The first Coral Gables commission meeting Tuesday after the required recall petitions for Mayor Vince Lago were submitted last week was long and a bit awkward for everybody. Ladra cringed a few times.
Lago said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement was investigating the recall effort and accused the new three amigos — Commissioners Melissa Castro, Ariel Fernandez and Kirk Menendez — of plotting against him to help the recall, which is being led by his old friend and the trio’s ally, activist Maria Cruz. He crowed about the internal purchace-card audit that, he said, showed no real inappropriate purchases, as Fernandez had asserted. And he said he wanted a forensic audit to finally lay rest to the claims of widespread corruption.
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Union releases web video critical of administration
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Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago may say he’s not worried about the recall effort mounted against him. He may say it’s just gadfly Maria Cruz and activist attorney David Winker with a grudge against him.
But don’t believe him. He is sweating it.
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After two cancellations, a town hall meeting to discuss potential changes to the Coral Gables city charter has been scheduled for Thursday evening.
Created last September with legislation sponsored by Commissioner Ariel Fernandez, the charter review committee’s first meeting in December was cancelled due to a scheduling conflict with one of the board members, said City Clerk Billy Urquia. He said a second cancellation in January was at the request of Commissioner Fernandez.
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A downsized version of the Ponce Park Residences, an Allen Morris project that’s been pitched to the city of Coral Gables at least four times in the last three years, will be considered Tuesday by the city commission. This time, the proposal is for a 9-story building — down from an original 16 — with 60 residential units and 20,000 square feet of commercial or retail space on the first floor.
The scaled down design by Zyscovich architecture is reportedly the result of several meetings with nearby residents concerned about the density and the traffic it would bring to an already busy area, next to the Agave Plaza project. Development, or overdevelopment, is a key issue in the Gables.
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3 commissioners say public corruption is the reason
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