arrested in 2024<\/a> on charges of bid tampering and official misconduct.<\/p>\nWATCH BELOW: Opening statements begin in trial of former city manager<\/p>\n
During opening statements, the State Attorney’s Office said Mimms knowingly rigged the bidding process for two vacant parcels of land along Avenue D in favor of a local nonprofit that his niece was on the board of, and kept it from the public.<\/p>\n
“The defendant Nicholas Mimms just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar,” Assistant State Prosecutor Jonathan Bridges said.<\/p>\n
Bridges pointed to a paper trail of city documents, email correspondence, phone records and witness testimony.<\/p>\n
“He made sure that the public was not privy to the information he shared with Miss Scott and her group. In doing so, the defendant made sure that the city-owned land would ultimately be leased by LPYP and no one else,” Bridges said.<\/p>\n
LPYP stands for the Lincoln Park Young Professionals, the local nonprofit involved in the case.<\/p>\n
The defense countered that Mimms showed no favoritism, and that a $500,000 grant provided by the Alleghany Franciscan Ministries toward the development of the site in Lincoln Park did not involve the city.<\/p>\n
“They started work on the project, and it failed, and that’s the sad truth. But it wasn’t by the fault of any one person. It certainly wasn’t a deliberate act by anyone,” defense attorney Donald Murrell said.<\/p>\n
The first witness called by the state was Ben Masondo, a local real estate broker from the Doyen Company, who also submitted a bid on the two vacant lots. Masondo said he felt the city’s decision to move forward with LPYP was unfair.<\/p>\n
“You have one that has a city employee involved. I felt that the judging was misguided. At one point, I think I had said clearly one of these people was the Russian judge, just decided not to score me fairly, and I looked at what was around, and yes, I was upset. I thought that was snake. They snaked me,” Masondo said.<\/p>\n
The trial is expected to last at least a week.<\/p>\n
If found guilty, Mimms could face a second-degree felony for bid tampering that carries a maximum of 15 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.<\/p>\n
Official misconduct is a third-degree felony that carries a maximum of five years in prison and up to a $5,000 fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The trial of former Fort Pierce City Manager Nick Mimms entered its second day Tuesday with opening statements…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-414535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}