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IN THE CITY OF MIAMI THE VINDICTIVENESS OF BUREAUCRATS WHO'VE BEEN CAUGHT DOING WRONG IS ALL THE WORSE FOR THEIR ARROGANCE  IN REFUSING TO MAKE AMENDS

NUMBER 78 - AUGUST 10, 2018

In July of 2017, when Commissioner "Sellout" Russell first introduced the idea of creating a Historic District in the West Grove, he cited the 20 or so shotgun wooden houses built by the early Black pioneers of the City of MiamI as the reason why he wanted to see a Historic District created.

By the time that his proposal became an amendment to the city's Historic Preservation Ordinance in October of 2017, the number of the shotgun wooden houses had increased to 51, and the idea of creating a Historic District had been abandoned and a decision was made by the city's Planning Department that Russell supported, to create a new category within the Historic Preservation Ordinance that would be called "Multiple Property Designation."

There were several ways that the number of shotgun houses went from 20 to 51.  One of those was to label each side of a duplex as a separate residence for purposes of counting the number of affected residences, and the other was to include several houses that had, before the historic preservation process had begun,  were scheduled to be legally demolished.

One of those houses belongs to an 84 year old woman named Jackie Rose, and the house sits at 3514 Frow Avenue. Rose and her daughter attended all of the community workshops held by the city's Planning Department, and at the June 11th meeting, she spoke about how the city had treated her, and how they had illegally incorporated her house as one of the 51 shotgun houses on the list to be protected through the Multiple Property Designation process, that in the process stopped the demolition permit issued by the city months before the whole issue of creating an historic district had ever been discussed.

Jackie Rose joined other owners of shotgun houses who felt that their rights were being abused and hired attorney Frank Schnidman, a nationally recognized expert on urban and regional planning, who until last year had been the Chairman of Florida Atlantic University's Urban Planning Department.

One of the first things Schnidman was able to accomplish was to have her house removed from the list of the 51 houses that the city's Planning Department wanted to include in their Multiple Property Designation.

That should have been enough to restart the permit that Rose had been issued to have the demolition of the house take place.

Unfortunately, this is Miami we're talking about and when the elected politicians aren't conspiring with their deep pocket contributors by screwing the residents, the bureaucrats are trying to match them by just fucking over the residents who piss them off.

And that's what's happened with Jackie Rose.  

First, they screwed her over by illegally putting her house of the list of the 51 shotgun wooden houses they wanted to preserve, and when she got a lawyer who  succeeded in getting that decision overturned, then the folks at the Zoning Department decided that they'd screw her for having the temerity to challenge their illegal behavior by notifying her that even though the demolition process had been illegally halted as a result of their behavior, if she wanted to the demolish the house, she would have to start all over again, and pay all the fees and go through all the bullshit, because thanks to  their malfeasance, her demolition permit had expired.

Oh, and just to rub salt into the wound, when she first tried to get the permit reinstated, they told her that they had lost the file on her house.

As I often say, you can't make this shit up, especially since I've previously written about the antics of Devin Cejas, the Director of the Zoning Department, whose behavior, both before, and during his time as a City of Miami employee has been questioned.

These people lied, cooked the process to illegally include her property on a list of houses that they all but demanded needed to be preserved, and when she succeeded in getting that decision overturned, they retaliated by telling her that she needed to start all over and spend another $2500.00 to get a new permit.  

Here is the letter that Jackie Rose's attorney wrote to Tamara Frost, the Zoning Manager, when he learned of this decision.

This on it's own would be bad enough, but it gets worse.

As a result of all the stress created by this bullshit, Jackie Rose, was forced to go to a cardiologist, and he informed her that any continued stress over all of this could kill her.

So, to step back from all of this she decided that as unsavory as the extortion attempt was by the Zoning Department that she refile and repay the costs of obtaining a demolition permit, she would do so, and turn everything over to her daughter to handle.

That prompted Schnidman to senda new letter to Tamara Frost.

