Recall reason #17: Mayor Gimenez flip flops on courthouse tax

It’s not like the forces who want to recall Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez needed another reason to add to their long laundry list of arrogant miscues and misdeeds, disregard for public safety, crony connections and ties to lobbyists and the underbelly of 305 politics.

But they got one anyway: Gimenez flip flopped on Wednesday and said he would support a referendum to raise $393 million in new taxes, not for improved services like more police officers or enhance park and library programs, but to build a new, state-of-the-art Miami-Dade Circuit courthouse to replace the decaying Cielito Lindo built 90 years ago.

All indications on Tuesday evening, heading into his last budget town hall meeting in Miami Gardens, was that the mayor was going to present the language written as directed by the commission at the suggestion of Commissioner Juan “El Zorro” Zapata, but he was looking at other possible streams of revenue to pay for it and did not think that a general obligation bond passed on to the voters was the way to go.

He was expected to say so.

But Wednesday, when Commissioner Dennis Moss asked Gimenez what he would recommend, the mayor advocated for the referendum.

“Let them vote it up or down, because we need a new courthouse,” Gimenez said.

That is a complete turnaround from what he was saying through his spokesman, Michael Hernandez, the night before and one has to wonder what happened? Did he mayor have a nightmare about Cielito Lindo crumbling on top of Chief Justice Bertila Soto and a couple hundred lawyers? Or was it pressure from some of the people who are pushing for it, including lobbyist and BFF Jorge Luis Lopez?

Whatever the reason it is one more example of how Gimenez refuses to lead. Instead of saying that the money can be found elsewhere — because we all know that it can and, eventually, will — he is taking the easy way out and putting it in a referendum so that the people give him the green light to tax them further. That or he saw that he was going to be on the losing side of an 11-2 vote and he is sick of being on the losing side so he shrugged his shoulders and went with Plan B.

Either way, he’s a coward.

Because what he should have done was stand his ground and say that there is money to be found in other sources and that this year — since we won’t have layoffs and other things to worry about thanks to the “five-year sustainable budget” — the priority would be to identify those funds while putting out an RFQ and looking for a location and spending $25 million of the $78 million already banked for this kind of thing, as we learned Wednesday, on the immediate repairs that are so direly needed. That’s what a leader would do.

Is that too much to ask?

But surely that would not have fueled the cottage industry that now could spend up to a million on a “vote yes” campaign and the mini construction boom that follows an approval.

Gimenez likes to say that he’s “the most fiscally conservative” pol you know. Don’t believe it for a second. Because while he keeps ad valorem taxes artificially low, he raises transportation fees and water and sewer fees and permit fees and has now been in office while the voters got whacked with two new general obligation bonds countywide, already, that were really sorta rammed down their throats. This would be a third.

And the 17th reason or so to recall him.

Carlos Gimenez, courthouse, recall

Recall reason #17: Mayor Gimenez flip flops on courthouse tax added by Ladra on September 4, 2014
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