Commission Tick-Tock - 01/13/26

I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that this will not be the promised followup to the Dr. Castro/Live Local exposé. I know, I know, I teased it, and if recent reader emails are any indication, a great many of you were eager for that particular shoe to drop.

The good news is that it is coming. The evidence is in hand, and no amount of Dr. Castro’s preteen prevarication can change that. Actually, ‘prevarication’ isn’t quite right, as it implies ambiguity, a kind of subtle evasion. There’s nothing subtle about the doctor. Her dishonesty, much like her aesthetic, tends to be brash, vulgar, and unapologetically in your face. Think less Bill Clinton: “It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is, and more Baghdad Bob: “There are no American troops in Iraq”—as American troops literally roll into the frame behind him.

“Let me be clear, I gave my permit business away to my employee in order to spend more time at Mensa meetings.”

But all in good time, my dear readers, for today I'm obliged to report on the fifty-two clown-car pileup that was last Tuesday's commission meeting—which, like most meetings since the last election, felt as much like one long humiliation ritual for the remnants of KFC as it did an official proceeding. Frankly, this one is probably good for at least three full-length posts, as the marathon event was mostly contention piled atop chaos piled atop cringe.

But just like His Holiness, Father Ariel, says about getting a job or answering his city emails: ain’t nobody got time for that. Hence why I’m trying something a bit different today. Below, I’m going to attempt a version of what journalists call a “tick-tock” of the meeting—a timestamped, moment-by-moment reconstruction of key events. It's longer than recent entries, but the timestamps and loose structure should make it a breezier read, as well as easier to jump around to the items that interest you—at least that’s the hope.

Tick-Tock

Note that meeting replays aren't timestamped, so the times below are approximations based on the assumption that the meeting started promptly at 9:00am.

9:00-10:11am: This first hour or so of every meeting is dedicated to what is colloquially referred to as “ceremonials” or “protocol.” This is when employees and/or members of the community are recognized. My feelings on protocol are mixed. The upside is that it's generally positive and conflict-free. The downside is that it's generally positive and conflict-free.

No but seriously, I’m all for the warm and fuzzies, but it can get a bit cloying at times. It’s one thing to recognize high-performing employees; it’s quite another to gush all over them as if they were Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic—all for simply doing, you know, their job.

That said, I find item A-4: the proclamation declaring January 13, 2026 “Ana Alicia Fernandez Day” to be exceptionally touching. The backstory there is as inspiring as it is tragic, and as someone who knows the main characters in that story well—from Alicia to Randy Hoff—I can confidently say they're good people across the board:

10:12am: As is tradition, the meeting begins in earnest with Mrs. Cruzchev croaking out the first of her customary 432 obsessively planned yet somehow incoherent public comments. As usual, no one has any idea what the hell she’s going on about nor does anyone care.

10:30am (Item 2-1): Former mayor Don Slesnick presents the Charter Review Committee's recommendations as cogently and diplomatically as one has come to expect. Nothing groundbreaking. Most importantly, the committee has backed off its prior opposition to November elections, opting not to take a position, but it remains a 'no' on what it considers advocative language embedded in the proposed ballot question ("…in order to increase turnout and reduce costs"). It's a reasonable objection, though my understanding is that the City went with precisely the same language South Miami used in its initiative. Also, the City should feel free to use as much advocative and motivational language as it wants in its pre-election public outreach.

10:45am: Committee member Jane Moscowitz, for reasons I don't fully understand, is then invited to speak after Mayor Slesnick concludes—ostensibly to discuss "process" but really to voice her dissent on November elections. She followed-up her dissent with a series of “recommendations” that betrayed her surprisingly weak grasp of how special elections work.

10:58am: Dr. Castro moves for blanket acceptance of the Charter Review Committee's recommendations despite the mayor having itemized them for discussion on the agenda. Father Ariel seconds, as if paying homage to the old KFC policy of ‘No discussion, No debate’ when they know they’re on the unpopular side of an issue. The thinking seems to be that the commission has no business second-guessing this group of 'experts' and that doing so would be an insult to their dignity. Funny how this deference is not offered to the City's finance experts when they recommend against giving a $24 million COLA to long-retired employees. The motion fails 2-3.

