News Shack Attack Grovites decry kiosks as empty vessels. By Tamara Lush Sometimes city leaders mean well. They spend money on a project thinking it will help residents, improve quality of life, and make the Magic City a little friendlier. Take the Coconut Grove kiosks. The city spent $201,000 to…
It’s a blazing late May afternoon at Nathaniel “Traz” Powell Stadium near Opa-locka. The 29 members of the Miami Fury gather at the 50-yard line, dressed in their shiny aqua uniforms. On the running track that surrounds the field, near the locker rooms, the Pure Funk DJs from 97.7 FM…
When it comes to concocting bad government policy, Miami-Dade government officials are head and shoulders above everybody else. Last week, county commissioners Bruno Barreiro and Barbara Jordan floated the idea of asking voters to approve an additional half-cent sales tax to bail out the county’s mass transit boondoggle, otherwise known…
Culture Sweet Truth A filmmaker’s exposé peeves the sugar powers. By Edmund Newton If they gave an Oscar for the muckraking documentary that most riles the world’s fat cats, turning them into red-faced, sputtering stuffed shirts, Amy Serrano’s film about Big Sugar would surely win hands down. The exposé film…
In this week’s New Times, I report on an internal investigation of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Lt. Lisa Hart, who wasn’t showing up for work yet still getting paid. The investigation is based on an anonymous complaint filed with the Miami-Dade Police public corruption unit. Here you will find a copy…
Lisa Hart has a lot of leisure time. In the past two years, the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue lieutenant has burned through 865 hours of taxpayer-funded vacation and sick leave. That’s almost five months. Oh, and she also blew off another 2.5 months of unpaid time, records show. But that’s not…
Politics In Carlos, We Trust The boss pays you. time to pay him back. By Francisco Alvarado A couple dozen high-level, well-paid Miami-Dade County executives are investing in a little job security. Just more than $5,000 of the $719,860 contributed to Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez’s re-election campaign in the first…
Miami-Dade’s top public corruption prosecutor doesn’t have to worry about the Florida Bar coming after him anymore. Bar counsel Arne Vanstrum has dismissed a complaint against Joseph Centorino, the assistant state attorney who heads the public corruption unit, alleging he acted unethically by not prosecuting high-ranking officials in the Miami-Dade…
You can always count on Miami Today Publisher Michael Lewis to do what the Miami Herald editorial board won’t do. This week, Lewis takes Miami-Dade County Schools Superintendent Rudolph “Rudy” Crew and School Board Chairman Agustin Barrera to the wood shed and whups them real good. Here’s an excerpt: For…
Today, for the 54th time since July 2007, Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Rudolph “Rudy” Crew did not show up for work. This time, he took a vacation day. Meanwhile, the school district continues to fall apart. — Francisco Alvarado…
After a day-long drinking binge on March 30, 1988, Douglas and Dennis Escobar were driving a stolen gray Mazda on Calle Ocho near SW 32nd Avenue when they passed a police cruiser. Miami Police Lt. Victor Estefan, a 49-year-old veteran of the force, turned on his lights and sirens and…
The South Florida Business Journal recently published a story detailing a slimy deal between media executive and former Miami-Dade mayoral candidate Jose Cancela and the Jackson Memorial Foundation, the fund raising arm for the Public Health Trust, which runs Jackson Memorial Hospital. According to reporters Brian Bandell and Oscar Musibay,…
Several high-level, well-paid Miami-Dade County executives are investing in a little job security. At least 24 department directors, assistant county managers, and executive assistants contributed money to Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez’s re-election campaign. Even the folks who handle the mayor’s image and field calls from the press gave cash to…
Lately Florida marijuana growers are providing drug agents with a lot of job security. Yesterday, the Drug Enforcement Agency led raids on 150 indoor pot grow houses across the state, with one-third shut down in the 305. Television news stations WPLG and WFOR reported that law enforcers arrested 135 people…
Inside Room 222 on the second floor of Allapattah Middle School this past January 17, around 4:30 p.m., the 15 students in Erika Selig’s eighth-period academic improvement class are sitting at their desks, working on algebra exercises. The walls of the classroom are decorated with large, colorful phrases explaining the…
News Toke It Easy Snap out of it, 4/20 revelers: Florida legislators want to stomp on your buzz. By Francisco Alvarado The good people who run the State of Florida are celebrating the cannabis culture’s favorite day, April 20, by ruining it for weed lovers. In Tallahassee, an enthusiastic majority…
News Easy on Rudy The newspaper of record plays softball with the schools chief. By Francisco Alvarado The Miami Herald does a fine job exposing waste and corruption at city and county halls. It’s too bad that enterprising tenacity doesn’t carry over to coverage of Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS)…
For most of his life, Gregory “Silk” Thomas was a pimp and a drug dealer. In the 30 years he has lived in Miami Beach, the 45-year-old ex-con has been arrested so many times that his rap sheet could blanket a good chunk of Ocean Drive. “Being exposed to the…
News The Day Scarface Came to Town Twenty-five years ago, politics derailed De Palma’s Miami plans. BY FRANK HOUSTON Brian De Palma’s Scarface might hold a record for the movie with the most fucks per minute. The gangster epic, parts of which were shot in Miami Beach 25 years ago…
On a recent Thursday about 1 p.m., Carlos Manrique is driving his white Hyundai SUV west on the Dolphin Expressway when he grins and compares himself to the founder of software giant Microsoft. “Look at Bill Gates,” he says. “He didn’t graduate college.” The 48-year-old uses this shaky logic to…
$50,000 News Flash! Cops Are Cranky Filed under: News Results from a Miami Police Department “work climate” study are in, and it suffices to say the men and women who patrol the streets aren’t too happy with the department’s top brass. According to the survey, 64 percent “of those who…
It happened in 1996. Mario Lavandeira Jr. can’t recall the exact date, but it was late in his senior year at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, the all-boys Catholic institution that relocated to Miami from Cuba in 1961 after alumnus Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista. Educators, parents, and students filled Belen’s…
