Surfside Sustainability on the Back Burner

Surfside commissioners gave preliminary approval last month to toss its planning and zoning board’s sustainability requirement down the drain – the latest move in what some see as the new commission’s relentless effort to undo environmental regulations in the small coastal community.

As the code is written now, at least one of the planning and zoning board’s seven members must “have education and/or experience in sustainability and resiliency, which may include environmental science.”

Mayor Shlomo Danzinger and Commissioner Fred Landsman, who together brought the issue into question two months ago, cited difficulties in finding eligible applicants to fill a recent vacancy on the board.

And although that vacancy was not created by the current resiliency member, Ruben Bravo, a developer with experience in green building, Danzinger referred to the sustainability requirement as overly restrictive.

No Voice for the Environment

The provision was first put into place by the previous commission as a trade-off when the town’s sustainability and resiliency committee was axed entirely in 2020. While some commissioners now use that to argue that environmental experience was never relevant to the planning and zoning board in the first place, some residents believe that it’s all the more reason to keep it.

“I don’t see why we would take a hatchet to an area of expertise that is needed, that we currently have, when there is no replacement, and we’re silencing a perspective that we don’t have any other way of bringing into these discussions,” said Surfside resident Gerardo Vildostegui at an Oct. 12 commission meeting. “That, to me, seems really unwise.”

Danzinger and other supporters noted that the planning and zoning board’s duty is to objectively analyze site plans according to the town’s zoning code, essentially disallowing opinions on sustainability and resiliency regardless of who the members are. For that reason, Vildostegui and others were willing to support the commission’s move under the condition that such experts be given a platform elsewhere on the town’s staff.

Landsman, who asserted that his decision is by no means anti-environmental, said he wishes to encourage conversations on the matter in other ways. His brief inquiry as to how the commission could expand the planning and zoning board’s powers so that it may discuss the feasibility or sustainability of a project beyond self-removed interpretation of the town’s code was quickly cut short by Danzinger, who insisted they move on with the agenda.

The town code also states that at least three additional members of the planning and zoning board must meet one of several qualifications that include having credentials as a contractor, engineer, planning professional, architect, interior designer or attorney. Vice Mayor Jeffrey Rose pushed for the resiliency member to be alternatively added to that list, along with developers and realtors.

For the record, Rose himself is one of Surfside’s leading contractors – a point that has long troubled residents who often call on him to recuse himself from pro-development matters.

“The P&Z board should not be an entirely pro-development board made up of developers … and Realtors,” retorted resident and former Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer. “It needs to be a real area of expertise.”

“I don’t worry about having enough developers and Realtors on the board,” Vildostegui added. “Geez, there are developers and Realtors – you can’t flap your arms without hitting one in this town.”

Landsman also began to raise objections toward Rose’s proposal until Danzinger successfully urged him to “come on” and “just second [the item].”

If the move passes during second reading, the planning and zoning board will only be guaranteed a voice of environmental reason until Bravo steps down from his position – one he assumed just two years ago. But other moves will have more immediate implications.

An Apparent Trend

The month of March brought a sweeping turnover for all but one seat in Surfside’s five-member commission, who adopted a town in mourning after the Champlain Towers South condo building collapse that killed 98 people in June of 2021.

The newcomers have since wasted no time in dismantling a slew of eco-friendly policies.

In July, they raised the maximum size for docks on the town’s waterways. In August, they weakened a long-existing ban on gas-powered leaf blowers. In September, they increased the number of preset beach chairs, authorized food service on the beach and expanded allowable driveway coverage for single-family homes. Then came the planning and zoning vote.

“The P&Z vote is part of a larger ideologically based attack on sustainability that has been one of the defining features of this commission,” Vildostegui later told the Biscayne Times.

This community of less than 6,000 residents used to be a leader in environmental legislation, Vildostegui remembers, referring particularly to Daniel Dietch’s mayoralty from 2010 to 2020, during which Surfside became the first municipality in Miami-Dade County to ban plastic straws.

Jennifer Rotker, who pushed for the initial straw ban in 2018, is among residents who have shown up in droves this year to oppose decisions like the new beach guidelines, which they believe will dramatically increase litter and harm the character of their placid coastline – as well as the homes of nesting sea turtles.

“I just want to have the sea turtle town that uses the sea turtle as its mascot for marketing, for advertising dollars – it’s not a prop,” said Rotker at a Sept. 13 commission meeting. “Respect the actually federally endangered and protected species, and don’t use them as a cash cow and a mascot in vain.”

By the same token, some rejected the seaweed cleanup that was proposed the month before and unanimously accepted by commissioners, including by Commissioner Nelly Velasquez, the only incumbent and oftentimes lone dissenter on the board. Those resisting the measure cited seaweed as a necessity toward building shoreline stability and protecting wildlife.

“We have to stop pretending that the beaches are here for us to loot, to pleasure ourselves,” Salzhauer said at an Aug. 9 commission meeting. “That’s not what they’re here for. We are here second. The environment comes first, and we come second.”

“The turtles come second as far as I’m concerned,” disagreed Danzinger.

Yet the leading motive behind the mayor’s agenda could well be a merely libertarian ideal, noted by his immediate dismissal of a proposed cigarette ban on the town’s beach last month. When asked to consider the move – which Miami Beach approved in September – Danzinger expressed a distaste for bans in general, stating that “if somebody wants to kill themselves with plastic, that seems to be their issue.”

In fact, the idea that Danzinger and company are leading culprits in locally

anti-environmental politics is potentially altered when put into the context of an age-old debate with broader implications – one that asks how to address climate change in the first place.

Mitigation vs. Resiliency

When criticized for their stance on environmental policy, Surfside’s commissioners often refer to a move they made in June that allows the construction of non-habitable understories beneath homes in low-lying districts – a form of elevation that they believe would have been crucial had they been struck by Hurricane Ian, the state’s deadliest since 1935.

Danzinger, for one, is keenly aware of the town’s stark future as a coastal community in the midst of rising seas, having asserted his plans to live in Surfside until the town “floods over.” But, for him, a truly combative plan would have to look 20-30 years into the future, he says.

“We’ve heard, ‘do the right thing,’” said Danzinger in September. “It’s not about the right thing or the wrong thing; it’s just about a difference of opinion. I don’t think anyone here wants to destroy the beach. That’s why we live here.”

But others remain unconvinced.

Vildostegui criticizes those who exclusively focus on temporary fixes like sea walls, water pumps and home elevations while simultaneously throwing mitigation by the wayside. He wants the commission to invest in efforts to curb emissions; He wants to renew Surfside’s eco-leadership.

“We need to set an example and raise awareness as to what’s causing the sea-level rise,” he said. “This is not something that a simple development can address. We need to change the world, and we need to do our part.”

And while adaptation may play an important role in building resiliency, Vildostegui warns, such developments have their costs; needed dollars are unlikely to come from Surfside alone.

“We’re not going to build our way out of this ourselves,” he said. “At some point, we’re going to need help from the federal government and the state government, and when we do, what do we have to show for ourselves?”

While the commission has more than half of its current term ahead of it to figure that out, one thing remains clear: Surfside’s residential watchdogs aren’t going anywhere.

In the meantime, they’re left with an expression that Danzinger himself employs often: If you don’t like them, vote them out.