Twenty-five years is a big chunk of time in the life of any city. For whatever reason, once you hit 25, people start thinking about 100. Have you ever noticed that? People never say on the 20th anniversary of a thing that this duration represents the passage of a fifth of a century. Yet once that same thing reaches the ripe old age of 25, it is automatically dubbed a quarter of a century. This same logic is not applied to whiskey, where a fifth is seen as significant. Well, perhaps we can solve this dichotomy by breaking out a fifth of our finest Scotch and drinking a toast to the City of Aventura, which in November 2020 just turned – you should excuse the expression – a quarter of a century. Yes, our great burg was incorporated back in November of 1995.
The area had been an unincorporated section of Miami-Dade County and while some grumbling was inevitable, there was definitely not a vibe of widespread displeasure with the state of affairs. But in June 1991, Key Biscayne broke away and incorporated. Such is human nature that incorporation movements happen in waves, so actual incorporations occur in clusters. Why should the guy down the block have his own city with a fancy City Hall while all I have is a bored county official on the other end of the phone line in downtown Miami somewhere? So Biscayne put a Key in the door and it opened to our little adventure.
In the song, “Goodnight Irene,” the narrator croons, “Sometimes I lives in the country, Sometimes I lives in the town, Sometimes I haves a great notion, to jump into the river and drown.” Well, the good people of Aventura had a great notion to jump into the big river, turn into a town and try their best not to drown. This was our moment to sink or swim.
The Miami-Dade County Commission was not initially receptive to this ambition on our part, but a compromise allowed a potential City of Aventura to continue using Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue. This was a sort of win-win deal because the county could keep some of the taxes while the city would be spared the expense and responsibility of learning from scratch how to run an effective team of first responders. The upshot of all this wrangling was that incorporation came up for a vote in November 1995 and the residents of Aventura, determined to pull away from the direct governance of the county, incorporated their own city.
If we are to judge today our position on the spectrum between sinking and swimming, we must first remind ourselves what we initially hoped to accomplish, and then measure our results against those goals. Several arguments for independence were cited – and promoted – at the time. We wanted the ability to create our own police department and enhance public safety, even if the fire and rescue came from outside. We wanted control over zoning, development and municipal taxes, so that developers in Miami could not cajole the county commission into letting them fashion our horizon to conform with their worldview instead of ours. And we sought the ability to create and maintain a high standard of landscape and streetscape.
By most measures, the vision of “the founders” has been fulfilled. Our taxes are still the lowest in the county, but services are excellent and we have a budget surplus. Over the course of this quarter-century, we have succeeded in creating four new parks and the Don Soffer Trail along Country Club Drive, in addition to some lively and creative streetscape themes. The landscape maintenance is outstanding. We sport a recreational center and a cultural center. We have a police department that is well regarded by our citizens and has caught national attention as a model for efficient law enforcement in smaller municipalities. In education, our facilities are all top-notch, including – and no one foresaw this in 1995 – three charter schools with parents throwing sharp elbows at each other to gain admission for their children.
So I think it is fair to say there are no revanchist voices left out there (except perhaps in the county), no Luddites, none of what the Urban Dictionary calls “regressivism.” Congratulations to us for 25 great years and a lot of great work, even if there are a few imperfections, often called out in this very column. We have arrived and we are enjoying our destination.
What has been lost, if anything? Pre-incorporated Aventura was a boiling caldron of political activity. Before 1995, quite a number of nongovernmental organizations existed. There were three Democratic Clubs, the Northeast Dade Coalition, a group of 160 condos and HOAs in Northeast Dade and Concerned Citizens, comprised of hundreds of individual members, even a Jewish War Veterans group. All are gone today.
So 1995 was a time of great active civic participation by the residents of Northeast Dade, including Aventura. Candidates flocked to Democratic, Coalition and Concerned Citizens meetings to gain attention and endorsements. The Turnberry Country Club was a recreational center and socialization place intended for residents. Since then it has morphed into a resort marketed to tourists.
Now we have grown fat and happy. Participation in political or communal activity is mostly passive – going to parks, performances or other recreational events. There is virtually no active participation in group activities or discussions for those with common interests or causes. Of course the city has boards, but at most maybe 20-25 residents participate in those. Most revealing of all of our complacency, in this election cycle all but one commissioner is unopposed for reelection.
The ultimate irony is that fat and happy tends to morph in a form of psychic entropy to an angry, indignant mode, the result of people getting locked into their viewpoints without debate. Lack of debate may start as peace but eventually becomes the political version of hardening of the arteries. Opposing viewpoints are dismissed at best, demonized at worst. This is not the recipe for long-term growth.