In what seems like an obvious case of political retaliation, Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo — who is still butt hurt over being stripped from the Bayfront Park Management Trust — tried in vain Thursday to stop the Allapattah Community Redevelopment Agency from moving forward.
He used to support Allapattah getting its own CRA, when he and Commissioner Miguel Gabela were pals for a short while, since both of them were mad at Commissoner Damian Pardo. But then Gabela dropped his lifetime pensions idea and Carollo — who is accused of abusing his post and mismanaging funds at the Bayfront Trust — was removed as chairman, which was then given to Gabela, who represents District 1, including Allapattah, and has been fighting to get his own CRA for more than a year.
Read related: Compromise may be reached at Miami commission on Omni/Allapattah CRAs
Carollo tried to make it seem Thursday like his motive for voting against the CRA was to keep the property tax dollars from leaving the general fund to go directly into that neighborhood. It’s also the “reason” why he had the item deferred from the last meeting earlier this month, to find out how much it was going to cost the city. He and Gabela got into it then, too, with Gabela 
asking how much the city had spent on attorneys for the multiple lawsuits stemming from Carollo’s abuse of power — since he was so “fiscally concerned” — and Carollo calling Gabela “Tony Soprano.”
He said Thursday that the funds for the CRA were the same dollars “we use every day for police, fire, garbage collection and every city service. How will we replace those funds back in. Because when you take money away, there’s only two ways to resolve it: You have to make cuts or you have to find new money.”
Staff tried to explain the CRA projects would be funded by any tax revenue greater than the amount collected on the base year. They can receive 50% of this tax increase or 95%, and Miami Chief Financial Officer Larry Spring recommended the Allapattah CRA be funded with 50%. That means $281.4 million would be diverted to the CRA over 30 years. It would have been $534.5 million at the higher percentage, he said.
But it’s like shouting into a vast void.
Carollo also said that it would take more than five years for enough money to accumulate to make a difference. And if “we’ll assume and make believe he gets re-elected,” then Gabela “won’t even be around when the real money comes in to make an impact.”
He doesn’t know how CRAs work, apparently. Maybe he thinks it’s like the Bayfront Trust, a personal slush fund for the chair.
“This is not money that is being taken from the general fund. It doesn’t exist yet,” explained Pardo, adding that CRAs work with the city and sometimes pay the city’s debts, like the Omni CRA — the extension of which was held hostage while Gabela fought for his Allapattah one — is doing with the port tunnel.
“It is not us against them,” Pardo said.
Read related: Fight over Omni CRA causes new rifts, alliances on Miami City Commission
Either way, Gabela didn’t care. “I don’t need your vote. Call the question.” He must have said “call the question” five or six times. It wasn’t as good as the meeting April 10, where the two yelled at each other and Gabela banged on the dais and demanded to know what Carollo had cost the city in legal fees.
“I want the figure. I want it one my desk,” Gabela told City Attorney George Wysong. “I expect, please, an answer to the 
question I’ve been asking for a year now. How much has Joe Carollo cost the city in legal fees?”
The answer was still elusive last week. But the CRA motion, which was establishing the business plan and setting boundaries, passed 3-1. It still need to get approval from the county before a CRA can be officially established.
Gabela, who always seems to be looking down when he talks, was also able to pass a resolution so the the city attorney is informed any time legal fees for outside counsel reach $500,000 in any new case where they are retained to represent an elected official. It was totally about Carollo, who has cost the city close to $10 million in legal fees for different cases. “You know the gentleman over there has a truck record, a very bad track record,” Gabela said.
He had originally wanted it to be a $150,000 threshold but changed it to $500K to get the needed vote from Chairwoman Christine King. “Something is better than nothing,” Gabela said.
“As a practitioner, I know cases don’t wrap up in a few months. Cases sometimes take years,” King said, adding that the rule would now apply to future commissioners as well. “I am not going to legislate based on personalities because this doesn’t only affect us.”
But the measure only calls for the city commission to be informed, much as it is informed when another city department is going spend more than $25,000 on something.
“I think we’re talking about transparency and having a threshold where it’s disclosed,” Pardo said.
Miami Commission moves forward with Allapattah CRA — sans Joe Carollo added by Ladra on
View all posts by Ladra →
