CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Coral Gables police are expected to investigate allegations that some people who spoke in support of a development project at a recent city commission meeting may have provided false addresses and misrepresented themselves as city residents.
The allegations were presented Tuesday by attorney David Winker, who is representing community activist Bonnie Bolton in her effort to preserve the Garden of Our Lord.
“We can’t have people coming in and just manufacturing support for these projects,” Winker said.
Bolton called the allegations “massive corruption” that she believes tainted the process surrounding the preservation fight.
The issue began with observations made by Coral Gables resident Omar Packard, who said he became suspicious after watching people speak in favor of the development project.
“We started noticing these people that they seemed to need to look at their cellphone to recite their addresses,” Packard said.
Packard said he began writing down the addresses provided during public comment and checking them.
“I found a lot of them didn’t even exist or were commercial buildings,” he said.
He then began visiting some of the addresses in person.
According to Packard, the people he spoke with said the speakers did not live there.
“They came here, they took these addresses, they misrepresented themselves, and they stole our voices,” Packard said.
Packard shared his findings with Bolton, who then provided them to Winker.
Winker presented the...
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