Police Department Legal Bills

There are two special meetings planned for the North Bay Village Commission this month.  

May 10 @ 6PM - A meeting to discuss the staffing and organization of city departments.  

May 14 @ 6PM - Consideration of RFQ's for Legal Services.  

Mary 8 @ 7:30PM - The Regular Commission Meeting.   The agenda is not yet published but I will put it up when I get it.  

Regarding the Legal Services meeting on May 14, the city needs to always be evaluating if the money spent on legal services is the best value.   Our legal costs are out of control, but that is a symptom of management issues, not the result of billing and gouging.  The bulk of the legal bills are from the Police Department and reflect the Chief's decision to make routine management issues a firing offense for officers who are not part of the favored union.   

The judgment involved in these firings was political, not managerial.  In one case, the final arbitration ruling clearly said that the police officer should be reinstated and made whole.  Yet the PD continues to drag this out which will result in even higher legal bills and settlements when the matter is finally resolved.   

In another case, an officer was fired for violating department policy regarding speech in public forums.   That policy was instituted by the  police chief and has since been abandoned as nonconforming with current labor law and court findings.  It's pretty likely that this too will fail arbitration.  

A simple technical adjustment, cross charging the legal expense to the department responsible, would shine the light on where the money is being wasted.  If it was a commission action, then the legal bill is charged to the commission budget.  If it was utilities or permitting, that cost center takes the hit.   

If the city did this, the legal services alone for the Police Department would be their second biggest budget item after salaries and the commission and citizens would see clearly where the money is being spent.   

That would be real transparency.  Bad things happen in the dark.  

Kevin Vericker

May 4, 2012

NBV Police Chief Applies to Port St. Lucie

Police chief Bob Daniels applied for the job as Chief of Police in Port St. Lucie. The article is in the Treasure Coast Palm. Check the list of applicants at the bottom and there he is:

Robert Daniels: Chief of Police city of North Bay Village Police Department, 7/2010 — present

Kevin Vericker
March 19, 2012

The Police Department and the Budget

What does the budget tell us our priorities are?

The biggest single discretionary expense has been the ongoing arbitration and court battles with two officers. In one case, the results are in and we are now on the hook for wrongful termination with a yet to be determined amount of money to reinstate the officer. It will probably be a hit well over $200,000 for back pay and benefits, plus the legal bills for an additonal $200,000.

In another case, there is an ongoing legal battle over what seems to be a union battle. Former CFD president and current appointed commissioner Richard Chervony was subpoenaed on Friday in the case over his involvement. Apparently he instigated the complaint over a Facebook posting two years ago where the officer posted that he believed North Bay Village needed "new blood" on the commission. This one too has all the earmarks of a losing case.

The police chief was brought in to resolve the conflicts in the police department but he hasn't succeeded. If anything they are worse. And we're footing the bill. Reduced or nonexistent services and unnecessary lawsuits of over $500,000 while the city is going broke.

The cherry on the sundae is that mismanaging the police takes so much effort, that there is now a posting for an "Assistant Chief" to help in it. Where does it stop?

Kevin Vericker
March 18, 2012

Recap of the April 12 Commission Meeting

Last night was the breath of fresh air we needed. I will talk about the new political action committee (PAC) at the end of the post but let me get to the meat of the meeting first.

The mayor spoke in no uncertain terms about the deceptions by the city manager, the gossiping by the police chief and the dithering by code enforcement. Let's break it down.

* Vice Mayor Connie Leon-Kreps has at the request of the city manager been signing wire transfers and checks. This is illegal and sneaky. The charter states explicitly that signing power is reserved to the mayor and vice-mayor respectively. Respectively means in sequence, first one, and then the next, not whoever. Here's the definition from the Oxford English dictionary: adverb: separately or individually and in the order already mentioned (used when enumerating two or more items or facts that refer back to a previous statement):they received sentences of one year and eight months respectively.

This action is criminal and deceptive. Even Leon-Kreps close ally Lim was shocked and voted Yes on a motion requiring a forensic accounting investigation of all the transactions.

