How much do you wanna bet that 100 people go and speak against the American Dream Miami mega mall nightmare complex
that is being pushed for the Northwest corner of Miami-Dade?
How much do you wanna bet that commissioners will ignore them and approve the development agreement that basically has the developer, Triple Five, give us a few shiny new buses in exchange for allowing them to build a $4 billion retail center and theme park with a 16-story indoor ski slope, a 20-slide water park, an indoor lake with submarines and a beach, a 14-screen 3-D movie theater and a 2,000-room hotel?
Not only that, but the developer clearly intends to use public taxpayer dollars to make his American Dream come true.  How much you wanna bet?
Read related: American Dream mega mall developer would give us buses for our troubles
Opposing malls who don’t want the competition might be the ones demanding that the American Dream developers vow not to take any public subsidies, but they’re not alone in thinking that. And they are right in demanding that it be a deal breaker. Sure, they hope it’s a poison pill that prevents the Triple Five people from building the mega mall. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t.
It shouldn’t. Not if it’s going to be the huge economic engine success that proponents say it is. It should just make the developers more responsible with how they build it. But that doesn’t matter.
What matters is that there shouldn’t be any more corporate welfare gifts worked into our strapped county budget. We don’t have enough for transit solutions or to keep all our libraries open every day and these developers come and get subsidies — whether in the form of incentives or bonuses or even just discounts on their impact fees — when they should be paying more not less to get the variances they get on everything from density to required number of parking spaces.
And that’s not what the developer said or intended two years ago. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who negotiated this deal and even convinced the state to sell the land surplus at discounted rates to the developer, has said that Triple Five planned on requesting county subsidies for the project.
But even if they don’t request county funds, they could request state subsidies — which are still our public dollars. In 2016, there was a late amendment to a state bill that would have allowed counties to form special tax districts for funding infrastructure work around economic-development projects. It was sponsored by none other than Miguel DLP and would have benefited the mega mall tremendously.
Read related: Miami-Dade mega mall: A new, and shinier, insider deal
It is also interesting to note that in New Jersey, the American Dream Meadowlands mega mall developer got $1.2 billion of tax-exempt municipal bonds for that project plus another $390 million in state grant over several years if they reach sales-tax targets. You think they’re going to skip trying to get that here? Sometimes, Ladra thinks the whole point of these projects is to get the public funding.
Either Commission Chairman Esteban Bovo is ignorant to all that or he was being somewhat disingenuous Wednesday when he tweeted “A misinformation campaign is in full swing regarding #megamall I received this text message that gives the impression that the @MiamiDadeBCC is contemplating giving tax dollars to the developer. I said on more than one occasion that NO tax subside is or will be considered.”
He posted a photo of the text message, which urged him to call Commissioner Bovo and “tell him to prohibit our tax dollars from going to billionaire developers” and linked to the South Florida Taxpayers Alliance page, which seems like an opposition page funded by the other malls.
But misinformation comes in all forms, Commissioner.
The developer has time and time again refused to make a promise that they will not take public funding. It should be easy enough to agree to — but only if you don’t already intend on taking state subsidies. If you do, then it’s hard to say good bye to millions of dollars that aren’t yours and that you can get for free for your project.
Also, if the developers really believe that this American Dream Miami mega mall will be so successful, then it should be easy for them to not only agree to forfeit any public tax dollars but also to pay real impact fees and contribute heavily to the transit solutions that will help offset the damage such a project will have on the area and help get people to the mega mall.
Of course, that would be acting in the best interest of the community, not in the best interest of their pockets. That’s not the developer’s job. It is, however, the commission’s job to act in the best interest of the community.
They have this one opportunity Thursday to make such criteria — no public funds used in the project and real impact dollars towards transit solutions — a requirement of the development agreement.
Let’s pray they listen to the people.

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If ever there was a race where absentee ballots was going to make the deciding factor, it is the special shotgun wedding election in Miami-Dade’s County District 5.
Four candidates are vying to replace Bruno Barreiro, who resigned last month so he could run for Congress: His wife, Zoraida Barreiro, former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, radio show host and former Telenovela star Carlos Gorin and Democrat activist and dark horse contender Eileen Higgins.
Election Day is on Tuesday, but it’s possible that the winner has already been decided.
As of Wednesday, there had been 6,703 ABs returned to the elections office, which is almost 30% of the 22,388 that went out. By the end of the day Friday, it will likely have surpassed the 7,088 that were returned during the last big contest in that district: 2012’s challenge to Barreiro by former State Rep. Luis Garcia. It’s only 385 ABs short. On Wednesday alone, 382 came in.
Read related: Miami-Dade special District 5 election is really a race for No. 2 on Tuesday
Sure, the Garcia vs Barreiro bout was a presidential primary and this is a shotgun wedding special election in a non presidential year that some people still don’t know is happening. But it’s the closest thing we could find to compare. There were two other nobodies running in that race, too, forcing the runoff after Barreiro failed to get 50%, even though he led ABs by about 1,500, a margin he was able to keep in the general, when it did make the difference in a 52-48 split.
In that first round in 2012, Barreiro got 3,784 absentee votes. Those are the ones that his wife — who only captured 676 ABs in the city District 3 election last year — is going after.
That same August in 2012, Alex DLP beat Zory’s brother-in-law, former State Rep. Gus Barreiro, in the Republican primary for State House 114 with 59% of the vote. In that first round, ADLP got 2,145 ABs.
You do the math.
Every campaign is going after those ABs hard. Barreiro told Ladra that voters have called her to report that people had already tried some shenanigans in Section 8 housing — hotbeds of absentee ballots, like fishing in a barrel.
Hopefully, the authorities are looking at these numbers, too, and have people in place to catch any fraud or intimidation.
 

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