Tag Archives: Miami Corruption

America’s Casablanca — A Book Review

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Before I ever wrote a word about The David Winker Affair — it had just broken in the news — I was ranting about Miami Corruption to a friend. I already knew I would write about Winker because what I had already learned rubbed me the wrong way.

That’s when my friend said, “You’ll get a much better understanding of Miami Corruption today, if you read ‘American Casablanca‘”.

Boy, were they right!

America’s Casablanca: A “True Novel” about Miami’s Emergence from Bankruptcy and Corruption, by José García-Pedrosa, is a true eye-opener about Miami politics and how it’s been crazy after all these years, to quote Paul Simon.

However, let’s get the least important stuff out of the way first: This book is clearly self-published and screams for an editor. A h/t is given on the last page to Dr. Norma Martín Goonen, for editing and helping shape the book. However, she may have been too close to the author. Although they met after the book was written, they were married somewhere along the way. And, I suspect, her normal employment is not writing or editing. There are typos galore and an odd lack of a space after many quotation marks, a habit that became infuriating over 300 pages.

Furthermore the events related in the book, of which Garcia-Pedrosa was a participant, is a complicated web of people and motives spanning decades. An editor in on the ground floor — so to speak — at the beginning of the project, might have given the book a different outline. There’s far too much back and forth in the chronology. Some of that is necessary. However, some of it was intrusive, especially as events accelerated near the end of the book. There were times I wasn’t sure the meeting being described took place before, or after, the meeting just described. In this book it could be either. A few words here and there could have made things clearer, but a better outline could have solved the problem. I’m sure it’s something Garcia-Pedrosa grappled with; his solution didn’t work for me.

Having said that, this is not a book you read for the fancy prose. This is a book you read to see current City of Miami District 3 Commissioner, “Crazy” Joe Carollo, meltdown time after time over the many decades he’s been a Miami politician, sucking off the government teat while bullying opponents, misusing his authority, having people followed, and lying about just about everything.

Sound familiar?

Here’s where this book review takes a slight tangent:

I had no idea this book would be [mostly] about Crazy Joe. He turns up as early as the preface and is the focus of every chapter, even if he doesn’t make an appearance. The events depicted in American Casablanca happened, for the most part, because of Carollo. Every one of his shenanigans back then echoes in present day Miami politics and informs my Miami Corruption Tapestry, starting with The David Winker Affair.

I don’t want to take that tangent here, so look for it as Part Four of The Miami Corruption Tapestry, coming soon to a browser near you.

Tangent over.

As a self-admitted carpetbagger, having only lived in South Florida since Hurricane Wilma, I was unaware of most of the events related in this book. Therefore I had never heard of Xavier Suarez referred to as Hurricane Xavier, but that’s a moniker he gave himself along, with “a meteor the size of Texas”, “an earthquake”, and — later — “not deranged” as the media happily reported on his every stumble.

Others called Suarez different things as his 2nd term of Miami Mayor began in 1997. His continued antics led to stories of chaos in the Miami Herald, NYT, USA Today, TIME Magazine, and the London Economist, which called him El Loco in its headline.

However, it wasn’t long before Joe Carollo, who lost the election, challenged the results in court over the issue of bogus Absentee Ballots. He was successful. After some more court decisions, which eventually tossed all Absentee Ballots, even the honest ones, Suarez was disqualified. Crazy Joe was appointed the Mayor of the City of Miami.

Essentially, this book is the inside story of those roller-coaster years. The author, José García-Pedrosa, was hired by Suarez to be Miami City Manager (one of the most powerful positions in any city) having been hired away from Miami Beach, where he held the same position.

As it happened, Carollo hated García-Pedrosa for an incident from all the way back in 1982. As Miami City Attorney while Carollo was a Commissioner, García-Pedrosa ruled Carollo had violated Florida’s Sunshine Law.

It took 15 years for Carollo to get his revenge and he was as vengeful as anyone named Crazy Joe could be. García-Pedrosa only served 5 months as Miami City Manager and was fired by Mayor Carollo 3 times in his last 2 weeks.

While Carollo really needed no reason to fire the City Manager, because he served at the pleasure of the mayor with Commission approval, he threw every mendacious and false claim he could invent at the author, including charges of criminal conduct. Nothing was ever proven against García-Pedrosa.

Naturally the author is biased participant in the events, so it’s worth taking a whole shaker of salt while reading the book. Clearly he has an axe to grind.

I found myself Googling many aspects of this story and the publications that wrote about it contemporaneously: Miniskirt mayor, George Magazine, 60 Minutes, The New Yorker, along with Spanish language cartoons. There were many threads I wanted to pull on, all of which led me to agree that Miami politics has been a 3-ring circus for a very long time.

Which naturally leads to the Miami Herald, the newspaper of record during this period. Bottom line: The Miami Herald has always been a lousy newspaper, which this book proves over and over again.

While García-Pedrosa has an agenda, so did The Miami Herald, and he proves it.  It was willing to look past Corruption and Cronyism to come to the defense of Crazy Joe with mendacious articles or editorials that didn’t dig any deeper than the surface.

The Miami Herald is still useless in holding elected officials accountable, as any Miami Muckraker will tell you. It will look the other way, provided its executives can still hobnob with the movers and shakers at all the charity balls; a strata of society that the average Joe/Jane never reaches. The Miami Herald‘s view of us way down here is obscured by those clouds below them.

The most recent example of this paper’s idiocy is the recent endorsement of Katherine Fernandez Rundle for Miami-Dade County’s state attorney. This endorsement perplexed everybody and anybody who cares about social justice. Rundle had already served 27 years in the position and — SOMEHOW! — never found a police officer to have committed crimes against citizens. Never even took one to court

Even The Miami Herald realized this endorsement was bullshit when it wrote:

This is not a full-throated, unequivocal endorsement of the incumbent. Her 27-year tenure has been at times flawed, at times infuriating, at times befuddling. She can, and must, do better.

