Eve Boutsis | South Dade Matters

PB: Politics Ain’t War!

Politics have no relation to morals.

-Niccolo Machiavelli

The great military strategist von Clausewitz wrote (SDM is paraphrasing) that war is merely an extension of policy. The quote is often misstated as politics is just war by another name. A careful reader can see that this particular misquotation might result in very tragic consequences.

The cold reality is that some treat politics as war because the two activities share many tactical similarities:

Politicians and generals try to force the opposition to expend resources as a means to wear-out the other side;
The ends often are used to justify the means in both types of conflicts; and
Casualties are expected and often ignored.

But politics can’t be war in a civilized society. The ends cannot justify the means and care must be taken to avoid conflating the war and politics.

The end of the Palmetto Bay COW meeting brought to light a troubling skirmish going on largely out of the public’s view. At approximately 1:34, attorney JB Harris rose during public comments to “explain” his decision to file an ethics complaint against Village Attorney Eve Boutsis.

Mr. Harris justified his public declaration by claiming that it had come to his attention that Ms. Boutsis had advised the council that the complaint had been filed against her. He went on to confirm the bar’s rule that complaints are kept confidential, especially by attorneys who are complaining against other attorneys. SDM presumes Mr. Harris to believe that once the attorney notifies her client of the existence of a complaint the confidentiality provision becomes inoperative.

Perhaps, but did Mr. Harris really need to stand up and tell the council (and by extension the world) that the complaint was filed?

SDM Aside: Apparently, he felt the need to exonerate the Vice Mayor from having taken any part in the act. SDM figures Mr. Dubois can manage his own P.R., thank you very much.

SDM Wonders: Or, was this just a back-door mechanism of publicizing the existence of the complaint so as to weaken further Ms. Boutsis? Frankly, it’s a close enough call that the Florida Bar ought to consider investigating Mr. Harris’s true motivation.

This blog has not been kind, at least lately, to Ms. Boutsis. She made a major hash of the Coral Reef Park Master Plan item and deserves to be reviewed. SDM is also completely comfortable with putting her contract out to bid, partly based on performance issues and partly because doing so is long overdue.

But SDM does not believe that Ms. Boutsis deserves to have her living placed in jeopardy. Mr. Harris’s attempt to do so looks a lot like a personal attack, rather than fair debate in the political realm.

The other disturbing news that came to light is that lots of folks are taking extra-political action (lawsuits, mostly) against various residents and council members. SDM has no way of knowing whether any of these actions are justified, but their existence begs the question of whether these actions have any relation to morals? Or are they just politics by other means?

SDM Says: When politics adopt the tactics of war, we start to look a lot more like Congress than a village.

23 comments

April 9, 2013

Guest Post: David Singer Questions Palmetto Bay Financial Report

Something just doesn’t add up in the Village’s Annual Financial Report.

In my previous life for 7 or 8 years I was an auditor. An auditor is usually a CPA who reviews and verifies accounting records for public, private or governmental agencies.

I’ve had a the opportunity to review the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report that was presented to the Mayor, City Manager, and Council at the last Council meeting on April 1st . I found what seems to be a glaring and possibly material error in the way litigation is reserved and footnoted.

One would think that pending litigation would be material if the ultimate cost to the Village of Palmetto Bay was, say, a million dollars, but somehow the firm auditing the Village of Palmetto Bay did not find or may not have been given accurate information regarding pending litigation between Palmer and the Village, and pending litigation between Shores of Palmetto Bay and Palmetto Bay.

The direct quote by the auditor in the Report under the heading Litigation is : “The Village is involved in several lawsuits incidental to its operations, the outcome of which, in the opinion of management and legal counsel, should not have a material adverse effect on the financial position of the Village.”

I’m sure everyone is thinking, we know there is litigation occurring between Palmer Trinity and the Village, and Shores of Palmetto Bay and the Village, so what is the issue?

The issue is that Audits and auditors have guidelines to follow. These guidelines may be foreign to the lay person but are important because they require litigation to be handled in a specific manner on an Audited Financial Statement. (Not to get too technical, but the wonks among you might agree that public and government audits as they relate to litigation contingencies must follow SFAS No. 5, GASB No. 62 and GASB No. 10.)

