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In one email months later, Vazquez — who also had asked to leave out senior Assistant City Attorney Rafael Suarez-Rivas, whose expertise is land use — expresses frustration that the situation with the Battesea Woods re-p
lat has not been resolved. “I can’t believe we’re still having this same conversation,” he wrote Mendez on Jan. 20. “Imaginate,” she emailed him back the same day, using a common Spanish word that literally means “imagine” but figuratively means you can’t even imagine.
That exchange came after an email that Mendez sent to Enrique Pousada, a senior surveyor in public works, at 6:31 a.m. that morning. “Enrique. Is this resolved?” Five days earlier she had written him, asking him to assist in the matter.
“It is still pending from zoning,” Pousada wrote back at 8:12 a.m.
Later that Wednesday, an attorney for the developer wrote Mendez. “Thanks for sending a reminder to Mr. Pousada,” wrote Gus de Ribeaux. “I spoke to him yesterday and it appears he needs Mr. Cejas to send him something (even as simple as an email) letting him know that zoning no longer requires the warrant. As you may have seen, I sent Mr. Cejas a request to please send such notification to Mr. Pousada.
“If you could send Mr. Cejas an email asking him to send the email so we can close this out, we would really be grateful,” de Ribeaux writes. “Thank you again for your help with this matter.”
At 4:29 p.m., Mendez sends Cejas an email: “Devin, can you send Pousada the and email that no warrant is required as discussed?”
Less than an hour later, Acting Zoning Administrator Devin Cejas got an email from Assistant City Attorney Daniel Goldberg, who had ruled in November that a warrant was not needed. “Devin, please remove the condition on advice of counsel (assuming you still listen to my advice),” it said — with a smiley face emoji inside the parenthesis.
Ninety minutes later, Cejas sent an email saying the warrant was not needed. Mendez sent him a thank you the next day — with five exclamation marks. A day later, she got another email from de Ribeaux.
“Vicky, thanks for your help with this. It looks like it kept slipping through the cracks until you got involved,” he said. “We really appreciate it. If I can help you in any way, please feel free to call me.”
Only it didn’t exactly slip through the cracks. It had been determined that the property needed a warrant. The developer, naturally, just didn’t like that determination and worked it until he got a different one from the city attorney.
Was she just being extra helpful? As some of her supporters suggested? Extra diligent? A parade of them, mostly attorneys, went to bat for Mendez, calling her super ethical and professional. It provided the commissioners with the perfect cover to keep her — even though public records violations are a pattern with her office, not an isolated incident. After all, a lot of these lawyers and their firms donate to and raise funds for these politicians, three of whom will be candidates again soon, facing a re-election next year.
Reason No. 1: There’s been no due process, said Commissioner Willy Gort.
But, really, the due process for removing a city attorney is exactly what Russell did — put it on the agenda. It doesn’t matter whether there is an investigation or not. It doesn’t matter what any investigation may find. She serves at will and Russell no longer has any confidence in her ability to give him all the tools he needs to do his job serving the people who elected him. Government in the Sunshine laws prohibit him from discussing it with his colleagues outside a public meeting.
Reason No. 2: Russell didn’t word the request the right way the first time, said Commission 
Chairman Keon Hardemon. He’s convinced that the request for IT was more precise and that is why it produced more emails.
Well, then, maybe he just didn’t like Russell calling Mendez out. “There’s one thing when you want to fire the city attorney but it’s another when you are trying to disparage her name,” he told Ladra Sunday. So he should have lied? Come up with some other reason to get rid of her?
Reason No. 3: It was a misunderstanding, said Commissioner Francis Suarez, who also tried to 
explain the difference between a commissioner’s obligation to represent the citizens and the city attorney’s obligation to represent the best interest of the city — sometimes against citizens who sue. He said that this was the third such application and the other two had already been approved. Maybe a different finding on this property would open the city up to a liability?
“I’m not saying she was right,” Suarez said, and he pointed to the fact that the development was voted down by the commission. He also said at the meeting that he is the commissioner who is most critical of Mendez.
“But in no way am I saying that there were ethical violations committed by her.”
Did they read the emails? Because while there may be some context missing in the back and forth, it is still apparently obvious that Mendez was bending over backwards to make this happen for the developer.
“I do think that it reads where you can be left with the impression that she’s too chummy chummy with the attorney,” Suarez said.
So while this battle is over, the war is not necessarily lost. Not yet.
The whole incident is apparently being investigated by the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust after Mendez herself asked them to look into it. There is also the possibility of a bar investigation — after Mendez made comments to the media about Russell’s frame of mind on an item he voted on — and an independent review by an outside counsel.
And the city attorney’s contract itself is up for review next year. Certainly, this whole affair will be part of that.
Meanwhile, Russell will have to deal with an awkward working environment for a bit. Not only with Mendez and her office but with the commissioners who were not too pleased to have to deal with the problem.
“I’ll have some repair on relationships to do with them,” he said. “It wasn’t a fun day at the commission.
“But we move on. We’ve got so much to do in the city.”
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