UPDATED: For at least 20 years, the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club has provided a safe place in Miami Beach for civil political discourse on everything from city government projects and issues to county issues to developments of regional impact to state policies and legislation as well as an independent public forum for candidate debates in local elections.

But perhaps no more.

An email last week told us that Tuesday’s meeting would be the last because Manolo’s Restaurant, in which it is currently being held, will be partially demolished to make space for a new hotel addition at the rear of the property along the east side. Demolition along the south end of the 600 block is already taking place in the rear, according to an email from breakfast club creator David Kelsey.

“The development idea is that the very deep stores can give up their rear portions to accommodate a five story hotel or condo structure and still have ground floor retail along the front,” he wrote.

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And the breakfast club is just a casualty? This is one of the few equal opportunity, bipartisan, open and free public forums there are left. It has hosted not only politicians like Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, but activists like Peter Ehrlich and candidates for city, state and congressional office as well as city leaders like the police chief and city manager. Okay, so maybe it has served more as a bullhorn than a hot seat, but that’s it’s role. It would still be a shame to let it go.

Packed house at a Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club meeting at David’s Cafe for Levine’s first campaign in 2013

Ladra sent Kelsey a couple of emails to find out if there was any chance they could continue at another venue. After all, it used to be at David’s Cafe before it moved to Abuela’s Cuban Kitchen before it moved to Manolo’s. I mean, it couldn’t come at a worse time — as this year’s election of a new mayor (Levine announced already that he wasn’t running — for that seat, anyway) and three commissioners.

Kelsey, president of the South Beach Hotel and Restaurant Association, got back to me Monday morning, after this post was published. He said that the meetings have been moved six or seven times but that it’s not easy to find a new place. He looked at six other eateries that didn’t work before finding Manolo’s two years ago.

“If a restaurant already has any breakfast business, they don’t want it to be disrupted,” Kelsey said. “If they don’t have any breakfast business, and are open for lunch, they don’t want to bring in staff and pay them just for this group.”

Kelsey also said he would be open to continuing the meetings, but that more people need to show up.

“It’s very discouraging. We have not had good turnout in the last few weeks even though we have had good guests,” Kelsey told Ladra. “Let’s see what happens Tuesday. If there’s a lot of interest in keeping it, I’ll look for a new place.”

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There are other fans who also want to keep the club it going.

“The Tuesday Morning BreakfastClub has always been a place for residents to voice their concerns and demand that government listen,” said former Commissioner Michael Gongora, who hopes they can find another new home. “It would be a shame not to have this group of activists listening and monitoring to what happens,” Gongora said, “especially now with an open Mayoral seat and Commission seats likely to follow.

“It’s time for the residents to have a voice at City Hall again,” he said, adding that he is reaching out to other restaurant owners to see if the club can be moved to another venue.

Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez noted how the club unified the community, even as others tried to divide it. “Whether you were rich or poor, Hispanic or Jewish, black, white or other, Dave Kelsey’s Breakfast Club welcomed everyone, and we must all be grateful to Dave Kelsey for that,” Rosen said.

“This is a loss for us all and represents the winding down of a certain generation of South Beach activists,” Rosen said. “Miami Beach is losing one of its critical political forums, and it breaks my heart to see it end.

“Someone needs to continue the tradition. It shouldn’t have to close.”

“Miami Beach United will continue its community efforts to keep the Breakfast Club spirit alive,” said Mark Samuelian, a former commission candidate and member of the MBU executive board who called the Tuesday morning meetings an “amazing and valuable Miami Beach institution.”

Ladra suspects that finding an alternate space to save the civic club and its meetings from oblivion will be the main topic of conversation at the last meeting this Tuesday at Manolo’s, 685 Washington Ave. Read: I sure hope so.

Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez wasn’t getting her phone messages. She wasn’t getting invitations sent to her for events. She missed meetings that she wasn’t told about. She wasn’t getting her message out to the senior citizen centers where she campaigned among the seniors who elected her.

And that’s because her aide may have been working against her.

David Zaret was hired by Mayor Philip Levine, who has been bullying Rosen Gonzalez since before she won her seat a little more than a year ago against one of Levine’s plantidates. He tweets more about Commission John Aleman than he does about his boss, who Aleman went after with her since-abandoned kiss-and-tell ordinance.

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David Zaret

“I felt like I had a Benedict Arnold in my office,” Rosen Gonzalez told Ladra. She couldn’t fire him. So she did the next best thing: “I changed my locks and moved that double agent into the mayor’s office.”