So what if guidelines weren’t followed and the financials are misstated – then what? The Mayor and the Council should demand to find out why. First, was it the auditing firm that made the error? Was it the Village Manager or Finance Director? Was it the Village Attorney? The auditing firm, Cherry Berkaert, is only responsible for the information that is presented to them by various sources within the Village during the Audit. That’s why all Auditors require a Representation Letter to be signed by the Auditee, in this case, the Village of Palmetto Bay. Note that the auditor makes the determination that litigation is not material based on the opinion of management and legal counsel.

The Auditors are required to send out what is called an Attorney Confirmation to all law firms who have been paid during the year to find out what type of litigation is occurring in the Village and what effect it may have on the Finances of the Village. In this case, I would hope that our Village Attorney Eve Boutsis received and sent one back. If not the auditing firm has some, as Ricky Ricardo once said to Lucy, some serious “esplaining to do”.

With millions of dollars at stake should this information been handled differently on the Comprehensive Annual Financial Statement? Once again, did the Village Attorney fill out the Attorney Confirmation completely, honestly and accurately?

A Million Dollar judgment or settlement with either of these Plaintiffs does, in my opinion (and any sensible universe,) have a materially adverse effect on the financial position of the Village. Is the Village once again not being open and honest? Did the Village Staff, specifically the Village Manager or Village Attorney, mislead the auditors or is it just incompetence?

Regardless of the reason, the record needs to be set straight and if needed the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report corrected. I call upon the Mayor and Council to investigate as these are their Financial Statements. In the mean time it’s important that the Council set up a Board of Financial Advisors to keep this from happening again. Our Village, without a doubt, could call to service any number of financially seasoned resident-professionals to assist with the Financials and help the Village weave through numbers and guidelines to get the budget and reporting finally in order.

7 comments

April 3, 2013

PB: Steppin’ Out with the Tres Hermanos

Ok, so SDM had some very formative years during the musical 1980s. One SDM favorite came to mind while watching the Palmetto Bay Village Council meeting on Monday, April 1st when her honor Mayor Shelley Stanczyk got up and walked out before adjourning the council meeting:

We’re – so tired of all the darkness in our lives

With no more angry words to say can come alive

Get into a car and drive to the other side.

Steppin’ Out, Joe Jackson (1982)

Now the only question for Ms. Stanczyk is where is the other side? In fact, it looked to SDM like the Marathon Man, Tim Schaffer, got into his red truck and drove from the Three Amigos to join the Tres Hermanos along with Vice Mayor John Dubois and Councilman Patrick Fiore.

SDM couldn’t help but notice that the Tres Hermanos coalition – i.e., the private property owners’ rights coalition – joined together to push for some major changes to the badly named “Neighborhood Protection Ordinance.” (In fact, SDM’s first suggestion is to delete this silly name – mark that one down.)

Then, the Tres Hermanos appeared to unite on creating a financial advisory board – though SDM can’t be sure if that idea passed or not. SDM Wonders: Why would the Mayor support having an education committee over which the village has absolutely no jurisdiction but oppose a finance committee that is looking at village finances? Chalk that up to an SDM head scratcher.

The big move – and the one that shot the Mayor from her chair as if she just noticed a meter maid standing over her car – was when the Tres Hermanos joined together to (gasp) put a village contract out to bid!

SDM Wonders: So this is what upsets you Mme. Mayor? Bidding out public contracts?

SDM reads Schaffer’s move from the Three Amigos to the Tres Hermanos with cautious optimism. Perhaps Palmetto Bay’s newest elected official – after gaining a glimpse behind the curtain – sees that the Mayor (figuratively) wears no clothes.

Then again, perhaps this is merely a tactical move by Mr. Schaffer to maintain his independence. Either way, what a breath of fresh air! Bravo and kudos.

The only real lowlight of the night was when Mr. Dubois caved in and withdrew his item on releasing the Palmer shade session transcripts. The Village Attorney changed her previous stance that all the Palmer litigation was “intertwined” to a new formulation that SDM has a hard time describing.

Her idea – as our tiny little brains understand it – is that because Palmer has amended its pending complaint to include certain acts by council members or others involved in the concluded litigation, then those acts somehow render the now-decided Palmer case as not concluded for purposes of the public records act.

In other words, because someone involved in the concluded litigation is now implicated in the pending legislation, the shade sessions will contain facts or data that will hurt the Village’s ability to defend itself going forward. (SDM Says: Bunk. There is no such exception to the public records act.)

