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The City of Coral Gables has many roles. Its police patrol the streets and its fire fighters put out — you guessed it — fires. Code Enforcement enforces City regulations with a manic kind of zeal.
Most of the jobs it does well. One of them, as a landlord, they are still working on this one but it looks like it is the weakest area.
It looks like the city owns about 30 properties within its boundaries, including a country club and golf courses, locations for restaurants, museums, playhouses, and even cell phone towers. Finally, it seems to have forgotten there are two sides to being a landlord.
The first is letting someone else use your property. The other is collecting the rent.
The city keeps forgetting that second part. Burger Bob’s had many issues including lease violations as well as owing over $20,000 in back rent. However, the city never pulled the trigger on an eviction until the lease was almost over. Before that, the restaurant Ortanique defaulted on nearly $175,000 that the city never bothered collecting, writing off the amount in 2020 without trying to hold anyone accountable. Now, the Coral Gables Country Club has defaulted on its lease, putting the city in another bad position.
These may be just three of the 30 properties the city owns, but if this sample is any indication, the municipaility needs to take a closer look at all of the properties.
The city should post on their website a copy of every lease that it has on these properties. The information should reflect a a running tally of what is due in terms of rent and records of payment or non-payment along with the percentage of sales paid by tenants with such leases that require those payments. In addition, any maintenance and improvement records on the property. And, just as important, who is up to date and who is behind on the rent posted on a regular basis.
The businesses the city deals with in the capacity of a landlord might protest that this is too tough. After all, if they are a tenant in a shopping center, the owners of the shopping center would have access to the details regarding the terms of their leases. And that is the point.
And that’s where the analogy breaks down. The taxpayers of Coral Gables are, ultimately, the landlords. The city owns the property in a kind of trust for the benefit of the public and the officials have a fiduciary duty to residents to maintain the property for them. And as the real landlords, the people have a right to know everything without having to make a public records request.
