On September 18, 1979, City of Miami voters went to the polls and overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the city charter. Residents endorsed a proposal requiring that all future development along Biscayne Bay or on either bank of the Miami River below the Fifth Street bridge be placed 50 feet…
Last week, just hours after two momentous court decisions dealt severe blows to Democrats’ hopes of retaining the White House, local party activists filed into the county’s Joseph Caleb Center in Liberty City. They had not come to rally around their wounded leader, Al Gore. Nor had they gathered to…
The call came over the airwaves as it had so many times before. On Wednesday, November 22, Radio Mambí (WAQI-AM 710) and La Poderosa (WWFE-AM 670) reverberated with the cries of political advocates, among them U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and state Sen. Mario Diaz-Balart, urging people to descend on the…
When he decided this past Monday to allow ballot recounts by hand, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks ensured that the political madness engulfing South Florida would rage on. For a few days at least, the future would be known: Lots of people would be examining lots of ballots. One…
It’s fitting that Jason McGee, a senior account executive in the New Times classified department, spent the week before his October 19 murder on a family vacation with his mother, grandmother, and his two young children. By all accounts McGee doted on his three-year-old daughter Molly and two-year-old son Liam…
Alan Farago, Sierra Club Miami conservation chair, has a nightmarish vision for the future of South Florida. It’s 2030 and the population of the four-county region has almost doubled from today’s just under five million people to nine million. In Miami-Dade the urban development boundary has expanded like the waistline…
The German chemical tanker Igloo Moon cut through the predawn stillness in the waters off the coast of South Florida. It was 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday, November 6, 1996, when Chief Mate Peter Stubler sent one of his crewmen on a routine inspection of the ship. Stubler liked to call…
Public records show them to be a curious bunch. Two have no full-time jobs. One makes a six-figure salary working for a publicly backed social service agency. Two work as consultants, but it is unclear what they do. At least one’s finances don’t seem to add up. And two more…
Dressed in their evening finery, hundreds of the Democratic faithful gather on a Saturday in late June for the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner, a gala fundraiser for the Florida Democratic Party. Supporters from around the state, including Sen. Bob Graham, Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson, and state Rep. Elaine Bloom, file down…
City of Miami Commissioner Arthur Teele insists it is news to him that he owes $6100 to Miami-Dade taxpayers. Back in 1996, during his failed bid to become county mayor, Teele submitted campaign spending forms 207 days late. As a result the elections department fined the former county commission chairman…
Nothing prepared Joel and Michelle Rodriguez for their first experience as landlords in Edgewater, the tattered waterfront area just north of downtown. Back in November 1996, the young couple, who were in their late twenties and planning to wed the following spring, came across an eight-unit, 1940s-era Art Deco-style apartment…
The struggle to keep little Elian Gonzalez from the clutches of his communist father has galvanized Miami’s Cuban-American community like no other issue. Spanish-language radio buzzes with us-versus-them propaganda, political figures on both sides of the ethnic divide pander, and street-corner conversation focuses on exacting revenge from those who would…
The Marion 7820 Walking Dragline is a monster of a machine. Picture a crane on steroids attached to a truncated ocean tanker. When the dragline’s boom is fully extended, the Marion wouldn’t fit into Pro Player Stadium. It weighs more than four million pounds and rests on two 52-foot-long treaded…
More than twenty people crowded into the tiny front room of a modest Little Havana home on a sunny Sunday. They were drawn from a wide spectrum of ages and skin colors. Most were Cuban Americans. Nearly all were clothed in white from head to toe. Three drummers beat rhythmically…
Florida Marine Patrol Ofcr. Jason Lundy recognized the sponge poachers from a distance as he motored outside the northern boundaries of Biscayne National Park. He knew their boat well, and the glint of vegetable oil on water indicated they were likely breaking the law. The poachers often spread an oil…
It was the shot in the foot heard round the world, and it will be replayed for years to come. There stood Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas at the federal courthouse on March 29, 2000, a day in which the very real threat of civil unrest loomed menacingly. A phalanx…
On the morning of February 25, when Jacquelyn Mills-Smith summoned José Garcia to her office, Garcia thought he knew the reason. The pair worked for the U.S. Bureau of the Census on Miami Beach. Mills-Smith was the office manager. Garcia supervised a team of seven who had been hired to…
The premise of the meeting on the evening of January 13 seemed simple enough. Miami officials hoped the gathering on the second floor of the Coconut Grove Convention Center would provide a forum for Grove residents and board members of the Land Trust of Dade County to share information. But…
At the entrance to the Little Havana street where kindergartner Elian Gonzalez currently resides, two Porta Pottis stand ready to accommodate the press and crowds that regularly throng the block. On one an enterprising media member has tacked a sign that reads, “Welcome to Camp Elian.” Almost anyone watching television…
Here’s a quiz in which both long-time residents and recent arrivals can test their civic knowledge of Miami. What can you call all of the following city-owned properties: a waste dump, a boat ramp, a shopping mall, a sewer plant, and a cemetery? (Hint: If you are a newcomer, remember…
Off South Dixie Highway in Naranja, down at the southern end of Miami-Dade County, is the winter home of a low-rent traveling carnival. On a football-size field, amusement rides in spiral shapes and bright colors stand jumbled together in various states of disrepair. A row of buses and the trucks…
It was just a few months ago that a couple of small-town mayors and one of Florida’s most influential families found an innovative way to greenwash their plan for a commercial airport sandwiched between two national parks in South Miami-Dade. In a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno, they asserted…
