There is a candidate currently running for office in North Miami Beach who is also behind a petition effort tied to districting our city. While that may sound like structural reform, buried within it is something far more concerning.
In 2016, over 60% of voters approved of term limits by referendum. That was a clear decision by the people to ensure turnover, accountability, and fresh leadership. Now, this petition attempts to undo that.
If passed, it would allow current elected officials to sidestep existing term limits and remain in office far longer than voters ever intended. We are talking about the possibility of extending their time in power to nearly two decades.
That is not reform. That is rewriting the rules to benefit those already in office.
To justify it, a narrative is being pushed that our city needs to be districted because residents are somehow not represented equally. That claim does not hold up. North Miami Beach has always functioned as one community where any resident can reach any elected official. Districting would limit that access, not improve it.
Historically, representation has not been limited by geography, with service extending across all neighborhoods, east, west, and throughout the city. Our president, a former commissioner, has firsthand experience showing that claims of limited access to elected officials are misleading, and districting the city would reduce, not enhance, that access.
What is being presented as progress is in reality a distraction. The real issue is extending term limits and giving current officials a free pass to stay longer.
North Miami Beach voters already made their decision in 2016. Trying to reverse that through fine print and misdirection is not leadership.
It is a power grab, plain and simple.
We do not need leaders who divide, mislead, and rewrite the rules to benefit themselves. North Miami Beach deserves honesty, accountability, and respect for the will of its voters.
The candidate running in Phylis Smith’s seat is the apparent culprit. He was placed there by MJ as payback for Smith’s vote to censure the Mayor. Why else would the candidate pick the seat of a Commissioner who will be the toughest to win of the three seats up for grabs? Why would he not run in the seat that currently has a certifiable Nut Case running in it. That Nut-Job candidate currently running in the seat being vacated by Commissioner Smith doesn’t reside in NMB (she lives in unincorporated Biscayne Gardens) and has had no involvement in the affairs of NMB. It’s obvious, just like the candidate running against Phylis Smith, that they both are running on the promises made to them by MJ.
Any candidates that Michael Joseph is involved in, i.e., Linda Joseph Noel and now Ariel Vasquez, are merely his puppets. He chose them because they are useful idiots who will do his bidding. All Michael Joseph needs is one more body on the dais who will vote with him and his current two co-conspirators, McKenzie and Daniela, and the takeover of NMB will be complete.
You all saw what happened from 2020 to 2022 when they had four Criminal Commissioners on the dais until Paule Villard was finally voted out and replaced by Jay Chernoff. They hired the criminal ex-City Manager Duke Sorey, who stole millions of dollars from the city and spent them on the four Criminal Commissioners by way of taxpayer funded vacations all around the country and beyond, food orgies every single day, police chauffeurs, weekly expensive events, hiring friends and family employees and vendors, etc., etc., etc.
If North Miami Beach residents want to keep their city free from Organized Crime, they must not ever allow any Michael Joseph endorsed candidate sit on the dais ever again.
In fact, the only real solution here is to start a recall election and get rid of all three up there if possible.
Commissioner Smith is not vacating a seat; that is Commissioner Smukler due to term limits.
Now, on to the question of how these connections are supposed to make sense. The Mayor, Michael Joseph, serves as First Vice Chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, so I can understand why Linda Joseph might be a likely choice. She is a proud democratic socialist and serves on the Miami-Dade Democratic Executive Committee representing District 7, which, notably, is nowhere near North Miami Beach and instead sits in Biscayne Gardens. But then there is the candidate running for Seat 6, who, according to voter records, is a card-carrying Republican and even hosted Senator Rick Scott at his church in 2024. If anyone can explain how those two worlds meaningfully intersect, I am genuinely interested in hearing it.
And then there is the bigger picture, which at this point feels less like local government and more like a long-running reality show no one remembers signing up for. A pastor candidate tied to Michael Joseph is already a complicated situation. Add in Linda Joseph, whose past includes making confusing and conflicting statements about her name and residency while defending the Mayor’s eligibility at a commission meeting a few years ago, and it becomes even harder to follow.
At this stage, calling the city a mess feels almost generous. It is less a mess and more a level of dysfunction that seems to feed itself. You would need a super-sized blower to clear it out, and even then, it might just end up spreading the debris around rather than actually fixing anything.
I remember voting for term limits. The city seemed to be moving forward with the sentiment across the country. But nothing has changed where it also needs to, in Congress.
Going in reverse is the last thing NMB should be doing. It’s time for fresh ideas that might roll into progress. And dividing our city into separate fiefdoms is a poor idea. We’re a small city. I could understand districting in a large city, but it is completely unnecessary here in NMB.
Like the author of this article named themselves, damn right, wake up NMB!
As a nearby resident of LJN for over ten years in Biscayne Gardens, I was surprised when one of her neighbors contacted me to tell me about LJN’s latest scheme to run for office in the City of NMB. LJN was a key conspirator in spreading false information to residents of Biscayne Gardens to coerce them into voting to incorporate Biscayne Gardens into a municipal City. Fortunately, the false budget and taxing information she spread to residents about the proposed city’s budget was not believed by the majority of the residents. Proof of this was shown to her quite vividly at the end of the day of the special election when the votes were counted and the initiative to incorporate was defeated by a vote of 86% AGAINST and 14% FOR incorporating. Fast forward 5 years, and LJN is still trying to lie her way into a fat government paycheck by claiming she lives in the City of NMB when she does not.
I am well aware and I fully intend to out her publicly and shamefully.
You know we do not take carpetbaggers kindly.