Happy New Year, voter! Are you ready for 2024?

If anybody thought elections in 2023 were interesting — what with corrupt Miami Mayor Francis Suarez being a pretend presidential contender for all of five minutes and incumbent losses in Coral Gables and the city of Miami — next year will likely be as good or better.

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He was absent from the redistricting process when the Miami City Commission disenfranchised black and Coconut Grove voters by dividing their districts and diluting their votes. He let Commissioner Joe Carollo carve up the Grove so he could put his own house into District 3 and he let Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla take his only real challenger out of District 1. Mayor Francis Suarez didn’t say ni pio.

But now he wants to be involved? Now he wants to work?

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There’s a growing list of people who think Miami Mayor Francis Suarez ought to resign his position in light of the exposé published this week by The Miami Herald, with details about just how much he blurs the lines between his private, for-profit life and his, ahem, “public service.”

Former Miami Police chiefs Jorge Colina and Art Acevedo — who wrote a scathing memo about corruption that is supposedly being investigated by the Broward State Attorney’s office — have joined the chorus. But the first one to publicly call for his resignation was newly-elected Commissioner Damian Pardo, who ran on a platform of rooting out corruption.

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The first meeting of the newly-elected Miami commissioners showed the change in the dynamic that voters seem to want in their city government when Miguel Gabela and Damian Pardo refused to rubber stamp the old budget and fought to make changes that resulted in a $25 million shave on operational expenses and a tiny tax cut.

But it’s the thought that counts.

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Talk about awkward: Steven Miro, the former chief of staff fired by Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo in 2018, is back at City Hall this week as special advisor to newly elected Commissioner Miguel Gabela.

Miro said his job would be to run the district offices and “make sure the constituent services are up to par, which they haven’t been.” He is going to be making $60,000 a year, which is more than he did as Carollo’s staffer before he became a whistleblower and got fired in 2018. Miro had gone to the State Attorney’s office to report PaellaGate, Carollo’s use of district funds to campaign with Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, in the county commission race of 2017, with the Spanish dish at elderly housing.

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Miami City Attorney Victoria Mendez should be shopping for a new job.

Newly-elected Commissioner Miguel Gabela, who said on the campaign trail that he would fire Mendez, has put her termination on the agenda of his first regularly scheduled meeting Dec. 14.

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