By George Volsky
georgevolsky@aol.com

Coral Gables Mayor Don Slesnick has said it himself.

“We look dysfunctional,” he affirmed Tuesday during the City Commission’s discussion of the Biltmore Hotel’s $3.9 million debt. These three words, legitimate gems as it were, he interjected into his customary braggadocio-laced drollery with which he tries to prove that he is the commission leader. The words, certainly not written as reportedly are by a well-paid outside flack, were uttered in the midst of the two-hour long, confused, at times incomprehensive talkathon of the Biltmore issue.

Slesnick was only partially right. It wasn’t so much the commission  - hence the “we” - that was dysfunctional. It was he with his customary lack of understanding and of minimizing city problems – or perhaps with his manipulative pretense of not-knowing as some of his erstwhile friends observe - who over the years has dragged his colleagues down to a low plane of irrelevancy. It is he who is principally responsible for the fact that the commission is seen today by the overwhelming majority of residents as a profligate, untrustworthy body, and as a quintet that must be totally replaced, beginning at the top.  

It is Slesnick who by dint of his power to set the commission’s agenda and the meetings’ conduct, and believing that he still has his hands on the tiller, tries to dominate the city discourse. The mayor makes those who observe the commission’s open sessions grin when after assuming a pose in the manner of Rodin’s “The Thinker,” he suddenly falls over himself to congratulate his own leadership. Now at the end of his political life here, finding his ship wrecked on a sea of disappointment and frustration, and talking nineteenth to the dozen, he finally admits that he “looks dysfunctional.”

Many people wonder whether the other members of the commission realize how under Slesnick’s direction that body has bogged down in pointless, redundant and time-consuming verbal hemorrhage (sometimes mingled with embarrassing mendacity) that has produced nothing.

Another Slesnick verbal gem has to be recorded. During the June 30 commissions meeting, with a straight face, he affirmed: “Our city government has never operated outside public eye.”

This could be amusing if pronounced, with a grimace, by Jon Stewart. But here nothing could be further from the truth, and Slesnick was made foolish by a colleague Tuesday.  Following an unsurprisingly brief and meaningless “budget workshop” (which possibly on Slesnick orders was not shown on our expensive and largely dispensable television channel), and after a 3-2 vote for the 6.189 rolled-back millage tax rate in the 2010-2011 Fiscal Year, Commissioner Ralph Cabrera, who cast the dissenting vote (the other was Vice Mayor Bill Kerdyk), shouted: “It (the millage rate) was a done deal. The goose had been cooked.”

There was, also unsurprising, one bit of news last Tuesday, which possibly escaped the notice of most observers because it was revealed by City Attorney Elizabeth Hernandez in the afternoon at the very end of the commission’s meeting. She said that on Monday, July 19 the commission would hold an “executive” session to discuss “courtroom strategy” pertaining to a circuit court hearing in the case of Somerset Academy which wants to operate a charter school in the University Baptist Church, at 624 Anastasia Ave.

Hernandez said that the commission and City Manager Patrick Salerno would also talk to two attorneys she had hired to represent Coral Gables at the court hearing.

TWO LAWYERS for what appears a relatively straightforward case which so far has been handled by Hernandez and her city assistant!!! Aren’t we paying them good salaries expecting to perform at least simple legal functions?  In most cities, and certainly in all private entities, an executive who regards her or his job as a comfortable dotage unencumbered by work and responsibilities would be certainly hauled over the coals. Alas, not here by the Coral Gables commission.

But back to the city-owned Biltmore. The issue was placed on the commission agenda by Slesnick at the formal request of the hotel’s management.  Although the mayor and his colleagues have known for at least 18 months that the management has not been paying the city for the hotel’s lease and for managing the golf course, Slesnick, for reasons unknown, had no desire or courage to publically discuss the problem before. Yet everyone in City Hall knows that he with the former disgraced city manager David Brown had been orchestrating for years the city-Biltmore relations, and that he, Brown and presumably Hernandez had kept documents related to these ties.

It was Salerno, rather than the commission, who has begun a process trying to find out the city’s financial position vis-à-vis the Biltmore, whose management at one point claimed having spent $30 million on the necessary upkeep of the “historic” hotel, thus actually being owed a  bundle by Coral Gables. Salerno did two things: He ordered an internal   review of the city-Biltmore finances and retained the services of the international firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) to review both the financial and the legal aspects of the ties, the last because the Biltmore management has been able to involve in the financial dispute the U.S. government that gave the Biltmore property to Coral Gables under certain federal “historic” conditions and requirements.

When PWC began investigating and requested that the city provide Biltmore documents, it has reportedly found that many important ones, which should have been in custody of Hernandez, were missing. (In most cities that would have been enough to dismiss the irresponsible official.) The Biltmore management has been asked to provide copies (it said it gave PWC about 16,000 pages), but that has delayed its work, which certainly is not inexpensive.

But the Biltmore management, needing an injection of cash in view of reduced bookings caused by the economic recession, for the first time asked the city to approve an “Interim Agreement) for eventual repayment of its debt - it conceded it owes the city $3,944,000. The city - true to Hernandez’s custom – has an outside lawyer advising her on the Biltmore. The attorney has submitted a counterproposal to the Biltmore’s Interim Agreement and the commission will have to decide on Monday, July 19 what to do next. The logical solution would be to wait for the results of the internal audit and, more important, for PWC’s comprehensive report. 

The Biltmore is putting increasing pressure on Slesnick and the commission to sign by Monday an interim agreement which both the audit and PWC could find not in the best interest of the city. And as Coral Gables taxpayer Richard Namon has pointed out in his opinion letter to the Gazette, signing it without a full public hearing might be even be illegal. Stay tuned.

During the Tuesday Biltmore discussion, one commissioner who could not be identified because of the prevailing din in the chamber, referred to the hotel as the (David) Brown-Biltmore. Perhaps it would have been better the Slesnick-Brown-Biltmore.”