As we all saw at last night’s meeting, Commissioner Souto does not seem to be interested in backing-down from his push to incorporate our area. Earlier this week, I had already written letters to our State Representative and State Senator, Daniel Perez and Annette Taddeo, but have not received any responses yet. In fact, no one from the County Commission or Mayor’s office has responded yet to any of my emails, so it seems to be time to broaden our plea for help. It appears State Representative Anthony Rodriguez is already registered as a candidate for District 10 in this year’s upcoming Commission election; it is my opinion that this matter should be his primary concern as a candidate for our district. As such, I have written him the email below and I encourage all of you to contact him to take a public position against the MAC and to use his influence to end the MAC now before it gets going full-steam. Do not give up on dissolving the MAC now in its infancy—we do not want to proceed with ‘business as usual’ when the legally-required process of obtaining our consent was summarily violated. The Commissioner and the County need to be taught a hard lesson: MACs-by-waiver end now. Dear Rep. Rodriguez, I understand you intend to run for the District 10 seat on the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners. While I understand you may be busy with matters in the statehouse, we need your help here now in our district with a County matter. The Miami-Dade Board of Commissioners recently approved the creation of the Westchester Municipal Advisory Committee (MAC) via waiver rather than by seeking our consent as residents as required by the Code of Ordinances. Residents were not broadly informed of this waiver until after it was granted and our Commissioner Souto’s first communication to us about it, a January 31st letter to residents, was full of scare tactics and half-truths to pit neighbor against neighbor right from the start. This is not the first time the Board has bypassed the resident consent requirements to push forward with the creation of a MAC in our County. Now this process has been foisted upon us against our will and residents will have to waste time and resources fighting an incorporation for which we did not ask nor on which we were consulted as required by law. My preliminary discussions with friends and neighbors shows there is no support for incorporation and that the effort is ultimately likely to fail—but why must we now be forced to fight an incorporation effort to which none of us consented in the first place? The Board should be made to dissolve the MAC which was created by circumventing the law without resident input. What's worse, our community's town hall meeting last night with Commissioner Souto was an absolute mess full of insults, condescension, and threats of arrest from the Commissioner towards us residents who were unanimously upset by his surprise waiver to create a MAC. The meeting was recorded if you or someone in your office needs to see how rudely we were all treated. Our commissioner has no respect for us and is railroading an incorporation effort we do not want and on which we were not consented. I ask that you please utilize whatever influence you may have with the Board to end this ill-begun effort now rather than wasting the time and resources of the County and its residents fighting something that should have never been created in the first place. The MAC must be dissolved immediately, the waiver must be withdrawn, and we need assurances the County will stop circumventing the resident consent requirements to create MACs. Taking a public stand on this would be very helpful for us residents as we decide who to vote for in this year's election. I would appreciate your feedback as soon as possible. Thank you,