The Proposed Changes to the Adult Ordinance

Below I have embedded the proposed changes to the Adult Entertainment Ordinance that will be discussed at the Planning & Zoning Meeting on Tuesday, May 29 at 7:30 PM. The changes are mostly to make more specific the requirements for an Adult establishment and is more precise in its language than the current ordinance. This would seem prudent and needed. My big concern is what effect changing the ordinance during a lawsuit will have on the lawsuit. I intend to ask that question on Tuesday night. Here is the full text of the item and the changes. Kevin Vericker May 26, 2012 Proposed Change to Adult Entertainment Ordinance May 2012

City Hall Never Paid Its Property Taxes

Scott Greenwald, the would be strip club impresario,  is the landlord for North Bay Village's city hall and police station at 1700 Kennedy Causeway at a cost of some $141,000 per year. Greenwald has never once paid the property taxes on the facilities and owes $98,734 in property taxes dating back three years. Source: Miami-Dade County Property Apraiser's Office 

The same Greenwald also owes the city $25,000 in repayments for an illegally negotiated commission to move the City Hall to this site. This money has apparently never been paid either. 

Greenwald's properties at 7914 - 7916 West Drive are health hazards destroying the recently completed park and of course, he never paid taxes on them, owing $183,084.   

Strip club litigant Greenwald continues to sit on the North Bay Budget Oversight Board. Greenwald was appointed to the board by Eddie Lim, Connie Leon-Kreps and Dr. Vogel in early 2010, long after they knew of his plans to develop a strip club at 1415 JFK Causeway which has an unpaid tax debt of $923,748.  Look it up here.

Yet Greenwald continues to sit on the Board, weighing such matters as how much the city should spend to fight the lawsuit he brought.

Probably not a good idea to have the city's largest tax debtor on the Budget Oversight Board and certainly a terrible idea to have someone suing the city overseeing the finances.   

Kevin Vericker

May 1, 2012

What to do about the Strip Club

As you may know, Scott Greenwald's company has filed a Federal lawsuit claiming that the city is violating the First Amendment by regulating Adult Businesses differently than other kinds of businesses.

The city is now in a position of defending in court the right to control where and under what circumstances North Bay Village can set restrictions on strip clubs. While I believe that the city does have that right, and the courts have consistently found that cities are allowed to add regulations specific to this type of business, if the city doesn't mount a strong defense, Greenwald could win.

A strip club will go up adjacent to a child care center, a school and anchoring our waterfront.

I urge you to write to our commissioners and insist that the city defend against this. Their addresses are here:

Connie Leon-Kreps: cleonkreps@nbvillage.com
Stuart Blumberg: sblumberg@nbvillage.com
Richard Chervony: rchervony@nbvillage.com
Eddie Lim: elim@nbvillage.com
Paul Vogel: paul.vogel@nbvillage.com

And copy the city manager Dennis Kelly dkelly@nbvillage.com

I'll keep you informed as I know things.

Kevin Vericker
April 18, 2012

Scott Greenwald Sues The City

Scott Greenwald filed suit on March 28, 2012 asking the Federal Courts to rule that the North Bay Village ordinance governing adult businesses is unconstitutional. The full complaint is below.

Scott Greenwald has a years long overdue tax bill on the same property of $914,164.94 on the property at 1415 79th St. and three more more totaling $183,084.06 on his abandoned properties on West Drive (source: Miami-Dade Property Appraiser) Greenwald is also the city's landlord at the Lexi, sits on the Budget Oversight Board deciding how the taxes he doesn't pay get spent, and contributed heavily to the campaigns of Commissioner Eddie Lim and Planning and Zoning Chairman Rey Trujillo.

The strip club will be a disaster for North Bay Village. The ordinance designed to protect us was crafted so as to ensure that the any such establishment would be at least five hundred feet away from a school, have adequate parking and security, and not interfere with the development of the water front. Scott's club will sit directly across from a child care center and a school, has been designed with the loosest possible interpretation of parking and will kill any chance of creating a Baywalk.

Our city has to mount a vigorous defense in the courts. Let the commission know that we expect every possible legal avenue to prevent this from happening. And seriously, Greenwald's a deadbeat. Kick him off the city boards. Now.

The complaint is below.

Kevin Vericker
April 16, 2012


Isle of Dreams vs North Bay Village

Different Drummer?

When this blog started, it was with the hope that the issues before North Bay Village could be laid out rationally, discussed openly and perhaps heatedly, and that varying viewpoints could be considered. I thought sincerely that the group who call themselves "Citizens for Full Disclosure" had a style problem. I thought that the histrionic, over the top, emails were the result of deep frustration.

I won't go into the long history of contentious relationship with this group. (You can read about it here.) To give credit where credit is due, the CFD has finally stopped sending emails anonymously and now sign them. This is a good thing.

