checks or balances?

The City Managers of Coral Gables AND the City of Miami have been found to abuse their credit card priveleges with outrageous and expensive lunches, etc. Who reviews and approves our City Manager's expense account? Does anybody know? The City has NO fiscal restraints in most of its enterprises, could this be just another case of expensive outlays in a time of great financial difficulty?

MIC musings

Went to the MIC site and found it very interesting. From the looks of it around 50-60% of that land is already designated for the MIC, with additional land earmarked for "additional development". Wonder who will own that land once its developed? The State? The developers? Who? there MUST be somebody who knows the answer to these questions, right? Who is it? The County? The state? Its still a relatively small piece of property with a LOT of questions attached that wont be answered anytime soon. If, as the City Manager said, the County has been "losing hundreds of thousands of dollars for years" on area 9, why would want it? We already have PLENTY of money-losing projects in our boundaries now- CC addition, the bathrooms, the pool, paid utilities for Santana, and the golf course, to name a few of the more egregious recent disasters. Each debacle mentioned cost us AT least 100k in cost overruns, change orders, and questionable judgements; some cost as much as 400k. None were brought in anywhere close to deadline (by YEARS) and ALL were AT least 300-800 % over usual and customary Dade County construction costs. SOMEBODY has to be held accountable for these series of ongoing disasters and that someone is the City Manager, as they ALL happened on his watch and under his theoretical supervision.

good questions

Will the bathrooms ever be completed ? Can we expect the same sloppy construction at the new gym? At Stafford field the soil is washing away from the slab, which is going to create problems down the road. To set the building on an island in a flood zone was stupid. Does anybody in the building dept know anything about erosion? How soon will it be before that slab starts to crack? Who made that mistake? Who made the mistake on the sewer hook ups? Who made the mistake of not designing the buildings to meet ADA requirements? These are ALL good questions that deserve an answer. Similar questions were asked over TWO MONTHS ago and no response so far, despite repeated followups. The bathrooms are ANOTHER example of the stumbling, fumbling, and bumbling going on in City Hall. The amazing thing is that apparently it is done by GHOSTS, as NOBODY takes any responsibility for these screwups! NOBODY is apparently in charge. The City Manager is paid a LOT of money, isnt he ultimately the one responsible for how the city functions, or DOESNT function, as in these cases? When will he take responsibility for these multiple and ongoing disasters? The buck certainly stops at his desk on paydays,why not any other days?