Pero por supuesto.
Former Miami Commissioner Frank Carollo, brother to the current commissioner, has filed to run for the District 3 commission seat that he served two terms, from 2009 to 2017. This was expected and is not good news. He may not be as bad as his big brother, Commissioner Joe Carollo, but Frank Carollo is still not a good role model as a politician.
He took a mysterious free trip to Spain in 2011 and stayed at a swanky hotel (value: at least $1,635) and said it was paid for by AirEuropa, which had gotten a key to the city months earlier.
Frank Carollo also got out of a traffic ticket in 2012 by calling then Police Chief Manuel Orosa when he was stopped for crossing the double yellow line on a street in Coconut Grove. He got off with a warning. The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust determined that there was probable cause that he abused his power.
And, in 2015, he was questioned by WLRN about the connection between some of his campaign donors and the upzoning (read: gentrification) of Little Havana.
Maybe it’s in the Carollo DNA.
Read related: Frank Carollo pleads ‘no contest’ to ‘call the chief’ ethics charge
Also running for the District 3 seat so far are Oscar Elio Alejandro, Rolando Escalona and Brenda Betancourt, who is president at Calle Ocho Inter-American Chamber of Commerce and a frequent speaker at the commission meetings. She is, so far, the frontrunner by all accounts. And she’s not worried.
Al contrario.
“It was no surprise because he had announced like three months ago,” Betancourt told Political Cortadito. “I think it’s better for me now that he’s in the race, because there’s more reason for voters to choose me. Before, we couldn’t really talk about him. What for? But now, we can remind voters that we had eight years of Frank Carollo and what did he do? Nothing.

“Now, the ‘Why vote for me’ is very easy. We have to stop corruption. We have to keep the city safe and we have to safeguard the tax dollars of our people.
“I’m happy that he’s in the race,” said Betancourt, who has been involved in civic activity for 34 years.
In the mayoral race, it was not expected that former Miami Commissioner Ken Russell would jumping (more on that later). And that is good news. He may get to run against Joe Carollo and/or former Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who was removed from office in 2023 after an arrest on public corruption charges that were later dropped. Other potential candidates include Commissioner Manolo Reyes and former city manager Emilio Gonzalez.
Read related: Long list of potential 2025 Miami mayoral candidates starts to take form
None of them have filed any paperwork, however, to indicate that they have opened a campaign bank account.  The other candidates who have, so far, are Ijamin Joseph Gray, Michael Hepburn, Maxwell “Max” Martinez and June Savage.
Russell announced last week and said that giveaway of $10 million to the Miami Freedom Park developers for the 58 acre park in their property was the deciding factor. He was the deciding vote in 2022 on the lease and only voted in favor because those $10 million had been promised as a “public benefit” to acquire and improve parks in other areas.
He is the first announced candidate who sounds like he could be good for Miami, even though he is also recycled.
Like award-winning filmmaker and activist Billy Corben has said repeatedly: “In Miami, we don’t recycle our trash, we re-elect it.”
The post Recycling in Miami: Frank Carollo and Ken Russell on the November ballot appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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Miami voters could say no to political retreads or professional politicians by extending term limits this November.
City Commissioner Damian Pardo wants to put a charter amendment on the Nov. 4 ballot so that elected officials who have served on the commission or as mayor for two terms cannot come back and run for office after a break. Like zombie politicos.
Currently, term limits in Miami are only for consecutive terms. That’s why Commissioner Joe Carollo, who was mayor from 1996 to 2001, can run again this year. Mayor Francis Suarez could, technically, sit this term out and run again in 2027. Former Mayor Tomas Regalado could run again, though he won’t want to now he’s Miami-Dade Property Appraiser. Former Commissioners Willy Gort, Frank Carollo — who is widely rumored to be looking at another District 3 run to take over what is now the “Carollo seat” — and Marc Sarnoff (gasp!) could run for commission again.