* Frank Rodriguez did the right thing and introduced a motion asking for the City Manager's resignation. The mayor seconded the motion but it did not pass. It should have. And Bob Pushkin should resign.

* The mayor then spoke about two incidents regarding the police chief. The first was when the police chief claimed to citizens that an investigation against an officer was "requested by the mayor." It was not. The mayor did not request any investigations and further, does not have the power to do so.

The second was an incident when the police chief stated that the mayor and the commission had voted to reject a proposal for a cooperative camp with the Miami-Dade school systems this summer. There was never such a vote and prior to her comments, the issue was clarified and the commission unanimously supported the approach.

This public chiding was an expression of the deeply political nature of our police chief. He was hired by Trujillo and Pushkin and continues to show his contempt for the duly elected mayor of North Bay Village. He's on notice by the mayor that she won't be pulled into his games.

* Finally, the mayor spoke of her frustration over a commercial business, one with a marketing website, admission policies, scheduled hours and all the other appearances of a commercial business that residents have been complaining about since late 2010. She asked the police chief why it was still running and he replied clearly and unequivocally that is was not a police matter but a code enforcement matter.

The Chief's right. The city manager, not the police chief, has chosen not to address the issue. It will be interesting to see if the CM does.


There's no point in being polite with sneaky people who sign checks in the dark, gossip and don't do what they are obliged to do and many, many residents have told me today how happy they are with the new attitude on the part of the mayor.

People are fed up. We're tired of our taxes going up, our services being reduced, runaway spending on pet projects and employees and no reduction in our budget.

Which brings me to the earlier part of the meeting. Over twenty people met last Saturday to form the North Bay Village Voice, a PAC inspired by the county recall effort. The issues are the same: our police are out of control, our taxes are higher, our services are less and our money is being frivolously spent on lavish salaries and perks ($5,000 so the police chief can attend a dinner? What did they serve, extinct animals on diamond crusted plates?)

Like Miami Voice, the issue is not recall but that will be the tactic until and unless the city fundamentally reforms the way it does business. Ten people spoke in favor last night and there is a special commission meeting to discuss the issues next Thursday, April 21.


Kevin Vericker
April 13, 2011

City Government By The Numbers

Numbers matter. Numbers quantify how organizations plan to execute, how well the plan has worked and where to form a new plan. The most obvious quantification of desired results is the amount of money set aside in a budget for activities and goals. This is not exactly rocket science or complex mathematical reasoning. Everyone does it, whether with detailed financial plans or a casual look at the wallet to see if there is money for basic needs and then some left over for optional purchases.

Individual consumers exchange money for goods and services. At the supermarket, the customer hands money to the cashier in exchange for the items in the cart or at the movies for the right to sit in a seat and view the film. Companies exchange money for employee services, for new computers, for accounting services and so forth. Again, this is not complex.

Our city is no different. Residents are taxed and pay taxes in exchange for basic services and how that tax money is apportioned is the clearest indication of what the community values. In North Bay Village, close to 70% of our budget has been dedicated to police services. This is a clear indication of the high value that North Bay Village puts on having a local police department. North Bay Village is justifiably proud of being an exceptionally safe community.

Police services are not a single entity. When a city pays for police services, the city is paying for a full package of services and part of fiscal stewardship is quantifying the services delivered and the quality of the services delivered.

For at least a year, several commissioners and citizens have been asking for the basic statistics on the police department, not just the crime reports (UCR is the acronym) but the actual activities of the police department. This is a routine and normal reporting function for most American police departments. These reports vary in what they quantify, but a typical report is attached below and it includes a good summary of the police activities.

We need this basic information to manage our money. We need to know what the police are doing. Look at the attached report below from Sunny Isles for the month of October 2010. It's simple, understandable and shows what the police did, not just crimes committed. This basic quantitative measure can be further explored for answers to critical questions such as "Are we having a new problem with traffic violations?" or "What is the cost per dispatch call? How many were duplicates?" and "What skills do our police need?" It doesn't provide the answer to these questions but brings them forward.

At the meeting on Tuesday night, the chief could not tell us the arrest stats. Vice Mayor Connie Leon-Kreps and one of the residents talked about how pleased the residents are at more visible patrols but no one can quantify how many patrols there are. A commission can't make policy based on anecdotes. The commission needs verifiable and agreed information.