Rosen Gonzalez was the only commissioner who was not allowed to hire her own aide. Her choices were vetoed by the mayor, who gets to approve any hires the commissioners make. She has a problem with that. And on Wednesday she will try to convince her colleagues to put a referendum before the voters that would allow them to hire and fire their own staff.

Zaret has ignored her directives, she said. “I tried to fire him six months ago. I told the chief of staff he wasn’t doing anything that I asked him to do,” she said. “She refused.”

Zaret also ignored calls and emails from Ladra. The first email came back with this message: “Your email has reached the office of David Zaret, however, he is no longer the aide for Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez. If you are attempting to reach the Commissioner, you may do so by emailing her directly.”

He also does not speak Spanish, which Rosen Gonzalez says is important to be able to communicate with her constituents and represent them properly.

“When I get calls from Spanish speakers, my aide can’t help and bounces it over to the mayor’s aide,” she said. She doesn’t get the information or gets it late. “My constituency has suffered and I’ve had to work twice as hard.”

Recently, the commissioner was invited to a cocktail party. The host hand-delivered the invite in a gold box with a purple ribbon. You think she’d remember such a thing. But she never got it. Or sent regrets. Or knew about it — until she ran into the host who said she was missed.

“I was embarrassed,” she said. “I don’t care about not going to the event, but I want to be able to say ‘thank you’ to the person who hand delivered the invitation. And I just happened to run into this person. Who knows how many other things I’ve not gotten that I don’t know about?”

One would think that Zaret would be fired from his job. Anyone who so blatantly fails to perform would be. We will know he’s a spy when he gets rewarded with a new job, instead. Maybe he will be reassigned to Aleman’s office. He’s such a fan, after all.

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Ladra bets that Aleman votes against Rosen Gonzalez’s initiative. But the other commissioners really ought to take it seriously. In order for commissioners to be truly independent, they need the freedom to hire and fire their own staff — and to be able to trust that their staff isn’t really working for and taking care of someone else. 

Don’t forget the word fire. Because the mayor can also fire an aide out of spite or revenge. Anyone remember Alex Fernandez? He was former Commissioner Deede Weithorn‘s aide until Mayor Ego fired him for supporting former Commissioner Michael Gongora in the 2013 mayoral race. Fernandez is better off now, working for a county commissioner.

And last week, the spy may have been in Rosen Gonzalez’s office. But tomorrow it could be in yours, Commissioner Michael Grieco. Or in yours, Commissioner Micky Steinberg. 

If Rosen’s item fails — as is likely since Commissioners Joy Malakoff and Ricky Arriola have proven before to be in the mayor’s pocket, as well as Aleman — then she should take the matter to a petition and get it on the ballot despite them. Don’t get comfy just because you got rid of one spy.

There can always be another.

The Miami Beach leg could still be the “backdoor” to a larger, more lucrative county contract

Mayor Philip Levine seems to have backpedalled some on his Loopy Loop.

Earlier this year, Levine defended his beloved train to nowhere, a stand-alone , two-mile, $245-million streetcar that would loop from 5th Street to the convention center and eventually — maybe someday — connect to BayLink or whatever connector was finally moved on by Miami-Dade County. He was hell bent on moving independently of the county and city of Miami with an accelerated bidding process that favored the most expensive firm. He led the commission in a vote to accept the “unsolicited proposal” last December. The move was criticized by many — including Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado — because it could result in the loss of state and federal funds.

Last week, however, after growing public discontent, Levine sent an email blast saying that any Beach train would only be part of a county-connecting project — one of the six corridors approved in the SMART plan is the Beach connector — and said he would hold off on final negotiations.

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“We will not sign any agreement that commits financial resources to the plan until we have full commitments from Miami-Dade County that they are willing partners in this endeavor and that they are fully committed to a real connection,” he wrote. “This is instrumental, as our taxpayers alone should not bear the full responsibility of building a rail corridor that connects Miami Beach to the City of Miami. But, we know that for it to be a successful system, connectivity throughout Miami Beach and key points in Miami are essential.

“We cannot allow ‘grandstanding’ for political ‘points’ to slow down the progress that we’ve made. This is why my commitment to you remains unchanged. I will ensure that a transparent process through open dialogue continues and that ZERO tax dollars are committed until we have the full support from our local, state and federal partners and then and ONLY then will this vision be brought back to the commission for their consideration.”