But not if voters amend the city charter to establish that anyone who has already served two terms, at any time, is ineligible to run for the same office again, “during their lifetime.” Pardo is sponsoring a resolution a Tuesday’s meeting that would direct the city attorney’s office to prepare the amendment for the Nov. 4 ballot where alongside the mayoral race and contests for commission districts 3 and 5. And District 4 if Commissioner Manolo Reyes runs for mayor, as expected.
Read related: Long list of potential 2025 Miami mayoral candidates starts to take form
Neither Carollo nor Reyes have officially announced or filed any paperwork with the city clerk’s office. Yet.
Is Pardo targeting Carollo, who he has been butting heads with on the commission since he was elected in 2023? Carollo thinks so. But Pardo said it is absolutely not.

“Nobody knows what he’s going to do,” Pardo said. “He keeps saying he’s going to go to Shangri-La. He wanted an appointment with the Trump administration. This is not about Joe Carollo.”
Pardo said it is about opening the city up to new people and ideas and points at how term limits have changed the leadership in Miami-Dade. “We’re looking at a whole new set of commissioners that came in,” he told Political Cortadito. “It changes the entire dynamic.”
The city’s own commission could be an example of how non establishment electeds can shake things up with the change made since Pardo and Commissioner Miguel Gabela, neither of whom have been in office before now, were elected in 2023.
“Miami residents have waited long enough for real change in our city government,” Pardo said in a statement, adding that the legislation “limits the participation of career politicians entrenched in City politics.
“We are committed to a more representative government that advocates for its residents’ interests,” Pardo said. “Holding public office should be about public service, not self-interest or monied interests. This legislation guarantees that our government remains as dynamic, responsive, and accountable as possible. We are ushering in a new era of transformational leadership and democracy in the Magic City—one in which public service is a privilege, not an entitlement.
“We are proud to introduce this measure and look forward to residents making their voices heard in the November general election.”
Read related: 2025 Miami Commission contests could be battles between some known names
All it has to do is get three votes on the commission next week, or two other votes aside from Pardo. Ladra suspects that Gabela will be supportive. And Reyes might want a safety net to take Carollo out if he wins the mayor’s race. But is his vote a conflict of interest? King is out. Not just because she does Carollo’s bidding, but because she honestly thinks that elections are the true expression of term limits.
If they approve next week’s measure, the city attorney’s office will still have to come back within 120 days to get the ballot language approved by September 5 to make it onto the November ballot.
Ladra suspects that, if it gets on the ballot, the amendment will win with an overwhelming majority. Nearly 70% of Miami Beach voters passed a similar measure in 2014, creating “lifetime term limits” for their electeds. It’s why commissioner Michael Gongora was blocked by a judge from running for re-election in 2021.
The amendment, if passed would be retroactive, which means that Carollo, if elected, would be de facto ousted from office. Any Carollo, actually, because if the commissioner’s brother Frank decides to come back and wins, that election would also be invalidated. Pardo said the seat could go to whoever came in second in the race — but he doesn’t really know.
Ladra says there will be lawsuits.
Candidates would be made aware of this at the time they qualify and voters would also be made aware that there are candidates who might be invalidated if the amendment passes. Basically, that they risk throwing their vote away if they cast it for a Carollo.
That makes for a good campaign slogan.
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The Miami Commission meeting on Thursday was short, less than three hours long, and almost entirely civil. It helped that several controversial items were deferred. But it’s more ’cause Commissioner Joe Carollo was absent for most of it.
Carollo — recently named in a whistleblower lawsuit that alleges he abused his position as chairman at the Bayfront Park Management Trust and used it for personal gain — should have just taken the whole day off. The commission waited for him on the items he had put on the agenda — which then all failed for lack of a second once he arrived. Talk about rejection.
Crazy Joe wanted to create a policy by which all future elected officials and their staff would have to undergo drug tests and background checks and disclose if they had any sealed criminal records. “I’ve been hearing the last year so much the word ‘transparency,’” Carolll said. But he was really retaliating against commissioners who took the Bayfront Trust from him at the prior meeting.
