The Miami Commission meeting on Thursday was short, less than three hours long, and almost entirely civil. It helped that several controversial items were deferred. But it’s more ’cause Commissioner Joe Carollo was absent for most of it.
Carollo — recently named in a whistleblower lawsuit that alleges he abused his position as chairman at the Bayfront Park Management Trust and used it for personal gain — should have just taken the whole day off. The commission waited for him on the items he had put on the agenda — which then all failed for lack of a second once he arrived. Talk about rejection.
Crazy Joe wanted to create a policy by which all future elected officials and their staff would have to undergo drug tests and background checks and disclose if they had any sealed criminal records. “I’ve been hearing the last year so much the word ‘transparency,’” Carolll said. But he was really retaliating against commissioners who took the Bayfront Trust from him at the prior meeting.
Read related: Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo loses Bayfront Park Trust to Miguel Gabela
“You’re problem is, you’re like Maduro,” Commissioner Miguel Gabela told him at the Feb. 13 meeting, just before being named the new chair of the Trust. “You don’t want to leave.”
“My problem is I’m not a thug or a criminal,” Carollo shot back, apparently forgetting about his domestic violence arrest in 2001 when he was a mayor after hitting his wife so hard he left a welt on her head. His daughter called 911 and said “Help. My dad is hurting my mom! Please come now! Please.”
Is he implying that others are?
Carollo also failed to mention that individuals with sealed records are protected by Florida law from having to disclose any details. But it didn’t matter. Nobody wanted to ride that revenge train with him.
Crazy Joe also failed to get a change to the zoning code allowing for higher solid wooden fences. It seems innocuous enough. Good fences make good neighbors. But he’s such poison right now that nobody wants to touch anything to do with him. Perhaps his mayoral campaign is doomed (more on the later).
Several items were also deferred to the March 13 meeting, and we’ll get back to the important ones.
Others passed without much discussion, including an affordable housing project that seems to have tentative community support. Various Grove leaders — including historic, iconic community giants like Monty Trainer and Thelma Gibson — said the developers need to do more public outreach and include the community’s input in their final design (more on that later).
It was an almost entirely civil meeting until Commissioner Gabela said he just had to speak up on the criminal background checks.”It boggles the mind,” Gabela said, adding that Carollo’s motives were underhanded because he used to have a chief of staff — Gabela declined to name him — who had been arrested for something, he declined to say what. It was former Bayfront Trust Executive Director Jose Suarez, and it was soliciting prostitution in 1998, as reported by Political Cortadito.
“So you weren’t interested [in background checks] a year ago,” Gabela said, because Suarez was named to the Trust last March, “and you are now. It seems to me that you’re bringing this up for a reason.
“I’m not into that. I don’t like to character assassinate,” Gabela added.
That’s too bad. Because Ladra thinks he’d be good at it.
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The mayoral race in Coral Gables is going to be heated and already the temperature has been turned up.
Incumbent Mayor Vince Lago has, so far, wanted to make the campaign about three things: Raises that the majority on the commission passed, the changing of three city managers in less than two years, and the opposition that Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who is running against him, has to changing the city elections to November. Lago is taking it all out of context because, well, he has nothing else to campaign on and is growing increasingly desperate in a community that is growing increasingly tired of him and his pathetic public meltdowns.
Last week, after Menendez qualified for the April 8 election, he sent an email blast setting the record straight on the issues and adding a couple more. Ladra was working on a “Lyin’ Vince Lago” post, but the commissioner beat me to it.
And it is well done, so the whole thing is attached here to the bottom of this story.
About the raises, which sounds much worse than it is because Lago uses the term “104% increase” without any context or explanation — the amount is key. After all, 100% increase from $1,000 is $2,000. The actual salary increases for commissioners went from $36,488 to $65,000 a year, which doesn’t seem like a lot. The arguments that the salaries were too low and had not been raised for years and that a higher pay would attract better, less corruptible, candidates make sense.
But saying 104% makes it look like they get a six figure salary. Which they don’t get even with the fattened up expenses and car allowances (which add up to $18,000). Saying 104% is good for the campaign. But a lie.
Read related: Coral Gables commission pay raise is red herring for Lying Vince Lago
Furthermore, while Lago says it was done in secret, it wasn’t secret to him. It may have come as a surprise to the rest of us, butLago discussed it with the city manager before the first of several meetings where it came up.
