She’ll be in the hot seat at Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club

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The distribution of hateful, anti-Semitic flyers in Miami Beach and Surfside over the weekend, blaming the “COVID agenda” on a list of Jewish doctors and officials, has not just alarmed that community. Everyone is disgusted.

Police from several jurisdictions are investigating the source of the crude, false and inflammatory flyers, which were carefully left on lawns and driveways inside plastic bags so they wouldn’t get wet, with pebbles to weigh them down, so they wouldn’t fly away.

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The Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department has a new director, and it’s another refugee from Miami Beach government.

Former Miami Beach Public Works Director Roy Coley was appointed as the new WASA director Tuesday by Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava — but everyone believes he was brought in by former Miami Beach City Manager Jimmy Morales, now the county Chief Operations Officer.

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Miami Beach City Manager Jimmy Morales will likely get a four-year contract extension at Wednesday’s meeting and a salary increase to $305,736.
In a move that is largely a rubber stamp vote, Morales — who was hired in 2013 for $255,000 a year — will also get an increase in retirement contribution, from $7,000 to what the IRS allows, an increase in car allowance to $800 a month.
But he may also have to deliver on several beach projects since, for the first time, there seem to be goals and objectives attached.
Read related: Jimmy Morales contract extended at ‘secret’ meeting, raise coming
It’s a rubber stamp move because the city commission already discussed this in secret at a committee of the whole meeting last month. The only commissioner to dissent then was Michael Gongora, who did not like the secretive way the contract extension was pushed.
Why this had to be discussed first at a meeting that has no real public notice and no real public participation, at a meeting in the manager’s conference room rather than the public commission chambers, is beyond anyone’s comprehension. As is why this was added to the agenda at the last minute.
Ricky Arriola, who chairs the finance committee and was charged with negotiating the terms, sponsors the resolution, which was added to the agenda late Tuesday in what seems like yet another attempt to get this passed with as little public input as possible.
The contract comes with a goals and objectives that basically amount to a list of deadlines: the Beach Walk, Lincoln Road renovations and the convention center hotel within three years, city automation and electronic filing of permits within two years, and significant progress on Bay Walk and the North Beach Town Center, among other projects.
Some of the deadlines are in four years — which is at the end of the contract.

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There is a secret meeting in Miami Beach this afternoon at which the city manager’s contract will be discussed, as well as several other measures that include limiting residential input into government policy.
City Manager Jimmy Morales could come out of it with a raise and a five-year contract. Not right away, maybe. But once they know how the votes are going to go, a commission meeting is just a rubber stamp.
The Committee as a Whole meeting — coming three weeks after Morales asked for a five year extension and for the city commission to authorize the finance committee to negotiate a raise — is not a regular commission meeting. It is a more like a secret gathering. It is not in commission chambers. It is in the manager’s office conference room. It is not aired on television or streamed live online or even recorded. There is no public input.
If Commissioner Michael Góngora had not put it on Facebook, nobody would have known it was happening.
City commissioners got an emailed agenda from the mayor’s chief of staff Friday. “Below are the items to be discussed at Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole. Do you want to add anything,” Michelle Burger wrote, before adding the items:

City Manager Performance Evaluation
Ballot Questions / Resolutions
Best Practices for the Office of the Mayor & Commission
Eliminating the Commission Committee system and moving towards two (2) Commission meetings a month
Quarterly meetings for all boards and committees (except land use boards
Policies related to presentation and awards agenda

The last one seems pretty boring, but the rest certainly seem like they should be discussed at an open and public city commission meeting.
Particularly the manager’s evaluation, which was taken off the table by Mayor Dan Gelber last summer, when the commission evaluated the city attorney, Góngora said.
“I had inquired whether or not we were going to be evaluating the city manager and I was advised it would happen at a future date,” Góngora told Ladra, who said he was put off by fact that it came so much later on the heels of the request for a five year extension.
“Regardless of how you feel about the city manager’s performance, I’m unaware of us ever doing such a lengthy contract extension in the past,” Góngora said.
Gelber did not return a call for comment. Commissioners John Aleman, Micky Steinberg and Ricky Arriola did not return emails seeking comment Tuesday morning, although Arriola did have his aide call back and stress that the 2 p.m. meeting nobody knew about — with the seven commissioners, their staff, the city manager and his staff and the attorney and clerk and their staff in the manager’s conference room — is open to the public.
Commissioner Mark Samuelian said he was not concerned because nothing would be determined Tuesday without further discussion. “I’m under the impression there will be more than one discussion,” Samuelian said, adding that a salary increase would  go before the finance committee.
But when? Because also on the agenda for the secret meeting is a discussion about having all boards and committees meet quarterly instead of monthly or more regularly. This item would clearly get a lot of comment at a regular commission meeting.
“They are suggesting that the frequency of the meetings could be burdensome to city staff,” Samuelian said, adding that he wants to hear from staff about just how stressful it is and from his appointees to see what they think.
Góngora said he opposed the idea. “Those committees do a great job. Limiting them to once a quarter would stifle them and the hard work they do. It would severely impact citizen involvement,” he said.
There’s another questionable item about scrapping the committee structure within the commission and having all issues go before the full commission twice a month. These meetings are already 12 hours long sometimes, and this would likely make them longer. But it would also give the mayor more control.
No wonder he’s bringing these things up in secret.

