The first forum for Coral Gables candidates, presented by the PTAs of eight city schools, was centered on education and the issues at the schools in the City Beautiful, like safety, teachers’ wages, affordable housing for teachers, student anxiety, book banning, increasing the number of families who send their kids to public schools and food waste in cafeterias. I kid you not.
Questions were asked by students at local schools and then the PTA members chose some submitted by participants in the Q&A section of the Zoom forum. Voters who missed it can view a recording here. The password is ?E^XpP^9, which is unnecessarily impossible to remember.
Not that it’s really worth the two hours. There were no real zingers or surprises. And it wasn’t terribly enlightening.
Candidates were questioned in three groups for the three different races, with the first session focused on the mayoral hopefuls — incumbent Mayor Vince Lago, Commissioner Kirk Menendez and Michael Abbott, an accountant with a beef against Coral Gables Police, who stands no chance of winning but could force a runoff.

All of the candidates think Coral Gables has some of the best schools. Abbott sounded like a robot reading from a boring script, and kept talking about his “technology hub” and establishing “Silicon South,” which is apparently a part of his platform. Lago and Menendez each touted their respective scholarship fundraising and different programs they’ve created.
Lago said he was the first elected in Miami-Dade to put police officers at schools after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. Menendez spearheaded spending $50,000 in the city budget for a conceptual design of a public park working with the Miami-Dade County School Board and mentioned the compact between the city of Miami Beach and the school board as something the Gables could explore.
Read related: Candidates are set for Coral Gables election April 8 as voters request ABs
The best part was when the candidates were basically asked to defend their decision to send their kids to private schools, not in so many words, but that was the point. Like, gotcha. Abbott said he has no kids but Lago and Menendez, who were obviously the targets of this question, said they made the decision to send their kids to faith-based schools because they are Catholic.
Lago — who suddenly has a lisp (maybe he had come from the dentist’s office?) — wanted to be someplace else.
There were no big surprises in the two commission forums, either. But some interesting takeaways:
Both Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson and Felix Pardo, a longtime city activist and architect, are products of the public school system. Pardo’s wife is a teacher and his son is a public school teacher in Chicago’s South Side. Both his grandchildren attend Chicago public schools. Oh, and Pardo has was recently celebrated for perfect attendance at The Rotary Club.

Anderson, as usual, sounded like she was mansplaining everything to people who just aren’t as smart as her. She also said she started bike lanes in Coral Gables 18 years ago.
Attorney Laureano Cancio, who announced his run before Pardo jumped in, is a Pedro Pan kid, having come from Cuba on the Catholic Church’s Peter Pan flights as an unaccompanied minor. He said his number one issue is education and he has said in the past that the city could establish its own education system or compact with the Miami-Dade County Public School Board to keep Gables students, who now go to schools outside the city, at hometown schools. That makes a community, he said.
At 74, he also runs about three miles almost every day.
The best question was from the participants on the Zoom call and it was about density. Pardo, who is on the planning and zoning board and was also one it 20 years ago as the chair, is absolutely making overdevelopment an issue in his race, and rightly so. Anderson was elected in part because she was supposed to be a firewall against the developers’ interest and, many say, it hasn’t turned out that way.
“I have been the sole voice for responsible development in the city,” Pardo said on the Zoom call. “What has gone on is absolutely atrocious. This city 100 years ago was never designed for the incredibly large projects that are just destroying the fabric of our city.”
Read related: Fundraising for Coral Gables election slows, incumbents count on max gifts
It’s not just traffic that’s affected every time a zoning or land use variance gets approved, he said. Water and sewer, parks schools, freighters, police are all “overburdened,” Pardo explained. “We are pinning ourselves into a corner.”
In the third race, voters have to choose between attorney Richard Lara, Lago’s handpicked pocket-vote candidate, micro transit lobbyist Claudia Miro, who talked about lobbying in Tallahassee for more school guards, and attorney and activist Thomas “Tom” Wells, all of whom are public school products.
Lara seemed to pander and use a bunch of buzzwords. Miro and Wells both seemed more prepared, knowledgable and specific.