It is the chief's job to provide that, regularly. The chief spoke about benchmarking, which is a qualitative measure of how one group performs compared to goal. An organization cannot get to benchmarking without first deciding what it is to be measured, measuring it and then comparing. It was a good answer but not to the question posed. A better answer would have been, "I'll provide the requested information."

I urge you to look at the Sunny Isles report. There's nothing hard in here. This is information that the North Bay Village PD have currently and it would be unimaginable if the police chief did not have these numbers. It would mean all of the PD's decisions were guess work and the NBV PD is better than that. This will continue to be an issue until the police chief makes the information public.

Kevin Vericker
January 14, 2011



Sunny Isles Police Statistics Oct-2010

The Best Supervised Police Department Ever

With the restructuring of the police department, we now have the THE BEST SUPERVISED POLICE EVER. Seriously. Check it out.

We have:

1 Chief
2 Lieutenants
4 Sergeants
4 Corporals

11 Total Command Staff (Gold Badge)

8 Patrol Officers

Ratio of Supervisors to people being Supervised 1.25:1

And let's not forget that we have 5 detectives, who in North Bay Village investigate property crimes. Now we don't know how many property crimes there are since the PD does not publish crimes stats but I'm sure there must be a lot of them. Of course, if it's a violent crime, it goes outside North Bay Village.

Another important thing to remember is that each of the so called "command" and "detective" positions come with a financial benefit for the increased responsibility, typically 5% for sergeant, 5% for detective and 3% for corporal.

Where is the money coming from? The PD did not budget for raises in 2011 and did not save any money in 2010, in spite of being directed to make cuts.

Maybe if Chief Daniels feels well enough, he might explain this to us at the next commission meeting.

Kevin Vericker
December 31, 2010

The Post Before Christmas

This is a very short post. The North Bay Village Police Department is continuing to create new positions and raise salaries while the city is suffering the worst decline in its history.

The question remains why. Maybe it is needed to resolve short term problems or to improve long term effectiveness. Maybe. It would be nice to know but there is no public discussion of the police issues.

I understand Chief Daniels felt ill during our last commission meeting and left. That happens. But the responsible thing to do would have been to provide a written assessment to the commission about changes proposed in the police department. His contract specifies that he need answer to no one but we do after all pay his salary and a simple memo would have been appropriate.

I'll be back next week. In the meantime, for those who celebrate Christmas, have a very merry Christmas and for those who don't, have a great day off.

Kevin Vericker
December 23, 2010

Closing Out The Week

This week I've written about the worsening issues of the North Bay Village Police Department.

• Publicly paid private investigations to intimidate police officers and citizens.
• The complete lack of community outreach and involvement in public safety.
• The extra legal contract crafted for the police chief.
• The refusal to reign in costs.

There's a bit more to add. There is check sitting in city hall to pay the chief a three month bonus for his insurance transition, his COBRA. This was not part of his employment agreement, not part of his contract but a "verbal" promise made to him. It seems like the grab bag never empties when it comes to the police.

There needs to be a massive change in the police department and I have no faith that this chief will make that happen. So far, any questions from the community have been met with digging in, the chief claiming annoyance at the person trying to work with him, and intimidation. Maybe he might realize that success in North Bay Village is not just about pleasing a small group in the force but his history here, and in Buckeye, AZ, are such that if he has not learned it by now, he never will.

This week, people have been warning me that I face retaliation for criticizing the police, and I probably do. I'm neither stupid nor crazily heroic and I am well aware that the NBV PD has such a history of targeting residents who speak out. I will probably at some point find that I get a ticket for oh, I don't know, unregistered sneakers or making a legal turn. But the current situation is even less tolerable.

Don't take my word for it. Call the chief at 305 758 2626. Ask to see the crime statistics and response sheets for NBV. Ask him about the investigations. Ask him about the budget cuts. Or come to the commission meeting on Tuesday December 14 and ask him in person. Tell me if you get a real answer and I'll tell the rest of the world.

