Doral Mayor Luigi Boria strongly supported the hiring of City Manager Joe Carollo, but now says he wants him fired.
“I think his behavior is not good for the city – having a person that thinks everybody is a criminal is not good for the city,” Boria told NBC 6 on Friday.
Carollo, who has been on the job nine months, said he’s going nowhere.
“If he feels this way why has he waited so long, why has it not been brought before the City Council?” Carollo asked.
That should happen next week. The Miami Herald reported Friday that Boria will ask Doral council members to dismiss Carollo, a former Miami mayor, at their next meeting on Wednesday. Boria told the newspaper he would keep asking at every meeting if necessary.
“I must admit that I was wrong in selecting Carollo,” Boria told the Herald. “Carollo has erratic behaviors that do not belong in a normal person, an administration professional. I ask all Doral residents and citizens to forgive me for having erroneously chosen this person.”
Carollo came under fire recently after he was accused of physically and verbally attacking a Venezuelan businessman in charge of a luxury development in Doral. Juan Carlos Tovar told the Herald that Carollo made racist statements by calling him a chavista – a supporter of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Carollo denied the accusations.
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Carollo and Boria are at odds, in part, because of an issue over a real estate deal involving the mayor’s adult children and their associate.
But Mayor Boria says the problems run deeper than that, describing odd behavior by Carollo at City Hall.
“The reactions he (had) to several people in the city showed me that he's the same Joe Carollo,” he told NBC 6.
Carollo, infamously called “Crazy Joe” by some people during his time as a Miami politician in the 1990s, insists he has done a terrific job during his brief time as Doral’s city manager.
Asked if he ever gets the feeling that controversy follows him, Carollo responded, “Look, I think that I have been involved in very difficult situations in government and the record speaks for itself, that I have done an excellent job.”
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