The mayor’s salary would jump from $44,905 a year to $69,000 a year, although he said more than once that he would not take it. But lo and behold, Menendez says the city’s finance department confirmed that he is getting the increased bi weekly checks.
Maybe he’s donating the balance to charity?
And about the November election… Menendez has repeatedly said that he wants to see what the charter review committee, which is tasked with making recommendations for those kind of large-scale permanent changes to the city’s constitution, says about it. He is wary. After all, Lago only began this drive for November elections after his hand-picked candidates lost the election two years ago.
Proponents say the change would increase turnout. But critics say it will make the election more partisan and vulnerable to special interests.
Read related: Coral Gables City Manager Amos Rojas resigns, leaves next month after one year
And on the city manager’s revolving door: It’s hard to fathom that Lago would continue to defend former Manager Peter Iglesias after the longtime structural deficiencies at history City Hall were uncovered months ago and certain offices and functions have been moved out of the building for safety reasons. Iglesias was fired because he wasn’t doing his job, according to three of the commissioners who felt that the manager was retaliating on behalf of the mayor. The new city manager was hired in an atmosphere of the chaos that Lago created himself when he interfered behind the scenes in the potential hire of a county director.
And former manager Amos Rojas said it would just be for a year, so his exit was predetermined and prepared for.
Again, the mayor is stretching the truth because he has nothing else to campaign on.
In his email, Menendez also preempts a bunch of other attacks that are coming.
Read related: Town hall on tiny tax cut in Coral Gables shows residents don’t want it
About the zoning changes made to his neighborhood, for instance. The truth is that vote happened before Menendez was elected and he now lives across from a massive development project — a project that Lago approved.
And Menendez did not vote to increase taxes. He voted to keep the tax rate the same, because cutting it by 1% could lead to cutting services and would only mean less than $100 in savings for homeowners but tens of thousands of dollars for the owners of big projects, like Gables Station, which would get a $28,000 tax break. A bunch of homeowners said they didn’t want it.
On April 8, maybe they’ll say they don’t want a liar for a mayor anymore, either.

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For all their talk about not wanting to “kick the can” down the road, Miami-Dade commissioners are really good at it. Last week, the commission once again postponed making a decision on the long-term solution to the county’s solid waste disposal needs — which became an urgent issue after the waste-to-energy facility in Doral burned down about two years ago.
And their lack of action has led state legislators to, once again, put their grubby little hands on our local issues with proposed laws that would create a buffer zone for any new solid waste facility — potentially limiting the county’s options.
State Sen. Bryan Avila this week introduced a bill that would prohibit local governments and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection from issuing construction permits for new solid waste disposal or waste-to-energy facilities within a half mile of residential properties, commercial properties or schools.
So, basically, anywhere?
Read related: Miami-Dade garbage incinerator talks look more like a stinky dumpster fire
“After extensive input from my residents in NW Miami-Dade County, I am proud to have filed SB 1008 (Waste Incineration) this morning,” Avila posted on his social media Monday. “This bill will prohibit a local government from issuing a construction permit for a new solid waste disposal facility that uses an ash-producing incinerator or for a waste-to-energy facility if the proposed location of the facility is within a one-half mile radius of any residential property, commercial property, or school.”
Specifically, the bill adds new restrictions “that explicitly prevent the issuance of construction permits for ash-producing incinerator facilities or waste-to-energy facilities near populated or educational areas,” according to the Bill Tracker 50 website. The bill is set to take effect on July 1.
Well, what do you know? That’s when the commission will take it up again. They voted last week to direct Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to come back in 120 days with a report — or more like an analysis with side-by-side comparison — giving them some time to digest the options before meeting in July to make a decision.
Maybe. If they don’t play kick the can again. Which, Ladra would not bet against. No matter how many assurances we got from Chairman Anthony Rodriguez.
Several commissioners, notably Oliver Gilbert and Danielle Cohen Higgins, could not imagine what new information the administration might bring. Cohen Higgins suggested letting the private sector pick a site and make an unsolicited proposal. Gilbert kept pushing Doral and wondered what happened to the proposition that the city pay a special tax (read: extortion fee) so that the incinerator would not be rebuilt there.
Read related: To keep a new Miami-Dade garbage incinerator away, get ready to pay
Commissioner Raquel Regalado said that there had been several decisions made already, like transporting our trash on trains to central Florida landfills, which she said we got at a “locked in” price for the next 10 years.
