The Renters Are Coming! The Renters Are Coming!

[Re: “Rental Suit” by Ben Torter, published Aug. 7.]

Residents of single-family districts in Miami Beach may soon find transients in their neighborhoods. Under pressure from Realtors, the planning board recommended that the city commission change zoning to allow single-family homes to be rented out three times a year for three months each time, for a total of nine months a year. Currently, the minimum rental period is six months.
 
The change could trigger a new single-family home rental industry for Realtors who line up owners of secondary residences eager to get into the rental business. Moreover, under the reporting required to administer the ordinance, owner-occupants stand to lose their homestead exemptions under a little-known section of Florida law that deems a homestead “abandoned” if rented.
 
The city commission is going to have to think very hard whether it should change the long-standing purpose of the city’s single-family zoning, which is to protect the character of its single-family neighborhoods.
 
Frank Del Vecchio
Miami Beach

Your Writer’s Personal Blog Entry Is Irresponsible!

In a piece of reporting that is destined to take its place among the most reckless and incendiary in Miami-Dade history, Miami SunPost contributing writer and substitute teacher Jordan Melnick has opined that a “race war” is brewing in the county’s public schools. Melnick’s characterization of the future of Miami-Dade Public Schools, the county’s largest employer, appeared today in a recently established blog he calls TeachDade.com.

Melnick describes www.TeachDade.com as “a privately owned newspage dedicated to mapping the landscape of Dade County public education. Its editor-in-chief is a contributing writer on the Miami SunPost His main purpose is to publish in-depth, investigative stories — not necessarily to cover day to day news.” Melnick made the following entry in TeachDade in the wake of Larry Feldman’s election to the Miami-Dade School Board. “But even if Crew leaves, Feldman’s victory is still important. If indeed he does align himself with the current minority of Renier Diaz de la Portilla, Marta Perez, Ana Rivas Logan and vice-chair Perla Hantman — all of whom voted to terminate Crew’s contract — then a Cuban-American agenda will take hold on the board.

“This would include an increase in bilingual education, more support for voucher schools and possibly the appointment of a Cuban-American to replace Crew if he is fired or quits. It might also result in the removal of Vamos A Cuba, a book Hispanics on the board have already tried to remove from school libraries because they say it presents an inaccurate picture of Cuba. (Though it may seem the most insignificant consequence, TD is adamantly against censoring school libraries.)

“A Cuban-American majority might also set off a racial conflict, according to Brian Peterson, editor of the Miami Education Review. A very close observer of racial politics in MDCPS, Peterson fears that a Cuban-American majority might try to fire many Black employees and hire Cubans in their place.

“The tension between the two ethnic groups bubbled over at the Aug. 4 meeting, when hundreds of Crew supporters from the Black community showed up to protest the termination of his contract. Violence was in the air. At one point, a Crew supporter from the Northwestern High neighborhood told the Superintendent that he had ‘an army’ ready and waiting.

“This is the district Feldman inherits. MDCPS is plagued with financial hardship of epic proportions, uncertain leadership and a brewing race war. TD has faith in the $1-a-year principal’s abilities, but it is going to take more than a symbolic gesture to keep MDCPS from crashing and burning. We hope the newest board member is prepared for what’s coming to him.

Incredibly, Melnick posits in the public domain that Feldman’s victory could facilitate a “Cuban-American” takeover of the district and repeats FIU Professor Brian Peterson’s wildly irresponsible speculation about the firing of “black employees” and the hiring of “Cubans” in their place. Melnick writes that “tensions between the two ethnic groups bubbled over” at the Aug. 4, meeting of the Miami-Dade School Board, and then proceeds to a grossly misrepresented account of that meeting to prove it.

At the meeting in question, African-American community leaders the likes of U.S. Representative Kendrick Meek and Miami-Dade NAACP President Rev. Victor Curry shared the microphone with former U.S. Ambassador to Belgium and former School Board Member Paul Cejas. African-American supporters of Dr. Crew were joined by Noreen Timoney, the wife of Miami Police Chief John Timoney. Representatives of the Beacon Council, the Chamber of Commerce and the American Association of School Administrators braved the “violence in the air” to speak at the meeting. At the meeting School Board Chair Augustine Berrera spoke in support of Dr. Crew and voted to reject the idea of firing him. Even an opponent of Dr. Crew, board member Perla Tabares-Hantman, flatly rejected any suggestion that race was involved in her deliberations.

You can’t get the facts of the Aug. 4 meeting as wrong as Jordan Melnick does by accident. Only an agent provocateur does that. The Miami SunPost owes this community an explanation for the fire Jordan Melnick is building.

Paul A. Moore

Teacher, Miami Carol City High School

Editor’s Note: Jordan Melnick’s blog at TeachDade.com is not a publication of the SunPost. The SunPost does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in TeachDade.com. Melnick is not a substitute teacher.