Imagine my surprise when I saw the headline on the second page of the current issue of Le Floridien, Blogger Tells North Miami’s City Clerk to Keep His Silly Opinions to Himself.

I was even more surprised when I read the article.  Because this is a newspaper by and for the Haitian community, I expected to be criticized by the reporter, Dessalines Ferdinand, for criticizing Haitian American Michael A. Etienne.

Au contraire!

It is certainly gratifying to learn that not everyone in the Haitian community will defend the pompous and self-aggrandizing City Clerk of North Miami simply because he’s Haitian.

It’s also nice to know I’m not alone.  There are others who have had enough of Michael’s “arrogant buffoonery,” too.

How cool is that?  Yeah.  Way cool.

Here’s the thing.

As long as the North Miami City Clerk position is an elected one, residents won’t be able to get rid of this clown any time soon.

North Miami is one of a very few (6 at last count) cities in Florida that has an elected clerk as opposed to one that is hired by the council or commission.  This is an especially dangerous scenario because a municipality’s clerk is typically the supervisor of that city’s elections.

If an elected clerk abuses the power of his office by supervising his own election, as we have already seen Michael do in North Miami, he can finagle a way to remain in office forever.  Or at least, until he’s termed out.

The only way to fix this abomination is for the North Miami City Charter to be amended.  There are two ways this can be accomplished.

The first is by charter review board recommendation.

Article III, Division 3, Charter Board of the City of North Miami Charter created a charter board “for the purpose of reviewing and analyzing the City Charter and recommending to the city council, for its consideration, amendments to the Charter.”  Ideally, a municipality’s charter should be periodically reviewed by a board or committee on a regular basis (at the very least every ten years) in order to abolish outdated laws and implement new ones designed to better serve the residents of the community.

According to the charter of North Miami, there should already be a charter board in existence, the members of which having been appointed by the current elected officials.  North Miami residents need to call their Mayor and Council and tell them to appoint a charter board if they have not already done so.

Sec. 6-49. states, “Each member of the city council shall nominate one (1) member of the charter board, which nomination shall be subject to approval of a majority of the city council. Two (2) additional members of the charter board shall be appointed by the city council as a whole. The seven (7) members thus appointed by the city council shall be residents of the city. The term of those board members appointed by the individual city council members shall be coterminous with the appointing elected official’s term of office. The terms of those board members appointed by the city council as a whole shall be coterminous with the mayor’s term of office.”

This board is “directed to make recommendations to the city council from time to time as it may deem advisable.”

The best way to initiate change in North Miami is for residents to find out when the charter board meets and submit their suggestions for consideration.  If no meetings are scheduled, it’s up to residents to contact the charter board’s liaison and insist that one is scheduled.

The current liaison happens to be outgoing Interim City Manager Arthur H. Sorey III.  You can contact him by calling 305-895-9896 or emailing asorey@northmiamifl.gov.

And, oh yeah.  Good luck with that.

The second way to change the city’s charter is by filing an initiative petition to be presented to the Mayor and Council.

Chapter 6., Article III, Sec. 6-49. – City Charter amendments of the City of North Miami Charter states that a citizen can file an initiative petition to the city council proposing an ordinance to amend the charter.

The citizen petitioner (or “political committee”) must circulate the initiative petition (download sample form here), which must be “signed by ten (10) percent of the city’s electors as of the last city election,” and then submitted to the city council.  The petition will look like this:

The council may approve the proposal and pass an ordinance accordingly or, if the council does not adopt the ordinance, it will be placed on a ballot for the voters to decide in a citywide referendum.

Unfortunately, in North Miami in particular, there’s a catch.

According to Sec. 6-51., with respect to these citizen initiative petitions, only the CITY CLERK is authorized to “determine if it is sufficient as to form, content, and circulator affidavits.”

Can you beat that crap?

What are the chances that Michael A. Etienne, Esq. will approve the sufficiency of a citizen initiative petition in the event that petition is designed to eliminate his job?

Exactly!

If Michael Etienne was able to engineer his own re-election by eliminating the competition, trust me … he will find a way to make sure that a petition, which is designed to do away with his own job, will never see the light of day.

Yes, he is that corrupt!

Another charter amendment that citizens should consider, in my humble opinion, is to increase the term length for a sitting mayor from two years to four.  I can’t think of one logical reason for a mayor to be in office only two years, when his colleagues on the dais serve twice as many

Furthermore, as it now stands in North Miami, a mayor will end up spending the entire second half of his two year term running for re-election instead of being free to perform the job he was elected to do.  It’s not fair to the mayor, and it’s certainly not fair to the electorate.  This seriously need to be changed, and it can only be done by charter amendment.

Obviously, changing a city’s charter is a lot of work.  By design, it should not be easy to amend such an important document.  A municipality’s charter is, in essence, its “constitution.”  And, just like the Constitution of the United States, a city charter is the blueprint by which “a government of the people, by the people, for the people” must comply in order to for their government to exist as a democratic and representative body.

That being said, the very fact that North Miami is a representative form of government ensures that residents have the right to amend their own charter when they believe that doing so is in their best interest as a community.

It’s not always easy to effectuate change in government, but it’s the responsibility of every citizen to hold our representatives accountable to those who put them in office.

UPDATE:  The members of all the city’s boards and committees are posted on the North Miami website here.  Use the drop down menu to select a board and view its members.  The charter board’s members are:

Councilwoman Keys and Councilman Bien-Aime have not yet appointed members to this board, nor have the two at-large positions been filled.

The bad news is that there are four vacancies that must be filled before this board can meet.

The good news is that there are four vacancies, which means YOU can apply for a position on this VERY IMPORTANT BOARD!

Information on how to apply for a board appointment can be found by clicking here.

I urge all North Miami residents to get involved by volunteering to serve on a citizen board or committee.

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” Plato

Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”