Miami New Times had the perfect rejoinder:

Some would say it was both infuriating and befuddling when Rundle opted not to charge the corrections officers who locked 50-year-old Darren Rainey, an inmate at Dade Correctional Institution, in a scalding shower and left him to die. And when Rundle said she couldn’t prosecute Jesús “Jesse” Menocal, a Hialeah police officer with a history of using his power to prey on women and girls because there were no witnesses to make the case. (This, despite the Herald’s own investigation, which found that prosecutors never interviewed three out of four witnesses and dismissed the women as gang members and runaways.)

Yet somehow, the editorial board pulled off the gymnastic journalistic feat of citing those “missteps” and still giving Rundle the thumb-up for another four years. The Herald argues that Rundle has the “muscle” and “valuable experience” to push for reforms in police departments, jails, prisons, and courtrooms.

This is not a review of The Miami Herald, so I’ll leave it here. Suffice to say García-Pedrosa proves it was bird cage liner back then. Current events show it still is.

The author almost lost me at the beginning of Chapter Eight — You’re Fired, which began with several passages about a section of Miami called “Germ City”. This small section struck me as being racist. It was only 4 paragraphs — and I could have read more between the lines than is really there. [I tend to see the world with Racism Coloured Glasses. Read page 157 and 158 of the book and tell me what you think.] Those paragraphs disturbed me greatly and I almost gave up reading the book.

However, the author did lose me near the end of the book for 2 reasons:

  • He relates his involvement in the international squabble between Cuba and ‘Merka, which has little to do with the events in the book, other than another way to criticize Carollo;
  • As Miami closed in on another Mayoral race, García-Pedrosa engaged in the same kind of backroom machinations that I have always found distasteful to try to become the next Mayor , even to the point of an attempt to change the city’s residency requirements in order to run for mayor.

Bottom line: It’s a whole lot easier to understand the crazy politics of Miami today by reading about its recent past in America’s Casablanca: A “True Novel” about Miami’s Emergence from Bankruptcy and Corruption, by José García-Pedrosa.

Right That Block; Block That Write ► Unpacking the Writer

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It’s funny how things work out. The day after I published my last Unpacking the Writer, The COVID Chronicles, Mad King Trump tongue-kissed Salt & Pepa in a tweet and I threw up a little in my mouth.

I didn’t write about it. I wasn’t writing about much of anything. But, for reasons that even I don’t understand, I saved that Mad King Trump tweet for posterity . I was minding my own bidnezz, cowering from The COVID, with enough Writer’s Block to build a concrete canyon down Grand Avenue (which is what will eventually happen, BTW, but that’s another story for another day), when I got a phone call from someone I had not heard from in years. They started telling me about a particular story about Miami Corruption and — JUST LIKE THAT! — I was interested in writing again.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!


I had to learn how to write all over again. Writing is a muscle that can atrophy. I was rusty as hell. Furthermore, it DID NOT HELP that the WordPress software under the hood at the NNS Newsroom had been updated and the editor no longer did things I used to count on when I needed to count. There was a learning curve to the website software that I’m still working on.

At any rate: I managed to cobble together The David Winker Affair – Part One, followed rather quickly (for me lately) by Winker? I Hardly Know ‘Er – Part Two of the David Winker Affair. Part Three is almost finished and I have already outlined a Part Four. I’m not sure where this will go, but I’ll keep weaving these threads into the warp and the weft of my Miami Corruption Tapestry to form a bigger pictures.

That could be sooner rather than later. Suddenly sources have been sending the Not Now Silly Newsroom documents on Miami Corruption that others have only hinted at over the years. Now I have more Miami Corruption to look into than you can shake a FOI at.

Meanwhile, with about 60 days to go until the election, I’m hoping to write more about my opinions of Mad King Trump. He needs to be stopped. I’m old enough to remember the 1967 Detroit Rebellion and the other riots of the era. Following the murder of George Floyd the entire country has righteously erupted.

I don’t condone violence or destruction, but I understand the language of the dispossessed. I know how loud ‘the rabble’ has to get before any needed reform is even hinted at. In 1966 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told Mike Wallace:

I contend that the cry of “black power” is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.

Everything old is new again. We’re just calling it #BLM, or Black Lives Matter, but Black folk are still trying to make their voices heard. Were it not for the fact that people are now carrying video recorders in their pockets, so many of these murders at the hands of police would not be known.

I’ve watched, just during my lifetime, how the fight for true equality in ‘Merka has been two steps forward and one step back. The country never makes it to the finish line.

When I was growing up I couldn’t get my parents to drive me to school. Now 17-year old children are being driven across state lines to murder peaceful protestors with more firepower than police carry.

In Mad King Trump‘s ‘Merka, brownshirts taking over city streets with their pick-up trucks — jacked up to compensate for their cuckold-follow-the-pack lifestyle — shooting people with paint balls. Rich White Fucks with boats (or huge loans on their boats) are taking over ‘Merkin waterways.

Not only won’t Mad King Trump condemn the violence done in his name when asked outright, but he encourages it from the sidelines in tweets. He sees unhinged rallies where MAGAts wave the TRUMP 2020 flag, but only sees the support, not the this-is-so-bad-for-the-country-it’s-off-the-charts. Because, Mad King Trump has only ever seen the flags.

Which brings us full circle, dear reader. Just as I was getting ready to publish this update from the Not Now Silly Newsroom, I popped into Twitter to see if there was anything I wanted to roll into this post. There, right at the top of my timeline, as if daring me to screenshot it, and make fun of it, was the latest tomfoolery from Zircon & Burlap.

I don’t see this as a compelling
argument to reelect a monster.

