Add Zoning Director Joe Ruiz and Human Services Director Milton Vickers to the high-ranking employees who have left the City of Miami’s employ in the last year, or, basically, since the city commission pressured former City Manager Emilio Gonzalez to resign.
Vickers’ exit seems to be a direct result of the abusive treatment from commissioners at a January meeting where they actually considered opening up a tent city on Virginia Key for the homeless and Commissioner Joe Carollo suggested they should have had police arrest the homeless who didn’t accept shelter on Christmas Eve.
He also warned Vickers that his days were numbered.
City Manager Art Noriega sent commissioners an memo announcing their “voluntary resignations” on Tuesday, when he also announced the resignation Jan. 29 of former Code Enforcement Director Adele Valencia.
That brings the total to 14 city leaders who have left in a year.
While Mayor Francis Suarez tweets Elon Musk at 3 a.m. and takes $250,000 checks from tech CEOs he’s luring the Miami, more than a dozen department heads and key personnel who have fled the stinking ship, leaving secure government jobs, most of them during a pandemic and crippling economic crisis. Who does that?
Read related: The Purge: Top city of Miami officials fall like dominos in power shift
Let’s count ’em, shall we? This may not be in perfect chronological order:
- City Manager Emilio Gonzalez
- Deputy City Manager Joe Napoli
- Building Department Director Jose Camero
- Planning Director Francisco Garcia
- Chief Financial Officer Sandra Bridgeman
- Department of Real Estate And Asset Management Director Daniel Rottenberg
- Police Chief Jorge Colina
- Budget Director Chris Rose
- Parks Director Lara de Souza
- Capital Projects Director Steve Williamson
- Strategic Planner Cheriene Floyd
- Code Enforcement Director Adele Valencia
- Zoning Director Joe Ruiz
- Human Services Director Milton Vickers
Has Ladra forgotten anybody?
These are not slackers. These are people who put in the work. In most, if not all cases, these are very smart and capable people who have landed great jobs elsewhere.
Napoli, who became the manager in Cooper City, took in Bridgeman as an assistant city manager and Williamson as the public works director. Valencia, an attorney, is already a partner and lobbyist at Llorente and Heckler, one of the most prestigious local firms. Floyd was just announced as the new Director of Performance and Analytics at Miami-Dade County’s newly-established Office of Equity and Inclusion.
Big losses for the city of Miami are big gains for Cooper City, the county and Alex Heckler.
What’s the common denominator: Commissioner Carollo, who publicly abuses many of these true public servants and tries to use their tax-paid roles to threaten, harass and intimidate political adversaries. Others just got fed up with a hostile work environment and a city that is now being run by greedy politicians instead of skilled professionals.
Ladra wants it noted that we predicted back in October that Valencia and Ruiz would leave. They held out longer than anyone thought they could.
Valencia’s friends told me that she loved her job — until Carollo weaponized the code enforcement department against a Little Havana businessman who had allegedly supported his opponent in the 2017 election. Then he started to beat up on her during public commission meetings.
Ruiz, whose resignation is effective March 8, did not return several late texts for comment Wednesday. Vickers, is gone this week, using his paid leave to make it effective at the end of the month. Assistant Human Services William Parro will be in charge for now.
Read related: Miami Commission appoints Jeffrey Watson to vacancy in a new power shift
Vickers joined the city in 2015, when Tomas Regalado was mayor and Daniel Alfonso was manager, to work on anti-poverty issues. A longtime veteran county administrator — hired in 1970 as the affirmative action administrator — he established the Miami-Dade Office of Minority Business Development and came out of retirement to work in the city.
Gonzalez told him to create the Human Services Department, which oversees aid for the homeless and healthcare for uninsured women and children, among other things.
“That was the reason I came out of retirement,” Vickers told Ladra Wednesday. “I had something to offer to an administration that listened and could do great things.
“I got up every morning happy to go to work,” he said, adding that he was proud of the work he had done, particularly with the homeless program.
“Until there’s a real commitment to mental health programming and addiction in the state, we’re going to find ourselves with a homeless population,” Vickers said. “But the idea of putting people on busses and shipping them out of town is just asinine.
“At some point it just stopped being fun.”
That point was about a month ago, he told Ladra. Which is right around the time that Carollo went on a dais rant against the homeless, suggesting they be booted out of town if they refuse to go to a shelter or are caught with a stolen grocery cart.
“Here’s a nice one way ticket out of town and we’ll even give you some extra money so you can live for two weeks somewhere else. Or we’re going to arrest you,” Carollo suggested.
It was at the Jan. 14 meeting when an item came up about special revenue project titled “2021 Miami Homeless Assistance Program-CE Consolidation Program,” a $1 million program to provide outreach, information, referral, assessment and placement service to homeless individuals and families. Three quarters of the funding would come from a U.S. Housing Department grant. Newly-appointed Commissioner Jeffrey Watson asked for it to be continued so that there could be more discussion, perhaps a workshop, on how to address the homeless population now that the courts (last year) ruled the city can terminate judicial protections given to homeless under the 1988 Pottinger vs. City of Miami settlement agreement.
“We are spending millions of dollars every year on homelessness and nothing changes,” Carollo whined.
“I’m kicking around the idea that maybe we don’t give another penny to the Homeless Trust, Camillus House, whoever it is, and freeze all the salaries or the green shirts, the blue shirts that we have dealing with the homeless,” he said, referring to the staffers on the homeless outreach teams before he spoke directly to Vickers, with a threat to get rid of him.
“While you are getting a paycheck and you think that any of us that might be gone in the future you are still going to get a paycheck. I have news for you Mr. Vickers, its not going to work that way.”
Later, Carollo — who also got legislation passed last year that bans groups from feeding the homeless in public — repeated the threat: “One of us is going to be out before the other. And it’s not going to be me.
Read related: Joe Carollo fires staffer who reported abuse of office to the state attorney
“I don’t have the right to hire and fire, but the manager does and we can hire or fire him. That’s all,” Carollo said.
“If we are throwing money away, what do we need you for?”
“Mr. Vickers, I know that what I say doesn’t matter. I get all kinds of excuses. But I reached my limitation. If you can’t do the job, the manager needs to find someone who can do the job and clean the streets.”
Commissioners are set to discuss the city’s homeless issues again on Thursday and sources at City Hall told Ladra that Vickers was being pressured to do just that — send the homeless away. His department staff and programs may end up getting cut, like Carollo threatened.
Vickers wouldn’t confirm that, officially. But c’mon. How could he stay after all that?
“I just didn’t feel I could be effective,” Vickers told Ladra. “I’m trying to be diplomatic, but it was just not worth it. I wasn’t doing this job for the pay. You do it for the privilege of serving and carrying that out in a professional manner is important to me.”
What a loss to the city, huh? Maybe La Alcaldesa can scoop him up for their Office of Equity and Inclusion. For right now, Vickers is going to relax and spend time with his grandchildren.
Meanwhile, Noriega (read: Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla and Carollo) will be replacing these people in all these key positions.
Perhaps with people who will do their bidding.
More key city employees leave Miami like it was a sinking SS Joe Carollo added by Ladra on
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