If you’ve been paying attention, you already know that Phyllis Smith won the runoff election in North Miami Beach by 75 votes.

If you’re one of the 18,944 registered voters who stayed home instead of casting a ballot, you probably don’t know.

More importantly, you don’t care.

Although the small handful of people who do care work really hard to get the right people in office, it doesn’t seem to matter.  They simply cannot force an apathetic electorate to vote.

Scarier still is the fact that elections have become so downright nasty in North Miami Beach that almost no candidates of quality are willing to run for office.  Judging by the libelous and hateful campaign that Team Phyllis perpetrated against one of her opponents, what sane person would subject themselves to such viciousness?

I know I damn sure wouldn’t.

I’d love to tell you that yesterday’s runoff election produced the lowest turnout in a decade, but I’d be a liar if I did.  And since I’m not Frantz Pierre or Phyllis Smith, I don’t lie.

In 2005, only 1,665 voters, or 9.07% of the electorate, went to the polls for the runoff.  Interestingly, in the 2007 runoff, the turnout was identical.

There was no runoff in 2009 because 3,208 souls, or 15.96% of registered voters, decided all the races in the general election.  That was also the year Frantz Pierre won his seat back by only 15 votes.  Interestingly, 2009 was also the year that Myron Rosner was elected as mayor, as well as the year that absentee ballot “brokers” became regular players in North Miami Beach elections.

Coincidence?  I think not!

The runoff in 2011 was an NMB aberration in that 3,454 voters, or 17.51% of the electorate, swarmed the polls to make Myron a one-term mayor when political newcomer George Vallejo literally trounced the incumbent by a whopping 497 votes.  The runoff produced an even higher turnout than the general election that year, during which 3,232 ballots, or 16.94%, were cast.

2011 was also the last year that all seven council seats would be up for grabs at the same time due to a charter amendment that introduced staggered terms for alternating seats.

This charter change might have also led to one of the lowest voter turnouts in years when in 2013, only two seats were up for grabs (Barbara Kramer ran unopposed), and 2,092 people, or 10.48%, voted in the general election, and even less voted in the runoff.  The final winners were decided by 1,899 voters, or 9.50%, two weeks later.

On May 5, 2015, 2,761 voters, or 13.22%, decided three races.  But yesterday, as evidenced by the unofficial results, only 1,918 people cared enough to cast a ballot.

And that, dear readers, is how less than two thousand people were able to decide what’s best for the remaining 41,000 residents of North Miami Beach.

NMB is now stuck with the exact same council for the next two years.  Even though I don’t have a crystal ball, I can almost guarantee what will happen in the near future.

Here are my predictions:

Phyllis, backed by a newly empowered Frantz Pierre, will sue North Miami Beach to get the taxpayer funded lifetime health insurance she believes she’s entitled to.

They will lose.

In the process they will cause the city to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to defend its position.

But … but … they care about the residents!

Yeah, right.

I also predict that Phyllis will finally be stifled.

At least four of her colleagues have had enough of her constant grandstanding, filibustering, and bloviating.  From now on, when she starts running off at the mouth, telling you about who she sat next to at her second cousin’s best friend’s daughter’s husband’s sister-in-law’s second wedding, and how many dozens of people called her, and that she spoke with the U.S. Ambassador to Lichtenstein, she will be cut off at the pass.  While her Phyllisisms might make for hilarious blogs, there is nothing funny about council meetings running two hours later than necessary because her pompous ass can’t shut her pie hole up.

Just remember these three words:  “Call the question.”

‘Nuff said.

Sanitation will finally be privatized.

And despite their own campaign lies to the contrary, my money says that both Frantz and Phyllis will vote against it … before they vote for it.

I don’t want to hear the ridiculous argument that “the residents want to keep sanitation in house.”  I seriously doubt the vast majority of North Miami Beach residents even know who picks up their garbage.

During the general election, 1,357 people, or 6.60% of all registered voters, or 3.15% of the entire population of the City North Miami Beach, voted for Frantz Pierre, who ran on the promise not to outsource the garbage department.

In the runoff, at 993 votes, or 4.76% of voters, or 2.31% of the population, Phyllis grabbed even less support for her “no-privatization” platform.

What this means is that 99.98% of the residents of North Miami Beach have no personal attachment to garbage.

They just want it picked up.

Period.

At a true cash savings of more than two million dollars a year, it makes absolutely no sense for North Miami Beach to be in the garbage business.  There are professional sanitation companies that do one thing.  They collect garbage.  It’s their specialty because it’s the only thing they do.  They have one job and they do it well.

If it were so lucrative to keep sanitation in house, why would more than 95% of Miami-Dade County’s 34 municipalities be moving to outsource?  One of the last holdouts in privatization, Hialeah, the sixth largest municipality in the state, is now putting its sanitation out for bid.  With a population of about a quarter million residents and a newly booming economy, Hialeah’s city leaders recognize that government doesn’t create jobs by putting more people on the taxpayer funded payroll.  It creates jobs by becoming more business friendly to industries that, in turn, will be able to hire more local residents.

Despite their campaign “promises” to the contrary, if you think for one minute that Frantz and Phyllis won’t seriously consider voting for privatization, consider this FACT:

Contrary to their campaign “platforms” that they “supported” the hiring of more police officers, both of them voted to FIRE SEVENTEEN COPS … before they voted to … oh, wait!  They never voted to hire more cops.  That was never on the table.

So before you champion Phyllis or Frantz for “saving jobs,” remember that with a raise of their hands, they fired 17 police officers in a city with a violent crime rate of 647.6 per 100,000 people, according to the most recent data posted on the Uniform Crime Report for the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Which is approximately 41% HIGHER than the national crime rate of 386.9 per 100,000 people.

What I can also say with a fair amount of certainty is that two years from now when three seats are up for grabs, Frantz Pierre is going to be out there again trying to fulfill his dream of a “Haitian majority.”

If history continues to repeat itself, Frantz will keep on breaking laws without consequences and he’ll be free to recruit carpetbaggers and other misfits like him to run against his colleagues, Tony DiFillipo, Barbara Kramer and Beth Spiegel.

Judging by the hostile, unscrupulous mise en scène of this most recent election, it will be even harder for quality candidates like Ketley Joachim and Michael Joseph to run and win an election based on honesty and integrity.

Like water, Frantz Pierre seeks his own level by installing his is fellow ethically challenged compatriots into council races, who will attempt to “win” elections by buying air time on Haitian radio … and absentee ballots.  A corrupted City Council will pave the way for Frantzie to funnel tax dollars into his own very special “non-profit organizations,” the principles of which claim to “help the Haitian community” when what they really do is line their own pockets.

Frantz Pierre will make sure that civil elections are permanently a thing of the past.  North Miami Beach voters will continue to be accosted at the polls by loud, screaming, in-your-face paid “volunteers,” who literally “escort” unsuspecting citizens into the voting both to make sure they “vote correctly,” as North Miami’s Fake Teacher Carline so famously said.

And, finally, I predict that if North Miami Beach can’t entice more developers into bringing more upscale residential properties and commercial businesses into the city, it will continue to be an even worse hell hole than it already has become.

The North Miami Beach City Council has exactly two years to fix the mess and encourage more residents to participate in their local government or there will be three more L’il Frantzie P clones to contend with on the dais.

There will also be absolutely no chance for progress in NMB.

Then again, if all else fails, y’all are welcome to move to Davie.

Where sanity – and a corruption-free government – still exists.

Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”