Pinecrest voters rejected a plan Tuesday that would seek $15 million in bonds to pay for approximately 18.5 miles (98,000 linear feet) of pipeline infrastructure so 739 properties can connect to Miami-Dade County water.
The vote came down to 63% against and 37% for taxing themselves an additional 23 cents per $1,000 of taxable value, or an average of $158 a year — of course, some homes would pay much, much more — for the next 20 years so that every property in the village would have access to county water.
Not even the promise of an additional 208 fire hydrants — which are not necessary to cover water needs according to the fire rescue guys but good for drumming up fear votes — could sway villagers who made the decision via a mail-in ballot only.
According to Miami-Dade County’s elections department, 5,720 of the 13,083 registered voters in Pinecrest returned ballots. That amounts to practically a 44% turnout.
The village undertook an aggressive “get out the vote campaign” that included eight — count ’em, eight; two per week, including the last one this past Saturday  — public workshops for residents and property owners to learn about the project and see the map. They were not very well attended.
The village slapped posters in public spaces and sent postcards to all registered voters and a letter from the administration explaining what the financial impact would be.
They got one of those FDOT-like signs with the blinking lights to remind folks to vote — and they hired a guy with a spinning sign on U.S. 1.
Read related: Pinecrest voters to decide if they’ll pay extra taxes to get county water
The two recurring themes among some of the 3,593 who voted against it were (1) a reluctance to subsidize the water hookup for homes of multimillionaires and (2) the concept that it should be a responsibility of Miami-Dade County, which would retain the infrastructure and derive all the profits from the water sales. Those were exactly the reasons that Councilman James McDonald voted against putting the referendum on the ballot and campaigned against it.
The red properties are the ones that need lines. The yellow properties already have lines and will have to pay for hooking up to water in addition to the additional tax.
Miami-Dade County policy dictates that the cost associated with new water infrastructure be borne by private developers/private property owners. Revenue from the sale of water to existing customers can only be used to fund expenditures and improvements to the existing infrastructure, not new infrastructure — not unless, of course, they can cover it with “economic development” like the megamall in Northwest Dade.
But the county has paid for some of the hookups.
When Pinecrest first incorporated in 1996, about 1,500 homes were on wells, without any way to hook up to the county water supply. The 2004 countywide Building Better Communities bond referendum supplied the village with $4.3 million and a Florida state grant gave another $1.5 million for the water pipeline infrastructure up to the sidewalk. That work was called Phase I and Phase II and was completed about 10 years ago, said City Manager Yocelyn Galiano.  Property owners still had to pay for the service hook-up connection from the public right of way to their homes/buildings, she said.
More than 2,100 people voted in favor, including, we suppose, advocates like former mayors Evelyn Greer and Cindy Lerner and former Councilwoman Cheri Ball, right, who basically stepped down to push for the measure and served as treasurer of the Pinecrest H2O political action committee.
Ball and her husband also happen to own a two-story, 6 bedroom, 4 bath house they bought in 2016 for $1.6 million — that doesn’t have access to county water.
Some might think this is over, that the referendum was a way of putting this long fought issue to rest. But Ladra knows it’s never that easy. Ball and the other proponents are unlikely to give up. And while it’s not a big county issue — only 2,000 people lack water access countywide compared to hundreds of thousands on septic tanks (more on that later) — there may be other places to turn to for funding.
“We’ll just keep looking for the funding from the state legislature, which we’be been doing but we keep getting vetoed,” Galiano said. “Maybe with this new governor…”

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Voters might not be sure if Carmen Olazabal is running for a commission seat against three other candidate — or if she is running against activist Maria Cruz and little ol’ Ladra.
The girl has gone off on Maria and I, wasting precious campaign ink on our distaste for her unethical behavior and her role in covering up for former city manager Pat Salerno, instead of concentrating on the issues.
And I do believe she doth protest too much.
In a recent email missive — because that is all Olazabal can afford, no real mail — she tries to deflect attention from her own failures and unethical acts by calling any and all criticisms about her smears and falsehoods.
How convenient.
Read related: Commission candidate Carmen Olazabal can’t rewrite ugly past
Olazabal, who can’t spell my name right even once, also lashes out at the Gables  Good Government — which paid me to write a completely unbiased piece, which I still sometimes do — and Commissioner Vince Lago, who she said I interviewed to lend the post more “credence.”
First, the GGG came to me and after much initial discouragement, I took on the job because it seemed easy enough. If she didn’t like that one, Carmen should have seen my original version before they edited all the good stuff out.
Secondly, I don’t make electeds say what they say. Or, wait, is Olazabal suggesting that its irrelevant what Lago — perhaps the most respected elected there and future Gables mayoral shoe-in — thinks of her? By the way, it’s what a lot of people think. They either don’t want to be named or aren’t as relevant.
Earlier, Olazabal issued a “fact checks” section on her website that sounds a lot more like a fairy tale than anything resembling the truth, which Olazabal apparently has a distaste for. But since Olazabal likes to play with the facts, and voters need more than she said, she said, here is Ladra’s fact check check.
Fact 1: She was part and parcel to the lie that got her boss and mentor, former City Manager Pat Salerno, fired. She doctored the document that was prepared by the Police Chief for the commission about a 170% increase in accidents on North Ponce de Leon Boulevard related to some palm trees that caused some line of sight issues for drivers.
Carmen check: Ms. Olazabal, — as she calls herself to lend credence to the argument because it is presented as third person verification — says she simply edited the police memo. She and Salerno “discussed the numbers presented …and they determined they did not accurately represent the issue because the statistics covered a wider area than the median construction and included inaccurate construction dates,” she quotes her own excuses from a Miami Herald article. “Ms. Olazabal’s professional determination was that “if [she] would have forwarded [Hudak’s memo] to the commission, it would have been wrong.”
Reality Check: Um, no. It was wrong to change Hudak’s memo and present it as his own work. Is she really defending that. What she should have done, if she and Salerno thought the numbers were wrong, was add their own memo to the memo, explaining the accurate dates and median locations, which, by the way, did not end up being “wrong.” That’s just cover.
Read related: Coral Gables must remove Ponce palms Salerno lied about
And this photograph of an overturned car on Ponce de Leon Boulevard is not propaganda. It is real, it is really someone’s car and there was somebody in it when it really turned over. Nobody placed this car upside down on the street as a prop. It was taken during the time frame that the report looked at. The photo is not Ladra’s. It was provided by someone in Coral Gables at that time. It may have been part of the report. It was an example of an accident caused by a line of sight issue that Olazabal not only failed to address but denied even existed. There is no reason not to use it to illustrate a point. Of course, she doesn’t like it. It’s hard to look at. Especially since she tried to cover it up. She doesn’t want to be reminded of her mistakes.
Like…
Fact 2: Giving herself a 10% raise.
Carmen Check: “Rather, the Coral Gables City Commission approved her contract as Interim City Manager on May 5th, 2014, and her salary reverted back when a new city manager was appointed.” she writes, back to third person for validity.
Reality Check: Rather, the commission approved the interim manager’s agenda item on her own pay raise. Oh, and she asked to keep her 10% raise when the city hired the permanent city manager.
Fact 3: So inept at her job, Olazabal had to hire former county and municipal manager everywhere Merrett Stierheim to hold her hand.
Carmen Check: “Rather it was the Coral Gables Commission that directed the hiring of Mr. Stierheim.”
Reality Check: Again, the commission certainly approved the hiring of and payment for Stierheim’s services, up to $50,000, but the item was a recommendation from, guess who? The interim city manager. In fact, Commissioner Frank Quesada congratulated her on the idea at a public meeting.
Read related: Merrett Stierheim — Coral Gables’ extra city manager for $50K
Fact 4: Carmen Cason was identified as Olazabal’s campaign manager.
Carmen Check: “Rather, Mrs. Cason is an active and valued volunteer in the campaign.”
Reality Check: Mrs. Cason was described early on as the campaign manager before Olazabal brought FIU Professor and pollster Dario Moreno on board. But most people close to the campaign would say Carmen Cason, showed in a supervisory role in this photo, is a little bit more than an “active and valued volunteer.”
Fact 5: While she was acting as city manager, Olazabal decided to name Maj. Theresa Molina the acting police chief, against the wishes of the commission, which had called a special meeting to make the decision themselves. An email to voters from Cruz questioned her judgement, noting that Molina was the major who was later forced to resign when she was caught spying on the activist and commissioners.