Winker? I Hardly Know ‘Er – Part Two of the David Winker Affair

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Image

David Winker has been described by Concerned Citizen as a “disheveled heavy-set man” in the anonymous hit job — the 95 page dossier — the city used as a basis to inspect the home where he lives and slap some code violations on the property, which happens to be in his wife’s name.  She’s just collateral damage in this crazy story.

I can affirm — and would so so under oath — that David Winker, activist lawyer, is a disheveled, heavy-set man. When I first met him, literally while making introductions, his wife started straightening his collar because it was askew. Almost sheepishly he related he just arrived from a YouTube LIVE podcast and must have been disheveled during it.

Read: The David Winker Affair – Part One

And, he is heavy set, with the body of a football player, which he inherited from his football-playing father. Ironically his father forbid him from playing football. Growing up in Canada he played hockey and ‘Merka’s national sport, baseball. Although these days he occasionally reviews high school football.

I spent 4 hours with David Winker. Mostly we talked at his dining room table, which the City of Miami seems to think is a dedicated office. The rest of the room is filled with the flotsam and jetsam of a large family room occupied by people with children. If this were my house I wouldn’t necessarily want a client to see that clutter and Winker assured me he doesn’t meet with clients there. But, I didn’t really care about that.

Nor did I really care about most of the other items in the 95+ page dossier.

Mostly I wondered why I was even there.

Then I remembered that my source told me I would uncover Miami Corruption, so I stuck with it.

I asked about every exhibit in the 95-page document and it felt dirty. Nothing in this colonoscopy — other than about 40-50 words — had anything to do with the Code Compliance Violations tacked to Christina’s house. Not the pages and pages of printed screenshots labeled “Exhibit A: Winker Tweets/Social Media Assaults.” Exhibit B is every traffic ticket, parking violation, and some “no valid license plate history.” Exhibit C is called Winker Criminal DWLS. I could go on and on through “Exhibit J: Winker City of Miami Permit History”.

Part of the Winker DossierWhen we were done, I wanted a shower. But, I had to ask about every page — every exhibit — in those 95 pages if I wanted to find the corruption I was promised.

Winker’s wife drifted in and out of the room during this rectal examination, until she had to go do children taxi.

Winker copped to some of it; he also had reasonable explanations for some of it; said some of it had been cleared years ago, but he forgot to file those docs that would take them down; and (later) showed me why the plate on his pickup truck appeared invalid. His registration is valid. However, someone tore off half of the little yellow sticker to put on their own car because their sticker had expired. [Apparently this is more common in Miami than I knew.] The problem to replacing the sticker is The COVID and government offices not being fully operational yet.

Later we walked completely around the property where I examined the supposed Code Violations.

The granny flat, f’rinstance. It’s a converted garage and had been a granny flat for who-knows-how-long? However, it was there the last time the City of Miami signed off on all these surveys and documents, both before and after the last sale 8 years ago. It’s all on record. Public record. Records available to Code Compliance, had it wanted to look.

The surprise was meeting Winker’s mother, who snowbirds in the granny flat. Normally she’d be back in England at this point in the year, but that’s another thing The COVID complicated. (FULL DISCLOSURE: We share a Queen. I’m Canadian.) 

But, all of this is getting so far away from the dossier. This cannot be stressed enough: almost nothing in that document was germane to the issue of Code Violations. It was an attack on a taxpayer by another anonymous taxpayer throwing anything and everything against the wall to see what sticks. And, it’s pretty clear that it was compiled by a private detective as oppo research.

It’s disgusting.

Why would anyone do such a thing?

It all goes back to Winker’s profession. He’s a lawyer for hire. In his spare time he sues the city and wins. According to Miami New Times:

Beyond representing the group calling for a recall of Carollo in a case against the city, Winker has openly criticized City Attorney Victoria Mendez for defending Carollo in the recall effort and acting as his “private law firm.” He also has filed ethics complaints against the MLS soccer stadium construction effort.

Winker also sued the city after it appointed the lawyers and lobbyists of developers to serve on a zoning review board. LAW.COM picked up that story with Activist Criticizes Naming Developer Attorneys to Miami Zoning Review Group:

Escarra, Leiva and Tapanes represent most of the big developers before the city and will have front-row seats shaping the city’s development regulations. Winker maintains It would be difficult for them to focus on the public’s best interest rather than their clients’ priorities.

“Miami has an image problem, and these appointments are the quintessential ‘foxes guarding the chicken coop,’ ” Winker wrote in a letter Friday to City Attorney Victoria Mendez. She had no comment by deadline.

Winker argued the appointments violate the Florida Code of Ethics for Public Officers and Employees barring private employment and public office with conflicting interests.

Winker won that argument, too.

Then there was the time Winker filed a suit against the City of Miami and Ultra Music Festival, the massive, yearly, 3-day EDM fun fest. He filed on behalf of the Brickell Home Owners Association, which would have to include some heavy-hitters, just based on the zip codes. That contretemps was big enough for Billboard to take notice. Winker lost that one. Ultra went ahead in what many people believe is an environmentally sensitive area and the squabbling has really never ended. Another Miami mess. But, that’s not this story.
 
And, that’s the problem with this story of Miami Corruption. To tell it properly, it’s necessary to weave an entire wall tapestry in which Winker’s Code Violations is just one vignette in the corner. Stick with me because I’m growing fond of this analogy.
 
In another corner of this tapestry is Coconut Grove, a community I know well because of the hundreds of stories I’ve written about it. Another of Winker’s pro bono lawsuits was on behalf of a Coconut Grove homeowner who righteously opposed the fact that the city’s building department approved permits to build two houses on Day Avenue without the 10 feet setback AS REQUIRED BY LAW.
 
This is Code Non-Compliance. The laws are clear. How does a thing like this happen? 
 
