Mayor Carlos Gimenez turns deaf ear to public comments

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Speaker after speaker at the final Miami-Dade County budget hearing Thursday night begged Mayor Carlos Gimenez and the commission to allocate more funds to address the climate change and sea level rise that threatens to put much of Miami under water.

Some discussed other items — grants for community based organizations, the Underline parkway initiative, a community center in Little Haiti — but they all have one thing in common:

Gimenez couldn’t care less what they have to say.

“The mayor has taken a small step — I’m not sure where he is right now,” said one environmental activist that Gimenez did not hear.

Read related story: Miami-Dade budget 2015 call is for climate change funds

Gimenez can’t be bothered to listen to public comments that are critical of his budget or that talk about priorities that are not his. Especially past 8 p.m.! The next morning is a Friday and he has an early golf game tee time at the Biltmore Hotel. He must get refreshed.

You would think that after the second or third “um, wherever the mayor is,” from speakers, his Communications Director and mouthpiece Michael Hernandez would pull him back to the dais and tell him to stay put. But noooooo. Hernandez told Ladra he was the one who pulled the mayor away on some of those occasions.

“I’ve pulled him to be interviewed,” Hernandez said when asked why the mayor kept leaving. “Other times, he speaks with his directors.”

Well, don’t you think he can do that another time? He can talk to his directors any old time he likes. You can schedule interviews afterwards. So, it doesn’t make the 6 p.m. news. Is that a priority? More important than listening to his constituency? Why take away from the people after people have taken time away from work and from their families to come and address him? Seems like a slap in the face.

Also, he could have learned something from some of the college and high school kids who sounded so much smarter than him.

And to add insult to injury, his staff spent the time tweeting all the budget’s feel-good highlights instead of looking for the absent mayor and shepherding him back on the dais. Body Cameras! Yay! More officers! Dale! Port Business! Woo hoo!

But this is not the first time the mayor is MIA while the public speaks on an important matter. In fact, he does it all the time. He’s done it to librarians. He’s done it to taxi drivers. He’s done it to the Pets’ Trust advocates. But, hey, he has much more important people to listen to. Ladra has caught him several times talking to lobbyists or his campaign contributors out in the audience or just off the dais or outside the chambers.

This shows him for the arrogant social climber that he is. The mayor is basically thinking “How dare these people waste my time with their petty complaints. Don’t they realize that I know better than all of them, than anyone?”

Read related story: Miami-Dade’s Carlos Gimenez saves us — from himself

Of course, he didn’t say that. What he said was that what he allocated was appropriate because it wasn’t a problem he had to address right now.

“It’s not going to be here tomorrow,” he said, about the rising sea level that will impact us to the tune of billions by 2030, by some estimations. He added that he thought the county should look at the issue with partnerships with the University of Miami and Florida International University — which has some of the country’s leading experts on sea level rise and, thus, begs the question… Why is that not already happening? Duh!

Especially since FIU has basically owned the issue for months. Leading environmental researchers who are seen as experts and were recently invited to the White House to advocate for greater coordination and FIU has a partnership with WPBT to air a weekly series on the subject.

Guess the mayor didn’t know that. Probably because he’s not listening.

  Carlos Gimenez, climate change, Miami-Dade budget