Carollo’s staff seen removing opponent’s campaign sign. He says there’s a reason
Miami resident Wendy Alvarez was sitting outside enjoying the nice weather late Tuesday morning when she noticed a person approach the swale outside her home in The Roads neighborhood and remove three campaign signs she had in support of mayoral candidate Emilio González.
By the time Alvarez, 33, could grab her phone and keys from inside the house, the person had started making their way down the street and collecting more pro-González signs, Alvarez said.
As it turns out, the person removing the signs not only worked for the city but was also an employee in the District 3 office of Commissioner Joe Carollo, who is competing against González in the city’s Nov. 4 election. Carollo and González are two of 13 candidates vying to be Miami’s next mayor.
According to Carollo, the sign removal was not politically motivated. He told the Miami Herald that staff in his office regularly remove illegally placed signs throughout his district.
If signs are posted illegally on a public right-of-way or a swale, Carollo said “they’re coming down” regardless of the sign’s message.
“Otherwise,” Carollo added, “our city is gonna become like a fourth-world country with signs everywhere. ... Imagine if we would not enforce this. Every block would be full of signs of people promoting whatever they want to, whether it’s private or political.”
González, who referred to the issue as “sign-gate,” was wary of that explanation.
“I find it very suspicious that during an election season people from his staff, and not from the department of code compliance, would come by and remove signs — particularly from someone running against their boss,” González said.
González took to social media Tuesday and Wednesday to condemn the sign removal. He included photos taken by Alvarez in his post.
“This is what abuse of power looks like,” González said in one post. “Miami deserves better. GET OUT & VOTE!”
‘Visual pollution’
Tony Wagner, the administrator for Carollo’s District 3 office, oversees the office’s sign removal operation. He told the Herald that for the past six or seven years, District 3 employees have removed illegally placed signs on a daily basis.
“The aim is to have the area free of visual pollution,” Wagner said.
He said staff remove upward of 300 signs a month, although very few of those signs are political; most advertise things like cars for sale or rooms for rent.
Wagner estimated his team has removed about a dozen campaign or election-related signs in recent weeks — and not just for González but also for other candidates, including Ken Russell and Eileen Higgins. No sign removal is intended to target a certain candidate, Wagner said, and staff haven’t been given a directive to take down certain candidates’ signs.
Carollo said he doesn’t have plans to halt political sign removal during election season. He added that campaign signs for himself and his brother, Frank Carollo, who’s running to succeed Joe Carollo as the District 3 commissioner, should also be removed if they’re placed illegally.
Carollo and Wagner emphasized that District 3 staff don’t remove signs from private property. Wagner said that while the staff don’t notify a homeowner if they’re removing a sign in the vicinity, they can return the sign to the person if they approach city staff during the removal.
That was the case for Alvarez, who said she was surprised to see the person wearing a shirt embroidered with “Commissioner Joe Carollo District 3 Staff” when she approached. She thought to herself: “What’s going on here? It’s the city doing this? No. It can’t be.”
Alvarez asked for her signs back, and the employee returned them. A day later, still frustrated by the city’s actions, she put them back up.
“Taxes are quite expensive in this area, yet all the streets are dirty, and they don’t seem to care about that, yet they take down posters,” Alvarez said. “No, that’s wrong. Where is democracy? There isn’t any.”
Miami Herald reporter Max Klaver contributed reporting for this story.
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