Miami-Dade Police Director JD Patterson cancelled on Friday two mandatory meetings scheduled for next week for sworn and 
non sworn personnel on the list to be laid off because of budget constraints.
His boss, Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez told him to in a memo that was pretty much like a typed spanking.
“After discussions with Mayor Carlos Gimenez and a memorandum from him, it is clear to me that the Miami-Dade County Human Resources Department should communicate on these issues, not the Miami-Dade Police Department,” Patterson wrote in a memo Friday to all the same people he had written to earlier in the week about the mandatory meetings.
“The mayors top priority is to work with the unions to secure agreements that could result in fewer layoffs and possibly no layoffs at all,” Patterson wrote, adding that the mayor said there could be 110 police officers laid off at the town hall meeting in Aventura Thursday. That’s good news since a day earlier, at the Facebook virtual town hall, he used a figure of 228.
Read related story: Miami-Dade Police cuts by Carlos Gimenez cause concern
“With Health Care redesign, that number will be zero,” Patterson wrote. “I want to personally apologize to each of you and your families for any undue confusion, frustration or heightened concern this may have caused.”
Really? Really?
So, after all the threats and hand-wringing… after putting this community on edge, Mayor “Cry Wolf” has found a way to keep all our officers on the force, after all? Could this just be another bait and switch? You know, so we can all wipe our brow and say at least we’re not firing anyone from our department which is already 300 officers short? Whew. We missed another bullet.
Riiiiiight. We knew this going in, didn’t we? I don’t know about you, but Ladra really isn’t surprised that the mayor and/or his administration is going to find an 11th hour solution that allows them to sweat the employees as long as possible. They are not going to let the commission come in and save the day by taking money away from him in some other department.
And they certainly don’t want the police director coming in and doing anything for those poor laid off folks who, wink wink, he never really intended to lay off. According to news reports leaking out Friday, the county is tapping into hotel tourist tax dollars to plug up the shortfall. Hey, isn’t that what Ladra suggested months ago?
But what this latest turn does indicate is a bit of a turf war between Patterson and Gimenez, whose memorandum — the one 
Patterson alluded to — basically scolds the Police Director for trying to do right by his troops in calling for meetings with 400 police employees.
“While I commend your proactive approach to this very serious situation, at this time such a briefing is premature at best and unnecessary at worst, given that there is no official list of layoffs and my administration is actively working to avoid this worst case scenario,” Gimenez wrote.
“As you are aware, the number of potential layoffs is very fluid and much lower than the total number of departmental personnel that was provided in the notice asking staff to attend the meeting. Further, my administration’s top priority is to work with our unions to secure agreemnts that could result in fewer layoffs and possibly no layoffs at all. Hour departmental letter has probably led to confusion and concern in your department,” Gimenez wrote, basically telling Patterson he over-reached.
Gimenez spokesman Michael Hernandez told Ladra Friday that the administration had lowered the number of potential layoffs from 228 to 100 — that’s more than a 50 percent reduction — even without the health care costs cuts. Where did they find the monies to save 128 police positions?
Hernandez could not immediately say.
“The number could be zero if the PBA agrees to healthcare redesign. Information on the health insurance plan proposal is available on the Miami Dade County website. Also, please note that the Mayor is no longer seeking an extension of “snap backs” that are due to employees on October 1.”
So, wait a minute! Gimenez, who says he is not a magician, suddenly found the money to save 128 police positions without keeping the concessions that he said were absolutely, positively necessary just a few weeks ago?
No wonder the Patterson memo was “premature.” It would be premature at any time, ever.
“The Mayor believes that the meeting called by Director Patterson was premature given that the number of potential layoffs is a constantly moving figure due to the fact that tax collections and reallocation of subsequently available funding is taking place,” Hernandez said. The Administration is certainly working to keeping all officers employed.
“Furthermore, the mayor prefers that should layoffs be necessary, the County’s Human Resource Department handle the process of providing information to affected employees. The department offers a variety of services to personnel who have lost jobs and is better equipped for this type of work.”
Read related story: Our own ‘The Purge’ as Miami-Dade Police cut from budget?
You could tell he doesn’t want Patterson involved in that process from the Gimenez memo.
“The Department of Human Resources is charged with helping our employees through any downsizing process and will be taking the lead in this effort. For these reasons, I am asking you to cancel this briefing and allow our Department of Human Resources to take the lead in informing and assisting potentially impacted employees as needed,” the mayor went on.
