What is telling about these letters and email responses is that nowhere in the exchange of letters between Noriega and Event Entertainment is there any mention of the agreement that the Mayor tried to get the commission to agree to when he introduced his Pocket Item that would have granted ULTRA an additional year extension on their, "Revocable License Agreement."

And in fact, following the March 12th meeting, I asked for a copy of the document that the Mayor kept referring to during the time he was trying to convince the commission members to agree to his Pocket Item, and was told that no such document had been submitted into the record.

In short, the Mayor introduced a Pocket Item - one that would have a financial impact on the city - yet failed to provide any documentation in support of that item - and after a half hour or so of debate, the commissioners refused to agree to the Mayor's item, and it now shows up on the agenda for the April 9th meeting.

THE BACK STORY

As interesting as all of that is, we have to backtrack to the beginning by asking the first question that needs an answer, which is why did Art Noriega inform Event Entertainment Group that he was "postponing" the event, and not cancelling the event like he did in the days that followed with the Calle Ocho Festival?

Postponing and Cancelling mean different things in legal terms, and the city could have as easily cancelled the ULTRA Music Festival as "postpone" it.

All of that supposedly has to do with a private meeting that took place between the Mayor, Commissioner Joe Carollo and several representatives from Event Entertainment, including I was told one of the principals of the company, in which the real terms of this deal were reached.

Terms which no one wants to reveal, or even admit exists.

Even though they hate each other, and Carollo will never pass up an opportunity to embarrass or humiliate Suarez in public or private, they joined forces at this meeting because I was told that as much as they hate each other, they both hate Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez even more.

Suarez and Gimenez have been battling now for some time now over the Coconut Grove Playhouse, but until recently it was believed that Carollo and Gimenez were bossom buddies. That seems to no longer be the case, although I haven't a clue as to why.

In any event, at the time this meeting the decision to seek an agreement was as much, if not more about an effort to challenge and embarrass Gimenez who during the time that the meeting took place was still refusing to shut down any events in the county.

Of course things started changing days after March 12th, and as we now know the virus has turned into a world-wide calamity, but back then, personal vendetta political plays were about as far as Suarez and Carollo could think into the future.

On the ULTRA side, this meeting and the decision by Suarez and Carollo to support a "postponement" was a real gift because I've been told that contrary to all their pronouncements about how great things were going to be in 2020, the truth was supposedly different because after the disaster that has occurred on Virginia Key last year the ULTRA folks were supposedly further away from selling out the event than the 90% they were claiming on their webside on March 6th: