The Best Laid Plans

I could have called this "To Be (Able to Trust), or Not To Be (Able to Trust), That is the Question," but it seemed too long.

The Village hires a planner.  The firm's name is Bell David.  Named for Mr Jerry Bell and Mr Alex David.  Bell doesn't come around much any more.  Now we get David.  It's not that we need much help planning.  The Village is so small, and our scope so narrow, that we don't really have any ambitions per se.  What we need is advice regarding statutes and procedures: what they are and what municipalities have to do to satisfy them.

For example, regarding the matter of the school, the planner needed to know whether municipalities like ours are required by state law to make provision for a school.  He needed to know if there was the possibility of an exemption.  If there was, he needed to apply for it for us.  If we had already been approved for one, he needed to know not to have us provide for a school in our comprehensive plan anyway, thereby negating the exemption.

Or on the matter of the possibility of annexing nearby territory, the planner needed to know if there was a substantial intent on the part of the County to get such areas annexed.  As it happens, our planner does planning projects all over the county, and he works closely with the County Commission.  He needed to know that a piece of the County near the airport was up for annexation, and that four municipalities had been working for ten years, partially against each other, to divide that territory (Miami Herald, 10/10/13).  It should not have been a surprise to the planner to find that the County denied all four applications, reportedly because it disapproves of simply annexing a commercial tract in order to squeeze the businesses for the taxes they can provide.  The planner should also know whether this decision represents a blanket posture for annexations in general, or whether there were other and unrevealed issues regarding the territory in question.

To be able to provide advice, insight, and perspective like this, the planner would have to have two characteristics.  First, the planner would have to know the rules and relevant dynamics, and he would have to know what he was doing.  Second, the planner would have to have the interests of Biscayne Park, his client, as his central concern.  Specifically, he would have to place the interests of his client above his own interests.  For example, if there was a reason his client was not required to provide zoning for a school, and the planner either didn't know if his client wanted a school or knew his client did not want a school, he would have to protect the client from getting a school, even though it provides more work and more fees for the planner if the client does have to make room for a school.  And if the planner had reason to know it might be unlikely that a municipality could absorb some nearby territory through annexation, he would have to discourage the client from seeking to annex, even though it would provide far more work and fees for the planner if the client did pursue annexation.

The fact is, I don't know for sure whether Biscayne Park was required to zone for a school.  I suspect not, since the Park is an unusual neighborhood, there are exemptions for neighborhoods like ours, and we were in fact named on a list of exempt communities.  The planner brushes all of this aside, and tells us that we were not exempt and could not have been exempt.  To accept this conclusion, I would have to determine to trust the planner, and to consider him competent and trustworthy.  I have no more reason to do that than I have to know for sure whether our exemption was solid, or could have been made so.  What I do know is that the planner has provided a great deal of advocacy for the church and the school, and he was reportedly overheard talking to the church/school people as if they were his main interest, and he was willing to sacrifice the Village for them.

And I don't know whether the County would consider an annexation application from us differently than it did from Doral, Medley, Miami Springs, and Virginia Gardens regarding the large tract near the airport.  I don't know whether the planner knows about the problem with this application, or whether he has inquired of County Commissioners as to how they would look upon an application from us.  If "three years ago, the cities submitted their agreement [and] the County's planning advisory board recommended that the Commissioners deny all the requests" (yesterday's Herald article), I would think the planner would know that.  (I would certainly like to think Sally Heyman would not have been urging us to go for annexation if she knew her County Commission colleagues would not be accepting.)  But the planner has focused only on annexation-related tasks, and how much it would cost us to accomplish them.  This is fine, and certainly what we would want to know, as long as the planner is also seeing the big picture, like whether an annexation attempt is likely or not likely to succeed.  Again, for me to assume that he has kept this perspective would require me to trust him, and his capability, and his judgement, and his advocacy of the Village first.  I'm not sure I have reason enough to do that.

We need the services of a planner.  He can help us, and he knows, or should know, rules and procedures no one else would know.  He should have valuable contacts.  But for him to provide the help we need, he has to be interested in us, even more than he is interested in himself.  Our planner's time is not cheap.  He charges us $125 an hour.  That fee should be enough to keep him dedicated to us.  If it isn't, he needs to tell us we're below market.  Or he needs to quit working for us, and find a better-endowed client.  Or perhaps we need someone with a clearer dedication to us.  A competent Commission would address such an issue.  We have what we have until December.