Carmen Check: First, Olazabal said that the spying incident happened two years later. “Ms. Olazabal could not have known that Ms. Cruz’s incident would occur.  This is a standard misleading association common in propaganda materials,” she says, adding that Molina had “no prior violations or internal affairs investigations in her personnel file.” She said she had every right, as the city attorney said she had, to name an acting chief.
Reality Check: Nobody said you didn’t have the right, Carmencita. But it was kind of a shocker to the commissioners when she did that after they asked her to wait until the special meeting, which I believe was the very next day. So when Ms. Olazabal says in the meantime, she means 12 or so hours. Also, it was left unsaid but should be noted, that Ms. Olazabal also took it upon herself to fly former Maj. Scott Masington in from Tennessee or somewhere like that even though at least one commissioner had told her not to. As for Molina, who was being investigated by the State Attorney’s Office at the time, all Cruz and Ladra were saying was that, even if the spying incident was years later, it could serve as example of Olazabal’s terrible judgement of character.
The truth is that Olazabal needs to rewrite her history. And remember, she likes to edit. As assistant city manager, she cut and paste information from a police report to take out important data about public safety that didn’t jive with the administration’s perspective. Today, she cut and pastes — or juts cuts — comments from her Facebook page that call her out.
And she attacks those who recall her real history and she cries foul and calls them names, all the while saying her campaign is the cleanest. Tsk, tsk.
Maybe it is because she needs to deflect from the fact she is totally lost on the issues.

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Coral Gables voters got a mailer this week that attacks Ralph Cabrera on development, calling him a “career politician” and saying he approved 40% of the tallest buildings in the city.
But nobody is taking the credit.
Not only is the figure pulled out of the sky, with no reference to any research or parameters — are we talking about the five “tallest buildings,” for example? — the piece says it is paid for by a Jensen Beach political action committee that told Ladra Friday it had nothing to do with it.
So that means we do not know and may never know who really paid for the mail piece. Unless we can get the State Attorney’s Office to investigate. Because someone did break the law here.
Read related: Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors had illegal Homestead exemption
Ladra’s first guess was that the piece came from Jorge Fors‘ camp. Neither Carmen Olazabal, the onetime interim city manager, nor downtown property owner Jackson “Rip” Holmes have the funds you would need to do this kind of mailer. And, besides, the Leadership for Florida’s Future PAC has ties to Fors’ campaign manager Steve Marin, who got $63,000 from them last year.
But Marin, who said he was paid for work on state races, told Ladra he had nothing to do with the hit piece, either. “I don’t have a PAC for this reason, said Marin, adding that Fors’ mailers will come directly from the campaign.
Ladra specifically asked a PAC administrator if they had maybe sent it on behalf of Steve Marin. Debbie Millner, wife of PAC Chairman Michael Millner, vehemently denied sending it on behalf of anybody.
“We know nothing about it. We didn’t send it out,” Millner told Ladra Friday morning. “No one asked us if they could use our political committee at all.”
Leadership for Florida’s Future doesn’t have any contributions or expenses reported since October, except for $1,300 paid last month in accounting fees. The report for March won’t be filed and public until after the election April 9.

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Former State Sen. and current Miami city commission candidate Alex Diaz de la Portilla had another stellar month for fundraising in February, more than doubling his total to almost $86,000.
But at least half of the $45,380 raised in February, according to the campaign financial reports filed last week, was through bundles, which generally indicate donors with more than just a passing interest.
That includes $2,250 in 11 contributions from real estate development companies tied to Sergio Pino, $5,000 in five maximum contributions from real estate development companies controlled by Henry Torres, $3,000 in three maximum gifts from property management companies held by Lewis Swezy, $3,000 from lobbyist Eric Zichella, another $5,000 from real estate and development companies controlled by Rolando Delgado, $2,500 from former State Rep. turned lobbyist Eddy Gonzalez and $2,500 from hotel developer Richard Meruelo.
Ladra can’t help but wonder if these folks want a piece of the Miami Freedom Park Pie, the mega shopping/office/retail complex disguised as a soccer stadium that is planned for Melreese Golf Course. It’s got room for a hotel, too. The Dean — whose first month was also marked by a bunch of bundles and lobbyist dinero — is running for the seat vacated by the termed out Commissioner Willy Gort, who opposes the mega complex as planned.
