Can someone please tell the mayor what’s going on in his city

When Miami commissioners voted to rape the landscape by allowing monstrous ad signs throughout downtown on every government property, it created a perfect opportunity for Mayor Francis Suarez to become a local hero by righting the wrong with a veto. Unfortunately, he was too busy out of town trying to become a national hero to pay attention.

If you didn’t see Miami Today’s report last week, commissioners with zero regard for residents or visitors and a great desire to serve billboard companies with prime advertising sites voted to allow ad signs three times as large as the biggest highway billboard to rise up to 10 stories high at local landmarks, parks and government properties.

Residents will get no benefit, unless you like to look out of your office or condo or car windows and see LED ads that change every eight seconds where you used to see greenery or bayfront or architecture.

It certainly won’t be a lure to the 50 million-plus air passengers who set a new record flying into Miami International Airport last year. Visitors certainly aren’t flying here to see the worst aspect of Times Square in New York.

Commissioners who voted for this travesty cited revenues to the city that could range from $48,000 a year for the smallest sign up to $432,000 for the largest. Even if you assume $5 million from a mix of signs, that will be more than offset by a loss of tourist spending and tax revenues – both sales tax and property tax – so the reduced quality of life will create a net loss.

Manolo Reyes, the only commissioner with the interest in the public wellbeing and the guts to ask for a study first (he never got one) to see how the signs would affect living in Miami, was alone in looking out for the interest of residents. Tellingly, he also chairs the Downtown Development Authority, which shouldn’t be happy to see the city make working, living and shopping downtown less pleasant.

The mayor could well have vetoed the measure. It would have shown his defense of quality of life and a common decency that does not pervade the city commission. Unfortunately, the mayor has been preoccupied with showing the rest of the nation that he has the interest in quality of life and the common decency needed to govern at a higher level, and a veto was never even hinted. You have to wonder if he even notices what the commission, which runs the city with no regard for him, is up to.

He might not notice, but the public will. And there’s more in the works. While this first advertising measure has passed, another in the wings would add Virginia Key Beach Park to the long list of sites that would permit advertising signs, each of which will flow through the city for permits. That one still needs a final vote. While less noxious, it still would be worth vetoing if it ever came to the mayor’s attention.

There is little sense in appealing to the city commission not to go further into billboard land. There is plenty of community opposition to this rape of the landscape, while the billboards have only a small but ultimately controlling constituency – the billboard companies.

If Mayor Suarez has a hope of election at a higher level, he will almost certainly need to show something more than his level of savvy about crypto currency – he will need to show that he cares about environment and the people he represents.

Maybe he could start at home by vetoing the next billboard incursion. Even if the commission were to override that veto, which would be probable given the support there for billboards, with a veto he could show that he was on the people’s side of the issue. Somebody beyond Commissioner Reyes has to be.