Kevin Vericker
December 10, 2010

How The Police Got To This Point

There's a simple distillation of the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes that says “If you do things the right way, you do the right things.” Hobbesian choices are not about complying with arbitrary social mores but about making sure that the seemingly small choices we make are correct and ethically consistent. The old aphorism that “the end justifies the means” is just wordplay in the moral universe of Hobbes. The means themselves create the end.

So apart from not wanting to let that humanities degree go to waste, why the heck would I be writing about philosophy from the Scottish Enlightenment?

Simple, it's a continuation of what has gone wrong in the North Bay Village Police Department in the last year. Monday I wrote about the police chief using public money to hire a private investigator. The investigation is focused on officers whom the current dominant union does not particularly care for and has the appearance of being designed to intimidate officers and citizens rather than unearth facts.

Yesterday, I covered the isolation and lack of public accountability that characterize the NBV police department.

That we are worse off than before with the new chief does not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with how he was hired and the contract he holds. That process of recruiting and hiring Chief Daniels was filled with unethical and possibly illegal steps in which he willingly participated.

Let's review. Robert Daniels was brought in through the back door. After the commission voted lockstep, Vogel, Kane and Trujillo, to not hire an interim chief following Roland Pandolfi's resignation, announcing that they felt it was better to wait until a new commission was elected to recruit the chief, interim city manager Robert Pushkin began a recruitment campaign with few applicants. Daniels was already picked.

When George Kane and Rey Trujillo, joined by Dr. Vogel, forced the hire on the city without public comment and virtually no discussion from the dais, things were done wrong.

When the contract which gives the chief “sole discretion in management of the Police force” was written in spite of its clear illegality as it directly contradicts our charter and approved in collusion with Daniel Abbott of Weiss Serota, the chief, the city manager and the three commissioners knew and should have known that this was a dirty deal. Yet they all gladly went along.

When the severance package for dismissal for anything, anything, other than criminal conviction gives six months' notice and three months' severance, you know that the conspirators are aware of how illegal and unethical their behavior is and this severance package was designed to do two things – reassure the chief that even though his contract is illegal, he will be taken care of and put the cash strapped city in a bind where we continue to employ the chief regardless of his actions or inaction because we cannot afford to let him go.

So it's no surprise that Chief Daniels feels no obligation to the public, the commission or the mayor and spends his time protecting his position and supporting his patrons. It's sad for him and a bad deal for North Bay Village.

But given his willing participation in an unethical hiring process, his extraordinary contract, it's entirely predictable. Besides, ask yourself. If you were the Chief and you came in this way, would you want to be seen in public? Would you feel comfortable under scrutiny? Better to stay in the shadow, preemptively ferreting out enemies and not engaging with the public who were cheated.

Kevin Vericker
December 8, 2010

Isolation and Politics in the Police Department

Yesterday, I wrote about the outside investigator, Pat Franklin, who has been brought into North Bay Village to conduct investigations about "citizen complaints" that some police officers may have been involved in politics. I note the Mr. Franklin does not seem to be investigating the FOP Endorsements in our last election cycle, but spending his time questioning innocuous social media postings.

The net effect of such an investigation is to send an intimidating message to the officers and to the targeted civilians that not falling in behind the chief is dangerous. I'll write in more detail tomorrow as it has to do with the contract that was shoved down our throats.

But in the meantime, are the relationships any better with the citizens, the ones who pay the taxes and to whom the police department is here to serve? Not if you are not part of the political cabal that hired and continues to protect the chief.

Some small samplings - a "Meet The Chief" night with PAL became just a PAL meeting when the chief called in sick. He never rescheduled and never took the time to initiate any further interaction.

The police department does not publish metrics so we have no idea how many patrols are made, how many calls are responded to, what the police are doing. There are no published crime statistics for North Bay Village.

There have been no community meetings with the chief or the police since he started last July. North Bay Village has been concerned for some time that our police department was divided and not serving the community. Not a single thing has happened to change that perception. There is zero community outreach, something we had been very used to under Chief Pandolfi.

