Representatives of homeowners in Downtown Miami, Brickell and Edgewater joined forces last week to respectfully ask the Miami Downtown Development Authority — an agency that focuses on promoting and strengthening the “economic health” of Downtown Miami — not to give $100,000 to the UFC for events at the Kaseya Center, formerly the American Airlines Arena.
The UFC has a reported net worth of $12 billion, according to Forbes, and do not need, nor should they be getting, any taxpayer handout, these leaders said.
And really, what is $100K when you have $12 billion?
“This is beyond wasteful; it’s offensive,” said a joint statement from James Torres, presidents of the Downtown Neighbors Alliance, Ernesto Cuesta, president of the Brickell Homeowners’ Association, and Rick Madan, president of the Biscayne Neighborhoods Association, posted days before the meeting took place Friday.
But they were ignored.
In a post on social media, the DDA said that the resolution passed by the board of directors will “keep UFC 314’s Fight Week in Downtown Miami.” The events in April reportedly benefit local charities, offer free “family friendly” activities and deliver a big economic impact to local businesses.
Read related: Miami DDA Director resigns amid political power shift and chaos
Commissioner Manolo Reyes, who chairs the DDA, did not respond to calls from Political Cortadito, as usual. But a DDA spokesperson — and the agency has one of Florida’s top PR and crisis management teams on retainer — told Ladra this week that the UFC event in 2023 sold out at 19,000 fans and produced more than $47 million in economic impact for Miami-Dade. They apparently also were going to go somewhere else this year without the, er, um, incentive. Las Vegas was courting them, hard. But it’s difficult to imagine that another city wouldn’t pay $100K for a $47M return.
The $100,000 is to bring the UFC “fan village” so that people will have reason to hang out downtown — and spend their money — before and after the fights.
The DDA is governed by a 15-member board of directors — three public appointees and 12 downtown property owners, business owners, and/or residents. The board sets policy direction, which is then implemented by a multi-disciplinary team under the oversight of an executive director. “As an autonomous agency of the city, the Miami DDA advocates, facilitates, plans, and executes business development, planning, capital improvements, and marketing and communication strategies,” states the city website.

It has a budget of about $13.5 million through a special tax levy on properties within its district boundaries in downtown, Brickell and Edgewater. But those community leaders question the benefit they get in return.
“Instead of prioritizing real improvements, the DDA continues to waste taxpayer money on frivolous spending while ignoring the pressing needs of our community,” their statement last week read, recommending a dissolution of the agency. “The solution is simple: Downtown and Brickell residents should not be taxed at all for a redundant agency that prioritizes waste over the well-being of the people who actually live here.”
On Tuesday, Torres doubled down with an op-ed calling for the “outdated” agency’s dissolution and detailing some of the expenses reported most recently. That includes $3.85 million spent annually on salaries and benefits and another $3.35 million on “special initiatives,” with no further details about what those are. Close to $2 million are spent on sponsorships, like the UFC’s $100K.
Read related: Residents win rollback on ordinance for huge LED signs in Downtown Miami
The DDA also gave at least $80,000 in grants to businesses suffering the construction chaos on Flagler Street. Each business received a grant valued up to $5,000, which doesn’t seem like a lot. According to the agency, it has distributed $622,000 in grants to downtown businesses since 2021.
The $100K would be better spent on public safety, the neighborhood leaders said in their joint statement. They said aggravated assaults are up by a whopping 225% in Downtown Miami, while robberies have doubled, thefts have gone up by 61% and vehicle break-ins are up by 50%.
And that wasn’t completely ignored. The DDA on Friday also allocated $550,000 for additional police services in the Central Business District and Brickell areas. According to their social media statement, the board plans to expand additional police patrol services to Edgewater and has committed $1.2 million to this effort.
“But crime isn’t the only crisis downtown and residents are dealing with,” the joint statement said. “Rampant homelessness, overflowing garbage, and worsening cleanliness issues are degrading our quality of life while the DDA ignores these urgent problems. Instead of addressing the real needs of our community, they continue wasting money on corporate sponsorships, lavish offices, and bloated staff expenses,” the statement reads.
“Downtown Miami has no shortage of venues or major events—Formula One, Ultra Music Festival, marathons, concerts, and conventions flood our streets every year. Downtown sells itself—we don’t need to bribe global corporations to come here. That money should go to crime prevention, beautification, and public safety—not corporate welfare.”
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The first forum for Coral Gables candidates, presented by the PTAs of eight city schools, was centered on education and the issues at the schools in the City Beautiful, like safety, teachers’ wages, affordable housing for teachers, student anxiety, book banning, increasing the number of families who send their kids to public schools and food waste in cafeterias. I kid you not.
Questions were asked by students at local schools and then the PTA members chose some submitted by participants in the Q&A section of the Zoom forum. Voters who missed it can view a recording here. The password is ?E^XpP^9, which is unnecessarily impossible to remember.
Not that it’s really worth the two hours. There were no real zingers or surprises. And it wasn’t terribly enlightening.
Candidates were questioned in three groups for the three different races, with the first session focused on the mayoral hopefuls — incumbent Mayor Vince Lago, Commissioner Kirk Menendez and Michael Abbott, an accountant with a beef against Coral Gables Police, who stands no chance of winning but could force a runoff.

