Centennial Edition: Birth of the City

EDITOR’S NOTE

Voting for the Next 100 Years

This month marks the anniversary of the founding of Coral Gables, the beginning of an extraordinary century for an exceptional municipality where the ideal of work, live, learn, and play unfolds in a beautiful, walkable, highly cultured environment. With this issue, we celebrate that achievement, along with a sense of wonder that the city has remained, for the most part, true to its original vision.

It is therefore vitally important that all residents vote in the City Commission elections on April 8. It is a critical test of whether the city can continue to provide an exceptional lifestyle.

We are basically a lifestyle magazine, providing readers information about the people, places, and events that enhance that lifestyle. But in the last year, we have become outspoken about the politics of the city. This has been a reaction to the alarming change at City Hall, where the “troika” of Commissioners Kirk Menendez, Ariel Fernandez and Melissa Castro have introduced a bitterness and vitriol never before seen. All anyone has to do is watch the City Commission meetings (all recorded on the city website and YouTube) to understand how these once decorous gatherings have deteriorated. We therefore urge residents to vote for Vince Lago, Rhonda Anderson, and Richard Lara.

Mayor Lago has an extraordinary record of responsible, conservative financial management, keeping city reserves safe and paying down its future exposure to the unfunded liabilities of pensions. He has also introduced a welter of legislation to protect the environment, increase the amount of green space in the city, underground the city’s powerlines, reduce the impact of traffic, and much more. This past year, at almost every turn, the 3-2 troika has blocked his initiatives, shutting down efforts to reduce city taxes and increase voter participation, while enriching themselves with a 101 percent pay raise and firing competent city employees in order to hire unqualified candidates who answer only to them. Kirk Menendez is running against Lago on a platform of anti-corruption and anti-development – highly hypocritical, considering his efforts to upzone the block where he owned two homes (on Salzedo), which was upzoned from 40 to 77-feet and is now a large-scale project.

As for Richard Lara, we find him to be a smart, moderate candidate who should bring a calm, reasonable approach to city government. His principal opponent is Tom Wells, who is campaigning on a platform of returning civility to the City Commission. And yet,Wells has repeatedly attacked Mayor Lago with rancorous assaults on his character and competence as part of his campaign. This is no way to begin a new era of decorum, and promises more of the same irrational in-fighting.

Finally, there is Rhonda Anderson, one of the most selfless and hardworking commissioners the city has ever had. She has fought to preserve the tree canopy, to make sidewalks and bikeways safer, and, most importantly, to overturn the worst parts of the so-called Mediterranean bonus that has allowed developers to break the city’s height restrictions. And it’s not just lip service. As an ardent member of the Garden Club, she has constantly been out there with shovel and spade, helping with plantings (see story pg. 104) and with city cleanups.