The Miami-Dade Property Appraiser was planning to retire. Then came COVID.
Earlier this year, Pedro J. Garcia, the first elected Property Appraiser of Miami-Dade County, was thinking about retiring. He had recently turned 83 years old. He had headed the 400-employee department for nearly 12 years. He decided it was time.
“I didn’t want to go through an election cycle again,” Garcia said. “I don’t need this job. I am not worried about paying my bills. I have enough savings to live out the rest of my life comfortably. I could be golfing or fishing.”
Then came the COVID pandemic.
Among the chief duties of the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser is assessing the annual value of all real estate properties within the county and providing them to the various municipalities and jurisdictions. Those values are used to create millage rates, which are incorporated into the TRIM (Truth in Millage) notices all property owners receive in August, informing them of the taxes they will have to pay that year. The notices give the owners time to appeal their assessment if they think it’s too high.
The funds are invaluable. For the county’s current 2020 budget, property taxes alone make up 35%, or nearly $2 billion, of the overall $8.9 billion budget.
So Garcia, who served his first year in office during the real estate crash of 2009 and its subsequent recession, decided to postpone retirement and run for re-election. He is concerned about how the economic shutdown caused by the virus will wreak havoc on property values — and, by extension, Miami-Dade’s fiscal budget.
“This is a situation none of us has seen or even imagined before,” Garcia said. “I changed my mind because Miami needs us. Next year will be extraordinarily difficult, because we will have a critical situation with the assessments. Changing the captain of a ship in the middle of a storm is not a smart move.”
But although he assumed he would be running unopposed, Garcia is running for reelection against Marisol Zenteno, one of his employees who entered the race at the last minute. The winner will be decided during the Florida Primary election on Aug. 18.
A storied career
Garcia was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1937. He studied at the Havana Business University before emigrating with his family to Miami in 1962. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he began his career in the real estate field in 1970, eventually launching his own brokerage and appraisal firms.
In the late 1990s, his career in the public sector began with a job as special magistrate with the Miami-Dade County Value Adjustment Board, where taxpayers contest the assessed value of their real estate and personal property as determined by the Property Appraiser.
Garcia used that experience to become the first publicly elected Property Appraiser of Miami-Dade in 2008 (previously, the position was appointed under the mayor’s purview). In 2012, he lost a narrow reelection race to Carlos Lopez-Cantera for the post but returned to the job in 2014, when Lopez-Cantera vacated it to become the 19th lieutenant governor of Florida.
That wealth of experience is what Garcia said makes him best-suited to continue overseeing the Property Appraiser office in 2021, when the true impact of the pandemic on property values will be revealed.
“One of the most important aspects of this job is to assemble a team of people who can do their jobs independently,” he said. “It allows everyone to grow while taking care of their own responsibilities.
Focusing on the present
His opponent, Marisol Zenteno, is running on a platform that focuses on embracing the 21st century. Garcia argues that the immediate crisis takes priority over the future.
“We have a big problem called the pandemic,” he said. “The 21st century comes later. We have to deal with this pandemic now so we can help people who are renting, people who are unemployed, people who own commercial properties. Businesses and restaurants are closing everywhere you look. We have to help everyone at the same time.”
Garcia said he has no problem with one of his employees running against him (“This is a democracy. Anyone can run for office.”) But he did take issue when he discovered Zenteno’s 74-year-old mother, Ismelda Santana, was receiving a senior citizen’s homestead exemption due to her limited income — even though her daughter, who was making $76,000, had moved in with her in 2017. His office fined the elder Zenteno $11,000.
“When someone inside this office is committing fraud with her mother ... how can you sit there confronting homestead defrauders if you’re committing the same fraud?” Garcia said. “If you are planning to run for election, fix that problem first. Either you’re the dumbest person in the world or you don’t have morals. They already paid the penalty. But the way she explained it, that she didn’t know what her mother was doing — please.”
Garcia said his office returned $4,000 of the $11,000 fine after learning Santana was not renting out the efficiency on her property and was only using it to house family members when they visited.
“We didn’t want to create a legal action because there was no precursor to this situation, so we returned the money,” he said.
Garcia said he has received endorsements by the Latin Builders Association, the Builders Association of South Florida, the Miami Association of Realtors and his former rival Lopez-Cantera.
He admits that people constantly ask him why he doesn’t just kick back and retire. But his mind doesn’t work that way.
“Age is a mental issue,” he said, pointing out he still goes to the office every day. “Every time one of my friends has retired to sit down on the couch and watch TV, they have all died. I’m a cancer survivor but I feel just like anyone else. I’m a cancer survivor, I play golf every chance I get, and when I go fishing, I fight with the fishing rod just the same way I did when I was 19.”
Garcia, who is married with four daughters, 13 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, is also sanguine about his future if he should lose his re-election bid.
“I have 14 days left before the election,” he said. “I will either keep working or I will start playing more golf. The city will decide. I am here until January, so I will still be able to do my job through the end of the year. But I still have a lot of life and the desire to work in me.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 7:00 AM with the headline "The Miami-Dade Property Appraiser was planning to retire. Then came COVID.."
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