FOLLOW THE MONEY: Palm Beach Gardens edition

Last night, the Palm Beach Gardens city council voted 4-1 (with Matt Lane voting 'nay') to place an amendment on the March ballot to overturn the term limits citizens initiative approved in November 2014 by 79% of Palm Beach Gardens voters. Citizen after citizen took the stand at the meeting with the message "don't touch our term limits." But one of the most illuminating was by resident Sid Dinerstein, a prime mover behind the term limits initiative:

Sid Dinerstein

SID DINERSTEIN: The first question I ask after having been here two months ago was how do five very well-intentioned city council candidates turn into five special interest apologists in a wink of an eye.  So, I do what everybody does when they have problems like that and I follow the money.

So here’s what I figured out: the extra three years you want the electorate to give you is worth $200,000 to each of you.

$30,000 plus for your base pay. $20,000 each of your own Cadillac health insurance packages. [To audience] How many of you people get one like that? And $10,000 for the pension that you get that we pay for that no one knows that you get. Then, additional thousands for mileage and giving reimbursements when you reach into our pockets instead of into your own.

Multiply that by three years and you just pocketed a cool $200,000.



Marc Pintel's new cap, custom made for him at the Gardens mall

Once I figured that out, I didn’t have to wonder anymore what happened to you guys. And why you are so unappreciative of the work we did when we put our hands in our pockets to get rid of the guys who were never leaving so we can have five new people just like you.

 

Furthermore, something that I am guessing you don’t know, in the David Levy term limits saga we the taxpayers, and this includes you, gave the city attorney $232,000. That’s what it came to for the privilege of trying to overturn the will of the voters.

MAJORITY OF ONE: Gardens Council Member stands up for the voters

Last night, the Palm Beach Gardens city council voted to place four amendments on the sleepy March ballot, one of which would overturn the 6-year term limits law approved in November 2014 by 79% of Palm Beach gardens voters in a high-turnout general election. While the self-serving majority rushed to extend their terms via their new term limits proposal, one council member brought the citizens to their feet with his thoughtful case for honesty and restraint. Here is Matthew Jay Lane's case for his sole nay vote:

COUNCIL MEMBER MATTHEW LANE:  ...I think the timing of these four proposals is extremely poor. We just had an election where over 20,000 Palm Beach Gardens showed up, 79% of them approved a citizen initiative that limited city council members terms to two consecutive three-year terms.  It seems to me that for this council who are sitting in our seats because of term limits to make it one of our first priorities to say that we want three more years in office -- it just seems like an amazing act of hubris, really terrible timing. It is saying to the the  80% of Gardens residents that came out that their vote didn’t mean anything. You gave us your opinion, and we don’t care.

Second, this proposal doesn’t address the most fundamental problem with the charter as it currently exists. Our terms in office need to be staggered. When I’ve spoken to the members of the charter review committee individually and when I have spoken to leading members of our community whom I respect , they’ve told me our terms need to be staggered. When this council took office the collective experience of the five members of this council were one year and seven months. There needs to be a mechanism put in place in this charter that obviates this problem.

This leads me to the third issue. The reason that the committees proposal doesn’t stagger the terms is because the members of the committee were not given sufficient time to complete their work. I attended a presentation by the vice chair of the charter review committee where she said the committee didn’t have sufficient time to look into the issue of staggering the terms and the facilitator of the committee, Dr. Lee, commented that this whole process was being done in weeks when it usually takes months to years  to appropriately and thoughtfully complete this task.

Fourth, the city shouldn’t be spending between $70-80,000 for a free-standing election where these important proposals are being hidden on a March ballot with the hope that they’ll be passed. Two-thirds of the registered voters voted for term limits in a general election where there was a high voter turnout. By placing this issue on the ballot this March we are permitting a small group of 1,000-2,000 people to overturn the vote of the 20,000 people who voted for a specific term limit.

Fifth, two of the five members of the charter review committee thought that we should have two four-year terms, which is really the norm across the country and the norm in the state of Florida. And I believe that the logic supporting this proposal is substantial and persuasive. And so I agree with two of the five members of the charter review committee on this issue. However, I have discussed this at a prior meeting and I won’t keep you here to hear my rationale again.

So, although I have high regard for the five people who agreed to serve on the charter review committee, I consider them as friends, and although as a matter of course I usually agree with these people 95% of the time, on this issue strongly disagree and I am voting against all four of the proposed changes to the charter. I believe the recommendations of the charter review committee were badly timed, rushed through without sufficient time to do the job right, are being hidden on the March ballot where very few people are expected to attend, and they are incomplete proposals...

... The public also needs to know that we as a council are receiving emails almost daily opposing the [council's new] term limits which were recently voted upon by 80%. If we pass these ordinances in the deceptive form in which they are written, we are intentionally -- these ordinances as written are intentionally attempting to deceive the public and we will be that type of politician that we are being accused of being in all these emails from our constituents who opposed these [new] term limits.

So for these reasons, I am voting against.

MAYOR MARIA MARINO: Sit down, please! No clapping, please!

Fear and Loathing in Palm Beach Gardens

Clearly, the Palm Beach Gardens City Council fears and loathes the voters that elected them.

When voters approved a retroactive term limits initiative with 79% of the vote in 2014, the political establishment of this small city of gated communities and golf courses went berserk.

One council member, David Levy, simply refused to obey the new limits and City Clerk Patricia Snider and other officials lined up to defend their own in court against the citizens. To add insult to injury, they used the citizens' tax money to do it.

They lost in court, but the fight didn't end there. In their first term in office, the new crop of council members have taken a unified stand against the results of the 2014 elections, creating a new referendum to gut the term limits law. But they aren't going to offer this new amendment to the general electorate. How could they? The council already knows that 79% of the voters approve of the term limits.

PBG residents, please go here to send a quick email to the council and tell them:

Hands off our term limits!

Instead, at their Dec. 7 meeting, the council is expected to vote (first reading) to put an anti-term limits proposal on the March ballot tucked inside a series of amendments recommended by a phony, hand-picked Charter Review Commission. The council members know that turnout will be light, with maybe as few as 1,000-2,000 voters going to the polls. Compare this to the 20,000 who voted in 2014. The council members know that they can count on the special interest constituencies in the town to turn out their supporters and they can use Palm Beach Gardens resources to promote the measure.

Only with this deceitful multi-level scheme can they hope to overturn the expressed will of the voters. If this proposal is presented to the general Palm Beach Gardens electorate, it wouldn't have a prayer.

This move is particularly brazen when you consider that the Palm Beach Gardens Charter explicitly warns against corrupt referendum shenanigans like this one. See Sec. 26-7(a) Calling of Election: "Except as otherwise provided in the law or city charter, an election shall be held in conjunction with a regular state, county or city election." In spite of this clear direction, the council will vote Thursday to place the referendum alone on the March ballot.

In 2014, the voters gave Palm Beach Gardens 6-year term limits, just like Boca Raton, Boynton Beach and Delray Beach. West Palm Beach and Wellington have 8-year limits. The Palm Beach Gardens proposal, if approved by a small subset of voters in March, would weaken the term limit to nine years, the weakest term limit in Palm Beach County!

Palm Beach Gardens residents are encouraged to email the council members and tell them to leave the voter-approve term limits alone. Also, at 5 p.m., prior to Thursday's council meeting, there will a sign-waving outside city hall at 10500 N. Military Trail, Palm Beach Gardens. Join us!