The suspension of the PAL/DARE programs was a community relations disaster. Daniels stonewalled the board and individual members, put himself in a bizarre argument with me when I wrote that "emails" had been ignored and let me know in no uncertain terms that he only ignored one email so the plural was an attack. Only when it was clear that this was a campaign issue and a liability for his political sponsor Rey Trujillo did he begin to respond.

Other residents have regularly reported that he is distant on the best of days.

We are a small town. There is a good argument that the only reason that we are a town at all is to have our own police force and we pay the bulk of our taxes to keep them.

It's time for the police chief to get out of the trailers, out of the secret meetings at city hall, and get out in the street meeting with the residents whether he likes us or not. Drop the faux investigations and stop intimidating the citizens.

Next Tuesday, December 14, the chief is expected for the first time to provide a public safety briefing to the commission and to the public. This was not his idea or proposal as it should have been, but at least maybe we will start to hear just what the heck the police department is doing with our money.

Tomorrow: Let's look at the contract.

Kevin Vericker
December 7, 2010

Investigating the Investigators

In July, the city hired Robert Daniels as Chief of Police. His biggest challenge was to bring the police department back to a place where the department works as a cohesive unit to serve the city.

Chief Daniels has failed. The police are now working under a permanent state of investigation and favoritism. Political activities have further divided the police, community relations are bad and there is no longer even lip service to respecting the budget. In every way, our police department is in worse shape than it was before Chief Daniels was hired.

For this post, let's concentrate on one thing – the investigations. We'll talk about the other aspects through the week.

The North Bay Village PD has hired Patrick Franklin, a private investigator, to pursue politically unpopular members of the North Bay Village Police Department. Franklin has a long reputation doing internal affairs investigations for police departments around Miami-Dade and did several for the North Bay Village PD over the years. Franklin was hired in response to “citizen complaints” about social media postings that might have had political leanings and to look at publicly available records.

First problem: Why bring in an outside investigator when we have an internal affairs group in our own police department? If the PD's internal affairs is not capable of running of a preliminary investigation to see if there are grounds for a larger investigation, then that's what needs fixing. There's nothing about casual citizen complaints about dislikes of specific officers that warrant this extraordinary expense.

Second problem: Such investigations are presumed to be confidential. Yet within days, the news was all over town that Franklin was conducting inquiries about members of the PD. Now that may have been the plan, to do the investigation publicly to ferret out information, but it looks more like sloppiness than strategy.

A leader coming into the position of chief in a deeply conflicted department should be uniting the department but this looks more like retaliation than rehabilitation. Perception matters.

Kevin Vericker
December 6, 2010

The Parents Speak

Police Chief Daniels suspended the PD's participation in both programs on September 15 without any notice to the parents or the community. His reasoning was that he needed to evaluate the programs and with budget cuts coming, he could not spare the officer assigned to the DARE program.

Last night, the parents, the kids, the community turned out to show the commission the deep support of the community for the DARE and PAL programs and to express their deep frustration at being left out of the decision to suspend. A special presentation, led by Jean Pankey, and supported by parent after parent, citizens without kids, and the kids themselves, got up to tell the commission how much this successful program meant to them individually and as a group. Many talked about the fierce dedication and practical administration that North Bay Village Officer Lisa Gittner brings to the program.

North Bay Village DARE and PAL are especially successful programs. The goal of reaching out and involving the community in positive education and activities is shared nearly universally in North Bay Village and Lisa Gittner has woven this program fully into the fabric of North Bay Village civic life.

The commission itself showed their support for PAL. Rey Trujillo has worked hard with the city manager to find $25,000 in a budget stretched near the breaking point to support PAL. George Kane asked the Waste Management Systems rep for their support of PAL and Mayor Oscar Alfonso understood the importance of listening to the community so well that he put a special presentation on an already overcrowded agenda.

It's clear that the community wants and values these programs.

The Chief's abrupt suspension of the programs without parental and citizen involvement or even a place to air their concerns was a misstep. As late as yesterday, he was still dug into an authoritative stance that he did not need to reach out to the community on this. This does not bode well for his relationships with the community.

The truly ironic thing about last night's special presentation is that this is the meeting that the Chief should have had two weeks ago. The information would have been the same but he would have been in front of the process, not dragged there against his will.

