North Miami city officials must still be reeling that their Get Rich Quick Scheme (a/k/a GO Bond) failed.

After all, they gambled with – and lost – $300,000 of taxpayer money to “educate” voters on why they should pony up another $120 million to finance their reckless spending habits.

While there’s plenty of blame – and finger pointing – to go around, there are still questions left unanswered.

On May 30, 2018 we made yet another public records request asking:

1. Which city official gave The Mosaic Group the names of the three canvassers they hired for the bond educational campaign?
2. Did The Mosaic Group provide the digital advertising truck that was seen driving around North Miami in the days before the election?

The Clerk’s Office responded, “I have to refer you to our Public Information Office which can answer your questions.” He also copied the PIOs with his email.

So we patiently waited.

And waited.

And then waited some more.

When no response appeared to be forthcoming, we asked for a status report of our request.  A short time later, we received an answer from City Attorney Jeff Cazeau, who wrote, “This isn’t a public records request and it should be addressed directly to the vendor.”

Um, no.

We then emailed Mr. Cazeau back:

Thank you for your response. However, my question about which city official provided the names of the canvassers to the vendor is most definitely a public records request. The decision to have The Mosaic Group hire these three particular companies as canvassers for the GO Bond Educational Campaign was made by someone in the City of North Miami, and not by the vendor. Therefore, I am asking for the name of the public official who made this decision.

By the same token, I am now expanding my public records to include the name of the public official who made the decision to hire The Mosaic Group to run the GO Bond Educational Campaign.

Please provide your response to both public records requests.

Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

As always, we will keep you posted if and when we hear back from the powers that be.

As for that digital truck, we may never find out who paid for that mobile digital advertising truck.  But we will keep digging.

In the meantime, one of the canvassers that received $15,000.00 to promote the GO Bond was GAF Professional Center, LLC, which is owned by Frandzdy Pierre Michel.  You will recall that in 2016, Mr. Pierre Michel was appointed to two city boards by Mayor Smith Joseph.

We also reported:

On July 1, 2017, the City of North Miami and GAF Professional Center, LLC entered into a three month Agreement for Cleaning Services at a rate of $2,000.00 per month.  The Agreement refers to an Exhibit A, describing the Scope of Services performed, which was not attached to the copy posted on the city’s website.

Per the terms of the Agreement, the City made two monthly payments of $2,000.00 to GAF beginning August 8, 2017 for FY 2017.  Although the Agreement terminated at the end of the fiscal year on September 30, 2017, regular payments to GAF continued from October 31, 2017 through May 24, 2018.

We made a public records request for a copy of the current Agreement between the City of North Miami and GAF Professional Center, LLC, as well as all exhibits attached thereto.  We will update this post if and when we receive these documents.

We finally did receive a response and were told, “Please be advised that after a thorough search Exhibit A of the attached contract was not found.  The agreement was not renewed after its expiration date and, therefore, there are no current contracts in place with GAF Professional Center, LLC.”

Interesting.

Let that sink in.

Frandzdy Pierre Michel’s company, GAF Professional Center, LLC’s only binding contract with the City of North Miami expired on September 30, 2017.

And yet, according to the City of North Miami’s own Financial Transparency Portal, since October 1, 2017 this “vendor” has received a grand total of $29,000.00, or an average of $3,625 a month, for “Cleaning Services.”

Or something.

How is this even possible?

We have no idea, but we decided to put Councilman Scott Galvin on the case.  He advised he would look into the matter.

We’ll keep you posted.

For now, we’ll leave you with this final thought.

North Miami resident Bob Pechon conducted a statistical analysis of the results of the May 1, 2018 North Miami Special Election for the GO Bond.

As a result, he filed a complaint with the Miami-Dade Elections Department alleging absentee-ballot fraud.

Yeah, we’re shocked, too.

We will expound more on this latest development in a future blog post.

Until then, North Miami residents still deserve better.

Stephanie