The Criminal Commissioners of North Miami Beach have placed an interesting item on the Agenda for the March 24, 2022 Commission Meeting.

It appears that Paule Villard’s personal, taxpayer-funded campaign manager, Willis Howard, has resigned from his imaginary position of “Chief of Staff” at City Hall.

Considering that Willis, who was hired by City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey on May 17, 2021 for an astronomical $127,305 annual salary, is by “profession” nothing but a dime-a-dozen lobbyist-slash-campaign strategist, it’s surprising he would give up such a sweet gig.

Willis Howard and his BFF, former North Miami Mayor Andre Pierre both registered in North Miami Beach as lobbyists on February 9, 2021.

Andre registered to lobby on behalf of Pro Transportation, Inc. [sic], d/b/a ProKel Mobility, the second rate company he directed the four Criminal Commissioners to approve of managing the City’s trolley line.

Willis registered to represent — himself, for the specific issue of “Community Relations,” which is code word for “Paule Villard’s Campaign Manager.”

On May 19, 2021, two days after Duke put him on the City’s payroll, Willis withdrew his lobbyist registration in exchange for a do-nothing gig financed by North Miami Beach taxpayers.

Unfortunately for Willis, he’s recently found himself under fire for collecting a full-time government paycheck, while at the same time getting paid to manage the campaign of Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the allegedly self-funded candidate for Florida’s 20th Congressional District, who won the race in a special election on January 11, 2022.

While working for then-candidate Cherfilus-McCormick, Willis collected a total of $86,650 in “consulting fees” between March 11, 2020 and January 31, 2022, of which $83,650 he earned while employed by the City of North Miami Beach.

Public employees who participate in such campaign activities may be in violation of Sec. III (b)(2)(b) of the Florida Code of Ethics, which states, “A public officer or employee also is prohibited from holding any employment or having a contractual relationship which will pose a frequently recurring conflict between the official’s private interests and public duties or which will impede the full and faithful discharge of the official’s public duties. [Sec. 112.313(7), Fla. Stat.].”

It’s quite possible that Willis chose to resign from his “official” position at the City of North Miami Beach before he found himself on the receiving end of a Florida Commission on Ethics probable cause ruling.

In any event, as an official member of the Duke Sorey Friends & Family Plan, and especially with Paule’s re-election campaign quickly looming, Willis Howard still needed the ability to unobtrusively lurk around City Hall while having a “legitimate” reason for being there.

As expected, Duke came up with a plan to keep Paule’s taxpayer-funded campaign manager on the payroll, while making it appear that his “services” are essential to the running of the City.

He then had the unethical, unprofessional, and incompetent Interim City “Attorney” Hans Ottinot draw up a bogus Consulting Agreement so that Willis Howard could be retained “to assist [sic] Office of the City Manager to complete projects relating to annexation and the extension of the CRA [Community Redevelopment Agency] agreement with Miami-Dade County.”

Because every lobbyist/campaign strategist is an expert on “annexation” and “CRA agreements.”

Oddly, the term of this Consulting Agreement runs from April 13, 2022 through September 30, 2022.  As compensation for his “expertise,” Willis Howard will, of course, receive the “remaining gross salary, inclusive of employer’s portion for medical benefits, on a monthly basis during the term of this Agreement.”

The fact that this Consulting Agreement deliberately excludes the dollar amount of his remaining gross salary without specifying how many months are remaining on Willis Howard’s contract is proof that either (a) Duke is trying to hide how much he will pay Willis, or (b) Hans Ottinot is such an inept lawyer he forgot to include that silly little detail, proving yet again that and has no business drawing up contracts.

Unfortunately, both reasons are entirely plausible, so take your pick.

What’s really curious, however, is that all of a sudden “annexation” is being mentioned for the first time since Michael Joseph deviously put the kibosh on annexing the “donut hole” because it would “dilute the Haitian vote.”

