Volsky on Coral Gables Mayoral Debate

GEORGE VOLSKY

SLESNICK DEFENSIVE, SHELLACKED IN DEBATE

Mayor Don Slesnick was shellacked at Tuesday night’s mayoral debate in which he confronted two serious, well qualified opponents: former diplomat James Cason and attorney Tom Korge.

It was a shame that the Coral Gables TV station did not broadcast live the Congregational Church debate – the city has purchased expensive equipment for it – because it could be the only one before the April 12 election.

About 150 people watched the exchange of views about Coral Gables’ past and present problems and its future travails. At the outset, it appeared that the majority of them were supporting  the mayor. But as the debate progressed and became more animated, the volume of applause indicated a decisive change in favor of his opponents. Significantly, a proposal that Coral Gables rescind charging parking fees until midnight – for which Slesnick is principally responsible – was received by shouts of approval and thunderous applause, the biggest of the night.

In the verbal match, the mayor was constantly on the defensive and thus repeatedly bruised. No knockout punches were scored, none were expected. Cason and Korge  could have seriously blooded the mayor, who until quite recently assured everybody and his uncle that after 10 years in office he would not run again, but they were rather gentle with him. In their opening statements and comments later, both pointed out to the financial morass that originated and deepened under Slesnick’s leadership, without mentioning that of his 10 years in City Hall eight were the nefarious David Brown administration, called by many in City Hall “the Slesnick-Brown mess.”

Only Carson referred to Brown once, saying that the disgraced former city manager had brought “disrepute and shame to Coral Gables.” Pointedly, Slesnick did not defend his erstwhile close ally who left the city unscathed with a golden parachute.

The debate did nor generate groundbreaking news items, except perhaps Cason’s statement that the current debt in the city’s pension fund – close to $200 million – is per population the second worst in Florida, after the impecunious city of Medley.

Slesnick’s opponents, while looking more “mayoral,” certainly more knowledgeable and decisive, suggested a different concept of leadership. Reading  his opening statement, Cason was polished and intellectual. He bemoaned the lack of transparency in the city and said that as a relatively recent resident he would look at issues with “new eyes and ears” and be a full-time mayor.  Korge spoke often extemporaneously at the opening, trying to convey to the audience the idea that he was like one of them, locally experienced to mend the Slesnick-authored mismanagement,  especially the finance-killing pension shortfall.

Both accused Slesnick of sweeping serious city problems under the rug. Cason pointed out that a 2004 study which detailed serious dysfunction in the Building and Zoning department, copy of which Slesnick presumably had received, was hidden from residents by Brown.  Korge reminded the audience that during the Slesnick mayoralty residents had four property tax increases.

Accusation of these and other administrative and financial failures that took place under the Slesnick leadership were  not disputed by Slesnick. Time and again, without expressing a single “mea culpa,” he attributed those problems to failings in the nation’s economy. He said that administratively and economically things are improving. He did not say the improvements were due his or the city commission’s actions, but rather to measures undertaken by the “new city manager.”

(This struck some observers as odd. Most people in City Hall aver that Slesnick and City Manger Patrick Salerno are not always on the same page. The most serious and dividing issue was Salerno’s openly critical opinion of the professionalism of the former city attorney, the mayor’s favorite.)

But during the 60-minute debate (originally scheduled for 30 minutes more which the moderator Elliott Rodriguez cut without explanation) Slesnick was Slesnick. He made a number of misstatements that need to be corrected:

1.  Social Security, he said, is underfunded like the Coral Gables pension fund. Not true: S.S., according to government data, will have a surplus until about 2040, if not longer. (Our fund was current in 2001 when Slesnick became mayor.)

2.   “We picked the new operator for the Country Club.” Not true. Nick Di Donato, President and CEO of the Liberty Entertainment Group of Toronto, chose Coral Gables. His company was the only one that wanted to invest in our previously mismanaged club.  Yet he was treated with discourtesy by the mayor during a commission’s meeting.)

3.   The function of the city attorney is to “coordinate” actions by outside lawyers. Not true. According to the job’s description,  that  official has to perform all legal functions in the city.

4.  The city attorney’s office in recent years spent less on outside lawyers than appropriated. Not true. Between 2006 and 2009, these expenses were over-budgeted by  $1,055,000.

5.  In the last several years, Slesnick said, city employees have not had salary increases. Most of them had. His own, $34,123 in 2009, increased to $35,778 in 2010.

Most important, what indisputably emerged from the debate, is that Coral Gables has a series of difficult problems that originated and were exacerbated during the last 10 years – the decade of the  Slesnick leadership.

The central question, therefore, is whether the city can afford to continue under the same leader, or whether on April 12 the residents should chose a new mayor.