Read related: Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo loses Bayfront Park Trust to Miguel Gabela
“You’re problem is, you’re like Maduro,” Commissioner Miguel Gabela told him at the Feb. 13 meeting, just before being named the new chair of the Trust. “You don’t want to leave.”
“My problem is I’m not a thug or a criminal,” Carollo shot back, apparently forgetting about his domestic violence arrest in 2001 when he was a mayor after hitting his wife so hard he left a welt on her head. His daughter called 911 and said “Help. My dad is hurting my mom! Please come now! Please.”
Is he implying that others are?
Carollo also failed to mention that individuals with sealed records are protected by Florida law from having to disclose any details. But it didn’t matter. Nobody wanted to ride that revenge train with him.
Crazy Joe also failed to get a change to the zoning code allowing for higher solid wooden fences. It seems innocuous enough. Good fences make good neighbors. But he’s such poison right now that nobody wants to touch anything to do with him. Perhaps his mayoral campaign is doomed (more on the later).
Several items were also deferred to the March 13 meeting, and we’ll get back to the important ones.
Others passed without much discussion, including an affordable housing project that seems to have tentative community support. Various Grove leaders — including historic, iconic community giants like Monty Trainer and Thelma Gibson — said the developers need to do more public outreach and include the community’s input in their final design (more on that later).
It was an almost entirely civil meeting until Commissioner Gabela said he just had to speak up on the criminal background checks.”It boggles the mind,” Gabela said, adding that Carollo’s motives were underhanded because he used to have a chief of staff — Gabela declined to name him — who had been arrested for something, he declined to say what. It was former Bayfront Trust Executive Director Jose Suarez, and it was soliciting prostitution in 1998, as reported by Political Cortadito.
“So you weren’t interested [in background checks] a year ago,” Gabela said, because Suarez was named to the Trust last March, “and you are now. It seems to me that you’re bringing this up for a reason.
“I’m not into that. I don’t like to character assassinate,” Gabela added.
That’s too bad. Because Ladra thinks he’d be good at it.
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Miami Mayor Francis Suarez made a rare appearance at the city commission meeting last week to push for the return of $20 million to developers of Miami Freedom Park — the boondoggle real estate complex with a soccer stadium in the mix that is being built on the grounds of the old Melreese golf course — even though he tried to make it look like that was always the plan.
Suarez said the $20 million, which the public thought were going to the improvement and acquisition of other parks in the city, were always supposed to go to the maintenance of the 58-acre park, which on the MFP website is called Jorge Mas Canosa Park. He said the “language was very clear” in the 2018 ballot question passed by 60% of the voters in 2018 “that $20 million was going to go to a 58-acre park,” he paused for dramatic effect, “or other green space.”
Key words: Other green space.
But Suarez said that those three little words were only included because it was a constitutional question, which meant that it would dictate what the city could and could not do based on what people voted for. “And you want some legal room in case you want to deviate from what the voters themselves wanted,” the mayor explained.
Did he mean legal wiggle room? So this was intentional? Someone knew all along that the $20 million — sold as a public benefit to sweeten the deal for residents — would never go to “other green space?”
Read related: Miami Freedom Park developers want their $20 million parks donation back
The idea, when the 99-year lease agreement was approved in 2022, was spurred by the “no net loss” policy that meant the loss of green space at Melreese would have to be replaced elsewhere, Suarez said. Because of that policy, the city carved out $7.5 million from the $20 mil to give $2.5 mil to commission districts 2, 3 and 5 for the acquisition and development of new parks, he said. District 4 was punished because Commissioner Manolo Reyes always voted against Miami Freedom Park. District 1 was left out because that’s where Miami Freedom Park is.

“Four months later, the property was rezoned, the no net loss issue was resolved,” Suarez said. “That money should be restored based on what the voters want, or the will of the voters.
