PB Council to Village People: We Will Never Learn!
by SDM
SDM is going to force our fat and lazy staff to watch the Palmetto Bay COW tape from Monday as a form of mass punishment just because we had to watch part of it.
SDM can still hear the droning…and not the kind that drops a bomb on SDM at the Starbucks at 144th street.
There were so many moments that shocked us here that we are going to draw out the COW report for a couple of merciless blogs just so our kind readers can feel the pain along with us.
Here at SDM, we are not rocket surgeons…we just have internet access and curious minds. So, last night when Village Attorney Eve Boutsis opined that Councilman Fiore could reconsider the vote that she screwed up with clearly wrong legal advice (see PB: March 4 Council Meeting Quick Bites and PB: Roberts Rules Guest Post by Vice Mayor John Dubois for scintillating commentary and analysis of the controversy), SDM began to wonder if this new batch of legal advice was correct. Guess what? It wasn’t.
To understand how the council functions, one must look at two sources that create their rules of order. First is the village’s charter and code. Second is Robert’s Rules of Order, which the code identifies as the council’s procedural guidebook (see Sec. 2-48(j).)
The village code contains this provision:
Reconsideration. An action of the village council not determined pursuant to a quasi-judicial hearing may be reconsidered only at the same meeting at which the action was taken or at the next regular meeting of the council. Emphasis added. Sec. 2-48(g).
Dear readers, you see that the sentence emphasized above says you may reconsider either at that same meeting or at the next one, right?
Robert’s Rules of Order says the following: No question can be twice reconsidered unless it was materially amended after its first reconsideration. (Art. VI, Sec. 36.)
SDM went to the tape of the March 4 meeting to see exactly what happened and whether the Village Attorney followed the law. You can watch the meeting here starting at approximately 2:01:50 through 2:21:00.
The nuttiness begins with Councilman Fiore moving to adopt the Coral Reef Park Master Plan with an amendment requiring the manager to provide financial reports. Dubois seconded the motion. (Four votes are needed to amend a parks master plan.)
The council bounced the motion around for a while and eventually Fiore and Dubois voted no, killing it. That’s when the Village Attorney interrupted the proceedings to wrongly proclaim that Fiore was barred from voting against the motion he made.
To make matters worse, the attorney suggested to Fiore that he might want to reconsider the prior vote, presumably as a mechanism to keep the master plan out of the trash can. Fiore moved to reconsider and it passed. Then, Fiore moved the master plan again but with another amendment to add protections for churches and schools.
Mayor Stanczyk asked the attorney if the new amendment would have any binding effect and was told “it would have no effect.” (2:16:23) Vice Mayor Dubois expanded the amendment to say that churches and schools would be given the same treatment the amended master plan gave to Coral Reef Park (i.e., that churches and schools would not have to apply for a site plan amendment to replace their lights, etc.).
Again, the village attorney opined that the Dubois amendment, like the Fiore amendment, would have no effect because the only way schools and churches can effect changes to their site plan is by adoption of an ordinance of the council.
To summarize, the master plan item was reconsidered at the March 4 meeting and then it was amended in a way that did not change it materially. (How can an amendment be material if it would have no effect?)
When we apply the rules to these facts, we learn that the motion cannot be reconsidered in April, which is precisely the opposite of what the village attorney advised Councilman Fiore he could do.
SDM Says: Fortunately for the village attorney, SDM’s obsession with this compound malpractice is meaningless since Mr. Fiore caved-in to pressure from the audience and let the matter drop.
(SDM Wonders: How long will it take for Fiore to claim a great victory for adding meaningless words to the motion? Hmmm…)
Unfortunately for the Village People, our leaders don’t appear willing to learn their own procedural rules; instead, they choose to rely upon increasingly questionable procedural recommendations of their hired help.
Didn’t they also have a Council meeting prior to the COW? Even if it could be reconsidered wouldn’t it have had to be done at that meeting?
The intervening COW was held on Wednesday, 3/20. However, COW meetings are not formal council meetings – the members are supposed to use them to discuss items, though lately they seem to be using them as “sunshine meetings.” For council members to meet on matters that may come before the body, the meetings must be held “in the sunshine,” meaning they must be advertised and staffed.
So, to answer your question directly, no…the COW doesn’t count for reconsideration purposes.
The COW meetings should be a subject of an ethics investigation. No action is to be taken at these meetings. They are supposed to be workshops for in depth discussion of items too large for a council meeting. Note however that the attorney and staff are always asking for ‘direction’ and essentially a roll call vote is taken as to whether they support the particular item. So then why bother with holding the actual meeting and putting an item on an agenda for what amounts to a sham vote when the council members have already announced their support or opposition? The mayor and council come to the follow up council meeting with their minds made up.
