The campaign for the re-election of Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava responded quickly and harshly to the 30-second web video ad launched Sunday by Miami Lakes Mayor Manny Cid, who is challenging La Alcaldesa this year, attacking her $2.5 billion bond initiative.
And the gist is that Cid himself has pushed for tax increases.
“It’s time to call fouls on Manny Cid’s deceptive plays,” campaign spokeswoman Claire VanSusteren said in a statement sent Monday morning, the day after the Super Bowl. “Under his watch, Miami Lakes voters rejected Manny Cid’s leadership and made clear they don’t trust him.
“Voters resoundingly rejected his botched bond plan – so now he’s attacking Mayor Daniella for doing it the right way,” VanSusteren said.
Read related: Manny Cid PAC hits Mayor Daniella Levine Cava on $2.5 billion bond
“Under our Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, property tax rates have been cut to their lowest level in forty years,” she said, not differentiating between tax rates and property taxes, which have gone up with property values. “Her bold and visionary plan doesn’t call for higher property taxes. In fact, the Miami Herald reported that the approach would likely be tax neutral for homeowners as the county lays out a strategic approach to financing the plan,” she said, not mentioning that it’s neutral because the debt would replace old debt that could be paid off instead.
“While Mayor Levine Cava leads with vision, integrity and results, Manny Cid is doubling down on his failed leadership that Miami Lakes voters resoundingly rejected in 2022.” Okay, that second part’s true.
VanSusteren is talking about a failed bond referendum for Optimist Park that would have raised almost $20 million, paid through 30 years of property taxes, to renovate recreational facilities. The ballot measured — which Cid voted to put on the ballot — failed solidly, with almost 60% of more than half the town’s voters saying nananina.
“I voted in favor of letting residents decide on issues that were already in our strategic plan,” Cid said. “That was in our strategic plan since the town incorporated. It was something that was planned for 20 years. It wasn’t something like what she just came up with.
“That was planned for since I was a sophomore in high school,” Cid, 40, told Ladra. “It came to a head when I was a mayor, so I said let our residents vote it up or down.”
But it’s not the only bond initiative he has championed.
Read related: Miami Lakes Optimist Park $20M bond referendum cost in croquetas
In 2018, Cid floated a proposal for a $55-million bond referendum to buy green space that could be developed and turn it into parks and make capital improvements for 19 existing parks. The measure, presented as a surprise during a special meeting that summer with little notice to residents, was resoundingly rejected before it even got to the ballot.
Cid on Monday defended his position, saying that $36 million was to buy green space like the Florida Forever Fund buys for the state.
“That was literally the entire cost of our entire strategic plan,” he told Ladra Monday, referring to the Imagine Miami Lakes 2025 plan. In July of 2018, he said: “We have a strategic plan that, the reality is, if we don’t borrow, it will never happen.”
Some of Levine Cava’s supporters have said that it’s too soon to denounce the $2.5 billion bond concept without knowing the details of what she plans to spend it on — more specific, that is, than resiliency and infrastructure. But that’s precisely why others don’t trust it already.
As opposed to what La Alcaldesa did, Cid said the town of Miami Lakes had multiple public meetings and a community survey. “We do a strategic plan with the council, the residents, everyone involved,” he told Political Cortadito. “We don’t wake up one day and do a plan with a handful of insiders and don’t get the residents involved.”
Cid said the quickness of the response shows that Levine Cava’s camp have their own poll numbers indicating that he is a bigger threat than they may have previously thought.
Read related: Mayor Daniella Levine Cava drops $2.5 billion bomb, er, bond plan at SOTC
“It shows what I’m hearing on the street, which is that a lot of… especially the liberal elites, have abandoned working families and small businesses. And these are all coalescing behind our campaign,” Cid said, sounding too much like the presumptive Republican presidential candidate and indicating that this is going to be a partisan punching fest.
A Republican that once worked in Tallahassee for state legislators like State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez, Cid could also become a surrogate for Trump in Miami-Dade. “Donald Trump is the nominee and I will be voting for him,” he told Ladra.
Asked if he believed the 2020 election was stolen or if the people prosecuted for invading the capitol Jan. 6 were patriots or not, Cid dodged the questions. Repeatedly. He said that people lost faith in the election in states where it took too long to count the votes, but that Miami-Dade should be a national model. And that it is not what matters to voters anyway.
“I made a promise to working people to lower taxes. If I don’t speak for them, nobody else will. Everybody else wants to talk about partisan issues and nobody wants to talk about working people.
“You know what everybody is concerned about? Having to move out of Miami-Dade County.”
La Alcaldesa’s camp responds to Manny Cid’s PAC attack on her $2.5 bil bond added by Ladra on
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