An October Surprise?

Our commission has done many odd things in response to the budget crisis. Three of the commissioners, Kane, Trujillo and Vogel, have looked at the numbers and responded by proposing even more spending. I've detailed this spend out in other posts but it's safe to say that at least $500,000 have been spent unnecessarily, that is on things that produce nothing, in the last six months.

With all the reckless spending going on, there was one peculiar and seemingly small issue of contention that came up last week. The commission voted unanimously in August to implement a hiring freeze until the new budget was in place in October of this year. A two month hiring freeze, one that allowed for exceptions to be brought to the commission, is normal, prudent financial management. If you don't know what you'll have, you don't make new commitments. Less than a month later, Kane, Trujillo and Vogel voted lockstep to revoke the hiring freeze. Why?

Here's one scenario. If you want to make sure that you have access to the large amounts of money floating around the city with the projects, the key is not the commission but the city manager's office. The city manager by charter is our CEO.

I suspect that in October, there will be a lockstep move by the three to install a new city manager from the current employee pool, who will then hire a Projects Manager, and promote to fill the position left vacant by the new city manager. A current commissioner will be the "go to" real estate guy, either as a contract employee of the city Community Redevelopment Agency or a well connected independent, so he can continue to flog his listings for the new public safety complex. The contracts for the key positions, City Manager, Projects Manager, and Police Chief will include the same charter busting clause giving the individuals “sole discretion” in the running of their specific areas and providing the absurdly generous severance that if they leave for anything other than a criminal conviction, they will have six months “notice” and three months additional “pay”. This will effectively lock in the new commission to the contracts as the cost to undo this would be at least $400,000 that we don't have.

Think about it. If what you're after is the money, the commission is just a useful tool. When you've locked in the administration of the city, now you have the access and lack of transparency on which North Bay Village has traditionally operated.

The key word in the above is “suspect”. I really hope I'm wrong. But what other reason was there for the urgent repeal of the hiring freeze? Let's see what October brings.

Kevin Vericker
September 24, 2010

Looming Housing Crisis

North Bay Village is facing a housing crisis. It is not the sort of crisis that has been discussed in the past where there is an inadequate supply of housing. Most cities have learned to deal with that, but a new kind brought on by over-supply, bad mortgage decisions and declining demand.

The building pictured, 7525 East Treasure Drive, is one of several abandoned projects in the city. There are others, vacant lots, unsold units, abandoned houses, all throughout our community.

The Lexi filed Chapter 11 on June 23, 2010, with 50 unsold units out of 164. www.trulia.com, a website that consolidates real estate listings shows 553 homes for sale in North Bay Village, with 255 in distress or foreclosure, 46% of the total properties. It is not restricted to condos, 26% of the single family homes listed are in distress.

The existing condo buildings are in bad shape according to www.condoreports.com, a site that rates the health of the association on a scale of 100 with 100 being the healthiest. Their breakdown is frightening. Here are some samples:

• 360 A 26th percentile
  
• 360 B 18th percentile
  
• Breeze 28th percentile
  
• North Bay Villas 6th percentile
  
• Grandview Palace 6th percentile

and there are more out there.

When buildings are so poorly rated, the property values decline, the risk of foreclosure increases and the risk of board bankruptcy is overwhelming.

North Bay Village has taken very few steps to address this issue. It's established that our property values fell 26% in the crash, that only Homestead saw a worse decline with a marginal difference, HUD (Federal Housing and Urban Development) ranked us the highest in Miami-Dade for neighborhoods at risk and we can see it. A simple walk around the islands confirm that.

The only real attempt so far was an effort, introduced by Rey Trujillo, for the city to condemn under eminent domain a vacant lot on Harbor Island, leased to Al Coletta, and turn it over to Scott Greenwald, to build new low income housing. It failed as it should have. It would have been just another North Bay Village Trujillo Tax spending money we don't have for things we don't need.

We don't need new buildings - we need to rehabilitate the old ones and create a city initiative to address this crisis. It's not going away and it's going to get worse.

There is federal, state and county help to address these issues but the commission needs to act now to be able to take advantage of the help, and we've seen nothing. These are questions we need to put to all the candidates for this November's election:

• What is your plan to reduce foreclosures in North Bay Village?
• How do you propose to address the abandoned buildings?
• What's the next step to stabilize North Bay Village?
• How will you ensure that the development money flying around North Bay Village is used transparently?

Kevin Vericker
August 16, 2010