A real street fight between neighbors erupted earlier this month at an impromptu press conference about the street fight between the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County over the closure of several roads in Silver Bluff.
And it’s all in time for this year’s city elections.
The totally unnecessary press conference was more like a campaign event for Commissioner Joe Carollo, who squeaked into office four years ago on a 251-vote margin and is up for re-election this November in a district where he was almost recalled. And there’s a well-known political being recruited as a challenger (more on that later).
Pro closure residents clapped and chanted his name when he arrived late, like he was waiting for all of them to get there. They brought cute little kids in their school uniforms as props and stood them by Joe as he spoke to the cameras. One father in particular herded them in, like sheep.
Anti-closure residents had already taken advantage of Carollo’s Cuban time and made statements in front of the cameras about the inconvenience and an incident in which paramedics had to park outside the barricade and walk to the home that called 911 with their equipment.
It ended with neighbors shouting at each other as the cameras pulled away. But not before Carollo got a chance to give a longish speech that preached social equity and baited anti-closure residents, calling them outsiders. He tried to cause class division between Coral Gables and Silver Bluff. Silver Bluff, where many homes sell for half a million or more.
“You know where they have street closures? Coral Gables,” he said about the neighboring city, adding that he had driven around and counted at least 32 of them. “The last one was about a year ago when they put them in. They didn’t need permits from the county.”
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He even floated the idea of creating a new county, something he said he discussed with Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez. He wants to call it Miami County. Hernandez told the Miami Herald he didn’t take Crazy Joe seriously.
¡Pero, por supuesto que no!
This is all political posturing for elections. Coral Gables hasn’t had a street closed in more than a decade, maybe two. Gables City Manager Peter Iglesias told Ladra the county has denied a bunch of applications since.
Carollo is lying. Again. Big surprise. He loves being el protagonista and painting himself as the hero, the savior, coming to the rescue of some poor, downtrodden citizens. Ladra wonders if Beba Sardiña Mann, the resident leading this effort, knows she’s poor.
The whole street closure issue is a smokescreen.
Ladra has repeatedly asked for the petition where “a majority” of the homeowners requested this, according to Carollo. But nobody — not the city attorney’s office, not the city clerk, not Carollo’s chief of staff, Jose Suarez, or his new office aide, Alina Garcia, who worked for boletero Esteban Bovo and accused felon Frank Artiles before Carollo — has been able to furnish one.
It’s beginning to look like there is no petition. Or at least not one with more than, oh, 35 signatures.
Meanwhile, this little political stunt is costing the city of Miami taxpayers plenty.
The street fight press conference earlier this month came after standoffs with the county both on the street — when Miami-Dade showed up to remove the barriers, City Manager Art Noriega and police officers were dispatched to stop them — and in court. Police officers have been posted at the closures — you know, because Miami has so many extra cops and patrol cars lying around. And it looks like there will be a protracted legal battle.
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It seemed like Miami won round one in an emergency hearing where a judge ordered the city to remove only the cement barriers, after a county engineer said they were unsafe. The city removed them. But they left the temporary metal barricades (and police cars) because the judge did not rule on final decision. So that’s still going to court.
This is probably going to be litigated through, oh, November or so, taking up much of the city attorney’s office time and attention. Perhaps they will contract outside counsel.
Carollo doesn’t care. Not only because he uses the city attorney’s office as his own personal lawyer’s firm in a number of lawsuits and repressive actions — remember how they did everything they could to stop the recall? — but also because it makes for a good campaign message.
Because this is not a new issue. Some might think this beef started just the other day, when the county commission — led by Commissioner Eileen Higgins — voted to update a countywide “traffic flow manual” for the installment of traffic calming measures. One line in the measure referenced street closures not being a legit form of traffic calming.
And some Silver Bluff residents — okay, one resident. Beba — went wild.
Miami officials had already approved, in January, the closure of the streets. The alleged petition that nobody else has ever seen was collected two years ago. The alleged traffic study was done around the same time. Perhaps earlier. But the county hadn’t signed off and, in fact, denied the request.
Anyway, when the item came up at the March 2 county commission meeting, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez took time out of his busy schedule promoting Bitcoin and hosting his Cafecito webshow (hmmm, who did he copy?) to address the Miami-Dade Commission and ask them to let cities decide what is best for them. He wasn’t given a chance to speak. He gets Elon Musk‘s ear but not the county commission chairman’s.
