Miami-Dade taxpayers fund $1 mil move for Commissioner Rob Gonzalez

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County has paid for old vacant office for a year

Unelected Miami-Dade Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, appointed in November 2022 by the governor to fill the vacant seat in District 11 after Joe Martinez was arrested on public corruption charges, has two district offices — including a vacant one that taxpayers have been shelling out $4,486 a month for.

That’s $53,832 in the last year. For an empty space.

But the whole financial hit from the move is $1 million, according to a county memo.

We know this thanks to the dogged journalism of Juan Camilo Gomez, anchor of the morning news on Actualidad Radio 1040 AM and cohost of Contacto Directo with Roberto Rodriguez-Tejera. Gomez deserves a double byline on this post for a segment aired Tuesday that broke the news about the unoccupied office at taxpayer expense and interviewed Martinez, who we haven’t heard from in a long time.

Read related: Failed House candidate Rob Gonzalez is tapped for Miami-Dade District 11 seat

District 11 is a large swath of suburban unincorporated Miami-Dade that is densely populated with neighborhoods like the Crossings, the Hammocks, Lakes of the Meadows and Bent Tree, despite having almost half of it being undeveloped swampland. It is home to Florida International University, the Kendall/Tamiami Executive Airport and G. Holmes Braddock Senior High School, which has the largest student body in the Miami-Dade School District.

Since 2007, the county leased a district office at 4081 SW 152nd Avenue. After Gonzalez, a personal injury attorney, was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, he brought a resolution to the commission for a new office on March 7, 2023. This even though the lease on the old office doesn’t expire until this November, which would have been the end of Martinez’s term.

So, we’re still paying for it.

The shopping center space at 12781 SW 42nd Street, 25 blocks east from the old office, was rented for $4,417 a month as of April 1 of last year. That’s $53,000 a year. But with an additional $1,500 a month in maintenance fees, it adds up to $71,000 a year, reported Gomez, who compared it to someone paying two mortgages at once.

“Who in their right mind would have two houses at the same time,” Gomez asked. “It would have to be a millionaire.”

Read related: Miami-Dade: Oliver Gilbert spanks Rob Gonzalez on ‘my airport’ comment

The three year lease with two three-year options to renew would have an estimated impact to the county of just over $1 million for the nine-year period, according to the resolution. That included base rent, common area maintenance, lease management fees, utilities, operating expenses and tenant improvements to the tune of $486,000. The last allocation approved by the county was last November for $20,979.70 for the “completion of the District 11 satellite office renovations.”

All this for a guy who really has a temp job, for now.

David Gonzalez, the commissioner’s communications director, said the old office was just not efficient or large enough.

“That place was a bunker. It was very dark and not the most welcoming,” said Gonzalez, adding that the old office had a back door and the new one does not. “It’s more transparent. It’s all glass. And there’s more room.”

He said that the Internal Services Department and Mayor Daniella Levine Cava had expressed an interest in doing something with the office, providing some kind of satellite services, and that it’s not the commissioner’s fault that the county did not make use of the space.

The new office — which is 10 blocks from the Florida Turnpike on the eastern edge of the west end district — has allowed the D11 commissioner to bring county departments and services to the neighborhood so that residents don’t have to drive downtown, Gonzalez said.

It’s more convenient, he added.

Read related: Joe Martinez claims public corruption charge is really a political hatchet job

“That’s a lie,” Martinez said in Tuesday’s interview with Gomez, adding that the new office was on the second floor of the shopping strip. “For seniors, it is not that accessible,” said the former commissioner, whose barber is in the same shopping center. It does have an elevator, however. But he says the parking is an issue since a clinic opened in the strip and parks its multiple vans in the lot.

But he was most upset about what he said was a waste of taxpayer dollars. “That money isn’t his. That only is ours. It’s the people’s money,” said Martinez, who did not return calls to his cellphone but sounded like he was running for office in the near future.

“Half a million would have helped a lot of people in this district,” Martinez said, about the $486,000 that Gomez confirmed through the county’s Internal Services that the new district office cost.

Ladra would like a line item list of those expenses, please. Was any furniture bought at Pradere Office Design?

And Martinez wants to know what happened to the TVs in the old office that he said he paid for with his own money.

  Joe Martinez, Roberto Gonzalez