What is Crown Castle hiding from everyone?
Opinion By Lissette Monzon, Kendale Lakes resident
Our community is being littered with unsupervised radiation-emitting equipment — and we’re being told to accept it without question.
All across Kendall in Miami-Dade County, residents have been waking up to find 5G “small cell” towers built just inches from their property lines — without warning, consent, or clear answers. What began as a tech infrastructure rollout has spiraled into an accountability and transparency, public health and safety issue that local government is dodging at nearly every corner.
Read related: Kendall residents take fight against 5G towers to Miami-Dade commissioners
Here are the problems:
Public records withheld — Why?
In a troubling twist, Miami-Dade County has refused to release key public records related to financial transactions between Crown Castle, the private telecom infrastructure company behind the towers, and the county’s Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTPW). These records include payment details, permitting communications, and emails/texts—documents that legally belong to the public.
Lissette Monzon speaks to the Miami-Dade Commission about 5G towers last year.
An official records request for “all communication and financials from Crown Castle to the County from 2019 to date” was submitted in July 2024. The county then closed the request in January 2025 claiming they have “provided all they could” which was, in fact, only the permit and plan of the one tower in question (no financials or communication).
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava was alerted to the issue and she graciously assigned staff to assist. Yet, still today, no documents have been located by this staff either.
Despite official requests, the county continues to block access, leaving constituents in the dark about who is benefiting financially and why public oversight is being circumvented. This lack of transparency speaks volumes. It raises major red flags around trust and suggests a deeper problem beneath the surface of this tower rollout.
No safety reports required — a dangerous conflict of interest
Sticker on a 5G tower box
Even more concerning, the county accepts $170,000 from Crown Castle to expedite these 5G small cell tower permits. In addition, the county does not require radiofrequency (RF) safety reports as part of the 5G tower application process — despite federal expectations of local authority being the first line of defense in ensuring RF safety for any tower permitted in their municipality. These reports are supposed to verify that the towers meet basic safety standards for human exposure to radiation.
This raises serious concern…is there a financial conflict of interest in the permitting department?
The Report Crown Castle Didn’t Want You to See
Radio Frequency Compliance Reports are encouraged to be shared in good faith with any resident who requests it. Yet, after nearly eight months of requesting the Radio Frequency Compliance Report from the county and Crown Castle, the Federal Communications Commission had to intervene and get the document from Crown Castle – this is highly unlikely.
What was found was alarming: The report made assumptions about the tower configuration that didn’t match what was built in the official engineering plans. It referenced a generic “scenario” but not the actual tower. It failed to account for the tilt and height actually used. Finally, all those mismatched details were input by Crown Castle, with no third party verification.
“Miami is not a testing ground for corporate shortcuts. My children are not tradeoffs in the race to 5G or infrastructure dollars.”
— Lissette Monzon

Now, numerous Kendall homeowners are putting in for these public records to see if this is an isolated issue or a systemic problem in the permitting department, which accepts $170,000 from Crown Castle to expedite these small cell permits. In any other regulatory space, such errors would prompt an immediate investigation. But in the race to digitize everything, even safety checks are being sacrificed.
Read related: Kendall residents worry re 5G towers that pop up suddenly by their homes
Residents deserve to know:

How much money Crown Castle is paying the county — and where that money is going
Why safety reports are not required for 5G tower approvals. This is not preempted by the state law, in case anyone tries to tell you it is.
If elected officials will implement an audit of the Kendall tower permits and not allow antennas to be activated until data is accurately reflected in the safety report and the engineering plans.

