Get out the popcorn.

The pint-sized Village of El Portal, run by public officials with disproportionately out-sized egos, is back on our radar.

At the center of the latest drama are the three usual suspects, Mayor Claudia Cubillos, her (literally) hand-picked interim Village Attorney Norman C. Powell, and the wife of Norman’s good buddy Nariman Daruvalla, Councilwoman Vimari Roman.

It seems that Claudia is desperate to hold on to the last vestiges of power she lost when Councilperson Luis Pirela replaced ex-Councilperson Harold Mathis, Jr.

Mathis, you will recall, was suspended from office by the Governor last December after getting arrested and charged with 63 felony charges of grand theft, forgery, and organized scheme to defraud.

Along with her sole ally on the Council, Vimari Roman, Claudia relies heavily on the “legal” opinions of Norman Powell to push through her personal agenda and override the proposed legislation brought forth by her other three colleagues on the dais.

Case in point, the Administration & Finance Committee met on May 19, 2020 to discuss, among other things, the issuance of a Request for Proposal (RFP) to hire a permanent Village Attorney.

Ms. Roman suggested they use as a template a Recruitment Letter issued by the Village of Biscayne Park in March 2018 after its attorney announced his retirement.

Per Item G10 of the Agenda, discussion began at hour 3:53:58 of the meeting video on whether or not to advance the RFP template to the full Council for approval.

Despite taking credit for digging up the Biscayne Park Recruitment Letter, Committee Vice Chair/Councilperson Vimari Roman desperately tried to have the matter tabled for a future meeting, using COVID as an excuse, and claiming there is “no sense of urgency” since Powell “is doing a good job.”

After all, the job of her husband’s best friend is at stake.

 

Committee Member/Councilperson Anders Urbom brought up Norman’s current contract, and suggested that the job of the Village Attorney be “all encompassing.”

At that point, Committee Chair/Vice Mayor Omarr C. Nickerson presented a screenshot of the Biscayne Park Recruitment Letter (at hour 4:03:09), which listed its job requirements for the position.

He cited the letter’s Job Requirements description which stated that “[d]uties include coordinating with outside counsel regarding litigation on behalf of the Village.”

Mr. Urbom acknowledged that the village attorney has the discretion to hire outside counsel, but further suggested that the hiring should require Council approval.

Powell’s Head Cheerleader Vimari Roman immediately broke in to defend Norman’s hiring of outside counsel for “labor issues because that’s a very sensitive topic.”

Sensitive?

Oh.  Okay.

She also added that there are “real estate attorneys” and “attorneys that handle all types of specialties.”

Ms. Roman conveniently ignored the paragraph in the Biscayne Park Template, that read, “The candidate shall demonstrate knowledge of labor relations, civil litigation, collective bargaining and municipal, state, federal and constitutional law affecting municipal government.”

In response, Chairman Nickerson presented a screen shot of the second page of the Biscayne Park Recruitment Letter.

He then noted that he “loved the part” where it says, “The Village Attorney should have a solid understanding of a broad array of legal matters…,” adding, “so it kinda says what they should should know about, labor and municipal law, union agreements, grievances, land use and planning, water rights, public finance, personnel, public works, public contracts and bidding, and drafting ordinances and resolutions.”

Although in Norman’s Florida Bar Member Profile he claims to specialize in government law, as well as real property, probate & trust, we personally know that his main area of “legal” expertise is the filing of SLAPP suits against bloggers who dare write the truth about his ethically challenged antics.

But, we digress.

The real fireworks began at hour 4:12:56, when Village Clerk Yenise Jacobi announced that she received a question from a resident who wanted to know who negotiated Village Attorney Norman Powell’s contract.

All of a sudden, you could hear a pin drop.

No one … not Norman Powell, not Vimari Roman, not one person … had a damn thing to say.

In fact, you can clearly see how Vimari, who until that moment was using expressive hand gestures while enthusiastically advocating for Norman, became conspicuously silent as she suddenly looked down and avoided eye contact with the audience while nervously playing with her earrings.

Clerk Jacobi pressed Councilperson Roman to name the outside attorney or law firm that negotiated Norman’s contract with the Village of El Portal.

Before she could answer, Chairman Nickerson broke in by asking, “You worked on that contract, correct?  You were the chair at the time, right?”

Vimari immediately clenched her hands and said, “Yeah, but I’m not a legal person.  I don’t remember who looked at the legal, I don’t know if…”

Nickerson interjected, “The legality of it?”

Vimari continued, “I don’t know the legal, um, if we hired, I think we might have hired outside counsel,” all the while nervously wringing her hands.

“Um, I mean we had to,” she continued.  “Because there’s, you know, we had to have an attorney look at the contract.”

When the Clerk persisted in asking for a name, Vimari said, “I just don’t remember.  I’m sure we have it on file.  We might, we should have a bill somewhere.”

When the Clerk asked Vimari if she negotiated Norman’s contract on his behalf, she emphatically said, “No.  No!”

Vimari kept stammering, saying that she didn’t know who did, and suggested they check the Minutes of the meeting.

