Jeanette Gorgas
Public Information Officer
MEDIA RELATIONS GROUP
18001 Old Cutler Road, Suite 459
Palmetto Bay, FL 33157
jgorgas.mrgmiami.com
23 April 2016
Subject: The Amazing South Beach Sewer
Dear Ms. Gorgas:
I was pleased to encounter you briefly during the event I entitled ‘A Freak Accident on the South Beach Redundant Sewer Project.’
First of all, please understand that I am not, as you said, a “blogger,” although I do use various vehicles including blog sites as preliminary publishing platforms to excite interest and to learn more about my subjects of interest. In fact, besides being another cattle, I am just a curious man.
Some publishers call me a “long journalist” if not a tedious one. I write simply to improve my understanding of the world, and I am pleased if my work helps others to understand it better. Many of my readers are journalists, lawyers, public officials, and people who happen to be keenly interested in the subjects that I more or less take up at random because I believe everything may be logically connected in a coherent whole.
My coverage of the 54” Redundant Sewer Projects focused on the technology, and not on whether the project is really necessary, or whether the government is mismanaging the contractors, or whether the bidding process is faulty, or whether the contractors, for whom I acquired the highest regard by watching their work, are sleeping with the mayor, so to speak, or bribing the procurement director, and so on. My interest in those ancillary subjects was piqued by the responses I received to my original coverage, otherwise I would have went on to complete my study of Third Earl Stanhope.
The only drawback I perceived in the current process was the excessive noise and the fumes from the industrial C-27 Caterpillar engines rated EPA and CARB Tier 2.
It was only with an eye to the further success of in-city horizontal directional drilling that I made inquiries as to what could voluntarily be done to contain and reduce the pollutants even better than the wooden contraptions devised by David Mancini. I mentioned noise containment devices, noise dampeners, and the development of quiet and emission free turbine engines for the process. I believe improvements can be made that contractors can use to even more positively advertise the virtues of HDD contracting.
At the mere suggestion of improvement, and a polite inquiry to all the contractors, I was greeted with silence, with the exception of the steering consultant and tool manufacturer on the job. He said he heard no noise, and that anyone who thought freedom from noise should be a citizen’s right, as it is in our city charter, the importance of which is mentioned in our state constitution, was an idiot. Furthermore, he tried to insult me by implying that I am an annoying young girl, and said that I am an annoying little twerp, a homeless blogger with third grade writing skills.
I believe he meant that I am somehow less than a man, that is, in his mind, an inferior human being, and perhaps even a hysterical South Beach gay man. That is not true, but I was no more offended by him than the driver who stuck his head out of his window and repeatedly yelled “Maricone!” at me and giving me the finger as I walked down the street yesterday minding my own business and thinking about what a nice day it was while listening to John Lee Hooker sing that the Blues heals. I believe the turquoise color of my shirt excited him.
A city official greeted my questions with praise for the technological process, which I had already publicly lauded at length. The night that you and I met, a stereotypical public relations character on the scene tried to drown out my reference to “only one drawback, at the entrance and exist holes” with a redundant litany of the technological advantages.
That brings me to our relative positions in the animal kingdom, wherein our kind tends to hierarchical organization.
You said that you worked for David Mancini, and you mentioned that you had seen your name mentioned by the neighbors, obviously in an unflattering way. Terrorized neighbors perceived you as unhelpful, and thought you were simply going around and talking to people, acting as sort of buffer.
A lot more was expected from your attempts at “consensus” making. You did convince many neighbors that the pollution of their environment must be suffered to save their city according to the messianic plan of the mayor. However, you should have turned off the machines, had the job stopped, forced the owner and contractor to operate within reasonable hours, and so on. You did not. So the buffer has been rebuffed.
I believe you did your job within the limits of our modern public relations profession, which has certain faults of which we are well aware.
The fundamental fault with modern public relations was identified, for example, in ‘The Days of Wine and Roses,’ when Kirstin Arneson Clay (Lee Remick) takes Joe Clay (Jack Lemmon) home to meet her dad, Ellis Arneson (Charles Bickford). Joe, an advertising man who has sold Kirstin on boozing, admits to the fault with modern public relations. Ellis is finally informed of the marriage without the courtesy of his prior consent. In the end, as you may know, Kirstin chooses the bottle, proving herself to be less than her man, who has sworn off the jug forever—he loves her dearly, but alas, he cannot live with a drunk, because he knew what would happen if he did.
In fine, I personally do not blame people for acting according to their social status and professions, although there are occasions when they should refuse to act as directed and resign instead of lying, cheating and murdering people, for example. That seldom happens because the desire for survival often trumps contrived ethics, or the person feels that she is doing the right thing because when the society does wrong long enough wrong feels right, and feeling most often determines what one ultimately does. So much for mores.
As you may know, I lay the responsibility for the faults on this project at the feet of Mayor Philip “King” Levine and his horseman Jimmy “Nice Guy” Morales, not on the contractors, not on subordinate officials, not on you. What we have here is the natural order of things, and that is what is forever faulty if you are an idealist.
Yes, maybe they are innocent, had good intentions, did not anticipate the consequences of their rush to construction, but I believe they did anticipate it and they figured they could get away with offending a minority because the majority of people do not really care very much what happens to a few people somewhere else in South Beach, a place lauded for multi-cultural individualism and contempt for collectivism.
Now if you are not dozing off or are not distracted at this point, I do seek a little bit of information from you:
1. You said that the man who manages Hotel Villa Italia told you that the noise was no problem and that you should stop contacting him. Since that is contrary to the information I reported from the owner, please give me the particulars, such as his name and date of his statement that there was no problem with the noise.
2, Also, you said that you had contacted that business and the neighbors prior to the beginning of the work at 3rd Street, so I would like to know the date of your initial contacts with them, because that is contrary to the statements I have received.
3. You said you worked for David. Please verify that your firm is being paid by his company and not by the City of Miami Beach.
4. Please clear up the mystery in my mind as to why David Mancini & Sons, who has valid permits for the work, and whose contract probably does not include public relations work, would go to the expense of engaging a public relations firm to respond to the complaints that have been made, instead of deferring to the responsible owner, the City of Miami Beach and its officials.
Sincerely,
David Arthur Walters
Attached:
A FREAK ACCIDENT ON THE SOUTH BEACH REDUNDANT SEWER PROJECT
CONFIDENCE MEN AND PAINTED WOMEN
MEDIA RELATIONS:
Media Relations Group, LLC, (MRG) is a public information company specializing in public and private sector public involvement campaigns for the past 15 years. The company provides media relations in English, Spanish and Creole, marketing, graphics services, the organization of business interests, grassroots door-to-door consensus building, and serves as a spokesperson for our clients. As MRG continues to grow, a commitment to personal interaction and strong relationships remain the standard of how we operate. We pride ourselves on becoming an extension of your staff as we represent the interests of our clients and the community.
Jeanette Gorgas is a bilingual communications professional with more than 15 years of experience working in various aspects of communications and television news media outlets throughout South Florida. She currently works on both Design and Construction projects for Florida Department of Transportation’s (FDOT) District Six, and coordinates various public outreach initiatives. Mrs. Gorgas is a graduate of Barry University, where she received a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Administration with a specialty in Communications. She can be reached at jgorgas.mrgmiami.com.
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