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The mayoral race in Coral Gables is going to be heated and already the temperature has been turned up.
Incumbent Mayor Vince Lago has, so far, wanted to make the campaign about three things: Raises that the majority on the commission passed, the changing of three city managers in less than two years, and the opposition that Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who is running against him, has to changing the city elections to November. Lago is taking it all out of context because, well, he has nothing else to campaign on and is growing increasingly desperate in a community that is growing increasingly tired of him and his pathetic public meltdowns.
Last week, after Menendez qualified for the April 8 election, he sent an email blast setting the record straight on the issues and adding a couple more. Ladra was working on a “Lyin’ Vince Lago” post, but the commissioner beat me to it.
And it is well done, so the whole thing is attached here to the bottom of this story.
About the raises, which sounds much worse than it is because Lago uses the term “104% increase” without any context or explanation — the amount is key. After all, 100% increase from $1,000 is $2,000. The actual salary increases for commissioners went from $36,488 to $65,000 a year, which doesn’t seem like a lot. The arguments that the salaries were too low and had not been raised for years and that a higher pay would attract better, less corruptible, candidates make sense.
But saying 104% makes it look like they get a six figure salary. Which they don’t get even with the fattened up expenses and car allowances (which add up to $18,000). Saying 104% is good for the campaign. But a lie.
Read related: Coral Gables commission pay raise is red herring for Lying Vince Lago
Furthermore, while Lago says it was done in secret, it wasn’t secret to him. It may have come as a surprise to the rest of us, butLago discussed it with the city manager before the first of several meetings where it came up.
The mayor’s salary would jump from $44,905 a year to $69,000 a year, although he said more than once that he would not take it. But lo and behold, Menendez says the city’s finance department confirmed that he is getting the increased bi weekly checks.
Maybe he’s donating the balance to charity?
And about the November election… Menendez has repeatedly said that he wants to see what the charter review committee, which is tasked with making recommendations for those kind of large-scale permanent changes to the city’s constitution, says about it. He is wary. After all, Lago only began this drive for November elections after his hand-picked candidates lost the election two years ago.
Proponents say the change would increase turnout. But critics say it will make the election more partisan and vulnerable to special interests.
Read related: Coral Gables City Manager Amos Rojas resigns, leaves next month after one year
And on the city manager’s revolving door: It’s hard to fathom that Lago would continue to defend former Manager Peter Iglesias after the longtime structural deficiencies at history City Hall were uncovered months ago and certain offices and functions have been moved out of the building for safety reasons. Iglesias was fired because he wasn’t doing his job, according to three of the commissioners who felt that the manager was retaliating on behalf of the mayor. The new city manager was hired in an atmosphere of the chaos that Lago created himself when he interfered behind the scenes in the potential hire of a county director.
And former manager Amos Rojas said it would just be for a year, so his exit was predetermined and prepared for.
Again, the mayor is stretching the truth because he has nothing else to campaign on.
In his email, Menendez also preempts a bunch of other attacks that are coming.
Read related: Town hall on tiny tax cut in Coral Gables shows residents don’t want it
About the zoning changes made to his neighborhood, for instance. The truth is that vote happened before Menendez was elected and he now lives across from a massive development project — a project that Lago approved.
And Menendez did not vote to increase taxes. He voted to keep the tax rate the same, because cutting it by 1% could lead to cutting services and would only mean less than $100 in savings for homeowners but tens of thousands of dollars for the owners of big projects, like Gables Station, which would get a $28,000 tax break. A bunch of homeowners said they didn’t want it.
On April 8, maybe they’ll say they don’t want a liar for a mayor anymore, either.

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Kirk Menendez already has important endorsements
Three is the magic number in Coral Gables as that is how many candidates officially qualified last week in each of the three elections in the city’s April 8 election.
Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson will face Felix Pardo and Laureano Cancio while three other candidates vie for the open seat left by Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who is running for mayor. They are Richard Lara, the hand-picked candidate by Mayor Vince Lago, Claudia Miro, a transportation lobbyist who lost a commission race in 2021, and attorney Thomas “Tom” Wells, an active speaker at commission meetings who sits on the charter review board.
Read related: Two more candidates say they will run for Coral Gables commission in April
But everybody is going to be looking at and taking about the mayor’s race between Lago and Menendez. A third candidate, Michael Abbott, doesn’t really count.
Speaking of count, turnout is going to be key in this race. There are just over 37,200 registered voters in Coral Gables, according to the city clerk. As of last week, there were 3,135 requests for absentee or vote-by-mail ballots, according to Miami-Dade Elections spokesperson Roberto Rodriguez.
That’s a huge increase from the 204 VBM requests on file as of Jan. 16. But not a huge surprise, Rodriguez said.
“Our office has been sending text messages and emails to voters who had a vote-by-mail request on file and provided contact information,” Rodriguez told Political Cortadito, adding that election specific messages would be sent to voters who have upcoming elections.