ATTORNEY DOUG MUIR IS MYTHODICALLY MARCHING UP THE ASS OF THE POLITICIANS AT MIAMI CITY HALL

IN A LITTLE OVER 7 MONTHS, FRANCIS SUAREZ HAS DEMONSTRATED THAT HE IS MORALLY CORRUPT, A PHYSICAL COWARD, AND WELL ON HIS WAY TO BECOMING THE WORST MAYOR IN MIAMI'S HISTORY

PART I

I first started questioning Francis Suarez's moral character back in November of 2012.

As the years passed, my questions about his moral character only increased as evidenced by his ill-advised and incompetently managed first campaign for Mayor in 2013, and by his behavior in the years that led to his second run for Mayor, and now his effort to become a Strong Mayor.

His association and willingness to play patty-cake with Commissioner Marc Sarnoff and with lobbyist Steve Marin over those years, activities that I've repeatedly referenced through the email that Carlos Gimenez Jr. wrote that revealed how lobbying and business was conducted by the members of the Miami City Commission during those years, especially by Sarnoff and Suarez, was the kind of information, that had it been discovered in many other American cities would have led to a major investigation by both a State Attorney and the local newspaper.

To this day, I am the only "news" outlet that has ever mentioned this email, and to appreciate how things have not changed one iota, a few months ago, when Francis Suarez went to Boston to attend the National Conference of Mayor's, he not only took the Chief of Police along to be one of his bodyguards, but he also took Steve Marin.

Unlike the Chief of Police, Marin stayed in the shadows, but he was there and was spotted by other attendees.  That revelation raised a question that I've not yet been able to get an answer to, which is on how many other trips has Steve Marin tagged along with Francis Suarez since he's become the Mayor of Miami, and what kind of relationship do Marin and Suarez have that would allow him to tag along?

On Monday, before the Special Meeting over the effort to put the Strong Mayor item on the November ballot, I arrived early to City Hall, and was challenged by Suarez's bodyguard/chauffeur, who disputed the story I had published that morning about his parking the Mayor's SUV on a sidewalk in Coral Gables, while he and Suarez went across the street to a restaurant.

He was right, and as I've written in my retraction, it became clear to me after I questioned my source that I had been gamed.

The funny thing is that although the Mayor's bodyguard had no problem confronting me to my face - which I respected - when I sat down in the Commission Chambers,  Francis Suarez came in, and instead of walking to where he could stand in front of me and say whatever he wanted to say, he stood behind me, and proceeded to tell several people that were also behind me that, "Yeah, he did it to try and get a rise out of me, but that's not going to happen."

He then left the chambers.

When a guy who wants to become the strong mayor of an American city lacks the personal courage to stand in front of someone who has written something that he rightly had a reason to dispute, but instead does it to the person's back, I call that being a coward.

In Part II of this series, which I hope to publish by Monday, I will provide even more details of the corruption of Francis Suarez, who not only continues to collected hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in $10,000, $20,000, $25,000 and even $30,000 amounts, but more importantly how the quid pro quo's are beginning to surface as those deep pocket donors are beginning to receive a return on those "investments."

For now, I want to deal with the issue of Francis Suarez's effort to become the Strong Mayor of Miami.

THE PROBLEMS THAT SURFACED REGARDING THE REFERENDUM EFFORT TO PUT A QUESTION ON THE BALLOT TO MAKE FRANCIS SUAREZ THE STRONG MAYOR OF MIAMI

At Monday's Special Commission meeting, three issues ended up causing the Commissioners to continue the meeting until August 14th.

Those issues were:

1. The convoluted and duplicitous way in which the salary of the Strong Mayor would be calculated.

2. A question as to whether the people who collected the petition signatures were required to be "registered voters in Miami-dade County, and if they weren't, was that enough to invalidate the petition signatures collected by those individuals?

and,

3. Whether the difference in the translation between the English and Spanish version of the petitions - a difference that had the English version say that the Mayor would have the authority to appoint the City Attorney, and the Spanish version said that the Mayor would have the authority to appoint the City Prosecutor - was enough to invalidate the petition?