“Miami-Dade County takes potential layoffs very seriously and as such we do everything we can to mitigate the adverse impacts to 
our employees. Human Resources is well equipped to handle these instances and will meet with groups of employees to educate them on the process. The Department also offers assistance in skills such as resume writing, interview techniques and will schedule one-on-one meetings upon request,” the mayor wrote, and then called the Patterson’s department list bogus.
“If layoffs cannot be avoided, the Department of Human Resources will compile the correct list with assistance from operating departments and take into account a number of factors such as seniority, bumping rights, veteran preferences and other qualifying employment. Because an official list dos not exist at this time, any meeting to discuss staffing cuts will not be based on reality, but on hypotheticals.
“Again, as stated above, the number of potential layoffs is being reduced as my administration continues its work to limit or eliminate employee staffing reductions. Therefore, when a final number of layoffs throughout the county government is available, the Department of Human Resources will be contacting you to discuss the next appropriate steps. Please communicate with Human Resources on how best we can work together to help inform and assist potentially affected personnel.”
Read related story: Miami-Dade Police cuts won’t hurt Carlos Gimenez & sons
But the problem is that among those on the Patterson list of “hypotheticals” are the most recent recruits, at least 45 officers who have gone through the academy and initial training — at a cost of about $2.9 million to the county, according to union representatives (more on that later) — who can’t even look for other jobs because they signed agreements that they would stay with the county for two years.
So, while the city of Miami is looking to hire as many of the fired county cops as they can, these new recruits can’t apply.
Gimenez should fix that instead of getting into a pissing match with the police director over who gets to tell these folks they’ve been axed.
Carlos Gimenez scolds police director: ‘Layoffs may not come’ added by Ladra on
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Obatala hit the nail on the head. We should require our employees to use our own primary care facilities and hospitals.
As to county waste that could be eliminated look for my upcoming memo on the still out of control bureaucracy. Remember the span of control figure provided by the Internal Auditor in 2011 (4.9 to 1)?
Just got the new figure yesterday. Would you believe it’s 4.2 to 1 now???
That means one supervisor for every four persons who actually do the work…
Do you know any business with that kind of bureaucracy? Not likely, as span of control in the private sector ranges from 7:1 to 10:1.
Xavier Suarez
I think it is shameful that the employees of Miami-Dade County have been subjected to this hostile work environment for the past several years. To constantly be referred to as inefficient, greedy and lazy by our elected leaders and have their jobs threatened no matter how hard they try to do more with less is deplorable.
Why can’t the budget department do their job and create a budget for approval that doesn’t have to be changed ten times when all the errors are finally corrected? Funds are just suddenly found where they didn’t exist before!? We need to layoff 265 police…. Never mind, here is a little pot of money we forgot about, we only need to layoff 110! We have to close 22 libraries… Oh never mind, we’ll just layoff more librarians…..maybe some of the employees threatened with layoffs wouldn’t have to spend months worried about whether they should take their education and training elsewhere if we could get a truthful budget in the first place.
Gimenez likes to refer to himself as a good manager but good managers normally have the respect of the people who work for them. I don’t think that is true in our county.
All of this will be worked out. The PBA will give concessions with health care redesign. The Mayor has the power to win.
“At least the guy was going to meet with the potential lay off personnel and tell them SOMETHING, rather than continue to sit idly by and see the daily mental torture some of them go through.”
The Police stood as one unit rallying against an elected official.
At the disabled library system, the best you can expect is to have an assistant director show up without any previous warning and start crying as she hands you your letter. She’s crying from the fact that she feels badly for herself, confused and victimized by circumstance. Otherwise, not a bad day at work…
She’s had plenty of opportunities to stop the train wreck, but instead made the entire situation much worse by feeding the Mayor wrong information and agreeing with all punitive orders. The lowest of the lows amongst the profession. A complete despicable sell out.
I am sorry, but the mayor lies everyday. I voted for him the first time, but it was the last time I make such a mistake. My friends Miami-Dade County has money, and it does not need to fire anyone. The budget is full of hidden items/accounts where they hide the money in case they needed later. In addition, the County has liens and penalties in the books for more than $400 million, but nobody pays and/or nobody cares about making sure thatinfractors pay. We could have health clinics to reduce healthcare expenses, but nobody cares. They prefer to use Avmed and/or JMH to charge the County as much money as possible.
The Unions do not know how to look at the budget or compare budget versus actual. The County is full of idiots or individuals who pretent to be intelligents.
Has anyone found where on the county website has the health care reform plan is located?
Christine if you find out where please let me know I have been looking n looking
And as of this moment NOTHING has been posted whatsoever about the revised
Insurance !!