“There was someone legally involved, I just don’t remember who,” she said nervously, as she tried to defend herself.  “There’s gotta be a record somewhere.  No one’s gonna do that work for free.  So, we just need to look into it.”

Clerk Jacobi then asked Norman if he remembers discussing it with an attorney, to which he responded, “All I recall is that I submitted the agreement, which is a template that’s used pretty much throughout the state, to the Village, and I don’t know what happened afterwards.”

Vimari continued, still wringing her hands, “We would have to get back to you so you can answer whoever is asking you that.”

Suddenly, she blurted out, “We might have a video!  Maybe look at the video if you can’t find Minutes.”

Well, we here at VotersOpinion are only too happy to refresh her memory.

For one thing, we easily found the Minutes.

According to the Minutes of the March 5, 2018 Council meeting, Mayor Claudia Cubillos announced out of the blue that it was time to look for another attorney.  Councilperson Vimari Roman immediately followed her cue by making a motion to terminate then-Village Attorney Joseph S. Geller.

When Vice Mayor Nickerson told Claudia that the Village needed to have an attorney, she immediately, and very conveniently, put Norman Powell’s name on the table.  At that same meeting, Claudia also explicitly stated that an RFQ for a permanent attorney would be placed on the Agenda for for the next meeting “to agree on the RFQ and then it goes out.  100% it needs an RFQ asap.”

At the very next meeting, however, and as we already reported in El Portal: The shady alliance of Claudia Cubillos and Norman Powell, “According to the Minutes of the March 27, 2018, meeting, Cubillos desperately tried to convince her colleagues to bypass an RFQ (request for quotation) and select Powell…”

There was absolutely no mention of any outside attorney or law firm that negotiated Norman’s contract in the official Minutes of either meeting.

And yet somehow Norman’s contract with the Village of El Portal is dated and signed on March 27, 2018 … the same day as the March 27, 2018 Council meeting.

Meanwhile, it’s still a mystery whether or not Village public officials retained outside legal counsel to negotiate that contract on behalf of El Portal residents, who are footing the bill for Norman’s salary.

Curiously, Vimari’s plea to “look at the video if you can’t find Minutes” resulted in a dead end.

Although the Village of El Portal has a link on its website to Videos of All Meetings from December 20, 2016 through May 26, 2020, the videos of the March 5, 2018 or March 27, 2018 Council meetings are mysteriously missing.

Well, isn’t that interesting?

As soon as Vimari stopped posturing, Councilperson Luis Pirela finally had a chance to speak at hour 4:16:08.

His main concern was “how the attorney got here, who negotiated his contract,” and why the Village is paying “for an all-inclusive to almost double the amount” than the previous attorney was getting paid.  He wondered why Norman was supposed to be a “full service” attorney, yet there was still a need for outside counsel to be hired.  Mr. Pirela also said that “most of the residents were under the impression that we were going to pay pretty much double for legal services when everything was going to be handled by our [attorney].”

We here at VotersOpinion are only too happy to answer his question.

We also previously reported:

When they hired Norman Powell on March 27, 2018, however, the counsel doubled his salary to $8,000 a month under the condition that it be “all-inclusive.”

Mayor Cubillos stated on the record, “When attorney Geller charges $1,500, it wasn’t all-inclusive, which is why we ended up paying last year $74,000.  What contract, if you all read it, it is all-inclusive.  There’s not going to be land use fees, there’s not going to be when we pick up the phone and there’s a fee for that.  This is all-inclusive.”

Apparently, as we also reported, Claudia lied.

We wrote:

As of May 19, 2019, however, the village had already paid its in house attorney the amount of $64,000, and an additional $27,380 for outside counsel.  By the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 2019, the village projects that it will have spent a total of $96,000 to its attorney and $30,000 to outside counsel, for a combined total of $126,000 for legal fees, which is $30,000 over budget.

So much for the “it’s all inclusive” lie!

We have no idea how much more El Portal taxpayers shelled out for outside legal services for the remaining three and a half months of Fiscal Year 2017-18, but we imagine it was considerably more.

On June 2, 2020, we made a Public Records Request for, among other items, “Copies of all legal bills from outside counsel from 10/1/18 through the present date.”

We have yet to receive a response.

Meanwhile, it’s been two and a half years since Mayor Claudia Cubillos “just happened to meet” Norman Powell and was able to finagle his appointment as the Interim Village Attorney.

And two and a half years later, the Administration & Finance Committee voted in favor of issuing an RFP for a permanent Village Attorney and place it on the Agenda for the June Council meeting.

And yet, there is absolutely no mention of this matter on the Agenda for the June 23, 2020 Council meeting.

We can’t help but wonder how that happened.

But we have our suspicions.

And we do intend to find out.

If you think there is just way too much shadiness going on in this mostly irrelevant, .42 square mile postage stamp-sized village, you’re not alone.

Believe it or not, there’s more to come.

Despite Mayor Claudia’s adamant denial that it’s only an “alleged rumor,” a FEMA investigation of El Portal’s Dirty Little Secrets has already begun.

Keep that corn popping.

Stephanie