Article
and Video Courtesy of CBS Channel 4 Miami
By Bobeth Yates
Published April 15, 2021
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VIDEO
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MIAMI – For the second weekend in a row, Miami-Dade
residents got together to protest the closure of Matheson Hammock Park’s
west entrance.
“This is simple. Just don’t want these on watched
people near my home,” said pro bono attorney Bruce Jacobs, who
represents the friends of Matheson Hammock Park West.
Jacobs says the effort to close the Old School House Road entrance to
the park is being pushed by the Hammock Lake Homeowner’s Association.
“They came up with a plan that these nature trail that’s about a quarter
of a mile a little longer that is a protected rock nature trail. The
plan is to build a multi-million boardwalk right through the nature
trail. As if that is somehow helpful to the community and really all it
does is give them an excuse to shut down the north gate on Old School
House Road.” |
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Jacobs points to emails between then county commissioner Xavier Suarez
and the president of the HOA as proof.
“This all started because there’s a Miami-Dade circuit court judge, a
very powerful person in town who consulted with a county commissioner
and said I want you to meet with my homeowners’ association and what
they got the commissioner to do is to shut down this park,” said Jacobs
as he described the contents of the email chain.
But the homeowner association denies the claim saying they had nothing
to do with the change. In a previous interview with Bill Ogden, the HOA
president said while they did reach out to the commissioner for help
with concerns with the park that surrounds their community, those emails
never resulted in any assistance.
Ogden added that from the mid-80s to 2009 the Old School Road Entrance
was only used for service vehicles and not open to the public.
In 2009 the entrance was expanded to those with disabilities but because
it was never policed anyone could again access it. He adds prior to the
gate being closed last year for COVID, about 4,000 cars a month used the
west entrance that goes through their small residential neighborhood.
Now, the newly elected commissioner Raquel Regalado, who over that
district is now trying to find a balance between the two sides
“Miami-Dade county doesn’t make decisions based on who lives next to the
property. We’re making this decision based on the covenant and our
obligation to protect, preserve, and restore environmentally fragile
properties,” added Commissioner Regalado.
Regalado says she has proposed legislation that will address the
concerns by giving the Department of Environmental Resource Management,
not commissioners, not neighbors, dog owners, or the Parks Department
has the final say on what happens next.
“We’re taking into account all the different parties the people who are
interested in the environmental piece, people who are interested in the
dog park piece, the leash, and no leash, as well as the educational
component,” said Regalado. “These are environmentally protected lands
and that’s our number one priority, honoring that restoring that and
preserving that.”
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