IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT $$

by

Charlotte Greenbarg

Early on we realized it was about money; it always was. The actions of the edumonster belied the public pronouncements characterizing themselves as child-centered.  One only has to look closely at history and the cast of characters to understand what's been going on at the expense of the children whose best interests the monster professes it puts first. This is one example, with more to come.

 The Miami Herald (3-26-2000, Tom Dubocq) reported Miami-Dade's latest folly with yet another contaminated site on which they proposed to build a school. Cleanup could cost as much as $4 million; yet the district bureaucrats claim they weren't aware of the problem, just as they claimed ignorance regarding the site for DDD high school in northeast Miami-Dade several years previously. 

We are seriously considering awarding our "Brown Q-Tip" to the district for these protestations of ignorance. They have a history of convenient loss of brain cells when generous donors to political campaigns and/or political power bases are involved. I was in the unenviable position of dogging them for about 10 years on the DDD caper and hope you'll find it as illuminating as we did. 

As early as 1980 we were tipped that a dumpsite in Miami-Dade owned by the City of Miami Beach was contaminated and needed to be cleaned up to avoid health and water problems all the way to the Intracoastal.  Naturally, Miami Beach denied contamination, responsibility, and even knowledge of the dumping problem. Soon after our revelation, wealthy, prominent and generous developers proposed to build what they called "Child's World", a theme park (not an amusement park, they insisted) with cute little replications of nursery rhymes and stories. What a wonderful tourist attraction it would be; how they expected to make back the investment, much less profit, on such a plan was not clear. We knew we had a problem, but not the full extent until a Herald reporter whispered to me that I'd better see the files the county had on both the contamination documented on site, and the real intentions of the developer (a full-scale amusement park with giant roller coasters). 

It was all true. We spent hundreds of hours at the S. Florida Regional Planning Council, the county's Developmental Impact Committee, School Board meetings, lobbying and networking with other environmental groups. The "we" I refer to isn't IVBE, which didn't yet exist.  "We" were community groups and anyone else who would help. I took a position, fatefully, with the Dade County Council PTA as safety chairwoman because I knew it would help the cause. As a County PTA chairwoman, I was in a position to speak to staff and board members about the dangers inherent in such a plan, and the need to make Miami Beach pay for the cleanup. It was only during this stage of the battle that I discovered how corruption fed the beast we called a school system. 

The district's own Safety Department, quoting national and local experts I pulled into the fray, advised the board to oppose any development on the land, which was adjacent to an elementary school and homes. The Supervisor of the school's Department of Safety read his objections into the record in July, 1987, and sent the letter to the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation in West Palm Beach (a joke to those of us who knew how that division was run in those days). I was given by a secret source a copy of the memo written by one corrupt county official to another, detailing the dangerous extent of the contamination, including the fact that it had been used for "ongoing promiscuous dumping" since 1938. The school board voted a resolution to oppose the development, and in December of 1987, The Miami Herald ran an editorial opposing development. The developers, facing busloads of condo commandos and the very school children they thought would love the park, withdrew their proposal at a wild County Commission meeting that same month. It wasn't over yet. 

In 1991, Miami Beach publicly admitted fear of the high cost of cleaning up the property. The developers were asking for an extension of the contract to pay for the site from the city, and the city didn't want to be held liable for the cleanup costs, which they admitted would be at least $3 million. All of this was reported in The Miami Herald (2-3-91, Bonnie Weston). In 1992, the school district had appraisals done by two firms, both of which reported that the land should cost no more than $45,000-$53,000+-/acre, assuming that the landfill was properly closed.  I found these papers during the struggle to keep the school system from using capital dollars to pay for the cleanup. 

By 1993, the school district and the county were working on a plan to use the land for a public park (the only safe use for a contaminated site) and a new high school, which would entail a complete cleanup of all of the contamination both the city and the developers had originally denied existed back in 1985. I spoke at the October, 1993 board meeting, now as a founder of IVBE, warning them of the contamination, letting them know we opposed using capital dollars for cleanup. Incredibly (unless one realized what was really going on) the school district was proposing by 1995 to pay over $82,000/acre for the land needed for the school! Again, The Miami Herald (2-19-95, Jodi Mailander) wrote extensively about the costs involved, the contamination, the overcrowding in the schools. At that time, the district was publicly claiming that the school would be built on the non-contaminated area of the site, which was, arguably, in the southwest corner of the property. Little did we know that they really intended to build it on the northwest corner, which was definitely contaminated. Little did we know why. 

In October, 1996 (Sun-Sentinel, Tessie Borden) it was reported that the land the district paid $82,000+/acre for now required over $1 million to clean up the “tons of buried garbage” under the site. It seems the firm they hired to test the land never probed into the interior, only the perimeter. The superintendent at the time was quoted thusly: "I doubt they even knew it (tires, trash...) was there." In December 1996, The Miami Herald (Orace Lim) reported that it would now cost $3 million to clean the school site. 

So what was going on?  Why such collective amnesia and stupidity, with absolutely no accountability?  DDD was built, and it was time to give it a name. The committee formed by the district voted to name it after a sitting board member, who had very close political ties to Miami Beach and to the generous developers who wanted to build the amusement park. He was "honored:" to have his name on the school. We thought it would be appropriate to name it after Anne Frank, the child of the Holocaust. The community in which the school was located signed petitions against naming it after the board member, but the political elite of Miami Beach came to the board meeting at which the vote took place and pressed for the sitting board member. Remember, the board removed all responsibility for paying for cleanup from Miami Beach because of the constant denials of any knowledge of contamination until after the sale was complete. The school is named for the board member, who is fond of saying, "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." The only consolation is that the kids call the school "Crap High".