Spending wasting your tax dollars - a Guide for Dummies

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Big shots at County hall getting $10,000 in "executive benefits."

Millions more spent on 3,000 "take-home cars" for county workers.

3,100 of the county's 27,000 employees hauling down six-figure salaries.

How many more ways could there possibly be to waste your tax dollars?

Frank Alvarado at Miami New Times knows and he's put together a list of eight of the most outrageous examples of wasted taxpayer money in Miami-Dade County.

He started off the series today with a look at how a traffic circle mysteriously appeared one day in front of Miami Commissioner Marc "The Shark" Sarnoff's Coconut Grove home

In 2001, Marc Sarnoff was president of the Center Coconut Grove Homeowners Association. He complained to city and county road planners that he needed a traffic circle to slow traffic in front of his two houses. Their response: the four way stop sign at Virginia Street and Shipping Avenue did a fine job. Six years later, newly elected City Commissioner Sarnoff made the circle one his top priorities.

Alvarado continues Thursday with a look at why the South Dade Cultural Center was a waste of $51 million.

On Friday he takes readers for a ride on the $50 million, 94-foot tall I-95 flyover.

Then on Monday he takes a tour of Raul Martinez's $411,000 monument to Hialeah.

Alvarado tells Random Pixels that the rest of the series will feature a $350,000 park with no parking for cars and a $1.8 million parking lot with no cars!

Follow the series daily at Miami New Times.

Aerial view of "Marc Sarnoff Circle" at Virginia Ave. and Shipping St. in Coconut Grove.