The North Miami Mayor and Council pulled out all the stops to get the General Obligation Bond passed on May 1, 2018.   As we’ve giddily reported several times, all four questions failed by more than 70% of the vote.

As we also recently reported, city officials claimed that the Bond’s “educational” budget was $108,350.00, they exceeded this amount by $8,837.08 by paying a total of $117,187.08 to The Mosaic Group to run the campaign.

Also not included in the projected budget was the $35,500.00 of taxpayer money the city spent to advertise the Bond on radio.

In yet another scathing Biscayne Times article, They Just Said No, Mark Sell reported that the city spent close to $300,000, mostly taxpayer-funded,” to push this Bond on North Miami residents, including “$105,000-plus for rushing the vote to a standalone election” instead of during the next county-wide primary election on August 28, 2018.

Aventura, Hialeah and Miami Lakes are all holding special elections on that date.  Why couldn’t North Miami do the same?

What was the mad rush?  Did SoLē Mia need its five million dollars that badly?

But, meh, who cares?

What’s a mere $300K to city officials who thought nothing of shelling out a cool quarter million dollars to then-Assistant Police Chief Larry Juriga to make his “Redneck” complaint go away.

After all, it’s not their money.

The Biscayne Times article also slams the City Manager, Mayor and Council for its fiscal irresponsibility by reminding residents of the failed 2013 Early Retirement Incentive Program (ERIP), which was supposed to save the city millions of dollars in reduced payroll costs and pension liabilities.

Instead of sticking with the game plan of downsizing its workforce and replacing its top earning employees with cheaper labor, former City Manager Aleem Ghany and current Deputy City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey used those savings to expand the workforce by hiring and giving exorbitant pay raises to their cronies, a/k/a the North Miami Friends & Family Plan.

Mark Sell also reported that since 2013 “police payroll is up more than 17 percent with smaller staff, averaging $91,000 per employee (skewed toward command staff) and with a $1 million shortfall.”

That “smaller staff” still includes Adam L. Burden, who is so unqualified as a “police consultant,” he couldn’t even get hired as the police chief for tiny North Bay Village when he recently interviewed for the job.

Then again, City Manager Larry Spring owes him big time for saving his ass from getting indicted during the City of Miami SEC scandal.

So Larry Spring keeps his long-time crony on the city payroll to the tune of $113,100.00 a year under the NoMi Friends & Family Plan.

Of course, none of this should surprise anyone.   Chief Larry Juriga and Deputy Duke Sorey, along with the overpaid civilian “police administrator” Jorge Manresa, have been mismanaging the police department’s budget for more than a year now.  No wonder all of them were desperately hoping the Bond would pass, which included a cool TWO MILLION DOLLARS to help pull Juriga’s department out of the hole.

But, hey.  For the low price of “free,” you can attend the North Miami Financial Fitness Workshop beginning June 6, 2018, where fiscally irresponsible city officials will teach you “how to become financially independent.”

Courtesy of North Miami taxpayers, of course.

Alrighty then.

Let’s move on and focus on the $45,000.00 paid to The Mosaic Group for “canvassers.”

On behalf of the City of North Miami, The Mosaic Group commissioned three companies as “canvassers.”   NIC Investments, Corporation, Zafe Pa Nou, Inc., and GAF Professional Center, L.L.C. were each paid the sum of $15,000.00 to hand out flyers and door hangers, all for the sole purpose of “educating” voters about the Bond.

That’s so adorable.

The Florida Statutes, specifically Chapter 106.113, are pretty clear on the government’s roll in the expenditure of “public funds for a political advertisement or electioneering communication concerning an issue, referendum, or amendment, including any state question, that is subject to a vote of the electors.”

We’re also pretty sure that the city’s roll does not include committing absentee ballot fraud.

Then again, this is North Miami.  So there’s that.

Good Time Charlie, the owner of NIC Investment Corporation, is a well known absentee ballot fraudster.  In 2013, the Miami Herald reported that Nacivre Charles was “at the center of South Florida’s latest absentee-ballot fraud investigation [and] is the go-to operative when local candidates need to sway Haitian-American voters.”

State Attorney investigators “traced fraudulent ballot requests to a computer at the North Miami office address” he shared with then-Mayor Lucie Tondreau.  While the SAO inexplicably chose not to prosecute him for ballot fraud, after its two year investigation, Charlie was charged and arrested for illegal campaign expenditures, according to the Herald.

Career criminal Smith Cassamajor, owner of Zafe Pa Nou, Inc., is another familiar face during election season in both North Miami Beach (helping Frantz Pierre “win” his last re-election campaign) and North Miami (“consulting” for Mayor Smith Joseph’s campaigns).

In addition to running his radio show, Cassamajor was most recently seen escorting voters to the polls, and then rewarding them for “voting correctly” by taking them to buy $40 worth of groceries at the North Miami President Market.

To the best of our knowledge, the third “canvasser,” Frandzdy Pierre Michel, who was appointed to two city committees by Mayor Smith Joseph, and who owns GAF Professional Center, LLC, has never been involved in absentee ballot fraud.

What we do know, however, is that since Fiscal Year 2017, his company has received $33,000.00 from the City of North Miami for his “contractual services” for the Parks & Rec Department, and an additional $20,017.00 from the Mayor’s Office for “Miscellaneous Expenses.”

On July 1, 2017, the City of North Miami and GAF Professional Center, LLC entered into a three month Agreement for Cleaning Services at a rate of $2,000.00 per month.  The Agreement refers to an Exhibit A, describing the Scope of Services performed, which was not attached to the copy posted on the city’s website.

Per the terms of the Agreement, the City made two monthly payments of $2,000.00 to GAF beginning August 8, 2017 for FY 2017.  Although the Agreement terminated at the end of the fiscal year on September 30, 2017, regular payments to GAF continued from October 31, 2017 through May 24, 2018.

We made a public records request for a copy of the current Agreement between the City of North Miami and GAF Professional Center, LLC, as well as all exhibits attached thereto.  We will update this post if and when we receive these documents.

In our next installment of NoMi Bond Fail, Part Trois, we will delve even deeper into these three characters and the irrefutable proof that absentee ballot fraud was committed with the City Council’s blessing.

North Miami residents deserve better.

Stephanie