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NEWS
Cutler Bay SERVING SOUTH DADE
FEBRUARY 24, 2009
Business uses Smart cars to ‘think green’ BY GARY ALAN RUSE he Town of Cutler Bay has an official policy of striving to be a “green” community with its master plan for future development and building and zoning regulations, but Vice Mayor Ed MacDougall is extending his concerns about thinking green into the day-to-day operations of his own business as well. His company, Choice One Insurance, has a fleet of six Smart cars, the ultracompact European vehicles, for its agents to use in driving around town. MacDougall set the wheels in motion for that move even before the town announced its environmentally friendly policy. “I ordered the Smart cars in August of 2007,” MacDougall said. “I was overseas, spotted one of them, came back to the United States and ‘Googled’ them. I found out they were going to be selling them in the U.S. and had a program for ordering ahead, so we paid the fee and put them on reservation. We’ve had them for about six months now.” Choice One, located at 18400 Franjo Rd., sells property/casualty insurance for
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No sin in this cinema as church moves to theater
BY SEAN MCCRACKINE
Pastor David Mayoral stands in front of Cutler Ridge Regal Cinema where he conducts Sunday church services.
BY RON BEASLEY ife Church Pastor David Mayoral conducts Sunday morning services in a movie theater in Cutler Bay and he thinks it’s a much better place for a church than a traditional brick-andmortar building. Mayoral, 47, was the longtime pastor of the Bird Road Baptist Church until two years ago when the congregation sold the property on Bird Road and SW 84th Avenue for $3.5 million and went looking for a new place to locate the church. “We started looking right away for
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SMART, page 4
iami-Dade county manager George Burgess recently announced that the county would begin integrating 5 percent biodiesel into the fuel mix for county fleet operations beginning in April. “This is a significant step forward,” said Miami-Dade Commissioner Katy Sorenson, who has been advocating the use of renewable fuels in the county fleet since 2001. “I’m glad that the manager has determined that the time is right to move our operations to clean, renewable energy.” Commissioner Sorenson — recently named chair of the Budget, Planning and Sustainability Committee — sponsored a resolution in 2001 that directed the county to research the use of alternative fuels. That was followed by a resolution in 2007 that called for the development of a five-year strategy for integrating biofuels into the county fleet. “Miami-Dade County uses about 17 million gallons of diesel fuel a year to run all of the heavy equipment — everything from transit buses to garbage trucks — so our demand for biofuel can prime the market for everyone else to have access to renewable fuel blends,” Commissioner Sorenson explained. “The manager’s
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Staff member of Choice One poses with one of the Smart cars.
County begins move to use biodiesel in fleet operations
a place to build a new church, but real estate here in south Miami-Dade is just so expensive,” Mayoral said. He said he had heard about ministers conducting church services in movie theaters in other areas of the United States and decided to investigate the concept. “Today, this is really not that unusual,” Mayoral said. “These days, there are a lot of churches that are going mobile because there just isn’t enough real estate available and buildings are simply too expensive.” –––––––––––––––––– See
CHURCH, page 4
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BIODIESEL, page 4