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Esta página no está disponible en español. Orlando Sentinel'Mayor Mom' Has Neglected HispanicsMyriam Marquez
December 26, 2002 It would be just like "Mayor Mom" to say the Orlando City Council is acting like children when there's a disagreement as to who should be in charge now that she's accepted a job in Gov. Jeb Bush's administration. Glenda Hood wants to sit pretty until Feb. 4 and force early elections for all the mayoral wannabes. Commissioner Daisy Lynum, the mayor pro tem, wouldn't be in charge of city business for a single minute if Hood has her way. Good thing those two are political allies. Imagine what Glenda would do to an enemy. Hey, that's how Mayor Mom operates. Because she says so. She just slapped the black community by not stepping aside now and letting Lynum do the mayor's job for a few weeks until voters pick a new mayor. Sometimes I wonder if aliens have come down and taken over Glenda's soul. She used to care about such things as people, particularly those in communities who had little power. Ah. What do I know? I stuck my neck out for her last time because she presented herself as the more inclusive candidate, the one who had big dreams and wanted to build a big Hood tent for everyone in a growing, multicultural city. Had I known Mayor Mom would be an absentee parent, shuttling off all over the place and abandoning the kiddies, including the gay ones, my neck wouldn't hurt so much now. It's particularly frustrating for Orlando's growing Hispanic community. Many feel as though Mayor Mom has treated them like pesky stepchildren, with little to show for supporting her re-election to a third term two years ago. Not even the Hispanic pastors who backed Hood got her attention once she won even though she had promised to meet with them often about community issues. Take a lump of coal, kiddies. Hispanics make up one in five city residents, yet they don't run any major city departments. Their numbers in the city's police and fire departments at the management ranks are dismal. And in city contracts, it's not much better. The fire department, in particular, has missed opportunity after opportunity to promote qualified Hispanics to key positions. Never mind that those Hispanics who were bypassed had received top marks from their bosses, special employee recognition awards, and done well on their promotions tests. Forget that they have college degrees when others moving on up don't. There's only one top manager at the fire department who's Hispanic, and he had to make a federal case out of it a decade ago to get there. At the police department, the only high-ranking Hispanic, Assistant Chief Reinaldo Rivero, came close to being unceremoniously kicked out the police-station door when the new chief took over in October. Had it not been for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and county politicians who took the mayor to task behind the scenes for an attempt to force Rivero to retire early, he'd be gone already. Police Chief Mike McCoy promises to diversify his department, which is swell, but we'll wait and see what those words really mean under a new mayor. Because with Mayor Mom we know what embracing the diversity of a city that's 49 percent minority meant. It turned out only blacks seemed to be valued in top posts, and that probably has more to do with the city having two black council members who go to bat for the African-American community. Hispanics don't have any elected official to speak for them. At least, most people I know don't think Betty Wyman has done much for the growing Hispanic neighborhoods in her east Orlando district. The community now has a police sub-station, but economic development of the kind the city has promoted for historically black Parramore? Not even a streetscape. Let's get real. Mayor Mom in her "nonpartisan" seat seems to listen quite well to those Hispanics who can bankroll Republican campaigns. But those on the east or down south aren't that kind. They're humble, hard-working people who had hoped their vote for Hood would bring a new day. All they got was the same old neglect.
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