Look What We Caught a Code Officer Doing The Miami Beach Code Compliance officer who drives City Vehicle No. 1547 must really like his car. In addition to getting him around the city to the places he has to go to, he doesn’t have to pay for its upkeep, nor for the gas that goes [...]
Last Friday – two days following the Miami Beach City Commission’s acceptance of his resignation – City Manager Jorge Gonzalez was notified of his being named to the city’s Pension Board. Here is the email from Rick Rivera, pension administrator for the Miami Beach Employees’ Retirement Plan, to Gonzalez, sent at 10:12 a.m. that morning. [...]
But This Is No Movie; City Hall’s Ethics Disconnect is Real On the morning of April 11, I was sitting at my desk, completing a column for deadline, when I learned the news. The U.S. Attorney in Miami would be holding a noontime press conference to announce the arrests of Miami Beach city employees on [...]
Deede Wants Transparency Commissioner Deede Weithorn wants the city manager who replaces Jorge Gonzalez to be more transparent than Gonzalez was in his dealings with the Commission and the public. Speaking at the tail end of a public police briefing on Memorial Day weekend plans last Friday at Smith & Wollensky in South Pointe, Weithorn [...]
City Manager, Jorge Gonzalez Gets the Heave-ho From the Miami Beach City Commission; Last Day is July 8 After having first proposed resigning a year from now – an offer that hit a brick wall in the form of four commissioners – embattled Miami Beach City Manager Jorge Gonzalez will now leave office on the [...]
The accounting firm for which Miami Beach Commissioner Deede Weithorn works was reportedly warned that it would lose business if she voted to fire City Manager Jorge Gonzalez. Sources to the SunPost said this week that Richard A. Berkowitz, a managing partner of Berkowitz Dick Pollack & Brant, the downtown Miami CPA firm for which Weithorn [...]
Within 8 Hours This Week, Jorge Gonzalez’s 12-Year City Managership Finally Unraveled What a day, Tuesday. A crowd of angry, seething citizens awaited the city manager’s appearance before the Miami Beach Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club at David’s Cafe on Lincoln Road. TV news crews and their remote vans, parked outside the cafe, awaited him, too. [...]
Here, in its entirety, is an email that Commissioner Tobin sent to City Manager Jorge Gonzalez on Tuesday afternoon, under the subject title, “Sneaky till the end” – Jorge, Yesterday you and I discussed your resignation. You wanted to stay for one more year. I wanted to sleep on it. Here is my answer and [...]
Citizen Rally at Miami Beach City Hall Demands Change Now “WE WANT CHANGE!” a pitchfork brigade of angry citizens demanded. And they made their point loud and clear, right smack on the doorstep of the site where they want that change: Miami Beach City Hall. They came. They saw. They raged. As Gary Cooper’s Marshal [...]
Gathered with the throng outside Miami Beach City Hall last Thursday to speak with protestors and observe their rally was Commissioner Ed Tobin. He, fellow Commissioner Jonah Wolfson, and Mayor Bower were the only City Hall notables to appear at the rally. The mayor having just been confronted by angry demonstrators before leaving the area [...]
Galbut Development Unveils Versions to the Public Three distinct visions were unveiled to the public last Thursday of what the three-block area between 6th, 7th, and 8th streets at Alton Road could look like in a few short years – a grand, yet scaled, outlet mall/residential development which its various architects intend to be a [...]
Snippets from the Mayor on the Move Sessions “We’ve lifted a rock, and turned on the lights” With days to go before a crucial City Commission meeting at which will be raised the controversy of the recent corruption arrests of seven city employees and a likely vote on the future of the city manager who [...]
