The town of Surfside will have a special election Nov. 7, 2023, that could change future elections in the municipality.
Residents will vote on five charter amendments, one that would extend the terms of both the mayor and commissioners from two to four years and another that would require a mayoral candidate to receive a majority vote before being elected. If approved, those changes would affect the outcome of the town’s next general election March 19, 2024.
As it stands now, all Surfside commissioners are elected at-large every two years. The first charter amendment would change that to elect only two new commissioners for four-year terms at any given election. To accommodate the staggered terms, the extension would only apply to the top two vote-getters in the 2024 election, while the remaining two would still be subject to the two-year term limits until 2026, when the new rule takes full effect.
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Surfside Mayor Shlomo Danzinger and Commissioner Nelly Velasquez often bump heads at commission meetings.
Candidates for mayor, on the other hand, run in their own separate election, meaning whoever wins in March would be sitting pretty until 2028 if the amendment is passed.
Victory possibly won’t come as easily to candidates abiding by the current rules of the charter, however, which requires only a plurality – that is, more votes than any other candidate, but not an absolute majority – to win. The second charter amendment would require candidates to receive more than 50% of the vote before being elected as mayor. If that fails to happen, a runoff between the top two candidates would have to take place.
At a special commission meeting Aug. 2, where the potential charter amendments were initially proposed to the commission, Mayor Shlomo Danzinger came prepared with a PowerPoint railing against runoff elections. He presented the argument that runoffs often result in low voter turnout, higher costs to residents and increased conflict due to a longer election cycle.
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Gerardo Vildostegui, Surfside Resident
Lost on no one is that Danzinger himself won by a mere plurality in his own election in 2022. Receiving approximately 34% of the vote, he was elected by only 501 votes in a town with more than 5,000 residents. His opponents do not fail to remind him of that.
At an Aug. 22 meeting, resident Gerardo Vildostegui expressed criticism over what he calls an “unprecedented aggrandizement of the mayoral office,” during which Danzinger has taken his own office in the municipality’s Town Hall, where he could direct staff members out of sight of public scrutiny.
“We have a mayor with 34% of the vote who acts like a dictator,” said Vildostegui, “and that’s why it’s important that you change the charter so that any mayor who’s going to wield maximal power – firing the town manager, forcing resignations, instituting criminal investigations of his critics, abusing the town emergency contact system – needs to get a majority vote.”
Bubbling Conflicts
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Former Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett was removed from a July 25, 2023, commission meeting under Mayor Shlomo Danzinger’s order for violating decorum rules.
Vildostegui’s comments outline only some of the allegations Danzinger has faced in the past year and a half that he’s been in office. The mayor has also come under fire for striking down environmental regulations in the coastal community.
The strongest voice on the commission opposing Danzinger’s agenda has been that of Commissioner Nelly Velasquez, the only incumbent reelected last year. The ongoing rivalry is why Velasquez believes another possible charter amendment enforcing residency requirements is aimed right at her.
The third charter amendment that residents will be voting on come November would allow the commission to hold a public hearing to determine “whether a vacancy on the commission exists due to a commissioner ceasing to possess and maintain qualifications and/or residency within the town.” Velasquez, who sold her house and now rents an apartment in Surfside, feels that the amendment is a political ploy to remove her from office.
Policy aside, Danzinger and Velasquez often bump heads on the dais over the latter’s tendency to interrupt or speak out of order. Velasquez has said she feels Danzinger enforces petty rules on her more stringently than he does on other commissioners, especially Vice Mayor Jeffrey Rose, who consistently sides with the mayor on controversial issues.
Danzinger enraged residents and Velasquez when he snapped back at the commissioner for disrupting decorum, asking the audience if anybody knew Spanish to recite the rules to her that way instead. Velasquez, a Hispanic who speaks English fluently and was born in the United States, was highly offended. Danzinger has since made a public apology, although he did not address Velasquez by name.
At the previous meeting in July, former Mayor Charles Burkett was kicked out of the meeting by Danzinger for his own decorum violation after continuously referring to Commissioner Fred Landsman by name. According to the town charter, any resident speaking publicly must direct their comments to the commission as a whole. Danzinger had Burkett removed from the chambers, despite a motion to appeal the mayor’s decision and allow the public comment to continue.
That debacle continued into the Aug. 8 regular meeting when Burkett returned to make a citizen’s presentation on residents’ speech rights, citing a charter rule that allows the commission to appeal a mayor’s decision on matters of order by a majority vote. Town attorney Lillian Arango insisted that the rule does not apply to Burkett’s particular violation. Danzinger then retorted with his own presentation, which included disparaging images of Burkett underneath a question mark to indicate confusion and a thought bubble that read “Your rules don’t apply to me!”
Additional Charter Amendments
Under the first proposed charter amendment, the vice mayor will still be the commissioner who receives the most votes on the commission, except that those votes will be split between two elections. That means that, although all commissioners will serve four-year terms, the vice mayor could lose that title after two years if another commissioner is suddenly elected by more votes than the former received in their own election two years prior.
Also on the November ballot are two additional charter amendments that would allow the town clerk to file an appeal with the personnel appeals board and remove limitations on indebtedness for emergency and/or infrastructure projects not exceeding $10 million.