Comments about South Miami City Hall….

COMMENTS BETWEEN SHARON MCCAIN AND MAYOR PHIL STODDARD

Phil

The nerve of Ms. Oca,” heckling” or is that your adjective? If she used the word “heckled” she definitely should not be in partnership with this city.  Nobody heckled her at the commission meeting. If the emails I sent bother her, too bad.  As Mayor, you should be ashamed of the contract presented Tuesday.  Perhaps she and Mr. Feingold, should have provided a contract that was acceptable. As our ex city attorney, he certainly was not looking out for our best interests when he slipped this awful contract onto the agenda.  Mayor, your motives  for pursuing this vendor when there are others, like Swim Gym who responded to this Rfp is now in question.   I understand another contract was available, much more detailed, but Mr. Feingold decided to go with the less detailed contract.  If you really cared about the resident’s in this city as well as your promises of fiscal responsibility, and possess a “good business eye” you would realize this contract is inadequate and what was requested by me, as a resident, is the norm, and our ex city attorney knows it.

The only thing you care about is your ego and being able to say you built the pool Horace Feliu could never build. The only thing Brian Beasley is concerned about, after promising fiscal responsibility, is having at least one (1) accomplishment on his re election platform, which is a shame, after sitting in the commission seat for (3) years.

Mayor, kindly ask Ms. Oca, who is working you and  the rest of the commission, and 10,000 people in this city  to provide the following…. Apparently she has withdrawn her interest twice today, and twice you had to talk her back into it.  She certainly has worked you over.

1. financial status of her current business
2. O and M of her current business
3. Credentials, if any, in pool design

Kindly do us all a favor and go back to your FIU Lab and tend to your frogs, they like you a whole lot more than many of us here in South Miami.  Each day you continue to manipulate the process and other members of the commission, is another day you lose respect.   No doubt being in academia for most of your adult life, you’ve missed out on alot of things, one of them is not have good business sense and certainly no common sense.

You promised us better, you haven’t produced. Just remember what happened to previous commissioners who did the residents of this city wrong, they never got re elected.

Point of information:

This afternoon, after numerous phone calls, emails, and even personal visits from many residents and a few commissioners, Miren Oca agreed to meet with us on Monday evening provided she not be subject to abusive heckling.

-Philip

On Mar 3, 2011, at 6:46 PM, AslanF@aol.com wrote:

Reply All   The applicant, Oca,  withdrew. She said she was just worn out with constant repetition.    I want to personally thank Mr Bradley Cassel for his untiring efforts in  working endless hours with the City Team. It is sad  we  lose precious grant money  On a personal Note, the definition of a Letter Of Intent to salvage the deal and save the Grant  is…………” a non binding document prepared by lawyers expressing the desires and wishes of    the city while avoiding and/or postponing the more rigid requirements of a contract. it is a particular useful in bypassing time constraints where delay could extinguish the very financing that makes the deal doable.”
Thus my suggestion was in the routine practice of law and not acting as the sixth Commissioner

Comments about South Miami City Hall….

I would like to respond to Brad’s email below…..

Sharon—

“Oca will not participate in the design and build unless she has a guaranteed contract to manage. She’s a professional.

As the grant stands now…the pool must have a CO by 12/31/11. There are no assurances the Gimnenez will roll the grant

If we build a pool that she doesn’t think she can make a profit with she won’t sign the agreement.”

The sham of the contract presented Tuesday basically states that Ms. Oca’s contract doesn’t begin, in actuality, until she gets a CO (pool is finished and the doors are ready to open).  That being the case, our city is giving her a golden opportunity and yet that was not satisfactory to her and in my opinion she  put some pressure on the commission this past Tuesday.  According to you, she  won’t participate in the design unless she is given a contract???? What entity would provide a contract like this anyway?  Obviously, Mr. Feingold  and members of the commission who have not yet learned from past mistakes,   i.e. the garage, the YMCA, to name a few.  Again the cart before the horse.

If she were given a deal guaranteeing her the contract once the pool was designed and finally went to the commission to vote on (let us not forget, the pool still needs to be voted on by the commission) and allowed her to participate in the design, what is wrong with that?  If she really wanted this golden opportunity, she would donate her time in the design and not be demanding to want a contract to do so.   After all,our city is building her  an indoor pool (that was never in the original plan) so she could drastically increase her earnings and have money left over to maintain the two pools  One would think, and you already know this, that a contract should not even be thought of until a design is done,  then and only then, can a proper contract be drawn up BASED ON THE DESIGN OF THE POOL THAT WOULD ENCOMPASS THE “REAL” COSTS FOR  MAINTENANCE AND OTHER ISSUES IN THE CONTRACT.  You would think Ms. Oca and the city would one it done that way, which is the correct way!

Why hasn’t Feingold or members of the commission asked for…..

