annexation, either, however. So we have a big problem. If we don't support ourselves independently, as we always did before, and we don't take on partners, investors, new neighbors, then we can't survive. It seems some people have a different kind of answer to this problem. Not only do they accept the death of the Village of Biscayne Park, they welcome it. They embrace it. And their reasoning has some distinctly inconsistent elements to it.
The specific proposal, articulated by two people, is that we end our existence as the Village of Biscayne Park and propose to become the northern quarter of Miami Shores Village. One of the two people who have articulated this idea is Ron Coyle, who was once himself an elected Commissioner in Biscayne Park, but was generally criticized for being quirky and detached and who failed in subsequent bids to get himself elected again. The other is Bryan Cooper, who is now an elected Commissioner and who generally finds himself at odds with the residents of the Park as well as, more often than anyone else, with his own Commission colleagues. If you detect a pattern here, so do I. Now the annexation-by-Miami-Shores idea has three complications. One is that there is no sense that the general residents of Biscayne Park have any interest in being adopted by Miami Shores or anyone else. The second is that there is no evidence that Miami Shores wants to adopt Biscayne Park or any other territory. And the third springs from a recurring complaint, both of Ron Coyle's and Bryan Cooper's. Both of them complain that the land use Codes of the Village of Biscayne Park are onerous and cruel, especially to the more marginal of Biscayne Park homeowners. Coyle recognizes that the Codes in Miami Shores are frankly stricter than those in Biscayne Park, but he claims to feel it's worth it to comply with even stricter Codes than the ones about which he complains, as long as he can say he lives in Miami Shores. Cooper doesn't seem to get the irony at all.
But here's the bigger problem. If some residents of Biscayne Park advocate for the demise of the Park, and if at least one of those advocates is an active Commissioner, aren't they violating an oath to uphold the Charter and interests of the Park? Or do they think they're Dade County's version of Mikhael Gorbachev, and someone will give them a Nobel Prize for dismantling the municipality they swore to uphold and preserve? I'm guessing not.
And here is something Dr. Commissioner Cooper obviously hasn't thought about - just suppose they would want us, and our voters would approve - there is no way we would get the kind of police service and response time we are used to. We'd end up with a crime rate like theirs. And - when you combine their much higher trash bill, tax bill and bonds we'd be paying more. We'd get a better brand, true, and hopefully better code, but we would also lose a lot.
ReplyDeleteJaney Anderson