The rate at which pets are being abandoned has grown and Miami-Dade Animal Services ran out of space at their spanking new, $15-million adoption center shelter in Doral. So, they are keeping some dogs and cats at the old shelter in Medley and animal advocates worry about horrible conditions.

After all, this is the worn out, grossly “sick” building, the “house of horrors” for both the animals and staff, that had to be replaced pronto.

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Elected officials, you are now free to lobby again.

A U.S. district judge issued an order Wednesday that strikes down the state’s lobbying amendment, passed by voters in 2018, which bans any elected official from any kind of lobbying during their term of office and for six years after because, she said, it was an unconstitutional infringement on free speech.

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Miami Beach resident Lynette Long, a former university professor who has authored more than 30 books, recently took a drive through the city and noted all the ceremonially co-designated streets, which are named to honor someone for something. What she found was an astonishing gap.

There are at least 18 streets that are co-designated for men and only one street that is co-designated for a woman, Barbara Capitman. While Capitman deserves it for her work creating the Miami Design Preservation League and her efforts to preserve the Art Deco district, she is not alone.

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Former Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Góngora has waited. And waited. And waited.

Góngora has skipped several elections, waiting to run for mayor when he felt he had a better chance. Not against Philip Levine. Not against Dan Gelber, who is finally termed-out. But certainly now in the open seat.

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Former Coral Gables Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick, a class act who was involved in many civic organizations and served as First Lady of the City Beautiful for 10 years, died Thursday evening after a long battle with cancer. She was 75.

Slesnick, wife of former Mayor Don Slesnick (2001-2010), was first diagnosed with lymphoma in 2014 and also fought back breast cancer in 2016, one year after she won election as a commissioner. She did six weeks of radiation and went into remission. Then the lymphoma returned in 2020 and there was more chemo to beat it back. Until it returned again earlier this year, Jeannett said in an email sent to friends in June, warning them that she had little time left.

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With all due respect and thoughts and prayers to former Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez, who shot himself in the head off the side of I-75 last weekend, the 2024 election for county sheriff has just become a real race.

Ramirez, who was still recovering at a Tampa Hospital after a self inflicted gunshot wound administered on the side of the road with his wife in the car, was the clear frontrunner by a long distance before this. Last weekend, while staying at a Tampa hotel for a state sheriff’s association event, there was some kind of domestic dispute. Ramirez was asked to leave after other guests reported he had been brandishing a gun outside.

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