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It’s not scientific, or anything. But the results of a paper ballot survey of the Kendall and West Kendall residents who went to a town hall meeting Tuesday hosted by the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Associations was interesting nonetheless.
Not everybody answered every question, but the questions did get between 127 and 138 answers, that were later tallied up by KFHA President Michael Rosenberg.
Read related: Kendall residents take fight against 5G towers to Miami-Dade commissioners
Among the more interesting answers was whether or not Miami-Dade County should keep the fluoride in the water. The commission voted April 1 to stop adding fluoride to the water, but Mayor Daniella Levine Cava vetoed it. Contrary to the much more scientific poll done by La Alcadesa‘s political team — where more residents support keeping it the additive in the tap water than not — more people at the KFHA meeting said no, don’t keep it in the water. Not by much. They were pretty evenly split.
Still, this will likely be used as ammunition by Miami-Dade Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, who sponsored the measure and is likely to lead an override attempt against the mayor’s veto May 6. He had a staffer in the audience.
Predictably, an overwhelming majority of those who filled out the ballot survey also felt that Miami-Dade should stop charging property taxes and that the county should find another way to dispose of trash without having to build an incinerator, which commissioners have stalled on but will discuss again in June. Or is it July?
And because the room was full of Kendall people, they were overwhelmingly in favor of having a park in the place of the closed and abandoned Calusa Golf Course instead of something like 540 homes. Yeah, ’cause that’s still going on (more on that later).
What Ladra did not expect was the result to the question, “Would you like to have a town hall meeting with Congressman Carlos Gimenez?” It got the second largest yes response, after the Calusa question, with 101 in favor.
Hear that Gimenez? They want to have a word. Time to connect with your constituents.
Ladra doubts the former county mayor is going to go anywhere near a town hall these days, judging how those are going for Republicans across the country in the wake of what many see as a constitutional crisis happening in real time. Two words: Not well.
Read related: Video blasts U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez for silence on ending TPS, deportations
People also seem in favor of getting some sort of property tax discount if they have 5G towers abutting their property, and bringing the value of it down. But they weren’t big on incorporating Kendall and West Kendall. They like their UMSA there.
The saddest answer was the one about whether or not people think that their county government listens to them. Almost 4 to 1, they said no. Ladra wants to talk to the 21 people who said yes and ask what their secret is.
Well, maybe 20, if one of the ballots was filled out by the District 11 employee.

The post Survey of Kendall residents shows they agree on Calusa, split on fluoride appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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A united Kendall makes for a stronger Kendall
Opinion By Michael Rosenberg, President, Kendall Federation of Homeowner Associations
On the evening of April 22, 2025, almost 150 Kendall and West Kendall residents gathered at the “Little House” in Kendall, the meeting place of the Kendall Federation of Homeowner Associations, located in the Kendall Village Shopping Center.
It’s not easy to get people to leave their homes after work, doing everything that we do in the evenings, and then drive to a meeting for ninety minutes. But, on this night, the Community left their computers and social media at home and decided that getting together is what will make us stronger. In looking at these photos, can’t you feel the power of community?
Stop for a moment and really look at those pictures. This is us. All of us. It’s the Kendall Community coming together to discuss issues where we live and working together to find solutions. There were no famous people at this meeting. No elected officials. No big names. It was only you and me, the people that actually live here and often suffer the decisions of our elected officials. The house was full. Standing room only. Our community, wondering, “Do our elected officials listen to us?”
The topics of the evening were the proposed waste disposal station being considered for SW 127th Avenue and SW 136th street. You read that correctly. A garbage dump near the Three Lakes area! We also discussed 5G Cell Towers, the Calusa Golf Course and the soon-to-be 540 homes that will be built there. The floor was open for all concerns and we did talk … we did Kendall Talk!
Read related: KFHA forum for Miami-Dade sheriff candidates helps narrow down the field
The plan is to grow Kendall Talk! and get more and more people and homeowner associations involved. We need a lot of voices as our Community is far away from downtown and Government Center and, sometimes, it feels like our elected officials have forgotten about us, except when it comes to more and more development with no transit solutions for those people.
We hope Kendall Talk! will turn into Kendall Action. If you are an HOA/condo association, or any individual, please go to www.KFHA.org and contact us. Sign up to be part of this force. Or, call me at 305-439-3571.
Lastly, we handed a “ballot” to everyone that came to this meeting. Not everyone voted, but many did. Here are the questions and the results. We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Michael Rosenberg is the longtime president of the Kendall Federation of Homeowner Associations, which represents tens of thousands of residents in Kendall and West Kendall and advocates on their behalf. He is also the co-founder of the Pets’ Trust initiative, a ballot measure that voters overwhelmingly supported to provide for low cost spay and neutering services, and whose primary mission was to stop the killing of our animals. He also was a candidate for Miami-Dade Commission District 7 in 2020.

The post Op Ed by KFHA’s Michael Rosenberg: ‘Kendall Talk!’ makes Kendall strong appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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It’s tradition now. The Kendall Federation Political Action Committee, the political arm of the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Associations, has come out with their endorsements for both Miami-Dade candidates and the state amendments on the ballot. 

The PAC decided not to endorse anyone in the State House races in districts 118 and 119, which cover parts of Kendall. But they have their favorites in all the county constitutional offices, a school board race and a county commission runoff. These are them:

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County urges state legislature to back off

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The KFHA will host a community meeting Tuesday

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