Coral Gables Needs a New Platform for Community Dialogue

December 6, 2010 Leave a comment

Dialogue Needed.  This city lacks a forum for open dialogues on community concerns.  There are many current concerns in the city, including city services, taxes, fees, the city’s budget, the economic future of the city, trends in business and commerce, the Hotel Biltmore matter, the Coral Gables Country Club, the museum, infrastructure priorities, community charity needs, the environment, education, youth, historic preservation, public security, among others.

Need.  There is need  for community dialogue that goes beyond blogs, newspapers and news websites and the Miami Herald.  There should be an open, neutral, fair and disinterested forum where political leaders, business people, teachers, students, community organizations can come together to talk about their concerns without the necessity to insult and raise personal attacks.

Organizations. There are many good community and related  organizations in Coral Gables, including business groups (Chamber of Commerce, Kiwanis, Lions, Coral Gables business associations,etc.), charitable organizations independent of the city and others financed by city funds (Coral Gables Community Foundation, political action committees  and many others that are not listed here.  Unfortunately, these groups discuss current local concerns only rarely and not in the business of a having a forum of open and health debate.

Participation.  The city Commission is reticent to have more citizen participation.  Of course, there are many city boards that serve as in indirect filter for community opinions, but the board members are selected by the Commission members and, thus, do not always account for a wide swath of views.  Citizens are invited to express opinions at the city Commission session about very specific and limited subjects, and they are usually restricted to making a few minutes of comments under the sometime irritated or bored gaze of the commissioners.

There is no good single forum where highly different views can be expressed openly and freely

Filed under Coral Gables

UM Student Dies

December 6, 2010 Leave a comment

There are two factors at play.

First, drivers in Coral Gables and Miami do not respect pedestrians.  In many other cities, a pedestrian in a walkway means STOP.  When you are driving it is your responsibility to watch out for the pedestrian.  For example, there is a flashing activated by pedestrians on Ponce de Leon in front of a series of doctors’ offices that drivers simple do not respect by slowing down or stopping.

Let’s face it, Miami is more like Santo Domingo than it is like Washington, DC.

Second, UM and other students walk around with their heads buried in their iphones and blackberries with total disregard for the traffic around them.  In fact, on the UM campus students just cross in front of you assuming that traffic will stop.  Many times a student has wondered in front of my car while talking or texting without lifting their eyes.

You will not change the drivers in Miami; UM  better reeducate their students, staff and faculty.  (And this is not a judgement on what may or may not have happened in the two recent sad and unfortunate deaths of UM students.)

University of Miami sophomore was killed early Sunday after being hit by a car near the Coral Gables campus, marking the second student within weeks to die from a crash.

via Crash claims life of another UM student – Miami-Dade – MiamiHerald.com.

Filed under Community, Coral Gables, Miami-Dade County

US Inequality–Latin American Model?

December 3, 2010 Leave a comment

Highly unequal countries tend to become unstable and dangerous places. How unequal do you want the United States to become?

via Fixing The US Budget – Straightforward Or The Hardest Problem On Earth? « The Baseline Scenario.

Our country  is gradually imitating the Latin American model of development with the latter’s great inequality (perhaps the worst region in the world), a huge gap between the few at the top of the income and asset pyramid and the mass at the bottom, accompanied by a fairly small middle.  In the US the middle and bottom have access only to increasingly poor education, restricting opportunities to lower paying jobs and not ability to accumulate capital (worse after the housing crisis) during their lifetime.

In the US the chance of progressing, related to education and opportunity, is rapidly narrowing for the middle class in the current unemployment crisis.  There seems to be little political desire to change the system.

The pure capitalist system works now for a few and, unless there is active government intervention to protect the low and middle income people, there is little prospect of changing these trends.  Things will get worse if the US extends income tax reductions permanently to the high income groups.

 

Filed under Coral Gables, Economy, National

Please Face Economic Reality Coral Gables: A Note From a Taxpayer

December 1, 2010 Leave a comment

More views for us that we are years away from reducing unemployment [these are the people that consume things], from a recovery in housing and from rising property values [also, years ahead, if at all].  Will the city government of Coral Gables, its commissioners and city manager face economic reality, or will they continue to hit taxpayers with ridiculous annual tax increases [of course, Miami-Dade county is worse and its mayor may soon find out about citizen unhappiness].

It could take years for the millions of people once employed by the housing industry — from construction workers to real estate agents — to find new careers or return to their former careers when and if a strong housing market returns.

“I think we also have a bubble in the labor market for state and local government employees,” he said, “and over the next two years we might see as many as one million of these employees lose their jobs.”

via Some Very Creative Economic Fix-Its – NYTimes.com.

Filed under Coral Gables, Economy, Miami-Dade County

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