Concerns about Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s reorganization and expansion plans for 
Vizcaya Museum have been mounting and will have to be publicly vetted at a commission workshop to be set in the near future.
Gimenez, in one of his famous last minute Friday memos, requested a workshop “in light of the public comments and media attention generated” by his proposal.
Gee? Ya think? Those pesky public comments and that meddlesome media! Que se han creido! Ladra is quite sure the mayor would prefer to have everything completely finished and done before anybody got a whiff of it. Now he has to have a stupid workshop! What a pain!
Perhaps a workshop should have been scheduled last summer after you first talked about the historic landmark’s expansion plans.
On Wednesday, Gimenez was absent from Sunshine (read: noticed) meeting between Monestime and Commissioners Javier Souto, Xavier Suarez and School Board Member Raquel Regalado, even though he sent six or seven of his emissaries, including Senior Advisor Michael Spring. Vizcaya Executive Director Joel Hoffman was also there.
Souto called for the meeting out of concerns that this plan — which would turn the operations, including procurement, for the historic site and the Museum of Science property across the street over to a trust of appointed members — has, basically, come out of nowhere. It did not go through the county’s public committee process.
Read related story: Gimenez Vizcaya proposal to take $48 million out of the public eye
Suarez has already come out with an editorial, co-written with Regalado, asking to slow the plan down and
consider other alternatives for the property. It was published first in El Nuevo Herald and then in the Miami Herald. While the two may have to face one another on the ballot in 2016 — if X decides to get off the pot — they have joined forces on this Vizcaya issue because it is in his commission district and her school district (more on that later).
“We believe there is a better alternative that honors the history of both sites and, in the shadow of the cranes of our ever-expanding urban core, enhances Miami-Dade’s residents’ access to free public space,” the two wrote, suggesting more public input and putting out a request for applications — which opens it up to anybody under government oversight — that would incorporate the planetarium and create at least some public space.
“That is why today we jointly hope that the mayor and the County Commission will consider the separate and distinct characteristics of these two properties. Let’s do the right thing for both of these gems.”
Commissioner Rebeca Sosa has also said that she needs more information and public input.
Among the principal concerns is the timing. The administration wants to turn the reigns over to a non-profit board by October. People are less engaged in government stuff during the summer and Ladra is certain that the mayor knows this.
Regalado said she will have difficulty accessing her community of parents, teachers and students who might want to chime in on how the space gets used and what gets done to the Planetarium that means so much to so many of us.
So why October? Why the hurry now? It’s not like this is something that has suddenly come up.
The mayor has known about this plan since at least May of last year, when he met with Hoffman and Spring and others to discuss the expansion and turnover, according to records. A July report from Hoffman to trust members relates the meeting at which Vizcayans president J.C. Flores and trustee members Ray McGhee, Shawn Khosravi, Carlton Cole, Laura Munilla, the mayor’s longtime aide Inson Kim (recently promoted to CIAO director), his then Chief of Staff Lisa Martinez and a consultant named Diana Gonzalez.
“Mayor Gimenez expressed his continued support for the plan,” Hoffman writes in the report.
Would have been nice had he expressed it to someone else — like all of us.
Last month, after the mayor made his proposal public, Hoffman wrote to board members to provide the
m an update. He enclosed a copy of Mayor Gimenez’s memo to Monestime and the commission on Vizcaya’s reorganization.
“This document summarizes what we have long been discussing, but it is now officially circulating among the board of county commissioners,” Hoffman wrote in the May 13 email. It also said that while the process still had to be approved by the commission as a whole, the board was looking into hiring a consultant to discuss with benefits providers the “institutional compensation” that would be paid under a non-profit structure.
Ladra is having flashbacks to the Crandon Park golf course Donald Trump giveaway. Again the public is just learning about something the mayor has been discussing behind closed doors for more than a year.
Read related story: Carlos Gimenez’s next mancrush giveaway to Donald Trump
The question, again, is “Who else knew what when?” And Ladra might now add why?
Why couldn’t this be part of a more public discussion since at least last summer after the mayor first talked about the plans? Why wasn’t Suarez or anyone from his office brought in? Why wasn’t this passed on to the appropriate committees?
Why? Maybe because then the few people who knew about it couldn’t nail down everything for their friends and family plan?
It smells like another cooked deal done in secret so that some special interest(s) gets leverage on the public funds, doesn’t it?
Gimenez said in his memo that he wants the workshop to help clear up 
misinformation about the plan. He says it is not a giveaway — even though certain government processes would be skipped if the operations were turned over to a non-profit board. He says it is like the Arsht Center and the Perez Art Museum Miami, but I think those facilities were built out before the boards were created to take care of it.
Among the things the commission should consider at a workshop is whether or not the future of the museum of science land — already, by the way, dubbed the “village” property (hints of development to come?) — should be determined and bid publicly by them, our elected officials, before a board of non-electeds is created to take care of it.
And Ladra can’t help but wonder if the non-profit organization would still be an interest if that land grab weren’t part of the equation.
Something else to bring up at the workshop,perhaps.
Concerns force workshop on mayor’s Vizcaya ‘privatization’ added by Ladra on
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