His words, not ours.

Since 2015, the City of North Miami Beach had been attempting to annex the Miami-Dade County parcels unofficially dubbed the “donut hole.”

These unincorporated areas are comprised of one large and three small sections located right in the heart of North Miami Beach.  In fact, there is no manner of ingress or egress to any of these areas except by means of North Miami Beach thoroughfares.  Incorporating these parcels makes perfect sense in order to encompass land that the City already surrounds on all fronts.

These parcels are designated by Miami-Dade County as Community Council 2 Subarea 24.

The majority of residents in the large portion of Subarea 24 are Orthodox Jews, and most of the homes are assessed at $500,000 or more.

Needless to say, the annexation of this area would not only greatly increase the tax base for the City, but would also push the population over the 50,000 mark, qualifying North Miami Beach as an entitlement city eligible for federal grant funding.

While this annexation would greatly benefit the current and future residents of North Miami Beach, the four Criminal Commissioners, Michael Joseph, McKenzie Fleurimond, Paule Villard, and Daniela Jean, could not care less about increasing the City’s ad valorem tax base.

All these racists care about is ethnicity and skin color.

More specifically, people who “look like them.”

In 2018, when Michael Joseph was elected as a Commissioner, one of his first goals was to stop the annexation process because the prospect of welcoming more than 10,000 new, mostly non-Haitian, voters into the City would certainly hurt his chances for re-election in 2024.

In fact, one of the reasons that the four Criminal Commissioners, Michael Joseph, McKenzie Fleurimond, Paule Villard, and Daniela Jean, were so desperate to fire former City Manager Esmond Scott was because he was working hard to move the donut hole annexation plan forward.  They needed to stop that from happening at any cost.

Needless to say, these four have no plans to annex the “donut hole” any time soon.

We’ve heard a rumor from a (mostly) credible source, however, that City officials are now looking to annex a completely different, but contiguous area of unincorporated Miami-Dade County — and for entirely nefarious reasons indeed.

We also heard that the soon-to-be-termed-out County Commissioner Jean Monestime is behind the scenes pushing for this annexation.

While we do not yet have hard evidence that this is their plan, we do expect that more will be revealed at Thursday night’s Commission Meeting.

In the meantime, let’s take a close look at the other unincorporated areas potentially up for grabs.

The Skylake section of North Miami Beach has always been troublesome due to fact that a small portion of North Miami Beach was carved out of an irregular portion of unincorporated Miami-Dade County.  That portion of City property is an outlier, cut off from the proverbial “mainland,” and is surrounded by unincorporated property on three sides.

For years, the Northeast Dade Municipal Advisory Committee (MAC) had been proposing the incorporation of the unincorporated Miami-Dade County land surrounding Skylake north to the County line (the green area marked with a “4” on the map below).  On June 5 2018, The Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners held a Public Hearing on Proposed Incorporation of the Northeast Dade Area.

The referendum was placed on the ballot for the November 6, 2018 General Election, but it failed by the slimmest of margins.

The City of North Miami Beach’s annexation of this portion of unincorporated Miami-Dade County would make just as much sense as annexing the “donut hole,” since either area would greatly increase the ad valorem tax base for the City.  The assessed value of these properties are well above the average for Miami-Dade County, and the market values, especially in the Highland Lakes area north of 203rd Street, are one million dollars or more.

While annexing the Northeast Dade parcel would be a boon for the entire City of North Miami Beach, the demographics of this area would be detrimental to the radical agenda of the four Criminal Commissioners who presently have a majority on the dais.

In Michael Joseph’s words, with only 6.4% of the population who “look like him,” annexing this area would “dilute the Haitian vote.”

The only other parcel of unincorporated Miami-Dade County property available for annexation is the area formerly referred to as the Biscayne Gardens MAC, which was also the subject of a failed incorporation referendum.