11:09am (Item E-3): An ordinance on first reading approving amendments to the zoning code to make the RTZ (think a mini Live Local) less attractive to developers. I've written about this in detail here, so I won't rehash. Naturally, Dr. Castro is the lone dissenter, thanks to her inability to grasp that sometimes you have to give a little to gain a lot—and, of course, her slavish devotion to her “mentor” Felix Pardo and the rest of the cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face anti-development hardliners who pull her strings. The ordinance passes 4-1.

11:44am (Item E-6): The meeting's big set piece kicks off: Dr. Castro's proposed anti-kickback ordinance, or as I like to call it, the "Lady Doth Protest Too Much" law. It's hardly a coincidence that she's pushing this bit of theatrical legislation mere weeks after I revealed the connection between her sudden interest in Live Local and the 56 permits her company is running in Bal Harbour for a mall set to be dramatically expanded via Live Local. The logic, presumably, is that Dr. Castro can't possibly be receiving kickbacks if she's the one proposing anti-kickback legislation. It’s kind of reminiscent of the notorious John Leonard Orr, the California fire captain and arson investigator who over the course of decades set dozens of wildfires that he would inevitably pretend to investigate.

11:54am: After struggling to read—verbatim, like a child—a PowerPoint presentation she obviously didn't make, Dr. Castro kicks off the discussion and quickly reveals the item's true purpose: to unleash the devastating revelation that a mayor who’s borderline famous for being really good at raising money is—get this—really good at raising money. She achieves this by running through a short list of developer contributions to Lago's PAC that have only been publicly poked, prodded, and analyzed about 17 million times over the years. But I suppose when you're a carpetbagger who had only begun renting an apartment in the city about a year before running for commissioner, things the rest of us consider common knowledge can feel like breaking news.

11:56am: Dr. Castro drops in the disclaimer that she's "not saying there's anything wrong" with these contributions, which is pretty rich considering she ran through each one as if she were revealing DNA evidence on a murder weapon. If her intent isn't to imply these contributions are kickbacks, why make them the centerpiece of her anti-kickback ordinance?

11:57am: Like a fat kid trudging up a broken escalator, delivering roughly one minute of extemporaneous commentary causes all seven of Dr. Castro's functioning neurons to collapse from sheer exhaustion, forcing her to abruptly move her own item in hopes of a quick vote. Father Ariel promptly seconds.

11:58am: Anderson indicates that she cannot support the doctor’s ordinance due to it possessing the minor defect of being completely retarded:

12:02pm: Lara struggles to appreciate the doctor’s groundbreaking idea of taking something that is already a public record and making it a public record:

12:05pm: Lago reminds the doctor that he actually voted against most of the projects featured in Castro’s presentation. He also lets her in on the worst-kept secret at City Hall (a secret so badly kept that neither Dr. Castro nor Father Ariel jump in to refute it): that she and Father Ariel traded their ‘yes’ votes on the salary increases in exchange for Kirk’s ‘yes’ vote on firing Peter Iglesias. Finally, and most cleverly, he recalls Dr. Castro voting to authorize a revenue-generating parking agreement between a developer and her client, the Shops at Merrick Park. In other words, Dr. Castro voted yes on an item that will likely put millions into one of her biggest clients' pockets, and yet she deigns to lecture her colleagues on conflicts and kickbacks:

12:12pm: Father Ariel chimes in to voice support for the doctor's kickback, arguing that residents deserve more “accessibility” and “shouldn’t have to go through 20 different steps, 20 different websites, 20 different departments to get the information they’re trying to get.”

Hear, hear, Father Ariel! And while we’re at it, how about residents also shouldn’t have to file out-of-state lawsuits to subpoena user data from Mailchimp just to discover that the person sending fake surveys under fake names from fake companies with hidden tracking links to thousands of constituents was, in fact, you? By the way, if Father Ariel thinks that ordeal is behind him, boy oh boy is he in for a rude awakening this year.

12:31pm: Dr. Castro invokes, as she has many times before, the "patients" she used to treat back when she "practiced psychology." I should point out to newer readers that "Dr. Castro" is a running joke around here. She is very much not a doctor, as you've probably gathered. My research shows she was once a registered behavioral technician—a certification she seems to have held for only six years (not the 12 she claims) and that expired years ago. One can only assume the Dr. Castro Center for Behavioral Therapy was in the same building as the Hellen Keller Driving School and the Jeffrey Dahmer Psychiatric Institute.