We are wrong, he is a MAGICIAN, what he is not is a MANAGER and with his tricks he will destroy this community. He has tricks up his sleeve that he will bring out soon, “WATCH OUT DADE COUNTY”.Take a stance and STOP HIM DEAD IN HIS TRACKS, it can be done!
Daisy,
Let’s not forget the instant flooding of our major thoroughfares with each passing shower or the traffic lights that have been out on Biscayne Blvd. for years and years (wonder what that does to our vehicular homicide rate?)…or, hey, ever try to use the county’s much-heralded 311 service. Good luck with that! A quick drive north to Broward will show what a county government can do when people take their responsibilities seriously. At the end of the day, public service is not about photo ops with the rich and famous and trips to Washington to celebrate commemorative milestones for sports teams, but, rather, getting done what needs to be done for the electorate and the citizens of our communities. Compare and contrast Broward county’s infrastructure with Miami-Dade’s. It’s time for this “strong Mayor” to recognize he’s in way over his head when it comes to running an American city.
The answer is: To remove the position of Police Director, who is also the Sheriff of Miami-Dade County to an elected status, the same as the rest of Florida. This action will remove “downtown” of their power over the P.D.- Last time this was tried
the Miami Herald opposed Sheriff “Tal” Buchanan in 1964-1965. It’s about time to again remove the Sheriff from under the greedy politicians and make the office directed responsible to voters.
@Daisy, look at that we find common ground. I agree with you 100%. Jimenez is using each department as his own personal playground while destroying the MDPD from the inside out. It’s a feeding frenzy.
Carlos Gimenez runs the MDPD as his own private police force. Everyone member of the decision making staff is made up of individuals who have been personally selected by Gimenez. Dissent within the police force is met with quick discipline, transfer or demotion. Our police department is simply in place to enforce the will of the mayor and that includes for the police the police to look the other way in corruption matters having to do with Gimenez’s lobbyist and consultant friends. The manner in which Gimenez runs the MDPD is similar in nature as to the police force in third world country. Our police, paid for with our tax dollars is simply in place to obey the orders of a tyrant. Time for us to recall Gimenez and send him packing.
“The Department also offers assistance in skills such as resume writing, interview techniques and will schedule one-on-one meetings upon request,” the mayor wrote, and then called the Patterson’s department list bogus.”
Assistance in those “skills?” LMFAO !!!!!!
You are talking about people that were just hired by one of the largest police departments, if still not the largest, in the Southeastern US. What could they possibly help with?
Second, the mayor feels the memo from the police director was premature, because the director called his bluff. You see mr. mayor, in poker:
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you’re sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for countin’
When the dealin’s done
The mayor wants to be a player and then play House when the other players call his bluff. Well… I think that’s what we have here.
For one time in his life the police director took somewhat of a stance (he must have found his testicles this week) because even he has realized the things you’re doing are way too egregious to just stand by and watch you destroy this once great agency. At least the guy was going to meet with the potential lay off personnel and tell them SOMETHING, rather than continue to sit idly by and see the daily mental torture some of them go through.
If anyone had any doubts about who is running Miami Dade Police Department these days this latest snaffu should clear that up. The citizens of this county must be informed that Gimenez has eroded the infrasttructure of the county to an all time low. Is it just me or does anybody else notice the height of the grass in the medians, the plague of mosquitoes attacking us everytime we open our front doors, the broken sewer pipes, etc? Gimenez’s intent has always been to privatize county functions and award those contracts to his associates. Time for us to add the adjetive “corrupt” everytime we mention the name of this mayor.
As i said, this was always about the health care piñata. Now his narrative is… all is well if employees will agree to reasonable healthcare. Which beats what the narrative would have had he tried this stunt two months ago. “County workers health care cut 40% to fund dolphins, heat and soccer subsidies”
Yes I know those are not a quid pro quo but its closer to the truth than not.
Actually the 2009 av med’s healthcare contract should’ve got out the bid two years ago but the mayor likes the virtually unregulated and unmonitored 100 million reserve funds that this comtract permits.
Timely information. If Gimenez thinks this pours water in the fire, I can’t wait till he spends his dollars to robo-poll my landline. I’m waiting to give him zero credibility.
The Herald priced the recruit training at $2.5 million, you report $2.9 million? Either way, this asinine threat shows that our Mayor to be the Master of wasting past investments like they had no reason for existing.
By now I’m sure that anyone paying attention to county dealings, no director can make such a decision without the approval of the mayor. This was a plot from the mayor all along but now that the mayor is losing the PR battle on the public safety issue he has to make it seem as the director overstepped his authority which is not true. Gimenez can’t seem to shed the pile of fire ants that are biting him