Claudia V. Curbillos became the Mayor of El Portal in 2014, and promptly emailed the Miami Herald, “I will be using residents’ input and ideas in setting both short-term goals and a long-term vision for El Portal in order to make it the community of choice to live, work, and play.”

Four years later, the “input and ideas” of the Village’s 2,400 residents have fallen on deaf ears in her relentless quest for power over Miami-Dade County’s fourth smallest city.  Claudia Curbillos does whatever she wants … ethics, Sunshine laws, and the Village Charter be damned.

Loyal employees also face retaliation if they dare cross Queen Claudia and her loyal accomplices, court jesters City Manager Christia Alou and City Attorney Norman Powell.

According to a January 4, 2019 Miami Herald article, when then-acting Chief of Police Ronnie Hufnagel, a 20-year veteran of El Portal, questioned “the mayor’s statements regarding the level of police oversight of the debris removal process after Hurricane Irma,” she was demoted down to Sergeant on November 13, 2018.

Then city officials fired Hufnagel’s police dog.

The trouble started back in August of 2018 when the Village of El Portal contracted with a Mississippi debris hauling company, Looks Great Services of MS, Inc., to clean up after Hurricane Irma.  An August 2, 2018 Miami Herald article reported that the Mayor and Commission voted to take out a $1.25 million credit line to pay for the clean up.  At the council meeting, Mayor Cubillos claimed they needed this loan because FEMA hadn’t paid the Village yet.

According to the Miami Herald, however, she was wrong.

The Herald reported that “FEMA doesn’t reimburse unpaid bills,” only those which have already been paid.

The Village entered into a short term loan with Florida Community Bank which was required to be “repaid in full within 364 days of signing.”  However, since FEMA reimbursements could take up to four years to be finalized, this loan was a huge financial risk since the debt to Looks Great Services was “a third of its annual budget,” according to the article.

Mayor Cubillos also faced public criticism regarding the alleged monitoring of the debris hauling.

During a September 18, 2018 Public Affairs Committee Meeting, she claimed that the police department began monitoring the work in the first few days after the hurricane (hour 1:18 of the video).

According to the Herald, however, Chief Hufnagel disputed her claim, suggesting “there was no police oversight, despite the mayor’s public declaration to the contrary. Little proof has surfaced publicly to support either side of the dispute.”

This “proof” has been hard to come by since village officials have made it difficult, if not impossible, to obtain any records of the debris hauling process.

A public records request made by VotersOpinion for copies of all documentation regarding the debris hauling, including the monitoring of the work resulted in an estimated cost of $6,751.00.

After recovering from sticker shock, we responded to Village Clerk Yenise Jacobi:

Dear Ms. Jacobi,

Your public request estimate of request estimate of $6,751.00, as attached, is unacceptable and completely unaffordable.

Therefore, I am amending my original request, as attached, to limit my request to the following documents:

1. Copies of all bids for the hauling of debris post-Hurricane Irma
2. Copies of invoices from the hauling company which performed the job
3. Proof in the form of documentation only (no photos required) that the hauling was monitored by the El Portal Police Department and/or FEMA

It is my hope that this limited request will be a more reasonable amount. Please provide me with a new estimate.

Thank you for your assistance in this matter. I look forward to hearing back from you.

For good measure we copied Jose Arrojo, the Executive Director of the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics and Public Trust.

The Village Clerk responded with a revised estimate of $2,640.75.

Sticker shock continued.

The good news is that Mr. Arrojo from the Ethics Commission took this issue very seriously.

On January 2, 2019 at 9:46 AM, he responded by email [emphasis ours]:

Thank you for copying the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust regarding this public records request and reply.  Because the Miami-Dade Citizen’s Bill of Rights as contained in the County Charter addresses access to public records, I am comfortable with engaging on this matter. 

I would like to discuss with the parties, the proposed $197 per hour fee for producing copies of the documents, coupled as $112 and $85 per hour for two employees.  I will tell you that at first glance without knowing nothing more than what is detailed in the emails, $197 per hour as a fee for producing public records is exorbitant would appear to be contrary to the Bill of Rights provision.  We recommend that hourly costs in compiling records for public access should be charged at the salary for the lowest paid employee working on the project. Annualized, the per hour fee amounts to just under $410,000. 

Also, there are two figures quoted in the email exchanges as total costs, one just over two thousand dollars and a second over six thousand. 

I have copied Michael Murawski, our Commission Advocate so that he may also be informed on this matter.  I will request that Mr. Murawski have an investigator do some work on this so that we can be better informed.

Mr. Arrojo also copied Village Attorney Norman Powell, who is also currently in the hot seat in North Bay Village for abusing his official position as attorney for that municipality, including the firing of a police chief for blowing the whistle on corruption, among other things.

In El Portal, where Norman Powell is also the official attorney, acting Police Chief Ronnie Hufnagel was also fired on December 10, 2018 for … blowing the whistle on corruption.

Coincidence?  We think not.

In the meantime, the Village’s official police dog, Arctic, has become collateral damage of the rampant corruption because his handler, Chief Hufnagel, crossed the Mayor.

Despite Manager Alou’s denial, the 3-year old Siberian Husky was “added to the police department’s insurance policy and went through rigorous training paid for by the village before he was sworn in by the mayor, who frequently touted the K-9 program.”

There’s no end to shady business being conducted, and the lies being told by the current administration of El Portal Mayor Claudia Cubillos, Village Manager Christia Alou and Village Attorney Norman Powell, which we will cover in future blog posts.

Stay tuned.

Stephanie