Vote Gimenez out tomorrow, Tuesday, August 30th

[Unregistered]

Tomorrow is Election Day in Miami Dade County. Have you, your families and friends voted? If not, please do. This is our only chance to defeat Mayor Carlos Gimenez and change the course of our department. Gimenez needs to reach 50% for an outright win tomorrow. A weak showing by Gimenez will turn the tide and contributions will pour in for Regalado. Gimenez is already showing signs of wearing down. His polls are down and he would not survive a race to November. Only his absentee ballot machine is keeping him in place.
Please vote and help us get rid of the individual who has destroyed our department by cutting back units, failing to hire more officers and promoted lackeys to help him cover his corruption.

[Unregistered]

The man we once considered an outsider on the dais, the voice of the people has turned into the consummate inside deal broker, a man so entrenched in special interests and corrupt that his best friend and campaign finance chair has a $200-an-hour county contract worth $18 million over the next 12 years.

Gimenez went from being “Golden Boy” to a “Tainted Boy” — after he hooked up with the Hialeah hoodlums — and then “Cry Wolf Carlos,” after he kept threatening to lay everybody off, to “Mr. Giveaway,” when he started just giving millions away to millionaires.

It’s been a slippery slope. And as he faces the first real challenge to his dark and arrogant rule, it’s time to remind everyone why Carlos Gimenez should not be allowed to have another four years, what would be his last four years as mayor.

2011 — The Year of Setting Up

The descent started right after being elected in 2011. The new mayor asked the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust for an opinion on deals that were brought to the county by one of his two sons — the red light camera lobbyist or the project manager for a major construction firm. He was told to keep an arm’s distance. So he created an arm. Or, rather, five of them.

The deputy mayor system was created specifically to insulate Gimenez from his sons as well as his lobbyist friends and their special interest and still be able to wheel and deal at arm’s length. But it’s all a show. Because don’t think for a minute that dealing with Alina Hudak or Ed Marquez is any different than dealing with Carlos Gimenez. They will do what he wants them to do.

He also cut taxes by 12 percent, without really considering how that would impact the county in the following years. He did this 19 days after being sworn in July 1, 2011. And we’ve been paying the consequences ever since. Talk about inexperience and mismanagement. It was irresponsible. But, heck, it sounds good in robocalls and radio ads.

2012: The Year of the First Taste of Power

In the summer of 2012, Mayor Gimenez got the commission to approve up to $5 million in funding to meet the county’s insurance deductible for damage done by heavy rains that year to the Ziff Ballet Opera House at the Arsht Performing Arts Center. Somewhere around 2,500 patrons had to be evacuated after water came gushing through the roof during a May performance of The Lion King. Though the $5 million comes from county coffers, the independent Performing Arts Center Trust was charged with hiring the contractors to make the repairs. Normally the PAC gets the county procurement department to request bids for its projects, but this was an emergency, county staffers told Ladra. And the job went to the company that hired the mayor’s son, Julio Gimenez.

In August that year, his campaign against a challenge from former Commissioner Joe Martinez gets Gimenez caught up in an illegal absentee ballot operation. One of several people caught and arrested with dozens of absentee ballots was seen walking in and out of his Hialeah campaign office. He may not have known about it, but he certainly didn’t do enough about it after he found out. The man who told me personally in 2011 that he would reform absentee ballots to cut down on fraud was now looking the other way because it benefited him.

Nothing happens. Investigators later say they were stopped from going into Gimenez’s Hialeah campaign office because the State Attorney, whose campaign manager was also working for Gimenez, would not seek a subpoena. Nobody got jail time. And nobody followed up on the investigation, even though there was evidence that there were more people involved.

It’s never been spoken of again.

2013: The Year he “saved” Libraries

An obsession with sports stadiums started when early in 2013, Gimenez proposed a tourist bed tax Mayor Carlos Gimenezincrease to fund renovations and a roof at Dolphins Stadium, something he needed the state legislature to pass. He thought the idea was so revolutionary and fantastic — “best idea ever,” he called it — that he went so far as to having it put on fast track for a referendum and having the Miami Dolphins pay for it. The measure failed to get any support in Tallahasee and died.

Not to get too depressed about it, Gimenez flew to Paris for the air show and then later met his pal, lobbyist Jorge Luis Lopez, in Italy so they could get backstage passes to the Vatican.

When he came back, Gimenez proposed fire rescue cuts known as “brown outs” that would have some units at some stations out of service for several hours or days at a time. It wouFirefighters protest 042ld have severely impacted neighborhood service and response times. After firefighters had several street protests, the idea was dropped and money magically found (one of several times) to keep the fire rescue staffing levels.

But to fix the broken budget — which he had broken two years earlier, folks — Gimenez also proposed closing libraries and drastically cutting library programs and services. After much protest at County Hall and a number of budget town halls around the county, money was magically found again and the administration ended up only closing some branches on some weekdays and cutting staff.

Read more at Political Cortadito

[Unregistered]

Gimenez won't get voted out. PBA and other unions dragged thier feet and support until the last second. Too little too late for relgado.

[Unregistered]

We also need to vote for JOE MARTINEZ 117

[Unregistered]

never vote for someone the mafia police union supports. Gimenez got my vote!

[Unregistered]

Gimenez won't get voted out. PBA and other unions dragged thier feet and support until the last second. Too little too late for relgado.

Fight to your last breath brother. Vote if you haven't and don't worry about the PBA. We know we are all alone.

[Unregistered]

never vote for someone the mafia police union supports. Gimenez got my vote!

I can only assume you are not a police officer but a roving troll entering this site to insult or provoke. Maybe an officer gave you a well deserved citation. Maybe he arrested you for something to curb your ways and this is the way you get your rocks off. Maybe it has not occurred to you that many police officers in this department are not part of any Union. Once thing is for certain, if you pay taxes in this county they are ending in the pockets of the Rafael Garcia Toledo's and every other lobbyist of this world. But go on, brag about your single vote for Gimenez. All it shows is you are disinformed or maybe you just happen to be one of those lackeys who has received some perk for doing Gimenez's dirty deeds.

[Unregistered]

never vote for someone the mafia police union supports. Gimenez got my vote!

"Mafia police union?" Got the evidence? Take it to the FBI. If not, just stop oozing your pus on this site, you suppurating boil.

[Unregistered]

Gimenez brags that he cut his Miami Dade mayor salary in half, how noble! What he does not say is that he is getting a $130,000.00 City of Miami pension, with yearly accruing interest for life, along with top-shelf health insurance coverage for him and his wife – for the duration of their respective lives! So in the aggregate, this repulsive toad is getting $125,000.00 from Miami Dade County taxpayers, plus his “for life” City of Miami pension; that’s a cool $255.000.00 for the dismal job his has done for the regular folks, though a splendid one for the rich and famous! Any County employee who voted or will vote tomorrow for this detestable person, is a masochist who relishes being defecated on.

[Unregistered]

Every vote counts. Send Mr. Rotten Teeth to a runoff. He has already spent over $3 million on his over the top campaign. Make him spend every nickel from his campaign and PAC pots. Let him know we have not forgotten our 5%, our insurance, the threatened pink slips.