Mayoral race in Coral Gables is a do-over on over-development

Mayoral race in Coral Gables is a do-over on over-development
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The mayoral race in Coral Gables is a rematch between Raul Valdes-Fauli and former Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick. But some people really see it as a do-over of 2017, a second chance to make things right.

“Let’s not make the same mistake again,” is not just the headline of an email sent by the Gables Neighbors United group of Riviera neighborhood residents. It’s also the mantra of people who don’t like the development boom they’ve seen in the City Beautiful and people who don’t like how incumbent Mayor Valdes-Fauli handled the battle between the city manager and the popular police chief.

And people who thought Slesnick had it in the bag in 2017 and didn’t vote.

Valdes-Fauli won two years ago by a scant 187 votes. That’sGables development not exactly a mandate. But there were a bunch of factors that don’t exist this year. The last election was during spring break. Many families were away. Spring Break this year is over. All of Slesnick’s friends will be here.

Also, the big developments she voted against — like Gables Station on Douglas Road and the gigantic Paseo de la Riviera project going up where the Holiday Inn used to be across from the University of Miami (photo, right) — are either finished or rising out of the ground.

“Now people can see what I was worried about, these monstrous buildings looming over us,” Slesnick told Ladra. “Now they see it. And they don’t like it.”

So, two years later, the contest is still centered on development and the rapidly changing character of this Miami-Dade suburban paradise and that gives Slesnick the upper hand. The former commissioner, wife of former Mayor Don Slesnick and real estate pro has been talking about reigning development in for years, both on the dais and in her Jeannett’s Journal publication. It is the reason she ran for commission in 2015 in the first place.

Read related: Rematch! Jeannett Slesnick will jump into Gables mayor’s race

“Coral Gables is fragile. And its been overrun by developers and all these mega construction projects it doesn’t need,” Slesnick said. “Ninety-nine percent of the calls I get are about development.”

Valdes-Fauli counters that hers is a single-issue campaign.

“She has a negative campaign. She’s running on one issue,” the mayor whined in a short, terse telephone interview. “I’m running on my record. I didn’t have a record the last time.”

But that’s not really true, is it? Valdes-Fauli was voted out of office in 2001 by voters who disagreed with his plan to pave over and close off Biltmore Way and build a huge, 60,000-square-foot annex to historic City Hall. He was beaten by — drum roll, please — Don Slesnick, who Valdes-Fauli blames for the development boom.

After that, he disappeared. Only to resurface a few years ago after a trip to Cuba made him a Castro apologist pressing for normalized relations.

And while some of the big developments that have been criticized over the last couple of years were approved during Mayor Jim Cason‘s tenure, Valdes-Fauli — who has Cason’s endorsement — has said that he would have voted for all of those projects. He may have told the Miami Herald he would not have voted for the Paseo project, but that is not what he told the Riviera Neighborhood Association when they met the newly elected mayor right after the 2017 election.

He says he is for “smart” development in the downtown and along the U.S. 1 corridor to go with the Underline park that is being developed underneath the MetroRail. He says “smart” development does not add traffic.

But it looks like he has not voted against a single development since elected, including the 9-story Venera project for 165 apartments on a property owned by a developer of student housing, despite significant opposition from residents. Not sure how “smart” that project is. Are they all smart?

“We fight so much to downscale projects,” Valdes-Fauli told Ladra, “reducing height from 160 feet to 140 feet or lot coverage.” What he didn’t say is that 140 feet was still over what’s allowable via the city’s zoning and master plan, which keeps being ignored.

And voters are catching on to the bait and switch where electeds beholden to developer money tell their sponsors to ask for more height and more density so it can look like a compromise when they meet somewhere in the middle.

Valdes-Fauli has the support of the development community through dozens of campaign contributions from developers and builders in suspicious bundles that indicate it’s more of an investment than support for his public policy. This includes $10,000 in 10 separate $1,000 maximum checks from Armando Codina and his companies, $5,000 from developer Tibor Hollo Gables developmentand his companies, $5,000 in 10 checks from Sergio Pino, at least $6,000 from Carlos Marquez and his multiple construction companies, $11,000 from real estate investor Hugh Culverhouse and at least $1,000 from NP International USA, the developer behind the Paseo project and Gables Station (photo).

Read related: In Coral Gables, campaign cash goes out as quickly as it comes in

Perhaps more will be reported in the next campaign report. All but the $5,000 from Hollo were reported in the last campaign report, covering contributions from March 15 to March 31, when Valdes-Fauli collected almost $52,000, more than a quarter of his total $173,325 bank. Sometimes candidates report the controversial money at the end of the campaign, after thousands of people have already voted via absentee ballots.

