Monthly Archives: April 2015

Before my talk with her I had no idea at all what to make of Coral Gables Commission Group V Candidate Sandra Murado. Murado has been a lawyer for 22 years. She has worked at the state attorney’s office, then as a divorce lawyer, and now has an immigration law practice.

She’s seemed, and to some degree remains, the most confusing candidate in the Group V race. On the one hand – no wait, we’re going to need a lot of hands here, let’s try that again.

Item: I put some serious stock in word of mouth. Murado is getting some good word of mouth. I’ve had more people spontaneously tell me that they were impressed by her than any other candidate. OK, that makes her score about four, but that’s still two more than anyone else.

Item: I like some of her friends. Daisy Baez is one of the people who came told me how great Murado is. Murado also has an endorsement from SAVE, which is a big plus.

Item: I do NOT like some of her friends. Reportedly she was recruited to run by Mayor Jim Cason, and shares his campaign consultant. As I’ve said before, I think Cason’s support of (or if you go with some stories, domination by) the old City Manager was a big problem. And continuing to support Salerno after he was caught misleading the Commission is just totally unacceptable to me. Ms. Murado was noncommittal when I put this point to her, refusing to take one side or the other. That really worries me.

Item: She’s been a strong advocate for a good cause, fighting the proposal for Somerset, the mega-charter school proposed for the University Baptist Church site.

Item: She’s a poster person (see page 18) for the James Madison Institute – a really really far right political group that thinks it is a think tank. The James Madison Institute lauded her for helping to “rein in excessive growth in government spending” by fighting to limit pensions as a way to limit the City’s unfunded liabilities – an issue that will likely endear her to many voters.

Item: Local gadfly George Volsky is talking her up – a very bad sign on its own, and further evidence of the Cason connection since Volsky is totally in the tank for Cason. Murado reprints a cranky Volsky column prominently on her campaign web site, one trashing Ariel Fernandez and Jeannett Slesnick.

Item: Murado is very articulate, seems smart. I like that.

Item: Murado’s lawyerlyness trips her up sometime. More than once in the two candidates’ events she’s given legally correct but politically tone-deaf answers to questions.

I put my standard list of questions to Murado a couple of days ago.
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I had a chance to talk to PJ Mitchell last week about his candidacy for the Coral Gables Commission. He’s a good, soft-spoken, advocate for himself.

I asked Mitchell the same questions I’ve been asking everyone, starting with development. Having served on the economic development board, Mitchell had seen some of the proposals in some depth, and he wanted to distinguish between those that sought variances from the code (possible) and those which sought to have the code changed to their benefit (like Agave), a process that was quicker for them, but not in his view better for the city. Each project should be judged on its merits, he said, and the problem with Agave’s initial proposal is that it created a ‘city within a city’. Coral Gables needs to have the project connected with downtown, so pedestrians go from Agave to Miracle Mile and back. Mitchell said more than once that seeing the animated version of what the project would be like had shown him just how big it was – too big.

On green space, like everyone else he was for it in principle. On the sea level rise question, Mitchell said he thought that the state and federal governments needed to take the lead, and create a master plan in which Coral Gables could then participate.

Regarding the potential new tax revenue, Mitchell’s first response was that “cities will spend any of amount of money that comes in” – an anti-spending attitude to delight an penny-pincher’s heart. He allowed, however, that there were infrastructure needs. When I pressed him for his top three priorities, Mitchell listed the fire stations as number one, noting that some new police officers are already in the budget and that we might also need to replace one or two missing fire fighters. I had to nudge him to list any others, but then he said eliminating the city’s $75 million debt, and then attacking the unfunded pension liabilities would be his next priorities.
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