Anyway, she’s not a licensed psychologist, much less a medical doctor, which makes her use of "patients" more than a little untoward. RBTs are technicians who implement behavior plans under the supervision of actual licensed professionals. They don't diagnose, they don't treat, and they certainly don't "practice psychology,” which is illegal without a license. They have "clients" or "learners," not "patients." Claiming to have "practiced psychology" as an RBT is like a paralegal claiming to have "practiced law."

But hold on, it gets worse. Here's even more of this petulant child's ranting, which I'm clipping only to make two points. First, you can take the girl out of Hialeah, but you can't take Hialeah out of the girl. Second, dishonesty is Dr. Castro's failure mode. Back her into a corner and she doesn't adapt or recalibrate, she simply lies. And when she enters a full failure cascade, the lies cascade right along with her.

For those of you who don’t speak Chonga, let me assure you that virtually every word uttered in that clip was false, even the crap that’s ridiculously easy to fact-check. Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to lie about something as visible as a phone number?

Here’s the phone number currently listed in M.E.D Expeditors of Coral Gables LLC signature line, the company Dr. Castro claims she has nothing to do with despite it being located in the same office and having the same email address as the other M.E.D and operating under the name of Dr. Castro’s loyal lieutenant:

And here’s the phone number for the original M.E.D. Expeditors Inc. circa 2023, long before the doctor’s shell company ever existed:

As a certain failed journalist/day-drinking blogger likes to say, more on that later.

12:33pm: Dr. Castro appears to have recently discovered the word "implicate"—she's used it three times this meeting, each time with a different meaning, each time incorrectly. Her ordinance fails 2-3.

12:36pm (E-5): Dr. Castro introduces legislation that’s almost as stupid as the last: an ordinance that would make any proposed change to the city’s comprehensive plan (zoning) require a 4/5 vote. If, like me, you can’t quite wrap your head around such complex matters, worry not, for the good doctor is here to “put it into perspective” for you in a way that puts a rather literal spin on the idea of dumbing something down:

Indeed! When you buy a house, you know exactly you are buying the house you are buying because of the zoning you are buying it as if you’re buying a townhouse. So wise. So true. It should be carved in marble.

Really though, you know its bad when even the city attorney is obliged to dunk on it, albeit diplomatically. Her point about litigation aside, notice how she brings up further state preemption. What if there’s a bit of Straussian subtext here? What if the people whispering these ideas into Dr. Castro’s empty skull are playing a little chess here? What if it occurred to them that the best way to strengthen Live Local is to resist it? Live Local is, after all, the State's response to local obstructionism. The more cities resist, especially with legally flimsy ordinances that invite preemption, the more justification Tallahassee has to strip away local control entirely. If you wanted to strengthen Live Local, you'd do exactly what Dr. Castro is attempting to do here: throw up resistance that's destined to fail, thereby proving the state's point for them.

12:53pm: After hearing Lago, Anderson, and Lara eviscerate the doctor's logic, Father Ariel is forced—reluctantly—to side with them once again. But not before audaciously trying to spin the past two and a half years of voting 'yes' on virtually every development that's come before him as proof that he's solved overdevelopment. All the developments he spent years trashing as Chief Propagandist of Gables Insider? Those were bad developments. No point discussing it. But the ones that came to the commission after Father Ariel joined? The ones he voted to approve? Those were different, you see. Those were good developments. They were good because…well…that's not important. They’re just good now, okay, and you have no one but Father Ariel and his 13% approval rating and zero policy proposals to thank for it. Pfft.

1:06pm: Dr. Castro launches into another incoherent rant about Live Local. She explains that because of supply and demand, or something, making Live Local projects more profitable in cities like Coral Gables will motivate developers to build them somewhere else where they are less profitable. We are all simpletons for not getting it. More perplexingly, she ends her comments by implying for the second time in the same day that the mayor has some kind of infatuation with her and is even stalking her. She ends her rant by warning him once again that he should “worry about his family” shortly before stomping off to the restroom:

Again, we need to navigate the language barrier here. If that were English, you would have heard Dr. Castro accusing Lago of being sexually attracted to her to the point of obsession. Hence the repeated references to his family. She’s not saying “keep an eye on your kids, accidents happen.” She’s saying “go home to your family before you wreck it over your obsession with me.”

Besides being staggeringly narcissistic, it’s unintentionally hilarious. I happen to know Lago finds Dr. Castro utterly repulsive on every conceivable level. As do many of us. Remember, the man has to spend hours sitting mere inches from her, and unfortunately there are no AI filters in real life, neither for her mouth nor the rest of her. So, yeah, there’s no obsession there. Just revulsion.

