A downtown activist and member of the Bayfront Park Trust Management advisory board has resigned because of a no-bid giveaway contract for $1 million worth of public art — dog and cat sculptures, like the Little Havana roosters in — for Maurice Ferre Park, which is also managed by the trust.

But it’s really about Commissioner Joe Carollo, who is chairman of the BPTM, and his handling of that group — and it’s money. This proposal originally was sent to Carollo and his wife’s personal email.

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Monday is the last day to register if you want to vote in the Coral Gables election April 13.

There were 35,962 registered voters in the City Beautiful at the beginning of March, according to the Miami-Dade Elections Department. That’s a little more than the 33,154 who were registered at the time of the last election in 2019, when a little more than 8,500 voters cast ballots, a 26% turnout.

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The mailer that landed in mailboxes Saturday calling Coral Gables Commission Group 3 candidate Alex Bucelo a puppet was paid for by former Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff.

What does Miami have to do with the Gables?

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All together, the 13 candidates in the April 13 Coral Gables election have raised more than $1 million — a milestone reached last month, according to the latest campaign finance reports.

Leading the pack are the mayoral candidates, who between them, raised $121,240 just in February. Together, they account for half of the million dollar bounty.

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Two of the frontrunners in the Coral Gables Group 2 commission race were the subjects of a mobile poll last week that tested negative messages against one of them.

Voters were asked if they would be more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate if they had been “charged by Boston, Massachusetts police for disorderly conduct for refusing to stop smoking in a hotel room” or if they were “married to prominent lobbyist and son of former Miami Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez.”

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Commissioner Pat Keon has drawn first blood in the mayoral race with a dark money attack mailer against Vice Mayor Vince Lago that calls him “a rubber stamp for big developers.”

It’s almost laughable, because Keon is the development darling in the race. Lago has consistently been the lone no vote on several controversial developments — he voted against the Agave project and Gables Station — as well as the sole voice of reason on the Miracle Mile rezoning.

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