Palm Bay City Council Election Night – November 2014

Left to right: Unknown, Councilman Harry Santiago, Councilman Jeff Bailey, David Isnardi, Councilman Tres Holton, James Marshall, unknown.

DAVID ISNARDI SEEMS PRETTY PSYCHED with his hand in the air.  He became Palm Bay Assistant City Manager on April 27, 2015.  Did he have an inkling he was going to get this job?

We are going to pick away on the alert we received from a reader about what’s going on in Palm Bay’s City Hall.

Stuart Buchanan was recently appointed Palm Bay’s Director of Growth Management. According to the City of Palm Bay website the “Core Services” of “Growth Management” are as follows:

Growth Management Core Services

• Update and maintenance of the Palm Bay Comprehensive Plan
• Implementation and enforcement of the Palm Bay Code of Ordinances
• Building and development permitting, inspections, and plan reviews
• Administer and improve the floodplain management system
  Provide population, land use, and planning studies
• Coordinate annexation requests
• Administer Federal and State Grant Programs

According to an Tampa Bay News-Journal article by Pat Rice on June 15, 2011, “in 1989, Buchanan was found guilty and sentenced to eight years incarceration by a court-martial of the U.S. Army for receiving, transporting and selling stolen property, as well as conspiracy and selling firearms without a license, according to city records and U.S. Army officials. In 2004, then-Gov. Jeb Bush granted Buchanan clemency, which restored his civil rights except for one restriction: He could not possess a firearm.”

In the same article Pat Rice wrote that Mr. Buchanan has “sent 3131 South Ridgewood LLC a ‘letter of intent’ to purchase any units for sale at River Club condos. The nonbinding letter was dated Aug. 6, 2010.”

The River Club condos are owned by Ramara Garrett and other investors who make up a partnership called 3131 South Ridgewood LLC.

“Garrett, who supplied The News-Journal a copy of the letter of intent, said it was filed away and never pursued by 3131 South Ridgewood LLC because Buchanan’s offer price for the condos was too low. Garrett said she hadn’t looked at the letter of intent for months, and only reviewed it last week, after Clifton and Mitchell (former Mayor Ron Clifton and former Special Magistrate Jerry Mitchell) were publicly charged with bribery and the U.S. Attorney named River Club condos in its news release.”

(That’s another angle to research because its reported that Mr. Buchanan was an informant with a wire who helped implicate Clifton and Mitchell.)

“When she looked at it, Garrett said she got another shock.

On the letter of intent, Buchanan stated that the buyer interested in purchasing the condos is “Marat Balegula.” Out of curiosity, Garrett typed that unusual name into Google. What popped up were numerous references to a ‘Marat Balagula.’

Balagula is a reputed member of the so-called Russian crime syndicate. He served time in federal prison from 1992 to 2004 for a credit card scam and for a gasoline bootlegging operation. Various news accounts have tied him to organized crime in New York. He was released from a federal prison in Bastrop, Texas, in 2004. The News-Journal could not ascertain his whereabouts, whether he is even still alive or actually has any connection to this case.

‘This was a jaw-dropper for me,’ Garrett said.”

On another note, David Isnardi, who came Palm Pay Deputy City Manager on April 27, lists on his LinkedIn profile that he was a “former Senior Non-commissioned Officer in the United States Army.”

As a former Senior Non-commissioned Officer in the United States Army, wouldn’t he have assess to the fact that Mr. Buchanan served time in the Leavenworth Penitentiary?