1. her credentials regarding pool design?  If she has never designed a pool before, why start with us?
2 Why is our city commission allowing a vendor, who only might be a vendor for five years or less, help in the design of a permanent building in our city?
3.Why didn’t Mr. Feingold  or members of the commission ask for Ms. Oca’s O & M statement and her financials based on her current business?  Doesn’t our city commission   and Mr. Feingold  want to know if her current business is thriving, or just meeting their monthly nut?  Obviously this would tell you and the taxpayers if we would end up eating this albatross within a year or two.

I question whether the grants obtained to pay for this pool state we need a CO by the end of December.  If this were true, why did Mr. Feingold and Ms. Oca or both say the pool had to be completed within three years?  A bit of conflict there.

Brad, you stated Tuesday the pool was not costing South Miamians anything.  When will you and everybody else  understand grants are available because of tax money collected from   ALL TAXPAYERS.The sooner everyone understands that the better.

What happened to the “green pool” we were promised by Phil?  Remember we were given so much money and the original plan did not include building an indoor pool and concrete to enclose it.  Incandescent light bulbs? What’s green about that, they won’t even be making them much longer.   Parking?  Where is the traffic analysis for this project?  What if in a few years a developer comes to our city to build  and a traffic analysis is required.  He has every right to point out that the city didn’t require a traffic analysis for the pool they built, why should he?  Another law suit?  Doctrine of equitable estoppel? (A term most attorneys use when they don’t want to do the work required)?  When I attended a Saturday workshop over a year ago organized by Phil, we were promised a green pool that might give the Ventian Pool in the Gables a run for their money.  Something our city could be proud of.  I was even half way sold on it.  Now we are not getting that, instead we are  building an indoor concrete albatross for a vendor and another pool on .67 of an acre piece of land with no traffic study, no place to park, and still have not received what we asked for, the maintenance costs, because ultimately, we will end up maintaining this pool. Let us not forget the community center that was suppose to be self sufficient, and never was.

You promised fiscal responsibility and transparency.  What is wrong with Swim Gym? Perhaps they won’t be as demanding and  want a contract before the pool is built but a promise they would have a contract if  they were allowed to participate in the design, and the maintenance costs and all other issues would come into play more accurately prior to guaranteeing any vendor a contract.  If they are more agreeable, as a taxpayer I would utilize them, I am sure they would go for it.

Could someone please let me know why a contract that is super less restrictive be allowed to go on the city agenda after all our city has gone through will previous bad legal advice and commissioners in the past who gave our city away at the expense of residents? Nothing was spelled out and here we go again!  It is unacceptable that the pool is only available 50% of the time on weekends, remember, the pool operation is not a 24 hours deal, but than again, we don’t know what are the hours of operation, they were never provided.

Kindly obtain the vendor’s O & M statements, financial statements, and credentials for pool design before Monday. This should have been obtained already.

Thanks

Sharon

P.S.  Please read today’s Herald page 3B “Miami
Dade County” and use as an example: The new bond money is going to
projects that don’t “carry ongoing operating expenses that will burden the
(county) coffers on a recurring basis”.

Yvonne Beckman wrote:

And once again you are in denial/ or delusional  because the  Square Diehl
issue  made you look really really bad to all the  people in  South Miami.
Shutting down the  SMHA in its wake was another and that’s only a start.

You cannot not hurt me any more so bring it on mister.

Horace Feliu wrote:

Once again you fail to understand the difference between a privately owned
property ie: Square Diehl and a property owned and operated by a government.
Perhaps you need to reread or better still have someone explain to you the
conclusion of your complaint regarding the city’s responsibility regarding
the S. Diehl.
…By the way the you misspelled my name.

Thank you,
Horace

Yvonne Beckman wrote:

Oh puleeze and who are you?

Horace Feliu wrote:

You are an angry and bitter person that requires a great deal of love an attention.

The answer to your lack of grasp of reality lies within.

Learn to love yourself so that can love others and so that you won’t continue to be kicked out of public meetings.
Horace G. Feliu


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5 COMMENTS

  1. Well it is if you stay away from City Hall. Just avoid the toxic politics and associated antics for your own sanity. This is a wonderful town to call home.

  2. The story in Neighbors today reaffirms that the city is being run by a bunch of lunatics.
    I saw Commissioner Beasley whispering in the ears of some folks..Can you tell me what in the world he was saying about Valerie Newwoman.

  3. Grants issued to municipalities are monies collected via tax or usage fees. Winning and using grants was once considered a good thing. Alas, now the entire issue of accepting grants is being called into question. If the City of South Miami should not pursue grants, then it is clear that we should not have hired the new grant writer. Or is it that grant money is acceptable when the project for which it is intended is one that has the approval of the vociferous few? And grant funding does not end because a municipality refuses to apply or accept it–it just goes someplace else–to another town, county or state.

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