By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
West Park is a small Broward city at odds with itself.
For months, a majority of the five-member, nonpartisan city commission have wanted to oust both the city attorney and city manager for alleged corruption they say includes usurping their legal authority.
Reform-minded Commissioner Katrina Touchstone, a pharmacist by trade, is using what she says is her own money, to sue the city, the mayor, the city clerk and city manager claiming its citizens are being deprived of “their democratically elected government” because the city is being run “like a dictatorship.” The lawsuit asks a Broward judge to put a stop to it.
Two of Touchstone’s fellow commission members, Vice Mayor Joy B. Smith and Commissioner Cristina Eveillard, filed sworn declarations in support.
“To thwart the democratic process, the Mayor, Clerk and City Manager illegally adjourn meetings and walk out to stop the majority from voting, refuse to recognize the City Commission and refuse to place items on the Agenda for a vote,” says the complaint filed in August by Miami Lakes attorney Michael Pizzi. “This includes, among other things, a Resolution calling for the hiring of an outside counsel to investigate spending in the city and the performance of the city manager.”
Pizzi was intended to be that outside counsel, Touchstone said, and on May 21 a majority of the commission voted to hire him. But the vote didn’t happen until after longtime Mayor Felicia Brunson “improperly adjourned” the meeting even though a majority of the commission remained and a quorum was present, Touchstone said.
In the mayor’s absence the commission continued its work, including approving the resolution to hire Pizzi. But City Clerk Alexandra Grant, who is also the city’s public information officer, never recorded the commission’s votes after the adjournment.
That omission was discovered, Touchstone said, at a subsequent meeting when commissioners were asked to approve the May 21 minutes and saw no mention of the vote to hire the outside counsel.
WHO HIRED LAW FIRM TO REPRESENT WEST PARK?
In early September, Circuit Judge Martin Bidwill set a Nov. 24 hearing to consider whether he should grant a temporary restraining order that would bar the defendants from violating the city’s charter. The city was to respond by Oct. 16.
On that day, however, lawyers for the city declared instead that they intend to file a motion to dismiss but need more time to get their legal act together. They asked the court to be allowed to respond by Nov. 15. The judge granted the extension of time on Tuesday.
The law firm is Fort Lauderdale’s Johnson, Anselmo, Murdoch, Burke, Piper & Hochman. Touchstone contends, and Pizzi told the judge, that the commission never voted to approve hiring the firm which was tapped by City Attorney Burnadette Norris-Weeks.
“During the [Sept. 3] meeting the only thing that was voted upon was to deny the appointment and the clerk subsequently on record indicated the motion failed and there was not any motion that passed on the resolution,” Touchstone wrote in a Sept. 10 email to the city’s top administrators. The video of the meeting, with angry voices frequently talking over one another, is unclear about the vote.
Florida Bulldog sent detailed emails seeking comment from West Park Mayor Brunson, City Manager Ajibola Balogun and City Clerk Grant, all defendants in the lawsuit, but none responded.
Broward has 31 municipalities. Southeast Broward’s West Park is the newest, incorporated in March 2005, and one of the smallest at just 2.26 square miles consisting of the neighborhoods of Carver Ranches, Lake Forest, Miami Gardens and Utopia. But it’s also among the densest, with a total population in 2020 of 15,130.
The infighting began late last year after the balance of power on the commission changed with Eveillard’s election in November 2024. Touchstone, elected in November 2022, said Mayor Brunson’s tone changed markedly and subsequent commission meetings became tense.
“The Mayor, City Clerk, and City Manager are not happy that the people elected a new majority City Commission that is not willing to act as a rubber stamp for the Mayor,” Touchstone’s court filings say.
The next month, Vice Mayor Smith accused City Manager Balogun of deliberately failing to include on the agenda a pair of items she wanted considered. She called him “insubordinate.”
CITY ATTORNEY PROTECTING CITY MANAGER?
At the commission’s Feb. 5 meeting, a vote of no confidence in Balogun was approved by a vote of 3-2. Mayor Brunson and Commissioner Brandon Smith voting against. At the outset Touchstone accused Balogun of abuse of power, creating a hostile work environment to nepotism, retaliatory behavior and mismanagement. Vice Mayor Smith accused him of never responding to her telephoned and emailed messages requesting information.
“When you send out a message, even if you’re trying to reach out to the city manager, he chooses not to take the phone calls or nothing. How can you do that? That’s wrong,” Smith said during the meeting.
In an interview, Touchstone told Florida Bulldog that she had requested City Attorney Norris-Weeks to include language when she drew up the no confidence resolution that would also, if approved, have suspended Balogun without pay for six months (his annual salary is $192,000) – but that Norris-Weeks omitted it. When Touchstone asked about that during the meeting, Norris-Weeks (annual salary: $100,000) told her she could not then amend the resolution to add the language.
Last spring, after commissioners talked publicly about calling a special meeting to suspend Balogun, the city attorney wrote a memo to them saying, in essence, you can’t do that.
But Norris-Weeks’s April 21 memo didn’t go down smoothly. At the commission’s next regular meeting on May 7, 2025 a resolution was introduced asking Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier to opine on a couple of Norris-Weeks’s opinions where “a majority of the City Commission vehemently disagree with the City Attorney’s findings.” Specifically, whether the city’s charter allowed a simple majority of the commission to call a special meeting to discuss Norris-Weeks’s future and whether the charter would allow a simple majority vote to fire her.
“The majority of the City Commission believes that the City Attorney is intentionally misreading” the charter in reaching both those opinions, says the resolution.
City Attorney Norris-Weeks did not respond to a detailed request for comment.
AG UTHMEIER’S RESPONSE TO ALLEGED CORRUPTION: CRICKETS
Nevertheless, the resolution was approved two weeks later. After speaking by telephone with Catherine McNeill, Uthmeier’s deputy chief of staff, Touchstone emailed a copy of the resolution to the attorney general’s office on June 5 along with a letter informing them that West Park’s city attorney “appears to be offering legal opinions geared towards protecting her job, instead of the best interests of our citizens.”
Touchstone’s email to McNeill added, “Please see my urgent request as outlined in the Word document I have attached…There has been severe arbitrary and capricious as well as egregious and erroneous legal advice provided. I have alleged public corruption is occurring and urgently need your assistance to help resolve or clarify what next steps can be taken.”
The response from the Florida Attorney General’s office: silence. But then again, Uthmeier was pretty busy at the time dreaming up “Alligator Alcatraz,” which he announced on X on June 19.
The frustrations of governing West Park don’t end there. Touchstone provided Florida Bulldog with a copy of a Nov. 25, 2024 email she received from clerk Grant in response to her request a month before for public records. Most notably Touchstone requested itemized expense account and P-card (city credit card) records for all of the city’s elected officials, the city manager and his staff for the prior 10 years. She did not request copies of those records, simply access.
Grant’s reply said that due to the “extensive time and additional labor/staff” needed to compile those records it would cost Touchstone an estimated $20,475 – with half of that total to be paid up front.
“Payment is accepted via check or money order, or credit card (payable at City Hall). Please advise how you wish to proceed,” Grant wrote.
Touchstone’s response: “If a sitting commissioner needs information is it customary to charge them for the information requested? Please note this information was requested a month ago.”
Touchstone has yet to see those West Park records.
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