Nonetheless, based on this legal advice, Mr. Dubois withdrew his item. (Next time Mr. Dubois, when you are confronted with changed facts, defer your item so that you don’t have to reintroduce it. Then you can do some homework and if the attorney is right, then you can withdraw it later.)

Of course, the Mayor couldn’t resist putting in her warped two cents again. Both the Mayor and Councilwoman Lindsay analogized the village’s withholding of public records to an individual not disclosing her communications with her attorney.

Newsflash: The Village of Palmetto Bay is not a person. It is a municipal corporation governed by distinct laws. Other sections of state law applies to for profit and non profit corporations and individuals. (SDM has discussed the public records act ad nauseum so we won’t do so again here.)

SDM Says: The Village Attorney may very well be putting the council members at risk of violating the law, which could cause them to be removed from office….maybe they should get a second opinion.

11 comments

April 1, 2013

PB: Test the Market for Village Attorney Services & Release the Transcripts

Time to Test the Market for Legal Services

SDM has been generally supportive of Village Attorney Eve Boutsis, though March, 2013 was an exception.

The Village Council will take up an item by Vice Mayor John Dubois that will put the village attorney’s contract out for public bid and SDM urges all the members of the council to support it.

Ms. Boutsis’ firm has been the only village attorney for Palmetto Bay since its founding 10 years ago. Stability is a good thing and certainly Ms. Boutsis knows the village from a legal perspective better than almost anyone.

But should the position of village attorney be a lifetime appointment without any competitive selection? SDM says absolutely not.

One can make several arguments favoring Ms. Boutsis, though her performance regarding the vote on the parks master plan was perhaps the lowest point in her Palmetto Bay career. She misstated Robert’s Rules of Order so badly that SDM argues the matter is permanently screwed up. She compounded her mistake just a couple of weeks later when she stated that Councilman Fiore could place the matter on the next village council agenda for reconsideration when he clearly could not under the rules of procedure.

SDM would understand if the council terminated her contract just based on last month’s performance, but doing so does not serve the village’s interest. Mr. Dubois’ approach is the correct one. Put the contract out to public bid and measure Ms. Boutsis against the other firms who may wish to offer their services to us.

And, don’t listen to those who say that changing lawyers at this point will somehow permanently damage the village with regard to ongoing litigation. The fact is that lawyers are changed all the time in the real world and the village will do just fine if new counsel is brought on board.

Mr. Dubois’ Other Good Idea: Release the Transcripts

At the last COW meeting, a majority of the council seemed content to hide behind a misreading of state law with respect to releasing transcripts of the village’s Palmer Trinity shade sessions. Mr. Dubois writes in his memo to the council:

MAJOR POINTS TO BE COVERED: The Florida Sunshine Laws provide for open meetings of governmental bodies when two or more members of the governing board are to be present at a meeting. There is an exemption in the law that provides procedures for conducting private meetings (commonly known as “shade sessions”) between a governmental entity and its attorney to discuss pending litigation. The law is clear that when the litigation is concluded, the transcripts of all shade sessions relating to such litigation shall become part of the public record.

REASON: The transcripts of all shade sessions relating to the litigation related to Palmer Trinity that was heard by the 3rd District Court of Appeals must be disclosed in accordance with State law, as that litigation is concluded.

SDM discussed this issue in detail in PB: Shady Village Council Fights Transparency and could not agree more with the Vice Mayor on this obvious requirement of the law.

SDM Says: Ms. Boutsis should come down clearly and strongly on the side of transparency and strict adherence to Florida law. She must opine that the Village of Palmetto Bay is under a clear legal obligation to release the transcripts as soon as practicable or risk being in violation of the law. Any other recommendation will only reinforce the opinion – of a growing number of village people – that Ms. Boutsis is doing Mayor Stanczyk’s bidding and not upholding her responsibilities to the rest of us.

SDM Wonders: Will the council continue to hide the ball from the public by hiding behind their village attorney’s questionable reading of Florida law?

7 comments

March 21, 2013

PB Council to Village People: We Will Never Learn!

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.

18 comments

March 6, 2013

PB: Roberts Rules Guest Post by Vice Mayor John Dubois

Below is a verbatim message posted as a comment to yesterday’s post PB: March 4 Council Meeting Quick Bites. SDM replies after Mr. Dubois’s comment.

