The first forum for Coral Gables candidates, presented by the PTAs of eight city schools, was centered on education and the issues at the schools in the City Beautiful, like safety, teachers’ wages, affordable housing for teachers, student anxiety, book banning, increasing the number of families who send their kids to public schools and food waste in cafeterias. I kid you not.
Questions were asked by students at local schools and then the PTA members chose some submitted by participants in the Q&A section of the Zoom forum. Voters who missed it can view a recording here. The password is ?E^XpP^9, which is unnecessarily impossible to remember.
Not that it’s really worth the two hours. There were no real zingers or surprises. And it wasn’t terribly enlightening.
Candidates were questioned in three groups for the three different races, with the first session focused on the mayoral hopefuls — incumbent Mayor Vince Lago, Commissioner Kirk Menendez and Michael Abbott, an accountant with a beef against Coral Gables Police, who stands no chance of winning but could force a runoff.
All of the candidates think Coral Gables has some of the best schools. Abbott sounded like a robot reading from a boring script, and kept talking about his “technology hub” and establishing “Silicon South,” which is apparently a part of his platform. Lago and Menendez each touted their respective scholarship fundraising and different programs they’ve created.
Lago said he was the first elected in Miami-Dade to put police officers at schools after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. Menendez spearheaded spending $50,000 in the city budget for a conceptual design of a public park working with the Miami-Dade County School Board and mentioned the compact between the city of Miami Beach and the school board as something the Gables could explore.
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The best part was when the candidates were basically asked to defend their decision to send their kids to private schools, not in so many words, but that was the point. Like, gotcha. Abbott said he has no kids but Lago and Menendez, who were obviously the targets of this question, said they made the decision to send their kids to faith-based schools because they are Catholic.
Lago — who suddenly has a lisp (maybe he had come from the dentist’s office?) — wanted to be someplace else.
There were no big surprises in the two commission forums, either. But some interesting takeaways:
Both Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson and Felix Pardo, a longtime city activist and architect, are products of the public school system. Pardo’s wife is a teacher and his son is a public school teacher in Chicago’s South Side. Both his grandchildren attend Chicago public schools. Oh, and Pardo has was recently celebrated for perfect attendance at The Rotary Club.
Anderson, as usual, sounded like she was mansplaining everything to people who just aren’t as smart as her. She also said she started bike lanes in Coral Gables 18 years ago.
Attorney Laureano Cancio, who announced his run before Pardo jumped in, is a Pedro Pan kid, having come from Cuba on the Catholic Church’s Peter Pan flights as an unaccompanied minor. He said his number one issue is education and he has said in the past that the city could establish its own education system or compact with the Miami-Dade County Public School Board to keep Gables students, who now go to schools outside the city, at hometown schools. That makes a community, he said.
At 74, he also runs about three miles almost every day.
The best question was from the participants on the Zoom call and it was about density. Pardo, who is on the planning and zoning board and was also one it 20 years ago as the chair, is absolutely making overdevelopment an issue in his race, and rightly so. Anderson was elected in part because she was supposed to be a firewall against the developers’ interest and, many say, it hasn’t turned out that way.
“I have been the sole voice for responsible development in the city,” Pardo said on the Zoom call. “What has gone on is absolutely atrocious. This city 100 years ago was never designed for the incredibly large projects that are just destroying the fabric of our city.”
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It’s not just traffic that’s affected every time a zoning or land use variance gets approved, he said. Water and sewer, parks schools, freighters, police are all “overburdened,” Pardo explained. “We are pinning ourselves into a corner.”
In the third race, voters have to choose between attorney Richard Lara, Lago’s handpicked pocket-vote candidate, micro transit lobbyist Claudia Miro, who talked about lobbying in Tallahassee for more school guards, and attorney and activist Thomas “Tom” Wells, all of whom are public school products.
Lara seemed to pander and use a bunch of buzzwords. Miro and Wells both seemed more prepared, knowledgable and specific.
When asked about priorities, Wells mentioned lack of civility, lack of transparency and the expediting of permitting. Miro said her three issues were transparency, overdevelopment and public and pedestrian safety. “A lot of things happening at City Hall that we the residents are not aware of,” she said, referring to the unpermitted “improvements” made to The Biltmore Hotel, which, frankly, Ladra doesn’t think City Hall was aware of either.
Lara, expectedly, echoed Lago’s issues, almost word for word, as if he was still running against Menendez, or one of the two commissioners not on the ballot who tend to vote with Menendez. As if it was his role in this campaign.
“The reasons I jumped into this race a year ago… is because there is an absolute lack of respect on the commission. It’s a dysfunctional body. It’s not getting the work of the residents done,” Lara said. “When you have a current majority on the commission that votes in lockstep on the most controversial decisions, then respect goes out the window if you’re going to win every argument on a one, two, three vote.”
Except that what Lago wants is a one, two, three vote in his favor.
Lara, however, said his number one issue was the budget and ensuring that the city did not enter into any more debt. That might be smart. It makes him stand out.
Voters will probably hear more about that at a live forum for candidates next week, sponsored by Gables Good Government from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Coral Gables Museum. It will start off with a meet-and-greet with the candidates and then the Group 2 race, for Anderson’s seat. The Group 3 race wil follow and the night will end with the mayoral race forum. RSVPs are required for the event Wednesday, March 12, and can be made at gablesgoodgov@gmail.com or by calling 305-582-5827.
School-based PTA forum for Coral Gables candidates has no big surprises added by Ladra on
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