The SunPost

Commissioner Marc Sarnoff: helpin' MAM get another $2 million.

According to the Miami City Commission’s newest member, Miami has not done enough to push for prime investment and exposure opportunities for the arts. “If we don’t start supporting our local artists and art venues, then we will never have a thriving arts community,” said Commissioner Marc Sarnoff during last Thursday’s commission meeting.

After his 15-minute speech, he helped reach into the city’s purse to change that trend.
Sarnoff voted, along with Commissioner Joe Sanchez, to allocate $2 million to create a new Miami Art Museum at Bicentennial Park. The $2 million will be added to a pool of private funds and pledges of about $36 million, as well as county bond funds of $100 million, for the design and construction of the new facility. The total project would amount to $208 million, according to MAM sources — $120 million for construction and design, $70 million for the museum’s operating endowment and $18 million for transitional expenses related to the project.

MAM currently has a 24,000-square-foot space at the Miami-Dade County Cultural Center dedicated to contemporary art with an emphasis on art of the Americas. The projected size of the new MAM, which is to be built alongside a new Miami Science Museum at Bicentennial Park, would be about 125,000 square feet. It is scheduled to open by 2010.

MAM’s director, Terence Riley, said the Miami City Commission vote was a major victory for the art museum, and art education in general. “The opponents of the Museum Park plan raised every imaginable objection, all of which were reopened for thorough and — at times — heated discussion over the past few weeks. The vote in favor puts these to rest,” Riley wrote via e-mail the day after the decision.

A “work in progress exhibit” showcasing the new MAM’s proposed look will be presented to the public sometime next fall, with additional public forums on the design to follow, Riley said. The firm of Herzog and de Meuron has been developing designs for the new MAM since October.

The $2 million from the city of Miami comes with conditions, however. Sarnoff created a list of nine benchmarks that must be met, including the creation of 500 underground public parking spaces paid for by the museum, and immediate formation of a committee to raise between $12 million and $20 million so the museum can re-landscape and maintain Bicentennial Park. Sanchez added a requirement for an oversight committee to assess costs and the project as a whole. Riley believed the commission’s conditions were “reasonable.”
Sarnoff also approached the decision as a way to save Bicentennial Park itself. He spoke of visiting the park and finding the green open space by Bayside mostly frequented by the homeless. He quoted Jane Jacobs, a prominent urbanist and writer, who labeled Bicentennial Park a “vacuous park,” meaning it does not attract the public as much as it should because of lack of an inviting entry point. “We need to create magnets within the park, to attract people,” said Sarnoff. “Bicentennial Park is the place for this museum.”

Sarnoff also presented an example of a vacuous park that had created the funding necessary to complete a large and modern museum: The Milwaukee Museum of Art, which, according to Sarnoff, cost that city $121 million to construct.

Skepticism and outright objection were not hard to come by at City Hall, from Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones, Commissioner Tomas Regalado and neighborhood watch groups.

Spence-Jones described it as “a difficult sale” because she feared “broken promises,” and wanted an agreement to make sure the museum would give something back to neighboring areas. Regalado was concerned the city was not receiving enough for the land it was giving up.

“We are already giving up what could be $50 million in land for something that is not ours. I just don’t know what is in it for the city of Miami,” Regalado said. He said he has a love for the arts, but had to object to spending taxpayers’ dollars in this fashion.

Representatives from several neighborhood coalitions made clear they did not like the prospect of spending money that could be headed elsewhere. Nina West and Judy Sandoval, members of Parks and Public Spaces and Miami Neighborhoods United, both expressed concern about the museums’ direction and the fiscal responsibility of the commissioners who are allotting funds for a project that has not yet been designed, or finalized.

“We object to the use of park space and public money and hope you will defer this issue until all papers concerning this are signed,” Sandoval said.

Grace Solares, president of Miami Neighborhoods United, expressed a similar sentiment. “We ask that you defer this item to September when you will have all of the documents of this deal … in front of you,” she said.

This did little to deter the final decision, which was approved 2-1 — Sarnoff and Sanchez voting in favor, Regalado against. Commissioners Michelle Spence-Jones and Angel Gonzalez both were absent during the vote.

Another theme that presented itself frequently was the fear of creating another Carnival Performing Arts Center fiasco, which cost $473 million to build and has run over budget this year by about $4 million. Sanchez also pointed to the continual delays in opening the performing arts center (his reason for the creation of an oversight committee). But despite this concern, Sanchez still believed the project was well worth the risk, noting that Miami was competing with other cities like New York and Paris in the realms of art and culture.

“There is a time when vision and leadership come together, and that day is today,” he said.

At last Thursday’s Miami Commission meeting, city officials announced a new agreement with the city’s sanitation workers that will induce sweeping changes in wages and benefits. Commissioner Joe Sanchez labeled it “the best contract the sanitation workers have negotiated in the city of Miami, in history.”

The sanitation workers’ union has been trying to negotiate a better contract since April 2004. “I was shocked that they were being treated unfairly with the tremendous job they do,” said City Commission Chairman Angel Gonzalez on Thursday. “It’s good that they finally have a good contract; I am very pleased.”

“We were getting different treatment than the other departments, and for a long time we’ve felt shortchanged,” said Bob Simmons, president of the Florida Public Employees Council 79, who has worked for the city more than 16 years.

