The Palm Bay City Council meets tonight at 7:00 PM with the agenda being found here.
There are several items of interest to us, but the big one is the ballot questions resulting from the debacle with the petition group, the City and the Supervisor of Elections.
Here is the agenda item:
Brevard County Supervisor of Elections Lori Scott made an appearance on the Bill Mick Show on Monday, July 1, 2019 to discuss many issues including the issue of the City of Palm Bay petition drive on special assessments and the lawsuit launched (and since dismissed) by the City against her office.
As usual, Bill Mick seemed uninformed or not particularly informed about what happened, but of course, Scott is.
Scott started by explaining that the state statutes require that her office verify signatures on petitions for candidates for state elections and for petitions seeking to amend the state Constitution.
She went on to to explain that the petitions must have the name, the address, the date, the signature and spots where the signer has to fill in their date of birth or their voter id number. These are requirements mandated by the legislature and Florida Department of Elections.
The reason for the date of birth or voter ID number requirement is simple.
SCOTT: I have a very common name. There may be more than one Lori Scott living in Palm Bay. So how do you know if that person is a voter or not or have they been removed. Have they broken residency? Do they not live there anymore?
So when we look on the voter rolls, date of birth or voter registration number is required by the State of Florida.
Makes sense to us.
Mick then asked Scott how the petitions gathered by the Palm Bay petition committee were deficient for her office.
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This past Thursday, the Palm Bay City Council voted on “direction” they wanted the City Attorney and the City Clerk to take in regards to the petition on special assessments now that the City dropped the lawsuit against Lori Scott and the Office of the Supervisor of Elections.
The outcome is a good one for the Citizens of Palm Bay petition group who gathered almost 9,000 signatures on the petitions. All they wanted was to have a chance to get the issue in front of voters. As the direction from the Council was to prepare ordinances to put the issue on the ballot during a special election on November 5, 2019, that’s a win for the petition group.
What was disappointing was the general feeling that the City was living in a bubble where previous statements and actions are forgotten.
As we often do, we want to discuss some of the comments that were made by people on the dais.
First, a citizen had asked Councilman Johnson to explain his remarks that he made in the Executive Session approving the dismissal of the suit by the City when he said:
COUNCILMEMBER JOHNSON: I would honestly feel better about that. I know that’s throwing a lot on Terese and her workload is heavy. But we don’t even know how many of these petitions are, you Know, forged or duplicated. We’re we’re just going off of — you know, the —
As we previously noted, the Charter does not allow nor require the City Clerk to verify the petitions. We are baffled at Johnson’s suggestion that the City violate the Charter (again.)
This past Thursday, Johnson doubled down:
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As we wrote on June 14, 2019, the City of Palm Bay dismissed it lawsuit against Bevard County Supervisor of Elections Lori Scott in which the City sought to compel Scott to certify signatures on the petitions presented to the City by the group seeking to revert the language of the City Charter back to its pre-2016 wording.
When the dismissal was filed what was speculated was the reasoning for the dismissal.
The City has released the transcript of the City Council Executive Session which sheds light on what happened.
Our comments are below this.
Our observations (and we know we are going to miss things, so feel free to add them in the comments below:)
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This is somewhat interesting as at this time, people aren’t quite sure what it means. Is the City throwing in the towel on a lawsuit the City Attorney claimed would be an easy and inexpensive win? Is this the sign of mediation? A delaying tactic by the City?
Hopefully in the coming week at the City Council meeting, what is going on will come out.
Jose Aguair
With most of the focus in Palm Bay and Brevard County has been on David Isnardi and his legal issues, the same amount of scrutiny and light has not been applied to the person arrested the same day in the same case with Isnardi, Jose Aguiar.
After initially being denied bond, Aguiar and his attorneys filed a motion to allow Aguiar to be bonded out. The Florida Today wrote about the filings in an May 20 article.
However there was a little nugget at the end of the article that caught the eye of many:
This is not Aguiar’s first brush with the law. In 1997 in Massachusetts, he was convicted of conspiracy to sell cocaine and was sentenced to three years and one month in federal prison.
According to Massachusetts’ law, Part IV, Title I, Section 274:
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The following two images are making the rounds. They are of the Mayor and City Council of Palm Bay meeting before Thursday night’s City Council meeting out of microphone range:
