Miramar Gardens and Vista Verde

City offers to help fix road problems

New city considers paying for an engineers' plan to improve roads and drainage for beleaguered residents of two homeowner associations that haven't delivered services.

Article Courtesy of The Miami Herald

By DONNA GEHRKE-WHITE

Published May 13, 2007

Two struggling townhouse communities may finally get decent roads and an end to chronic flooding -- improvements their homeowners' associations and the county have been unable to provide in nine years.

The Miami Gardens City Council will vote May 23 on a proposal to pay engineers $284,000 to develop a plan to help Miramar Gardens and Vista Verde, including drainage, roads, sidewalks and street lights.

Last month, The Miami Herald described how homeowners have endured for years flooded streets, potholes, broken mailboxes, torn-up sidewalks and weedy common areas in the northwest Miami-Dade neighborhoods, despite being ordered to pay $1.9 million in homeowner dues and the county throwing in another $3 million.

Now the newly formed city of Miami Gardens, which included Vista Verde and Miramar Gardens in its borders, wants to try to help, says Daniel Rosemond, the city's community development director.

''Our project is completely different [from the county's work]. We are not going to take over anything the county has done,'' he says.

Still, any actual relief is at least a year off -- and the city would have to show that the homeowners are poor enough to quality for help from the federal government.

The U.S. Postal Service also has stepped in, replacing the broken mailboxes that the homeowner associations in Miramar Gardens and Vista Verde had failed to fix. Usually, the HOAs would be responsible. But when no work was done -- and residents were forced to go to a post office to collect their mail, the postal service decided to do the work.

Meanwhile, the county is committed to finishing an abandoned drainage project. At a May 2 meeting, Miami-Dade Commissioner Barbara Jordan assured the boards of the Miramar Gardens Townhouse Homeowner's Association and the Vista Verde Townhouse Homeowner's Association that she will try to come up with about an extra $100,000 needed to finish the work.

A contractor walked off the job more than three years ago, after the county paid the Universal Truth Community Development Corp. more than $1 million to oversee the work. Workers only resumed burying huge drainage basins last fall after The Miami Herald asked about the project.

But Jordan warned that, even when that work is finally finished, some roads will still flood.

But Jordan says she hopes the city can help. Residents, she says, ``have been suffering for quite some time.''

She also offered help in monitoring HOA budgets and elections. Many homeowners have complained about improper elections and a lack of services from the two associations, which the county helped resurrect in 1998. Jordan said the HOAs could do more if people paid their $35-a-month dues. Nearly 40 percent of homeowners have faced legal action for not paying.