While deck permit saga continues, City of Miami chugs along sans city manager

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Who is the city manager of Miami? That’s what everybody wants to know.

Officially, it is still Emilio Gonzalez, who resigned last month after Commissioner Joe Carollo accused him of fudging the permit for his deck and tried to fire him. Instead, the commission voted for the auditor general to investigate and immediately after that, Gonzalez resigned with no effective date. But he has been missing in action since.

“Who is in charge of the city today? Are you the city manager? Is she the city manager” Carollo asked at Thursday’s commission meeting, referring to assistant city managers Fernando Casamayor and Sandra Bridgeman. “Who is the city manager?”

“Emilio T. Gonzalez is the manager until Feb. 18,” said Assistant City Manager Fernando Casamayor, one of three assistant city managers who took turns sitting in the hot seat. None has been named acting manager. This is something they do all the time, even when Danny Alfonso was city manager and had to go to the bathroom or something. Someone from the city manager’s office sits in that seat in case there are any questions.

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“Oh, now it’s the 18th,” Carollo said. “This keeps getting extended. Have you seen him working in the city of Miami?”

Casamayor said he saw him on Monday. “Was he working? Or carrying boxes,” Carollo asked. “The last time I saw him was in pictures getting boxes out.”

Then the commissioner asked for an update on the alleged code enforcement violations he reported to the city about an unpermitted wooden deck in the manage’s back yard and a tree that had been removed.

“In the case of this deck, there is a permit to repair and remodel. That permit will be, and the repair will be, inspected by the building inspector,” said a visibly shaken Adele Valencia, the director of code enforcement (and just look at those poor people’s faces behind her). “If at that time we ascertain there is work without a permit, we’ll take action.”

Carollo said they were still protecting the manager and kept railing about a “sham permit for a deck that was never permitted.”

And that might be what happened. Sources say former Building Director Jose Camero — who resigned around the same time as Gonzalez — may have advised the city manager to get a permit for the repairs which would then become a de facto permit for the deck, or at least evidence that they knew about it.

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“If he had gotten away with it, he’d have a permit through the back door,” Carollo said. “How in the world are they going to legitimize something with a sham permit, something that he did illegally?

“I fully understand how people in this city are still trying to protect him,” Crazy Joe, said, and you could almost see the staffers shaking. “The bottom line is what you have to do is make a determination of did he have a permit for that or not.”

Carollo said he brought it up at the meeting “to show what a force this whole thing is, how this man, to this day, is being protected.

“I’d like to know who is in charge on the code violation on the deck,” Carollo said.

“Between Zeri, Sandra and myself, we have it covered,” Casamayor said, referring to Bridgeman, and also their nickname for Nzeribe Ihekwaba, the other assistant city manager and chief of operations.

“Three of you in one. We might be better off,” Crazy Joe said about some of the people he just accused of protecting the manager.

It is a very scary time to be a city of Miami employee. Moral is very low as people react emotionally to the chaos and confusion. Like on the floor low. People are nervous about whoever the new leadership will be and how that might affect their roles. They are civil servants who work at the will of the commission. None of them can really speak up. But there are some resumes being updated and feelers put out.

Gonzalez has been on annual leave. His employment contract says he can’t cash it out and he’s accrued a lot of it so he’s taking the time off. Whatever annual leave he has left over, he will donate to an employee who is sick and needs it, he told Ladra. He is waiting for Mayor Francis Suarez to name a new manager so he can help with the transition. But he may have to leave sooner because it looks like it may take a while to find someone who wants the job.

On the deck issue, he again said he did nothing wrong and was waiting for the process to finish before presenting his side.

Read related: Miami manager says he did no wrong; exits in a ‘couple weeks’

According to city code compliance records, there are two permits for the deck or deck repairs in the pipeline. That is what Valencia referred to. Gonzalez was, indeed, cited for the tree — a sick mango tree that had to be removed 12 or 13 years ago, probably while Gonzalez was working in D.C. — and he paid the $500 fine a couple of weeks ago.

Code enforcement officers could verify, by looking at satellite photos and the canopy that one tree was missing. But they have not been able to inspect the deck, which is in the back yard.

And Casamayor said it was standard procedure to let citizens get into compliance before issuing fines or notices of violation.

“We do give compliance first priority,” he told Ladra. “We do that for any property owner, whether it’s the city manager or not. We give every opportunity for citizens to come into compliance first before we move on to the law enforcement side. The citizen is working with our department in order to come into compliance with the deck.”

Perhaps that is what Carollo means when he says Gonzalez is being protected. But then all Miami property owners are protected, aren’t they?

The city commission also on Tuesday voted to move next meeting up from Thursday the 27th to Monday the 24th. So Mayor Francis Suarez may name his new city manager then.

If anybody takes the job. Casamayor said he did not apply. Ladra keeps hearing that a few people have been approached and they all said not for a million dollars!

But Bridgeman wants folks to know that the city will keep on running.

“We separate the operation of the city from the politics,” the manager and city’s chief financial officer told Ladra. “Because the garbage still needs to be picked up, the services need to continue, the building department needs to be open, marinas need to open.

“Because customers are involved. Because constituents are involved,” she said.

And that’s how you represent your people, dear city commissioners.

  Emilio Gonzalez, Joe Carollo, Miami politics