Either the permitting department doesn’t know WTF they are doing or somebody greased the skids so that these house could get more square footage. That would be bribery. That would be Miami Corruption.
 
There are now calls to tear down these houses, but the city seems to be leaning towards turning away from the problem.
 
You can read more about it here: Residents: West Grove is losing its identity because Miami doesn’t enforce zoning code.  But — again! — that’s not the story I’m trying to tell today. However, it will turn up in subsequent chapters of The David Winker Affair, which is one reason I mention it here.
 
Another reason: It adds new names to the canonical list of suspects I’m compiling. Who is Concerned Citizen? Rather than narrowing things down, this list grows with every conversation I have.
 
Winker has amassed a number of powerful enemies due to his activism. They are all suspect until one person confesses, or is outed by another anonymous concerned citizen. So far no one has shared the real goods on who might have hired a private dick to go through David Winker’s dirty laundry.
 
Without question Winker’s most powerful enemy is Miami District 3 Commissioner Joe Carollo. For the record Winker doesn’t put him on my suspect list. I disagree. I wouldn’t put it past him because he’s used code compliance as a cudgel against his enemies in the past…more than once.
 
Ironically, as I was preparing this part of The David Winker Affair, more Winker stories came in over my electronic transom, delaying its publication. They converge at the recall effort for Miami District 3 Commissioner Joe Carollo.
 
I don’t want to get too deep in the weeds about the Carollo recall because it’s as tangled as all the other threads in this tapestry. However, it would be dead center.
 
If you like weeds, start here: He’s not called Crazy Joe for nothing. Miami New Times published A Brief History of Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo’s Craziest Moments on May 14, 2018, long before the recall effort even began.
 
Here’s the recall in non-legal jargon.
 
CIVICS 101: Citizens wanting to recall a Miami politician have specific laws to follow. The first step is registering the recall effort with the city. Oddly enough you do not have to register the the specific language of the recall petition and could make up any series of lies, but you’ll still have to convince 5% of the district to sign on to your theory. Your recall effort does not begin until you get your first signature and you only have 30 days before the recall petitions must be turned in. [Who is allowed to sign the recall petition is also regulated, but that’s deeper weeds.] Finally, the law directs what you do with the petitions once that deadline nears, how the signatures are verified (no Santa Clauses allowed), and what’s required of the city at that point.
 
Think of the recall like a fishing line spun out into the community (to begin a new metaphor I can torture). The recall law keeps the line taught.
 
Once the recall petitions were signed, sealed, and delivered by Take Back Our City, the City of Miami allowed the fishing line to go slack. Now it sits in my imaginary tapestry as a tangled mess, emblematic of Miami political corruption. Only the courts can untangle this Gordian knot, which would have already been solved — one way or another — a long time ago, were it not for the tangled mess Miami government has made of it. Throwing it into the courts has delayed the entire process, which may have been exactly what Carollo wanted.
 
Yesterday Ladra reported Miami’s Joe Carollo tries to recall the recall by getting petitioners to recant in which she tells of unidentified “young women” who are roaming various neighbourhoods, trying to get people to disavow their earlier signatures on the recall petition. Keep in mind only some 1900 people were needed for the petition to succeed and these “young women” knew where they all lived. Ain’t that some shit?
 
Ladra:
 
 
Miami City Hall, formerly the Pan American Air Lines Sea Plane Terminal, Coconut Grove, Miami, Fl... Via Amplification, Inc. | Miami city, Florida, Miami photosThe Miami Herald, as only that rag can, took a look at the same story and chose to parrot Joe Carollo’s lies, before relating why there’s been such a delay in this recall,  how that delay gives Crazy Joe all this extra time to intimidate petitioners into recanting, and why these shenanigans are bad for democracy. But I expect no more from the Miami Herald, which has been totally useless in ferreting out Miami Corruption. But I digress.

Carollo and his attorney, Ben Kuehne, confirmed Wednesday that an undisclosed number of residents have signed forms expressing their desire to be removed from the recall petition. In his lawsuit, Carollo claimed that the recall organizers misled and lied to some of the 1,941 voters who signed petition forms, arguing in part that Spanish speakers were confused by a document written only in English.

“Many people were lied to and told that this was for something other than to recall me,” Carollo told the Miami Herald. “Dozens of people are telling us that they didn’t sign [any] recall against me. They voted for me, they like me, but their names appear [on the petition].”

Carollo added: “If these people wanted me out of office so badly, they’re not gonna change their mind and take their name off the petition.”

There’s a similarity to the way Carollo brazenly lies without providing proof and the way Mad King Trump lies, but that’s another story for another day. The main point is the Miami Herald buried the lede:

“We knew it was only a matter of time before Carollo started a campaign of intimidation,” said David Winker, an attorney for the recall group. “Given his track record, you can’t blame residents who are getting a knock on the door from Carollo’s people [for] signing whatever is put in front of them.”

Winker said intimidation tactics by Carollo were “exactly what inspired the recall in the first place.” The petition focused on controversies that have marked Carollo’s term since he was elected in 2017, including accusations that he pushed the city’s code enforcement department to target properties owned by Little Havana businessman Bill Fuller, including the Ball & Chain nightclub.

Carollo obtained copies of the petitions — which include signers’ names and addresses — through a public records request, the Miami city clerk said Wednesday.

The very same Miami city clerk that tangled the fishing line in the tapestry in the first place.

So all that legal wrangling is costing taxpayers money. That’s one of the things that concerns Concerned Citizen (Remember: This story is about that malcontent). None of this was ever really about code violations. This is a baldfaced attempt to silence a critic of the City of Miami with an enviable track record in court.
 
Take Back Our City, the recall committee, recently held a presser on the courthouse steps:
 
 

IN SUMMATION:

My source promised I’d find Miami Corruption if I dug into this story. I also promised you, dear reader, corruption if you stuck with this story. However, it just didn’t turn out to be the kind of corruption my source alleged and that you are probably expecting.
 
