Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Mr. Giveaway” Gimenez has apparently never met a billionaire he didn’t like — or didn’t 
want to give public money and assets to.
The latest mayoral mancrush in his stream of bromances with billionaires is with Donald Trump. Hope Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and soccer star David Beckham aren’t too jealous.
But this is not a Valentine’s Day week fling. Gimenez has reportedly been in the know for more than a year about a plan that would hand over Crandon Golf on Key Biscayne, a public park and golf course, for Trump to redevelop and operate at a predicted significant turnaround profit for the next 99 years.
It’s bad enough that this is yet another example of the county giving away public dollars or land to a billionaire who stands to benefit far more than the residents the mayor wants to pretend he puts first. It’s bad enough that this is yet another attempt to continue to privatize our parks — parks we have paid and continue to pay for through our tax dollars. It’s bad enough that this smells of yet another unsolicited bid hammered out in a backroom deal.
It’s bad enough that this is yet another perfect example of what is wrong with Miami-Dade government today and the Gimenez agenda.
But there’s more. This is also another example of what Ladra likes to call the mayor’s friends and family plan. Mayoral son Carlos “CJ” Gimenez, an attorney that works as a lobbyist and government consultant at Balsera Communications, represents Trump and Trump International. Not at
the county level, of coooooourse. At the city of Doral mostly.
Junior, so called because he is the spitting image of his dad, has been working for Trump since early 2013, he said, which is likely before any of this was planted. He did admit to Ladra that he did some research for Trump on the master plan and Article 7 of the charter governing public spaces and the process for submitting unsolicited bids to the county. From his computer. He didn’t talk to anybody about it. Not even his dad, he said.
He didn’t want to talk on the record about the merits of the deal, but did defend such agreements in “general terms” relating to any municipality, and he characterized the proposal as a P3, or private public partnership project, which is all the rage right now.
“What we’re trying to find is solutions to everyday problems and this is one possible way,” CJ Gimenez said, referring to P3s that help governments redevelop and maximize underutilized assets and infrastructure at a savings or even, in some cases, creating an income stream.
Advocates of the Trump proposal, which was submitted in July even though we are only getting around to hearing about it now, say that the deal would provide the county with $400,000 a year in funds — $100,000 “rent” and $300,000 in saved maintenance fees because that’s what it is costing us now for a bunch of 
rich guys to play golf by the Bay — as well as pour $10-$15 million in private funds into a golf course that could become the next Pebble Beach. They say that the asset is underutilized and that residents would be protected from paying the higher fees that out-of-staters would be charged.
And they say that this conversation could open the process to a competitive bidding war — to see if someone can do it better than Trump — and that the commission at the end of the day will make the final choice or could reject all ideas and do nothing.
But we’ve all seen this kind of thing before. Competitive bidding is waived. The perception is that it’s happens more often when a firm does the legwork for an unsolicited bid. They get the inside track.
Now we are talking about Donald Trump here, not un Pepe Cualquiera. The guy is sorta known for his shrewd business acumen. I’m sure he’s
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