The deadline to request an absentee ballot for the April 8 election is March 27. The deadline to register to vote in the municipal election is March 10.
Most of the voters who participated in the 2023 election cast their ballots by mail. Of the 6,700 or 6,800 who voted in the two commission races, more than 4,100 were absentee. Turnout could have been low due to the lack of a mayoral race — Lago had no opponent two years ago — but the commission races were both high profile because the mayor was behind two candidates who ultimately lost.
That’s what makes this election so interesting. Lago is not only trying to win. He is trying to get his majority back. He has to not only win his own seat back, which is not a gimme, but also keep Anderson, which is the most certain of the three races, and get Lara into the open seat. It’s definitely a slate, and one can tell by the yard signs along San Amaro Drive, which is the mayor’s neighborhood.
Mayor Lago showed the biggest haul in his last campaign finance report with $$108,750 collected in just the first two weeks of February, almost exclusively in maximum $1,000 checks, according to the campaign documents filed with the city clerk. That’s the largest amount in a single report since the $166K collected last year in the second quarter — which is over three months not two weeks. He also has another $150,000 left sitting in his political action committee, which has its last report through Dec. 31 and we won’t know how much more it has raised until after the election. But Ladra suspects it will be a lot.
In comparison, Menendez has raised less than $18,000.
Read related: Kirk Menendez runs for Coral Gables mayor against city bully Vince Lago
But the last election showed that money does not equal votes in The City Beautiful when commissioners Melissa Castro and Ariel Fernandez beat better-funded candidates who had the mayor’s backing. It may not have officially happened, but Menendez will most certainly have their support. He already has the firefighters’ support and probably will get the police union.

Gables Neighbors United, which some argue helped elect Castro and Fernandez, were quick to come out with their endorsements over the weekend: Menendez and Pardo.
They are holding back, apparently, on the open seat race. But Ladra will bet real money it ain’t Lara.
“Make no mistake about it: Mayor Vince Lago and Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson are tied at the hip,” reads an email from the homeowners group. “It’s a quid-pro-quo relationship. Lago: ‘You stand by me and vote the way I want you to vote and I’ll introduce you to the people who can make you ‘whole’ and keep you in power. Let’s start with naming you vice mayor!’ ”
Ouch.
“Rhonda: ‘You got it BOSS!’
“While the wording may not be exact, the meaning is. Both are power and money hungry and feeding from the hands of developers and special interests,” the email says.
Which is how the election is going to framed for voters, as usual: Development interests versus resident interests.
But that’s not all. There’s a new issue this year.
“Civility and Stabiliity is his motto,” says the email about Menendez. “We could use a lot of both.
“Divisive behavior and even threats of harm to colleagues and disrepect for residents by Lago have been the tipping points for us, well beyond the favoritism to developers and special interests, to seek a candidate who can once again lead with a calm hand and move the city forward.
“For the past almost-four years, we have witnessed Commissioner Menendez‘ thoughtful approach to oftentimes difficult issues and watched him render solutions that benefit residents and the good of the city,” the email states. “Kirk is a peacemaker and a leader and for these reasons, we join the Coral Gables Fire union in backing Kirk Menendez for Mayor.”
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Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres.
There’s not a Cuban American growing up in Greater Miami that didn’t hear those words from their parents or grandparents when these didn’t approve of your friends. Or their friends. Or your friends’ parents. It translates to, “tell me who you associate with and I will tell you who you are.”
But apparently Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago did not heed his elders. Because Lago, who keeps surrounding himself with shady characters, is moving next week to appoint another one of his iffy friends to the code enforcement board.
Lago wants to put none other than Benjamin “Ben” Alvarez — who is known as “the Tony Soprano of lawyers” by his own colleagues — on the board to replace someone who apparently hasn’t lived in the city for some time now and was removed.
This is the same Benjamin Alvarez who has been disciplined at least three times by the Florida Bar, including and admonishment in 2017 for threatening his wife — who he was in the middle of a divorce with — and grabbing her phone in a physical altercation. There is a police report that indicates that Alvarez’s gun was taken after his wife expressed fear.
Additionally, a Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust investigation found a serious appearance of impropriety after his firm received city work from his then girlfriend, Veronica Diaz, who was an assistant city attorney in Miami. And, in 2012, a judge ruled against his firm in a fraud case involving forged documents requiring more than $82,000 in restitution.
Read related: More on Ultra bad judicial candidate Veronica Diaz
Alvarez was also suspended for 30 days after he disparaged opposing counsel and publicly reprimanded for misrepresenting, under oath, obstruction of evidence, and for financial mismanagement of a matter involving a client, who just happens to be Manny Chamizo, another shady Lago pal who was charged with criminal stalking and who the mayor appointed to a board.
Doesn’t Lago know any decent people? Among his friends and allies, L’Ego counts former Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who was arrested on public corruption charges in 2023 that were dropped last year, and lobbyist Bill Riley, who was arrested alongside ADLP and was in on the real estate deal Lago got in the $640,000 commission from the sale of a Ponce de Leon Boulevard building to Location Ventures, the development firm owned by Rishi Kapoor that was investigated for its $10,000 monthly payments to Miami Mayor Francis Suarez for “consulting. Oh, and he also rented a retail space to Kapoor.
This Ben Alvarez track record has already raised eyebrows in the community and Commissioner Melissa Castro has officially asked the mayor to reconsider and appoint somebody else. This may be unprecedented in Gables commission history.
“As public servants, we have the responsibility to make decisions that protect the integrity of our city and uphold the trust placed in us by our residents,” Castro wrote in a memo to her colleagues.