Commissioner Eileen Higgins is “less hopeful we’ll get clear and incise information,” as she said at the meeting last week. “Every time they write a memo it contradicts the memo they wrote before.”
And the administration has gone around and around on this. First they like Doral for a location to rebuild, it’s the cheapest and fastest option. Then they pivoted to the western property near the Everglades and Miramar. Then they pivoted to landfills.
It’s no wonder state legislators want to take it out of the local yokels’ hands.
Wait, aren’t Rodriguez and Avila pals? A head’s up might have been nice.
Avila’s is not the only bill trying to take the decision out of the county commission’s hands. State Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez introduced a bill last week that would prohibit a local government entity from applying for or approving a permit for certain waste facilities — include “solid waste facilities, municipal solid waste-to-energy facilities, pyrolysis facilities, solid waste disposal facilities, and incinerators” — within two miles of the Everglades Protection Area, the Everglades Construction Project, or any water storage or conveyance structures” related to certain water management projects.
This bill, which preempts local regulations on this matter, giving the state exclusive authority to manage such permitting, would also take effect July 1.
Like Commissioner Marlien Bastien said at last week’s meeting: “This all sounds like deja vu again.”
The post As Miami-Dade stalls again on incinerator, state legislators take it on appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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Newly-elected Miami-Dade Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez has wasted no time in making his mark in an office that has gotten very little attention in the past.
Fernandez, who has gone to multiple municipalities to explore opening satellite offices, will preside over the ribbon-cutting Monday of the new Driver License Service Point at the tax collector’s department in Downtown Miami, 200 NW Second Ave.
The goal, Fernandez has said, is to streamline services and cut down on long lines in a process that seems to have fallen apart in Miami-Dade — the obtaining or renewing of a driver’s license. The office will serve as a one-stop shop for residents who will now be able to renew their license, tag and pay their property taxes at the same location.
The tax collector’s office will dedicate three service windows exclusively for driver license and motor vehicle transactions, with the capacity to serve at least 90 people a day, according to a department statement. Though that seems like just the morning at Coral Reef. Both walk-ins and appointments will be accepted. Customers will be able to conduct most driver license transactions, with the exception of driving tests.
Read related: Meet our new Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia and her storied past
Meanwhile, Fernandez has secured an agreement with the Florida Highway Patrol to have patrol units at Driver License Offices across the county to maintain order and intervene when people disrupt services or use violence or intimidation. Apparently, there have been some incidents in the past.
“My goal is to ensure that every individual who walks through our doors is treated with respect and that our staff works in a safe, supportive environment,” Fernandez said.
“For the first time in 67 years, the residents of Miami-Dade County were able to elect their tax collector, and I am honored they elected me. I am here to put the needs of people first,” reads a statement from Fernandez, who seems in his interviews to have taken an English immersion class because he is not reaching for words as much as he was during the campaign.
Fernandez won last November with 56% over former State Rep. and Miami Beach Commissioner David Richardson.
Earlier this month, Fernandez was in Tallahassee for Florida Tax Collectors Association’s annual Legislative Day, where tax collectors from across the state met with state lawmakers and staff to advocate for policies that prioritize citizen convenience, safety, and access to state services.
“As we prepare for the 2025 Legislative Session in March, it’s crucial that we continue to collaborate with Florida’s legislators and partners to implement solutions that meet the ever-changing needs of our communities,” Fernandez said in a statement. In Tallahassee, he met Senators Joe Gruters, Ana Maria Rodriguez and Bryan Avila, and State Representative Omar Blanco.
On a recent Monday, he visited the driver’s license office at Mall of the Americas, one of the most crowded, and walked among the people in line, hearing first hand about their frustrations over long wait times and difficulty securing appointments online.
 
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Kirk Menendez already has important endorsements
Three is the magic number in Coral Gables as that is how many candidates officially qualified last week in each of the three elections in the city’s April 8 election.
Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson will face Felix Pardo and Laureano Cancio while three other candidates vie for the open seat left by Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who is running for mayor. They are Richard Lara, the hand-picked candidate by Mayor Vince Lago, Claudia Miro, a transportation lobbyist who lost a commission race in 2021, and attorney Thomas “Tom” Wells, an active speaker at commission meetings who sits on the charter review board.
