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FRANCIS SUAREZ BELIEVES IN MIAMI SO MUCH THAT HE'S OPERATING HIS CAMPAIGN FOR STRONG MAYOR FROM AN OFFICE IN CORAL GABLES.
NUMBER 29 - MAY 11, 2018
20 MINUTES OF CITY COMMISSION VIDEO EDITED OUT AFTER I TWEETED THAT THE CITY WAS CONDUCTING LAWSUIT NEGOTIATIONS DURING THE COMMISSION MEETING
Yesterday's Commission meeting was at times an almost out of body experience, and among all the crazy stuff that happened, two issues, among a laundry list of issues, prompted me to live Tweet the following comments:
The lawsuit in question was related to this item on yesterday's Commission agenda.
It's impossible for me to describe the particulars of what transpired during the evening's portion of the Commission meeting, in part because the Miami-Dade Clerk of Court has gotten cute and has now limited the available lawsuits that can be viewed on his website to 4 pages worth of lawsuit. Given how litigious people in Miami are, this resulted in any lawsuits filed before September 25, 2017, are no longer available for viewing, and consequently I couldn't go and find out what the specifics of the lawsuit filed by Priequez's client was all about.
Fortunately, even though the evening portion of the Commission meeting has now been removed meeting from the online video - the City failed to have Manny Priequez's comments from the Public Comments portion of the morning session of the Commission meeting removed.
Here is his initial comments, followed by the comments of Rosario Kennedy, a lobbyist for Bitcon, Inc., named in the Resolution.
My Tweets came later in the evening session when Manny Priequez, returned once again to argue his case before the Commission, and offered to have his client withdraw the count of the lawsuit that dealt with damages and attorneys fees if the City Commission would approve the above item.
That whole discussion was removed from the video of the Commission meeting that is now on line, and the evidence of that is this portion of the Commission video that shows a very clear edit has taken place that stops abruptly while the City Manager is speaking abut the debate that took place earlier about moving the Office of Resilience to the Public Works Department, and then picks up where Commissioner Carollo is speaking on his 2nd Discussion Item, approximately 20 minutes later.
The second portion of the video that was edited out came after the above discussion over the issues raised by Manny Priequez, when Planning and Zoning Director Francisco Garcia spoke on Discussion Item Number 1.
This item turned out to be a lot more than just a Scrivener's error correction of the City's Atlas when attorney Leida Rodriquez-Tasseff, representing the Alan Morris Company, stood up and revealed that she was representing the Allan Morris Company in a lawsuit against the city over 2 pieces of land that Allen Morris had personally given to the City.
The land was intended to become the Allen Morris Park on SE 10th Street, and that contrary to Morris's wishes, for the last 44-45 years, the land had not been treated as a park, but rather one of the 2 pieces of land is where Perricone's restaurant sits.
Rodriquez-Tasseff questioned the objective of the effort by the Planning Director to change the Atlas at this time, given that the lawsuit was in play challenging the use of that property.
Now, I'm sure that upon reading this, that Victoria Mendez will claim that the loss of the portion of the video tape was caused by a technical glitch, but that's bullshit. The afternoon portion of the video of the Commission meeting was clearly edited, and the only portions missing have to do with the discussion of these lawsuits.
This is all too squirrelly and unbelievable, even for Miami standards of behavior. It is once again an example of,
It's Miami, Bitches!
“NEVER ATTRIBUTE TO MALICE THAT WHICH CAN BE ATTRIBUTED TO STUPIDITY"
So, even though I often feel that the past behavior of City Attorney Victoria Mendez, who has lied to me so often that if feathers were to come out of her ass for every lie she told me would make her look like a Peacock in heat are reason enough to consider her the principal culprit when things that relate to the legal department are her fault, I was wrong to attribute the the edit of yesterday's Commission meeting was done out of malice at her instruction, but instead were done as a result of stupidity or incompetence by the Communications Department.
In the last several months because of problems that the city was having with the service provider that provides the linkage for the Legislative Hub pages on the city's website, I have been relying on the videos that the Communications Department posts on the City Of Miami Facebook page when I need a copy of a portion of a video.
I've been doing this not only because of the problems that the Legislative Hub was having, but also because the videos on the city's Facebook page are posted in High Def, and that allows me to record the portions of the videos with better quality to post on this site.
That's what happened this morning when I went to the city's Facebook page to look for the portions of the Commission meeting that I had watched last night, and discovered that there was a glaring gap of what I assumed was approximately 20 minutes missing video, but what was more like almost 40 minutes.
I never considered going and looking at the video of the meeting on the Legislative Hub, because I mistakenly assumed - and yes, I know that assumed includes the word ass - that whatever video was posted on the city's Facebook page would be the same video posted on the Legislative Hub.
That was not the case. It turns out that the copy of the video posted on Facebook was missing almost 40 minutes, and that's the video that I relied on for my story.
I'll leave it to the Communications Department to explain why this happened.
So, having had an opportunity to actually refresh my mind by looking at the missing 40 minutes, I discovered that I made two mistakes in my original story besides the fact that I attributed the missing portion to the City Attorney.
The first mistake is that I wrongly stated that Manny Priequez's client would agree to remove with prejudice the count in the lawsuit that dealt with damages and attorney's fees if the Commission passed RE 6. I was wrong, Priequez's client would do this if the Commission agreed to defer the item. I still remain concerned with the implications with this kind of deal making, not withstanding Mendez's claim that her sole concern was looking out for the city. It seems to me that looking out for the best interests of the city shood start way sooner than after a lawsuit is filed.
Secondly, I mistakenly confused the two parcels of land that Allen Morris had donated to the city, even though I should have known better given that I wrote a story that revealed that one of those parcels was being used illegally for commercial purposes and not as park land back in 2012. (HERE) The property where Perricone's sits is not one of the 2 pieces of property that Allan Morris gave to the city. It's the piece of properety just east of the restaurant.
In any event, I apologize the both the misinformation, and accusation of malice on the part of the City Attorney in this case, and below are the videos that correspond to these two issues. I have also left my original story up, just to remind you and me that I do fuck up once in a while.