Read related: Alex DLP bolts out of Miami gate with a campaign cash advantage
The open seat has drawn a number of candidates.
The only one with more money than Diaz de la Portilla is Miguel Angel Gabela, who loaned himself $100K. He raised another $17,000 but has spent more than half of that so far. Horacio Aguirre has spent the same $8,575 or so, but he has raised a total of $42,425. Eleazar David Melendez, the former aide to Commissioner Ken Russell, raised $4,442 in February, but spent $3 more. He has a total bank of $22,165. The only other person to have raised any funds is Yanny Hidalgo with $12,087, and spent $2,561 of that.
Former congressional candidate Michael Hepburn has withdrawn from the race and none of the other three candidates have raised a dime.
But, wait, there’s more. Because Alex DLP’s political action committee — the one he used for the senate race and then the county commission race — has raised almost $22,000 since October. He’s also spent almost $10,000, including $3K to Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador.

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Voters in Pinecrest have been asked to decide by next week whether the village should issue $15 million in bonds — the largest in the village’s short history — to provide access to the last 739 properties that do not have Miami-Dade drinking water and add fire hydrants.
If the referendum passes — it’s a mail-in ballots only election and they are due March 26 — property owners will have to pay an additional 23 cents per $1,000 of taxable value every year. The average homeowner would pay about $158 more a year — or a month’s worth of Starbuck’s. Of course, there are homes that will pay much more than that. Over the next 20 years, the average homeowner will pay a total of $3,160 to fund the completion of the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer infrastructure in the village, approximately 18.5 miles (98,000 linear feet) of waterline, and add 208 fire hydrants to village streets.
The fire hydrants will be added because the work is being done — not because they are needed. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue has repeatedly told Pinecrest that they have plenty water capacity to handle any fire in the village.
But proponents of the hookup — which include former and current electeds — are using that to scare people into voting yes.
Read related: More money, less scrutiny, in Miami-Dade water projects
Hooking up to county water has been a big Pinecrest issue since even before incorporation in 1996.  “It has been one of our top priorities over the years, and we have made significant progress on completing this system,” said Mayor Joe Corradino.
“Over the past 22 years the idea of going to referendum has been discussed but not acted upon,” Corradino said in a online message to residents on the city’s website page dedicated to the water vote. “Our Village Charter allows a referendum. Today we have never been closer to completing this project. The number of homes and the total cost are such that we can hold this referendum.”
Back then, there were about 1,500 properties that relied on wells rather than county water. The 2004 countywide Building Better Communities bond referendum supplied Pinecrest with $4.3 million for the water system. The Village also got a Florida state grant of $1.5 million for the infrastructure up to the sidewalk. The $5.8 million paid for infrastructure up to the sidewalk completed about 10 years ago, said City Manager Yocie Galiano, calling that Phase I and Phase II of the water system.  Property owners still had to pay for the service hook-up connection from the public right of way to their homes/buildings, she said.
The red properties are the ones that need lines. The yellow properties already have lines and will have to pay for hooking up to water in addition to the additional tax.
Galiano said only 535 or so homes were hooked up as part of Phase I and Phase II. Then the county money ran out. Another 200 or so were homes or properties that were redeveloped or for whatever reason and paid out of pocket to hook up on their own, almost one by one. The 739 homeowners who remain did not want, at that time, to pay an assessment to finish the job.
Miami-Dade County policy dictates that the cost associated with new water infrastructure be borne by private developers/private property owners. Revenue from the sale of water to existing customers can only be used to fund expenditures and improvements to the existing infrastructure, not new infrastructure — not unless they can cover it with “economic development” like the megamall in Northwest Dade.
After some lobbying for years by a group of the affected homeowners, the village council voted to put the referendum on the ballot in January. It was a 4-1 vote, with Councilman James McDonald dissenting. In an op-ed in Community Newspapers, McDonald wrote that it was unfair to saddle the entire town with a 20-year tax on something they will not reap benefits from.
“Once these water lines are built they will be turned over to Miami-Dade County for the county to derive all the revenue. Pinecrest gets nothing but debt for 20 years,” he said. “From my perspective, it is not fiscally responsible to do this to incur the largest bond debt ever in Pinecrest’s history and then give the infrastructure we build to Miami-Dade County.
