Community Against the Strip Club

At 11 AM or so yesterday, I set up a Facebook group called North Bay Village Residents Against The Strip Club. By 8 PM, it had 68 members.

Alejandra Slata set up a petition at Change.org called Reject An Adult Night Club In North Bay Village at around 2 PM and had 69 signatures by the end of day.

This weekend a physical petition is being prepared and will be circulated in North Bay Village.

The outpouring is amazing. I'll give more detail over the weekend.

Update: - The Sun Post Weekly did the best article summing up the issues. Well worth reading by clicking here.

Kevin Vericker
November 18,2011

The Strip Club - It's Not Over

Tuesday night was a great outpouring of community sentiment and clearly sent the message that we don't want a strip club in North Bay village. But that message is only partial. The same message equally as strongly must go to the commission as they, and they alone, have the ability to reject the plan in its entirety. Tuesday night was a recommendation to reject but not an actual rejection. That is for the commission to decide.

It matters that the voice be heard, loudly and clearly. If you are able to circulate a petition, please let me know. Better even, if you can attend the commission meeting on November 29 at 6:30, a special meeting to select an interim commissioner, and confirm the city manager's new contract, that would be great.

Most importantly, attending the commission meeting at which the petition is presented, the second Tuesday in December is the critical point. Our commission needs to kill this project completely.

Important to know: since the rejection by Planning & Zoning was unanimous, the city commission requires a super-majority to override the rejection. Four out of five must vote to override. Section of the code is quoted below.

Okay, now the boring stuff. A breakdown of Tuesday night's happenings.

Channel 7 did a good job of covering the meeting. Click here for the video, the Herald much less so. Click here for the article.

But neither of them covered the bad plans submitted to the city. Understand that even if this were the perfect fit, the plans are so flawed that they should never have passed city planning's approval, much less been recommended for approval.

There were ten conditions and exceptions to our plan, including environmental reviews, noise regulations, traffic studies, number of parking spaces, and no standard of measurement.

That alone should have caused the city to reject the plans. You could not build a shed or a dollhouse on your waterfront property without these.

The city planner did not seem to know how the distance should be measured to the nearest child care facility and school. The city attorney was befuddled by the definition of the "parcel".

Our city staff should know the Adult Entertainment Ordinance by heart before they present a plan they say should be approved. It's all there in Section 152.111 and they should have studied up before the meeting.

The kindest explanation is that this was confusion that day from the dais.

As the Planning & Zoning board members discussed their reasoning for their vote, only one, Richard Chervony, brought up the technical questions of distance measurement. The others simply talked about vague lawsuits and that the "citizens don't want it."

I hope that the commission will look at the deeply flawed plans and reject them on their merits.

Now for the big argument. The lawyers for the developer condescendingly educated us that the Supreme Court requires that a city with a wide diversity of public establishments must have an adult entertainment district, so there's nothing we can do about it. That argument is truthy but not true.

The ruling allows for a wide variety of exceptions. In a city like North Bay Village, limited by our island geography and neighbors with two cities having nearby adult entertainment, the argument falls apart. There is no compelling reason to locate such an establishment here. The most readable research is from Exploring Constitutional Conflicts on the University of Missouri at Kansas City site. Read it. There is no constitutional requirement to allow nude dancing or other adult businesses to operate where local conditions are unsuitable.

Here's the text from our regulations that show a super-majority of the commissioners are required for approval. From Section 152.102 of our ordinances. Emphasis mine.

If a written protest against an amendment, supplement, change, variance, or special use exception is filed with the City Clerk, signed by the owners of 50% or more within 500 feet of the perimeter of the property being considered, or if the Planning and Zoning Board recommends, after a public hearing as described above, that the proposed amendment, supplement, change, variance, or special use exception be disapproved by a unanimous vote of the full Planning and Zoning Board, such amendment, supplement, change, variance, or special use exception shall not become effective except by a favorable vote of at least 4/5 of a all of the members of the City Commission.

Finally, a personal point regarding a slander hurled at me. During the meeting, Fane Lozman, a resident at 2913 Avenue F, Riviera Beach, stated that he and I had discussions in which I expressed racist views regarding the clientele at another establishment. Lozman has an unhealthy obsession with me; he has made similar outlandish statements before; Lozman has harassed my family and with the full consent of the city commission slandered me in other city meetings.

I am stating here that Lozman and I never had any conversation remotely related to the subject of ethnicity or the establishment in question. He lied in a blatant attempt to slander me. The chair of the meeting, in accordance with our City Charter which specifically prohibits such behavior should have shut the microphone down. Section 30.13 states

The public. Any person making personal, impertinent, or slanderous remarks or who shall become boisterous while addressing the Commission shall be, forthwith by the presiding officer, subject from further audience before the Commission unless permission to continue be granted by a majority vote of the Commission. This remedy shall be in addition to the provisions of section 135.03(A).

It is not just about me. Our City Commission and Boards have an absolute obligation to enforce decorum and allow free speech at our meetings. That Lozman does this is despicable but our city allowing it is illegal and injurious to citizens.

