Pinecrest group rallies against incorporation

More than 80 homeowners worried about the possible incorporation of Pinecrest attended a meeting of the Concerned Home Owners of Pinecrest Tuesday evening to hear alternatives to the area becoming its own city.

“We’re trying to convey to the neighborhood that there is an alternative,” said former Miami City Commissioner Armando Lacasa, a Pinecrest resident and organizer of the homeowners group.

Members of the Village of Pinecrest drafted a charter at the end of November that, if passed March 12, will make Pinecrest a city.

Those for incorporation claim Metro police response is slow and the city would prosper from controlling its own tax base.

Lacasa and others feel police protection could be improved but that creating a special taxing district for the police department would be a better way to do it than incorporation.

Richard Brodsky, a Miami lawyer and homeowners group advocate, gave five reasons incorporation must be stopped:

• Pinecrest would have a smaller tax base than described last November when the Metro Commission gave Pinecrest residents the right to vote on incorporation.
• Pinecrest has not had a proper feasibility study to determine whether the neighborhood can sustain a tax base.
• The Metro Commission didn’t hold a proper public hearing prior to its Nov. 21 vote that permitted the incorporation process to proceed.
• Pinecrest’s first official act would be to pay lawyers $15,000 to fight a lawsuit that seeks to prevent its incorporation.
• Another huge, expensive bureaucracy would be the wrong way to improve police protection.

Lacasa and Brodsky sued Dade County in December over the lack of the feasibility study, saying the boundaries of the proposed city differ from those used when an earlier study was done.

That study, they said, included three neighborhoods - Hammock Lakes, Pine Bay Estates and Snapper Creek Lakes - that may or may not want to be a part of Pinecrest, and have a vote scheduled on whether to become a part of Coral Gables.

Also, an area referred to as the Suniland Triangle, west of Southwest 77th Avenue to U.S. 1 and south from 112th to 136th streets, was brought within the proposed Pinecrest boundaries after the feasibility study.

“There’s never been an adequate study on whether it is feasible for the city to exist if annexation happens,” Brodsky said. “We don’t know if taxpayers can afford what has been promised them.”

Gary Matzner, a leading proponent for incorporation, said residents in the Suniland Triangle asked to be included. And besides, he said, a new feasibility study isn’t needed.

“There are three requirements to becoming a city,” Matzner said. “A public hearing, a vote by the Planning Advisory Board and an election. The Suniland Triangle was not in the feasibility study, but there is not a requirement for a feasibility study.”

Incorporation: Pinecrest

• The Pinecrest West Homeowners Association, a newly formed homeowners group for those who live west of Southwest 67th Avenue, will meet Thursday at a member’s home. Call 663-1941 for times and location.
• The Chapman Field/Montgomery Drive Homeowners Association also will meet at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in a private home. Call Mindy Cassell at 667-7798 or Maria Rogers at 662-4888.
• There will be no more meetings of the Charter Commission. The group does plan to meet with several homeowner associations in February. No dates have been set. Call 854-8989.
• The Steering Committee for Concerned Home Owners of Pinecrest will meet Monday at a site to be determined. Those interested in attending can call 661-8192.
• Copies of the charter can be found at South Miami and Coral Reef libraries and at Palmetto and Pinecrest elementary schools.
• The charter vote will be March 12.

Continuation Furniture

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