Sylvia Poitier is now officially former Deerfield Beach Commissioner Sylvia Poitier after Gov. Rick Scott signed off on her removal from office yesterday.
Poitier -- who was a "suspended" commissioner until her case finished -- was sentenced last week to a year of probation, a $1,000 fine,
and 200 hours of community service for the four counts of falsifying
public records she was found guilty of in November.
Adjudication was ordered to be withheld in the case, so Poitier can have that scrubbed off her record in a bit.
Poitier, 76, was arrested in April on five charges of falsifying
documents -- which were related to a loan from her brother to a
city-tied organization -- although the fifth count was dismissed by the
judge during the trial.
The five misdemeanor charges against Poitier were related to her actions
after her brother's loan to the Westside Deerfield Businessmen
Association.
According to her arrest affidavit, in May 2006,
Poitier proposed sending a $30,000 grant to the Westside Deerfield
Businessman Association -- the same agency her brother had loaned
$46,000 to -- and then voted on the proposal without any disclosure of
the relationship or filing of the necessary paperwork.
Poitier's
daughter, Felicia Poitier, was also vice president of the WDBA since
1995, and Dan Poitier, a cousin of Sylvia Poitier's ex-husband, was
executive director of the organization.
Both Felicia and Dan Poitier, as well as Ferguson, confirmed to investigators that this loan existed.
Sylvia
Poitier then proceeded to vote to use that loan in a "limited
partnership" instead of handing over federal grant money and further
failed to file any conflict-of-interest documentation. At later
meetings, she claimed not to be related to anyone involved in the
matter, then eventually claimed he was her brother.
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