November 3, 2013

Mr. Danny Alfonso

Acting City Manager
CITY OF MIAMI
444 SW 2nd Avenue
Miami, FL 33130

Ms. Victoria Mendez

City Attorney
CITY OF MIAMI
444 SW 2nd Avenue
Miami, FL 33130

RE: CITY OF MIAMI BUILDING DEPARTMENT/UNSAFE STRUCTURES

Dear Mr. Alfonso and Ms. Mendez:

On October 25th, I was contacted by Ms. Catalina Diaz to visit her neighborhood
where a house across the street was abandoned and in severe need of
demolition.

I went to 567 SW 2nd Street, saw the house in question, took a number of
photographs of a house that was literally falling down, and that a yard and street
that had been turned into a dumping ground, talked with Ms. Diaz about the
situation and the fact that the building on this property had been abandoned for
almost 13 years, and the house for at least 2 years and that, to her recollection,
both had been the subject of numerous complaints, code violation notices, and
finally a determination that this property was an unsafe structure and needed to
be torn down.

Ms. Diaz was upset because after all of this, the house and the use of the street
in front of the house was still a dumping ground.

I told Ms. Diaz I would go to the MRC building and see what I could find out.

I first went to Code Enforcement where I found out that the house in question had
been the subject of 25 separate code violation complaints, and had on numerous
occasions be subjected to liens being put on the property.

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I then went to the Building Department to see if I could find and speak with Mr.
Ray Benitez, the head of Unsafe Structures. Ms. Diaz had been in
communication Mr. Benetiz, and in her mind, found his interest in solving this
problem less than supportive – to try and find out how far along the way the
decision to demolish the house was.

Mr. Benitez was not in, but Ms. Paola Rodriquez, his assistant was.

I introduced myself and asked if I could speak with her about this property. I
have subsequently learned that somehow Ms. Rodriquez, or the other lady in the
office managed, while I was there to communicate to others that I was harassing
her, and as if by magic Mr. Peter Iglesias, the Director of the Building Department
entered the office and asked if he could help me.

I explained to him that I was interested in learning about the house at 567 SW 2nd
Street, and showed him a copy of the Order Of The Unsafe Structures Panel that
Ms. Diaz had given me that called for the house to be demolished, and explained
that I was just trying to find out how that process worked.

Mr. Iglesias asked Ms. Rodriquez to pull up the document on this property on her
computer, and then the three of us proceeded to have a conversation based on
the information of the document that was visible to Mr. Iglesias and Ms.
Rodriquez, but not to me.

After a few minutes of this conversation, where I was unable to follow what was
being said because I could not see the document, I asked if Ms. Rodriquez would
print me out a copy of the document that she and Mr. Iglesias were looking at.
She said she would not.

I pointed out that she was the custodian of that document – it being in her
computer, etc., and she still refused, and then both she and Mr. Iglesias informed
me that Ms. Rodriquez was not the custodian of any documents, and that if I
wanted a copy of that document I would need to go the “Microfilm” Office and
make my request there.

Now, first of all, I want to address the issue of alleged harassment. If at any point
I had behaved belligerent or engaged in any harassing or untoward language,
this would have been the time that I would have done so, because it was clear to
me as this was happening, that both of these individuals were engaged in a clear
and blatant violation of complying with my legitimate public records request.

Furthermore, it was also clear to me that I was being rope-a-doped, and would
have had justification to called both of them on their behavior. But I didn’t,
because I’ve been doing this long enough to know when I’m being set up, and

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clearly when Iglesias walked through the door I knew he didn’t show up by
accident.

If anything, it appears to me that the folks in Unsafe Structures, while certainly

having a difficult job in dealing with a lot of folks around the city who are unhappy
about the houses and buildings in their neighborhood that need to be
demolished, were clearly uncomfortable with a guy like me coming to inquire how
they do what they do.

