Don’t say we didn’t warn you, because we did.

Right after the November election, we predicted the coming North Miami Beach Apocalypse, and that dreaded day has finally arrived.  As expected, the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are bound and determined to destroy every last bit of progress their predecessors worked so hard to build in the last decade.

Make no mistake.  They don’t care about the residents of North Miami Beach.

They don’t care if your award-winning Police Department falls apart.

They don’t care if your $30 million reserve account is completely depleted and there’s no safety net for the next hurricane.

They don’t care if they run your City into multi-million dollar deficits just like North Miami.

In fact, this planned destruction is deliberate and calculated – the specific goal of Team Apocalypse is to model NMB after North Miami, corrupt politics and all.

When these four corruptocrats look at North Miami Beach residents, all they see are votes for their re-election and money to campaign on taxpayer dime so they can publicly take credit for “free” food giveaways without having to open their own wallets.

The reason they’re doing this is because, in their warped version of politics, they think winning elections gives them power.

Commissioner Michael Joseph said it all at the May 22, 2019 Strategic Planning Session when he gave a drama queen performance after falsely claiming that he received death threats.

Watch at minute 1:42 of this video, as he spits out a guttural growl, “WE HAVE A LOT OF POWER!”

Not only does Michael Joseph actually believe he’s powerful, but he also thinks nothing of abusing that power, imaginary as it may be, since he knows there will never be any consequences.  Not from the Ethics Commission, not from the State Attorney’s Office, and not from the residents, who foolishly believed his lies and re-elected him anyway.

Michael Joseph’s uncanny ability to thus far escape responsibility for his corruption and illegal acts will be discussed in a future blog.  For now, we’ll stay on the topic of NMB’s impending destruction.

As Michael’s three comrades, McKenzie Fleurimond, Paule Villard, and Daniela Jean, watch him get away with everything short of murder with impunity, they are naturally emboldened to follow in his footsteps.  We already witnessed how they conspired behind closed doors against Sunshine Laws to appoint the uniquely unqualified Hans Ottinot as the City Attorney, and handed him $55,000 a month of taxpayer money to have their backs.

And now they are about to put the final nail into the coffin.

Make no mistake, North Miami reject Arthur “Duke” Sorey is going to be your new City Manager, whether you like it or not.

Everyone in North Miami – residents and employees alike – already know it’s a done deal.  The only thing left to do is get his John Hancock on the dotted line of the contract that’s already been drafted.

Be prepared to match or beat his North Miami base salary of $209,934.40, plus at least another $50K in benefits, which will include an expense account, car and cell phone allowances, travel expenses, and a generous pension contribution, which will most likely be in the neighborhood of the 48.7% that the North Miami Mayor receives.

In three short years from the first time he was appointed as North Miami’s Interim City Manager, Duke Sorey brought that City to the brink of financial insolvency under his “leadership.”  In 2016, he took a healthy fiscal year-end surplus of $9.1 million and turned it into a devastating deficit of $14.6 million by the end of Fiscal Year 2018-19, after presenting that fraudulent budget to the North Miami Mayor and Council, and double-talking them into approving it.

And yet, he’s managed to keep his job at the City of North Miami for over 17 years, currently as the Deputy City Manager, despite the fact he can’t even manage his own finances.

In 2012 he was sued by his first mortgage company for foreclosure, and the following year by Capital One Bank (USA), N.A. for non-payment of a small credit card bill that he refused to pay.

Then again, personal financial mismanagement seems to be commonplace in North Miami, considering that Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime and Councilwoman Mary Estimé-Irvin are both in dire financial straits and personally in debt for well over $2 million between them.  Both are also about to be thrown out of their respective homes.  It’s pretty pathetic.

We also exposed Deputy Duke for his questionable home purchase/loan through the North Miami Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

Sorey then went on to negate the intention of North Miami’s Early Retirement Incentive Program (ERIP) by hiring even higher salaried employees under the Friends & Family Plan, thus increasing the payroll instead of reducing it by 30% as planned.

Most recently, Duke Sorey’s “brainchild,” the Red Garden Sinkhole, cost North Miami taxpayers an unbudgeted $1,223,582.

As we reported in Duke Sorey’s Folly, Part 2: What does he care? It’s not his money!, here’s the mind-boggling story, which we couldn’t make up if we tried:

On December 12, 2017, the City of North Miami filed three foreclosure complaints against Alhambra Heights 12351, LLC, Alhambra Heights 635, LLC, and Alhambra Heights 645, LLC, for the non-payment of code violation liens as far back as July 11, 2012.  These three companies owned the three parcels of land collectively referred to as the “Denmark Property.”  The three Foreclosure lawsuits were filed due to unpaid liens owed by the Denmark Property to the City of North Miami in the aggregate amount of $1,319,655.34.

By the fall of 2018, the parties entered into a series of mediation conferences.  By May of 2019 a Settlement Agreement had been reached, and on June 7, 2019, all three foreclosure complaints were voluntarily dismissed.

From a legal standpoint, the City had every right to foreclose on the property due to the $1.3 million in unpaid liens.  It also appears that North Miami had an excellent chance of winning all three lawsuits, and taking possession of a property that, according to the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser’s Office, had a market value of $1,808,579 in 2019.  This year the value has increased to $2,138,349.

So, let’s think about this for a minute.

If North Miami had followed through on its litigation, the City would eventually own the Denmark Property free and clear – and tax-free to boot!  North Miami pays no real estate taxes on City-owned property.

In addition, this property is located within the North Miami Community Development Agency (CRA), which agency can use its own tax increment financing for redevelopment, thereby leaving the City’s General Fund untouched.

Instead of obtaining this property in a foreclosure action, the City of North Miami foolishly entered into a Settlement Agreement, which resulted in:

• • • The owner of the Denmark Property keeping the land and having $1,319,655.34 worth of liens wiped out; and
    • The City of North Miami losing $1,319,655.34 in revenue and getting absolutely nothing in return.

North Miami is now renting a property that it voluntarily gave up in a settlement for $8,000.00 per month, or $96,000 a year, for five (5) years (with two 5-year renewal options) with annual increases of 4%.

So, instead of owning a mortgage-free, tax-free parcel of land with a market value of $2,138,349, North Miami taxpayers now have to pay rent for that property in the total amount of $1,941,455.64 over the life of the lease.

With absolutely nothing to show for it in 2034 when the property is turned back over to the owner.

And Duke Sorey is solely responsible for the entire mess.

The only purpose of Duke’s Million Dollar Plus Folly was to allow him to host “Uncle Luke’s World Superbowl Experience” last February.

Duke’s Red Garden Sinkhole now sits sadly empty, unguarded, overgrown with weeds, covered by the remains of $102,950 worth of AstroTurf, and regularly broken into by crooks stealing as much expensive copper wire as they can cart away.

And this boondoggle was Duke Sorey’s crowning achievement in North Miami.

Nevertheless, this disaster of a human being is about to run the City of North Miami Beach.

It’s absolutely no secret that North Miami Beach Commissioners Michael Joseph, McKenzie Fleurimond, Paule Villard, and Daniela Jean have already conspired to hire Duke Sorey.  If they were counting on him to keep his mouth shut and lay low until the next NMB commission meeting, they were surely misguided.  Duke has apparently been shouting it from the rooftops of North Miami because the party has already started.  NoMi residents and employees have been brimming with excitement at the mere thought that Duke Sorey’s Thugocracy Reign of Terror is almost over.

As for the North Miami Beach Team Apocalypse, it doesn’t matter how how incompetent Duke is, how many actually qualified candidates apply for the job, or even how many of their own residents speak out against this insanity. They chose Duke Sorey, and they are not about to let anything get in the way of their evil plan.

By now you must be wondering why they so desperately want Duke Sorey.

Well, for one thing, as the Chief Executive Officer of North Miami Beach, he will give them carte blanche.

This blank check will entitle Team Apocalypse to spend any amount of your tax dollars on anything they want, no matter how reckless.

Because that’s how it’s done in North Miami.

For example, in Fiscal Year 2018-19, then Interim City Manager Duke Sorey gave the five-member Mayor and Council an outrageous budget of $1,168,129.

However, in order to sate their spending addiction, Duke had to amend that budget to give the Mayor and Council an additional $68,086.

And even with the extra play money at their disposal, the elected officials still ended up spending an insane $228,765 more than their original budget.

As you can see, according to the Fiscal Year 2019-20 Adopted Budget, Duke once again increased the Mayor and Council budget to a WHOPPING $1,505,663!

However, once again, as Interim City Manager, Duke Sorey amended that budget to increase the Mayor and Council’s spending by another $70,702, up to a laughably insane $1,575,365.

The only reason the Mayor and Council weren’t able to spend all of it last year is because a global pandemic crimped their style.  Even so, they still managed to blow $1,429,526 of the North Miami taxpayers’ money.

On July 1, 2020, the checkbook was finally taken out of Duke’s hands when City Manager Theresa Therilus came on board and “slashed” the FY 2020-21 Adopted Budget, and restricted the Mayor and Council to a “meager” budget of $1,354,584, or an average of $270,916.80 per elected official.

As we reported in Your Tax Dollars, Part 1: The Care and Feeding of a North Miami Politician, we reviewed the total compensation of the elected officials’ salaries, as well as the managers’ salaries, in all 36 municipalities in Miami-Dade County and prepared a handy-dandy spreadsheet in order to compare how North Miami stacks up to all the others, and discovered:

• Of the County’s council/manager municipalities, the Mayor of Miami, who serves 453,579 residents, was the top earner with a compensation package of approximately $111,500.
• Even with less than 14% of the City of Miami’s population, North Miami’s Mayor, who serves the fifth-largest city, was the second-highest paid in the County.
• Shockingly, North Miami’s Council Members earned more than any of their counterparts in the entire County!

Meanwhile, in North Miami Beach, the highly qualified now-former City Manager Esmond Scott’s fiscally sound FY 2020-21 Adopted Budget afforded its seven elected officials with a reasonable budget of $693,066.00, or an average of $99,009.42 per elected official.

According to Team Apocalypse, that’s not nearly enough money to accomplish their fervent desire to be just like North Miami … broke, in debt, and corrupt.

And they’re ready to burn down the house to get there.

The moral of the story is that elections have consequences.

Instead of diligently researching what these four candidates were really planning, North Miami Beach voters let themselves be conned into believing that Team Apocalypse would work for the electorate instead of their own selfish political ambitions.  And now, the destruction of their beloved city is happening right before their very eyes.

The future is bleak unless Michael Joseph finally gets arrested and removed from office, and/or one or more of these corrupt politicians get recalled before the next election.

Considering the fact that the State Attorney is very reluctant to prosecute certain elected officials for political reasons, and considering the effort it would take to remove any of them in a recall election, it would be quite the long shot if either one of those scenarios did happen.

In the meantime, however, we here at VotersOpinion will never be intimidated or deterred by Team Apocalypse.  We will continue to monitor their every single move, document their unethical and corrupt actions, file complaints when necessary, and report our findings on a timely basis.

Because we are absolutely relentless in our quest for truth, transparency, accountability, and good governance.

And because we have a never-ending supply of popcorn.

Stephanie