Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo can move back into his fancy, posh Coconut Grove house if the city gives final approval to the redistricting maps as they have been drawn, which divides the Grove into three separate districts.
The Morris Lane house Carollo reportedly moved out of just to run for office in 2017 has been drawn into his District 3 — at the end of a painful little dingleberry carve-out — by consultants guiding the redistricting process the city must go through every 10 years to accommodate population growth.
The maps were approved as is at a special commission meeting Friday. Commissioners are having community meetings to get input (re: pretend to include the community) before the final approval, scheduled for March 11.
Carollo, who just won re-election in November, is term limited in 2025 and would have to live in the district to stay in that seat through then. But he already found a way around the residency requirement, which he has no respect for, right? More importantly, las malas lenguas say he’s eyeing the mayor’s race next year, which is citywide. So it don’t matter where he lives.
Read related: Miami redistricting cuts Coconut Grove into three rather than add districts
Except in court, where Carollo is facing multiple lawsuits, including a federal lawsuit against him for violating the free speech of Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla, who own the properties that include Ball and Chain, a Calle Ocho restaurant the commissioner targeted for political retaliation simply because they hosted an event for his opponent in 2017.
That lawsuit seeks at least $10 million in damages and a federal appeals court recently upheld the denial of Carollo’s motion to dismiss. Turns out he does not get “qualified immunity” as a city official because it was not part of his job to retaliate against the bar for its political speech.
The 6-bedroom, 5-bathroom, 5,000-square-foot Carollo house tucked between Tigertail Avenue and South Bayshore Drive is assessed at $1.4 million but has a market value of about $2.2 million, according to the Miami-Dade property appraiser.
Florida law prevents victorious plaintiffs from seizing any real property that is homesteaded. In other words, they can’t take the house he lives in, which would make any judgement difficult to enforce.
Carollo hasn’t reportedly lived in his Morris Lane house since, we’re expected to believe, a whole year before he ran for office in District 3. Everyone knows he “moved” on paper on purpose because he couldn’t have been elected in District 2.
Read related: Joe Carollo sued for violating free speech of Little Havana businesses
Alfie Leon, who lost the 2017 runoff by 251 votes, sued to challenge Carollo’s residency, which at the time was, officially, a smallish apartment in Brickell Station Lofts where he paid less than $50 a month in electricity.
Leon lost anyway.
Carollo and his wife Marjorie have since moved to a cute, little historic house in Little Havana, a couple of blocks from Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla‘s old family home, where he reportedly doesn’t live either.
Curiously, Carollo moved there in April of 2018, just as the home was bought via a quick deed. The owner is a corporate entity that is hidden behind another corporate entity and so on and so on. We don’t know how much rent he pays — if he pays rent at all — and to who. Perhaps Jorge Mas and David Beckham, who want Carollo to approve the upcoming Miami Freedom Park development, loaned him the house. Was it someone who wants the marina bid? Or another interested party? It should have to be disclosed who he’s renting from and what he’s paying.
Carollo hasn’t rented his own fancy home while he’s lived in District 3. There is no rent income listed on his financial disclosure form from last year. The commissioner also practically emptied the house last Thursday, dumping furniture and mattresses on the cul-de-sac’s circle just before Friday’s trash pick-up. Like he’s doing renovations or redesigning the place.
Maybe a precursor to moving back in? He must be confident that those redistricting maps are going to be approved as is.
Well, he’s got millions riding on it.
Miami’s redrawn maps could save Joe Carollo’s house from lawsuit grasp added by Ladra on
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