After a somewhat ugly tussle between the Village of Palmetto Bay and the residents who live adjacent to a 2.5-acre parcel that each wanted to buy from Miami-Dade County, there seems to be the possibility of a compromise.
“Have you had a conversation about splitting the baby,” asked Commissioner Raquel Regalado at a committee meeting last week where the Village was sent back to do just that.
First a little background: The fight got tense earlier this month after County Commissioner Daniella Cohen Higgins proposed selling the surplus property — a Florida Power & Light easement that must remain accessible and cannot be built on — to a resident who would then subdivide it into 14 pieces with her neighbors. Village leaders, however, want the land for a passive park and Palmetto Bay Village Attorney John Dellagloria sent a letter to Miami-Dade Inspector General Felix Jimenez the day before the commission meeting asking him to open an investigation into what he said was an illegal sale.
As if that wasn’t dramatic enough, DCH recorded video of herself ripping Dellagloria’s letter in half and posted it on social media.
But before she could do that, Cohen Higgins’ colleagues did express concerns with the notice requirements and setting a precedent. Or was it the lobbying by Jorge Luis Lopez, who was secretly paid $25,000 by the village to work the commissioners on their behalf starting as early March 22 (more on that later). So the item was kicked back to the county’s Infrastructure, Operations and Innovation committee (Lopez earns his keep), which heard from residents as well as Village Mayor Karyn Cunningham, Councilman Steve Cody, Village Manager Nick Marano and Parks and Rec Director Fanny Carmona.
Read related: Palmetto Bay fights residents over county parcel Village wants for park
Councilwoman Marsha Madson also spoke, but she was advocating for the homeowners to get the land.
“I support the neighbors purchasing this property 100 percent,” Madson said, adding that she got more votes in the last election than the mayor did. She also said that the survey cited by the mayor and manager was about pocket parks in general “not this specific property,” and the vote to buy the land was split 3-2. “The councilman in the district voted against the land grab.”
The committee on Tuesday ended up deferring the matter, indefinitely, urging Village officials to reach a compromise that would let the neighbors keep a piece of the parcel as a buffer and let the Village develop the land as part of the six-acre Tanglewood Linear Park, that would connect to other paths and parks.
“The parcels do form an important public green space that the Village seeks to preserve in perpetuity,” Marano said.
Kassandra Rodriguez Padron, the homeowner who is on the application to purchase the property, said that the residents adjacent to the parcel do not want the land behind their homes, which has become a dumping ground and party atmosphere for the neighborhood youth, to be a park.
“A neighborhood park is supposed to be a park for the neighbors. In this case, none of the neighbors near this land want it for a park,” she said, comparing it to a similar easement parcel on the other side of 77th Avenue on 141st Street that was purchased by homeowners in 2018. She also complained that she was ignored for months while the county sought a competing application by the county.
“We’ve been legally trying to purchase this land since 2022 just like our neighbors did in 2018,” Rodriguez said. At the time, the district Commissoner was Daniella Levine Cava, today’s county mayor.
“Why were my calls and emails unanswered? Why were we strung along for so long?”
Committee chairwoman Raquel Regalado asked Internal Services Division Director Alex Muñoz what the heck happened. The explanation wasn’t very satisfying.
“It took a while in terms of doing the due diligence and what not,” Muñoz said about the process. “We do some analysis. We circulate the property.
“In the process of doing that, we had internal discussions of what the best interest of this land was and thats when the topic of actually talking reaching out to the city to see if they had interest in it,” he said. “The city had expressed previous interest in doing something along the lines of a park there.”
So, what happened is that county staff decided what to do with the parcel? Looks like it.
“In the end the decision was that it was in the best interest, it would better serve as a park,” Muñoz said.
But they never got to bring an agenda item to the commission because Cohen Higgins beat them to it.
Commissioner Keon Hardemon, who said some things at the commission meeting about this being an attempt to keep outsiders out, also spoke at Tuesday’s committee meeting.
“This property right now is public property. It belongs to the people,” he said. “The law says we can give it away. It doesn’t say that we have to.”
Hardemon said he worried because he doesn’t know what they are going to do with the land and there was no public benefit. “We are taking public property and giving it to private people to do what? To make their yards bigger? To give their homes more value?”
“For privacy,” someone yelled from the audience.
Cohen Higgins said the neighbors had followed all the rules for the application just as the homeowners across the street had in 2018. She said ISD is often asking to offload land to homeowners groups so they can absorb the cost of maintenance. She took issue with the argument that it was public land being given away to a private entity and the comparisons with The Underline and the South Dade Trail.
“This is not just government land being given away to private homeowners. This is surplus land that is being sold to abutting homeowners, who under state statute have the legal right to buy this land,” she said. “The messaging that this is the ‘people’s land’ that is gong to be sold privately is a little challenging for me because, again, these residents did exactly what they were supposed to do.”
Commissioner Anthony Rodriguez also asked why this group of residents were being treated differently than the group who bought a similar easement in 2018.
“Precedents matter,” he said. “Obviously one of the neighboring parcels was sold to the owners… its been done, so it can be done the right way because it was done just adjacent.”
Cunningham said the Village was never notified of that sale as it was last year about this parcel.
Cohen Higgins also asked about “the woods,” another parcel that the county is leasing for $1 a year to the Village under an agreement that the municipality would maintain it and make it a passive park. Apparently, not a lot has been done. I fact, the Village just asked the county for an extension on their deliverables.
“We are working on it. We’ve done quite a lot with this lot,” Carmona said. “We have cleared the perimeter. It was overgrown into the road. We installed the sign, that was one of the requirements.”
Wow. They installed a sign.
Read related: County airs 87th Avenue bridge design, details, despite Palmetto Bay dispute
Carmona said the Village is going out to bid for removal services so they can remove the invasive and install trailer, benches and more signs.
That’s one of the things Kassandra Rodriguez worries about — delays. She says they haven’t done anything with that parcel and she thinks the Village will just leave the parcel behind her. home the way it is for years.
Regalado brokered the compromise.
“There is a middle ground. We could devise a plan where the homeowners get a certain part and they can buffer,” Regalado said, adding that the importance of parks has become clearer after the COVID pandemic. “It is expansive enough where you could say we’re going to give you so much square footage, then you can buffer with landscaping and then you can have your privacy.”
Cunningham seemed hesitant but said there could be “some negotiations on how we can make this a win-win. Obviously it is difficult when you are kind of tearing a community apart.”
Kassandra Rodriguez doesn’t trust her but Regalado said the county could help.
“Clearly there is a lack of confidence that we understand. And I’m sorry you went through this process and it went sorta sideways. We are all equally disappointed with the process,” Regalado said.
Commissioner Micky Steinberg said the process was something that needed to be fixed. “So the county commissioner is not caught in the middle of residents and a village trying to use the same piece of property.”
Regalado said she wants the Village to come back with a comprehensive plan for the rest of the folios that they also want to turn into Tanglewood Linear Park. Kassandra Rodriguez told Ladra that she had a meeting scheduled with Cunningham this week.
Let’s see if it really happens.
Cunningham makes no mention of the buffer in a letter to the editor published in Miami’s Community Newspapers on Friday.
Village of Palmetto Bay could split future park land with adjacent residents added by Ladra on
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