They arrived wearing yellow T-shirts, but did they receive what they were promised? Photo by Harry Emilio Gottlieb

Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. They being the multitudes concerned with the political knife fight between Mercy Hospital/Related Group and Everyone Else.

For those of you just tuning in, on April 26, three of five Miami city commissioners voted to approve a zoning change allowing Related Group to potentially build something evil and untoward (condos or a nuclear power plant, one of those), no doubt leading to the end of the world as we know it. We all saw it coming and, well, it did. Flash and cash won the day. At least, I figured, the hospital would get something out of it to make much-needed renovations.

In other corners of this lonely metropolis, the fickle minds of the populace turned to such topics as whether or not to hang Dolphins Coach Cam Cameron from the nearest construction crane (for picking a nice little wide receiver over the hottest young quarterback in the universe). “We don’t need a Camarón as coach,” an outraged friend complained to me. “We need a Tiburón!” (For non-Spanish speakers, it’s a matter of shrimps and sharks.)

But in the Coconut Grove blog world, time stood still. Reactions ranged from apoplectic to despicable. One of my favorites made a hilarious picture of the three ayes (Joe Sanchez, Angel Gonzalez and Michelle Spence-Jones) as bobblehead dolls controlled by Mayor Manny Diaz. In other places, people posted racist comments that made me want to slap them.

One persistent rumor was that the dozens of black folk who sat in the commission chambers in yellow T-shirts supporting the zoning change had been paid $100 to be there. This happens sometimes in Miami, at the county and in various municipalities. Old and/or poor people develop a sudden interest in topics hitherto unknown to them, board a bus, don a T-shirt and Bam! The magic of the political process happens. It’s sad, but unfortunately, not illegal.

Then I got an e-mail. The e-mail came from someone in the Vizcayan camp, a group of volunteers that advises and advocates for the Vizcaya Museum & Gardens, a national historic treasure that was doomed by this particular decision. The e-mail described a curious phone call an unidentified man made to the organization, complaining that he was supposed to be paid his $100 for supporting the condo project and he hadn’t received it.

I called this man, a Liberty City resident who asked not to be identified. He told me that he’d been in Coconut Grove on April 25, visiting his girlfriend, when he was approached on the street by a woman with a clipboard. She asked him whether he wanted to make $100. As he was not opposed to the idea, he accepted the offer to appear at City Hall the following morning, sign a list and don the requisite yellow T-shirt.

A couple of hours of light dozing through a meeting later, this man left City Hall. But he was dissatisfied because he hadn’t gotten his money. He said a few people got the cash that day, but the rest were not paid. They were unhappy. “There were a few people like myself,” he related. “But did you see the people there? 95 percent of them were crack heads. Half of them were asleep.”

This man called someone over at the Vizcayan group, he said, because he’d been told that the vote was all about saving Mercy Hospital and Vizcaya from a developer.

He wasn’t the only one confused about who owed what and why. Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, who had vehemently opposed the project, told me that his office received a phone call from someone asking when they could come by and pick up their $100. He was flabbergasted by the irony.

The morning of the fateful meeting, he’d been informed by a bemused city staffer that “the entire room is full of African Americans and they’ve been paid $100.” As Sarnoff looked out from the dais on a sea of disinterested faces, he considered for a moment asking, “How many of you out there were paid $100 to be here?” Then he thought better of it. “I thought it would have cheapened the process,” he said, regretfully. “But I would have had 50, 60 hands.”

Later, after three fellow commissioners had helpfully cheapened the process for him, a police officer told him at a meeting that a rumor was floating around the West Grove that Sarnoff was the man to see about getting the promised payments. Ron Nelson, a former Coconut Grove Village Council member who recently resigned to join Sarnoff’s staff, called him and said, “There’s a riot occurring in the West Grove that people are not getting their $100 and they think it’s from your office.”

Sarnoff dispatched Nelson and another staff liaison, Yvonne McDonald, to handle the crisis. They drove to the residence of one Henry Riley, a well-known entity in the West Grove living on Percival Avenue.

Riley, McDonald told me, was one of the T-shirt organizers. There was “quite a crowd” assembled at his residence, complaining about not getting their money. She told him to tell the mob that Sarnoff had nothing to do with the $100 deal. He obliged.

That little political corruption faux pas apparently jogged the real money people to get with the program. My T-shirt-wearing source had called the Vizcayans around 2 p.m. Friday afternoon, but by about 7 p.m., he and a number of others were standing outside Lottie Person’s house, waiting to be paid.

Person, he said, had coordinated some of the support. Person is a member of the Coconut Grove Village Council, representing the West Grove, or as some would have it, Village West. My disgruntled yes-man waited around until a car pulled up. “Rosario Kennedy was the lady [who] brought all the money,” he said. “I got her phone number right here. She pulled up in, I think, a gray Honda. She had a little case full of money.”

Cash was, he said, dispensed. But apparently, not everyone was paid. Saturday afternoon, McDonald went to City Hall, where she found at the door a woman she recognized from the West Grove. The woman was trying to get in to “see the man” about her $100. McDonald advised her that Sarnoff was not the money man. “It was sad,” she recalled. “You could tell she wanted to go get high.”

Tuesday evening, I sat in on a portion of the Village Council meeting. Sarnoff gave an impassioned speech about the proposal he sent to the mayor to veto the zoning change. Failing a complete ban, Sarnoff wants the mayor to ask the commission to impose a high “green building” standard, require public parking and a baywalk be provided, tree planting and other civic goodies that, taken together, would probably make the project too expensive for Related Group to build anyway.

Sarnoff also lamented the method in which the developer and the hospital procured fake support from poor people and a couple of homeowners’ associations. “How cheaply and freely we sell ourselves,” he said. “We as a society and as Miamians have to come to grips with who we are. Don’t sell yourself for $50, $100 or $3 million if you’re a homeowners’ association.”

Sarnoff said that he and his staff had heard other stories as late as Tuesday about people not getting paid or only receiving $50 or $75, not the promised $100. As Sarnoff spoke, Lottie Person sat uncomfortably in her council seat. When he left the room, she asked to speak.

Person emphasized that she was a big supporter of Sarnoff and mumbled something about hoping she’d be allowed to be on his campaign team in the next election. “But there was some issue that came up and I supported it,” she admitted. “Because, you know, Village West is a poor community and I’m for jobs.” (One argument the developer made was that the condo construction would provide jobs.)

Then she said this: “It’s important that the people in Village West know Marc Sarnoff didn’t have anything to do with what happened.”

Translation: People, stop asking him for your $100.

Kennedy, a registered lobbyist for the Related Group project, was visibly handling (along with Person) the yellow T-shirt people at commission hearings. The Daily Business Review wrote a recent story that said she was also apparently lobbying Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones on the subject, a big no-no should anyone actually enforce the law prohibiting such contact.

Neither Person nor Kennedy returned phone messages seeking comment by press time. Neither did Related Group executives I called and e-mailed. I hope they write letters, though. Paying for support in this manner is not illegal, as far as I know, but it is sleazy.

What does it say about the city commissioners who were obviously aware of this manipulation? What does it say about the project that Related Group and/or Mercy Hospital would even consider it necessary? And lastly, what does it say about the people they hire to do the deed when it is handled in such a sloppy and transparent manner?

I’ll let Sarnoff answer that. “Sometimes when you overreach, you overreach in every way,” he said of Related’s efforts to push its project. “That’s when you reach in the cookie jar and you break the jar.”

One last thought, for the over-privileged Grovites who grumbled about poor black people being used by a developer: This is exactly why the entire Grove needs to come together to support the impoverished neighborhoods. Ignore Village West at your peril.