In El Portal: The shady alliance of Claudia Cubillos and Norman Powell, we told you about Mayor Cubillos’ desperate attempts to convince her colleagues to hire Norman Powell as the permanent Village Attorney.

According to the minutes of the March 27, 2018 meeting, Claudia claimed that his proposed $96,000.00 salary was justified because his fee would be “all-inclusive,” as opposed to the previous attorney, who she claimed hired outside council more often than not.

Norman backed up her assurances that his salary was comparable to that of the previous attorney by stating on the record, “If you look at the budget and you take the legal retainer and add the other legal, it comes to $85,000.  What you’re proposing now is $96,000 so it’s $11,000 difference.  However, the big difference is that if there’s any lawsuits which the village has to address, it’s all going to be all-inclusive in the fee.  It’s not going to be on the extra charges because that’s, as you know, we’ve had a couple of years we’ve had one or two lawsuits and we had that one worker complain, where our cost in legal fees was over $50,000.  You have to bear that in mind also.”

Unfortunately for the taxpayers of El Portal, he lied.

And we have the legal bills to prove it.

Bills, bills, bills

During FY2018-19 (from October 1, 2018 through September 30, 2019), the Village of El Portal paid outside counsel a total of $52,552.15.

So far this fiscal year through May 2, 2020, the Village paid outside counsel a total of $34,807.91.

In addition to Norman’s $8,000 a month salary for the last 19 months, or a total of $152,000, El Portal residents also shelled out $87,360.06 for outside legal services during this same time period, for a grand total of $239,360.06.

What this means is that Norman Powell’s $8,000 a month contract actually cost El Portal residents the sum of $12,597.90 a month.

But, hey.  It’s “all-inclusive.”

Conflict of interest

As we also reported, at a July 23, 2019 Council meeting, Councilman Andes Urbom specifically asked if there was any documentation submitted regarding conflicts of interest involving Norman Powell.  Claudia was quick to deny any by responding, “To my recollection, to my knowledge, no.”

In fact, at an earlier March 5, 2018 Council meeting, Claudia claimed to have met Norman at recent Miami-Dade County League of Cities meeting.  She said, “That’s how I met Norman Powell, none of us sure are friends with Norman Powell when I introduced him on the record in March 5th which is the [canceled for lack of quorum] February council meeting.”

However, as we already have proven, Norman Powell is close friends with Nariman Daruvalla, the husband of Councilwoman Vimari Roman, who remained absolutely silent when asked about any conflicts of interest.

During a “brief statement” that Vimari read at the June 23, 2020 Council meeting, (hour 4:11:57 of the video), she emphatically announced, “I have not had any personal relationship with any of the staff or contractors of this Village and neither has my husband.”

Except she lied.

As we’ve already proven, Norman and her husband attended a Christian retreat together in June of 2015, as evidenced by this photo posted on the Facebook page of Emmaus of Miami – SRL Men.

Vimari continued, “But if I did, or if we did, I would not have a problem admitting to it because there’s no law that says we could not have a friendship with anyone we work with.”

We have absolutely no quarrel with that.

Nor do we care who Vimari or her husband choose to befriend.

What we do have a problem with is that Vimari helped her husband’s close friend “negotiate” his contract, and then voted to approve that same contract, yet she did not publicly disclose that personal relationship.

At the very least, she should have publicly acknowledged that she and her husband had a personal relationship with Norman since at least 2015, and then recused herself from voting.

The fact that she did neither is a possible violation of the Miami-Dade County Conflict of Interest and Code of Ethics Ordinance.

And, yes, we intend to follow through.

Just saying.

Vimari’s silly little speech also included several false accusations and outright lies about this blogger, which we will address in a future column.

For now, though, we’ll stick with the topic at hand, which is Norman’s contract.

All of which brings us to the question of who actually negotiated Norman’s contract with the Village of El Portal.

Who’s your daddy lawyer?

As we reported in El Portal: South Florida’s shadiest little Village just got a whole lot shadier!, at the May 19, 2020 Village Clerk Yenise Jacobi announced that she received a question from a resident who wanted to know who negotiated Norman’s contract.

Norman threw the Mayor and Council under the bus by responding, “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, on the other hand, twisted herself into a pretzel trying to squirm out of answering the question by repeatedly whining that there must have been an attorney, but she just can’t remember who it was.

In the end, she punted, “We would have to get back to you so you can answer whoever is asking you that.”

Well, we here at VotersOpinion will save her “royal we” the trouble of pretending to look for the “mystery” attorney who negotiated Norman’s contract.

According to the minutes of the minutes of the March 5, 2018 meeting, Mayor Claudia Cubillos and her loyal sidekick Vimari Roman were both so intent on immediately firing then-Village Attorney Joe Geller and hiring Norman on the spot.

Despite one elected official’s absence, and former Councilperson Harold Mathis, Jr.’s desire for “the whole Council just to weigh in on this, not just the four of us or three of us, the whole Council,” Claudia completely ignored him and continued on her mission to get Norman hired.

When Mr. Mathis suggested they take time to review the charter to see “what they can and cannot do with regards to employees,” Claudia brushed him off with, “We can adjust that at admin and finance if need be. Anyway, if there’s an item on the agenda, if there’s a motion, I’ll open it up to the public for public comments.”

