MIAMI — At commission chambers across cities and counties, residents with a view on high profile development projects will often show up to be heard.
But what if the state of Florida decided to erode local control over development?
Lawmakers in Tallahassee are debating House Bill 399.
Beyond toggling a vote on a community’s comprehensive development plan from a super to a simple majority, it would require a study identifying the effects of removing Miami-Dade’s Urban Development Boundary, or UDB, which aims to prevent sprawl encroaching on the Everglades.
“We don’t have any more land so people can’t afford to live there (in Miami-Dade),” the bill’s sponsor, State Rep. David Borrero, R-Miami-Dade, said. “Let people do what they want to do with their own property, you open supply, when you allow developers to build and provide homes to people who need it the cost of housing will go down. We need to let the free market work.”
That was in response to State Rep. Ashley Gantt, D-Miami, who was critical of the legislation.
“We continuously preempt our local counterparts,” Gantt said. “When did local governments become the enemy of the house of Tallahassee? There are so many people in here who served at the local level so I get to ask, were you incompetent when you were local and then competent when you came to Tallahassee, or does that incompetence remain?”
Miami Beach City Commissioner Alex Fernandez said that the state legislature is “trying to become the Miami Beach Zoning Board as it does every legislative session.”
Environmental advocates say the UDB protects our drinking water and wetlands to mitigate against flood risks.
“This is about Miami’s future and we need to make smart growth decisions and we can solve our housing crisis without developing over wetlands and pushing into areas that are supposed to be left open,” Rachel Silverstein, the CEO of conservation group Miami Waterkeeper said.
Miami-Dade County commissioners passed a resolution opposing the legislation. But commissioners Raquel Regalado and JC Bermudez say they’re open to reviewing the UDB.
“Every legislative session, they (the legislators) remind us that we are the only county that has a UDB, so we have been expected a preemption for some time,” Regalado said. “I think we should start owning our wetlands. We need to look at it from an environmental perspective, not from a location perspective, and everything outside the UDB, what is valuable to us?”
Bermudez said he wants to get all voices at the table.
“Let’s look at the UDB, see if it needs to be moved here or there. I don’t think it’s going to be moved much, but if it is, we haven’t looked at it in 52 years. Let’s look at it,” he said. “Let’s bring everybody to the table. Everybody that is impacted, including the environmental community and the development community, so we can agree on something and then say, ‘We’re not going to talk about it again, and this is where you can build. This is where you can’t, and this is what you can build, and this is what you can’t.’ And we’ll leave it at that.”
Regalado said, “We have been having conversations over the past few years about the UDB because we would rather take action than (have) the state take action.”
There are also concerns over provisions of the bill that would allow for variances for large destination resorts.
“It has what we are calling the ‘Fontainebleau exception’ allows you to put a water park in any area,” Regalado said.
Miami-Dade Commissioner Vicki Lopez called it a “very unfortunate provision.”
“No municipality can stop it,” Lopez said. “I don’t know about you all, whether you want Six Flags in the middle of your residential neighborhood and with the amount of traffic that these large destination resorts can bring.”
On Thursday, the State Senate will debate and likely vote on Senate Bill 208.
It is different from HB 399 - namely in that there is not a provision about variances for large destination resorts.
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