Instead of a vote on any agreement, Levine is now presenting a resolution to the commission Wednesday that puts the brakes on the Loopy Loop and also calls for a voter referendum to approve any final contract. 

But this about face doesn’t come out of the blue. Levine can read poll results.

Some voters in Miami Beach received a phone call for a poll earlier this month. They were asked between 10 and 15 questions about the train before they were asked the favorability of several Beach politcos (more on that later). It was an obvious push poll, two residents said, with each question placing the train “in the best possible light.” But we know it didn’t work. Because the result is that Levine is now backing off.

But not really.

The resolution Levine is putting before the commission on Wednesday will only put negotiations on hold. It doesn’t scrap the project to start the process again. It doesn’t throw the train out altogether. It simply “parks” the negotiations until the county moves forward with its part of the formula — or until after the elections next year, whichever comes first.

Because Levine doesn’t want the train to be a campaign issue. If what we’ve seen at public meetings is true, Ladra imagines it polled very badly. Candidates attached to the train — such as Levine or Commissioner Ricky Arriola, who is widely believed would stand in for the mayor should Levine seek higher office — could be more easily challenged with that albatross around their necks. Especially by someone like Comissioner Michael Grieco, pictured left, who is widely rumored to be eyeing the mayor’s seat (more on that later) and whose profile has been growing as he distances himself from his onetime ally. Grieco blasted the mayor for inviting the Cuban government to open a consular office in Miami Beach. And last week, Grieco blasted the train to nowhere in an op-ed piece in The Miami Herald. In fact, he’s not even sure that a train is needed at all, even as part of a BayLink.

So, Levine slowing down on the train track is not him coming to his senses, folks. It’s strategic. And the mayor has every intention of bringing the wireless light rail streetcar back.

He owes it to Alex Heckler, pictured right, a lobbyist who has raised money for him and who represents the Greater Miami Tramlink Partners led by Alstom, the troubled vendor chosen after a trip to France. Heckler also raised money for Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez with Levine in the last election cycle. Why is Gimenez important in this story? For the same reason the streetcar is coming back: Because this Miami Beach deal is a back door to the county part of this project, which will cost millions more. If the Beach branch of the BayLink connector is already in the works when the county awards its own contract, points can be awarded to the contractor who has “shovels in the ground” and/or the county can piggy back on the existing contract, advocating for the same system to be used throughout because this vendor — who might otherwise be the least qualified and most expensive — has a unique criteria that the others don’t: They are already here.

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Plus, guess what? The Alstom systems are not interoperable with others. They have some kind of proprietary secret GPS mechanism that they don’t share with other operators either. So, doesn’t that mean that if they get the Beach contract, they would have to get the county contract if we want them to work together? Sure sounds like it.

In fact, there are all kinds of red flags on the selection or recommendation of Tramlink/Alstom that perhaps should be investigated. In a bid protest letter sent to City Manager Jimmy Morales in July, Mark Stempler, an attorney representing a competing proposal from Connect Miami Beach, says that the Tramlink Partners plan should not have been given top ranking because it deviates from the Beach’s own procurement requirements in several ways: 

• It fails to satisfy a “critical requirement that the proposed “Vehicle/Systems Technology” will be interoperable with the Direct Connect Project (read: no guarantee it can connect to the mainland branch).
• It fails to demonstrate that it could even deliver, based on the fact that the proposed streetcars and ground power supply systems that Alstom has used in Europe have NOT been certified to operate in the U.S.
• It fails to meet the city’s stated standards for “character, integrity, reputation or judgment,” based on the City’s finding of “prior admissions of misconduct” by one of the GMTP team members stemming from bribery and corruption charges, including the payment of a then-record $772 million dollar fine to the U.S. Government.

The gist is that these irregularities in applying the same standards to all gave Tramlink Partners and Alstom a greater advantage. Especially with the character flaw one. Because unproven corruption allegations were noted in the case of partners with Connect Miami Beach — but the proven charges against Alstom seemed to be okay. 

In fact, the city may be wiser to go with Connect Miami Beach, the second ranked firm. Particularly after they pointed out last week, in a Dec. 7 letter to Morales, that the $245-million pricetag is much higher than the price on its comparable projects — at $107 million per mile rather than the $45-$55 million per mile quoted for projects in Cincinnatti, Kansas and Milwaukee.

That’s twice as expensive. Is it because of Mr. Heckler’s fee? Or are there other people getting paid off along the route?