Head on over to the Random Pixels and Loose Talk website for a great blog today:
Friday, June 15, 2012
Aventura S.W.A.T. to al Qaeda: ‘Bring it on!’
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| Don’t laugh…it could happen! And Aventura’s SWAT team is ready. |
The City of Aventura in North Miami Dade County has a population of about 30,000.
According to the city’s website, its police department has 80 full-time police officers, 39 civilian employees, and 15 volunteers.
But don’t let the tiny size of Aventura’s police department fool you. This ain’t Mayberry.
The Aventura Police Department has a K-9 unit, a dive team and a S.W.A.T. team. Yup, you heard that right.
The police department has a ten-man SWAT Unit complete with a Command vehicle “to handle tactical operations which may be outside the scope of normal patrol activities. The team includes a SWAT medic, one sniper, and two team leaders,”according to a website.
Read it all here: http://randompixels.blogspot.com/2012/06/aventura-swat-to-al-qaeda-bring-it-on.html
Gotta wonder how much they paid for those pictures. 😆
Whatever they paid for them, Aventura can more than afford it. That’s what happens when a city is well run and fiscally responsible. Aventura has been exactly that from the beginning.
@ Stephanie – that’s interesting. Maybe we should break up Miami Dade into hundreds of 3.5 sq mi cities.
Just a thought..
Hundreds of cities? OMIGOD, think of the opportunity for even more crooks to run for city councils all over the county! Smashing idea. 😆
It doesn’t hurt to have a sizable tax base, and none of those pesky “height and density” issues that one individual has used to stifle all development here now and in the foreseeable future.
You are so right! NMB could have had a sizable tax base years ago, but all development was stymied by previous administrations. When Jeff Mishcon was the mayor for seventeen years, the city remained completely stagnant and had absolutely no growth whatsoever. Those were the years when sensible development could have turned this city into a showcase, worthy of being Aventura’s next door neighbor. But Mishcon and his cronies had no foresight or desire to have NMB be anything but a decaying relic of its former glory days. Mayor Marin tried, but was shut down. Rosner was just an idiot. Mayor Vallejo and the current council would love to bring development into the city, but the economy sucks now and the city can barely keep its employees on the payroll, much less make capital improvements. Developers want nothing to do with NMB, so I’d say we’re pretty much screwed.
“Developers want nothing to do with NMB…” This has nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with a council that thinks nothing of meeting until 1:00 am discussing crap, but the moment anything of substance is brought up, it gets tabled. No developer or investor is going to risk money on a project that could be endlessly tabled. We are like a girl with a bad reputation, everyone wants to screw her, but no one wants to marry her.
It does get frustrating watching them debate endlessly over nonsense and then tabling votes when it comes to doing something. I can sense the Mayor’s frustration, and then when he tries to rush the chit chat along, some of the other council members get pissed at him for cutting them off. It reminds me of Little League board meetings. When I first joined the board I was stunned at the amount of time the board would spend discussing nothing but minutiae. Meetings would last three or more hours! And that was just the Little League. Once I became the president, I sent out an addendum several days in advance of the meeting and instructed the board to review it and get back to me with changes or concerns BEFORE the meeting. By the time we got to the meeting, we were almost always ready to vote on whatever items were on the table. My meetings rarely lasted more than one hour. Too bad the council can’t do something similar just to cut through the bullshit.
Wouldn’t something like that violate the “Sunshine” law? Again, I say that the Council Members of the past (and of the entrenched) have only looked out for their interests and not of those of the community at large. We brought in some new blood with Mayor Vallejo and Councilmembers Martell, Spiegel, and Kramer. Hopefully, in the next election, this will continue with others that see the future of NMB instead of the Status Quo.
Damn those pesky Sunshine Laws LOL! Yeah, you’re right, it probably would. It just gets so frustrating watching them waste so much time discussing stupid stuff. Remember how many hours were wasted when Phyllis was pissed she didn’t get to sit next to the mayor? Or the ridiculous baggy pants ordinance she tried to pass? Then again, if they behaved I’d have nothing to make fun of. 🙂
And one more thing: Isn’t it amazing what is possible when you are not running a welfare city?
Try to open a business from scratch in NMB and see what happens. The city used to send out certfied letters for property owners to seal coat and restripe their parking lots as happend to me over the years. they dont do it anymore. The reason is this; If the city sends the demand to re-sealcote they cant force the property owners to bring the parking lot and landscaping up to current code. So they wait until the property owner decides to do it on their own to beautify their property. Then the city plays GOTCHA. Before the owner can get the sealcote permit the city adds on; re-design entire parking lot and curbing, add landscaping and sprinkler systems, add bollards and railings,etc. Go look at the parking lot at the Bida Shoe store on 163 street north side. Six parking spaces were lost as the owner was forced to do all of the above. I drove thru the new re-designed parking lot and it is a maze. I had gone there before and parked my truck no problem and exited the parking lot no problem Now I have trouble getting out of the parking lot because of all the curbing. I entered from the East and to get out from the west exit I had to reverse my truck twice as I could not clear all the new curbing to exit going west on 163 street. I do have a dually truck but still it was no problem before. They had to put up bollards, heavy steel pipes to keep people from backing onto the sidewalk in front of the building or crashing into the building. So you go from a parking lot that was designed such that no protection was needed for pedestrians entering the building or from cars backing into the building to a re-design that needs these protective measures. There will be more trees and shrubs though but the new design is inherently dangerous plus the money spent to do it.
By the way, this same thing happend to a condo building in Eastern Shores. The board decided to sealcoat. The city added so much on that the condo board said screw it and did not sealcoat.