The community is watching closely now. Chief Daniels has to act quickly and decisively to regain the community's trust. The citizens expect a quick restoration of the programs. The parents expect to be involved in the evaluation of these programs and part of any future decisions.

There's a lot more from last night but it will have to wait until tomorrow.

Kevin Vericker
September 29, 2010

Using the Budget Crisis for Political Gain

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. There is a difference between the imposition of authority and true leadership.

True leadership attracts by laying out the problem, proposing the solutions, transparently informing the stakeholders of the situation and leading the adoption and implementation of the solution.

Imposing authority is inherently a closed loop type of decision making. The authority listens only to what she or he chooses to hear, makes a decision and unilaterally imposes it.

In North Bay Village where the budget crisis is worse than most, we are suffering under the imposition of authority and the lack of leadership.

Two of the major changes to deal with the budget crisis are being imposed with virtually no citizen input.

The first, the police chief suspended the PAL and DARE programs on September 14 unilaterally, without notice to the parents or kids and with no public plan for what happens now.

The second, the privatization of the garbage pickup, is being presented as the only possible way to get the budget under control.

The citizens are angry. We understand that moneys must be cut but not why these two programs.

Let's look at the PAL/DARE programs. In a community where there is no publicly available space for children save for an obscure park across a busy highway which has no athletic facilities, PAL activities filled a much needed role for the parents and kids of North Bay Village.

Chief Daniels has made no attempt to engage the parents of NBV. When there was a "Meet The Chief" day at the school, he canceled his appearance for personal reasons and never rescheduled. He has consistently refused to meet with the parents affected by his suspension of both programs and does not explain himself beyond "I need to review the program."

This is a classic closed loop. The Chief is not only not seeking information and support from the stakeholders, he is blocking it. This does not bode well for our community.

In the case of the sanitation privatization, this is a radical change. In comes on the heels of the unions' objections to furloughs and the savings are estimated to be about $350,000, which includes the sale of capital equipment and a three year contract. Instead of a temporary emergency measure, a whole new system will be imposed on North Bay Village.

In contrast to the chief's decisions, this proposal has been put out for public comment at the September 14 Commission Meeting and again before the final budget adoption on September 28. Frankly after three public budget workshops, all of which have included the furloughs as a key element in the budget crisis, to suddenly change direction without a great deal of publicity and without building support is a concern. And it remains unclear as to whether the decision to not use furloughs is grounded in law or is based on a desire to not alienate the unions, at a cost of alienating the citizens. This must be clarified.

There's more coming as this unfolds.

Running total of the North Bay Village Trujillo Tax, the amount that Rey Trujillo, former vice mayor and current candidate for mayor, has caused North Bay Village to spend unnecessarily in the last year - $317,000

Cost of Duplicate Employees:

City Manager $80,000
Legal Service $40,000
Police Chief $115,000

Other Costs

City Advertising $27,000
Revoking the Hiring Freeze $55,000

Cost Exposure

Unnecessary Severance for the Police Chief $81,750 is not included in the total.

But we can't afford garbage pickup?

Kevin Vericker
September 20, 2010

North Bay Village Trujillo Tax Tonight Raised by $167,500

Here's how it broke out tonight.

2a. The proposal to pay the Miami Herald three times the amount it should cost to publish the city notices was proposed by George Kane. It passed - Rey Trujillo, George Kane and the sad Dr. Paul Vogel voting yes.

North Bay Village Trujillo Tax: $27,000 in unnecessary excess advertisement.

2b. The illegal contract with Police Chief Daniels, which overrides the city charter, and ensure 9 months salary if he is fired for anything other than criminal convictions.

North Bay Village Trujillo Tax: $81,750 plus cost of resulting lawsuits.

2c. Revoking the hiring freeze so an already filled position can be filled again.

North Bay Village Trujillo Tax: $59,000 at a minumum.

Total cost of the actions tonight: $167,500

That's just tonight. More analysis tomorrow. For now, I will leave you with a statement from compañero Trujillo. His objection to the Miami Daily Business Review which would have saved the city $27,000 was that only business people like lawyers and finance people read it. You know, capitalists.