Read related: Two more candidates say they will run for Coral Gables commission in April
But everybody is going to be looking at and taking about the mayor’s race between Lago and Menendez. A third candidate, Michael Abbott, doesn’t really count.
Speaking of count, turnout is going to be key in this race. There are just over 37,200 registered voters in Coral Gables, according to the city clerk. As of last week, there were 3,135 requests for absentee or vote-by-mail ballots, according to Miami-Dade Elections spokesperson Roberto Rodriguez.
That’s a huge increase from the 204 VBM requests on file as of Jan. 16. But not a huge surprise, Rodriguez said.
“Our office has been sending text messages and emails to voters who had a vote-by-mail request on file and provided contact information,” Rodriguez told Political Cortadito, adding that election specific messages would be sent to voters who have upcoming elections.

The deadline to request an absentee ballot for the April 8 election is March 27. The deadline to register to vote in the municipal election is March 10.
Most of the voters who participated in the 2023 election cast their ballots by mail. Of the 6,700 or 6,800 who voted in the two commission races, more than 4,100 were absentee. Turnout could have been low due to the lack of a mayoral race — Lago had no opponent two years ago — but the commission races were both high profile because the mayor was behind two candidates who ultimately lost.
That’s what makes this election so interesting. Lago is not only trying to win. He is trying to get his majority back. He has to not only win his own seat back, which is not a gimme, but also keep Anderson, which is the most certain of the three races, and get Lara into the open seat. It’s definitely a slate, and one can tell by the yard signs along San Amaro Drive, which is the mayor’s neighborhood.
Mayor Lago showed the biggest haul in his last campaign finance report with $$108,750 collected in just the first two weeks of February, almost exclusively in maximum $1,000 checks, according to the campaign documents filed with the city clerk. That’s the largest amount in a single report since the $166K collected last year in the second quarter — which is over three months not two weeks. He also has another $150,000 left sitting in his political action committee, which has its last report through Dec. 31 and we won’t know how much more it has raised until after the election. But Ladra suspects it will be a lot.
In comparison, Menendez has raised less than $18,000.
Read related: Kirk Menendez runs for Coral Gables mayor against city bully Vince Lago
But the last election showed that money does not equal votes in The City Beautiful when commissioners Melissa Castro and Ariel Fernandez beat better-funded candidates who had the mayor’s backing. It may not have officially happened, but Menendez will most certainly have their support. He already has the firefighters’ support and probably will get the police union.

Gables Neighbors United, which some argue helped elect Castro and Fernandez, were quick to come out with their endorsements over the weekend: Menendez and Pardo.
They are holding back, apparently, on the open seat race. But Ladra will bet real money it ain’t Lara.
“Make no mistake about it: Mayor Vince Lago and Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson are tied at the hip,” reads an email from the homeowners group. “It’s a quid-pro-quo relationship. Lago: ‘You stand by me and vote the way I want you to vote and I’ll introduce you to the people who can make you ‘whole’ and keep you in power. Let’s start with naming you vice mayor!’ ”
Ouch.
“Rhonda: ‘You got it BOSS!’
“While the wording may not be exact, the meaning is. Both are power and money hungry and feeding from the hands of developers and special interests,” the email says.
Which is how the election is going to framed for voters, as usual: Development interests versus resident interests.
But that’s not all. There’s a new issue this year.
“Civility and Stabiliity is his motto,” says the email about Menendez. “We could use a lot of both.
“Divisive behavior and even threats of harm to colleagues and disrepect for residents by Lago have been the tipping points for us, well beyond the favoritism to developers and special interests, to seek a candidate who can once again lead with a calm hand and move the city forward.
“For the past almost-four years, we have witnessed Commissioner Menendez‘ thoughtful approach to oftentimes difficult issues and watched him render solutions that benefit residents and the good of the city,” the email states. “Kirk is a peacemaker and a leader and for these reasons, we join the Coral Gables Fire union in backing Kirk Menendez for Mayor.”
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Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres.
There’s not a Cuban American growing up in Greater Miami that didn’t hear those words from their parents or grandparents when these didn’t approve of your friends. Or their friends. Or your friends’ parents. It translates to, “tell me who you associate with and I will tell you who you are.”
But apparently Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago did not heed his elders. Because Lago, who keeps surrounding himself with shady characters, is moving next week to appoint another one of his iffy friends to the code enforcement board.
