Coral Gables had promised itself a process for choosing its next city manager. It also has a written process for deciding whose name goes on a park.
One was a public commitment. The other is formal city policy.
On Aug. 25, the City Commission bypassed the first and waived much of the second, without violating city code or policy.
That is precisely the problem.
Mayor Vince Lago is authorized under city code to negotiate compensation for an appointed official on the city’s behalf and present the package to the commission for approval. Nothing required Coral Gables to conduct a national search before appointing Deputy City Manager Joe Gómez. And nothing required Lago to involve his colleagues in negotiating Gómez’s proposed compensation before bringing the completed package to them.
So he didn’t.
The commission voted 3-1 to appoint Gómez, with Commissioner Melissa Castro dissenting.
“This is not a vote against Joe,” Castro said. “This is a vote for a national search.”
That distinction mattered because a national search was not some process Castro invented Tuesday morning.
In February 2024, Lago sponsored and Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson co-sponsored a resolution directing city staff to engage an executive search firm for the city manager position. When Peter Iglesias returned as city manager in May 2025, Lago and Anderson again supported a future search, while Commissioner Richard Lara said he favored a process that would allow internal and outside candidates to compete.
Lago went further during the 2025 campaign, pledging in a Gables Good Government Committee questionnaire: “I will pursue a national search for our next city manager, one that allows the best and the brightest to apply, to include some of our own senior staff.”
Gómez may very well have won such a search. Castro herself said Tuesday that he was currently the best-suited person for the job.
The commission chose not to find out.
Once Gómez was appointed, Castro’s competing resolution calling for a national search had effectively lost its purpose.
Hours later came another lesson in how Coral Gables handles process when process is optional.
After a meeting that had begun at 9 a.m. and stretched deep into the day, Lago announced what he called “another pocket item that I didn’t want to bring up when we talked about the manager or the DCM (Deputy City Manager).”
He proposed naming a park for Iglesias.
Not an existing park awaiting a new name, but the future park tied to the Publix redevelopment at 2551 Le Jeune Road, a project whose conditions require eventual conveyance of the park to the city.
“I think it’s appropriate and much well-deserved if this commission would honor you by naming a park after your service here in the city of Coral Gables,” Lago told Iglesias.
It was a generous sentiment.
It was also a surprise proposal to permanently place the name of a sitting city manager on public property without first using the review process Coral Gables adopted for exactly such decisions.
The city’s park-naming policy lays out criteria and procedures. Individuals ordinarily must be at least 70 years old or have been dead for at least 18 months, absent certain financial-contribution agreements. Nominations can undergo staff review and review by advisory boards where applicable. Final approval belongs to the City Commission.
Iglesias, at 71, appears to satisfy the age criterion easily.
But age was never the issue.
The process was.
And here is the part that makes Tuesday particularly revealing: the park-naming policy itself allows the City Commission to waive any portion of that process at its discretion.
So the commission could do exactly what it did.
That does not mean it should have.
When Coral Gables named a park for former Mayor Dorothy Thomson in 2024, the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board reviewed the proposal and recommended it unanimously before the commission acted. The same process was followed for James and Sallye Jude.
Tuesday, no advisory board was consulted before Lago raised Iglesias’ name from the dais and the commission voted.
Castro objected.
“I believe that most of these parks are named after people who have been deceased, and you have a long way to go still,” she told Iglesias.
Lara responded by citing living honorees, including David Lawrence Jr., former Mayor Dorothy Thomson and the Kerdyk family. Lago added the Kakouris family.
They were right on the narrow question. Coral Gables has named parks for living people.
But that was not the real objection.
The question was why there was any need to bypass the city’s normal review process for an honor that could just as easily have been considered by the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board at its next meeting.
There was no emergency.
There was no deadline.
The park does not yet exist.
There was only the ability to act immediately.
And the commission used it.
That contrast becomes more striking when placed beside the city’s land-use proceedings.
Crystal Residences took five years and multiple rounds of review before reaching its final vote that same day. The University of Miami’s proposed 30-year campus agreement went before the Planning and Zoning Board and generated a formal public record before reaching the commission.
Those matters carry formal requirements and potential legal consequences if the city gets the process wrong.
A park naming and the selection of a city manager provide elected officials considerably more discretion.
Tuesday showed how this commission used that discretion.
The majority had the authority to act. Elections have consequences, and a three-vote majority is entitled to govern.
But governing is not merely accumulating three votes.
But governing is not merely accumulating three votes.
Process exists for another reason: to test an idea before government turns it into a decision.
A national search would not necessarily have produced a better city manager than Joe Gómez. A Parks Advisory Board hearing would not necessarily have found anyone more deserving than Peter Iglesias.
That is not the point.
The point is that the process provides an opportunity to ask.
To compare.
To hear objections before the result is settled.
To make government demonstrate why its preferred answer is the right one rather than simply the answer three officials already favor.
Lago did not violate the city manager code Tuesday. The commission did not violate the park-naming policy. In fact, the policy explicitly gave commissioners the power to waive its own procedures.
That is what makes the episode worth dwelling on.
A government committed to process does not ask only, “What are we legally required to do?”
It asks, “What would make this decision more credible?”
On Aug. 25, Coral Gables repeatedly chose the first question.
The rules allowed it.
Residents should expect more.
