Miami-Dade checks to the A3 Foundation are under scrutiny. One was just returned

Miami Herald

4 days ago

After the A3 Foundation secured more than $1 million from Miami-Dade, the county is getting some of that money back.
A $200,000 check issued on July 8 to the politically connected charity was left at a front desk in County Hall last week, a top Miami-Dade administrator said Thursday. The check was never cashed.
'It came in an envelope with my name on it,' said David Clodfelter, Miami-Dade's budget director.
The refunded dollars offer the latest mystery in the A3 saga, which started with a Miami Herald article on July 19 questioning how the obscure charity had managed to secure nearly $2 million in public money from the state of Florida and Miami-Dade County and was on the verge of getting millions more from a county parks contract.
Formed in the fall of 2023, the A3 Foundation still lists its headquarters in a West Miami townhouse. As of Friday afternoon, its website had no contact information and non-working links on its projects page. While the website does not list A3's leadership, state records show the charity's president is Francisco Petrirena. He works full-time as chief of staff to Miami City Manager Art Noriega.
The A3 Foundation first attracted public attention when the Herald reported on last-minute legislation that mandated a vendor give the charity $250,000 a year through 2045.
The required payment came from a 20-year management contract giving events company Loud and Live control of a portion of Tropical Park, where the firm helps put on the annual CountryFest rodeo each year.
Miami-Dade commissioners approved the contract a day after Levine Cava unveiled a 2026 county budget proposal that slashes about $40 million in nonprofit grants.
Herald coverage of A3 prompted Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to say that she'd block the planned payments to the charity in the Loud and Live contract and call for an audit of the charity's spending.
County records show her budget office under Clodfelter pushed finance staff to process A3 checks, which were requested by the office of Miami-Dade Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez. Rodriguez's staff used A3 as a clearinghouse for more than $1 million in tax dollars allocated to CountryFest, the springtime rodeo that's the signature event in his district. Loud and Live said it was paid by A3 for its CountryFest expenses in 2024 and 2025.
Through records requests, the Herald obtained three bare-bones invoices that A3 sent to Miami-Dade requesting money for CountryFest expenses. The recently returned check suggests at least $200,000 of the taxpayer funds wasn't needed after all.
But that wasn't the message from Rodriguez's staff in recent months as the chair's office pushed for the county bureaucracy to issue the check.
'Good morning David, per our conversation here is the invoice for A3 Foundation for CountryFest,' Aldo Gonzalez, a top Rodriguez aide, wrote in a May 14 email to David Livingstone, an assistant director of the county's Parks Department. 'Can you please process this invoice as soon as possible as we are trying to close out on CountryFest.'
Six weeks later, the requested check still hadn't been cut, and Gonzalez pressed Clodfelter, the county's budget director, for the money.
'Need this paid,' Gonzalez emailed Clodfelter on July 3. Attached was the original A3 invoice for $200,000 — the bill that would later generate the check returned to Clodfelter's office last week. It had no receipts or details beyond: 'Payment for CountryFest 2025.'
Gonzalez did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. Petrirena did not either. A lawyer for the A3 Foundation, John Priovolos, told the Herald on Friday he would look into questions about the returned check.
While Clodfelter said the $200,000 check to A3 was issued and released last month, he did not provide information on who retrieved it originally, so it's not known if the $200,000 check ever physically made it to the A3 Foundation. County records show a staffer for the County Commission picked up at least one other A3 check this year, so it's possible the $200,000 check never left County Hall.
County records show Miami-Dade issued about $1 million in checks to the A3 Foundation over the last two years. Paperwork behind the checks show the taxpayer funds were requested to pay for CountryFest.
Behind the scenes, the administrator of the Parks Recreation and Open Spaces (PROS) Department's budget was questioning why the foundation was getting so much money for the Tropical Park event, according to emails released this week through a Herald records request.
When the request for a $200,000 check to A3 got to Parks Budget Chief Angus Laney, he noted the charity had already been paid $300,000 for that year's CountryFest, held the last weekend in April.
That was well over what Parks paid the charity in 2024.
'Please note that last year's payment to the A3 Foundation was $421,000. A 19% growth in compensation seems high,' Laney wrote in a May 14 email to the county budget office.
Laney wasn't just managing A3 invoices for CountryFest. He wrote that Parks had also paid $200,000 to the Miami livestock company that put on the event's cattle show.
If Parks paid A3 another $200,000 on top of that, the event's cost would hit $700,000 — well over the department's $500,000 budget for CountryFest.
At the time, Parks was already under budget strain, with a mandate to cut costs as Levine Cava prepared a 2026 budget proposal that would cut back on department dollars for lifeguards, landscaping and athletic fields.
'PROS is currently under directive from the Mayor to come in $6.5M below our budgeted subsidy for the current fiscal year,' Laney wrote Gonzalez, the policy and legislative director for Rodriguez, on March 11.
On Friday, Clodfelter, the county budget director, released a summary of how Miami-Dade paid for CountryFest this year. He said that in addition to money from Parks and allocations from county commissioners, Miami-Dade tapped promotional budgets for Miami International Airport and PortMiami. If the $200,000 check had been cashed, Clodfelter said, money from those county-owned facilities would have covered the expense. As a result, the check would not have impacted the Parks budget.
When he sent the email raising budget concerns, Laney was pushing back on Gonzalez's request for the initial $300,000 check to A3. Laney said he only had $250,000 available for the charity's CountryFest expenses.
'If we were not under that mandate, I might be able to absorb the $50K in question (though my budget is already very lean), but under the current constraints, I cannot approve payment of the $300K invoice until I have access to $50K of additional funding,' Laney wrote.
The emails released by Parks this week don't show how the $50,000 gap was resolved for the $300,000 check that was issued to A3 on April 4. County records show that check was cashed.
Weeks later, pressure was building on Parks to OK the second A3 check for 2025.
'I need to know if you are going to be able to process this invoice,' Clodfelter, the county's budget chief, wrote in a May 14 email to Maria Nardi, then the Parks director.
There's no record of a response from Nardi, but the $200,000 check wasn't issued until early July.
On Thursday, Clodfelter said the un-cashed A3 check that was returned last week can no longer be cashed.
'It was returned,' Clodfelter said. 'And I have canceled it.'