SDM, You seem to spend a great deal of time reviewing and researching issues brought up at our council meetings and I applaud you for all the work you do. Below was my next day reaction to the RR controversy. It was not researched, rather, it was what I believed to be a common sense interpretation of the outcome of the sequence of events relating to the vote on the Coral Reef Park Master Plan. I am not an attorney, so, it may very well be incorrect but I would be interested in hearing your opinion as well as opinions from your readers that consider themselves subject matter experts.
————————————–
We need to be careful not to follow one mistake with another.

To recap last night’s sequence of events;

Roberts Rules are procedural, Council Votes are legally binding.
The vote was cast 3-2 on item 11a – the master plan mod for CR Park.
Since a super majority of 4 out of 5 were required to pass this, it failed.

Whether the council person [Fiore] who made the motion spoke against the item in violation of Robert’s rules is irrelevant.
If that did happen, the chair could have stopped it as it was procedurally incorrect, however, she did not and the vote was legally binding and the master plan approval failed.
Therefore, subsequent actions based on Councilman Fiore’s incorrectly modified Nay vote by the City Attorney are legally null and void.

I Don’t think there is anything to discuss except the staff should figure out how to notify the residents of PB that the master plan vote for CR Park failed last night.

Thank You

John DuBois

SDM Reply

First, thanks for commenting Mr. Vice Mayor, especially since SDM wasn’t very nice to you in the main post.

Second, SDM is not sure exactly where the matter stands either.

Clearly, the village attorney is under a moral obligation at the very least (she may very well be under an ethical duty, too) to find a way to correct her error. If she fails to do so, can we as residents be sure the Coral Reef Park Master Plan was adopted legally and is therefore binding on the council?

And what about her other opinions? For example, SDM has not watched the meeting’s discussion on whether the village is required to release the transcripts of the shade sessions related to the Palmer litigation. However, according to the Miami Herald story on the meeting, Boutsis said “that while the appellate court has ruled on one case, the records cannot be released because they are intertwined with another Palmer Trinity case that is still open.”

SDM found a copy of the Florida Attorney General’s opinion letter to Ms. Boutsis where she asked questions related to this issue. The letter is somewhat dense, but the initial paragraphs make clear that Ms. Boutsis did not ask whether the statutory requirement of releasing transcripts at the conclusion of the litigation extended to other cases involving the same litigants.

SDM Says: Ms. Boutsis appears to be trying to break new legal ground by arguing that the village may withhold the shade session transcripts from the public because the phrase “ conclusion of the litigation” (a term that is defined in section 286.011, Florida Statutes) applies to multiple lawsuits, rather than to each lawsuit individually.

SDM Recommends In addition to asking Ms. Boutsis to explain her opinion on the Robert’s Rules of Order issue, you may want to ask her to explain in writing her statement regarding the shade session transcripts, which SDM sees as resting on a very shaky legal foundation.

2 comments

March 5, 2013

PB: March 4 Council Meeting Quick Bites

Robert’s Rules of Order Controversy

During last night’s dysfunctional meeting, Village Attorney Eve Boutsis claimed that Councilman Fiore improperly voted against his own motion. Because of this parliamentary ruling, the site plan vote that had lost, was reconsidered and eventually passed.

SDM, as our readers know, is something of a skeptic so we investigated Robert’s Rules and found the following reference related to voting on one’s own motion: “The maker of a motion, though he can vote against it, cannot speak against his own motion.” (Article VII, Section 42, Debate.)

5:00 PM Update: SDM confirmed a couple things since posting this information earlier today. First, Village Attorney did in fact mistakenly opine that Robert’s Rules of Order prohibits a member from voting against his or her own motion. Second, Robert’s Rules does in fact permit the maker of a motion to vote against his or her motion. Third, based on SDM’s reading of the village council’s procedures ordinance together with Robert’s Rules, the vote cannot be reconsidered at the next council meeting. Fourth, in the immortal words of Ricky Ricardo, somebody’s got some splainin’ to do.

SDM Wonders: If the village attorney – in her role as parliamentarian – gives a legally binding opinion on the rules that turns out to be wrong, what is the remedy?

SDM Says: Perhaps Palmetto Bay operates under a different version of Robert’s Rules than the one SDM Googled. If so, the village attorney should cite the authority upon which she relied or repair the damage done.

Dysfunction on Display

One of SDM’s regular readers likes to post every few months the following: “Fiore for Mayor!” Well, after last night’s display, SDM cannot see how Mr. Fiore could stand for the post. He is just not coherent enough to lead this village.

Specifically, Fiore offered an amendment to the Palmetto Bay parks master plan amendment to the effect that the skate park should be retained in the plan and that the proposed soccer fields should be moved to Coral Reef Park. The problem was that the Coral Reef plan had already been decided in a previous vote.

When he was advised of the conundrum, Fiore appeared truly flummoxed and lost. SDM watched this event live and couldn’t help but squirm watching the meltdown.

Generally, SDM likes the way Fiore votes and the way that he stands up against Mayor Shelley’s perpetual nonsense. But last night, Fiore proved he can’t play ball at even Palmetto Bay’s single A level.

Learning Curve Continues

Vice Mayor John Dubois is bold, but not prepared and perhaps he learned last night that he must be both to succeed.

SDM believes it was during the Palmetto Bay Park item that Dubois’s had his moment of incomprehensibility. He attempted to amend the motion to state (SDM is paraphrasing from memory here) that whatever the council was permitting the village to do at the park, village private schools and churches are allowed to do the same.

SDM understands the sentiment, but the format was completely wrong. The council was adopting a site plan and a zoning change for each of these specific properties. Attaching the private schools and churches provision did nothing substantively or legally, as village staff advised.

Councilwoman Lindsay kindly explained the Vice Mayor’s error (she deserves kudos for doing so because her frustration with the inanity of the moment was shared by SDM), but Mr. Dubois just kept on keeping on.

Running a local government serious business and demands the kind of preparation one would make to run one’s business or do one’s day job. Mr. Dubois and Mr. Fiore clearly had not prepared themselves for the meeting and came off looking ridiculous. It’s not enough to vote right, gentlemen.

SDM Says: How very, very disappointing.

Comical Council

SDM’s general observation of last night’s meeting is that the council is tying itself up in knots over minutiae. Prior councils have created a Rubik’s Cube process for managing areas where the public gathers and our elected officials can’t seem to work their way through the thicket they created.

Perhaps this council needs time to gel into a working body, but boy is it tough to watch them stumble through meetings leaderless.

SDM was reminded on the nineteenth century German statesman Otto Von Bismarck who is credited with first observing that “laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.”

SDM Says: No matter how painful it is to watch, we must supervise the ingredients stuffed into the casings of our laws so that the resulting sausages do not make us sick.

9 comments

February 5, 2013

PB: The Circus is in Town

SDM watched a lot, but not all, of last night’s village council meeting and all we can ask is…was there a carnival barker standing outside the chamber? Step right up and don’t be shy, because you will not believe your eyes!

SDM’s inescapable conclusion is that these folks really don’t like each other much, and we are speaking specifically of Mayor Stanczyk and Vice Mayor Dubois, though Mr. Fiore had a moment of outrage that rivals those of the other two.

SDM Aside: When will the folks managing the chamber toss out the audience members who continue to shout at the officials on the dais? Yes, we can hear you, you obnoxious person(s), even out there in TV and internet land. You are as much to blame for the circus atmosphere as the folks on the dais.

But it wasn’t all invective. In fact, our ever reliable Mayor Malaprop provided the audience with a Norm Crosby moment that SDM will cherish forevermore.

For those of you who did not grow up in the days of the Ed Sullivan Show, Norm Crosby is probably a mystery. Crosby was a comedian who relied upon malaprops – words that sound like they belong in a sentence, but whose meaning is totally out-of-place – to break up the audience.

For example, at a roast of Barry Goldwater, Crosby remarked that it was up to the American people to ensure that President Johnson’s “War on Puberty” will succeed: “If you don’t pitch in and do your part and we in Washington don’t pitch in and do our part, then pretty soon we won’t have a part to pitch in.” Crosby also liked to say that he drank “decapitated” coffee.

In true Crosby fashion, Mayor Stanczyk – during her comments supporting run-off elections – stated that participation in runoffs was “sacrilegious” when she probably meant “sacrosanct.” (The words are near antonyms, which is no small feat.)

The only difference between Crosby and Stanczyk is that the audience laughs upon hearing the former and cringes upon hearing the latter.

+++

Perhaps the most heated exchanges – there were many to choose from – came at the end of the meeting when Mr. Dubois’s plan to fire the village attorney was taken up.

After a long, rambling introduction of his item – containing both legitimate points of concern alongside petty annoyances – Mayor Stanczyk mounted her high horse and lit into Dubois. SDM can’t recall the precise words (there were so many strung together), but it would have been quicker to merely call Dubois a liar and a cheat. Dubois’s rejoinder was that Stanczyk was out of her mind.

Now, SDM understands Mr. Dubois’s sentiment, but this gripping interaction was truly shameful and an embarrassment to both parties.

For Mr. Dubois, the clear problem is that he is like a wobbling colt just beginning to understand the nature of his environment and how his legs work. He desperately needs to develop a tactful manner…that’s as tactfully as SDM can put it. SDM is sure Mr. Dubois will learn but it is painful to watch.

For Mayor Stanczyk the status quo ante prevails just as it always has done: she just cannot act at the same time as both chairperson in charge of a meeting and commentator on all things. In addition to her misstatements, she just doesn’t run a sound meeting and her abuse of the chairperson’s prerogatives is growing tiresome.

As to the substance of the issue, the village attorney’s ostensible supporters did her enormous damage last night.

When a leader becomes weakened in parliamentary forms of governance, a vote of confidence is often taken. SDM’s intelligent and insightful readers will see the contradiction in such an act immediately. Wouldn’t a weakened leader just be further weakened by proving that she couldn’t avoid a vote of confidence in the first place? The answer, of course is yes, a vote of confidence – especially one that is narrowly carried – can signal the death knell for a leader and it did so here.

After a long and circuitous discussion, Mayor Stanczyk called the question on the amended item. According to the motion, the item would be deferred to the next meeting and a discussion of the village attorney’s billing practices would take place at the intervening COW meeting. Stanczyk and Lindsay voted no. Fiore, Dubois and self-described swing vote Schaffer joined together to pass it.

The result is the worst possible outcome for the village attorney. She must prepare for, and sit through, another uncomfortable grilling at the COW and again at the next council meeting in March. In the meantime, the council’s direction to her is as muddled as is her future with Palmetto Bay.

At the nadir of the mud fight, Councilwoman Lindsay called on her colleagues to behave like adults. SDM concurs with the sentiment though unfortunately none appeared.

No adult with experience or concern amended the motion to put the legal contract out to bid, which would have terminated the inquiry one way or the other. At least then the village attorney would be spared the unprofessional character assassination and the concomitant inept defense to which she was subjected last night.

SDM Says to Mr. Dubois: It’s not too late. Bring a proposal to the COW that will put the legal services contract out to bid. The item should include a proposed contract and – if you are ambitious – a policies and procedures manual for the village attorney. End the free form nonsense and follow a customary procedure or continue to behave like your nemesis. The choice is yours.

33 comments

February 1, 2013

PB: The Education of John Dubois

The village council will meet in full regalia on Monday night, Feb. 4th.

On the council’s agenda – after a number of noteworthy and typical items upon which SDM hopes to comment later this weekend – sits an interesting item authored by Vice Mayor John Dubois asking the council to join him and terminate the village attorney!

Thankfully, the Vice Mayor isn’t asking to terminate her with prejudice, but the act is surely intended to do harm, nonetheless.

SDM’s reaction to this item is decidedly mixed, so in an act of public-spiritedness worthy of a candidate for Mayor, we will attempt to contextualize Mr. Dubois’s plan so that he may learn the correct method of reaching the end he seeks.

To begin, it is important to understand that SDM sees the village attorney without any rose colored glasses interfering with our 20/20 hindsight. Ms. Boutsis – that is the village attorney’s name – has been serving the community faithfully for many years. She has had moments of both desperate failure and of shining courage.

For example, SDM would argue that Ms. Boutsis failed to vigorously argue against Mayor Stanczyk’s fateful motion to limit Palmer’s enrollment. A serious and competent attorney would have made clear on that record that the motion is likely to expose the village to significant litigation and financial harm.

Unfortunately, speaking the truth forcefully to power is dangerous for a village attorney, especially for one who serves at the pleasure of some unstable people. Ms. Boutsis didn’t do it.

On the other hand, Ms. Boutsis seems to have learned from Palmer and has provided the council written warnings when they attempted to go too far on the nonsensical and farcical “neighborhood protection” ordinance. SDM Says: Absent Ms. Boutsis, the NPO would have been much worse.

Mr. Dubois is right in one sense, which is that Ms. Boutsis is a contractor at-will and being a village attorney should not be a permanent sinecure. He raised at the last council meeting a serious point on her billing practices. He was doing his fiduciary duty when he questioned her decision to bill the village for speaking to Mr. Dubois about her billing practices.

