North Miami taxpayers are picking up the tab as Mayor Lucie Tondreau defends her right to remain in office against a challenger who says she did not live in the city for the required full year before the spring elections.
A judge will decide if Tondreau can stay in office in the lawsuit brought by former Mayor Kevin Burns, who ran against Tondreau in a June run-off election. Meanwhile, not everyone is happy that the city is paying Tondreau?s legal bills.
?I don?t think it?s appropriate for the city to represent mayor Tondreau at this time because what she was alleged to have done happened when she was citizen Tondreau. She wasn?t Mayor Tondreau,? said North Miami Councilman Scott Galvin.
But others see it differently.
?The lawsuit was filed after she became mayor of the city. I don?t think there?s any problem that the city is paying for these legal expenses,? said Councilman Philippe Bien-Aime. ?Over 4,000 people went out and voted for Mayor Tondreau. We need to respect those people.?
North Miami is paying well-known local attorney Benedict Kuehne as co-counsel on the case. A contract with the city shows Kuehne will bill $250 an hour for his work, $200 an hour for work performed by other attorneys in his firm and $90 an hour for paralegals.
In addition, the city will cover the costs for out-of-pocket expenses like photo copying, long distance charges and stenography fees.
Whether or not it?s proper for North Miami to pay Tondreau?s legal fees for an allegation that occurred before she was mayor is not clear.
North Miami did not respond to e-mailed questions to clarify why the city is representing Tondreau, but a legal expert said it?s not unusual.
?When you?re a public official, it?s sometimes difficult to determine who picks up the tab and for what,? said Ryan Padgett, assistant general counsel for the Florida League of Cities. ?If they do not provide representation, and whoever is being sued is successful, the city can be on the hook for reimbursing the official for his or her legal fees,? Padgett said.
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/08/3550502/north-miami-taxpayers-pay-mayors.html
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Let me address this straight away: I don’t personally care for services which “help you better manage your Twitter followers,” because they tend to be used by those attempting to game the system to increase their perceived popularity in inorganic ways. That being said, I don’t totally hate JustUnfollow’s newly launched, completely redesigned mobile application. In fact, I might even actually start using this thing. JustUnfollow, for those unfamiliar, is a longtime player in the business of Twitter friend management, having first gotten a somewhat inauspicious start here on TechCrunch, when founder Michael Arrington wrote that the app didn’t work properly, leading to some internal office fighting. The company has made progress since then – fixing that bug, obviously – plus adding support for Instagram in January, and recently reaching some 4 million users – up from its 1 million user milestone in August of last year. The JustUnfollow mobile apps for iOS and Android have been downloaded 1.7 million times since their launch last year, aiding in this growth. And the company has now passed 1 million Instagram users, too. These mobile apps offer a variety of tools for managing your followers, some of which are free, others which you can “tweet to unlock” (I know, ugh), or you can just bite the bullet and buy a subscription. Two paid plans are available for individuals: $4.99/year for unlimited follows and unfollows, plus 10,000 whitelisted/blacklisted accounts, or $24.99/year for the same, up to 5 Twitter accounts. For businesses like social media agencies, pricing for an expanded feature set including customer support starts at $9.99 per month up to $199/month. JustUnfollow reports a paid customer base of over 30,000, and while they’re not yet talking revenue, founder Nischal Shetty notes that his bootstraped company now has a team of 8 full-time in Navi Mubai, India, where they’re based. Within the application, you can view who doesn’t follow you back, your fans, those who have both followed and unfollowed you recently, inactive followers, your entire follower base, and more. You can also copy others’ followers and check individual relationships for reciprocity (um, @ferenstein, wtf? Wait, @TechCrunch doesn’t follow me? Jeez.) And you can whitelist and blacklist users, too, as noted above. I’m have to admit, I’m not the target market for something like this, so it’s a bit surprising I found it appealing. After all, I’m not super concerned with daily comings