That happens sometimes. You get a tip and chase it down wherever it might go. When I was writing Fox “News” criticism (9 years I’ll never get back) I once got a tip from a very reliable source that Flava Flav dated Bill O’Reilly’s wife back in the day. I chased that story right down to Flava Flav himself.
 
SPOILER ALERT: It’s not true, but it was fun looking.
 
However, while chasing down this story I did find some real Miami Corruption and real crimes committed. It just wasn’t the corruption and crimes my source alleged.
 
Bottom line: Florida’s laws on privacy were breached to obtain, and then distribute, David Winker’s information contained in the 95 page dossier. Both are crimes, which may — or may not — have been committed by the same person. Worse yet, Federal laws were also broken.
 
These will be easy crimes to prove. The rapscallion who committed this crime left their fingerprints in Exhibit B. The language cannot be more clear.
Your Personal Information in Florida motor vehicle and driver records is blocked in accordance with the Driver Privacy Protection Act.

Your Social Security Number has been verified. Thank you.
Furthermore, in the top right-hand corner of every page in the subsequent report is the following notation:
[7/27/2020 10:02:44 PM]
The government helpfully dated and time-stamped the request. It won’t take a colonoscopy to discover the IP address of the criminal interloper; just a few sharply worded subpoenas.
 
I feel like I’m living in a noir movie now. What kind of crooked private detective would break Federal law to obtain kompromat on an enemy? And, what kind of Concerned Citizen would overlook these criminal trespasses in a false attempt to prove an activist lawyer is crooked?

END OF PART TWO.

Stay tuned for Part Three of the David Winker Affair in which I reveal the questions the City of Miami needs to answer, not that I believe it ever will.

EXCLUSIVE: Are Valet Companies Stealing From Miami Taxpayers?

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The area surrounding the
Coconut Grove Playhouse
[Click map to enlarge]
LEGEND:


A). Grove Gardens Condominiums;
aka The Monstrosity;
B). Regions Bank;
C). The E.W.F. Stirrup House;
D). Zoned residential lots, used
for illegal parking;
E). Part of the 45 parking spaces
leased for Valet Parking;
F). Blue Star Drive In & remaining 45
spaces leased to Valet parking;
G). Playhouse Parking Lot
operated by the MPA;
H). Unlocked gate directing traffic
onto William and Thomas Streets
and location of arrow directing cars
to exit onto Charles Avenue;
I). Main entrance/exit for main
Playhouse parking lot;
J). The Bicycle Shop;
K). The Barnacle, now a State Park,
once belonged to Commodore Ralph
Monroe, a contemporary of E.W.F.
Stirrup;
L). Rich people in gated enclaves;
M). Far less well off people in West
Grove, which has remained
predominately Black and depressed
during the last 125 years;
N). Commodore Plaza, named after
Ralph Monroe, is lined with pricy
eateries and more expensive art
galleries, meant for people with
more disposable income than
those on the surrounding blocks.

A year-long investigation by the Not Now Silly Newsroom has uncovered a situation in which valet parking companies continue to rip off City of Miami taxpayers for an untold numbers of dollars.

Last year, when Miami-Dade Cultural Czar Michael Spring untangled the Gordian knot of the Coconut Grove Playhouse, several pieces of that complex puzzle were the various parking lots surrounding the Playhouse. Paradise Parking was kicked off the main parking lot [G on map to the left] — after having squatted on it for several years — in exchange for an arrangement where it rents 45 parking spaces from the MPA, at $6 a day per, immediately behind the Playhouse in lots [E] and [F].

It never occurred to me when I went into journalism that I’d be sitting in parking lots noting the movements of cars and valets, but that’s part of what I’ve been doing for the last year. That surveillance led to several articles. After my last series of parking lot stories, a gate at the west end of the Coconut Grove Playhouse parking lot was ordered locked. It turned out the valets on Commodore Plaza had demanded it be left open on busy Friday and Saturday nights in order to make their job easier.

However — and this is crucial — the valet companies don’t run the parking lots, nor the city for that matter. They just think they do. That’s why they run roughshod over West Grove, caring little about the agreements they’ve already made. They are playing the city for chumps and stealing money from taxpayers.

[For more on these Coconut Grove parking problems, and so I don’t have to repeat myself, please read: The Coconut Grove Playhouse Trojan Horse; Part I • Part II • A Playhouse Trojan Horse Update.]

Which brings us to the evening of Saturday, May 2nd. There was a big event at the Cruz Building on Commodore Plaza [N], one street over from the Playhouse parking lot. (The Cruz Building, rumoured to have been built with cocaine money in Miami’s Go-Go 80s, is rented out for weddings or bar mitzvahs and the like.) Saturday’s event must have been bigger-than-average because the single block of Commodore Plaza was bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go traffic in both directions, with an officer directing traffic directly in front of the Cruz building. Many parking valets were taking cars from the swells and zipping off somewhere, as the security officer held up traffic for them.

That got my journalistic senses tingling. Where were the cars going?

The last time I heard of a big affair at the Cruz building, the valets were illegally parking cars on the 2 residential lots [D] on Charles Avenue, immediately across the street from the E.W.F. Stirrup House [C]. The neighbours called the Not Now Silly Newsroom, which led to this reporter asking 11 questions of [allegedly] corrupt Miami District 2 Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff. He refused to answer any of them and punted them to the Miami Parking Authority. After waiting 2 months, I finally got answers to those questions that fell within the MPA’s bailiwick; not all did, so there are several questions outstanding.

