North Miami Beach voters, it’s voting time! Strap in!

First, check out the Thursday, Oct. 20, 6:30-8:30 pm candidates’ forum at the McDonald Center 17011 NE 19^th Ave. Online and call-in instructions are below. This follows the Oct. 13 meet-and-greet at Washington Park, visible on YouTube. We’ll write more about both forums soon in this running series on the evolving election. Today’s focus is housekeeping.

The November 8 city commission race will determine the direction of the city, which changed radically after Daniela Jean won her commission seat Nov. 17, 2020, with 11.45 percent of eligible voters casting ballots. That swung the council to a 4-3 voting bloc that secured the replacement of Esmond Scott with Arthur H. Sorey III as $247,000-a-year city manager and the sacking of the white-shoe Weiss Serota law firm for solo practitioner Hans Ottinot as $720,000-a-year city attorney for this city of 44,000.

This election is all about those four votes.  For now, those votes include commissioners Daniela Jean, McKenzie Fleurimond, Michael Joseph, and Paule Villard, the only incumbent of the four facing a challenge. They almost always vote in concert.

Two slates of three candidates each are competing with each other.

If you like what you’ve been seeing since 2020, vote for Paule Villard, Mark St. Vil, and Hans Mardy. If just one wins on this slate, management keeps its 4-3 majority. If any two win, management gets a 5-2 supermajority. If all three win, Mayor Anthony DeFillipo will be one lonely lame duck until 2024.

These three candidates, in one way or another, all are campaigning for “people over politics,” or neighborhood outreach, social services for the young, scholarships for first-generation high school grads, more accessibility for seniors. Critics and opponents have also cited a culture of secrecy, lack of accountability, ethical violations, favoritism, and corruption. All three happen to be Haitian-American, and are of otherwise wildly different orientations, backgrounds, and temperaments. Hans Mardy wants to change the seats from at-large to districts.

Opposing them you’ll find three familiar hands: incumbent Fortuna Smuckler and ex-commissioners Jay Chernoff, and Phyllis Smith. They, too, are running as a slate. All are campaigning for a more honest, transparent and fiscally responsible government and for more civility on the dais. All three need to win to break the 4-3 vote that city management is trying so hard to keep. And all three happen to be white.

Promising newcomer Wrendly Mesidor and Hubert Dubé are not in this particular dogfight, but they are running.

The last two years have been unusually bitter on a commission historically known for its contentiousness. Paule Villard has been a particular target for attack, most recently over the giveaway of $225,000 in Publix gift cards, high travel expenses to luxury hotels, and plastering her face on city events, sometimes originated by other commissioners. The four-commissioner majority censured longtime Commissioner Barbara Kramer – with unfounded allegations of “racially-charged” remarks — after Kramer attempted and failed to censure Villard for ethical violations. Kramer, who owns Ford Window Treatments, has been a strong and sometimes abrasive voice for transparency on the commission, and her term ends in November.

Early voting runs 7 am-7 pm Monday, October 24, through Sunday, November 6.

To learn more, check out the Meet and Greet the Candidates 6:30-8:30 pm Thursday, Oct. 20 – that’s TONIGHT, if you are reading this Thursday — at the Marjorie & William McDonald Center at 17011 NE 19^th Ave. in North Miami Beach. There was a Meet and Greet October 13 at the Washington Park Community Center. You can check that out elsewhere on this blog or here on YouTube.

Going online? Try the following:

Video call link here or https://meet.google.com/gja-rijb-tfy

Or dial: (US) +1 262-558-8963 PIN: 242 518 510#

More phone numbers here: https://tel.meet/gja-rijb-tfy?pin=2629617928596

HERE ARE THE CANDIDATES, WITH SUBSTANTIVE LINKS WHERE POSSIBLE:

GROUP 2 COMMISSIONER:

Jay Chernoff (commissioner 1989-2007), Hubert Dubé and incumbent Paule Villard

GROUP 4 COMMISSIONER:

Hans Mardy and incumbent Fortuna Smukler

GROUP 6 COMMISSIONER:

Wrendly Mesidor, Phyllis Smith (commissioner 2007-2020) and Mark St. Vil

Finally, some tips of the hat.

First, to Stephanie Kienzle for giving me this berth, as she has Commissioner McKenzie Fleurimond. Agree with her or not, she will welcome all comers to her blog.

Second, to Saundra Douglas and Lorenzo Hall for hosting the October 13 forum at the Washington Park Community Center.

Third, to Alison Robie for putting together tonight’s event. This might be the last NMB election I cover, so I’ll try to be objective when able, and subjective when I choose.

Fourth, to resident Mubarak Kazan, who speaks and sometimes challenges commissioners, trying to keep the city honest.

Finally, one huge shoutout to North Miami Beach’s own tech whiz Keith Myers, who has created www.nmbtransparency.com, an invaluable portal into the workings of the city that its own government too often tries to obscure. This, folks, is what citizenship is about.

Mark Sell