Dear Mr. Jeff Bezos:
You don’t know me. I am not an elected official. But I do order a lot of stuff on Amazon. And I live near your old neighborhood in Cutler Ridge. My daughter graduated from Miami Palmetto High, your alma mater. Go Panthers!
I know you are under a lot of pressure from local electeds and business leaders 
to bring your Amazon HQ2 here, now that you’ve scrapped New York City from the plans. And I understand it is tempting. We have great weather, beaches and culture and a diverse and technically savvy workforce thirsting for opportunities like the ones you will bring. I want Amazon here, too.
But you also have a rare opportunity to do something for your onetime home community by making some requests or setting some conditions on coming.
Read related: Mayor Carlos Gimenez lies about Miami-Dade to get Amazon HQ2
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez is desperate for you to come here. He has been trying to get you here for months, dangling economic incentives in front of you and your peeps. It would be a great, big feather in his cap and he wants to boast about it as part of his legacy.
You have him right where you want him.
Friday afternoon, Gimenez wrote a desperate letter:
Dear Mr. Bezos:
As Mayor of Miami-Dade County, I would like to extend a hand in partnership and encourage you to reconsider Miami as one of the sites for your North American headquarters expansion.
I understand that Amazon has decided not to pursue an additional
headquarters at this time, which is completely understandable. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to reopen the lines of communication because Miami, without a doubt, has the talent, technology and low taxes to serve Amazon’s needs. In short, we are confident that the diversity, dynamic entrepreneurial spirit and openness to partnership that drew Amazon to our community in the first place continue to be worthy of consideration.
As senior executives of your team learned during their visit to our world-class community last year, Miami is committed to a successful, collaborative partnership with Amazon. To that end, I would like to personally invite you and your team back to our community to discuss how Amazon and Miami can continue to grow together. Please reach out to me directly to schedule a time when we can re-engage in this exciting opportunity.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
Ladra definitely wants him to hear from you, Mr. Bezos. But she wants him to hear an earful.
Read related: Carlos Gimenez taps commissioner to block return of 1/2 penny funds
You should tell him how the lack of public transportation options or the mayor’s seriousness in addressing the issue is one of the main reasons why 
Miami didn’t cut it in the first round. You should encourage him to stop stealing the half-penny tax that was supposed to go to the expansion of rail and rapid transit and using it to balance his budget. You should tell him to stop going to such great lengths to keep using those funds, and blocking efforts to unmingle the monies.
Mr. Bezos, you might actually have more pull with our mayor than we, the constituents he likes to ignore. Gimenez actually had the audacity to tell us during his re-election campaign that more rail was coming, when he never had any intention to do that. He had a critic removed from an independent citizen board on transportation issues.
You are in a unique position to stop some of this bullying and really actually make something happen for us.
Don’t do it for me. Do it for your fellow Panthers.
P.S.: Just in case nobody told you, Gimenez was the first mayor to kowtow to President Donald Trump when he went against sanctuary cities. And his lobbyist son worked for him. FYI.
Dear Jeff Bezos: An open letter response to Carlos Gimenez letter added by Ladra on
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