The takeaway from Wednesday’s Miami-Dade School 
Board meeting is not that members gave their attorney 20 days to present options on taking legal action against the county mayor or the state or whoever it is that is responsible for the backlog at the Value Adjustment Board that has caused annual budget shortfalls in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
It is not that they opted to file litigation on their own, and not join the existing lawsuit filed last month against Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez by United Teachers of Dade, who haven’t seen raises in four years due to those aforementioned shortfalls.
No, the takeaway from that meeting is that, once again, Gimenez was absent from the conversation.
Apparently, the mayor seems to think this VAB issue is not real. He categorized the UTD lawsuit as politically motivated and passes the buck to the Florida Department of Revenue, which sets and approves the budget and the rules. County attorneys already filed a motion to dismiss the UTD 
lawsuit because they say it is aimed at the wrong entity.
In other words, it’s not his job to worry about it.
Read related story: Carlos Gimenez re UTD lawsuit on VAB: ‘Not my job’
But Gimenez doesn’t realize that (1) The issue is very real and serious, as appeals in Miami-Dade far outnumber all the other 66 counties and the process is prolongued through loopholes that keep much-needed tax dollars out of public coffers. Either the VAB is messed up or we have to stop budgeting on falsely inflated figures from the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser’s Office. Either way, it is a real issue that is not going away and needs to be addressed by a fearless leader. Which brings me to (2) that fearless leader is supposed to be him.
Ladra would argue that it is, indeed, the mayor’s job to make the issues at the VAB — which have also cost the county coffers hundreds of millions over the years in pojected taxes — a priority. He says that this is not in his purview. Well, it used to be. As a commissioner, Gimenez was on the adjustment board in 2008 and recommended changes to address these issues. You’re going to tell me it’s in his wheelhouse as a commissioner but it becomes none of his business as strong mayor?
We’ve seen Gimenez do this before. As a commissioner, he railed against the Marlins stadium deal. As a strong mayor, he has championed the public financing of multiple stadiums.
As a commissioner and first-time mayoral candidate, he denounced absentee ballot fraud and vowed to reform the system so that nobody’s vote was stolen. As a strong mayor with allies who benefit from the absentee ballot machinery, it’s not his job nor is it really a problem all of a sudden anymore. As a commissioner, he was critical of the strong mayor form of government and thought that the county should go back to a commission government with professional administrators that answer to them. As a strong mayor, well he wants to keep his job.
And maybe that is the problem. He is so busy trying to keep his job he isn’t doing his job.
While we are losing upwards of $40 million a year, Gimenez would rather blame the annual shortfalls in every annual budget on employees he characterizes as greedy and services he thinks are outdated, like libraries. Rather than try to make up for these gaps with unconvincing arguments about bond referendums for stadium renovations, library services and a shiny new courthouse, he should be focusing on efforts to collect what is owed us. Is he not a strong mayor? Someone needs to lead the way to more regulation and reform within what has become a runaway cottage industry.
Or is he protecting the cottage industry? The attorneys who can file appeals without a property owner’s consent and property owners who get paid 1% interest on payments that are held in the meantime? Why is the county in the banking business?
Read related story: Teachers to sue Carlos Gimenez over lost, delayed tax dollars
These are questions that the mayor ought to answer. Instead, he sends his spokesman, the delightful but miscast Michael Hernandez, to tell the school board members that they were partners on this and that they were going after the wrong guy. 
He was all Kumbaya everybody. He sounded like Rebeca Sosa. And Mike’s a great guy, but he’s there for spin. But it was like bringing a knife to a gunfight. School Board Member Raquel Regalado — a potential 2016 mayoral challenger to his boss — ate him up. Like a snack, not a full meal.
The bottom line is that the mayor proved that this is not a priority, which is the real problem. He blew an opportunity to show us that this is important to him because it is important to teachers and to us. He should have gone to the meeting and said something like, “Hold up. I have the same concerns you do. You’re right that something has to be done. There hasn’t been an appetite for changes in the past, but now that there is a new sense of urgency, a common drumbeat… why don’t we get 
together and go after whoever is really responsible. Give me X many days to come back to you with answers and a plan.”
That would have shown class. That would have shown respect. That would have shown leadership. Instead, Gimenez sends his mouthpiece and provides Regalado with yet another platform on which to beat him over the head. Regalado also became the school board’s appointment to the VAB Wednesday, so you can bet she will carry this torch there. Gimenez has given her the leadership role on this issue. It’s the courthouse tax all over again.
And what for? What caused the mayor to snub the school board and the rest of us?
Hernandez told me that the mayor had pre-arranged meetings with Commissioner Javier Souto — which was either deferred from Tuesday or a carry over, since it was on the calendar for both days — and Archbishop Thomas Wenski. None of those could be rescheduled? And even if they couldn’t have been, the school board would have given our county mayor the courtesy of a time certainty on this item. No doubt about that.
And the mayor knows it.
More likely, he just didn’t want to have to answer to the fact that he has simply failed, again, to show us he is the strong mayor he keeps saying he is.
Talk about a deafening silence.
Mayor Carlos Gimenez again misses opportunity to lead added by Ladra on
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