All of the candidates think Coral Gables has some of the best schools. Abbott sounded like a robot reading from a boring script, and kept talking about his “technology hub” and establishing “Silicon South,” which is apparently a part of his platform. Lago and Menendez each touted their respective scholarship fundraising and different programs they’ve created.
Lago said he was the first elected in Miami-Dade to put police officers at schools after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. Menendez spearheaded spending $50,000 in the city budget for a conceptual design of a public park working with the Miami-Dade County School Board and mentioned the compact between the city of Miami Beach and the school board as something the Gables could explore.
Read related: Candidates are set for Coral Gables election April 8 as voters request ABs
The best part was when the candidates were basically asked to defend their decision to send their kids to private schools, not in so many words, but that was the point. Like, gotcha. Abbott said he has no kids but Lago and Menendez, who were obviously the targets of this question, said they made the decision to send their kids to faith-based schools because they are Catholic.
Lago — who suddenly has a lisp (maybe he had come from the dentist’s office?) — wanted to be someplace else.
There were no big surprises in the two commission forums, either. But some interesting takeaways:
Both Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson and Felix Pardo, a longtime city activist and architect, are products of the public school system. Pardo’s wife is a teacher and his son is a public school teacher in Chicago’s South Side. Both his grandchildren attend Chicago public schools. Oh, and Pardo has was recently celebrated for perfect attendance at The Rotary Club.

Anderson, as usual, sounded like she was mansplaining everything to people who just aren’t as smart as her. She also said she started bike lanes in Coral Gables 18 years ago.
Attorney Laureano Cancio, who announced his run before Pardo jumped in, is a Pedro Pan kid, having come from Cuba on the Catholic Church’s Peter Pan flights as an unaccompanied minor. He said his number one issue is education and he has said in the past that the city could establish its own education system or compact with the Miami-Dade County Public School Board to keep Gables students, who now go to schools outside the city, at hometown schools. That makes a community, he said.
At 74, he also runs about three miles almost every day.
The best question was from the participants on the Zoom call and it was about density. Pardo, who is on the planning and zoning board and was also one it 20 years ago as the chair, is absolutely making overdevelopment an issue in his race, and rightly so. Anderson was elected in part because she was supposed to be a firewall against the developers’ interest and, many say, it hasn’t turned out that way.
“I have been the sole voice for responsible development in the city,” Pardo said on the Zoom call. “What has gone on is absolutely atrocious. This city 100 years ago was never designed for the incredibly large projects that are just destroying the fabric of our city.”
Read related: Fundraising for Coral Gables election slows, incumbents count on max gifts
It’s not just traffic that’s affected every time a zoning or land use variance gets approved, he said. Water and sewer, parks schools, freighters, police are all “overburdened,” Pardo explained. “We are pinning ourselves into a corner.”
In the third race, voters have to choose between attorney Richard Lara, Lago’s handpicked pocket-vote candidate, micro transit lobbyist Claudia Miro, who talked about lobbying in Tallahassee for more school guards, and attorney and activist Thomas “Tom” Wells, all of whom are public school products.
Lara seemed to pander and use a bunch of buzzwords. Miro and Wells both seemed more prepared, knowledgable and specific.

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Just in time for the 47-acre Upland Park transit-oriented, mixed use project that is expected to transform the Dolphin Park-and-Ride terminal into a major multimodal transit hub, the city of Doral is looking to update its transit plan, which could also include changes and/or additions to its trolley service.
Residents can hear about the transit plan goals and proposed improvements to the trolley service at a workshop from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday on the first floor of City Hall, 8401 NW 53rd Terrace. They can also learn about the county’s Better Bus Network — which many say is not necessarily better (more on that later) — and provide feedback on the city’s trolley service.
Traffic is already bad in Doral, and it is expected to get worse.
Developer Terra broke ground last month on the first phase of Upland Park, which will include more than 2,000 mid-rise and garden-style apartments, 282,000 square feet of retail and 414,000 square feet of commercial space.
Upland Park is designed to increase public transit ridership “while anchoring the new East-West Corridor of the county’s Smart public transportation plan,” according to a press release from the developer, who billed it as “the largest public-private transit-oriented development” in the history of Miami-Dade County.
“Through public-private partnerships, we are accelerating smart solutions by adding new transit-oriented communities along major transit corridors,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in a statement.
“These developments provide public transportation connections to employment centers, schools, arts and culture, and healthcare, making it easier for residents to access essential services and opportunities. Upland Park is a prime example of how we are continuing to build a better community for all and a future-ready Miami-Dade County,” Levine Cava said. “Located alongside the 836 Expressway, which features a dedicated bus lane, this development will provide residents with seamless and efficient transit options, further integrating smart mobility solutions into our growing region.”
Read related: Post election shake up in Doral as new mayor ushers in new administration
Said District 12 Commissioner Juan Carlos “JC” Bermudez, the former mayor of Doral: “Upland Park is a significant step forward in ensuring that residents of West Dade, have greater access to transit, jobs, and essential services.”
In 2016, the then-city council approved two inter-local agreements between Doral and the Miami-Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) providing up to $90,000 in grant funding to study the expansion of Doral trolley service to Florida International University and the conversion of certain streets into one-way traffic corridors to increase circulation capacity.
The trolley expansion back then was an initiative by current Doral Mayor Christi Fraga, who was vice mayor at time.
If you want to see more Doral coverage in Political Cortadito, let Ladra know. There’s a space to make a comment in your donation to independent watchdog journalism. Thank you for your support.
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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.
For more continuous and consistent coverage of the city of Miami, consider making a donation to Political Cortadito. Thank you for supporting independent, grassroots journalism.
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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.”
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