Just when we’re in the middle of one the highest-stress elections in American history, the City of North Miami Beach Welcomes You to … heartburn!

The reason, of course, is the municipal election. You may well have voted already to arrest hyperventilation if nothing else. If you haven’t, a little more research won’t hurt. Either way, you might want to stick around for this.

As you know, we don’t have many sources of local news. The Herald is stretched thin, The Miami Times has an important niche focus, and Stephanie’s blog has a lock on coverage. Among other things, I do a monthly column for The Biscayne Times, which just got bought out by the owner of The Miami Times. But it’s tough to follow a moving train with a monthly publication, let alone upstage Stephanie. Whether you agree with her or not, her blog offers a generous berth for those who wish to wade in.

After dropping in on the October 14 and 15 North Miami Beach candidate Zoom forums sponsored by the Washington Park-based Voters Council, the formidable moderator Saundra Douglas, who ran the meeting like a Grizzly Mama, pointed out me and Steph to the group as “representing the media.” Uh-oh, I thought. Better write something now.  We did a preliminary take on it for the October Biscayne Times, but the kaleidoscope shifts. So with deadlines as they are and with thanks to Stephanie for offering a platform, here are some belated off-the-cuff notes.

My take: Whether you’ve already voted or not, please pay attention. If you run and lose, don’t go away. Try to get on a city board and do the work. Keep showing up and do the reps. If you win, please take ethics and conflicts of interest to heart rather than as a paint-by-numbers exercise. This town has a record as ethically challenged. More scrutiny is part of the gig, and pride goeth before the fall. There’s lots of money sloshing around through proxies or proxies of proxies, and opportunities for mischief and temptation.

The next year or two will be interesting indeed. I would expect Dezer to solidify its grip and the argument that a bigger tax base does the rest of the city a lot more good. The massive Jefferson Plaza Shopping Center at 850 North Miami Beach Boulevard will come online, with a Lowes Home Improvement and revamped Publix. Ground may likely break at last on the new Washington Park Community Center. Big developments are afoot along 163rd Street at NE 19th Avenue, NE 20th Avenue, the site of the old Laurenzo’s, and the strip mall north of the Ancient Spanish Monastery. The annexation issue will remain for that big unincorporated hole in the donut at the 163rd Street mall site and the unincorporated area to its north and west. City Manager Esmond Scott is under pressure to transition the city’s water utility from Jacobs Engineering back to public management.

Dezer dominates, behind a wide moat of lawyers, PR pros, proxies, and proxies of proxies. And it has superlobbyist Ron Book, who also represents the City of North Miami Beach in Tallahassee. That, too, deserves scrutiny. To winners and incumbents: Be fair, but don’t let ‘em spook you.

With big money sloshing around and high stakes, this would seem a good time for neighborhood groups to redouble their efforts. If you are in a homeowners’ association, you might explore confederating with other associations, or at least gathering to compare notes and share the peace pipe. That way, Washington Park can better talk with Eastern Shores, which can better communicate with Highland Village, with can better understand Uleta … well, you know the drill. This town has an archipelago of 13 distinct neighborhoods. The more they talk to each other, the better. An Eastern Shores candidate, say, who doesn’t know Washington Park – or vice versa — deserves to lose and learn. Some folks in neighboring North Miami have formed these alliances, and it aids understanding.

Do check out the campaign treasurers’ reports to see who is getting what from whom.

This election has it all:  feudin’ and fightin’, disgusting and sometimes personal attack mailers, too much rage, and too much money. The $1.5-billion Dezer Development Intracoastal Mall dominates, with a second-reading post-election vote scheduled for 5 pm for November 10. The 3-2 yes vote at the last meeting, on October 21, following a 4-3 vote on the first meeting, was rescinded and rescheduled after two council members fell asleep before the 2 am vote – which followed a 3 am vote on first reading Sept. 25 — and Mayor DeFillipo had a screaming meltdown with outgoing Commissioner Phyllis Smith when she upbraided the Dezers’ ways and cited the 2018 Miami New Times story ranking North Miami Beach as South Florida’s second most corrupt city.

It was not a good look, but one tends not to be at one’s best at 1:45 am. Nor was it a good look for Dezer Development – or was it staff? – to drop off 1,600 pages of stuff just before the meeting, as Vice Mayor and Group Six Barbara Kramer pointed out. This is overwhelming and arms are getting twisted. After some shuteye and food, DeFillipo and the council unanimously decided the next day that it was wise to rescind the vote and revisit.

Of course, this big development has lots of hurdles ahead. It is supposed to take 10 years to build with a 30-year agreement, with 2,000 units in four 40-story towers on the north side of 163rd Street just before the bridge. Thirty years is a long time and optimistic, as long as the melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will behave.

The traffic issue is vexing. If you think traffic is funky now along 163rd Street going to or from the drawbridge to Sunny Isles Beach, just watch. The folks in Eastern Shores do have a case on a second exit point to and from the mall and their neighborhood, and to press the developers to honor the letter and spirit of prior agreements. That’s why Bruce Kusens is running for Mayor against incumbent DeFillipo in Group One and Ruth Abeckjerr for council in Group Three. They may well lose their bids – DeFillipo is popular and well-funded – but the Kusens contingent should be a constructive part of the conversation.

Other skeptics of the development’s progress include candidates Margie Love for Group Three, Liliya Spektor in Group Five, and incumbents Fortuna Smuckler in Group Four and Vice Mayor Barbara Kramer in Group Six. Most of them support the project but blow the whistle on railroading it through without attending to earlier assurances of access points and giving council members proper notice.

As per usual, slimy attack mailers from shadowy sources are on full display. Kusens, Spektor, Love and Ortega are four of the latest targets in these closing days. The widely held hunch is that the attacks are indirectly from Dezer-linked sources. Don’t know about you, but these mailers pivot my sympathies more toward the target than the opponent. Other candidates can expect skidmarks over their backs, too. The widely held hunch is that most of these attacks are indirectly from Dezer-linked sources rather than the opponents themselves.

Fortuna Smukler, an incumbent not running this cycle, posted the following on Facebook on Wednesday, and it speaks for itself.

“Two years ago $260,000.00 was spent attacking 5 NMB candidates. Someone does not want good people on the dais … Someone is trying to buy the commission. They want people who will vote their way. That someone should be instead donating the money spent to feeding the homeless, cancer patients, rape-sexual-physical abuse victims, etc. Instead they are wasting paper (trees), money that could be given to a good cause, and embarrassing families.”

More pro-development: Group Five incumbent McKenzie Fleurimond, Group Seven incumbent Michael Joseph, and Group Two incumbent Paule Villard. They have been relatively quiet from the dais in discussing the development votes, though Fleurimond is most inclined to contribute. Pro-development DeFillipo, and the more cautionary Kramer, Smukler and outgoing Commissioner Phyllis Smith were far more voluble.

Solving the traffic issue will be quite a hat trick. The 35th Avenue exit is close to the bridge as it stands. In a recent unrelated Zoom meeting on alternate routes to and from FIU Biscayne Bay Campus, the North Miami Beach Public Works Director Judeen Johnson shot down the idea of accessing the campus from the Oleta River State Park entrance at NE 34th Avenue, saying traffic at 163rd Street is at capacity. So what will happen with the Dezer development?

Adding to the mix is the entry into North Miami Beach by a new Haitian-American Political Action Committee – NHAEON Progressive PAC, a newly-formed PAC offshoot of the National Haitian American Elected Officials Network. Its mission: “Building a Strong Black Political Movement To Ensure Our Vote Counts..”  I wrote an article on this group for The Miami Times. While it is a national group, this year’s president is North Miami Councilman Alix Desulme, and its secretary is North Miami elected City Clerk Vanessa Joseph. The PAC has endorsed its first municipal candidates ever: Fleurimond and Joseph.

North Miami Beach is a blue city and heavily Democratic. So it follows that nearly all candidates are for a $15 minimum wage and strong unions. It is also worth noting that the Miami-Dade County Democratic Party has voted “overwhelmingly” to endorse Kusens for mayor, and recommended Fleurimond and Joseph for their slots.

Now for a crow-eating intermission and CORRECTION: If you saw the Oct. 21 print edition of The Miami Times, please note that NHAEON Progressive PAC did NOT endorse ANYONE in Group 3, where six candidates – three Haitian-American – are battling for one slot. That error was noted and corrected online. I confused a personal endorsement with an institutional one and take full responsibility and blame for the error.

Here’s a quick rundown, with updates and some observations.

GROUP ONE: MAYOR. Group One Mayor Anthony DeFillipo reports $100,800 in contributions as of October 16. His challenger, Kusens, is an entrepreneur-inventor-businessman and Eastern Shores resident who ran out of concern that Dezer was bulldozing its project through the council without a proper traffic plan as earlier promised. Kusens’ campaign Is largely self-funded.  Kusens has raised $30,920 and spent $16,641.70. DeFillipo, an energetic mayor and campaigner, says he has won concessions from the developer for a police station and enhanced guard gate, but Kusens says that is not the point. Kusens’ mission is largely to keep the city honest and act like a mensch.

