The morale at Coral Gables City Hall and among municipal employees made a 180 degree turn Tuesday after City 
Manager Pat Salerno — who was basically, and finally, caught in a lie — resigned abruptly during a commission meeting.
“A lot of people are very happy,” said one woman who works at City Hall.
But while Salerno broke the news after an impromptu break in the commission meeting — during which he was conspicuously absent — it may not have been a surprise to everyone. There have been rumors since at least this past weekend that Salerno was leaving.
The real surprise here may be that the ouster comes at the hands of Commissioner Vince Lago, a young, starry-eyed, first-time politico — who seems to really strive for more transparency than Salerno was comfortable with — who was elected a year ago today.
Because while the rumor is that Commissioner Frank Quesada was the swing vote against the city manager, The Cuban Kerdyk — which is what I like to call him because he is the Hispanic version of veteran Commissioner William Kerdyk — only seemed to come around after Lago challenged Salerno on his lies. Let’s face it, Salerno never really had Commissioner Pat Keon, who is sorta close to the manager’s nemesis, former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera. After all, he ran her first campaign in the 90s. It’s pretty safe to bet that she was already on the other side of Salerno’s fence. That’s why it took her all of 1.3 seconds to make the motion to accept Salerno’s resignation after he came to the meeting only to announce it. But Ladra has heard from several sources close to City Hall that Quesada told Salerno last week he would not be able to support him further. Perhaps he went as far as to ask for his resignation, as a couple of people have suggested. Ladra could not reach Quesada, but left a message with his assistant at City Hall and on his cellphone.
Either way, Quesada’s about face on the manager is apparently due to the bald faced lie Salerno told commissioners in November and again last month when he gave them a bogus response about traffic accidents along a stretch of palm-lined Ponce de Leon Boulevard.
“He doctored the information. He actually cut and paste information from a document,” Lago told Ladra Wednesday.
Lago was referring to documents from the police department — where there is probably a party going on right about now — that he requested in October after residents and business owners contacted him about what they believed was an increase in car accidents on Ponce. Turns out, the memo he got from the manager in November was missing five pages.
Of course, Lago didn’t know that then. He basically took the manager’s information — which indicated that there had been no major increase in accidents — at face value. But it just didn’t jive with what he kept seeing and hearing. Lago was getting photographs almost weekly of accidents along the stretch of Ponce in question. A car that flipped over. Another that went through a storefront.
So earlier this year, Lago made a second request about the landscaping project on Ponce and whether it had been approved by the county and for a more specific breakdown of accident figures.
“I have nothing against palm trees,” he tells me. “But this is about public safety.”
Two weeks go by. Silence. So he asks again. “Hey, where is that information I asked for?” My words, not his. The answer: “We’re working on it.”
A week later, he gets a one page document. Basically a graph. So he sends an email to the manager and copies all the commissioners (including Quesada) expressing his disappointment and unhappiness with (1) the lack of a timely response to his request and (2) the lack of a real response to his request.
“I saw a lack of transparency. I said I needed to sit down with the person who prepared the report,” Lago told Ladra.
See? Salerno doesn’t like commissioners to speak directly to the department heads or police administration (other than the lackey chief). He is known to be a control freak micro manager who likes to “filter” the information.
When Lago spoke to Maj. Ed Hudak — whom he hunted down after a Departmental Review Committee meeting — he learned that the November report was missing five pages and that the March document was also missing pieces. Big relevant pieces. Like a second graph and the little fact that accidents had increased by 174%.
Oh, and a recommendation that potential problems with the “triangle of vision” caused by the lovely palm trees should be reviewed.
“I answer to the residents and business community here,” Lago said. “The manager has done a great job in terms of finances for the city. But my concern is also the public safety of residents and business owners. And we need all the information to make the right decisions.
“In the private sector, that type of insubordination is unacceptable,” Lago told Ladra.
Still, he wasn’t going to fire Salerno, Lago said. Not yet, anyway. “He made that decision because he did not want to discuss these things on the dais,” said Lago, who had several items on the agenda, however, meant to strip some of Salerno’s power. He wanted to put the very agenda in the hands of the city clerk (duh! where it belongs) and more communication directly with employees.
Maybe “My Way or the High Way” Salerno saw that he was losing his grip of power and would rather quit than be questioned.
But if Lago had made the motion to ask for the manager’s resignation, he might have had the support. Salerno — who survived an ousting last year by a 3-2 vote — was reportedly polling his bosses and learned that he had lost Quesada.
Or might it be that he wants to avoid an investigation into his “doctoring” of official police documents and who knows what else? I mean, if Salerno lied about that, who knows what other bogus or out of context information the manager has provided to the commissioners and the citizens at large?
“That is what I am concerned about,” Lago told Ladra.
We know that he has glossed over what many have said is an increase in crime in the city, which has 21 vacancies in its police patrol. Police sources confirmed to Ladra the claims made in a March 7 email by Enrique Lopez, who said that Salerno had played with the figures to provide phantom statistics. He also said that while the manager’s financial moves saved him “a whopping $41 dollars” in taxes, his home and auto had been burglarized twice, costing hundreds in deductibles. High ranking officers also told Ladra that the main problem is the lack of communication between the city’s leaders and the police department, which was being controlled by Salerno.
Former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera, who lost the mayoral race last year to Mayor Jim “The Cuban Savior” Cason, who was the sole vote against accepting Salerno’s resignation — said last year that the manager was fudging crime statistics to benefit the mayor at the polls and that he also used the city’s electronic newsletter to campaign. The manager said that Cabrera was being political for the sake of the race, but police sources confirm he was right all along.
Cabrera would not gloat about the demise Tuesday of his greatest nemesis.
“The commission obviously had a compelling reason to accept his resignation,” is all he would say, though Ladra could swear she heard it in sing-song.
Like the city employees — especially in the police department — who were singing “Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead” Wednesday morning.
But don’t feel too bad for Salerno, a former Sunrise city manager who came to the city in 2009. He leaves April 18 with five months severance pay and a bright gold parachute after that. Somewhere close to a half a million, I am told.
A parachute, by the way, that was made stronger and bigger just a few months ago. Something like 20 weeks were added to his pension, which taxpayers reportedly pay about 40 percent of (compared to 17% for other employees).
Stay tuned for more on that later.
Gables Manager Pat Salerno felled by lie to commissioner added by Ladra on
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