But the quality of the emails remains the same. Witness the one below. It refers to the upcoming community workshop and expresses IN CAPITAL LETTERS the hope that the mayor and one commissioner "listen to the citizens and do what is right." This is of course good advice, but why just for two of the 4.5 commissioners? Why not for all?

Then of course the email does not express any viewpoint on "what is right." A well reasoned, intelligent critique would include the issues before the commission and some perspective. This includes neither. So it is just really a random insult.

The problem with the CFD is not that they are inarticulate or in their bizarre world continue to exist to fight the Alfonso administration, but that they are useful tools of the Lims-Krep and Vogel efforts to transfer large amounts of tax dollars to private hands.

Some quick examples.

City Hall moved to inferior headquarters at a cost around $80,000 for the sole purpose of supporting developer Scott Greenwald's bankrupt Lexi project.

The outsourcing of garbage pickup and the elimination of side yard pickup was so poorly done and the savings so obscured that it should be thrown out and done over to clarify the value, if any, to North Bay Village.

There is no clear version of the budget that shows what savings have been accomplished and how our reserve is doing.

There's a lot more and I will be covering these, but suffice it to say that there is reasonable doubt as to the motivations of these commissioners, especially given the large campaign contributions by Waste Management and Greenwald to one side.

Well, anyway, here's the CFD email. Judge for yourself if it adds anything to the conversation.

From: Citizens for Full Disclosure of North Bay Village Inc. cfd_nbv@hotmail.com
Sent: Sat, March 19, 2011 9:18:30 AM
Subject: PUBLIC WORKSHOP ON TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2011 AT 8:00 P.M

THE CITY COMMISSION OF THE CITY OF NORTH BAY VILLAGE, FLORIDA, WILL HOLD A PUBLIC WORKSHOP ON TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2011 AT 8:00 P.M. IN THE CITY COMMISSION CHAMBERS AT 1700 KENNEDY CAUSEWAY, #132, NORTH BAY VILLAGE, FLORIDA. CLICK ON ATTACHMENT TO VIEW/PRINT AGENDA.

WE ENCOURAGE MAYOR ESQUIJAROSA AND COMMISSIONER RODRIGUEZ TO LISTEN TO THE CITIZENS AND DO WHAT IS RIGHT INSTEAD OF ACTING TO THE BEAT OF THEIR OWN DRUMMER.

This information was sent to you by Citizens for Full Disclosure of North Bay Village, Inc., whose purpose is to help the citizens of North Bay Village obtain full and complete disclosure in all matters of government of the city of North Bay Village.

President - Richard Chervony
V. President - Alvin Blake
Secretary - James Carter
Treasurer - Flo Clein
Director - Jane Blake
Director - Gloria Carter

Kevin Vericker
March 20, 2011

The Lexi Move

The Lexi, a large new high rise as 7901 Hispanola Avenue, is a monument to the decline of North Bay Village. Developed by Scott Greenwald during the height of the condocraze in Miami, the Lexi was designed as a luxury condominium taking advantage of some truly spectacular bay views. As price rises spiraled insanely and then the market collapsed, the Lexi lost some of its luster.

The apartments are beautiful inside and the bay views from them are amazing but the ground floor of the building is derelict, looking like an abandoned strip mall fronted by an ugly parking lot. This is the face of the city today. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

The proposed ground floor plans included a variety of local businesses deemed "upscale" and was supposed to have included a Starbucks, restaurants, a spa and a useful veterinary clinic. Instead, the only restaurant, Mario the Baker, has closed, and the only activity on the ground floor is the "temporary" city hall and police station. It is at least from a commercial point of view a failure.

The City of North Bay Village is moving there next month. We had a preview of the new commission chambers at the December 14 meeting. A small, windowless room with poor acoustics will serve as our civic meeting hall. The light and the views from our current city hall will be replaced by a warren of closed in cubicles. The police station set up cannot by law include facilities appropriate for investigations and holding suspects so there will be a second facility on Galleon St. The parking lot in front of the building will get even more crowded.

The whole move was arranged for the benefit of Scott Greenwald, who had to turn to the city for this subsidy, and the benefit of former vice mayor George Kane, who pleaded "No Contest" to the charge that he used his position to promote this deal while collecting $12,500 annually as his commission for doing so. See the full report by clicking here.

So the city is going ahead with this move, at a cost of some $85,000 annually above what we pay now, in January. All so a politically well connected developer can recoup some money on a poorly executed bankrupt project. The laws of supply and demand are repealed by government fiat.

And how does Scott Greenwald repay the city's generosity? By waging a battle against the city to build his next sure to be successful project, a strip club to anchor our non existent boardwalk. The commission voted down the application but we all know it's coming back up and I predict next time it will be approved. Money has a way of doing that.

Kevin Vericker
December 29, 2010