It’s Julio’s turn. Again.
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez only has about a year left in his term. That means he’s got to step up the parceling out of projects and contracts for those on his friends and family plan.
On Thursday, his administration is asking the county commission to give a $5 million economic incentive for job creators to the developers of a steel mill in Homestead that include his son Julio Gimenez, the other one.
Son CJ Gimenez has the nifty lobbying gig that seems to have morphed from Donald Trump’s PR guy to a hemispheric guru — a job everybody, including colleagues, say he wouldn’t have if he weren’t the mayor’s son.
Daughter-in-law Barby Rodriguez Gimenez, Julio’s wife, has a no-show public outreach gig at a communications firm that is on contract with the county’s water and sewer department, which does almost no public outreach.
And Prince Julio — a former Munilla Construction Management project supervisor who joined longtime county vendor Leroy Jones to lobby for this steel mill project that he owns 23 percent of — has benefited from his father’s kingdom before. Julio Gimenez worked for Fuccina Construction when the company got the no-bid contract to repair the roof at the Arsht Performing Arts Center.
That was also almost $5 million. Must be Julio’s sweet spot.
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Gimenez has personally recused himself from these negotiations and Deputy Mayor Jack Osterholt — who usually steps in when the king recuses himself, but represents the mayor well — is recommending this, along with the Beacon Council, which is partly funded by the county. Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, one of at least four commissioners running for mayor next year, suggested a ban on doing county business with companies that are owned by or employ family members when this first came up in May — and Julio got that sweet deal on county land — but nobody on the dais backed her up.
Can you imagine how many people would be out of work?
Thursday’s resolution is sponsored by Dennis Moss — who really understands the friends and family thing. His wife, Margaret, has a cushy $99,861-a-year job as chief of the water and sewer department’s “Small Business Initiatives.”
Yeah, I know. It sounds inventado.
The subsidy is actually $4.82 million over ten years. But there’s a separate reso for $540,000 that brings it to over $5 mil (about $400,000 comes from the state).
Read related: Barby Gimenez shows up to no-show job on county dime
And it just happens to be the largest incentive provided ever under the Targeted Jobs Incentive Fund program, according to the Miami Herald.
For Julio. He’s come a long way since the disorderly intoxication and aggravated assault charges that stemmed from that bar brawl in 2009, and the drug-related charges that were dropped against him in 2006.
Julio Gimenez already got that county land — 123 acres near the Homestead Air Force Reserve Base — at a sweet bargain basement price: $16.8 million. If Ladra’s calculator is right, that’s $136,500 per acre. Such a deal!
The proposed development, a $224-million steel micro and rolling mill facility, would be built at about Southwest 127th Avenue and Saint Nazaire (but the folio number on the resolution, 30-7901-000-120, comes back with “no data” on the county’s property search website). Esteel, which was Ecosteel back in May, promises to create 180 new manufacturing full-time equivalent jobs.
Through something called a “multiplier effect” — a magical formula used by government types to inflate expectations and justify economic incentives — this project is expected to generate $7.2 million in county property taxes over a ten-year period, in incremental property tax revenues to the county. According to documents presented to the commission, the Beacon Council projects that the County will realize a positive fiscal impact of $2.2 million.
That’s $9.4 million in total fiscal impact over the 10 years that has basically been cut in half because of the subsidy.
And Julio’s not done here. He and Jones also want, in a separate application, more cheap county land for a halfway house for juvenile offenders.
He might have to wait for his turn to come up again. But there’s only a year left.