On November 2, 2021, Miami-Dade County held a Special Election to ask voters to authorize the County Commissioners to “create a new municipality, subject to approval of a municipal charter by the electors of the proposed municipality…”

Despite the lies and scare tactics used by a group of shady and greedy incorporation pushers with ulterior motives, they got their asses handed to them on election day.

Apparently voters weren’t as stupid as the aspiring incorporators were hoping.

The biggest proponent for incorporation was current lame duck Miami-Dade Commissioner and career politician Jean Monestime, who was probably hoping for a roost to rule when he’s termed out in November.

First elected as a North Miami Councilman in 2002, he served until 2005, when he ran for Mayor and lost to Kevin Burns.  In 2007, Monestime one again threw his hat in the ring, and lost once again to Mayor Burns.  He finally gave up on North Miami and in 2010 he ran for and won a seat on the County Commission, and he’s been keeping that seat warm ever since.

In 2015, Monestime purchased a house in the proposed Biscayne Gardens annexation area located at 14641 NW 17 Drive for $260,000, which the former owner lost in foreclosure.

He also has a vested interest in a contemplated annexation by North Miami Beach.

Meanwhile, County officials were, and still are, chomping at the bit to unload this 5.03 square mile chunk of real estate as quickly as possible.

A September 30, 2020 Miami-Dade County Staff Report calculated that the County would save approximately $3.4 million a year by not having to use its resources to service the new municipality.  Page 9 of the report states, “the proposed incorporation area generates approximately $9.6 million in UMSA [unincorporated service area] revenue, and the County spends approximately $13.02 million providing services to the area.  The incorporation of [Biscayne Gardens] will have a positive impact on the remaining unincorporated area of approximately $3.4 million.”

While the incorporation push went up in smoke, the County still has a chance to recoup its losses if the Biscayne Gardens area is annexed by a neighboring municipality.

It would certainly not be too farfetched an idea that the four North Miami Beach Criminal Commissioners would definitely have an appetite (their favorite word) to help the County — and themselves — achieve their mutual goal.

After all, the demographics, which is the only thing that matters to them, are much more to their liking that the voting base of the “donut hole” or the Northeast Dade MAC area.

Unfortunately — for them anyway — there is a potentially insurmountable problem.

The voting residents of the Biscayne Gardens area, who currently enjoy an unincorporated millage rate of 1.9283, already said a resounding NO to paying a proposed incorporated millage of 4.0000.  North Miami Beach officials will certainly have a hell of a time convincing them to pay the City’s millage rate of 6.2000.

Even more telling is that the referendum failed miserably despite the offensive the use of racist tactics by the pro-incorporation agitators, whose only selling point to voters was to form a “black city.”

Despite the fact that 69% of the Biscayne Gardens population is black, they didn’t fall for the pitch.

Apparently, they’re perfectly happy the way things are, which are low taxes, County police service, County sanitation, and most importantly, zero identity politics.

Wannabe annexation and CRA “Consultant” Willis Howard is as non-essential to North Miami Beach taxpayers as incorporation was to the residents of the Biscayne Gardens area.

The City already has qualified attorneys, unlike the moronic Hans Ottinot, who are experienced in all things annexation.

The City’s CRA also has qualified attorneys who specialize in managing Community Redevelopment Agencies.

There is one reason and one reason only that Duke Sorey wants to keep this freeloader on the payroll … Paule needs Willis to run her re-election campaign and she wants YOU, the taxpayers of North Miami Beach, to foot the bill.

Duke, of course, takes his orders directly from the wannabe “Queen of NMB.”  He has no choice but to do her bidding.

If all of you are sick and tired of your tax dollars being wasted on the Duke Sorey Friends & Family Plan, and especially, Paule Villard’s campaign for re-election, you need to attend Thursday night’s Commission meeting and tell your representatives on the dais to cut the crap.

If you don’t speak out and put a stop to the never ending corruption and racism, you get the government you deserve.

Stephanie