When North Miami Beach Criminal Commissioner McKenzie Fleurimond walked off the dais during the December 20, 2022 Commission Meeting for the sole purpose of saving the jobs of City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey and City “Attorney” Hans Ottinot, not only did he obstruct official City business, but he cost taxpayers a pretty penny.

Not to mention the tens of thousands of dollars a year that Duke’s “Senior Advisor to City Manager,” Athalie Edwards, spends on food for Duke and his staff.

As we already reported, just in the one month period of April 5, 2022 through May 4, 2022, Athalie Edwards, who was hired by Duke on May 24, 2021 at a salary $88,000 a year, and who now earns a base salary of $109,307 (or a nearly 25% increase!), charged $2,256.14 on her taxpayer-funded P Card just on food purchases!

We’d love to tell you how much more money she squandered on the care and feeding of the City Manager and his staff, but Duke is holding three of her taxpayer-funded P Card statements hostage until we pay $13.99 for our Public Records Request, which is twice the amount we’ve paid for more than two times the number of documents.

Granted, $13.99 isn’t going to break us, but we’re refusing to be ripped off on general principle.

Obviously, Duke doesn’t want us to see what his Senior Adviser, a/k/a Catering Specialist, Athalie Edwards spends in order to keep the Fourth Floor Buffet Table fully stocked.

But we digress.

Let’s take a look at how much McKenzie’s temper tantrum cost taxpayers every single day by obstructing the firing of the City “Attorney” and five members of the City Manager’s bloated Friends & Family staff.

Keep in mind, these are actual expenditures according to the Proposed FY23 Budget Expenses and Duke’s shady AF FY 2023 Adopted Budget.

We’ll start with the $990,000 budget for the City Attorney’s Office, of which $720,000 is paid directly to Ottinot Law, P.A.

While $270,000 is allegedly budgeted to “cover outside legal services,” in the first year alone of Ottinot’s contract with the City (February 1, 2021 through January 31, 2022), his firm was paid $857,098.19, which was $197,098.19 more than his contracted salary, which at the time was “only” $660,000 a year.

In fact, according to the City’s check registers that were posted online at the time, the total the City of North Miami Beach paid for legal fees in the first year of Hans Ottinot’s employment as City Attorney was $1,692,739.84.

Considering that according to the FY 2021 Adopted Budget allowed for an expenditure of $930,000 a year, Hans Ottinot went over the City Attorney’s budget by more than 82%!

We, of course, have no way of knowing where all your money went because Hans is holding copies of the legal bills hostage until we shell out $2,022.69 for a response to our Public Records Request.

Considering that Hell has not frozen over yet, we still have no idea exactly what “legal” services you paid for.

In any event, assuming that Hans has been staying within his budget (which is doubtful), every single day that he occupies a leather armchair in the City Attorney’s office costs North Miami Beach taxpayers $1,972.60.

Taxpayers are also footing a $632,143 annual bill for the total employment packages for Duke Sorey and his two hired guns Assistants, Gedel “Beezlebub” Merzius and Kemarr Brown, both of whom will hopefully be terminated as soon as Duke’s replacement is hired.

We also expect the new manager to terminate Duke’s Catering Specialist, Athalie Edwards, who is currently receiving an obscene $152,599 total employment package.

Then there’s the even more obscene $187,183 total employment package for Timothy Belcher, a retired North Miami Police Major (and Duke Sorey Friends & Family hire), whose equally useless job position as “Special Advisor to the City Manager-Public Safety” was created by Duke for the sole purpose of having a spy in the Police Department.

We assume the new manager will also cut this unnecessary position and send Tim back into retirement.

These five employees working directly under Duke Sorey are costing taxpayers a grand total of $971,925 a year, or $2,662.81 a day.

By walking off the dais to deliberately break quorum and obstruct the North Miami Beach City Commission’s obligation to well and faithfully perform the people’s business, McKenzie Fleurimond is costing North Miami Beach taxpayers a grand total of $4,635.41 a day!

In fact, since the evening of December 20, 2022, you can watch your tax dollars be flushed down the toilet on this handy-dandy Real Time Debt Clock™:

Courtesy of the ingenious Keith Myers, of course. 😉

These amounts, of course, do not include the tax dollars being wasted on the dozens of other former North Miami employees, a/k/a Duke’s Friends & Family, who were lured to North Miami Beach with promises of astronomical salaries and benefits, most of whom can’t even do the jobs for which they were hired.

Hopefully, the new City Manager will conduct a thorough review of the workforce and toss out the dead wood as soon as he gets appointed.

McKenzie Fleurimond is unfit to serve and should either resign or be recalled.

#RecallThemAll

Stephanie