South Dade Updates: LUXCOM. Palmetto Bay has ceded the high ground and some officials have begun resorting to mischaracterization of the ongoing process. Next in the series.

Friday, September 11, 2020

LUXCOM. Palmetto Bay has ceded the high ground and some officials have begun resorting to mischaracterization of the ongoing process. Next in the series.

The after event spin is consistent with past behavior of the this current mayor and council: the mischaracterizing, backpedaling, history revision and finger pointing has begun. This is not leadership.

I am bothered by by what occurred at the Special Council meeting that abruptly terminated on Wednesday evening (9/9/2020). The more I think about it - it is clear that something went terribly awry internally with the village council. This was not how the Palmetto Bay legal team intended the meeting / negotiations to go. This was to be a productive meeting set up through many months of preparation and negotiation to allow the Mayor and Council to move the negotiations forward from a position of strength from which the legal team could try to close a deal that would have been much more palatable to the Village residents. A result that Palmetto Bay could shape, rather than be shaped by the Courts. Instead the mayor and one council member demonstrated a lack of understanding of why they were there and got lost. Other members of the council tried to mitigate the damage but in the end tried to close the proceedings before more and irreversible damage was done. But it was apparently too late.

The first revision or mischaracterization of history - that it was a single member of the village council who pushed for 147 units at this Wednesday, September 9, 2020, Special Council Meeting. This is contrary to the record. The 147 number was reached and proposed long before the 9/9/2020 meeting:

147 - FACT - the 147 units were previously offered up by the Village Council. 147 units was a number reached through the consensus of the council.

A generally accepted meaning of consensus is that consensus means to reach agreement among those involved.

The issue remaining, solely as to the number of units, for the village council was to either hold at 147 for the purposes of the ongoing negotiations or barter the 177 number proposed by LUXCOM as bargaining chips against all the other requests they propose.

We will never get to see what could have been accomplished as 3 of the 5 members of the Village Council (the majority) were unable to right the fast sinking ship and instead voted to close a process that they appeared to believe was not moving forward in a productive manner. Perhaps there could have been a reboot and a reconvene for more productive talks. Unfortunately the damage was done, as I described in my PRIOR RELATED post from Thursday, September 10, 2020: Failed negotiations lead to the probability of yet another lawsuit filed against Palmetto Bay. Next in a series.