The Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau’s vice president of marketing, David Whittaker, took a bit of a thrashing in front of the Miami Dade Commission last week. Appearing before the commission for an after-the-fact ratification on a previously approved $500,000 for a summer marketing program, Commissioner Natasha Seijas told Whittaker that those dollars should have come out of the bureau’s $16 million dollar budget.

You keep coming here for more money. When is it going to stop? Seijas asked Whittaker. Whittaker’s response: That money helps to create jobs, the Watson Island deal is dead and, of course, it’s needed to help fill rooms following the tragedy of September 11^th.  The commission majority eventually ratified the previously approved $500,000.

After receiving a petition with more than 400 names from neighborhood residents opposing the City of Miami Beach’s request for a Certificate of Appropriateness to construct a permanent parking lot at 137 Washington Avenue, the Historic Preservation Board continued the application until December. The residents are upset with the city administration’s plan to relocate the Victory Garden green space in favor of a concrete paved parking lot that nobody in the neighborhood wants. The neighbors said they prefer a park-like space rather than an all night parking lot that will create a lot of noise and other problems for their residential neighborhood. The board’s continuance also calls for the city administration “to reconsider the construction of a parking lot on that site.”

Lee Francis Chudson, the resident loon who hangs around City Hall calling himself the Count of Catfish, has now been barred for several months from entering the city manager’s reception area because of his inappropriate behavior. Well, the Catfish’s bizarre behavior just got himself barred from now entering the mayor and commission reception area as well.

During the past few months, there have been a number of complaints from City Hall employees and city board members about the Catfish’s after hours snooping around unoccupied desks within the mayor and commission offices.

But last Tuesday, Chudson’s inexplicable behavior, even for a Catfish, was troubling enough for the police to be summoned and his eventual ban from entering the mayor and commission reception area.

Here’s the story: The Catfish entered the reception area last Tuesday and felt the need to furiously lick the reception desk. When the startled receptionist asked Chudson to stop licking her desk, the Catfish became angry and yelled some nasty things, which prompted a call to the police.