“This is not a position I take lightly, nor is it one I raise with any sense of personal malintent toward Mr. Alvarez. I have no relationship with him and, to my knowledge, have never met or spoken with him,” Castro wrote. “My sole responsibility is to advocate for the well-being of our residents and ensure that those serving in positions of public trust meet the highest ethical and professional standards.
“The Code Enforcement Board plays a critical role in upholding our city’s quality of life. Its members must be fair, impartial, and above all, committed to enforcing our city’s laws with integrity and transparency. Given the significance of this responsibility, we must ensure that appointees to this board not only meet the technical qualifications but also embody the values and ethical standards that Coral Gables represents.”
Castro sent the memo because she did not want to discuss this publicly at a meeting.
“I take no pleasure in bringing forward information that could cause embarrassment to Mr. Alvarez. He is a resident of Coral Gables, and like all members of our community, he deserves to be treated with respect,” she wrote. “That is why I am addressing this privately among my colleagues first, rather than allowing it to become a public matter unnecessarily.”
Oops. Too late.
“However, I cannot, in good conscience, remain silent when I believe an appointment poses a risk to the integrity of our governance,” Castro said in her memo. “I believe in due process and fairness, and I strongly believe that every individual is innocent until proven guilty.
“Unfortunately, in Mr. Alvarez’s case, the legal system has already determined guilt on multiple occasions.”
Read related: Hypocrite Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago votes against appointment
Ladra doesn’t think Lago cares about the Alvarez baggage and history. It is not his first controversial appointment. In 2023, the mayor appointed his buddy Manny Chamizo, who is facing felony stalking charges, to the water advisory board. Chamizo’s criminal trial is scheduled for March 24.
Lago uses board appointments to try to get his agenda through. He appointed Nicolas “Nick” Cabrera, the self-appointed Prince of Coral Gables and son of former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera, to the city’s board of adjustments so he could get a setback variance for a gazebo at his house approved. It didn’t work. Lago was denied his pretty little barbecue gazebo.
Last year, he had Planning and Zoning Board member Claudia Miro removed from her position by Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson after Miro failed to vote to put former Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers on the board, as Lago obviously wanted. He sent her a series of butt hurt text messages after her vote.
Miro is now running for commissioner in the open seat vacated by Kirk Menendez in his run for mayor against Lago.
Menendez, meanwhile, has not appointed any would-be criminals to city boards.
Police Report Ben Alvarez by Political Cortadito on Scribd

