Deposition: Mayor used his influence with permitting, parking
In yet another effort to thwart a recall effort he likes to belittle, Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago has funded a phone bank to call voters and tell them not to sign the petition.
One of those calls went to Commissioner Melissa Castro over the weekend. She was out of town, on an impromptu vacation with her son, but saw the call came from a 786 number and answered it, thinking it was something important from back home.
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.
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.
Warning that he was going to “drop a bomb,” David Centner did just that Thursday when the owner of The Centner Academy with wife Leila told Miami commissioners that, in light of the massive opposition, he was no longer interested in building a sports dome for his private school’s students on the public, taxpayer-owned Biscayne Park.
First, he had to hear speaker after speaker blast the way the shady deal was hatched — two people were later arrested for public corruption in connection with the 2022 licensing agreement — and the Centners campaign of misinformation and outright lies about their intentions and a previous plan that included Miami-Dade public schools and affordable housing.
Maria Cruz has had it.
Coral Gables’ most active and famous gadfly is done with Mayor Vince Lago, who used to be her dear friend and ally. One would have thought she was crushing on him. Now, Cruz has formed a political action committee to push an effort to recall Lago.
