Support the Crespogram

NUMBER 64 - JULY 14, 2018

This is your tax dollars hard at work.

Emilio "Colonel Klink" Gonzalez, the first City Manager of Miami to travel with an entourage that includes a personal photographer to document his interactions with city staff and citizens, is the same guy who behind the scenes has been accused of withholding public records from City Commissioners, the newsmedia and the public, and worse, has been accused of playing fast and loose with the information contained in the documents provided him by the Beckham Group.

The most important of these documents is the Term Sheet and Proposal that were the documents which the city supposedly used  to make the financial calculations it used as the basis for both the referendum language, and the claims made by the Mayor and others in the administration to the public and to the City Commission, that financially, this is a good deal for the taxpayers of Miami.

I have, and I believe others, including the Miami Herald have also been told that those documents were cooked, and in an attempt to obtain these documents for my own review, I sent the following email to the City Manager on Friday afternoon.

PHOTO OF THE DAY - FANBOY, EMILIO "COLONEL KLINK" GONZALEZ, TAKES PHOTOS OF DAVID BECKHAM ENTERING THE CHAMBERS OF THE MIAMI CITY COMMISSION ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON WHILE BEHIND THE SCENES HIS BEHAVIOR IN WITHHOLDING DOCUMENTS FROM THE COMMISSIONERS AND THE PUBLIC, AS WELL AS MAKING PURPOSELY MISLEADING STATEMENTS ABOUT THE CONTENT OF SOME OF THOSE DOCUMENTS SHOULD BE REASON FOR HIM TO BE FIRED BY THE COMMISSIONERS AT THE NEXT MEETING

58 minutes after I sent the above email I received the following response from Victoria Mendez, the City Attorney.

I have not received copies of the documents I requested.  

Given the situation, and shortness of time before Wednesday's Special Meeting this is unacceptable behavior. I can only speak for myself, but I have received documents from Victoria Mendez at midnight, and on weekends, and these specific documents are not hidden away in some box under a staircase somewhere.

They are electronic documents, readily accessible to the Manager, and to his staff, and also to the City Attorney and her  staff because they would have had to have access to these documents in order to prepare the ballot language for the referendum.

What is a Term Sheet, and why is it so important? Here is a definition provided by Wikipedia:

          "A term sheet is a bullet-point document outlining the material terms

          and conditions of a business agreement. After a term sheet has been

           "executed", it guides legal counsel in the preparation of a proposed

          "final agreement". It then guides, but is not necessarily binding, as

          the signatories negotiate, usually with legal counsel, the final terms

          of their agreement."

It doesn't have to be a binding document, but it is expected to be a truthful document.

The question about the Term Sheet submitted by the Beckham Group, and used by the city is whether it is truthful or cooked?  Are the numbers reflective of reality, or just a series of numbers made up in an effort to put lipstick on a pig?

Why is this so  important?  Because the financial claims and projections in the Term Sheet are critical in determining whether the claims made by Francis Suarez and Jorge Mas that this project will not cost the taxpayers of Miami a dime of public money are true.

As of today, none of the City Commissioners nor the public knows the truthfulness of the financial numbers used by the city in the referendum language, and unless and until these numbers can be independently analyzed and confirmed, I would, and I suspect that folks with far more knowledgable than I have about the legal requirements and implications of using fake numbers in a document seeking voter approval would also contend that a referendum based on unverified, and very possibly cooked financial information should not be allowed to be put on a ballot for citizen approval.

DID JORGE MAS, IN PLEDGING $5 MILLION DOLLARS TO COVER THE SHORTFALL OF THE MONEY NEEDED TO COMPLETE THE BAYWALK AND RIVERWALK MAKE A GENEROUS OFFER, OR WAS IT AN ATTEMPT TO BRIBE COMMISSIONER RUSSELL FOR HIS VOTE?

The history of Miami politicians taking bribes is long, sometimes colorful, and often a part of many conversations attempting to make sense of how Commissioners voted on issues and projects near and dear to people with deep pockets and shallow morals.

I previously wrote about an allegation I received from a knowledgable source that involved the Mas brothers calling their friends and business partners to ask them to donate to Mayor Francis Suarez's campaign to become a Strong Mayor, and not just to donate money, but deliver the checks to the home of lobbyist Steve Marin, and how in the last two weeks Suarez revealed that his campaign had received at least $70,000 in as yet unreported money.

This effort doesn't on it's own come close to constituting a bribe per say but it does speak to the way that money - money in the $5000, $10,000 and more range - is used to influence decisions and elicit support from politicians.

The most insidious example of how this quid pro quo works at the national level was recently revealed by Mick Mulvaney, former Congressman and now the Trump administration's Director of Management and Budget, who at a conference of bankers stated:

     "We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress. If you're a lobbyist who

     never gave us money, I didn't talk to you. If you're a lobbyist who gave

     us money, I might talk to you."

In Miami, the closest that someone has come to being so loquacious about the influence of money and lobbyists on how decisions were made by Miami City Commissioners was Carlos Gimenez Jr, who I have repeatedly written about because of the letter he wrote in 2011 to an anonymous blogger revealing the insider dealings that took place over the award of the Red Light Camera contract that involved the same Steve Marin whose house the Mas brothers allegedly told their friends to go to to deliver their donations for Francis Suarez's campaign.