On May 2nd, after some surveillance at 6:30 PM, I discovered the valets were taking cars from the Cruz Building and parking them in the MPA lot, which is not a part of the 45 spaces rented from the MPA. Eventually, by 9PM, the MPA lot was filled with cars, many of which were parked by valets. Private citizens would pull into the parking lot, drive around the small circle and, finding no parking spaces, would leave. Every car that left without finding a parking space was money taken out of the Miami taxpayer’s pocket by the valet parking companies.

This is more egregious than it sounds for 2 reasons:

  • The citizens were behaving better than the valets, who stuck their Cruz Building cars anywhere they’d fit, whether there were lines on the ground, or not;
  • At 9PM, parking lot [F], which is rented from the MPA was 100% empty, while parking lot [E], also rented, had only 8 cars in it.

[As a side issue: The Regions Bank parking lot, [B] had 18 cars in it, more than I’ve ever counted before. I have communicated with Regions Bank only to learn it has sanctioned this valet parking arrangement. The bank cited — GET THIS!!! — how it’s a convenient arrangements for their own customers because it allows them to drive right up to the night deposit. However, Regions better hope their customers are driving skateboards, because that’s all that will really fit.]

In short: The valets fill up every surrounding parking lot first, before they start filling up their own.  They’re playing the city and Regions Bank for chumps and stealing money from the taxpayer.

When I told this story to Art Noriega, head of the Miami Parking Authority, he hit the roof on Monday morning. Can’t wait for my follow-up interview with him.

Let’s tie all this up with a pretty little bow for people who need to have their noses rubbed in the corruption before they actually see it.

Because:

  • The valet companies are connected to Gino Falsetto through Andrew Falsetto at Paradise Parking;
  • Gino Falsetto owns Aries Management & Development LLC;
  • Aries has a 50-year lease on the E.W.F. Stirrup House, the 2nd oldest house in Coconut Grove, designated historic, but currently undergoing nearly a decade of Demolition by Neglect;
  • Aries owns the Bicycle Shop (through another company), which was the subject of Is Aries Development Coconut Grove’s Biggest Scofflaw? and Follow Up to ” Is Aries Development Coconut Grove’s Biggest Scofflaw?”, earlier this week;
  • Aries, through other companies, owns the 2 vacant residential lots across the street from the Stirrup House, which had a cute little West Grove shotgun-and conch-style house on each before they were razed;
  • Aries torpedoed several plans over the years to reopen the Coconut Grove Playhouse, allowing further Demolition by Neglect of that venerated structure that the community is still trying to save;
  • Finally, Aries built the Grove Gardens Resident Condominiums, aka The Monstrosity, which set a new precedent for higher density structures in West Grove;

Is it not obvious to the Powers That Be that a single entity is responsible for most of the deterioration of the area immediately surrounding the Main Highway and Charles Avenue, which has been designated a Historic Roadway?

How does Gino Falsetto get away with all of this right under everybody’s collective noses? More to the point: Am I the only one watching?

When Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff Lied To My Face

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Just like on Batman, the lair of the criminals is crooked.

Mea culpa. I should have written this up in December, when it happened, but that would make me merely another reporter to whom [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff lied. That’s hardly news, but better late than never. 

A bit of background. On December 9th I attended the Douglas Park Soilgate Dog and Pony Show. This was merely the latest, fancy, multimedia production, mounted at taxpayers expense by [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff in another frantic effort to mollify constituents after they realize they’ve been hoodwinked, as opposed to the elected representative being upfront with his constituents in the first place.

Read about a previous Sarnoff Dog and Pony Show:
The Trolleygate Dog And Pony Show

I didn’t write about Douglas Park Soilgate Dog and Pony Show because: 1). It was a total yawnfest, even though at the end of the meeting [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff lied to my face; 2). I really had nothing new to say on the topic after I shot my wad posting Marc D. Sarnoff ► Everything Old Is New Again in November. That post documented the Sarnoff Skulduggery™ that slicked through Brownfield designations against 6 Miami parks, and 6 adjacent neighbourhoods, before anyone could notice. To quote myself:

[Michelle] Niemeyer is the lawyer who has been advising and working with the Friends of Merrie Christmas Park. She’s managed to help them understand and negotiate the extremely complicated thicket of Miami, Miami-Date, Florida and U.S. environmental laws that go into effect once a neighbourhood has been designated a Brownfield site.

According to Niemeyer, the entire process for designating the 6 neighbourhoods around the toxic parks Brownfield sites was flawed from the get-go. The Brownfield designation was slapped on these neighbourhoods without the proper notification, no matter how many publications in which the city claims it was published. There are supposed to be public meetings before any decisions made and none were held.

During the Douglas Park Soilgate Dog and Pony Show Deputy City Manager Alice Bravo refered to this flawed process in an oblique way and I wanted to get [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff on the record. That’s why right at the end of the Douglas Park Soilgate Dog and Pony Show, I raised my hand to ask a question. Unfortunately, because I had already written about the Sarnoff Skulduggery™, he was prepared for my question. I had barely begun before he cut me off to tell me there had never been a Brownfield designation.

“Does that answer your question?” he challenged.

“No, not really.” And, so I started to ask the question again in a slightly different manner. Once again he cut me off to say there had never been a Brownfield designation.

As I started to ask the question a third time, [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff cut me off again to say the same damned thing. That’s when I gave up. The meeting was breaking up, it was getting loud in the room, and no one really cared about the answer but me. And, even I didn’t care that much because the record shows he is duplicitous liar every time he opens his mouth. However, at least I had him on the record that there was no Brownfield designation, just another lie to a reporter and his own constituents.

[Maybe I didn’t write about the meeting because I’m embarrassed that I allowed [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff to bully me off my question. I kicked myself over and over on the drive home. However, as I have clearly demonstrated, he’s not inclined to answer any questions from me anyway.]

