Liberty City residents demand answers about funds

from The Miami Herald

More than a dozen Liberty City business owners and residents demanded accountability for the failures in Miami-Dade's largest poverty program.

BY JASON GROTTO AND SCOTT HIAASEN

Local leaders are moving to salvage the county's largest poverty program and recoup millions of tax dollars doled out by the troubled nonprofit agency created to help Miami-Dade's neediest neighborhoods, Assistant County Manager Cynthia Curry told a group of Liberty City business owners and residents on Tuesday.

The empowerment zone program has been rocked in recent months by reports of insider deals, bad loans and other questionable projects undertaken by the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust, the tax-funded agency tasked with managing the federal program.

In the aftermath of a Miami Herald investigation exposing widespread problems at the trust, more than 30 residents and business owners created the Concerned Citizens of the Empowerment Zone Area to seek redress and a stake in the program's future.

''The Empowerment Trust is completely shut down, and there is no information available about where the money is,'' said Nathaniel Wilcox, the group's informal leader and head of PULSE, a Liberty City community activist group.

Curry told the small but vocal group during an hourlong meeting that she had met this week with representatives of the cities that make up the empowerment zone -- Miami, Homestead and Florida City -- to create a new management structure to run the empowerment zone program through 2009.

Whatever they come up with, she said, will have to be approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development -- the federal agency overseeing the empowerment zone program.

''The plan doesn't have to be very complicated, but it does need to be inclusive,'' she said. ``We're hoping to find a concept that will not bog us down.''

FRUSTRATED VOICES

Since 1999, the Empowerment Trust has received nearly $70 million in tax money to help distressed neighborhoods, including Liberty City, but has struggled to create badly needed jobs and attract new businesses.

With the federal program set to expire in December 2009 and the county's move to cut ties with the trust, local leaders are now in the process of determining what to do with the remaining funds.

The meeting with the group was marked at times by the frustrations of residents who say they feel forgotten and placated by county leaders.

''We're not here to talk about the same thing over and over again,'' said Tyrone Greene, whose family has run Greene Dreams Shoe Repair on Martin Luther King Boulevard for nearly 50 years. ``We want to know where the money is.''

''I hope you're not Gunga Din for the mayor,'' Liberty City resident Bernard Dyer told Curry. ``Our community is dying.''

Among the residents' concerns: the status of the Transit Village project, an $86 million plan that was scrapped by the county in the wake of the trust's mismanagement; and the fate of the Poinciana Industrial Park, which was to house a now-defunct biotech park.

The largest concern, however, is the fate of millions in uncollected loans, remaining empowerment zone money and other funds misspent by the trust, with some group members demanding criminal investigations.

''If there are individuals inside the Empowerment Trust that have broken the law, they need to go to jail,'' Wilcox said.

Curry said a report on the trust by the county auditor Cathy Jackson's office has been sent to the inspector general and the state attorney in the hope of recapturing misused money.

UNPAID LOANS

Nearly $4 million in federal dollars has been frozen as the county weeds through the political morass triggered by the trust's failures. About $10 million more in federal and local tax dollars is tied up in loan portfolios managed by the trust.

The Miami Herald found that many of the loans were given without basic background checks or even applications.

Among them: a $3 million, interest-free loan given to a company controlled by Boston developer Dennis Stackhouse. The money was supposed to go toward a proposed $250 million biopharmaceutical park in Liberty City, but the project is now dead and the loan -- which was due in August -- hasn't been paid.

Curry insisted that all parties will have to work together with community groups to decide how to spend the remaining federal dollars because HUD has demanded community input in any future plans.

Wilcox said the meeting with Curry was a precursor to the group's ultimate goal: a sit-down with Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez.

''He is the ultimate decision-maker,'' Wilcox said.