Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo and the Bayfront Fountain of corruption

• Tweet
• Sumo

• Tweet

The newly-restored and functional water fountain at Bayfront Park was on full display for New Year’s Eve. At least in the commercials played that night on the America Tevé broadcast of the party. But this week is the official ribbon-cutting.

There will be a press conference at 6 p.m. Wednesday with Mayor Francis Suarez and District 3 Commissioner Joe Carollo, who is chairman of the Bayfront Park Management Trust. This is happening one day, less than 24 hours, before Carollo proposes the abolishment of the Bayfront Trust and on the heels of accusations that he has been using the agency as a slush fund for favors to his pals and kickbacks.

Que cara mas dura.

Read related: Joe Carollo wants to abolish Miami’s Bayfront Park Management Trust

Carollo and the city have been sued by two former Management Trust employees who say the were threatened and forced to resign after they reported shoddy accounting practices led to widespread misuse of Trust funds. The lack of proper accounting procedures “enabled Carollo to (a) use the Trust’s funds to pay for Carollo’s own political ventures; (b) use the Trust’s funds to support Carollo’s District 3 Political Office (c) use the Trust’s funds to pay and overpay Carollo’s political allies; (d) use the Trust’s funds to overpay Carollo’s District 3 Social Media provider, (e) waste the Trust’s funds on a 2007 Vet mobile that was never used and that had a suspicious and seemingly untraceable past; and e) seek to use the Trust funds to pay for Carollo’s Holiday Party,” the complaint, filed by former executive director Jose Suarez and former financial director Jose Canto, states.

“Together, these wrongful expenditures totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars of misused and wasted Trust funds in less than one year, and Carollo has Chaired the Trust for the past eight years without any legitimate oversight.”

But, hey, we got a fountain.

Read related: Miami paid $150K for one long Joe Carollo commercial on New Year’s Eve

The Mildred and Claude Pepper Fountain at Bayfront Park, built in 1990, had been dry for longer than it was working. The city stopped operating it little by little because of costs and then it became the base for some balloon vendor. Last summer, the Trust began a renovation project that cost $5.5 million and, while the original design created by Japanese-American architect Isamu Noguchi has been preserved, they have added 500 lights and 800 jet streams and a “water screen” that projects videos and images.

“Seeing that fountain light up, other than the births of my children and my marriage, is one of the happiest moments of my life,” Suarez said last month during the State of the City address. Obviously, he’s had a dour life. And he needs to get out more.

The Trust’s interim executive director, Barbara Hernandez, told Axios Miami that the fountain is “still in the testing stage” and that the Trust is “working on a schedule for show times.” She also said that the cost to operate and maintain the fountain is between $20,000 and $30,000 a month. That’s between $240,000 and $360,000 a year.

Maybe they should seek a sponsor.

  Bayfront Park, Joe Carollo