The SunPost

Mayor in all but name: Donna Shalala.

By Cynthia Archbold

For the first time in three elections, incumbent Coral Gables Mayor Donald Slesnick has competition — candidates George Corrigan and Richard Namon.

But in the background, outshining all three, is UM President and supernova Donna Shalala.

Because of her star power, perhaps the biggest issue upstaging everything else in the election is Shalala’s highly publicized plan to make the University of Miami into a world-class school by constructing 22 major projects.

“The Peace Corps prepared me for working with the city of Coral Gables.”

“She’s the X factor,” says Gables resident Robb Burr, publisher of the Great Gables Guide. “We have to remember that this is a college town.”

The Shalala factor means all three candidates handle the topic of UM’s ambitions with reverence, as the university president has pressured the city to provide much more cooperation for the university’s master plan to build major new facilities quickly — very quickly, despite opposition from neighbors.

Just in time, the City Commission unanimously voted to approve the expansion, just two weeks before the April 10 election.

“We’re 10 years behind the competition in facilities,” Shalala said, speaking before business leaders at the Ponce Development Group luncheon, March 26, the day before the commission approved her plan.

As many as 5,000 UM faculty administrators and students are expected to vote for the next mayor in the city of 45,000 on Tuesday, and what candidates say about how they would treat the university is expected to influence who wins the election.

All three mayoral candidates support the university’s plans to expand its facilities. But only the incumbent Slesnick has had his loyalty tested, as the issue has been brought before City Commission. He has had to publicly walk a tightrope between protecting residents’ rights and addressing UM’s need to provide expanded student housing and parking as well as major new research and recreational facilities. He ultimately voted for UM’s proposal during the March 27 commission meeting.

Shalala, the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, said she wanted to change UM practically overnight. She says Mayor Slesnick has told her repeatedly, “‘You’re trying to do too much.’” “You’re absolutely right,” she replied.

“Coral Gables is not used to a very ambitious, very aggressive university that needs to do things by tomorrow,” Shalala said.

Her mission to transform UM into one of the nation’s top research institutions is so important that Shalala found time to make the speech on the same day she began a huge, national part-time assignment: to clean up problems in the Veterans Administration at the personal request of President George W. Bush. Earlier that morning she had toured the Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Center with Sen. Robert Dole.

“The Peace Corps prepared me for working with the city of Coral Gables,” Shalala joked, referring to her days as a volunteer when she was about the age of UM graduate students. “It teaches you patience.”

Since last summer Shalala and UM’s board of trustees have been trying to reach an agreement with the city of Coral Gables over development plans that had been stalled for two years.

For the past several months Shalala has been showing up at City Hall like a rock star, larger than life, voicing her frustrations during planning and zoning sessions and City Commission meetings. Her appearances and public criticisms have put City Hall and Mayor Slesnick under pressure to take action.

She admits what she wants to do is unprecedented. “No one has ever tried to move a university as fast as we’re trying to move this university.

“If we want to do a building a year, they’re fine,” she said, referring to Gables officials. “But if we’re going to move to the top ranks of universities we cannot build buildings that slowly.”

In contrast to the City Beautiful, Shalala said city of Miami Mayor Manny Diaz agreed to help fast-track her request for a 350,000-square-foot research facility at the UM-affiliated Jackson Memorial Hospital, changing the zoning to allow increased density and permitting the building to be constructed in 15 months. “They understand the relationship between a research building and our ability to attract world-class faculty,” she said.

However, she says “the difference in Coral Gables is understandable. That is, we live in a residential community, where we are surrounded by people with houses. All of them have an opinion. Many of them would prefer that we were apart.”

Yet Shalala got her agenda on the city’s front burner and won the commission’s support after modifying the plans and dropping a controversial parking garage.

Her goal is to create a more residential university, where students and faculty live and don’t drive. She said it’s a win-win for Coral Gables residents, whose biggest fear is increasing traffic.

Shalala said students are starting to pay attention to Coral Gables city politics because now they understand the connection between enjoying new buildings and what happens in City Commission meetings.

The university has been holding a get-out-the-vote drive in the past few weeks, and since only 15 percent of Coral Gables’ 45,000 residents are expected to vote, UM’s potential 5,000 votes could make a difference, although the university isn’t endorsing any one candidate.

