Results, Not Chaos: What We Built for Surfside in the Last Two Years
- Gerardo Vildostegui
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Yesterday morning, in our last official act of the 2024-26 term, Vice Mayor Tina Paul and I helped to re-dedicate Little Bay Park, on the corner of 92nd Street and Bay Drive. The new native-plant garden there has a been a pet project of mine, and seeing it through to completion has been a particular source of satisfaction and pride for me. You can see it in my smile.
Today, as the Commission’s term and my re-election campaign both draw to a close, I have a similar feeling of satisfaction as I look back on my two years of work as a Commissioner:
Residents are enjoying the 96th St. park, which we opened after years of construction delays. (And that was after we discovered that the previous administration had botched the project by constructing the new park building FIVE FEET from where it was supposed to be built!)
The Abbott drainage project, a key part of the Stormwater Management Plan, is underway.
We leave behind new ordinances that protect residents’ freedom of speech, as well as a beefed-up ethics code that protects the Town against self-dealing by elected officials.
When a new Commission takes the dais in April, they’ll inherit new Town properties on Harding Avenue that my Commission acquired.
They’ll also inherit a federal transportation grant that I helped to secure to make our streets safer and to help residents get around.
The new Commission will also get to oversee two vitally important projects for which our Commission awarded contracts last Friday, in our final meeting: a dune-restoration project that will beautify and protect our beachfront, and the Champlain South memorial, which helps fulfill our sacred duty to honor and to remember all that we lost on the darkest day in Surfside’s history.
These and other accomplishments are, in large measure, attributable to the excellent work of Town staff—and, in particular, to the smart, steady, professional leadership provided by Acting Town Manager Mario Diaz and Chief of Police Charles Press. Bringing them both to Surfside was among our Commission’s greatest contributions to the Town.
I mention the Manager and the Chief primarily because I want to acknowledge and thank them for all that they’ve done for this Town. But it’s important to mention them for another reason as well. One of the candidates in this election—backed, yet again, by an anonymous PAC whose donors are not publicly known—is trying to convince you that Surfside is in chaos. It’s ironic, because that same candidate, a little over three years ago, fired our Town Manager, Chief of Police, and Financial Director within a single 24-hour period. And when he went to hire their replacements, he made personal loyalty the foremost criterion—not loyalty to the Town, not competence, and certainly not professional experience. The result, as anyone who lived through the 2022-24 term can tell you, was chaos. And I have no doubt that that candidate will try to do the same thing again if he is elected tomorrow, firing our professional leadership and replacing them with loyalists who serve him personally, rather than the Town.
Today, Surfside is stable and thriving under competent, professional leadership. And tomorrow, on March 17th, you can elect a Commission that will keep our Town moving in the right direction.
