Newly-elected Coral Gables Commissioner Melissa Castro was so excited about her first commission meeting on Tuesday, nothing would faze her. Her car wouldn’t start, her heel got stuck in the elevator door, the Uber driver turned the wrong way and made her a few minutes late. But none of it mattered.
She was so psyched about her first chance to serve the residents that she took it all in stride. She was so happy to be there and so concentrated on the items in front of her, that she didn’t realize Mayor Vince Lago had been a condescending jerk, treating her like a little girl.
Castro thought it was odd when Lago went on and on about how the new commissioners were going to fix everything in the city. “I was so focused on the agenda, I didn’t realize what was going on,” she later told Ladra. “I was like, ‘Is he serious or is he exaggerating?’”
Then she went home and watched it on YouTube and realized he was mocking them.
“I felt totally disrespected,” Castro said.
Tuesday’s commission meeting in Coral Gables has given us a possible taste of what it will be like to have Lago and the two new reformist commissioners — Castro and Ariel Fernandez, the mayor’s nemesis and former publisher of the Gables Insider, which is on hiatus — serve on the dais together: A tense, combative, tug-of-war.
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Lago, who campaigned hard against both Castro and Fernandez, did not even try to hide how unhappy he was with the election results. His sarcastic mansplaining — or we could coin the term mayorsplaining — of government operations was so over the top, it was like watching Adult Swim.
What a sore loser!
And it’s not just Ladra’s observation. Several people commented on how “needlessly offensive” and “obnoxious” Lago was. More than one person used the word “bitchy.”
Now that they are here, at last, the new leaders, he called them, Lago can’t wait to see what they do to make the city more efficient and responsive. He said this over and over again. The message was that they have no idea what they’re doing and he can’t wait to see them fail.
When a couple of residents from Biltmore Way asked about the city’s outdated practice of providing golden pension plans for non essential employees, Lago saw it as another opportunity to take a dig, calling on the finance director to do some more mayorsplaining on his behalf. “Since we have two new commissioners, can you explain what are our pension requirements? What is our overall costs? And if we didn’t have that, what we could do?”
After she explained has the city has been trying to catch up with an unfunded liability, putting in an extra $4.5 to $8 million a year to bring it down, the mayor started jumping up and down again.
“That’s why I’m so excited to have a new commission that is going to find the money we need to do all these things,” he said, being condescending again.
“Now, as a commissioner, you’re going to have the opportunity… now you have to make decisions on what is the priority. Is it what Raul Valdes Fauli tells us is an issue in his neighborhood? Or what Brett [didn’t catch his last name] says is an issue in his neighborhood?
“I’m sorry, but I always go with public safety.”
He should have done a Steve Martin “excuuuuuuuuuuse meeeeeee.” Because that’s how it sounded.
“Let me respond to that,” he kept saying after Fernandez spoke, because it was the mayor’s job up there to challenge everything the new commissioner said. Right? That’s what it looked like. Ladra thought it was the other way around: Fernandez is there to challenge all the bullshit Lago says.
The commission spent about two hours discussing the performance of the city manager, all directed by Lago. He knew how the votes were going to go. He could have saved everyone two hours if he had just called the question. But then he would have deprived himself of yet another opportunity to hear his own voice and a chance to dig at the two new commissioners some more.
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When the police union president began to complain about the motor pool being a mess and officers applying to other agencies, how difficult int is to retain dispatchers, Lago said he was grandstanding.
“This negotiation should be happening behind closed doors with our team. No one is going to intimidate me, no union is going to intimidate me into making a decision that is not the best for our city,” Lago said.
Fernandez said that they were not grandstanding and that the public should know how the police officers felt as employees.
“Let me respond to that,” Lago said, adding that he was confident they would reach an agreement. He asked the city attorney if any municipalities did their union bargaining and negotiations in public. No, she said. It’s state law.
“I love it,” he exclaimed, like he had scored another point.
But the only people who can lose this game that Lago is playing with the new commissioners — I’m better, smarter, far more prepared than you are — are the residents and taxpayers of Coral Gables.
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