“We believe that Valdes-Fauli is bought and sold by developers,” said Sue Kawalerski, an active Riviera neighborhood resident and member of both the Gables Neighbors United and the RNA. “We do not trust Valdes-Fauli.

“Jeannett was the only one who stood by us with Paseo,” Kawalarski said. “Jeannett would never vote for something that would disrupt a residential neighborhood. She is accessible. She listens to us. She represents us.

“We have to stop the madness.”

Voters see a vote for Slesnick — who is not taking any developer money for her mostly self-funded campaign — as a vote for some very much needed balance to the board. Her critics say she did not accomplish much in her two years as a commissioner before she abandoned the seat to run for mayor. But her champions say she was a consistent vote against over development and that made her an outsider who was “punished” with a lack of support for her initiatives.

The other big issue that could hurt the incumbent is the lack of leadership he showed during the former city manager’s campaign against Police Chief Ed Hudak. Valdes-Fauil talked a big game when he was campaigning about changing the city manager, but once he was elected he let Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark run over Hudak with administrative baggage and a bogus investigation that she tried to use to hurt the police chief — even after it exonerated him. Valdes-Fauli let that saga drag on for months.

He argued that he did provide leadership — by putting the item on the agenda seven times. One of those times, he called it “The boil in Coral Gables.” He is proud of that little title because he made sure to remind Ladra. But seven times? Some might call that all talk and no action.

“We resolved the issue in a very legal and adequate manner,” the mayor insisted. Yeah, sure. Ask the police officers who were used for the city manager’s vendetta if they thought it was handled in an adequate manner.

Read related: Bob Graham, others host huge campaign gig for Jeannett Slesnick

His supporters are counting on an ethnically divided contest. Part of the reason Valdes-Fauli won last year was because of an ethnic whisper campaign about alleged discrimination that does not exist. They still believe that he has his base, the Cubans, and she has hers, everybody else. But Coral Gables Cubans are not Little Havana Cubans or Hialeah Cubans who vote along ethnic lines and can get spooked by campaign propaganda about the hidden “communists” among us.

In fact, several prominent Hispanic Gables voters are supporting Slesnick. Raul Mas Canosa and Ana Permuy-Mas, Frank and Maria Elena Gonzalez and Sergio and Maria Concepcion recently hosted a very well-attended fundraiser at the Concepcion home.

Slesnick, who made commission town halls a thing in the Gables, has made civility part of her campaign: “People deserve a mayor who treats them with respect and courtesy and not ignore them and impose his will, which is what we have now at City Hall.”

Valdes-Fauli is known to be rude and arrogant and makes misogynistic comments on the regular, saying at one forum that his opponent sounded like a nagging wife. He welcomes the developers and vendors to commission meetings and calls them Mr. This and Mrs. That. But he berates, belittles and bullies residents and tells them to “sit down and shut up” when they’re time is up if he doesn’t like what they’re saying.

Not that he is listening to what they are saying. Valdes-Fauli often stands up, leaves the dais and walks out of commission chambers in the middle of the discussion — that’s if he is not playing his Dominos app on his cellphone while residents speak.

A few voters who supported him last time told Ladra they would not vote for Valdes-Fauli again because of this behavior. They see this election Tuesday as a second chance to get it right, they said.

 

6 Responses to "Mayoral race in Coral Gables is a do-over on over-development"

  1. rcq1981@gmail.com I look forward to walking by pretty apartment buildings along the US1 corridor over the used car lots that used to be there. The Underline Project is going to make it that much better. Have a nice day and God bless.

  2. Ladra
    Your article mentioned what Mayor Valdes-Fauli received over a two week period. Please check out the Mayor’s last campaign report submitted today. Contributions totaling $80,800 in one week and guess who the contributors are? You guessed it – developer’s and all the professions that are hired by the developer’s. I guess the developer’s and the professionals they hire are frighten that Jeannett Slesnick is going to win this race. Too bad a journalist doesn’t look into what is actually happening in City Hall and how our Mayor and Commissioner’s are selling out the residents over the developer’s. Kiss the City Beautiful and our zoning codes good-bye and welcome the concrete canyon.

    • Yes, Debbie! I just saw!

      There will be another post soon about this development windfall that the mayor just got. Looks like the developers and building industry is coming to his rescue!!

      Thanks for pointing it out.

      Love, Ladra

      • Ay ay ay! Exxon-Valdez hits sunshine law tidal waves and we see her cargo haemorrhaging “black gold” all over the sunny beaches of 33146! Better call FEMA!

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