1:08pm: Lago moves to censure Dr. Castro for her comments about his family. He fails to get a second. I don't love this move, but not because of the censure itself. Censures are purely theater, and Father Ariel destroyed what little utility they possessed when he dramatically censured Lago back in 2023. I dislike it because, just as a lawyer should never ask a question he doesn't already know the answer to, a politician should never make a motion unless he knows he'll get a second. Lago is left with egg on his face here, even if his indignation is justified:

1:10pm: Sensing something has to be done, Lara invites Dr. Castro—who has finally returned to the dais—to fix her mistake. Dr. Castro then pretends to walk back her remarks by doubling down on them. She can’t help herself. This predictably inflames the situation, prompting Lago to call a one-hour recess. Chaos ensues as Father Ariel tries and fails to block the recess (he famously hates “working” past 2pm). Unfortunately, all of this occurs after the meeting is technically recessed, so none of it appears in the City’s official replay.

When the meeting resumes an hour later, the assistant city attorney opens with a brief lecture reminding the commission—Father Ariel and Dr. Castro, specifically—that this isn’t 2024 and thus commissioners can no longer hijack proceedings like Somali pirates commandeering a cargo ship. Order, it seems, is back on the menu. Oh yeah, and E-5 fails for lack of a second.

3pm-ish (F-1 & F-11): I’ve lost track of time since the recess, but it appears to be mid-afternoon. Items F-1 and F-11 are related and will probably be the meeting’s last truly contentious matter. The City is planning to install a dog park next to the Youth Center. Some residents are in favor, others opposed. The residents against the park have organized and shown up in numbers; some pro-park residents are in attendance as well.

It’s a long and tedious item, but the political takeaway is this: we can now say with absolute certainty that every second of Father Ariel’s I’m a changed man / I’m a uniter not a divider / let’s all come together act—the one he adopted upon returning from his months-long Phishingate-induced sabbatical—was, as expected, an absolute crock of shit. The millisecond he spotted ten or more disgruntled voters gathered in the same room, Father Ariel went from John Lennon (imagine all the people…) to Dee Snider (we’re not gonna take it, no we ain’t gonna take it!). Suddenly he was right there with them, their champion, their voice—insisting that these poor residents were being deliberately kept in the dark by a city that simply doesn’t care about them:

As you can see, his lazy and unaccountable side returned as well. Because not only were the residents kept in the dark—Father Ariel was kept in the dark too. He didn't find out about the 6pm time-certain for this item until the morning of, despite its prominent placement in the commission agenda. And lest you assume he should bear any blame here, let me be clear: it’s not Father Ariel's job to read commission agendas before meetings. It's not his job to maintain even the most basic awareness of even the most basic obligations of his position. Positioning himself for success is somebody else’s job. But it’s never Father Ariel’s. Father Ariel doesn’t do “jobs.”

You do have to wonder, though: How is it that the same self-proclaimed investigative journalist who in 2023 sniffed out a preliminary and strictly confidential ethics inquiry into Lago before literally anyone else in the world is now somehow incapable of accessing a publicly available agenda featured prominently on the city’s website?

And what’s with this excuse that he couldn’t make the 6pm item—despite having all day to make arrangements—because he had to pick up his son from school? His son goes to St. Theresa. You mean to tell me that even if pickup is at 6pm, the 20 minutes that takes didn’t leave him enough time to Zoom into the meeting from home?

This is a man who over the past few months has somehow found the time to visit the Vatican, Brussels, and the West Bank to cosplay as a diplomat—but can’t manage to log into a commission meeting from his living room a few miles from City Hall. He can traverse three continents for photo ops but can’t traverse the distance between his couch and his laptop for his actual job.

Yeah, he’s full of shit. He just didn’t care to attend the meeting, and now he’s trying to leverage his laziness and apathy into some kind of common cause with the few remaining residents who remain open to voting for him.

Anyway, that’s about all I have the time and patience to wade through this time around. But you get the gist: Dr. Castro lied, Father Ariel pandered, and somewhere in between, actual city business got done despite their best efforts. The new majority held. The old tricks failed. And the rest of us are left to wonder how much longer we’ll have to endure the slow, loud, public collapse of two political careers that never deserved to exist in the first place.