“This is a city park that the residents voted in favor of allocating $20 millions to,” he said, forgetting the words “other green space,” this time, and reminding everyone that $20 million today are not the same as 2018 dollars.
“It’s like giving The Underline a haircut.”
To sell it (this time) to commissioners, Suarez sweetened the soured deal with an amendment that would allocate $2.5 million to districts 2, 3 and 5 and basically instructed the city manager to find the funds by April. “So that no resident in the city can say that they, in any way, feel disenfranchised.” It was expanded to $10 million — with another $2.5 mil for District 4 — after Commissioner Joe Carollo volunteered to help the manager find the funds.
“I believe I can find the funds for the three districts, because one was getting more, and find sufficient funds to give commissioner Reyes his $2.5 million also for his district,” said Carollo, who should be investigated for how he spent the millions in funds budgeted by the Bayfront Park Management Trust when he was chair for eight years.
“I will work with the manager and I will show him fairly quickly where the money can be found.”
Shudder.
Carollo blasted the media for “so much disinformation out there” and said the city would have had to spend the money to maintain the 58-acre park anyway.
“At no time have we been speaking about the Mas brothers not going to pay us the $20 million, that they are going to somehow do a switch and bait and use the dollars for their park,” Carollo said, referring to Jorge and Jose Mas, who own the Inter Miami team with David Beckham and are developing the property. Well, that’s kind of what happened.

The bottom line is that the commission voted 4-1 to return the full $20 million into a fund to maintain the park at the soccer stadium complex — which will also have offices, restaurants, stores and a 700-room hotel. Only Commissioner Damian Pardo voted against it, but he told Political Cortadito after the meeting that the did so because he did not have enough time to digest what was being proposed.
Reyes voted in favor because he said the resolution was “respecting the will of the people.” But he voted against another resolution that supported the establishment of a Community Development District, which is an  instrument to collect maintenance fees. Basically, the developers are going to tax themselves — as the only “property owners” — to create an avenue for $500,000 to be earmarked for maintenance of the park for the next 100 years.
Read related: Miami Freedom Park scores yes vote for massive stadium real estate complex
CDDs are typically formed where there are residential owners who can leverage the future tax dollars to borrow on a tax-exempt basis. But because this is a wholly commercial development, with no resident board (at least for now), the developers of Miami Freedom Park won’t be able to do that, Suarez explained. “In this case there is no allowance for housing, because it’s next to the airport, so they can’t borrow on a tax-free basis.”
But, apparently, they can still borrow funds, because the mayor said there was another safety net.
“If they defaulted if they did borrow funds, CDDs do not impact the city in terms of, its not a lien against the city property,” Suarez said. “It would be a lien against the lease hold interest.” He said the tenants requested that the city support their application to become a CDD, which is through the county, because “they want to contribute to the operation and maintenance of the park.”
Okay. But why do they need a CDD to do that? Are they really just trying to borrow money with the lease as collateral?
Suarez stressed all the positives, calling it the best “stadium deal in the world.” He reminded the commission about the $5 million the developers are giving to the Baywalk along Biscayne Bay and the Miami River. Though Ladra thinks they would take that back if there was waterfront at the development site.
He said the $20 million are to shore up the fund because the $500,000 produced by the CDD won’t be enough.
“They want to make sure the the park, which is adjacent to their property, is kept up and maintained,” Suarez said. They didn’t want to leave it up to the city, he said, which “could have years when it maintains it well and years when it maintains it poorly.”
“They want to be able to control that outcome… have the park up to the billion dollar standard that is going up next door.”
“So, this is found money,” Suarez said. “This is money they didn’t have to pay so it’s just going to make the deal better than what it was.”
But what is $20 million in a $1 billion project? Is someone going to argue that the developers — who obviously need better public relations representation — don’t have another $20 million somewhere that they could have used for that? They had to take what amounts to $7.5 million from the city’s taxpayers — because the city manager is going to find that somewhere to fill the hole made by this resolution — to make themselves feel better?
