Liliana Dones, current Secretary of the Village Council, sent this letter to Martin Zilber, Village Council Chair, late last night.
This will make sense if you read this story first and this story next.
Dear Martin,
I do not understand why you should choose not to have a meeting on Thursday. Why would this choice be made without those of us who are still members of the Village Council being allowed to weigh in? Did I miss something? As far as I know the meeting tonight was for you as Chair to go over administrative details with the incoming council. Indeed, I was told that this meeting was to to include only yourself and the council-elect.
As far as I am aware, I am still the Secretary of this council through Dec. 31, and we have a meeting scheduled for Nov. 12 with some rather important agenda items, particularly that of the 5 am closings.
The fact that this memo from the Mayor elect has risen late this afternoon, and is being somehow interpreted to prohibit the Council from meeting at City Hall as we had regularly scheduled, hardly means that we cannot meet at all. Furthermore, I have word from sources extremely close to the Mayor elect that it was never his intention AT ALL, to prohibit the Village Council from meeting, as planned on November 12. Despite Tomas Regalado's extremely busy schedule tomorrow, he is hopefully going to graciously clarify this.
Martin, I lost this election because I spoke up in favor of 5 am closings, and thus incurred a vigorous campaign against me. I know this because I have seen the emails received by my neighbors asking that they not vote for me.
So be it. I took a chance speaking my mind, and would not have it any other way. They organized themselves to vote against me, and they succeeded in convincing over the uninformed and bullying the uninspired. But I cannot sit by and allow the scheduled agenda to be cancelled willy-nilly over some fantastic decree that is now being manipulated to cancel the November 12 meeting. I am still secretary of the Village Council for the next 2 months, and unless there is something in the bylaws that says the Chair may cancel a meeting at his sole discretion, I very much expect the meeting to go on as planned, regardless of whether the city allows it to take place at City Hall or not.
I have always gone with gut instinct. And you saw my gut instinct reaction when I first heard about this today. Then I reread the memo and thought to myself, I am over reacting. There is nothing here that says we cannot have the meeting. So I spoke to Michelle Pina, in the City Manager's office, and she verified my feelings. "if anything," she said, "this memo reinforces that the Village Council have their meeting." So I sent an email verifying our conversation and asking that our televised meeting be confirmed. Then I got her email stating that, oops, it looks like we cannot meet at City Hall after all, (I enclose said thread, below your message, for the benefit of the VC elect new members).
Fantastic as it may seem that the Mayor elect's first order of business for the ENTIRE city of Miami would be the re-scheduling of the use of City Hall Chambers so as to make it available to all community organizations in town, it is reasonable to expect that this rush edict would still allow the Village Council to have its meeting, as planned, on November 12, in Chambers and televised. After all, we were already scheduled and there is nothing to pre-empt our scheduled meeting from taking place. The likely hood of another organization demanding to use our time slot, within one day of this edict is simply absurd. Ah, of course, except if we were somehow to be forcibly held to a technicality.
Nevertheless, the Village Council need not have to cancel its meeting if it cannot meet at City Hall. There are plenty of other venues, and the Bill of Right does say it is our right to assemble even if we have to rent a venue.
I am willing to bet Commissioner Gimenez would be more than happy to let us assemble at the Rolle Center. So what if we cannot be televised? There has been freedom of assembly in this country going on long before there was television. Or a City of Miami.
Liliana Dones
Secretary, Cocoanut Grove Village Council
No comments:
Post a Comment