Slesnick’s Election Platform

Thanking the mayor for his new year’s greeting by email, he listed the following as his apparent platform (New Year’s resolutions) for running again this year,

• Control costs to insure that municipal services are affordable to all;
• Encourage and promote the smart growth of our business district as we emerge from the current economic recession;
• Recruit and welcome new businesses to revitalize our economy and to create jobs;
• Work with the School Board to improve and expand public education opportunities for all Gables students;
• Focus on the development and promotion of cultural assets and international relationships.

Volsky on “City Hall’s Ceiling, Like Slesnick’s Reelection Bid, Down”

GEORGE VOLSKY

CITY HALL’S CEILING, LIKE SLESNICK’S REELECTION BID, DOWN

In April 1997, the Coral Gables Cultural Affairs Council, which a year earlier was instrumental in saving the former Police and Fire Station   from conversion into private use, called upon  the City Commission to refurbish the worn out City Hall.  The call was seconded by other groups, principally the then very influential Chamber of Commerce, headed by former city commissioner Ron Robison.

The commission acted fairly quickly. It elaborated and approved a plan for a multi-story $12-$15 million City Hall Annex;  it secured a  loan from Tallahassee and in late 1999 construction began. According to the plan,  all city offices, except the commissioners’ and the city manager’s, were to be located in the Annex, 100 yards from City Hall.  Also transferred to the Annex, representing substantial savings, would be the rented offices elsewhere in the city.

Then the refurbishing of the City Hall would start. Finally, the rejuvenated building, enhanced by an extended park  with George Merick’s sculpture in it – would become the city’s administrative, cultural and historic center.  The commission and the manager were to have more work space, with additional footage for conferences, exhibitions, city board meetings and  community and civic activities.

But that cogent plan never became reality because Slesnick happened to Coral Gables. In April 2001, Donald Slesnick was elected mayor, defeating his long-time benefactor and Annex promoter Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli.

Because he was seriously ill,  Valdes-Fauli barely campaigned and chose to ignore Slesnick’s  political and personal attacks. Voters were unaware of the mayor’s illness, well known to his close personal and political friends, among the latter Slesnick.

(A couple of years later, Valdes-Fauli illness, originally unrecognized, was properly diagnosed. Eventually he underwent a 12-hour-long operation – a liver transplant, one of the marvels of modern surgery unimagined a decade earlier.  The Harvard-Sorbonne-educated international attorney, who heads his own law firm in Coral Gables,  says he feels “like a new man;” he works and travels on business more than ever. Does he believe – as many real friends do – that Slesnick’s 2001 sudden turnaround was a political “stab in the back”? He answers, ahem, “let’s talk about the future.”)

One of Slesnick’s first moves as mayor was to kill the Annex, which he had approved earlier as chairman of the Building and Zoning board,  where he served as Valdes-Fauli’s appointee. Yes, the new commission approved it, but it was Slesnick who single-handedly manipulated the destruction.  He was assisted by a well-orchestrated   campaign against the much-need Annex, financed by several property owners who feared the new building would depreciate the value of their older properties nearby.  A faulty advise by the city’s departed attorney  also provided  the mayor a way to undermine the project.

Slesnick made sure that the one-third constructed Annex was  immediately dynamited and razed to the ground; its site became a city parking, much of it free for selected city officials. But city residents are still repaying Florida millions for the Annex’s destruction and will do so for another decade.

During his 2003 reelection campaign the “Annex Killer” boasted of his 2001  deed, but not since. While doing nothing about it, Slesnick probably knew that City Hall’s physical condition was rapidly deteriorating. To wit: the lower ceiling installed for the air conditioning system lacked solid support; old electrical wiring and sewer systems were not entirely upgraded; periodically there were major water leaks and termite infections; mold fungus continues to be defected in  various offices, with employees complaining of the pervasive smell of decay.

As a result, many experts have feared that a calamity could strike City Hall at any time. It did on the last day of 2010.

On January 3, when after the long New Year weekend employees came back to work in the offices of the city manager and the Finance Department they found large parts of the artificial ceiling on the floor. Not just light-weight acoustic panels – in the city manager’s office a large, sharp heavy cement slab fell down from the ceiling.

Experts speculate that a couple of days earlier during the Junior Orange Bowl parade a conflated noise by the marching bands and the parade’s participants and viewers caused strong vibrations that made collapse parts of the artificial ceiling in City Hall’s two large ground floor offices. Interestingly, several years ago when Slesnick, at a cost of $50,000, refurbished his second floor office, he ordered  artificial ceiling removed.

The ceiling of the smaller-sized second or third floor offices were not affected. But the old ceiling represents a hazard, requiring an immediate safety inspection of the entire building.

Still, what happened in City Hall over the New Year’s weekend was a harbinger of other unforeseen physical problems for the ancient and beautiful building, whose façade became marred by the ungainly Merrick sculpture.

“The ceiling incident is like Slesnick’s reelection bid,” one city political savant said laughingly last week looking at the debris in the manager’s office, “both have collapsed.” The Bard might have put it differently: “Don, a soothsayer bids you beware the ides of April.”