One of the most important moments in last week’s Candidates’ Forum was the discussion of the third question, about the Town’s plans for dealing with stormwater–especially on Abbott Avenue, which experiences some of the worst flooding in Town. I’m going to start this series of Forum recaps with that question, since it’s been the subject of a recent mailer by that mysterious “One Surfside” PAC.
(By the way, if you’re wondering why an outside PAC based in Plantation is so interested in the Surfside election that they’d spend $20,000 bombarding you with mailings…well, I’m wondering that, too! 🤔 But that’s a topic for another day and another blog post.)
So, here’s what Surfside residents got in their mailboxes this week:
I gotta say, I chuckled at the mention of “Shlomo’s plan.” The mailer makes it look as though “Shlomo’s plan” is to make the sun shine–but nobody in Surfside (except for maybe Mayor Danzinger himself) believes that he has the power to do that! (Mayor Danzinger does get confused sometimes about the limits of his powers–but that, too, is a topic for another day and another blog post!)
As anybody who watched the most recent Commission meeting (Jan. 9, 2024) could see, this Commission’s two-year term is almost up, and there is no clear plan for moving the Abbott drainage project forward. Last year, this Commission scaled back the project from what had originally been planned, from two pumps to one. But when the Town put the scaled-back, one-pump project out to bid, the bids that came back in December 2023 put the cost of the project at $8.09 million–a price worth paying, but much more than this Commission had budgeted for.
At the Candidates’ Forum, when the question about the Abbott drainage project was asked, my opponent Mr. Forbes gave the first response. He noted, correctly, that the project has gotten stuck because of a failure to borrow funds to pay for it. My opponent Mr. Landsman agreed that “we don’t have the budget” to pay for the project right now. And I agreed with them, too!
But the crucial question that I asked–and that you voters should be asking, too–is this:
WHY don’t we have enough funds for this project?
I’ll tell you why: It’s because the current Commission didn’t take the necessary steps to borrow those funds. If they had put a specific question about the Abbott drainage project on the ballot for the November 2023 election, we could have had the money already, and the project would already be underway.
But do you know what this Commission was discussing–instead of Abbott drainage–at the two special meetings in August when they set the ballot questions for the November 2023 election?
They were trying to extend their own terms, from two years to four.
Mayor Danzinger was working extra-hard to make sure that he could once again get elected by a 34% minority vote–only this time for a four-year term!
They were trying to create a mechanism for booting Commissioner Velasquez from the Commission.
They were even discussing–I kid you not!–whether to make it easier to hire their own relatives as Town employees.
Borrowing specifically for the Abbott drainage project didn’t make it onto the ballot in November 2023. This Commission could still try to put that issue (as well as extra borrowing for the undergrounding project) onto the ballot for November 2024–but even if that passes, we’ll have lost a full year because of this missed opportunity.
Now, you may be wondering, “Didn’t we vote on borrowing last November?” We did, but that ballot question wasn’t about borrowing for any specific project like the Abbott drainage project, or for extra money for the utilities-undergrounding project. As my colleague Tina Paul correctly pointed out, that ballot question would have given the Commission a blank check to borrow for any non-emergency infrastructure project, including possibly a parking garage.
So how did the discussion at the Candidates’ Forum conclude? Well, rather than take responsibility for the Commission’s failure to secure the funds to improve Abbott drainage, my opponent Mr. Rose chose instead to blame the voters! He was upset that the voters in November 2023 failed to give the Commission that blank check. Mr. Rose’s answer was basically a more polite version of the anti-voter tantrum that Mayor Danzinger threw at the January 2024 meeting, when the bids for the Abbott project were discussed.
Source: https://play.champds.com/surfsidefl/event/294 at 5h36m34s
But it’s NOT your fault that the Abbott drainage project has stalled! It’s the current Commission’s–and, specifically, it’s the fault of Messrs. Danzinger, Rose, and Landsman, who used all that valuable time at the August 2023 special meetings to put their own interests on the November 2023 ballot, rather than the Town’s.
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A short epilogue to my post…
As I wrote this post and reviewed my notes from the Candidates’ Forum, I found myself still grieving over what Surfside residents lost that night. Over the Forum’s three hours, the Commission candidates had a wide-ranging and revealing discussion, hosted by an esteemed pro-democracy organization (the League of Women Voters) and presided over by an intelligent, neutral, and professional moderator (Dr. Terry Murphy). Our hosts and the candidates spent a great many hours preparing for a debate that should have formed part of Surfside’s historical record–not just for this election period, but for decades to come. The Forum was an excellent snapshot of our Town at a pivotal historical moment, and that snapshot has been lost.
It’s important to keep looking forward, though. And, thankfully, there are a few ways to recover some of what we lost that night:
First, you can read the written statements that the candidates submitted, ahead of the Forum, to the League of Women Voters. (You can tell a lot about this election just by comparing who took the time to write a statement and who didn’t!)
Second, you can watch the video of my opening and closing statements, which a member of the audience managed to capture.
And, finally, I do have my notes on the questions and answers, so I can keep offering you more partial recaps like this one. Stay tuned!