The long delay in renovating Dinner Key Marina
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
I am a lawyer with many years experience with insurance coverage claims. I have been a tenant at Dinner Key Marina (DKM) for many years. The failure to put the marina back to full capacity after the destruction caused by Hurricane Irma in September 2017, puzzles me.
I inspected all six marina facilities in the Dinner Key area by dinghy, and all but DKM are back up to normal. There has been no work done on DKM for months.
I assumed that it was an insurance claims problem as claimed by City Hall but then the insurance story at a recent Commissioner meeting did not compute, so I investigated.
A business that rents has enough business interruption coverage for prompt restoration of the income stream, say one year. Business interruption coverage does not pay unless there is prompt reconstruction, which is funded by the property damage coverage. The shortfall, if any, will come from FEMA, but only if you have executed stages one and two. Since there has been no stage one, there can be no stage two or three. So we are dead in the water.
But, Miami bought no insurance. They are bare naked. Self insuring by large cities is common for small claims and damage to facilities that do not produce income. But the marine industry is a major source of City income and should have been insured.
The fallback is the “force account" - city employees. We employ every trade. At first that was done and many slips were restored but then it was stopped.
The next fallback is the general account and then the reserves for casualty loss, none of which have been used. Why?
The answer is so simple. District Commissioner Ken Russell cannot get the votes because it is payback time. He has refused to support some projects outside his district so now his project is not supported. Add to that important people who want to privatize the City Marinas and convert them to mega yacht slips, which will bring in about five times the revenue.
What do we do to save one of the best located marinas in the country and one which is affordable? Find a candidate for our district that will play ball by the Miami rules.
Contractor and developer money make this system work, if you call it working. Ken cannot get money from the usual players.
Nothing will happen until Ken plays ball. When we have a Commissioner that will, a contract will be agreed upon with an already identified contractor. That contractor will finance the contract by working without getting paid for a certain period of time to see how much money is put forward in campaign money for the elections. There is a PAC that will juice this process.
Reconstruction will be $20 to $30 million, which is small change. The Little Haiti project is going to get $30 million.
I feel bad for Mr. Russell as he wants to do the right thing but he doesn't have what it takes. This way of doing business has been around for many years and it suits the voters. The players know the laws and are careful to stay on the right side of the line. We need a Lyndon Johnson but we got a Gene McCarthy.
Terry Fruth
Coconut Grove
posted by Tom Falco at 4:00 AM
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8 Comments:
Mr. Fruth, sincerely, thank you for the info, "force account" - city employees, self-insured, etc., most of us did not know. In addition you say Ken didn't support projects outside his district, and that's how THIS system works, it's payback time and "I feel bad for Mr. Russell as he wants to do the right thing but he doesn't have what it takes. I feel this is incorrect, perhaps unfair, but not a biased analogy. We are both a democracy and republic and public servants don't always get what they want. For every attorney who wins one must lose yet people pick an attorney's from a profession where 50% lose!? Jobie Steppe
Jobie, with respect, a good lawyer will not lose 50% of his cases. Not even close.
While he seems like a swell guy, I think we've seen that unfortunately Commissioner Russell is not ready for prime time.
Dear Anon 1:00 P.M. Read again sincerely with respect. I wrote for every attorney who wins one must lose. I.E., every case, one plaintiff and one defendant, civil or criminal, in any single individual case both the plaintiff & defendant cannot prevail. One wins, one loses. Not the attorney, but the plaintiff or defendant. There just might be some attorney who wins 100% of his cases, or loses 100%, but for every case there is a winner or there's a loser. 50% of all cases must have a losing attorney, plaintiff or defendant. If that's not true please explain how both a plaintiff & defendant can prevail except in a Disney movie? Unless of course your gauge is both attorney's get paid. I'm suggesting that Commissioner Russell or any other commissioner in the 1,600 counties in the U.S. could not possibly please everyone in the environment we have in the municipality of Miami - Dade County, Florida, as inferred by Mr. Terry Fruth - respectfully. Jobie Steppe
Better yet, lets try this succinctly. Attorney's who go to trial belong to a professional group who are 50% losers. If you were a boat or aircraft pilot or SCUBA instructor you would be run out of town tarred and feathered on a rail post. Jobie Steppe
Wow. Thank you, Mr. Fruth. Well researched and well written analysis of the problem.
City of Miami City Commissioners:
District 1 Willy Gort
District 2 Ken Russell
District 3 Joe Carollo
District 4 Manolo Reyes
District 5 Keon Hardemon
Thank you Ken Russell for your leadership of District 2. I would say your job is difficult at best, and I would also say you are doing as superior a job as possible. Thank you for your service!!!! Keep fighting for the Grove as well as the vast area that you represent. I cannot imagine a more competent, fair, caring person to represent District 2.
We got an opportunist with zero political experience and little regard for the citizens that live in Coconut Grove when we elected Ken Russell as our City Commissioner. In addition to the Dinner Key Marina fiasco mentioned, voters should remember that Russell originally campaigned for election as the champion of City parks. And after glaringly abandoning District 2 to run for Congress - just a few months into his first tenure as a rookie Commissioner - he voted to convert Mel Reese Park - the City's biggest green area - into a mega mall. Simultaneously, Russell maneuvered behind the backs of neighbors living next to Kennedy Park - a nature park since its inception - to change the character of that Park into a late night sports park. Almost four years into Russell's tenure his body of work is short and the list of political missteps, betrayals and self serving actions is long. In my opinion, Russell has not been true to the essence of his main campaign promise and has shown little regard for the taxpaying citizens he swore he would represent. His agenda seems to be driven more by self interest than the public interest.
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