“Pinecrest will not own the water lines nor will it get the revenue stream from the users to finance the bond,” McDonald wrote. “It is simply not appropriate to saddle the entire village with a debt that will only benefit 740 parcels and where Miami-Dade county will receive the revenues.”
McDonald said he can think of plenty of other things that more village residents would prefer spending that kind of money on — parks, a gymnasium, maybe — and then there’s the nagging little fact that it does nothing about the fact that 95% of the village has septic tanks, a growing sea level rise issue.
If the infrastructure was funded via a special taxing district of only the 739 property owners affected, that would cost an average of about $20,000 over 20 years, city administrators said. It would be $1,500 annually, not $150.
Still, some property owners don’t care if it’s not their problem: They don’t want to pay for their neighbors’ upgrades.
“While I fully realize the issue at stake, I just cannot seem to grasp the concept of making every Pinecrest property owner (whether it be a home or vacant land) for an issue belonging to just 750 homes,” wrote Francisco Mehech in a letter to the editor in the Pinecrest Tribune. He owns four properties and just sold a property that he had to personally pay the hookups for, he said.
“It just doesn’t seem fair to place the burden of these select few into the pocketbooks of the many other property owner and/or residents in the Village,” Mehech wrote, adding that he is a no.
But there is no organized opposition. And there is organized advocacy.
Proponents have formed a political action committee called Pinecrest H2O, with former Councilwoman Cheri Ball as treasurer, to push the yes vote. It is unfortunate that some of these advocates — who include former Mayor Cindy Lerner — seem to be misleading voters and provoking fears about fire safety to get the referendum passed.
Corradino said that while the village will “facilitate this referendum,” the village cannot, by law, advocate for a yes or no vote. Except it sure seems they have their fingers crossed.
The web page features a colorful, upbeat image of the word “Inspire” and the village undertook an aggressive “get out the vote campaign” that included eight — count ’em, eight; two per week, including the last one this past Saturday  — public workshops for residents and property owners to learn about the project and see the map. The village slapped posters in public spaces and sent postcards to all registered voters and a letter from the administration explaining what the financial impact would be.
They got one of those FDOT-like signs with the blinking lights to remind folks to vote — and they hired a guy with a spinning sign on U.S. 1.
“We are doing everything we can to get the vote out,” Galiano said.
It’s apparently working. The Miami-Dade Elections Department reports that as of Tuesday, 3,948 ballots had been returned from the 13,300 mailed to voters. That represents a turnout so far of practically 30%.
“In over two decades we have never been closer to bringing this issue to a conclusion,” Corradino said. And we’ll know next week.
Unless, of course, there’s a lawsuit.

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A subcommittee in the Florida House will hear the first bill Tuesday to legislate the process for felons to get their voting rights restored, which voters approved last year with the passage of Amendment 4 by 64% of Florida voters.
But in the typical bait and switch style of our Republican-controlled legislature, it seems the as yet unnamed bill’s true intention is to make it as difficult as possible for convicted felons to register to vote.
Supporters of the state constitutional amendment that passed last year — including Desmond Meade and the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition that promoted a winning campaign for the “second chances” amendment — have come out against the bill and urge others to also.
Meade, right, called it an “unconstitutional overreach,” which is way too polite.
Ladra calls it a slap in the fact to voters who overwhelmingly approved the amendment and who want to see these people’s voting rights’ restored.
Neil Volz of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition says the measure changes the definition of completed sentence, which has already been established by the Florida Clemency Board. It will also give non-judicial officials a say on the criteria.
The ACLU issued a “make the call” call for voters to call their state reps on the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee and urge them to vote no.
Their Suggested call script:

“Hi, my name is _________ and I’m calling on behalf of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and 1.4 million formerly convicted people throughout Florida who just had their voting rights restored by Amendment 4 last November.
I’m a Florida voter, and I want to say that I am opposed to Proposed Committee Bill 19-03 in the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee.
I am opposed to the bill because it will restrict the number of people who are eligible to vote. This bill would change the law to allow people outside of the judicial system to determine who can and can’t participate in our democracy. Florida has an existing standard for completion of sentence that is currently being used. Changing that standard represents a threat to what the nearly 65% of Florida voters who approved Amendment 4 intended.
I ask that the Representative please vote NO on 19-03 in the Criminal Justice Subcommittee tomorrow morning. Thank you!

Who to call:

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