Vote
Anthony DeFillipo, Group 2
Councilwoman Beth Spiegel, Group 4
NMB Elections
Election day May 7, 2013
Early voting May 2 -5, 2013
Why vote for Beth Spiegel and Anthony DeFillipo in the upcoming NMB Elections?In my opinion, there is no more important service the City of North Miami Beach provides its residents than police protection. The election is important since the mayor and 6 council members appoint the city manager and the city manager appoints the police chief and the police chief makes the decisions that affect our safety.
Today we have a mayor, several city council members, a city manager and a police chief that have made a strong commitment to the safety of all of its residents and those coming within the city. They all recognize that our community is particularly vulnerable on Shabbosim and yomim tovim because of the sheer number of us walking at all times of the day and night and that there is a need for sufficient protection. Maintaining a commission dedicated to our security is our obligation and voting is our tool to achieve it.
Beth Spiegel is one of the council members who has been an outspoken supporter in favor of adequate police protection. She has been accessible and responsive. Given that consistent record, we as a community should show our loyalty and gratitude and vote to re-elect her. For that reason I endorse Beth Spiegel in Group 4.
Once we located security cameras that would capture license tags with clarity and perfect facial recognition day or night, we found that the mark-up on those cameras reduces the project’s scalability for a communitywide program. When authorized dealers were unwilling to budge on pricing, the manufacturer agreed to allow us to find a qualified local security camera dealer and the manufacture would make that dealer an authorized agent for its security equipment. Anthony DeFillipo understood the community’s security challenges and agreed for his company to become an authorized dealer for the equipment to be used in the community at a mark-up of 5%. A far cry from the 33% to 67% mark-up the existing authorized dealers were charging. Mr. DeFillipo has spent a considerable amount of time testing and installing and re-installing the equipment to determine how it can best benefit the community. After the manufacturer makes some small adjustments, the equipment will be available for installation by others on a community-wide network. For his dedication and commitment to the community’s security needs and placing the needs of the community over his profit margin, I endorse Anthony DeFillipo for Group 2. His security equipment background will be helpful on the commission as the city explores the possibility of its placing cameras on its own around the canal and in other public places. [Over the last three months, my time has been consumed with assisting my family in Israel and regrettably that is the cause of the hold up. I hope now to again be able to make the security cameras a top priority.]
Other candidates may also be well qualified but for their proven records I endorse Anthony DeFillipo for group 2 and Beth Spiegel for group 4.
Congratulations to Barbara Kramer who was re-elected unopposed. It has been a long time since our community has had a friend like Councilwoman Barbara Kramer. On one occasion when our community needed help, Councilwoman Kramer gave me a very important piece of correspondence. When I thought that it may be helpful to use the document, I asked Barbara Kramer for permission to use it since while it would help us, it would likely hurt Ms. Kramer since the source of the document would become known. Councilwoman Kramer’s answer was not to be concerned with her and to only be concerned with doing what is best for the community. That is the difference between a statesman and a politician and our community is proud to have Barbara Kramer as a Councilperson.
Alan Sakowitz
I would like to know the candidates’ opinion on reinstating our gang units and crime suppression units. Violent crime is a real problem in NMB and both of these units were eliminated in 2011. It is kinda hard to fight crime if you don’t have enough crime fighters.
It’s kind of hard to think the Mayor & council are tuff on crime when they made the decision to lay off 17 officers.
If you are “TRYING TO HELP”, please educate yourself on past P.B.A. demands and who was leading them at that time.
Also look at the “Kangroo Court” that is in charge of recommendations to the council. The majority of them are NMB police officers.
Maybe with NMB PBA’s new president, we can all come together to solve problems and not make them.
We are not PBA, we are IUPA.
Our new president has been bending over backwards trying to reach agreement with this mayor and council. Backwards!
The mayor and council are elected by the people to make decisions on their behalf, and the mayor and council chose to fire 15% of their police deparment. That is NOT in the best interests of the people who elected them. Firing all of those cops meant dissolving all of the specialized units. No motors, no gang unit, no street crimes and no community patrol. That was not a wise decision by the mayor and council and the effects of that bad decision are becoming more obvious by the day. Shootings and crime are all on the rise.
We had a contract, but despite that we agreed to open the contract and we offered concessions…though we had no legal obligation. We could have refused to offer a dime and we’d have been legally within our right…but we offered and they refused what we offered.
If the mayor and council were looking out for the citizens, shouldn’t they have taken whatever we were willing to offer and used our concessions to avoid kaying off as many cops as they could? Wouldn’t that have been what was best for the citizens? Shouldn’t the mayor and council have explored any and all cost-cutting and revenue-enhancing measures as possible….using all of that money to avoid laying off as many police officers as possible? Isn’t that what a good mayor and council should do? What would you say to me if I told you it might have been possible to achieve the cuts they sought without laying off a single police officer, without cutting a single service to you the taxpayer? Wouldn’t you prefer to have the same savings without sacrificing safety or services?
Even now…the union has agreed to reform the pension, but that is still not enough for this mayor and council…they want us to not only agree to massive pension reform but they also want us to agree to accept a rotten contract that would cut our pay and benefits until we’d be one of the very worst paid officers in the county. In our last contract we agreed to eliminate all pay raises, cuts in longevity benefits and agreed to go yet another year with no pay raise. We’ve not had a single penny pay raise in five years. We’ve taken cuts over those five years. Inflation marches on, so in effect we’ve taken five years of cuts….and may I remind you, sir, that whatever financial difficulties this city has is not because of the police officers. No one ever asked us how to manage the money. If poor decisions were made, they were made by mayors and council members of the past, not us, yet this mayor and this council and citizens like you treat us like we are to blame….and attack us. I truly feel as if the mayor and council fired police officers in a punitive manner. I truly feel as if the mayor and council blames me for what is wrong and wants to punish me…and I don’t understand that.