Gimenez man Jesse Manzano gets board absences excused

It’s good to have palanca. Just ask Jesse Manzano-Plaza.

The political consultant and strategist, who ran the campaign of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez (at least until the mayor was forced into a runoff when others were brought in), got a break Tuesday when the members of the Bayfront Park Management Trust Board voted to keep him on despite having been absent from at least five meetings from June to December.

It’s a bit ironic that the guy who made up that mayoral candidate Raquel Regalado had missed multiple meetings as a school board member — when she had missed none, just skipped the presentations part — hasn’t gone to a meeting in at least six months. In fact, Manzano-Plaza missed enough meetings to get booted off the board if not for a special waiver that seems to have been invented just for him.

Guess he was too busy campaigning, going on radio shows, making stuff up and obsessing about soccer. Wonder how many meetings he misses during his next campaign.

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Apparently, Manzano had missed the June 28, July 26, September 27, October 25 and a December 2016 meeting of the Bayfront Park Trust Board, a nine-member board, led by Miami City Commissioner Frank Carollo, that manages Bayfront Park and Museum Park. 

Board members used to get voted off for missing three consecutive meetings or four meetings in a calendar year, according to the city code. But the city somehow rewrote the rules so that Jesse could stay on.

“It’s a new thing that the city clerk came up with,” Timothy Shmand, director of the Bayfront Park Management Trust, told Ladra Tuesday afternoon.

“The amended city code provides a board member subject to removal the opportunity to seek and obtain one attendance waiver during the board member’s tenure on a particular board,” Shmand wrote to the board members on Jan. 13. “The BPMT board is asked to consider such a waiver for Mr. Jesse Manzano-Plaza.”

The email says he missed four consecutive meetings but Shmand told Ladra he also missed a meeting in December.

It was a unanimous decision. Except Jesse didn’t vote. Naturally. That would be too much, no?

Read related story: Who does Carlos Gimenez spokesman really represent?

Why did Shmand ask to keep him on?

“He adds to the board,” he told Ladra. “He’s got insight into the way things happen in Miami that are valuable. When I need an opinion or advice, he’s always available.”

Yeah, um, well, except the last six months.