Mayor moves to promote Gómez to city manager after previously backing a national search

By Coral Gables Gazette staff

Mayor Vince Lago is asking the City Commission Tuesday to appoint Deputy City Manager José “Joe” Gómez as Coral Gables’ next city manager, effective Jan. 8, 2027, with a proposed salary and benefits package the mayor already negotiated.

The move would settle a question the Coral Gables Gazette has tracked since Peter Iglesias announced his resignation in May. It also would depart from a competitive search process that Lago, Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson and Commissioner Richard Lara have previously supported publicly in selecting Iglesias’ eventual successor.

Gómez’s appointment is item F-4 on the city’s final revised Aug. 25 agenda, sponsored by Lago. A competing resolution, item F-5, sponsored by Commissioner Melissa Castro, would instead direct staff to launch a formal national executive search and return to the Commission Sept. 15 with proposed search parameters, a timeline, cost estimates and a public-engagement process.

The timing adds another dimension to the decision. The current Commission would make the appointment about 10 weeks before Coral Gables’ Nov. 3 election, when three of the five Commission seats — the mayor and two commissioner seats — are on the ballot. Gómez would not take office until more than two months after that election.

A search the current majority previously supported

The paper trail goes back to Iglesias’ first departure.

On Feb. 27, 2024, after Iglesias had been fired by a different Commission majority, Lago sponsored and Anderson co-sponsored a resolution directing city staff to engage an executive search firm for the city manager position. That same meeting, Commissioners Ariel Fernandez, Melissa Castro and then-Commissioner Kirk Menendez instead voted to appoint retired U.S. Marshal Amos Rojas Jr. as city manager. Lago and Anderson voted against the appointment.

When the political balance shifted and Lago’s new governing majority reappointed Iglesias in May 2025, the succession question surfaced again.

Anderson said the city should continue with a search and emphasized the need for a succession plan. Lago agreed, saying the intent was for Iglesias to stabilize the city while officials moved forward with a search for his replacement. Lara likewise told commissioners that he had advocated for a search that would give both internal and outside candidates an opportunity to apply and said at the time that he still held that view.

Castro, who voted against bringing Iglesias back, criticized the majority at that meeting for what she saw as abandoning its previous insistence on a national search.

Fifteen months later, Lago is asking the commission to make Gómez the permanent manager without first opening the position to a competitive process.

Gómez’s record

Gómez joined Coral Gables in July 2024 as assistant city manager for operations and infrastructure and was promoted to deputy city manager in February 2025. He oversees the city’s Development Services, Parking and Mobility Services, and Public Works departments.

That chronology also reveals an apparent error in the proposed appointment resolution: its preamble says Gómez has served “as Deputy City Manager since 2024,” although the city’s own biography says he held the assistant city manager title for his first seven months.

Before joining Coral Gables, Gómez served as public works director for the City of Miami Beach, where he led a 360-person department across four divisions with a combined capital and operating budget of approximately $600 million. In 2022, the Cuban-American Association of Civil Engineers named him the Luis P. Saenz Engineer of the Year.

Gómez has more than 47 years of civil engineering experience, including 10 years with the Florida Department of Transportation and leadership roles in the public and private sectors. A registered professional engineer since 1985, he holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Florida International University and has taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Miami, where he also serves on the Civil and Architectural Engineering Industrial Advisory Board.

Nothing in Castro’s competing resolution challenges Gómez’s qualifications. The question it raises — as do the prior statements from Lago, Anderson and Lara — is whether the city’s top administrative position should have been opened to competition before being filled.

The compensation package

The proposed resolution sets Gómez’s starting salary at $305,324.86 a year, essentially the same as the salary the Gazette reported in July for Iglesias.

The salary would increase in future fiscal years under the same ordinance governing raises for other appointed officials. In lieu of joining the city pension plan, Gómez would receive a city retirement contribution equal to 25% of his base salary — $76,331.22 at his proposed starting salary — or the maximum permitted by law, whichever is less.

The package also provides 20 weeks of severance if Gómez is terminated for a reason other than misconduct; at least 120 hours of annual leave each year with no cap on accumulation; full payout of unused sick leave when his city service ends; a monthly car allowance equal to the highest provided to any appointed city official or employee; and city-paid health, dental and vision coverage for Gómez and his family.

The resolution states that Lago negotiated the terms with Gómez on the city’s behalf under Section 2-28(b)(3) of the City Code and submitted the package to the Commission for review. Tuesday’s vote would determine whether to approve both Gómez’s appointment and those compensation terms.

By comparison, when the Commission reappointed Iglesias in May 2025, his starting salary was $295,000 with many of the same benefits, including the 25 percent retirement contribution, car allowance and leave provisions. That resolution did not provide severance.

Iglesias now expected to stay until January

Gómez’s Jan. 8 start date also reveals a significant change in the transition timeline.

The proposed resolution states twice that Gómez would become city manager at 5 p.m. Jan. 8 “upon completion of Mr. Iglesias’s tenure as City Manager.”

Iglesias’ May resignation letter set his departure for Oct. 2 and said he was announcing it early enough to give the Commission sufficient time to identify a successor. As recently as last month, city officials told the Gazette that no search had begun and no decision had been made about an interim manager if a permanent successor had not been selected by Iglesias’ announced departure date.

The Jan. 8 date in Lago’s resolution aligns with what multiple sources have separately told the Gazette: Iglesias is now expected to remain in office for roughly three months beyond his previously announced departure.

The city has not separately announced that extension.

The resolution also states that Iglesias “strongly recommends” Gómez as his successor.

Castro calls for a national search

Castro’s competing resolution describes a competitive national recruitment as “consistent with prior public commitments” made following Iglesias’ transitional appointment.

It would direct city staff to begin the process of retaining an executive search firm specializing in local-government recruitment and return Sept. 15 with recommended search parameters, a recruitment timeline, estimated costs and a public-engagement process. The Commission would then establish the qualifications, candidate profile, interview process and final selection procedure.

Castro and Fernandez both voted against Iglesias’ reappointment in May 2025.

How to follow it

The Coral Gables City Commission meets and will discuss the time-certain item on Tuesday, Aug. 25, at 10 a.m. in the Community Meeting Room at Police and Fire Headquarters, 2151 Salzedo St. and the meeting will be streamed live.