Remarks by Vince C. Lago
518 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 18 of 21
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“Pretty self-explanatory. Mr. Clerk, do you have any public comment? No, Mr. Mayor. All right, we'll take a motion.”
“Thank you. Any public comment? No, Mr. Mayor. May I have a motion?”
“Thank you for clarifying. May I have a motion?”
“I have a... One second. I'll second. Mr. Clerk?”
“May I have a motion? We have a motion and a second. Mr. Clerk?”
“Commissioner Fernandez? Yes. Mayor Lago? Yes. Moving on to item F7.”
“So thank you very much. This is a message to my colleagues and one person in particular who's here. What we have done here, and I'm happy the Herald is listening to this, what we've done here is we've weaponized social media. Community, but we have blogs here and what we do turn people on the Commission and certain people in this room is they leak false information To these blogs. Let me give you an example and then they run with it They run with it and before you know, it's snowballs. You're knocking on someone's door and they're saying this and I can't support you because I hear that you're…”
“George Merrick. I'm fine being second to George Merrick from Commissioner Fernandez.”
“Just this year alone, it's 30 acres. How many acres have we brought to the downtown? How many acres have we brought to the residential communities through legislation that I've written? And it's the constant... You know, BS, lies, innuendos, scare tactics that are used to get people, oh, they're going to scare. The reason why they want to do the things in the Granada Golf Course is because they want to sell it. So you know what I did? Let's take it to an extreme. Let's take it to an extreme. And here's your extreme. The voters will decide now, by the way, green space, golf courses, and youth…”
“So this, I don't want to put this forward. I don't want to tie the hands because at the end of the day, what's the point of me having an elected official? And I talked to the manager. The manager asked me, Vince, what's the point of being an elected official? Well, you have no choice. You have to do this. Because people will implicate you in things. Like, for example... Raising your salary. I think it's absolutely insane that an elected official would raise their own salary. We did it here. We did it here in the middle of a budget hearing. So what do I do now? Residents are the ones that will…”
“So that's why I'm putting it forward and I ask for every one of my colleagues on this commission to support it because it's the right thing to do. Madam Vice Mayor.”
“I did that also. Look, my point is that we can go back and forth about simple words here, but this has nothing to do, nothing to do with the commission. This has to do with stopping the abuse on individuals' reputations in this town. And it's enough, because I'm tired of hearing the assault that happens on people's reputations here on blogs and anonymous people. I don't read any of that stuff. They send me screenshots. They stop sending me this stuff. I don't care what any of these people say. Put your name front and center. Don't be anonymous. Front and center. So my point is that I read it.…”
“The project that was split because Venetory redeveloped the, not redeveloped, he beautified this exceptional historic home and he split the lot. He's going to sell it. We bought it. We bought that lot. We bought the one on 37th Avenue in Alhambra. We bought the one on Granada adjacent to the Coral Gables Country Club. We bought the big piece on Salvador. We bought Dorothy Thompson Park.”
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“I mean, outside of, you know, I don't know what else we could do. You know, the Mayor Selesing was here. He was like, listen, he wasn't saying it, but he was kind of saying, hey, you can do a four-fifths vote. No, no, we're taking it even further. We're taking it even further. I don't think it gets, I don't know what else. We could do. So our intent, and I think we're pretty clear, for the youth center, for the Granada golf course, and for all our green spaces, for the youth center, for Granada, for the golf courses, and for all our green spaces, is to never allow them to be developed. Never.…”
“Salvador, and he was always advocating on behalf, and he was the one that basically asked me to change my legislation from 100% going to acquisition to 65, 35, where 35% of it went into renovation of existing parks, and 65 went to acquiring new parks. So I just want to give him a little shout out.”
“Let me correct you. Okay, number one. I already talked to this with the city attorney. 99-year leases, we don't 99-year lease parks. And we don't have any parks that are leased here in the city. So let's be very careful with the things that we say because, again, they're misleading and people believe them, just like we're going to redevelop the youth center and we're going to redevelop the golf course. So this is as extreme as it gets. There's nothing. There's no sales. There's no leases. There's no rents. There's no nothing. You cannot sell a city-owned piece of property that is a green…”
“Go ahead. So... What else would you like?”
“Supermajority. Let's go. Let's add it. Let's add it. Supermajority. How about that? Anything else you'd like to add? Thank you. Okay. So my point is this. Whether it's a sale, lease, rent, no green space in the city of Coral Gables will be sold.”
“Now it will be a golf course or a youth center. That's what I'm proposing.”
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“It's as clear as day. Clear as day. Let's stop playing around with semantics here. May I have a motion?”
“Do you have any public comment? Yes, sir, we do. Okay. Public comment. Thank you.”
“Correct. But that's something that we can work on over the next few weeks.”