Incorporation has a different meaning to each community:

With the Board of County Commissioners vote of 9-2 in favor of Miami Lakes having a vote for or against incorporation on September 5, 2000, the doors swung open for other communities, including Doral, to negotiate terms for their own incorporation.

They have accepted a $1.45 million mitigation payment per year forever and will be paying for the Miami-Dade County Police that will be assigned to their area for at least four years with removal of the county police in favor of their own police department only for cause. In addition, they will keep the county library, solid waste, and fire-rescue departments.

If that makes them happy and they can live with that arrangement, more power to them and good luck. But what works for Miami Lakes may not work for other communities.

Low-income communities called recipient communities receive more services from the county than are paid for by their taxes--these communities should not be required to pay any mitigation.

Various circumstances will determine which high-income communities called donor communities should pay any mitigation.

Now it's Doral's turn to negotiate 
Commissioner Miriam Alonso sponsored a resolution on the BCC June 6, 2000 agenda establishing the Doral Area Municipal Advisory Committee, directing staff to prepare a study of the possible creation of a new municipality in the area of Doral.

This article is being written prior to Commissioner Alonso's proposal in order to meet its deadline--it will be interesting to see if the county commissioners give Doral the same opportunity to negotiate that they did Miami Lakes.

A list of names was submitted to Commissioner Alonso for her appointment to the Doral Area Municipal Advisory Committee.

District 2 now examining incorporation
On June 1, 2000 commissioner Rolle of district 2 held the second Town Hall Meeting on incorporation for his district. The county manager's executive assistant, George Burgess, went through the financial elements that will be encountered in an incorporation process. He made it sound extremely difficult to understand and even more difficult to accomplish.

In talking with many of those present who live in District 2 I did not hear any of them say they did not understand the finances and that they did not feel they could handle the financial burden.

The county budget department gave Pinecrest inaccurate figures when they were going through the incorporation process, overstating Pinecrest's expenses by about 25% and understating their income by about 25%.

Pinecrest now has a budget surplus, has lowered taxes, paced all their streets, built a part, and installed new bus benches. They publish the village check register in the Pinecrest Tribune each month.

This is the same budget department that cannot, after repeated requests, give any of the community councils that the county spends for services within those community councils.

I spoke with Commissioner Rolle after the Town hall Meeting to remind him that the present rules require 25% of the registered voters within the boundaries of a proposed incorporated area to sign a petition for incorporation. This rule was created within the last two years to make it more difficult for communities to incorporate.

I suggested that he sponsor a resolution to go back to the rules that were in place when Key Biscayne, Aventura, Pinecrest, and Sunny Isles Beach incorporated that required just 4% to sign.

Why should the people that Commissioner Rolle represents be required to do more than the last four cities to incorporate?

Blasting Task Force blindsided by rock mining companies
Commissioner Miriam Alonso established a Blasting Task Force a year ago that included representatives of communities in the western part of the county that are effected by the blasting, representatives of the rock mining industry, and an engineering firm to evaluate the intensity of the blasts and damage to homes and businesses.

While the task force was negotiating in good faith, the rock mining industry representatives were successful in getting an amendment tacked onto Senate Bill 772, a transportation bill that would eliminate emissions testing in Miami-Dade County. The amendment would take control of local blasting away of the county and in the hands of the State Fire Marshal in Tallahassee.

Jesse Jones, vice president of the WDFHA, has worked on this task force for the past year.