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Campaign finance reports filed last week by the candidates for Coral Gables mayor and commissioner show that nobody did very well in the final quarter of 2024. Donations slowed down big time.
Mayor Vince Lago actually gave money back instead of raising any. His campaign report shows zero contributions, but that he returned two $1,000 checks from Pumayana, a residential developer and investor with projects in the city, and C2S Construction Solutions, an interior renovations firm based in Sunny Isles Beach. We don’t know why those checks, given in June, were returned on Nov. 19. But it’s not because they were duplicates. Political Cortadito checked.
Lago’s political action committee, Coral Gables First, also reported zero contributions and also returned a $2,500 check to Pumayana, as well as two $1,000 checks to Bahama Sunrise Development, which, according to the Florida Department of Corporations, is partially owned by Pumayana. Those contributions were also refunded on Nov. 19.
Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who decided in December to challenge the mayor instead of running for reelection, isn’t doing much better. Menendez, who raised almost $15,000 last year as a commission candidate, only raised $2,550 more in the last quarter.
But Menendez is also spending less, hundreds compared to $40,700 spent so far by Lago, more than half of which ($28K) went to his campaign manager, Jesse Manzano.
Read related: Kirk Menendez runs for Coral Gables mayor against city bully Vince Lago
Still Coach Kirk has raised a total only $17,550 compared to $167,000 raised by Lago just in his campaign account, not including the PAC. Of course, that’s thanks to many maximum contributions of $1,000. Of the 201 contributors listed on Lago’s campaign report, a whopping 151 have given the most that they can. Those include checks from Benjamin Leon, who Donald Trump has named as ambassador to Spain, and a whole football team of lobbyists, including former Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla and South Miami Mayor Javier Fernandez.

In comparison, of Menendez’s 40 contributors, only eight gave the maximum $1,000 donation.
Lago also has a bunch of bundles, like $15K in 15 maximum checks from real estate investor Tomas Cabrerizo‘s multiple companies, and $11,000 from developer Allen Morris, who got a his 10-story Ponce Park Residences project approved unanimously by the commission in May. Lago praised the project, and the developer, who reduced the size and density of the luxury condominium, which was originally planned for 16 stories. The $11K came in 11 separate checks on June 12, less than a month after the approval.
Leon gave another $5,000 from his companies and Lago also got $5,000 from JustWell Health, which is a healthcare and a real estate holdings firm.
Vice Mayor Rhonda Anne Anderson has reported raising only $$11,550 from 14 donors — 11 of those contributed the maximum $1,000, including herself. She also got two $1,000 checks from former Commissioner Wayne Withers, but only $250 from former Mayor Don Slesnick. Anderson’s campaign account shows she has spent $1,600 so far.
Attorney Richard Lara, Lago’s pick to run for commission against Menendez (now an open seat) has raised more than Anderson, an incumbent, with a reported total of $63,350.70 from 139 donors. Of those, 32 gave the maximum $1,000. Lara’s support has also waned since he announced at a commission meeting last February. He reported only $1,750 raised in the final quarter of 2024, after reporting $3,080 in the third quarter.
But he’s spending like the campaign was a shopping spree, with almost $23,700 spent so far, including $1,500 monthly consulting fees to Nicolas Cabrera, son of former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera and lackey of Lago. He’s also paid Alex Miranda, the former chief of staff and campaign spokesman for former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine (a Democrat who ran for governor), $3,000.
Running against Lara is attorney Thomas “Tom” Wells, a Menendez ally who has, so far, paid for everything himself. A total of $2,878 on signs, door hangers, a website, business cards and campaign buttons. Wells, who is the vice chair of the charter review committee, is a regular at Birdie’s Bistro, formerly Burger Bob’s, and is a well known entity in the City Beautiful. Unlike Lara. So maybe he doesn’t need so much money. It also appears, from the 2023 election, where both of Lago’s well-funded candidates lost, that money doesn’t matter as much in the Gables as in other cities.

Laureano Cancio, who is running against Anderson, is also counting on that. Cancio, like Michael Anthony Abbot — a fat chance candidate for mayor — has raised $100 to pay bank fees.
“The last election was won by people who didn’t have the most money. You can win without money,” Cancio told Political Cortadito, adding that he’s counting on the Lago backlash to hurt his sidekick, the vice mayor. “The mayor is pretty much hated by everybody,” he said.
“I’m spending the least amount of money I can and I’m not beholden to anybody,” Cancio added.
But he is concerned about the Lago/Anderson/Lara slate. “These three candidates seem to be running as a team and, if the trend is not reversed by Election Day, it is very possible that they might take the majority control of the commission, to the delight of Lago who lost that control two years ago.”
Cancio is counting on forums and other public speaking engagements to reach voters and while he is the only candidate, so far, to bring up education needs and the idea of the city running it’s own school system — in light of all the development — he recognizes that the biggest issue will be that very development.
“Overdevelopment seems to be the issue most likely to prevent the troika of Lago, Lara, and Anderson from walking away with victory,” he told Political Cortadito this week. “Coral Gables voters have identified this issue as being of critical concern for the community. Lago’s critics have even predicted that the issue could become the mayor’s Waterloo.”
Ladra love how he talks.
Two new candidates who announced last week, Felix Pardo and Claudia Miro, don’t have any financial reports yet.
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In what turned out to be yet another show of political division in the city of Coral Gables, Deputy City Manager Alberto Parjus was named city manager to replace Amos Rojas, who resigned earlier this month. The appointment will be effective at the next commission meeting Jan. 28, at which the salary and benefits package will be discussed and approved.
The vote was 3-2, of course, with the same dissenting folks as always: Mayor Vince Lago and Vice Mayor Lackey Rhonda Anderson, who now makes all his arguments for him.
“Everybody should have the opportunity to put their name in the hat,” Anderson said, referring to other city employees and managers from other cities that could also want the job. She also reminded everyone that there is an election in three months. “The faces on this commission may be totally different,” she said. (Fingers crossed.)
To which Commissioner Ariel Fernandez asked if they should just take the next three months off and not make any decision.
Read related: Coral Gables City Manager Amos Rojas resigns, leaves next month after one year
Commissioner Melissa Castro, who made the motion, said Parjus “is the leader we need to ensure continued excellence and growth.” She had a powerpoint prepared with slides that show the city has appointed from within more than not.

