Less than a day after an independent investigative report blistered Mayor Mike Norris for violating the city charter and for chronically unbecoming conduct at City Hall, Council member Charles Gambaro this morning called on the council to request that Gov. Ron DeSantis remove Norris from office for “malfeasance.”
Norris was a no-show for a 9 a.m. workshop this morning. The workshop agenda is packed with half a dozen presentations on the city’s finances, its golf club and aquatics center, a proposed YMCA, and a discussion on goal-setting. Norris received the full agenda Thursday and was in his City Hall office for much of the day Monday.
The investigative report, conducted by a Tallahassee attorney and distributed to council members late Monday afternoon, was not on the agenda. “It will be discussed at an upcoming meeting that has not been determined at this time,” Acting City Manager Lauren Johnston wrote shortly after the report was disseminated Monday evening.
“We’ve got a lot of important issues to discuss today regarding the future of our city,” Gambaro said immediately after the 20-minute public comment segment. “However, to me, nothing is more important than immediately addressing the findings received yesterday regarding the investigation that this council directed to review the mayor’s actions. In short, the accusations that led to the investigation have been sustained and are extremely concerning, especially the substantiated finding of clear malfeasance.”
To be clear, there was no outright finding of malfeasance: the lawyer’s conclusion was more nuanced, but not by much: the investigative report drew a clear line between the city charter’s prohibition on council members interfering with the administration withou council permission, and from there, to the charter’s explicit assertion that “Such action shall be malfeasance within the meaning of Florida Statutes.” The only missing link in the charter is the definition of “interference.”
The lawyer provided it. It is “the act of meddling, intervening, or intruding into affairs or duties that one is not authorized to inϐluence or control. It typically refers to unauthorized involvement in the performance of another ofϐicial’s lawful responsibilities, especially in a manner that impedes or undermines that person’s duties.” Norris, the investigation found, sought to force the resignation of the acting city manager and the chief of staff in a face-to-face meeting witnessed by the city attorney, and was said to have sought the firing of several others. None of that was permissible by charter.
“I wish the mayor was here today so I can tell him myself,” Gambaro said. “I’m truly disappointed with his behavior, his wild accusations against this council, members of our city, staff members of our community without any supporting facts to his claims. An example of this is the Flagler Buzz interview where he gave all of us the middle finger.” Gambaro also cited the mayor’s grim performance at the recent State of the City.
“I know this is a workshop, but I move that this council immediately issue a vote of no confidence and a vote of censure for the reasons that I have laid out,” Gambaro said. “And I also move that this council immediately send a letter to Governor DeSantis requesting the mayor’s removal from office for clear malfeasance. I ask that this letter include signature blocks of those on this council that choose to vote in favor of this motion.”
Customarily, no motions are made or votes taken at workshops. But neither are barred by law. Pontieri asked Gambaro to delay his motion to the end of the meeting, which could be hours later. That’s where the matter stood as the council moved on.
Two of the council members have faced censure issues before: One of them is Pontieri, who was in the majority censuring former Council member Ed Danko last November for his perceived role in undermining a lawsuit at the time pending against the city, and for his loutish behavior. Dank was not at the meeting for that vote.
The other is Dave Sullivan, the former two-term County Commission member appointed to the council last week. Sullivan, in his less creditable acts, twice refused to censure then-fellow-County Commissioner Joe Mullins despite finding Mullins’s conduct reprehensible–his bigotry directed at residents, his frequent lies, his invectives directed at a commissioner at a 9/11 event, and his public name-calling of two fellow-commissioners. Sullivan chaired the commission when he first refused to censure Mullins. He wouldn’t say why.
This morning the council’s five members waited a few minutes past 9 a.m. to start the meeting, figuring Norris may have been running a bit late. Neither Vice Mayor Theresa Pontieri nor Johnston had received any word from Norris.
Pontieri gaveled the meeting to order. Dave Ferguson, one of the few people who addressed the council during the public comment segment, and one of three finalists before last week’s appointment of Dave Sullivan to the District 3 Council seat, suggested: “Everyone smile! It’s not the end of the world.” He was not It’s not clear whether he was referring to the Norris investigation or to the process that led to Sullivan’s appointment by inadvertent semi-secret ballots, which he urged the council to fix.
Standing at the lectern in front of the mayor’s empty chair, Ferguson said: “I was going to take him down today. I was going to tell him why isn’t a Grand Haven resident eligible to represent District 3?” One of Norris’s strangest, if not discriminatory, objections to several of the 13 candidates who’d applied for the appointment, and the 10 who’d interviewed with the council, was their home address. He didn’t want Grand Haven residents, even though they represent one of the larger blocs in the district, and are typically–voter for voter–the most politically engaged, if voter turnout is a measure.
A call to Norris’s cell phone led to the same odd voice mail, by a different person, that a call had on Monday.