GROUP SEVEN: We visit this one next because DeFillipo is running in tandem with Group Seven candidate, city water employee Antonio Ortega, an affable Cuban-born water employee who started as a meter reader who has served don the General Employees Retirement Board as well the Redeployment Advisory Board, and has raised $35,111.40. Their signs are almost always yoked together, in yards and on trucks. Sometimes they can be found behind chain link fences on sites slated for development, as can Joseph’s. DeFillipo will admit that he is boosting Ortega’s candidacy to unseat…

Group Seven incumbent Michael Joseph, who has raised $73,925 and spent $47,520. Joseph, an attorney with Galbut Walters & Associates, has support of unions, the legal community, and development interests. He is an advocate for affordable housing, strong unions, less red tape for small businesses, and improving the city’s infrastructure. He says he helped secure $750,000 for the Washington Park Community Center, working with County Commissioner Jean Monestime. It is also safe to say that DeFillipo, Vice Mayor Barbara Monuse Kramer, and Commissioner Fortuna Smukler strongly dislike Joseph, in the evident belief that Joseph, who is relatively reserved from the dais, doesn’t show his true cards enough in public, and quietly works to undermine staff and divide council, a claim to which Joseph strongly objects.

“Strongly dislilke” may be an understatement. Term-limited Kramer, who has served on the council since 2009, addressed Joseph thus on her Facebook page this week: “Serving with you has been nothing short of a nightmare. I can go on and on and I’ll never stop until you are either voted out of office or your ejected by some other means.” She followed that with a rousing endorsement of Ortega. Paging Desmond Tutu!

GROUP FIVE:  Here, incumbent McKenzie Fleurimond faces water control technician Liliya Spektor, who got into the race in August after the city voted to take back control of its 170,000-customer water utility from Jacobs Engineering. Spektor is evolving from a one-issue water utility candidate, and called out Fleurimond, Joseph, and particularly DeFillipo at an October 14 Voters Council Zoom meeting for not calling out Dezer Development on an earlier agreement for multiple traffic access points to their development. Spektor told DeFillipo: “I think you, the lawyer Joseph and Fleurimond should know you have to respect the law.” Douglas threatened to shut down the meeting as Spektor and DeFillipo took each other’s bait.

GROUP THREE: Nearly all of the six candidates here have something to bring to the table, but three already bring extensive experience and institutional knowledge of the city, and workhorse reputations: Ketley Joachim, Margaret “Margie” Love, and Dianne Weiss Raulson. The other candidates in this race include Abeckjerr, Henry Dube, who has run before, and Daniela Jean.

Says Joachim: “I know I am the best candidate for the city at this time.” Joachim lives in the Uleta neighborhood, where she was association chairman for seven years and has been active on community and city boards since 1998, including code enforcement and beautification.

Margie Love is running for council for the fifth time. “Tenacity is my middle name,” says Love, the self-proclaimed “crime watch queen.” A retired teacher and active volunteer, she wants to bring more civility back on the dais and is wary of “shady developers” altering the residential character of this near-suburban community.

Raulson cites her experience on the city pension board and Public Utilities Commission and founder of Miami-Dade County Days. She looks favorably to development and pledges to be a hard worker rather than a showboater. Says Raulson, quoting her father: “May you be ever able to serve a friend and brave enough to conceal it.”

Abeckjerr, an Eastern Shores resident and Realtor who moved here from Morocco as a young child, was spurred to run by the looming Dezer development. Says Abeckjerr: “I have noticed how much money my colleagues have been raising and find it kind of offensive.” She is new to city involvement.

Henry Dube calls himself “the candidate who listens.” That may be true, because he does not say much. Dube, a real estate agent, did not participate at the forum, and has yet to return one of our calls or queries.

Daniela Jean is a City of North Miami risk management specialist social strategist, and cites her experience as a municipal employee. Says Jean: “The history of this community speaks for itself. There needs to be a higher level of transparency, honesty, decency.”

One last word: In North Miami Beach, running takes guts. This kitchen runs hot. Here’s hoping that the candidates who fall short get past it, do their bit to make the community a better place, keep the winners honest, and respectfully speak truth to power.

Mark Sell