Sparks Fly in Election Debate

By Cynthia Archbold

During Monday’s debate at the Coral Gables Congregational Church, incumbent Mayor Don Slesnick, armed with a bigger campaign chest than in any of his three previous election bids, told a group of more than 100 voters why he should continue in office for the next four years.

But during discussions for the upcoming April 10 election, he faced a barrage of criticism from his two challengers, former Mayor George Corrigan, who was ironically once Slesnick’s ally and mentor when Slesnick first became mayor, and political newcomer Richard Namon.

It’s the first time in two elections Slesnick has faced opponents. Corrigan and Namon gave the crowd an earful with attacks over the pension fund crisis, the city’s expanding budget, city spending and the controversies that have plagued City Hall over the past year.

But Slesnick’s campaign supporters have been more generous than ever in this, the mayor’s fourth campaign, writing checks amounting to $204,875 according to the campaign treasurer’s report. The mayor’s original goal was $70,000.

Money has not deterred Richard Namon, a 71-year-old businessman, from coming out of seclusion to challenge Slesnick on every issue across the board. Namon, who won’t accept campaign contributions but is spending $15,000 of his own funds, accused the city of using “Enron-style accounting,” during the debate. Both he and Corrigan say the city’s spending is out of control.

Yet Corrigan says he would take on more debt to acquire a $1.5 million general obligation bond to pay for city improvements. Namon says he wouldn’t even consider doing that without studying the city’s finances in detail.

Slesnick, meanwhile, has proposed a $70 million general obligation bond that the city is studying.

Both Namon and Corrigan object to the two-year-and-counting contract standoff with the Fraternal Order of Police.

In fact, the FOP is backing Corrigan, 79, the former CEO of Burdines, who served as the Coral Gables mayor from 1987-1993. The FOP is contributing heavily to Corrigan’s $28,100 war chest.

Police have been without a labor contract for two years, since they refused to contribute to the city’s retirement plan. Police are so angry with the city that they took to the streets in protest during one of the mayor’s fundraising events in February. During Monday’s debate Corrigan said police and firemen should be paid more than any other city workers and vowed to end the contract dispute.

Another hot topic was the two-year rift with the University of Miami over its development plans, which resulted in a truce on March 27, when commissioners unanimously approved the university’s expansion, just in time for the election.

Slesnick’s two challengers say the city should have done more to accommodate the university’s plans to build an additional one million square feet of new construction in 22 projects to make UM a more residential university with modern state of the art research facilities.

The incumbent mayor characterized his relationship with UM President Donna Shalala as warm from the beginning, despite conflicts. He says that when UM was ready to negotiate with a completed plan, “the disagreements were resolved in two to three weeks.”

The candidates tackled another controversy: the startling revelation, which came out of nowhere at a recent commission meeting, that Coral Gables Country Club hasn’t paid $250,000 in city loan payments for 10 months, to pay back a $4 million loan from the city. The country club doesn’t want to pay until it turns a profit.

The mayor and commissioners said they didn’t know before Finance Director Don Nelson gave them the news, inadvertently during the March 13 commission meeting, while answering another question about the city’s debt.

However, Namon and Corrigan scoffed at the notion that Slesnick wasn’t aware. Corrigan called the loan “a sweetheart deal” for the country club that never should have happened.

The challengers also attacked Slesnick for the city’s escalating pension fund costs — city personnel retirement benefits which have quintupled over the past five years, consuming 68 percent of the budget. Rising pension fund costs are crippling budgets in cities across the nation.

Slesnick countered that Corrigan is the one responsible for the crisis, because when he was mayor he stopped employee contributions to the fund, placing the entire burden of paying for the retirement program on the city.

All of the candidates, including two running against incumbent commissioners, are asking why taxes aren’t going down when property valuations have increased so dramatically in recent years.

That’s the reason Omar Pasalodos says he’s taking on incumbent Commissioner Chip Withers. Pasalodos has raised $5,350 to run against Withers, who has amassed a campaign chest of $79,650 and has been a commissioner for 16 years.

John Gottshalk, in his early 20s, who just got his bachelor’s degree from UM in 2005, is running for the seat held by incumbent Commissioner Bill Kerdyk, who has raised $75,320. Gottshalk believes the city could save money and improve service by using UM student interns.

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