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The post Miami Freedom Park gets its full $20 million back for 58-acre public park appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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It took a lawsuit against him for abusing his power, but Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo was finally stripped of his post as chairman of the Bayfront Park Management Trust, which he has been leading for almost eight years. This comes a month after a whistleblower lawsuit from two former employees who say that Carollo used the Trust as his own personal slush fund.
Commissioners voted 3-2 Thursday — only Chairwoman Christine King sided with Crazy Joe — to remove Carollo as chair. They also replaced him with Commissioner Miguel Gabela, who led the effort to oust him.
“I know you’ve done some good things in the park,” Gabela had told Carollo. “But things have gotten out of hand.”
Carollo and the city were sued last month by former Trust Executive Director Jose Suarez and former Finance Director Jose Canto, who say they were forced to resign after they reported shoddy accounting practices that allowed Carollo to giveaway contracts to his friends and get kickbacks from them. They also said that Carollo used the funds raised by the agency, which oversees both Bayfront and Maurice Ferre parks, to fund his own office events and promote his political profile.
Read related: Miami Joe Carollo Bayfront scandal snares Coral Gables pal Javier Baños
While King said that the commission had already scheduled new board chair appointments for the March meeting, and she didn’t mind waiting, Gabela said the recent news gave the removal a sense of urgency. Commissioner Manolo Reyes agreed.
“It’s about time we stop it, so we don’t get any more black eyes,” Reyes said.

Despite having promised last year to step down in January, Carollo defended his stewardship and called a visibly uncomfortable Chief Financial Officer and Assistant City Manager Larry Spring to the podium help him justify himself, pointing to annual audits and emails that show Commissioner Damian Pardo had also asked questions about the Trust’s funding. Wow. The commissioner in the district of the two parks that the Trust oversees — Bayfront Park and Maurice Ferre Park — dared to asked questions about operations and expenditures? You gotta be kidding.
They should all have been asking questions.
Of course, Carollo used his mic to attack everyone else.
“One of the worst things in life is to be so successful at something, they kill you for it,” he said, WHAT, saying the ouster was motivated by “envy.” No, it was motivated by good common sense.
He reserved his most pointed remarks for Gabela, again, hinting that the District 1 commissioner had made a mistake going after”a guy who was really your biggest supporter here for Allapattah.”
King asked for the commissioner to keep his comments short and non-confrontational. “You want to have a kangaroo court,” he shouted at her and demanded to have his say “if I’m going to be thrown in the dirt by so-called colleagues.”
Read related: Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo wants old lackey to lead Bayfront Park Trust
Carollo said he had every intention of stepping down in January and it’s why he rushed to finish the Bayfront fountain project.”It wa you who was here and Mr. Pardo by Zoom who voted to bring all the boards to the March 13 meeting,” he told Gabela
At that point, King was so frustrated that she called for a pee-pee break. “You know what? I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “This meeting is in recess.”
But when she came back, it did not get better.
Carollo continued with the emails he said showed that Pardo’s office wanted a formal investigation into the inventory, and specifically the controlled substances, in a veterinarian trailer that the Trust had overpaid for by tens of thousands of dollars. “This is all behind the city manager’s back, going direct to police.
“Mr. Pardo abused his power. Mr. Pardo abused his office… by going directly to the police chief and falsely claim he had anonymous complaints and people coming up to him at meetings.

“Mr. Gabela went to the radio, the Miami Herald, to put my face in the dirt, to try to humiliate me,” Carollo said, tone deaf to the fact that he doesn’t need anybody to humiliate him since he does such a good job himself.
Carollo said that his enemies, the Little Havana businessmen who won a federal First Amendment lawsuit against him and former State Rep. Manuel “Manny” Prieguez, who the commissioner pointed to in the audience — who was laughing out loud — were behind the effort to oust him. He said Prieguez represents a company that wants to put events on at Bayfront Park.
