They call Pompano Beach “Florida’s Warmest Welcome.” As of this summer, so does the City Attorney. In writing. With a registration number.
The welcome, it turns out, was never community-administered. According to the City Attorney, it is city-administered, federally registered, and not available for use without express authorization. The letter came in through the contact form on this website. The form I built so neighbors could share their stories. The city shared one.
That is all I am going to say about it for now, which anyone who has read this blog knows is not my natural setting.
The last post went up June 7. It was about the award the city wins every year for $765. At noon the next day, candidate qualifying opened for all five district commission seats. Then I went quiet for 117 days. The neighborhood did not. Nobody turned anything down to mark the occasion. The bass did not take the summer off. María has still not gone back to Rodrigo.
City politics didn’t take the summer off either. It moved to the courthouse.
To run for the commission, a candidate has to have lived in the district for one year. The charter says so. In District 5, the sitting commissioner, Darlene Smith, sued her challenger, Delvin King, to find out whether he had. The hearing ran seven hours on a Friday night. The judge compared his driver’s licenses to his voter registrations, found they had different opinions about where he lived, and called that fatal. He is off the ballot. The most competitive contest in District 5 this year lasted seven hours and was decided by one voter in a robe.
Then a Palm Aire activist and a former District 5 commissioner sued to reopen qualifying so someone else could run. That hearing took 90 minutes. The answer was no. Commissioner Smith is now unopposed. Her name will not be on your ballot. Her vote will be on everything else.
Before any of that, there was a Costco. In July the commission voted on whether to overrule the planning board and let one be built at The Pomp. The vote was 3 to 3. Nothing happened. Costco’s attorney mentioned court, because this year everyone in Pompano Beach mentions court.
The commission has six seats, the mayor and five commissioners. Six is an even number. Everyone at City Hall has noticed.
The mayor isn’t up this cycle, and District 5 was settled in court, so four seats are left on the November ballot. Everyone at City Hall is counting to four, and most of the counting is happening in District 2.
In District 2, three sitting commissioners have picked a candidate, and it is not the incumbent. It is also not the first candidate they picked. They started the cycle behind someone else, decided somewhere along the way that she was less likely to win, set her out at the curb, and moved on to one they liked the odds on. It is the most consistent position anyone at City Hall has held all year. The goal was always four votes. The candidate was the part they could swap out.
They had company. A Facebook page called “Pompano Beach, Fl. Official,” which lists itself as an ‘LLC’, single quotes and all, made the same swap. That page is getting its own post.
The one they swapped in filed his campaign finance report this summer and described the state’s required election assessment as money paid “for no apparent reason. it was required of me.” The lowercase is his. The reason is Florida Statute 99.093. It was required of him because he is running for an office that writes requirements.
Meanwhile, the campaigns have found the one issue everyone agrees is urgent. Yard signs. Candidates, some of whom are already commissioners, are publicly complaining that the other side pulled up their signs, and that the other side’s signs are standing somewhere they should not be. I have counted the cars in a two-bedroom driveway on more than one day, so I recognize the hobby. I just never expected it to come with a campaign finance report. Every one of them is asking for a vote on code enforcement.
The same ballot carries the homestead amendment. If it passes, the city’s own finance memo projects a $17.8 million annual shortfall and lists parks among the cuts. The botanical garden has 100% construction drawings and every approval secured. The parks have a memo.
Between now and November 3, this blog is spending some time at City Hall. There is a race the city has been counting toward since July, a candidate who would like to know why elections cost money, a news outlet that is an ‘LLC’ in single quotes, and a commission that cannot settle on a Costco. I have notes. Some of them have screenshots.
After November 3, regularly scheduled programming resumes. The bass has been warming up the entire time.
You vote for one district commissioner. All six vote on your parks.
The slogan already has representation.