The situation regarding the pledge of $5 million dollars is different.  First, here is the portion of Jorge Mas presentation where he makes that pledge.  

In the days leading up to the Thursday commission meeting, it became evident to Mayor Francis Suarez that of all the commissioners, Ken Russell was not only proving to be hard to pin down, but that he had become the critical swing vote.  

Commissioners Gort and Reyes were already on the record as being opposed to this deal, and Suarez had reason to believe that both Carollo and Hardemon would support the passage of the Resolution that authorized the Referendum being placed on the November ballot, each for their own reasons.

Russell however, was proving to be difficult.

Last Tuesday, Suarez arranged for a meeting between Russell and his staff with Jorge Mas, himself, the City Manager and a number of other people in an effort to persuade Russell to support the Resolution.

It did not end well, and Russell refused to pledge his support.

On Wednesday, Suarez returned for another meeting, and again, it did not result in a pledge from Russell to support him and the Resolution.

I have been told by several independent sources that hours before the arrival of the Beckham Group to make their presentation at Thursday's meeting,  Suarez, by then in a panic, raised the issue of the funding of the $5 million shortfall for the Baywalk and Riverwalk projects, which in the case of the Baywalk has become a legacy project for Russell, with Jorge Mas as a last ditch effort to get Russell to commit his support.

The absence of any mention of this financial commitment to either these projects specifically, or to the maintaining and increasing green space in the city in the Power Point presentation made by Jorge Mas lend support to the claim that this agreement was a last minute deal.

Did this solicitation by Francis Suarez and offer by Jorge Mas to fund a project that Russell considers a legacy project constitute a disguised attempt to bribe him into supporting the Beckham project?  

Here is the definition of a bribe offered by Merriam-Webster dictionary:

What do you think?

24 HOURS AFTER THE FAILURE OF THE BECKHAM GROUP TO SECURE THE VOTE TO PUT REFERENDUM LANGUAGE ON THE BALLOT, THE CITY'S COMMUNICATION DEPARTMENT CREATED WHAT IS ESSENTIALLY A BIASED, ONE SIDED TV COMMERCIAL THAT SUPPORTS THE BECKHAM GROUP'S EFFORTS

This illustrates what happens when public officials exploit the use of taxpayer money for a controversial political project.  

This is not communication, or even an attempt to present an objective view of a critical issue of importance to the citizens but rather, this is pure and simple propaganda, no different from the kinds of propaganda that Cuban politicians in Miami have railed against for decades when it was done by Fidel Castro and his brother Raul.

When push comes to shove, communists and capitalists share one thing in common, they both use lies to fuck over the proletariat when it comes to money, and the release of this video shows that there is no moral high ground for Francis Suarez and Emilio Gonzalez to stand on by authorizing this kind of propaganda to be produced with taxpayer money.

IT TAKES A LOT TO GET PEOPLE IN MIAMI PISSED OFF ABOUT THE BEHAVIOR OF POLITICIANS, BUT WHEN THEY DO, NO ONE SHOULD IGNORE WHAT THAT MIGHT LEAD TO

Unlike many contentious issues that make their way to the Miami City Commission, this one is different in significant ways, among them being the fact that hundreds, if not thousands of average citizens have woken from their normal lethargy about local political shenanigans and started writing letters and signing petitions.

Several thousand signed an online petition, and hundreds more signed petitions circulated by volunteers in Commissioner Willi Gort's District, where the Mel Resse golf course is located.

This has not happened before!

This is something that could, with a little effort and organization wake the sleeping tiger that all politicians fear: an angry citizenry looking for someone to take their anger out on.

Below are the letters and signed petitions that Willie Gort put into the public record of last Thursday's meeting.  Not only have letters been written to the mayor and the other commissioners but they have also been inundated by text message and Tweets.

In spite of all the craziness and frustrations that living in Miami sometimes produces, there still exists a basic expectation of honesty and fair play by most of the citizens of Miami, and those expectations were jarred by what they saw occur at City Hall last Thursday.

Yes, there are women in Miami willing to hang out of cars to show their tits to David Beckham as he passes by, but there are a lot more people who are offended and pissed at what he has caused to happen by his desire to have his personal soccer team in Miami, and those people might also lean out of car windows showing him an entirely different part of their bodies, because

It's Miami, Bitches!

HERE ARE THE LETTERS AND PETITIONS THAT WILLIE GORT SUBMITTED INTO THE RECORD

THERE WERE A NUMBER OF SPECIFIC ISSUES RAISED AT LAST THURSDAY'S COMMISSION MEETING. IN AN EFFORT TO DEAL WITH WHAT I BELIEVE TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT, I WILL BE POSTING   STORIES ADDRESSING AS MANY OF THEM AS I CAN.  HERE ARE THE FIRST GROUP OF STORIES.  I WOULD ASK THAT IF YOU FIND THEM INFORMATIVE AND WORTH READING THAT YOU SHARE THEM WITH YOUR FAMILY, FRIENDS AND FOLKS WHO YOU KNOW WHO LIVE IN THE CITY OF MIAMI.

THANK YOU