Las malas lenguas say that Baby X was on his cellphone as he walked out of County Hall, telling Noriega to put the barriers up. Pronto. By 8 p.m. that Tuesday evening, there were some reflective poles and concrete barriers at the four intersections: 14th to 16th avenues and 16th Court along Coral Way and on 23rd Street at 17th Ave.
Miami-Dade County apparently went out twice to remove them. But Miami Police and Noriega came out to stop them. Take us to court, Suarez told Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. So the county did that.
View related: Five Silver Bluff Street Wars videos recorded on the day of the campaign press conference
Now we’re at a standstill. Temporary barricades are up. Neighbors are upset at each other and Carollo is egging them on. At the last city commission meeting, Crazy Joe last asked staff to come back to him with a report about what the city contributes to the county tax base and the value of services it gets in return.
This is more of his empty threat. Miami can’t secede from Miami-Dade. But it sure makes for a good wedge issue that Carollo can campaign on.
Carollo and Suarez, who is also up for re-election, are going to bat for a group of residents led by Mann, who once ran for city commission once unsuccessfully. She, too, was turned away from the county meeting Tuesday when Chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz said the time for public comment was at committee (more on that later).
But there are neighbors who are against the closures. They include Vanessa Hyden and her daughter Emma Hidalgo, who came home from work the night the barriers went up and didn’t know how to get home.
“I was like, ‘Where do I go?’ Because 17th Avenue entrance was blocked, the 16th Court entrance was blocked,” said Hidalgo, 19, a nanny. “I have to go all the way almost to Brickell to get home. There’s only one way in and out.”
Some neighbors have accused the pro-closure homeowners of trying to create another Coral Gate, a gated community with one entrance/exit on 37th Avenue.
Two of the property owners adjacent to the closure on 17th Avenue have retained attorney David Winker, who was able to get the city to move the barriers back so his clients could access their properties.
“These closures make access to their properties very difficult. The only way to access their properties now requires an illegal u-turn,” Winker said. “These closures also present safety issues, as firetrucks and ambulances will have a hard time navigating the restricted routes.”
Winker said a garbage truck got stuck at a circle and garbage went uncollected one day because of the street closures. Ladra got several reports and photos of the Miami Fire Rescue truck that had to park outside the barricades and let the paramedics walk the rest of the way.
Ana Mendoza de Guerra, who lives off 14th and 23rd, is blocked on two sides. “This is a very tranquil neighborhood,” she told Ladra. “We don’t need this here. There is no need.”
She directed her anger toward Sardiñas Mann, who she said never told her about the January meeting or she would have opposed it then.
“She knows that my husband has had heart surgery and is on a Pacemaker and if something happens to him or to me, and I’ve had two strokes already, I want her to tell me how long the rescue is going to take to get to my house to save our lives,” Mendoza de Guerra pleaded in front of the cameras.
“This has never happened in our neighborhood.”
Ladra bets she didn’t sign the petition and wonders how a petition against the closures might do. Mendoza de Guerra has been living there for 52 years. Earlier in the afternoon, she yelled at Sardiñas Mann: “¡Mudate a Cocoplum!”
Even Miami City Attorney Victoria “Vicky” Mendez thinks the county has the last say on the matter — at least she did in an opinion issued to former City Manager Daniel Alfonso in 2017.
“The City of Miami is not precluded from the use of Jersey barriers to temporarily restrict vehicular access to a City street because such barriers are not traffic control devices subject to the County’s exclusive jurisdiction,” she wrote in an email obtained by Political Cortadito.
Wait, isn’t that just what Higgins said?
“The County has exclusive jurisdiction over all traffic control devices in the County, whether in municipalities or unincorporated areas,” Mendez goes on. “The barriers are allowed on a temporary basis pending final closure by the County or an order from the same to remove the barriers.”
Well, doesn’t that make these street closures — which were already ordered to be removed by the county — illegal?
It depends on who you’re asking? To Joe Carollo, these street closures are campaign gold.
Legal Opinion to Daniel J. Alfonso from Victoria Mendez, 2017 by Political Cortadito on Scribd
Silver Bluff street fight is campaign fodder for Miami’s Crazy Joe Carollo added by Ladra on
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