Javier Souto doesn't 'give a shit' as he pushes for Westchester incorporation

Pro cityhood mailers paid by developers have already arrived

The process to see if Westchester homeowners want to incorporate has just started — and it’s been very bumpy and very fast at the same time.

Some residents are upset that the Miami-Dade Commission in November, at the request of District 10 Commissioner Javier Souto, waived the required approval from 20% of the homeowners to establish the Westchester Municipal Advisory Committee, a group of residents who will meet to consider the pros and cons of cityhood.

Critics were met with insults when from Souto, who is termed out after three decades and has championed incorporation for years.

“Calladito te ves mas bonito,” he told them at a community meeting last week. It’s a Cuban saying that translates literally to, “You’re better looking when you’re quiet,” and figuratively to, “Shut up.” And it is caught and posted in a video on a new Facebook page called Save Westchester.

Residents asked Souto to dissolve the MAC and withdraw the waiver. If 20 percent of the residents want to incorporate, they can sign petitions like they’re supposed to. But Souto didn’t want to hear that.

“I don’t give a shit about what people here might think,” he says, clearly defiant and combative to the opposition.

Many think Souto wants to be the mayor of Westchester, but he’s already 112 years old and losing his train of thought on the commission on the regular, so that seems doubtful. The mayor is going to be former Sen. Anitere Flores. What Souto wants is a future statue of himself at Tropical Park as the father of Westchester. This is his dream, his legacy.

Ladra tried but was unable to reach Souto or his chief of staff, Aldo Gonzalez. But the commissioner sent residents a letter on Jan. 31 to tell them about the MAC.

“The moment of making a very important decision for residents of our beloved area of Westchester, where I have been a resident with my family for the last 53 years and an elected official (Representative, Senator and Commissioner) for 39 years,” he said, invoking God and quality of life.

Then he warned them that the alternative to incorporation is to get sucked up by Doral or — ¡Dios nos libre! — Sweetwater. Not by name, of course.

“If we don’t become a city, a town, a village, Westchester will start disappearing over the years by the legal process called ‘Annexation’ used today in Miami-Dade County by which small cities that are poor try to swallow up areas around them,” Souto wrote to residents in a letter that is obviously meant to scare them into cityhood. In some cases, he added, rich cities also try to “absorb” donor areas such as Westchester, which he says contributes $5.5 billion in taxes to the county’s general budget.

“This is exactly our case today. We are unincorporated. We are surrounded by small poor cities. There is a fairly powerful rich city near us,” Souto wrote, inferring that Sweetwater and Doral will fight over the neighborhood, like they did over the Dolphin Mall area.

But there were less than 250 residents in that industrial park area so it didn’t go to a vote. There are more than 80,000 voters in the Westchester MAC general boundaries — Southwest 8th to 56th streets and East State Road 826, or the Palmetto Expressway, to the Florida Turnpike — except for the area west of 107th and north of Coral Way, which is where Florida International University and the county’s Tamiami Park are. More than 50% would have to approve incorporation.

Earlier this month, someone formed the Save Westchester — No New Taxes Facebook page. Description: “A group to oppose new taxes related to the misguided incorporation effort by Commissioner Javier Souto and his cronies to extend his political career. Incorporation is being forced through with little citizen involvement and misinformation with a goal of confusing voters and imposing another layer of burdensome government on the hard working people of Westchester.”

Several critics of incorporation and/or the process have already posted their concerns. They include Jose Garrido, who came in second in 2018 in a five-way with 14% of the vote — hey, it was more than one-time mayoral wannabe Alfred Santamaria — and operations manager Anthony Garcia, who was at the Feb. 10 meeting to kill the MAC.

“It’s illegitimate,” Garcia told Ladra, adding that he’s concerned because almost every municipality pays a higher tax rate than the Unincorporated Miami-Dade Service Area. But he’s also mad that he has to take time off work and his busy schedule to fight something that is not resident driven.

“It’s grotesque. We don’t even feel like we have a representative. I’m having to call other commissioners because Souto’s office is not interested in hearing about it,” Garcia said.

The last successful incorporation was Cutler Bay in 2005 and no city has succeeded since. Efforts to incorporate East Kendall, West Kendall and the Perrine/Goulds effort have not even gotten off the ground. Last November, an effort to incorporate Biscayne Gardens failed miserably with 82% of the residents voting no.

But Ladra doesn’t know how much of a pro-incorporation campaign there was there. And it looks like there’s going to be some money spent on getting out the yes vote in Westchester.

Already voters got their first campaign flier in the mail earlier this week. Paid for by Friends of Tropical Park, which was formed in 2020 but just started getting donations in recently — $25,000 in December and $15K in January.

The funds have all come from development interests with items before the county commission in recent months, including $5,000 each from Magnum Construction Management (read: the Munillas), another $5,000 from the developers who want to build 550 homes on the abandoned Calusa Golf Course, and $10,000 from various entities owned by Ralph Garcia-Toledo and Jesse Manzano-Plaza, who are involved in that controversial Monorail project to connect downtown Miami with the beaches (more on that later).

Jose Toledo, the chairman of the PAC, didn’t think it was too early to be sending mailers. He says they just want to inform the public.

Toledo is concerned because there’s been talk in the past about making Miami-Dade more like Broward — a regional government, with municipalities covering police, fire, trash, code enforcement and other local services.

The 44-year-old operations manager with three school-age kids was born in Westchester and, but for a few years, lived there his entire life. He went to Banyan Elementary School, Rockway Middle and Belen Jesuit. He played baseball at Tamiami Park and has eaten at Frankie’s Pizza and Arbetter’s.

And, he says, he wants to protect what he has.

“We want to make sure that the services that are due to us, come to us,” Toledo said.

Javier Souto, Westchester

Javier Souto doesn’t ‘give a shit’ as he pushes for Westchester incorporation added by Ladra on February 17, 2022
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