Imagine if you called your lawyer to complain about her billing practices and she had the temerity to bill you for taking the phone call. SDM would not be pleased with our now former attorney, that’s for sure.

But is all of this grounds to fire the village attorney, just like that? SDM doubts it and unless we are reading the mood of the council incorrectly (heaven forbid), they just may rally to her side, even if they do so only out of antipathy toward Mr. Dubois.

SDM would have handled the matter differently (and, if elected will handle such matters differently…harrumph). SDM would place an item on the agenda putting the legal services contract out for bid.

The fact is that Ms. Boutsis and her late partner – SDM believes this to be correct – have been under contract to Palmetto Bay since its inception. Certainly, one should put virtually any contract out to bid at least once every ten years!

Had Mr. Dubois followed SDM’s plan, he would only be swatting away nit picky objections as if they were flies at the picnic. Instead, he may be facing a pity party.

SDM Says: The village council should transform the Vice Mayor’s idea into motion to put the legal services contract out to bid. No harm – and much good – can come from doing so.

8 comments

December 6, 2012

PB: Block Billing – More Than Meets the Eye?

One of SDM’s keen-eyed readers observed the exchange at the last council meeting regarding the village attorney’s billing practices. SDM went back to the tape and agrees that the Mayor made a very telling comment.

But before SDM gets there, let’s set the stage. The village for a long time has placed its legal bills on the agenda under the “consent” section. The consent agenda is like a negative check-off, meaning that if a member has an issue with an item in the consent section, she must pull the item and place it on the regular agenda. Otherwise, everything on the consent agenda passes.

Usually, the items on the consent agenda are simple, noncontroversial and require little deliberation. Before Palmetto Bay became litigation central, it may have made sense to put its legal bills on the consent agenda. Today, given the substantial drain on resources these bills represent, SDM thinks they should be given more scrutiny and apparently so does Vice Mayor Dubois. The Mayor thinks not, apparently, but again we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Vice Mayor Dubois did his own review of the legal bills and using a businessman’s eye noticed a problem:

I pulled this item from the agenda because I wanted to make a point. In the spirit of transparency, we need to avoid any future block billing. That is, [the] billing where a four or five hour block of time is associated with 5, 6, 7 different projects with indefinite time amounts that we’ve seen on the bills. So… [the village attorney] has accommodated us on the most recent bill and I believe on a going-forward basis that it will be addressed. The issue is the inability to audit the billing records as well as the inability to reconcile them back to projects to do project-specific cost accounting. So I think it’s very important that we get away from this block billing that’s been instituted relatively recently.

Sounds eminently reasonable to SDM, but Mayor Stanczyk didn’t think so. She asked the village attorney if this practice was recent. The village attorney replied that it had been the billing practice for over ten years. The Mayor then continued:

Alright, umm…well as long as we’re not busy doing billing as opposed to giving attention to legal work. I think, uh, legal work is the priority here.

SDM Code Breaker: There are a couple of interesting things to notice from this exchange:

Vice Mayor Dubois, in his first meeting, noticed a billing practice that the manager should have flagged years ago. When the attorney bills the village four-hours of time on several matters, there is no way to allocate precisely those costs to the projects or matters addressed. Legal costs, then, are not considered when the manager calculates the total costs of the projects or matters under his purview. That the village may not be doing project-specific cost accounting should concern every member of the council, including Mayor Deputy Amigo.
It’s bad enough that the Mayor missed the point of Mr. Dubois’s observation as she busily attempts to protect her flank. What’s worse, however, is the implication of her question: because the misleading billing has been going on for a decade, that makes the practice okay. The practice is not okay and the village leadership should have caught it sooner.
To top off her performance, Mrs. Stanczyk displayed a further misunderstanding of the issue with her nonsensical statement regarding the village attorney “giving attention to legal work” versus being “busy doing billing.” The village doesn’t give a darn how much time the village attorney spends on billing because taxpayers don’t pay her to compile her bills. This is Management 101 for crying out loud.

SDM Says: Mayor Stanczyk perpetually ignores the compulsion to opine on every topic under discussion, even when it is obvious she hasn’t thought the matter through. SDM thinks the Mayor should consider adhering to the old adage, it’s better to stay silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

10 comments

South Dade Matters

Tag: Eve Boutsis

April 22, 2013