NBV Election Season - It's Not The Heat - It's The Stupidity

No sooner than I finish writing about the ECO's and the half truths presented to be "facts" than another ridiculous piece comes around, this one about the mayor.   It purports to be from a group called "United For A Better North Bay Village" Seriously, look in the black print, hold it up to a white light, use a magnifying glass and you will see that printed in the lower left hand corner.

Or don't bother - there is no such group according to the Florida Secretary of State.

The flier informs us that the mayor was censured and that she tried to get Benedict Kuhne to defend her at a cost to the village of $650.   Both these facts are true and well documented but this piece gives you no useful information.  The censure was for stating without proof and then refusing to retract an accusation that the mayor made against her fellow commissioners.  She accused them of criminal acts of conspiracy and collusion and refused to retract the statements.  Then Mrs. Kreps attempted to engage an attorney and have the village pay for it at $650 per hour to do something.   Since there's no defense and no legal action, it's not clear what.   But if you going to write a piece, don't assume a nasty picture and words are enough.   We're smarter than that.

In order to balance this piece out, a new group called "Truth & Transparency" have been sending out odd emails.  They are Transparent in their support of the mayor, but Truth, eh, not so much.

Their main points seem to be:

• The mayor is not a realtor and the vice mayor is so this makes the mayor an environmentalist, a conclusion unsupported by any facts.   Just to be clear, in the five and a half years, the mayor has never once introduced a piece of environmental legislation.  Not once. 
  The realtors she compares to are Jorge Gonzalez, who pushed for the PACE program allowing us to make our houses more resilient and if Florida does not pass Amendment 1, will allow us to install private solar energy while Jackson has led island wide cleanups and fought hard to bring the trash and environment to the forefront.
• The mayor was apparently cleared by the Commission on Ethics on October 25 of making "false statements."  Well, maybe they did.  We have no way of knowing because the CoE, a corrupt organization designed to protect the powerful, does not clear people and no investigation is closed until the board votes on it, which will happen on Nov 9.  Must be leaky.
  
  
• Then there is "Sign Gate" which definitely happened.  The Village code enforcement decided to enforce an obscure regulation and removed all political signs closer than 25 feet from the center of the roadway on North Bay Island.  All signs.
  
  I believe they did this to impress Jodi Foster and it was a stupid move.   Commissioner Chervony is furious and posting all about it.  I imagine the other candidates are too.   It was a disgrace and I wish our code enforcers showed half the initiative in removing obstacles from our sidewalks that they did in this matter.  
  It's the dark implication that "someone must have done this.  Another candidate perhaps?"  Yeah, well it was the Village Manager.  Take it up in the right place. 

So if you haven't voted yet, be selfish.  Think what's in it for me?  Will my town be better with this one or that one?   And ask why this weird distortion?   We're small enough if you need to ask a candidate what they are for or against, you can find several on Facebook or just call them.   It's that simple.

Kevin Vericker

November 4, 2016