I was reminded of all of this Tuesday when I got an email from Ken Russell announcing Merrie Christmas Park is almost ready to reopen. To remind you, Russell led the neighbour revolt that got the toxic soil removed from Merrie Christmas Park. He’s also recently teased that he’s considering challenging Teresa [is it too early to call her corrupt?] Sarnoff, wife of [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff, in the Miami District 2 race, already crowded with 6 people vying to topple the Sarnoff Dynasty.

FULL DISCLOSURE: This reporter runs a kidding-on-the-square Facebook page called ABT – Anybody But Teresa. Come join the fun.

Russell managed to get the park cleaned up to the neighbours’ satisfaction despite the best efforts of [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff to present them with a fait accompli, a bizarre take-it-or-leave-it deal that would have had the neighbours chipping in for the cost of removing the toxic soil.

Yes, you read that right. For some reason [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff thought the residents should pay to remove the toxic soil the city dumped in their local park. As it turned out an anonymous donor coughed up the dough for the toxic soil
remediation and the work went ahead. That’s just another [possibly
illegal] deal [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff
cooked up behind closed doors. So far he has refused to name the
anonymous donor, which pisses all over the Florida Sunshine Law. But, I digress.

In his email Russell reminds his neighbours: 

Brownfield Designation:
Several months ago, the Commissioners quietly voted to declare this and 5 other parks as Brownfield Sites so that they could get money from the State and [be] release[d] from liability after the cleanup.  Through research, we learned that proper notification wasn’t given to residents and that this particular use of the Brownfield [law] wasn’t appropriate.  So the State is not recognizing the City’s ordinance.  However, for us, it’s important that the City officially reverse their decision to declare our neighborhood parks as Brownfields so that there would be no future confusion or stigma.  I received a call from Deputy City Manager Alice Bravo confirming that at the next Commission meeting (not this week), that the Commissioners would bring it back up for a vote to reverser [sic] their earlier vote.

How can a city reverse a vote that [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff tried to tell me to my face had never been made? Because, you see, it’s not just a game of semantics. This affects people’s lives and property values, something that [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff doesn’t seem to understand as he moves all these chess pieces on a board, playing both sides without any oversight.

At the Friends of Merrie Christmas Park Facebook Page Russell elaborated on this Sarnoff lie:

If anyone tells you that the City never designated the 6 parks as Brownfields, ask them about this attached signed approved memo from the City Manager’s office. I have been promised by Alice Bravo (City Deputy Manager) that Sarnoff has promised to un-do the designation through a vote at a Commission meeting later this month.(even though the State never recognized the designation, it’s important that the City withdraw their intention to designate).

If you go to the Friends of Merrie Christmas Park Facebook Page. you will see that Ken Russell has helpfully posted the minutes of the July 24, 2014, Miami City Commission meeting. Because of Sarnoff’s failure to adequately notify the residents around 6 parks and to provide public forums prior to any city vote on Brownfield designations, the motion passed will not be recognized by the State of Florida and now has to be undone. 

This District 2 race is shaping up to be a lot of fun for the Not Now Silly Newsroom.

An Open Letter To Miami Media

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The White Elephant completed and awaiting the end of lawsuits
I sent a variation of this letter to a local reporter. Because I worked on it for so long, and because every word I write is deserving of immortality, I am reprinting it here as an open letter in an amended form. Ahem. Testing . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . Ahem.

Dear Miami Media At Large:

Have I got a story for you. It’s a great story, one you can sink your teeth into and make your investigatory bones. It’s about waste and corruption within the City of Miami. I’d love to do it myself, but I’m just a little guy with a blog, yannow? I don’t have the resources you do, Miami Media, and I’ve been chasing this story for a year. 


I was alerted to Trolleygate right around this time last year, so I wrote “An Introduction to Trolleygate.” That’s when I really started
investigating this story. From the very beginning I
said the siting of the bus garage was, straight up, Institutional
Racism. It was not dissimilar to the racism that allowed West Grove to be gifted with Old Smokey all those decades ago. Therefore, it was heartening when
the USDOT agreed with me, which is the thrust of a recent Miami Herald article “How fed dollars for trolleys in Miami-Dade, local cities spurred civil rights investigation.” 

The article is correct, as far as it goes. However, it’s missing the entire point, as far as I’m concerned. It never asks:

“How did West Grove get stuck with
this white elephant in the first place?”

The deal between Astor Development and Coral Gables aside, there appears to have been a concerted effort within the City of Miami to get Astor’s dealie done with as little public input and awareness as possible. One of my off-the-record sources, an architect who has attended dozens of development meetings in several cities, tells me they’ve never seen a project approved so quickly in Miami. “A hot knife through butter” was the way it was described. Why? How? These are questions worth exploring, Miami Media.

From the very beginning of this project [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff seemed to be interested in making this happen on the QT, with as little muss and fuss as possible. Why? He allegedly helped Astor Development pit one West Grove community group off against another, which culminated in a huge lump sum of money ($250,000, apparently) being proffered by Astor Development for soil remediation of Armbrister Field. According to Miami Herald reporting, those people who were offered the money felt it was a bribe to get their approval for the maintenance garage, but considered it better than nothing if the garage was going to be built anyway. Why was Astor Development suddenly so magnanimous? How did Astor think to offer money to the community group in the first place? Who brokered this soil remediation deal with the community? Was Sarnoff a party to these negotiations? More questions you may wish to explore, Miami Media.

REMEMBER: This was before word broke that there was toxic soil all over Miami. What did Sarnoff know about toxic soil and when did he know it?

While those are all questions that need answers, Miami Media, there is one bigger question that might answer everything:

“Who is responsible for ignoring The Smoking
Gun email in the Miami Development Office?”

