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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Miami City Commissioners deferred making a decision last week on allowing up to 45 giant LED billboards downtown — and some critics worry the can will be kicked down the road until after the November election. You know, so commissioners don’t have to be held accountable.

Or maybe so they can collect more contributions from billboard companies.

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Commissioner Joe Carollo is suddenly living outside his district

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Did anybody really think that the South Dade Logistics & Technology District was going to be the last attempt to cross the Urban Development Boundary, an invisible line meant to keep urban sprawl from penetrating the Everglades? ¡Claro que no!

Instead, the Miami-Dade County Commission’s fervent dedication to and intentional push to up zone farmland late last year — they went of their way to approve it on the fifth try — opened the proverbial floodgates to these protected lands crucial to our water supply. The value of the properties that were upzoned skyrocketed. And speculators and developers can see the cash cow, um, cash manatee. That’s why three separate applications have been filed with the county in a year’s time, as first reported in The Real Deal by Lidia Dinkova and researcher Adam Farence.

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One staffer worked on brother’s commission campaign

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