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In the November 2020 election and the December runoff in Palmetto Bay, I beat incumbent Council Member David Singer and Leann Tellum skunked Ed Silva, the Palmetto Bay Manager who was fired. It has been over six months. You’d think campaigning would stop until we get closer to the 2022 elections, wouldn’t you?
Well it hasn’t.
There’s an old saying that politics makes strange bedfellow and Singer and Silva have attracted an odd assortment of bed mates. Throughout the campaign a group of the usual suspects formed a group called “A Better Palmetto Bay”. This isn’t a grass roots community group. It’s made up of people who are developers and who want the Village of Palmetto Bay to give them anything they want – mostly higher density and variances to cover a multitude of design sin.
Wayne Rosen, a developer who can’t figure out what to do with a parcel right next to Village Hall kicked in a wad of cash to fund mailer, mass text messages, and email campaigns. There’s a guy who was pissed off because he wanted to build a mixed use building on US1 with no parking and the Village resisted. Finally, the Council allowed him to build with no parking. Guess what? He’s pissed that we allowed him to build with no parking. It seems he can’t hold onto tenants because they and clients can’t park. He blames the Village for his lack of parking. That guy tossed in some cash, too. Two real estate developer brothers have been supportive and put their money where somebody else’s mouth is. And there have been other developers funding this thing.
A Better Palmetto Bay is cared for by a local attorney who watches out over it like the headmistress at an orphanage and has its books carefully maintained by a Coral Gables accountant. As you might guess, none of them are Palmetto Bay residents.
The campaigns they come up with are laughable. Their new target is the Saturday Palmetto Bay Farmer’s Market. First, they complained about the parking. But now that baseball and softball seasons are up, parking isn’t a problem. Then they came up with an idea that only an accountant could love.
They claimed that the Farmer’s Market was causing wear-and-tear and accelerated depreciation of park assets like concrete sidewalks and the grass and the trees. Only a few number crunchers could even understand that argument. Most people shrugged their shoulders at that one. Their argument is that we leave Coral Reef Park out in the rain.
So with those cannonshots exploding in their faces, they were left to seek refuge in the last arguments of scoundrels: what Palmetto Bay is doing is harming children. “Ah, ha!,” David Singer, ousted Mayor Gene Flinn, and fired Village Manager Ed Silva all cry, “We’re going to say you’re harming children!!!”
These Three Gay Cabelleros of Palmetto Bay Politics are trying to mislead and bamboozle local residents. After a young Miami resident was abducted from a park in Atlanta and murdered, the Miami-Dade County Commission passed an ordinance requiring certain persons who were coming onto County parks to work in programmed geared towards children to have criminal background checks.
When Gene Flinn was Mayor, Palmetto Bay enacted its own version of the Shannon Melendi Act. The ordinance in that form it was passed in 2008 and you can read a copy of it by clicking the link below. It addresses “Child Event Workers” which are defined as: “any fukl- or part-time employee, agent, volunteer, independent contractor, or employee or volunteer of an independent contractor of a carnival or fair that hosts amusement rides in a park owned or operated by Village of Palmetto Bay.”
The ordinance goes on to exempt “carnivals, festivals, trade shows, and fairs that do no host amusement rides.” The entity hosting our Saturday Farmers’ Market does not rent out space for amusement rides and likely never will.
The Shannon Melendi Act does not apply to the Farmers’ Market and the claim pushed by David Singer, Ed Silva, and Gene Flinn know it. How can I say that they know it”?
Coral Reef Park hosted a Farmers’ Market put on by another vendor in 2016 and extended in 2017. At the time, Gene Flinn was Mayor and Ed Silva was the Manager. There was no requirement that the people selling goods at that first Farmers’ Market be fingerprinted and had their backgrounds checked. If it had been a requirement, you’d expect that Flinn and Silva would have been all over it.
They didn’t apply the Shannon Melendi Act to that first Farmers’ Market because they couldn’t apply it to that first Farmers’ Market. And just like that one, we can’t apply it to this Farmers’ Market.
Flinn, Silva, Singer, and the folks writing checks to fund A Better Palmetto Bay all know that it doesn’t apply. If they want us to create a new ordinance, there are ways to do that. They could even mount a campaign to put a referendum on the ballot.
But they cannot truthfully say that we’re not enforcing a law that they knew couldn’t be enforced the way they want it to be. It would require a new law.
The fact of the matter is that Flinn, Singer, and Silva, shown in the picture above, are playing this as a political game. They want to be the Colorado River and through relentless lies, erode the truth and hopefully dislodge the sitting Mayor and Council Members so that pliant and complicit officials will bend to their desires. And they will say and do anything to do it.
You know, the people of Palmetto Bay should stop listening to these Airheads.
Steve Cody was elected to the Village of Palmetto Bay Council in November 2020, beating David Singer by 6,898 votes to 6,399.