Kevin Vericker
August 24, 2010

Police Chief Contract and The Rest of the Meeting

Yesterday, I promised the rest of the news from the commission meeting last night. I am not going linearly since the key to understanding the rest of the meeting and yesterday's post is in the contract drafted but not yet approved for the new police chief. I'll start with that which was the first item on the agenda. (The contract in its entirety is at the end of the post.)

The contract is only the sort of agreement that could be drawn up in government. This agreement would never fly in any responsible private concern. The highlights:

• The proposed base salary is $109,000.
• Five weeks vacation upon signing the contract, credited immediately and an additional five floating holidays.
• Car for unlimited personal use.
• Fully paid personal and family medical.
• Sick time on top of the vacation time but not specified.

Termination Clause - If the City terminates the police chief for reasons other than "cause", which seems to refer to criminal convictions and behavior unspecified in the contract, the chief gets Six Month's Notice and Three Month's Termination. Nine full months of pay.

This is a cut and paste of the same contracts that have hobbled our budget.

It was also the first item on the commission meeting agenda. The contract itself was delivered to the commissioners and the mayor at 7:50 PM while they were on the dais and as they were asked to vote on the contract. The commission agreed to postpone the item until they at least had a chance to read it.

Draw your own conclusions here about why this was not shared before the meeting.

Now I mentioned yesterday's post about the weird and unexplained controversy of using the funds from the red light cameras to save three sworn officers. I am no longer wondering why. The intention for this money was to pay this extravagant contract from the red light funds and then claim it was "budget neutral." That's why the tantrum on the dais.

Audit Report - Last year's audit, 2009, was finally delivered. The short version is that no significant problems were found, but that the city needs to reconcile the funds accounting monthly.

Funds accounting is unique to government and nonprofits. Simply put, it shows not just what we spent and what we received, but the source of the money spent. Example, if we have $400,000 in an account, from three sources, and write a check for $150,000, that check should note which source funded this check. This is to prevent moneys being used for purposes prohibited by law and policy. For example, the city can't use the grant funds for general operations. North Bay Village is subject to error and revocation of funds if we cannot clearly prove the source of the money dispersed.

The big surprise is that the city is not reconciling these accounts right now. A suggestion was made that several years of reconciliation be done by an outside firm. Now the funds have to be reconciled or we could face catastrophic penalties and have to refund large blocks of grant money. Whether we need to have an outside firm do it or our accounting department does it in house is another question.


The Hiring Freeze -At the last commission meeting, the commission voted unanimously to put a freeze on hiring. It was brought up for reconsideration at this meeting because it is stopping the employment of a full time code enforcer. Or at least that's what was explained. The resolution was quite clear that the commission could override the hiring freeze on a case by case basis.

The truth is this was put in to stop the North Bay Village Trujillo Tax, whereby every time former vice mayor Rey Trujillo gets annoyed with someone, we hire a duplicate to do that employee's work. If the city manager proposes a new hire, he can bring the proposal to the commission and the commission can vote on the proposal. No great inconvenience and one that most responsible corporations implement from time to time. It simply requires a greater burden of proof that the position is urgent. The motion was postponed.

Public Safety Complex - We are still renting City Hall, about to move to the Lexi at a cost around $180,000. We have had bond issues available to us for at least two years but no progress on building the combined Fire Station, Police Station and City Hall. Well, Commissioner Kane found that the police station at the Lexi is inappropriate for its purpose. He blamed this on the previous city manager, failing to mention that the Lexi deal was his and he was found in violation of the Miami-Dade Ethics Charter when he contracted for compensation for the move. That was cute.

Anyway, this time Kane proposed that he lead negotiations to build a fire and police station only with the county and alluded to other possible properties available for the city hall construction. The other four commissioners just looked embarrassed about Kane involved in another real estate deal and quietly postponed the motion.

The next meeting, originally planned to be a budget hearing will also deal with these items above. It's scheduled for August 23.

Here's the Police Chief's Proposed Contract:

Police Chief

Kevin Vericker
August 12, 2010