He conceded that progress only really started when Hector Mirabile, the city’s deputy director of employee relations, began working with the union about seven months ago.
“The previous contract was extremely substandard,” Mirabile said. “So we tried our hardest to get the best package we could possibly get.”

The changes are effective immediately but range across two different contracts the union has with the city of Miami — the current one, which started on Oct. 1, 2004 and will last to Sept. 30, 2007; and a future agreement from Oct. 1, 2007 to Sept. 30, 2010. The substantive revisions include a total wage increase of six percent over the first three years of the first contract, and a nine percent increase over the three years of the second contract. Pay would also be restructured in such a way that after a certain number of years, a “step” increase of 2.5 percent would be credited.

Before negotiations, sick leave was limited to 600 hours, with no pay afterward. Now, the number is 750 hours, but without a limit; any hours accumulated after that would be granted at 50 percent and either paid in cash or credited to vacation leave.
Commissioner Marc Sarnoff praised the negotiations, and recounted a time when he lived in New York during a sanitation workers’ strike. “There was no garbage pickup for one and a half months. I’m glad we didn’t get to that point, and resolved the dispute,” he chuckled.

Simmons always believed the best approach with the city was to be “cooperative rather than adversarial” to achieve their goals, even if it was taking longer than the negotiating team wanted.

The workmers’ compensation would be slightly better than state law, at 80 percent of the base wage. Also, under the old contract, an employee who was in an accident had to undergo substance abuse and alcohol testing and wait for the results before returning to work — using their vacation time for the work they missed. “I had fellow employees that would lose a week of their vacation time just waiting for a test to come back negative,” Simmons said. With this new contract, employees would be on administrative leave while undergoing these tests. Another change is that if employees need to be immediately relieved for a legitimate reason, they will continue to be paid.

Even the union sucked up some of the costs to get the contract finalized, agreeing to “assist the city in curtailing excessive healthcare costs by sharing increased percentages of premium costs,” according to a release from the city’s Office of Communications. “It really was a team effort, and I’m absolutely proud of the progress,” Mirabile said. When asked if Sanchez’s comment about this being the best union agreement in the history of the city of Miami was accurate, Mirabile answered without hesitation: “That is completely factual.”

assistant to the city manager, whose role was to keep City Manager Pedro Hernandez briefed and to assist Mirabile in facilitating the negotiations.

“The city staff worked very long hours and put all their muscle and heart into it because we knew how important this union was for the city manager,” said Piña. “This was truly a team effort.”

When asked about future contract talks past the year 2010, Piña believed the city could stay consistent with the current revisions.

“Both the city and the union have set a new tone and standard. Hopefully in 2010 we will be able to uphold it and reach an amicable agreement,” she said.

Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones joined in the praise, saying that she finally thought the sanitation workers, a group of some of the hardest-working people, were getting a fair deal. She was not all smiles, however, speaking of the “deplorable conditions of the facility” where solid waste employees work. She spoke of the need to upgrade that facility and its showering unit, adding “if anyone needs to be able to have a good, clean shower in this city, it should be the garbage pick-up personnel. They should have the best showers.”

The ordinance symbolizes a new era of cooperation with Surfside's religious institutions, according to the town’s vice mayor. Photo by Andrew Goldstein

The Surfside Town Commission unanimously passed an ordinance dealing with public assembly and religious institutions, during a meeting held June 12.

The ordinance was meant to accommodate Young Israel of Bal Harbour, a synagogue that previous town governments litigated against in conjunction with another temple, Midrash Sephardi, for nearly a decade. The two temples wanted to operate in a bank building at 9592 Harding Ave. However, Surfside officials argued that the building was not zoned for religious use. The courts ruled in favor of the synagogues based on a statute called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which Congress passed in 2000.

Surfside only recently settled the case, and was forced to pay both temples’ legal fees amounting to more than $1.5 million. “At Vice Mayor Weinberg’s request, we have done an analysis of how we could remedy the legislation that was in place prior to this litigation that resulted in a large loss for the town,” said Town Attorney Lynn M. Dannheisser. Mayor Charles Burkett said the legislation would help avoid “future problems” regarding similar zoning issues.

Young Israel plans to build a two-story synagogue on two empty lots, one at 9580 Abbott Ave., the other on Byron Avenue west of and adjacent to the first; both front on 96th Street. The possibility of the temple expanding its site south by buying two private homes was discussed at previous meetings, but Stan Price, the synagogue’s attorney, said they were no longer interested in doing that. “This [zoning] map is sufficient for the purposes of Young Israel,” he said.

The three areas allowed for public assembly in Surfside will be 96th Street, Harding Avenue and Collins Avenue. In the lawsuit, the town’s different treatment of religious assemblies compared to secular assemblies or organizations was ruled discriminatory. Dannheisser said the new ordinance standardizes treatments, and also regulates home assemblies.

Price apologized for “characterizations that were made at the last meeting.” The lawyer said he did not have a proper survey of the 96th Street area when he referred to the ordinance as “anti-RLUIPA.”

But Price did complain that the new ordinance does not address several issues relating to the height of synagogues and their required setbacks. “We’d also like you to consider your parking requirements,” he said. Price argued that Orthodox Jews, like the congregants of Young Israel, are required by religious law not to drive on the Sabbath; therefore fewer car parking spaces should be needed. He noted that Bal Harbour passed an ordinance taking into account this unique characteristic of religious Jews.