In fact, activist Maria Cruz pointed out that former manager Peter Iglesias was appointed at a commission meeting on a non-agenda item with three minutes of discussion and no objections.
Iglesias was fired by the new commission majority almost a year after Castro and Fernandez were elected in 2023 (a prior attempt was thwarted) setting in motion a scramble for a new manager that had Miami International Airport Director Albert Cutié named for a day before the commission, at Fernandez’s suggestion, appointed Rojas, a former U.S. Marshal and special agent at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who was supposed to root out corruption.
He didn’t talk about that during his brief comments about achievements in the year he’s been manager, which included planning the centennial year celebration, beginning the City Hall renovations, the Minorca parking garage office buildups, the purchase and installation of temporary speed tables for traffic calming, expansion of the citywide broadband and public Wi-Fi, improvements in the financial management and property management systems and lobbying efforts that secured $2.7 million in state and federal grant funding.
Rojas also mentioned the negotiations that resulted in new or renewed lease agreements for Birdie Bistro (the old Burger Bob’s), Le Parc Cafe at the Coral Gables Country Club and Fritz and Franz downtown. He also talked about bringing in “top tier talent” such as Assistant City Manager Joe Gomez and Parking and Mobility Director Monica Beltran.
He made no mention of the hostile work environment he’s had to deal with that included allegations of assault against Lago, which were investigated and ultimately found unable to be proven. Nobody could believe that Lago was actually going to hit him.
Read related: Coral Gables Internal Affairs check out mayor’s ‘assault’ incident at City Hall
There was no real talk about a national search, after the last one ended in disaster. The chosen candidate failed a criminal background check and last year — we know thanks to Castro’s research — he was sentenced to federal prison for public corruption. But both Anderson and Lago wanted to advertise the position and get a larger field to choose from. They also scolded Parjus for comments he allegedly made about resigning after Iglesias was fired.
“Clearly your mind was changed, and that’s your right,” Anderson said.
“Going out and testing the waters is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing,” Lago said, adding that Parjus could be let go after the election and get a five month severance. Apparently, he thinks he and his pocket vote candidates are going to win in April.
Said Fernandez: “You’re hoping to see if you can pick up a majority and bring back Peter Iglesias.”
Fernandez also reminded his colleagues that, two years ago, they appointed City Attorney Christina Suarez on the recommendation of the outgoing city attorney. “There was no application process. We trusted the recommendation of the person who was in that top job,” Fernandez said. “There was no objection from anybody.
“This is not a time for dirty political attacks,” Fernandez added. “This is a time for civility, stability and continuity and for our city to move forward.”
He thanked Rojas for his “leadership as City Manager with utmost integrity and for his tireless work to move our City in the right direction,” and said that Parjus had the experience necessary for the job. That includes 35 years at Miami-Dade County, ending as deputy director of the Department of Transportation and Public Works, and a stint as assistant city manager in Miami.
Read related: Ralph Cutié picks Miami-Dade over Coral Gables after PAC text attack
Commissioner Kirk Menendez said what he liked best about Parjus, who was hired by Iglesias, was that his work under both administrations was centered on responding to residents needs. “No matter who it is in the room with you, your focus is public service,” Menendez said.
In a separate 3-2 vote, Menendez was made the negotiator on the Parjus salary and benefits because Castro said she didn’t trust Lago to negotiate in good faith.
Menendez is running against Lago for mayor and this decision will likely become a flash point in the April elections.
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