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Let’s go back a few years.
Steve Cody, a resident of Palmetto Bay, gets up to speak at a meeting of the South Miami City Commission. He was there to talk about why the City of Pleasant Living had to spend about a million bucks defending the efforts of then Mayor Phil Stoddard to fire Police Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro. Stoddard wouldn’t let Cody speak. This began a bruising fight between these two.
In the years since, I’m sure everybody thought that battle was over. If what happened on Friday, Aug. 27, is any indication, everybody thought wrong.
Phil managed to hang onto the chairmanship of the Clean Energy Green Corridor District — which covers Miami Shores, Pinecrest, Cutler Bay, Palmetto Bay, South Miami, Miami and Coral Gables — after he stopped being the alcalde of South Miami.
In November 2020, Steve Cody beat David Singer by 498 votes and took his seat on the Palmetto Bay Village Council. Mayor Karyn Cunningham had been Palmetto Bay’s designee on the Green Corridor District, but was stretched too thin. She planned to hand over her duties on the Green Corridor District to Steve Cody and began reaching out to the staff of the district.
That’s when she started feeling pushback. At the Aug. 27 meeting, Mayor Cunningham communicated that she had received a phone call from Steve Alexander, former city manager of South Miami. Alexander told her that, if she went through with her plan to replace herself with Cody, Stoddard would resign as a member of the Green Corridor District. Undaunted, Karyn pushed the nomination forward.
The agenda for the Aug. 27 meeting had an item for the confirmation of two other members, but left Cody’s name off. When that fact was made known, Cody’s name was put on the agenda — sort of. Cody’s nomination was put forth as an amendment to the confirmation.
When the meeting started, Phil pulled the nominations from the top of the agenda and put it on the bottom. When the item finally came up, Stoddard pulled out a typed sheet from his papers and outlined Cody’s problems with the Florida Bar that led to a one-year suspension. That, Stoddard proclaimed, was reason enough to exclude Cody from the Green Corridor District.
Cody took the charge in stride. He posited that Stoddard’s real motivation was he had filed a complaint with the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics and the Public Trust about Stoddard. Had I been on the hot seat like Cody, I would not only have brought it up, I would have sent copies to all the members of the Green Corridor District. But that’s just me.
In the end, only Stoddard and his replacement, Sally Philips, voted to reject Cody. All the other members present voted to confirm. (Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Cutler Bay Mayor Tim Meerbot were absent.)
After the meeting adjourned, it is reported that Phil Stoddard looked like a puppy that had been admonished for peeing on the carpet. What’s Phil going to do now? Will he resign as chairman or grit his teeth? Only Stoddard knows.
I know both these men. In some ways they are cut from the same cloth. Both of them are extremely nerdy. One of them is a science wonk and the other is wonky about science. Both share an uncomfortableness with interacting with the public, but force themselves to do it.
Stoddard’s relayed threat to resign appears to have moved no voting member. No single man or woman is indispensable to the smooth operation of government, something Stoddard appears to have forgotten.
It will be interesting to see how these two will clash over the coming years. It’s not a question of if, but of when. I, for one, plan to tune into future meeting of the Green Corridor District with a big tub of popcorn.
