Dear Residents,
It appears the effort to incorporate areas of District 10 into the new “City of Westchester” may potentially be linked to designs upon Tropical Park by well-moneyed interests.
Residents of District 10 this week began receiving mailers paid for by “Friends of Tropical Park” supporting the incorporation of the area between the Florida Turnpike and State Road 826, from SW 8th Street down to SW 56th Street. The mailer seen so far directs recipients to a website www.westchesterfl.com which repeats many of the same pro-incorporation talking points (sometimes word-for-word) listed in Commissioner Javier Souto’s infamous January 31, 2022 letter to residents first informing them after-the-fact of the creation of the Westchester Municipal Advisory Committee (M.A.C.). While Section 20-29(A) of the Code of Ordinances requires 20% of affected residents to consent in writing before a M.A.C. is created, Commissioner Souto himself requested a waiver of this requirement which was ultimately approved by the Miami-Dade County Board of Commissioners.
“Friends of Tropical Park” itself is linked to a website, www.savethepark.org which purports to be interested in protecting Tropical Park, a 275 acre park within the boundaries of the proposed municipality, from “lobbyists and special interests who would seek to profit our our public parks” (sic). The purported founder of the organization is Ernest “Ernie” Thomas, a managing partner at a private family investment fund and a member of the Miami-Dade Citizens' Independent Transportation Trust representing District 10 (https://www.miamidade.gov/citt/member-thomas.asp The website says Mr. Thomas is a resident of Horse Country which, being situated immediately to the west of the Florida Turnpike, seemingly coincidentally falls just outside the boundaries of the newly proposed city of Westchester.
“Friends of Tropical Park” appears to have been organized as a political committee on May 14, 2020, but campaign finance reports show the committee was relatively inactive with relatively small and infrequent receipts and expenses until December 13, 2021, when the organization received eight contributions totaling $25,000. Five days prior on December 8, 2021, Commissioner Souto’s request for a waiver of residents’ consent was forwarded to the Board of Commissioners by the Chairman’s Council of Policy with a favorable recommendation for approval by the Board. The committee again received another $15,000 in total contributions on January 24, 2022, this time five days after the Board of Commissioners voted to approve Commissioner Souto’s request for a waiver of Section 20-29(A). While no wrongdoing is alleged, it remains to be investigated whether any link exists between the timing of the advancement and approval of Commissioner Souto’s waiver request and the donations to “Friends of Tropical Park”. The donations reported to date largely come from various construction management, real estate, property development, and lobbying firms (https://www.voterfocus.com/CampaignFinance/candidate_pr.php?op=cv&e=13&c=miamidade&ca=2351&rellevel=3&committee=Y Several of these contributors count various Miami-Dade municipalities among their clients, lucrative relationships which represent government contracts totaling in the tens of millions.
Whether the incorporation of “Westchester”, including the 275 acre Tropical Park—an enormous tract of undeveloped land in one of the nation’s fastest growing real estate markets—represents a potential business opportunity to interested parties may ultimately be answered by investigating what interest “Friends of Tropical Park”, its organizers, and its contributors have in the ongoing push to incorporate the area.