In any event, Ms. Rodriquez, who is subject to complying with the public records
law based on Puls v City of Port St Lucie, and Mr. Iglesias, who is the Director of
the entire Building Department, and therefore by virtue of that position the de
facto Custodian of Records for all documents within that department, engaged in
rather dickish behavior by refusing to provide me with the document that they
had been using to explain to me why the house in question had not been torn
down, and more importantly, why the house had not been on the latest list of
houses to be demolished put out for bid.

In fact, that was the question that neither of them would answer.

Going along with the rope-a-dope to see where it led, when I went to the
“Microfilm” Office, I was informed that I had to fill out a form identifying the
document that I wanted, and that the cost would be $44.00, and that it would take
a mandatory 15 days to comply with my request.

So, first of all the refusal of both Iglesias, the Director of the Department, and
Rodriquez, the Assistant to the Director of the Unsafe Structures Office refusal to
comply with my request was a clear violation of Florida statute 119.07 (1)(a),
119.07 (4)(a) and 119.07(4)d), as supported by cases Puls v City of Port St
Lucie, 678 So 2nd 514 (Fla. 4th DCA 1996), Mintus v. City of West Palm Beach,
711 So 2nd 1359 (Fla. 4th DCA 1998.

Secondly, by telling me that my request would take a mandatory 15 days the City
of Miami Building Department was in clear violation of the provisions regarding
the imposition of a mandatory time delay in the production of documents: Tribune
Company v. Cannella, 458 So 2nd 1075, 1078-1079 (Fla. 1984), Deperte v.
Tribune Company, 105 S Ct. 2315 (1985), Roberts v. News-Press Publishing
Company, Inc. 409 So 2nd 1089 (Fla. 2nd DCA), and the Town of Manalapan v.
Richler, 674 So 2nd 789, 790 (Fla. 4th DCA 1996), among others.

Thirdly, the City of Miami cannot turn the production of documents into a money-
making proposition by charging a mandatory fee of $44.00 for all public
document searches. Florida AGO 85-03, states that, “providing access to public
records is a statutory duty imposed by the legislature upon all record custodians
and should not be considered a profit making or revenue-generating operation.”

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In conjunction with this, the fact that the city has chosen to archive much of its
Building Department material on microfilm does not justify them charging a
special service charge in order to comply with public records requests. That
decision, like a decision to maintain records off-premises is not a charge for
retrieval that the city can pass on to those individual requesting copies of those
documents: See AGO 90-07 and 99-41, and Cone & Graham v. State, No. 97-
4047 (Fla 2nd Cir. Ct. October 7, 1997.

Furthermore, EVERY individual public records request has to handled

individually on its own merits, and not with a blanket approach that treats a
request for a single piece of paper the same as a request for hundreds of copies
from multiple files and sources.

Therefore, I am making this public records request to you Mr. Manager, as the
ultimate Custodian for all the documents in the City of Miami for a copy of
following documents.

1. I want a copy of the document that Mr. Iglesias and Ms. Rodriquez were
looking at. I’m sure that Mr. Iglesias will be able to adequately identify it.

2. I want the list of all the Unsafe Structures that the office of Unsafe
Structures maintains that have been approved for destruction.

3. I want the list of the 10 houses that Mr. Iglesias and Ms. Rodriquez
informed me had been let out to bid at the end of September/first of
October 2013.

This request should not take 15 days, nor should it cost $44.00.

To both you Mister Acting City Manager, and you Ms. City Attorney, this is fair
notice that the City of Miami is openly and flagrantly in violation Florida Statutes
by allowing the City of Miami Building Department to establish arbitrary time
delays and engage in the illegal practice of attempting to turn the response of
public records requests into a money-making operation. These activities violate
all of the statutory provisions cited above.

Please conduct yourselves accordingly, and please put an end to these illegal
practices immediately.

Thank you

Al Crespo

Cc: Ms. Catalina Diaz

Mayor Tomas Regalado

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Members of the City Commission
Mr. Peter Iglesias
The Crespogram Report