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If you live or work near Miami Beach City Hall, you may have seen the big black billboard truck circling around this week with City Manager Jimmy Morales‘ face plastered on all sides. Yes, from far away it did look a little like Roger Stone’s face. It wasn’t.
“Shame on you, City Manager Jimmy Morales” reads the back of the truck. “Public safety workers deserve fair pay,” reads the side.
And no, this is not the police or fire union attacking Morales. It’s the Communications Workers of America Local 3178, which represents close to 400 employees, mostly lifeguards and 911 dispatchers — the other people whose jobs it is to save lives — but also clerical and code enforcement workers.
After more than two years of getting zero cost of living increases and ahead of Friday’s impasse hearing at City Hall, the largest union in Miami Beach — and the one with the most women and minorities — has ramped up its campaign calling on city leaders to treat them the same as the other city unions, all of which have gotten salary adjustments since 2015.
And they have recently gotten the support of the For Our Future Action Fund political action committee, led by Ashley Walker, former Obama for America state director who now works at Mercury Partners. In a short time, For Our Future has launched a website called MiamiBeachEverydayHeroes.com, an online advertising campaign (photographed right) calling Morales a union buster, at least one direct snail mailer and the traveling billboard. The group has also collected about 1,000 signatures in support of the workers.
Florida Division of Elections documents show that For Our Future Action Fund was created in 2016 and funded with $80,000 from a Washington DC PAC with the same name. It spent all that money on phone banks and political mailers in Palm Beach Gardens last year. There has been no expense other than bank fees since then through the end of March and April expenditures or contributions have not yet been reported so we don’t know who is financing this campaign.
But the union leadership felt as if they had no other choice but to get professional help getting their message out.
“The city manager hasn’t negotiated in good faith,” said union president Rich McKinnon. “We’re going to show tomorrow what we’re asking for and how much it costs versus how much it cost for the other employees.” He would not make the analysis available to Political Cortadito until after Friday’s hearing.
This battle has been a long time coming, however. The city declared impasse on the union negotiations more than a year ago. It took six months to agree on and argue before a special magistrate and another six months or so for the special magistrate to issue his recommendations and then no time at all for Morales to decline all of them. He dangled a small raise in front of the union, but only if they gave up other benefits, such as any right they have to go before the somewhat still powerful city personnel board with gripes or complaints. McKinnon said he is not willing to do that.
“I asked the city manager if he put that into the other contracts, and of course he didn’t,” McKinnon told Ladra, stressing that they just want to be treated equally.
The move certainly seems punitive and is not very flattering to Morales, who was once the personification of government ethics when he served as a county commissioner but has fallen quite far down the slippery slope since he crossed to the dark side.
McKinnon further explained that the CWA workers accepted necessary cuts in the past when the city was short on resources, but always with the idea that they would be made whole when the economic slowdown has ended. Currently, he added, the city has a surplus of about $9 million, while employees are still struggling.
One of those is Janelle Gilbert, a former schoolteacher who started as a lifeguard at the Flamingo Park public pool, the largest aquatic center of three in the city, and is now a supervisor there. A single mom who lives on $24.10 an hour in a one bedroom apartment two blocks from the park, Gilbert is proud to serve as a city Goodwill Ambassador and her 13-year-old son is a Police Athletic League volunteer. But she thought her promotion a few years back would mean her situation would improve.
“I’m grateful for my 40 hours but there’s not much difference because the cost of living keeps going up,” she told Ladra.
A 3 percent raise for Gilbert would represent about 75 cents an hour, but if she gets it retroactive — which is what sources tell Ladra the workers want — it could represent $300 or $400 a month more. “That’s a lot for a single mom,” Gilbert said. “I could get a new apartment for me and my son. That is life changing.”
Morales, McKinnon says, is standing in the way for no reason. It would only take about a third of this year’s surplus to make the workers whole again, he added.
Hmmm… isn’t that about the same amount of money that was stolen electronically from the city by someone who got the city’s bank account numbers and started transferring funds right under Morales’ unaware nose?
In fact, the trouble with the CWA contract started about the time the money started to go missing. Is Morales trying to make the shortage up on the literal backs of lifeguards and 911 call takers?
The impasse hearing begins at 9 a.m. tomorrow at City Hall, but don’t expect any updates in real time. McKinnon told Ladra late Thursday that the city had informed them that the meeting would not be televised and that there would be no public comments allowed.

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