I think that the COW meetings violate Sunshine because the residents are robbed of the opportunity to see council discussion and have input at an actual council meeting. A good case in point is the street naming item. There was a roll call and all announced five council members stated their support.
Whether you agree with the naming is irrelevant, anyone who speaks for or against the item is wasting their breath because support has already been granted. It would be intersting for a councilmember to change their mind and vote no as you would see them attacked for withdrawing their support.
The real issue is, that the Village Attorney allowed a motion to pass in error, which then caused a subsequent motion to pass in error, based on misinformation she supplied. If the original motion was declared dead as voted, there would have been no subsequent votes and no changes to the Master Plan which the Village Attorney stated the Village didn’t even have.
Let’s all count all her mistakes in one Council meeting. I’m up to three.
This comedy of errors just proves you don’t have to be intelligent to work as an attorney for Palmetto Bay. There shouldn’t even be a need for a motion to reconsideration. Any motions that passed after the original motion was incorrectly reversed by the Village Attorney should be disregarded and bought up again for discussion and voted on the correct way. This is the only logical procedure from my perspective and personally with a few additions to the original motion I would like to see changes to the Master Plan which once again, the Village Attorney said was nonexistent.
I’ve received numerous emails from professors at University of Miami that the Village Attorney made a huge mistake and should be removed from her position with the Village. She continues to pile on to her original mistake by giving very bad advice to the Council, much to the delight of the Mayor.
I was hoping things would get better at the Village after the election. Things have just gotten worse and more unprofessional.
SDM is starting to come around to your ultimate conclusion, especially given what appears to be a gigantic failure to remain neutral on the substance of the screwed-up motions.
Specifically, it’s hard to watch the council meeting and the COW and not come to the conclusion that the village attorney wanted the master plan amended and was working toward that goal all along.
SDM is sure Ms. Boutsis would not only disagree with us, but would be offended by the suggestion. All we can say is look at the tape and make up your own mind.
If you decide to watch, think about the inconsistent use of terms. For example, at one point when Vice Mayor Dubois – we think – was questioning the need for the item, the village mayor termed the item “master site plan.” So was the council amending the master plan or imposing a site plan under the master plan?
The truth as Mr. Dubois stated is that the village rezoned the parks so that they would no longer have underlying residential zoning, which by definition takes these properties out of the constraints imposed by the NPO. SDM cannot see how one can avoid this conclusion.
Is doing so a good idea? Probably, since the NPO would just add layers of issues to an obviously and demonstrably overly complicated procedure to install batting cages and water features. But, the village is not giving churches and schools such relief – and in the end, that is what both Mr. Fiore and Mr. Dubois were upset about.
To make things worse, all the people who use the tennis courts at Coral Reef Park were caught up in this self-made crisis. Some of them probably look at Mr. Fiore and Mr. Dubois as the villains when in truth it is the fools who pushed the NPO who caused the most recent problems at Coral Reef Park.
All in all, the whole affair made the village look silly and disorganized.
Your comment that the whole affair makes the village look silly and disorganized is far too kind. You have a current council that is corrupted. Not in a criminal sense, but in the fact that it operates without any sense of procedure. You cannot even argue as to what the results would be in theory because they are actually playing out in a nightmare fashion. This is theatre of the absurd.
This council is no better than the county we fought to leave. I want a reconsideration of my vote to incorporate.
It would be appropriate for this council to arrive to each event together and stumble out of a clown car. I can hear it now, every meeting on WBay TV would have a musical opening to the tune of “send in the clowns.”
“silly and disorganized”….what else is new!!! I reiterate my request for a re-vote on incorporation! In truth, things were NEVER this bad when we were governed by the courty.
Please make them all just shut up. The level of pontificating at each meeting is deafening. Just give them each a Harpo Marx horn to blow. It is all just noise that comes from their mouths anyway.
Patrick Fiore for Mayor 2014…. Just my opinion.
You are either deranged or blind. Fiore us having a terrible, terrible year. He’d be a disaster as Mayor.
The bar is not too high.
Maybe, but it’s too high for Patrick. If he runs for Mayor, he loses.
SDM. Patrick will win next year. I’d make you a bet. But were both anonymous people so neither you or I can claim the prize.
Save your money for campaign contributions…you’re going to need all the money you can find.
I would like to poll your readers SDM. Who do you like for Mayor in 2014: Shelly Stanczyk, Eugene Flinn or Karyn Cunningham.
None.
Shelly Stanczyk is the problem.
Eugene Flinn is the past.
Karyn Cunningham was just defeated last year. (With a $50,000 war chest)
So my vote goes to Patrick Fiore for Mayor 2014.
I like anyone but Stanczyk! I would vote for my dog before I would vote for Stanczyk.