GOP Tax Proposal–Not Good for Coral Gables

Coral Gables is no just a city of wealthy people.  Indeed, the rich relatively make up a small part of the city and there is strong middle and upper middle class professionals.  The GOP tax proposal (as currently circulating) has bad features for the middle and upper middle class.

Many will pay more taxes in the future.  Graduate students at UM will have to pay for their tuition and research benefits as income. Student borrowers will lose their interest tax deduction. There are residents who get Medicare and Medicaid will lose benefits in the future.

All of these higher taxes and lost benefits will shift to the very rich and the owners and management of big corporations.

A huge increase in government deficits will certainly lead to a trend of higher taxes and interest rates in the coming years.   Increase deficits will certainly cause an increase in inflation unless the Federal Reserve raises interest rates.

Do we really want to keep increasing the big gap the middle class and working poor and the uber-rich: this is not good for the long-term well being of the city.  It will be hard to sustain a strong community that represents us all.

Paris Agreement–Syria Signs

The USA is now alone in the world has the only country denies climate change.  Syria has signed the Paris Agreement.  Shame on the USA.

Coral Gables Delayed Miracle Mile “Streetscape”

The project has been greatly delayed and the City of Coral Gables continues to provide optimistic reports about the benefits of the project and the closing date.  Casual observers have suggested that there are a number of issues with the project.

• Parking will continue to be a big problem with high cost valet parking and limited easy access space in parking garages.  Street parking will be negligible.  Parking has always been limiting factor in the development of Miracle Mile, and this project should make it even worse as parking has been reduced by 75%.
• Except for the pedestrian walk for the restaurant section, benefiting exclusively owners there (accompanied by more lost parking), the benefits of the project are not yet evident. Very little actual additional space has been added to the pedestrian sidewalks along Miracle Mile, which appear as narrow as before. The limited parallel parking is an eye sore.
• Miracle Mile businesses are relative unattractive and a low value compared to (say) Merrick Park. Many are one-stop shops rather than being part of an larger shopping and spending experience.  It will be a long time, if ever, for the “streetscape” change the low value businesses (with some exceptions) that are there now.

The benefits of this costly project seem to have been greatly oversold.  Residents will end up paying for a disproportionate share of the cost.

The poor management of the City of Coral Gables is in full display in this long delayed capital project.

The City of Coral Gables and the FPL

The mayor and city commissioners of the City of Coral Gables questioned from the start the preparation and response of the FPL in reactivating the cities’ electric power system, which was disproportionately hit by a relatively intensive  tropical storm (out of Hurricane Irma) on September 9 and 10.  The municipality of Coral Gables was hit  by the large number of fallen trees, broken trunks and branches and the subsequent loss of electric power, telephone, cable services throughout the city, with some sections more than the others.

The City of Coral Gables leadership states that the reason for the larger impact of the storm on the cities’ trees and the electric power outages was that the FPL electric system was deficient and that the power company had not done enough to construct and manage a more resistant system.  Also, FPL failed to follow up to protect the system consistently from prior years hurricanes that had smaller impacts but were stronger hurricanes and tropical storms.  Based on this writers personal observation the effect of the IRMA tropical storm was equivalent or greater that previous hurricanes.

To this date the city still shows a lot of fallen trees and branches.