About 100 people — give or take a few dozen political operatives and candidate relatives — showed up Thursday for the fifth and possibly final candidate forum for the South Miami Feb. 11 election. And Ladra wants to thank South Miami Neighbors and the South Miami Elks not only for hosting the event, but also for having croquetas and coffee to keep me awake through the three-
hour ordeal. There was quite a spread with cookies and cheeses and little round sandwiches. Best forum buffet Ladra has seen.
But the Q&A itself was pretty boring. Why? Besides the structure of the forum — too many questions were merged into one and sometimes candidates had 15 seconds to respond — the five mayoral candidates pretty much agreed on most things: Development should stay in the downtown to increase the commercial tax base and revitalize the city’s main commercial zone, taxes should not be increased, services should not be cut, power lines should not be expanded, the community redevelopment agency should be extended, everybody loves the chief of police, the city has great parks and traffic sucks. Everyone wants a pedestrian bridge from the South Miami Metrorail station across to the downtown core and more affordable housing.
Blah, blah, blah.
But, okay, between the lines, there were a few key differences that stood out.
The first one is that Sally Philips, for all her time on the city’s planning and zoning board and the police retirement board, 
doesn’t seem to have a clue about what is going on or how to address South Miami’s needs. While she gets a little kudos for being the only one to mention sea level rise (briefly in her closing) and residents said they wish there had been more on it — she also basically said everything is already “wonderful” — the budget is “wonderful”, the Sunset Place project is going to be “wonderful” — and that she would delegate responsibility to “experts ” who know more than she does.
Good thing, too. Because her idea of traffic calming is speed bumps on residential streets and her plans for affordable housing is to divide bigger lots in two for homes made of containers.
But Ladra thinks she means current Mayor Phillip Stoddard, who technically could have run for another term but decided to step down (more on that later) and run his longtime campaign treasurer, in his place. He’s even been campaigning for her like it was his own race, using his consultant and his PAC to attack the three Hispanic candidates.
Read related: South Miami mayoral race gets ugly with ethnically-tainted hit piece
Even the people who like Stoddard and the direction he’s taken the city in, don’t like the puppeteering heir apparent thing and think it’s so he can keep a hand in the city’s business. He’d have to, however, because Philips would be very hands off.
“I get some pleasure out of solving problems and, because I’m not the greatest mind, I get some pleasure getting 
other people to solve problems,” Philips actually said.
Well, then, she should have looked to the guy to the left of her. And she did. When dark horse Mark Lago finished his closing statements, Philips congratulated him. “That was a beautiful speech. I’m very impressed,” she said.
She wasn’t the only one. Three voters told Ladra they came in supporting someone else (they wouldn’t say who, dammit), but left undecided, thinking Lago deserved more of their attention. “He was the most prepared,” one woman said.
And she was right. Lago — who ran for commission two years ago and learned from it — did his homework and apparently has read the city charter, the budget and the parks master plan, at the very least. “And it does say we need about eight acres more of parks,” he told the audience.
Lago, a financial guy and magistrate on the county’s tax abatement board, 
knew the numbers, and several other candidates who spoke after him would use the same information he just gave — passing off as if they knew it, too. You could tell they didn’t.
“They don’t have the business mentality, the business acumen I have,” Lago said.
When someone in he audience asked if any candidate supported free parking for residents, he was the only one who knew that parking generated $1.2 million for the city, and said he’d be for it if they can find the $1.2 million someplace else. And he told the audience that while the millage or tax rate stayed the same, property values increased 3.5% last year, so the city’s tax revenue did rise. He said the three projects on the horizon — the new and improved Sunset Place 3.0, the Winn-Dixie tower and the City Hall project — would add another $3 million to $3.5 mil to the city’s tax rolls.
But in the next five years, he warned there would be a $2.5 million deficit in the budget. “We do have to be prepared,” Lago said.
Read related: Horace Feliu and 4 more vie for open South Miami’s mayor’s post in Feb race
He was also the only one who seemed to know that the city manager’s contract ends in May. He said the assistant city manager does a great job, but the city should do a wider search. He did think that when the city attorney’s yearly contract is up, he would put that out to bid. “Just to get more bang for the buck.”
Like other candidates, Lago would like to bury the power lines. But he also said that North Bay Village had gotten a grant from FEMA to bury their lines and that South Miami could do the same thing and get FP&L to help by dropping their lawsuit.
And he said that rather than more restaurants to compete with each other, the city should try to attract a micro brewery to the downtown. “They have a 90% success rate in two or three years.”
He wants to see the city have a chief information officer, an Instagram account and a Business Improvement District.
Former Mayor Horace Feliu, a fan of Bougie’s downtown, was also another favorite among the older people who spoke with L
adra. But their support sounded more emotion-based and nostalgic than anything else. He was definitely the most confident charmer on stage, naturally, having been mayor and vice mayor and commissioner before. “I’m no stranger to politics,” he said. He spoke about “spot zoning” aiding the gentrification of the historic black neighborhood in the Northeast part of the city.
“South Miami is at a crossroads,” he said, which resonated with some. “Right now, we need leadership and temperament. I’ve seen some of the commission meetings and it’s embarrassing to see the fighting back and forth.”
Some in the audience giggled. They remember that he didn’t exactly preside over the most collegial commission. “It was worse when he was here,” one voter said. “They are civil now, in comparison.”
Feliu is the only one of the five who said he was steadfastly against the sale of City Hall to a developer who would build a mixed use retail center and rent part of it back to the city for its offices.
“It’s iconic. It’s a beautiful piece of property. And to add more density to that particular area is nuts,” said Feliu, who believes the current mayor has gone overboard with development. “We need to be putting on the brakes to big development and high density.”
Lina Sierra, who brought the biggest entourage of supporters, said more than once that it was “essential” there be a grocery store in the city’s downtown after the Winn-Dixie lease ends in three years and Facundo Bacardi develops that land into, possibly, an 11-story building, which she has no problem with. She thinks the city should hire a grants writer and wants an additional dog park from the one on 78th Street. “We need one in the north part of our city,” she said.
The homegrown charter school executive (she heads Academica’s virtual education department) also intimated that she can best represent the community — 43% is Hispanic and 47% is female — becaus
e she checks both boxes.
She was the only one who made safety and, specifically, property safety a priority in her opening statements. Her own car was broken into, ransacked and had items stolen from it. She sees on the Next Door app that people have reported coming back from vacation to burglarized homes.
A few voters said she hasn’t been involved civically until very recently and should run for commission first. “Not ready for prime time,” said an older guy. “Too green,” said a young woman.
Same goes for Bruce Baldwin, who is a nice enough guy,
but was mostly unmemorable. Nobody who Ladra spoke to even mentioned him. He did not resonate. His best idea: getting federal dollars to put charging stations for electric cars.
If the crowd at the Elks Club is representative of the South Miami electorate, and if the election were tomorrow, Ladra would predict two things: Sally Phillips would come in fourth, only ahead of Baldwin. And Lago might just win. If he keeps knocking on doors and talking to people like he did on Thursday — drop the trust and integrity song, dude, and just show them how much you know — he could very well win the race.
Because it doesn’t take much in South Miami. There are no runoffs. Whoever gets the most votes on Feb. 11 wins. In a five-way race, that literally means that someone could win with as little as 21 percent of the vote. Sierra might check two boxes but veterans like Feliu have the benefit of already having a support base to turn to.
But the election is not today. And a lot can happen between now and Feb. 11.
Dark horse Mark Lago shines at mostly mundane South Miami mayoral forum added by Ladra on
View all posts by Ladra →