THE SALARY QUESTION

The salary question is again, an illustration of how much of a weasel Francis Suarez is.  Instead of making the issue of his salary a straightforward  proposition, like saying: "The Mayor of Miami will receive a salary of $150,000, plus benefits," the language in the petition had the Mayor's salary pegged at 75% of the salary of the County Mayor.

As Joey Flechas revealed in an article after Monday's meeting, the actual salary and benefits of the Mayor of Miami-Dade County is "about $326,000."  The current Mayor, Carlos Gimenez requests "a waiver to receive about half of that, and lets the other half go back to the county."

Based on that $326,000 amount, Francis Suarez, could, based on the convoluted language in his petitions receive a "minimum salary" of $244,500.

Obviously Suarez didn't want to put that amount in the petition language, so in his usual fashion of being cute, he and his advisors came up with the percentage salary as a way to hide that number from the public.

THE QUESTION OF WHETHER THE PETITION GATHERS WERE REGISTERED VOTERS AND THE TRANSLATION QUESTION

Two days after the Special Meeting I wrote to Christina White, the Director of the Miami-Dade Board of Elections:

On Thursday evening, I received a response that included a copy of all of the  letters from the Board of Elections to the City of the signatures that had  been certified, and several other documents, but no copy of any certification of the petition gathers, or the question about the translation.

(NOTE: I must point out that I mistakenly identified the City Attorney as the person who Commissioner Carollo had directed to request the Board of elections to conduct this new certification process, when in fact, it had been the City Clerk.)

In any event, given the shortness of time till next Tuesday's continuation of the Special Meeting, and a concern that all of this might turn out to be a City of Miami rope-a-dope, I immediately wrote to Ms. White and her assistant Ms.Tuttle a detailed letter explaining my concerns, and enlarging on the legal issues surrounding the question of the legality of the petition collectors and the translation question.

Since I wrote the email in the evening, I wrote it to be read this morning. Here is that email:

To provide more clarity, below are portions of Section 12-23 of the Miami-Dade County Charter, Section 6 of the Miami City Charter, and a copy of the June 11th email by Vanessa Ramirez.

Vanessa Ramirez email detailing the 5 reasons a petition would not be certified, but excluding any mention of the failure of the petition gather;s lack of voter registration in Miami-dade County.

These are serious issues, and even though I'm not an attorney, I don't believe you need to be an attorney to understand that if the Board of Elections finds that any of the petition collectors were not registered voters of Miami-Dade County, then all of the petitions that they collected will have to be rejected, and if that number of rejected petitions lowers the number of certified petitions below the required 19,335 signatures required to put the Strong Mayor question on the ballot, then the game is over.

If that happens, then Francis Suarez managed to piss away close to $500,000 by hiring an out-of-state company to collect his petitions, and it will serve as a resounding affirmation that he's too stupid to be a weak mayor, much less a strong mayor.

Shortly after sending this email, Schnidman received a response from Devin Cejas, the Director of the Zoning Department.

Frank Schnidman replied.

It should not be forgotten that this is the same Planning and Zoning Department who has repeatedly been accused of not only bending over backwards to do favors for big developers that included, ignoring the laws, bending the laws, and when none of those would work, they were even caught coaching the Flagstone folks with how to craft the language in a warrant so as to evade the warrant being considered a major change to the specifications of their resort and parking garage.

To now claim that after fucking over an 84 year old woman, becaused of their ignorant behavior, they are incapable of bending the law to allow her to demolish the little wooden house without having to repay $2500, is absolute bullshit, and shows you what a bunch of dirtbag scum are on the payroll at the City of Miami!

Doug Muir continues his slow, methodical process of laying the foundation for his Writ Of Mandamus against the City of Miami Commission for their actions in approving ballot language to amend the City Charter illegally in order to give the Beckham Group a reach around.

Here is a copy of a letter he sent a couple days ago to all the officials in the city.