Right on cue, Vimari immediately piped up, “Mayor, I think you should open it up.”

Without missing a beat, as soon as the votes were tallied on Geller’s termination (page 39 March 5, 2018 meeting minutes), Claudia launched right into a “recommendation to appoint [as] the interim attorney” none other than Norman Powell (page 40).

And despite Claudia’s insistence that she didn’t “personally know” Norman, she reiterated, “It seems that this gentleman, from the experience that he has and from what he’s doing right now in North Bay Village, could be a great interim person for us” (page 41).

She continued, “At the end of the day, I have a job that I have to get done for you all.  This would be my recommendation on an interim basis.  You have a computer, you can Google him.”

(Yes, by all means.  Please Google “Norman Powell North Bay Village” and “Norman Powell El Portal.”)

Claudia continued, “If anybody has met him, I think most of you have met him at the league, but he would be my recommendation.  If he could start and then I would ask the clerk to please contact him tomorrow and then we’ll formalize something.”

When Councilperson Mathis suggested giving Geller’s firm one or two weeks’ notice so that Norman could “have catch up time with them” (page 44), she quickly put the kibosh on that idea.

In her shameless crusade to get Norman hired, Claudia made it very clear she had no intention of waiting.  She said (page 45), “That was one of the things that I tried to cover in as much as I can in the event that anything would happen.  In the conversation that I had with other mayors that have been in this predicament is that you make the termination, you have the clerk contact the new attorney.  They actually said that the termination would be immediate and that he will come in tomorrow and we’ll take it from there.”

Is anyone surprised?

Two weeks later at the Administration & Finance Committee meeting on March 20, 2018 (see hour 1:04:11 of the meeting video), Chairperson Vimari Roman introduced Item G2 on the Agenda entitled “Interim Attorney.”

Donning her Pretend Lawyer hat, she authoritatively announced, “So, I printed the contract for you guys just in case.  I reviewed it pretty much, it’s self-explanatory.  There was nothing that stood out to me.”

Vimari then went on to explain that Norman’s fee will be $8,000 a month and that “it’s a month-to-month contract.”

Keep in mind, folks, that this is the same arrogantly confident woman who, a mere seven days later at the March 27, 2018 Council meeting, protested vehemently when asked a simple question by the Village Clerk.

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…”

But we digress.

Vice Chair/Mayor Claudia Cubillos asked what his fee includes and Vimari, who was obviously very familiar with the terms of Norman’s contract, responded that it’s “3.2, it’s all under there,” and that it “includes but is not limited to … A through L.”

At that point, Norman offered to explain what it all meant.  He went on to say that their current lawyer’s contract “called for a bare minimum retainer and then you were billed on an hourly basis afterwards at the discretion of that firm.”

“The way I approach the representation, which I have done with all of my municipal clients is there is a laundry list of items that we know are covered under the agreement,” he continued.  “So there is no room for any additional billing.”

However, he added, “The only additional billing would be for what they call special items, which is litigation, which also would not be something that I would necessarily be involved with, because of the League of Cities, and if it’s covered under that, the League of Cities takes the lead on that.”

Norman was referring to the The Florida Municipal Insurance Trust, which is administered by The Florida League of Cities, the state association for cities, towns and villages of Florida.  In addition to general and professional liability insurance, the Trust also provides legal defense services for municipalities.  A list of its services, however, does not specify “all litigation.”

After a grand total of six minutes devoted to the discussion of Norman’s employment as interim Village Attorney, the El Portal Administration & Finance Committee voted to “move the contract for approval to the Council.”

Once again, there was no mention of any outside legal council hired to represent the interests of El Portal residents for the negotiation of the interim Village Attorney’s contract.

In the name of … transparency?

According to Item H1 on the Agenda for the March 27, 2018 Council meeting, the Mayor and Council were scheduled to presumably vote on a Village Attorney contract.

The attached packet, however, did not include a copy of the alleged contract the elected officials were expected to approve.

According to the minutes of the meeting, however, the members of the Council had been provided copies of the contract by email for their review five days earlier.  All except for Councilperson Harold Mathis, that is, who only received it two days earlier and stated he was not prepared to vote on it.

The members of the public – you know, the taxpayers who actually pay the salaries of the elected officials making all these decisions on their behalf – were kept totally in the dark.  They had absolutely no prior knowledge of the terms of Norman’s contract, and no time to review it before the meeting.

During the discussion, former Councilperson Werner Dreher had many concerns, including the proposed cost of Norman’s salary, as well as the lack of transparency regarding this matter.

Claudia, of course, defended Norman with the whole “all-inclusive” nonsense, which we all now know was anything but.

She then responded, “To your last question in terms of transparency, one of the reasons why the videos are now uploaded on the website is because we are transparent, is because everything is done on the record.”

Well, except for the fact that there are no videos in existence of either the March 5, 2018 Council meeting when Claudia first brought Norman to the Village, or the March 27, 2018 Council meeting where she expected him to be hired.

If El Portal residents want to restore any semblance of transparency, or for that matter normalcy, to their government, their best bet is to demand the immediate firing of Norman Powell.

And then vote out Mayor Claudia Cubillos and her shady co-conspirator, Vimari Roman this November.

El Portal’s 2,500 residents deserve better.

Stephanie