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She says she was fired without good cause. But the council says she was sent home for gross dereliction of duty. A letter from the council points out three areas where that alleged dereliction cost the council megabucks. Yesterday we challenged her on those points:...

Jules Vasquez reporting
Miller was the pivot point in the former council - all roads led through her office. But when the new council was elected, she was shut out.

Candice Miller, Former City Admin.
"I was blocke from all transactions of the council, taken off the council account, I no longer sign any purchases, requisitions, any overtime. I was not copied in on letters of people that were hired or fired etc. I literally was just at work."

So, she wrote this letter proposing an amicable separation:

Candice Miller, Former City Admin.
"I then wrote a letter to the mayor figuring this, the mayor does not want to work with me. I have a contract letter, let us sit down and negotiate."

And the letter says...

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"But if it your intention that I no longer serve as city administrator for the Belize City Council, then I am prepared to negotiate with you my separation from the council. I only ask that I be paid my just salary and the benefits including gratuity that can be agreed upon and this can be paid over time."

"So you saw this as a amicable way to end a contentious non-productive situation?"

Candice Miller, Former City Admin.
"Very non-productive, yes. And the mayor never responded."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"So now things continued like this until April 5th. April 5th, the mayor called you into his office."

Candice Miller
"Yes. His exact words were 'Candice, I need to take a step back and get a better feel of is happening at the council, so I will place you on suspension.'"

Her suspension letter says...

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"You're authorizing of payments for expenses incurred by an employee while not engage in the business of the council. Now those of us, everybody has been following the story. We know that this refers to the Joe Bradley payment to...."

Candice Miller
"There was no payment. To date there has been no payment. The cheque was prepared, signed by the previous mayor. He showed you the cheque on your news story. He has never release the cheque. So he has not paid the bill. But I explained to him at that time, Mayor those were not Joe Bradley's personal payments. Those were payments that were authorized under the previous mayor. They were for different functions and it occurred over a period of time. This $6,361.00 was incurred over a period of 5 months if I am not mistaken. From September of 2017 to January of 2018. Every invoice has an explanation. This is just the cover sheet. Food and drinks for mayor and councilor Theus birthday social, for councilor Willoughby emergency meeting - it gives a detail explanation of what every invoice accumulated to the $6,361.00 to which the mayor referred to. So it clearly could not have been Joe Bradley's personal bar tab."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"One would say, man, its only parties you are having. How much party the council had like this?"

Candice Miller
"The council had a tradition of having birthday social and again, a birthday social in HR would be for everybody. We have a staff of 430 plus people, Jules. You will have birthday socials."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"How did Joe Bradley get into this?"

Candice Miller
"He picked it up. He went across the street and signed for it."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"You were prepared to defend this. To respond, but it never came to that."

Candice Miller
"No."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"So the next time you are called to the council it's for that famous caucus meeting."

Candice Miller
"Again, on the first of May which was a holiday I see on Breaking Belize News that council has voted to ratify my suspension. I never got an opportunity to respond. They also said that they have found grounds to dismiss me for gross dereliction."

She got her letter the following day and it lists three grounds.

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"There are 3 points. The first being that you did not make a demand for full payment to a loan facility that the council and Enrique Carballo, which is from the mayors association I believe."

Candice Miller
"Enrique Carballo is the general secretary to the mayors association."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"Okay and for a loan that he has not paid."

Candice Miller
"And I did demand full payment. Mr. Carballo got 3 separate letters."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"Now the second ground has been very well publicized that you with undue haste on March 8th, the day after the election, you rushed down perhaps before the new council could get set in place, you hurried in and authorized this payment of $59,600 for Gilbert Franklin."

Candice Miller
"Completely false allegation and I will show you this. This is what the mayor has been showing all over the media. This is a requisition dated the 8th March. If the mayor wanted to be fair, he could pull 20 other requisitions that left my desk on the 8th of March."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"Now the suggestion is that you were expediting things to slip them under the new council's nose."

Candice Miller
"There would be no need to expedite things. Mr. Franklin had a pre-existing bill with the council that has not even been paid yet. So even if a payment was made, this would not have been touched. This is what the mayor did not show. This is the actual invoice and the work happened on the 14th February. The works manager signs to verify that the materials has been delivered. His signature is here. That indicated to me that all this material was delivered. After he signs, the city engineer then verify it. He signed off on this."

That same works manager, Ramon Menjivar is the one who then in April did a second appraisal putting the value of the works at 44,400 dollars - after he had signed off on the 60,000 thousand dollar bill:

Candice Miller
"Mr. Menjivar signs off on the original invoice. Mr. Menjivar by his signature verified that all the material was delivered. Also, double checked for, lack of a better term, by the city engineer."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"I'm saying that you must have had paused to say, 'man this is a new council, let us see what the new mayor says.'"

Candice Miller
"Right, I would have had paused if we were going to make a payment. But this is standard procedure. This is not any expectation for any payment any time soon. So there was no rush for this payment and I saw nothing wrong in sending it down to finance. It's not something that I was trying to hide or ask them to prepare a cheque immediately. No cheque was prepared. I could only go based on the technical people and both of them signed off on it and these are not unusual amounts of money. These are standard procedure. These happened every day at the council. We operate a 24 million dollar budget."

And a million dollar default judgement is the third grounds for dismissal:

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"There was a pending default judgement by Belize Waste Control, a significant judgement - 1 million dollars and you failed to give the mayor a heads up in time."

Candice Miller
"I asked for a meeting with the mayor. In the meeting with the mayor, the director of legal affairs advised him about the lawsuit. He then instructed us that we would not be using the council's attorney who was Tricia Pitts and we would use another attorney. Miss Pitts could verify this. The director of legal affairs can verify this. The mayor is contending that I didn't put it in writing. But we had a meeting and it was brought up in the meeting and he got the physical document. So again, to me the grounds for dismissal for gross dereliction are non-existent."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"The specific allegation is that at no time after 8th March did you bring to the attention of the mayor or the council the existence of this pending 1 million dollar claim against it."

Candice Miller
"It is a blatant lie."

Still she was dismissed in a letter dated May 07th - and now Miller says she's suing:

Candice Miller
"I want to clear my name, Jules. I operated by the books and for them to be slandering me its damaging my character, it is damaging my ability to go out there and look for another job. I need to clear my name."

As we've reported, Miller has already filed suit against the council.