I wrote about this last September in “BLOCKBUSTER!!! The Trolleygate Smoking Gun Surfaces.” Follow the bouncing ball. To paraphrase my own reporting:

As the wheels were being greased to get this project through Miami City Hall quietly, Dakota Hendon — Miami Building and Zoning Department — noted something VERY inconvenient. The Astor/Coral Gables/West Grove trolley garage project they had been about to approve DID NOT comply with the Miami 21 Plan. Hendon should know. He helped write the Miami 21 plan. To that end he sent an email to Miami Planning Director Francisco Garcia [embedded here] to say this garage would be non-conforming because vehicle maintenance is an industrial use, which was prohibited on Douglas Road. [Not to mention that the Miami 21 Plan specifically prohibits things called “government operated vehicle maintenance facilities” on the Douglas Road corridor.]

At this point the City of Miami paper trail seems to go cold, except for one curious thing. Astor Development resubmitted its application to the City of Miami. This second, replacement, application was virtually identical to the first one, except this new one removed the word “maintenance” from the intended uses of the building.

Let’s be clear. The intended use of the building never changed. It was just a massaging of the wording on the original application once Hendon discovered there was a problem. And, on the basis of this amended application, the project was approved faster than “a hot knife through butter.”

The former Pan Am air clipper terminal has been restored beautifully
to become Miami City Hal. It’s where the alleged corruption now happens.

MORE QUESTIONS: Who told Astor to change its application? When Miami learned the project was non-conforming, why was the project not stopped dead in its trolley tracks? Why did Marc Sarnoff — only after the controversy erupted in the community — mount a Trolleygate Dog and Pony Show in a futile attempt to placate the West Grove community?

Where was the Miami Media at this laughable Town Hall Meeting? It was the kind of presentation that is usually given to taxpayers and stakeholders BEFORE a project is approved — in order to get it approved — not afterwards. Why was Sarnoff so concerned? Why was Sarnoff so involved? Why did Sarnoff spend taxpayers’ dollars to mount the Trolleygate Dog and Pony Show if it was already a done deal that couldn’t be changed? Who shepherded this project through the rough shoals at City Hall (to mix metaphors)? How did it get past goalkeepers Henden and Garcia? How much taxpayer money is now being spent by Coral Gables, Miami, and Miami-Dade to defend these [allegedly] corrupt backroom deals in the various legal forums that have erupted? (Astor pays its own freight, of course, and the West Grove community has been getting its legal services pro bono.) See, Miami Media, this story practically writes itself.

Miami Media, trust me on this one: You really won’t have much work to do in order to lay this entire fiasco at the feet of [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff. You’ll be hailed as a hero, too, because it will come right out of the blue. Sarnoff is rarely mentioned in stories about Trolleygate, despite the fact that he seemed to have his hands in almost every stage of this boondoggle in which Miami doesn’t even receive tax dollars, let alone a fake trolley stop.

Sarnoff’s interest in getting this disaster approved appears to have gone well beyond the basic fact that this polluting garage is in his district. Ask yourself this, Miami Media: If he was truly looking out for the interests of his constituents, Sarnoff could have interpreted every ambiguity in the zoning by-laws in favour of the West Grove community, as opposed to the OUT OF TOWN developer. However, Sarnoff said over and over at the Dog and Pony Show that his hands were tied because the project met all city standards, something we now know is not true.

If Sarnoff was truly looking out for the interests of his constituents, he would not have threatened them at the Dog and Pony Show. It was shocking to hear him casually claim that the West Grove lawsuit not only put in jeopardy the Arbrister Field bribe, but might cause him to withdraw HIS support for a redevelopment project currently in the planning stages for Grand Avenue. It was the most blatant example of Modern Day Colonialism I have ever witnessed. The naked political power dropped casually, as if he could not care less whether these projects go ahead, reminded me of Jim Crow. See, Miami Media? This story is really as old as the hills, if South Florida had any.

The Dog and Pony Show was my first contact with Sarnoff and I saw a bully in action. I’m surprised the Miami Media doesn’t write more about this aspect of his character, before he starts closing down the bridges in Miami.

The Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Dog Park sculpture, which I have
nicknamed Marc. If Sarnoff had any empathy for children and
families he would not have allowed two-thirds of Blanche Park
to go to the dogs at the expense of a children’s playground.

And, just to put a fine point on this whole dealie: if Marc Sarnoff had any empathy for his constituents in West Grove, he would not have lined the back wall of the Dog and Pony Show with a largest police presence anyone can ever remember at a public meeting in Miami.

Could this be one of the [several] reasons my West Grove sources call him racist? Could this quiet racism be what allowed him to not even think about the residents of West Grove when approving this project, except on how to bamboozle them?

Would Marc D. Sarnoff have approved of this garage at, say, Shipping and Virginia, on the site of The Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Dog Park, right next to The Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Traffic Circle. Would he have pushed for this in any other residential neighbourhood outside of West Grove? Would it have gone through like “a hot knife through butter”?

So, you see, Miami Media, I think there are a lot of unanswered questions concerning Trolleygate, the least of which concerns the Department of Transportation’s objections concerning the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Which is ironic because Institutional Racism informs the whole project at every level, from the ground up. Ask this basic question, Miami Media, and spread out from here: Why was Astor Development able to find the cheapest land in West Grove?

So, there you have it, Miami Media. It’s a story of naked corruption and racism hiding in plain sight. It’s one you’ve pretty well been ignoring for a year. But, I’ve made it easy for you. I’ve wrapped the entire package with a pretty bow just for you. Start pulling at that ribbon, that leads to all these unanswered questions, you might just discover corruption at Miami City Hall. To paraphrase Captain Renault in Casablanca, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that corruption is going on at Miami City Hall.”

So, Miami Media, you may want to do your job and investigate these acute angles surrounding Trolleygate. And, let me remind you, Miami Media, reporters win Pullet Surprises writing about government corruption.

With all my love,
Headly Westerfield
[aka Aunty Em]