As expected, the Homestead City Council on Tuesday killed the deal between the city and Dade Medical College to redevelop 19 properties in the downtown and make it a vibrant, bustling commercial center.
Well, almost.
The college still has until January to get the site plans approved under the current agreement — for which an extension past that was denied 5-2 — but that timeline is more than just challenging.
It has a little more than a month — and through several holiday breaks — to go through the Development Review Committee, the Planning and Zoning Board and then back to the city council in January for approval.
“Staff says it’s impossible,” said Vice Mayor Stephen Shelley, who voted for the denial based on what he called a “tainted process” in which the college gets 19 properties for about 40 cents to the dollar’s worth and agrees to redevelop it into trendy shops, restaurants, bars and cafés. Shelley told Ladra it was not about the recent headlines about College founder and former CEO Ernesto Perez and his antics — a sexual assault arrest involving a minor, questions about ethics in his dealings with legislators, investigations into the use of college funds.
Shelley is concerned about widespread allegations that former Mayor Steve Bateman — whose wife, a real estate agent, was involved in the private land purchases for the deal — had pushed staff behind the scenes to make the agreement happen. Yeah, this is the same Bateman who was arrested in August on corruption charges in an unrelated case, for taking money as a secret lobbyist from another company that was doing business with the city.
As far as we know, he didn’t have another secret job with Dade Medical. Perez just paid Bateman through campaign contributions — at least $7,500 in bundled $500 checks for his 2011 race.
“To me it is important that we have the public’s trust,” Shelley said. “I wasn’t voting for or against Ernesto. I wasn’t voting for or against the project itself. I was voting against the process.
“If they want to come back and go through the process again, then so be it. But it has to be done transparently,” he said.
And still, the vote to deny the six-month extension wasn’t unanimous, as it probably should have been, whether because of the tainted process or the tainted partner.
Voting against the deal were Shelley, Mayor Jeff Porter and Commissioners Jon Burgess, Judy Waldman and Patricia Fairclough-McCormick.
What were Commisioners Jimmie “The Rev” Williams and Elvis Maldonado thinking?
Maldonado has been dodging me for days. Multiple messages on his voice mail and Facebook go unreturned. But Williams told Ladra he was thinking that an extension was “normal.” Part of the status quo.
“We have given extensions to other entities,” Williams said, adding that Perez was no longer CEO of the college. I told him, saying first that Ladra meant no disrespect, that it seemed a little naive for him to believe that Perez was no longer involved in the day to day operations because he had stepped down after the headlines.
“In my personal beliefs, I don’t believe that he’s not giving some direction and ideas on day to day stuff. Did he just wash his hands of it? I don’t think so. But I don’t know that to be true,” Williams told me over the telephone, although I imagine he said it with a completely straight face.
“I was told he stepped down. I’m going from what I was told,” he explained. “If what is given in my packet is presented as facts or truth, I have to go on that.”
Really? Really? In some circles, that might be called plausible deniability.
“I was looking at the project, not looking at anything else,” Williams added, referring to Perez’s 1990 arrest in Wisconsin for sexual assault on a 15-year-old girl. Most stories don’t even go into the details about how Perez and two other members of his music band allegedly took turns exposing themselves to her in their hotel room and pressuring her to, um, service them.
If that were not enough to make you question the partnership — if the sweet deal for less than 50 percent the land’s values, the connections to former Mayor Bateman were not enough– there are investigations into the possibly illegal use of federal student loan monies for collateral and the free tuition granted to the sister of State Rep. Carlos Trujillo, who sponsored legislation that benefited the college while she attended classes (I am sure there will be more on that later).
Williams said he didn’t know about all that. He said it didn’t come up Tuesday. Would it have made a difference in his vote had he known about more of the questionable items in Perez life? “Absolutely,” he told Ladra.
Not that it would make a difference. Williams doesn’t think that the college can meet the deadline either.
“To be realistic, it’s going to be impossible,” he said. “There’s just not enough time.
“I don’t have to kill it. It’s going to die anyway.”
Downtown Homestead deal dies — if deadline not met added by Ladra on
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