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Tom Wells's avatar

Your 4-part treatise on the maximum millage rate is like a Lady Whistledown gossip letter. However, unlike the anonymous Lady Whistledown who criticizes the Queen, you anonymously criticize anyone who is critical of Mayor Lago’s unfavorable minority positions. By a super-majority vote of 4-1, the Commission rejected Mayor Lago’s position (and your treatise) and agreed to keep the maximum millage rate the same since 2016. I believe this vote reflects the position of Coral Gables residents because the cost of a $2,600,000 budget reduction to Coral Gables residents significantly exceeds the de minimis benefit that they would receive. The proposed 2% property tax reduction to Agave Plaza Trustee LLC (the Plaza with a proposed $41,218 tax savings) or HGIT Coral Gables LLC (a/k/a Hines Global Income Trust that is a Houston-based global real estate fund that purchased Life Time Living at Gables Station in 2022 for $386 million with a proposed $29,410 tax savings) is meaningless to their annual budget. You want the City to reduce its budget (and residents to pay such cost with a City that has less money) in order to give wealthy real estate owners a tax cut! Why? It is a cost of doing business. The millage rate has remained the same since they purchased property in Coral Gables.

Your treatise includes numerous falsities. For example, the City did not extend a “significant financial benefit” to a “local burger joint” or to a “local beer hall”. Resolution 2024-153 (unanimously approved by the Commission) references 2 market rent analyses for a “local burger joint” with market rent paid by the tenant. Resolution 2024-31 (also unanimously approved by the Commission) provides that the renewal of an existing lease with a “local beer hall” at $50 per square foot is market rent. Note that a tenant with adjacent space to the local beer hall is paying only $31 per square foot for a 15 year lease term with 2 separate 5 year renewal options (Resolution 2022-06). Its lease rate will only be $47.06 per square foot in year 15 (2037), and the rent increase for the renewal option cannot exceed 8% of its then current rent – that tenant’s rent will likely always be below market for 25 years. And that lease is currently in default per Article XXIII.A.2 and per XXIII.A.6(b) allowing the City to seek market rent – I provide references to make your review easier.

The residents will benefit and enjoy the re-opening of the local burger joint after a protracted 31 month renovation and continue to benefit and enjoy the local beer hall that the former City Manager and certain Commissioners threatened to close.

Part 4 of your treatise is based on ad hominem fallacy attacks. A “fallacy” is a failure in reasoning which renders an argument invalid – assuming that you were making an argument. And if you address the argument rather than the person making the argument, your treatise becomes much shorter and more readable. It is time to move on and pick a new perceived injustice – hopefully one that a majority of the residents and Commissioners support rather than just a personal grievance of Mayor Lago. If you would like to discuss your concept of reducing the City budget to give money to wealthy real estate owners, I will be at the Coral Gables Youth Center on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons playing pickleball. I look forward to meeting you in person.

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