Lago wants to put none other than Benjamin “Ben” Alvarez — who is known as “the Tony Soprano of lawyers” by his own colleagues — on the board to replace someone who apparently hasn’t lived in the city for some time now and was removed.
This is the same Benjamin Alvarez who has been disciplined at least three times by the Florida Bar, including and admonishment in 2017 for threatening his wife — who he was in the middle of a divorce with — and grabbing her phone in a physical altercation. There is a police report that indicates that Alvarez’s gun was taken after his wife expressed fear.
Additionally, a Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust investigation found a serious appearance of impropriety after his firm received city work from his then girlfriend, Veronica Diaz, who was an assistant city attorney in Miami. And, in 2012, a judge ruled against his firm in a fraud case involving forged documents requiring more than $82,000 in restitution.
Read related: More on Ultra bad judicial candidate Veronica Diaz
Alvarez was also suspended for 30 days after he disparaged opposing counsel and publicly reprimanded for misrepresenting, under oath, obstruction of evidence, and for financial mismanagement of a matter involving a client, who just happens to be Manny Chamizo, another shady Lago pal who was charged with criminal stalking and who the mayor appointed to a board.
Doesn’t Lago know any decent people? Among his friends and allies, L’Ego counts former Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who was arrested on public corruption charges in 2023 that were dropped last year, and lobbyist Bill Riley, who was arrested alongside ADLP and was in on the real estate deal Lago got in the $640,000 commission from the sale of a Ponce de Leon Boulevard building to Location Ventures, the development firm owned by Rishi Kapoor that was investigated for its $10,000 monthly payments to Miami Mayor Francis Suarez for “consulting. Oh, and he also rented a retail space to Kapoor.
This Ben Alvarez track record has already raised eyebrows in the community and Commissioner Melissa Castro has officially asked the mayor to reconsider and appoint somebody else. This may be unprecedented in Gables commission history.
“As public servants, we have the responsibility to make decisions that protect the integrity of our city and uphold the trust placed in us by our residents,” Castro wrote in a memo to her colleagues.

“This is not a position I take lightly, nor is it one I raise with any sense of personal malintent toward Mr. Alvarez. I have no relationship with him and, to my knowledge, have never met or spoken with him,” Castro wrote. “My sole responsibility is to advocate for the well-being of our residents and ensure that those serving in positions of public trust meet the highest ethical and professional standards.
“The Code Enforcement Board plays a critical role in upholding our city’s quality of life. Its members must be fair, impartial, and above all, committed to enforcing our city’s laws with integrity and transparency. Given the significance of this responsibility, we must ensure that appointees to this board not only meet the technical qualifications but also embody the values and ethical standards that Coral Gables represents.”
Castro sent the memo because she did not want to discuss this publicly at a meeting.
“I take no pleasure in bringing forward information that could cause embarrassment to Mr. Alvarez. He is a resident of Coral Gables, and like all members of our community, he deserves to be treated with respect,” she wrote. “That is why I am addressing this privately among my colleagues first, rather than allowing it to become a public matter unnecessarily.”
Oops. Too late.
“However, I cannot, in good conscience, remain silent when I believe an appointment poses a risk to the integrity of our governance,” Castro said in her memo. “I believe in due process and fairness, and I strongly believe that every individual is innocent until proven guilty.
“Unfortunately, in Mr. Alvarez’s case, the legal system has already determined guilt on multiple occasions.”
Read related: Hypocrite Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago votes against appointment
Ladra doesn’t think Lago cares about the Alvarez baggage and history. It is not his first controversial appointment. In 2023, the mayor appointed his buddy Manny Chamizo, who is facing felony stalking charges, to the water advisory board. Chamizo’s criminal trial is scheduled for March 24.
Lago uses board appointments to try to get his agenda through. He appointed Nicolas “Nick” Cabrera, the self-appointed Prince of Coral Gables and son of former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera, to the city’s board of adjustments so he could get a setback variance for a gazebo at his house approved. It didn’t work. Lago was denied his pretty little barbecue gazebo.
Last year, he had Planning and Zoning Board member Claudia Miro removed from her position by Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson after Miro failed to vote to put former Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers on the board, as Lago obviously wanted. He sent her a series of butt hurt text messages after her vote.
Miro is now running for commissioner in the open seat vacated by Kirk Menendez in his run for mayor against Lago.
Menendez, meanwhile, has not appointed any would-be criminals to city boards.
Police Report Ben Alvarez by Political Cortadito on Scribd

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