“His handlers got a hold of him right away and told him what to do,” Carollo said about Gabela.
Gabela shot back: “The only person that handles me is my wife.”
Read related: Joe Carollo wants to abolish Miami’s Bayfront Park Management Trust
He called the question three or four times before they actually voted because Carollo went on and on about the war against him.
Gabela has been trying to remove Carollo from the Trust since at least last June. Guess he needed the controversy of a whistleblower lawsuit alleging mismanagement of funds to get it done.
“You’re problem is you’re like Maduro,” Gabela said, comparing Carollo to the Venezuelan dictator. “You don’t want to leave.”
In the end, Carollo said he did not have time for the Bayfront Trust and wanted to give it up — just not to Gabela, who he said wanted the chairmanship “for all the wrong reasons.”
In related news, there was no appetite, as Commissioner Carollo noted, to abolish the Bayfront Trust and, before the chairmanship vote, he voted along with the rest of the commission to unanimously reject the his own measure.
He should have given the chairmanship up then.
The post Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo loses Bayfront Park Trust to Miguel Gabela appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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The newly-restored and functional water fountain at Bayfront Park was on full display for New Year’s Eve. At least in the commercials played that night on the America Tevé broadcast of the party. But this week is the official ribbon-cutting.
There will be a press conference at 6 p.m. Wednesday with Mayor Francis Suarez and District 3 Commissioner Joe Carollo, who is chairman of the Bayfront Park Management Trust. This is happening one day, less than 24 hours, before Carollo proposes the abolishment of the Bayfront Trust and on the heels of accusations that he has been using the agency as a slush fund for favors to his pals and kickbacks.
Que cara mas dura.
Read related: Joe Carollo wants to abolish Miami’s Bayfront Park Management Trust
Carollo and the city have been sued by two former Management Trust employees who say the were threatened and forced to resign after they reported shoddy accounting practices led to widespread misuse of Trust funds. The lack of proper accounting procedures “enabled Carollo to (a) use the Trust’s funds to pay for Carollo’s own political ventures; (b) use the Trust’s funds to support Carollo’s District 3 Political Office (c) use the Trust’s funds to pay and overpay Carollo’s political allies; (d) use the Trust’s funds to overpay Carollo’s District 3 Social Media provider, (e) waste the Trust’s funds on a 2007 Vet mobile that was never used and that had a suspicious and seemingly untraceable past; and e) seek to use the Trust funds to pay for Carollo’s Holiday Party,” the complaint, filed by former executive director Jose Suarez and former financial director Jose Canto, states.
“Together, these wrongful expenditures totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars of misused and wasted Trust funds in less than one year, and Carollo has Chaired the Trust for the past eight years without any legitimate oversight.”
But, hey, we got a fountain.
Read related: Miami paid $150K for one long Joe Carollo commercial on New Year’s Eve
The Mildred and Claude Pepper Fountain at Bayfront Park, built in 1990, had been dry for longer than it was working. The city stopped operating it little by little because of costs and then it became the base for some balloon vendor. Last summer, the Trust began a renovation project that cost $5.5 million and, while the original design created by Japanese-American architect Isamu Noguchi has been preserved, they have added 500 lights and 800 jet streams and a “water screen” that projects videos and images.

“Seeing that fountain light up, other than the births of my children and my marriage, is one of the happiest moments of my life,” Suarez said last month during the State of the City address. Obviously, he’s had a dour life. And he needs to get out more.
The Trust’s interim executive director, Barbara Hernandez, told Axios Miami that the fountain is “still in the testing stage” and that the Trust is “working on a schedule for show times.” She also said that the cost to operate and maintain the fountain is between $20,000 and $30,000 a month. That’s between $240,000 and $360,000 a year.
Maybe they should seek a sponsor.
The post Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo and the Bayfront Fountain of corruption appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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