Much more when the petition is ready.

Kevin Vericker
November 17, 2011

Occupy North Bay Village

The strip club proposal for 1415 JFK Causeway was voted down unanimously by the Planning & Zoning Board.

Within the 24 hours prior to the meeting, hundreads of citizens mobilized to pass out fliers in front of the school, write to their commissioners, spread the news to their neighbors and one intrepid mom made a hundred "No Strip Club" signs and passed them out to attendees.

There was no leader, no formal organizing, no "you do this, I do that", simply the spontaneous community organizing that happens when enough is enough.

It was impressive to say the least. And the message carried.

Last night shows what the power of community can do. The spark, a Channel 7 news report on the plans, was enough to ignite the opposition of an often fractured and seemingly detached community.

I'll review the details of the meeting later this week - the arrogance of the developer's lawyer, the poorly drafted plans that were accepted by the city with holes large enough to drive a truck through, the anger of the residents at "business as usual".

This is not the last step. This could still go before the commission and they can override the recommendation. So let's be prepared for another round.

You did good last night, North Bay Village, you did really good.

Kevin Vericker
November 15, 2011

Strip Club Meeting Tonight

Special note: There was some confusion over the start time since the sign on Treasure Island read 7:00 PM but Yvonne Hamilton assures me the time is 7:30 PM.

The plan reads "The fourth and fifth levels will provide a total of 27,970 square feet for a night club offering adult entertainment." for the new building proposed by Scott Greenwald at 1415 JFK Causeway, the Channel 7 property.

Tonight at 7:30 PM, the Planning & Zoning will be considering the application for the strip club, an application that contains a large number of variance exemptions from our code and requires parking that is currently under litigation.

Both the Miami Herald and Channel 7 have covered this in detail.

The agenda specifically includes a use agreement for an adult entertainment club and extensively discusses the plans for the club.

I think it will pass. The rumor circulating is that Rey Trujillo will vote against it, even though Scott Greenwald financed his unsuccessful campaign, as it is politically untenable for him but that the votes of two other members are assured yes, giving enough to pass. Let's see how it plays out.

Kevin Vericker
November 15, 2011

Strip Club Meeting Tomorrow Night

Killed twice by the North Bay Village Commission, tomorrow night (Tuesday November 15) at 7:30 PM at the City Hall, Planning & Zoning will once again hear the application for a strip club at 1415 JFK Causeway.

This time, it will probably pass. Scott Greenwald lined Chairman Rey Trujillo's campaign coffers during his unsuccessful run for Mayor, spent an equal amount on Commissioner Eddie Lim successful run and has been greasing the skids throughout the city.

Channel 7 did an excellent report on it tonight. Click here for the piece.

Last time, they prevaricated, bullied and did everything but admit that it's a strip club. This time, they don't even bother. On the city application, their business plan reads "The fourth and fifth levels will provide a total of 27,970 square feet for a night club offering adult entertainment."

It may not happen. Greenwald has left a series of vacant lots overrun by squatters and vermin in his disastrous career here in North Bay Village, so maybe this will fail too.

But not if the ruling junta of North Bay Village can help it.

Meeting is tomorrow at 7:30 PM, City Hall.

Kevin Vericker
November 14, 2011

The Mayor Resigns

As of 5 PM today, Corina Esquijarosa is resigning her office as mayor of North Bay Village. After a brutal and deceitful campaign which took a routine tax matter and portrayed it as a criminal offense, she had enough.

So the unelected Connie Lim-Kreps becomes acting Mayor. The commission can decide to hold an election but since Rey Trujillo will lose again, the more likely course is that the commission appoints Lim-Kreps mayor and appoints Rey Trujillo to her vacant seat.

In the meantime, the strip club will pass and Paul Vogel can resume stealing city services and money ($1,225 and counting).

Kevin Vericker
November 11, 2011

Recall or Resignation

The CFD ROME Pepe Jueves coalition sent out another of their blood red, poorly written screeds this week with the subject line "CORINA RESIGN NOW - THE CITIZENS DEMAND IT!!!!!" and that leaves me wondering. I wonder if that, resignation, is really the point of their brutal and mendacious campaign. Heck, they qualified the recall signatures which they gathered by creative misrepresentation and intimidation. Why not take it all the way to a recall?

It occurs to me that a recall would put Esquijarosa's personal tax and financial problems before the voters. But it would also put all the nasty business that this group has actively supported out in public, all of it.

• Vogel's theft of services from the city (over a thousand dollars in cell service for his wife.)
  
• The hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on legal services to handle routine management issues in the police department.
• Lim's failure to pay any city taxes in 2008.
  
• Kreps illegally signing thousands of dollars in unaudited checks.
  

And a lot more. Things like the strip club continuing to be pushed, what happened with the project money and why the city broke its own charter rules in the police chief's employment contract.

If there is a recall election, and I profoundly hope there will be one, then questions will be asked and answered. Questions they don't want you to hear and the answers will scare the socks off you.

The recall is just a pretense for an intimidation campaign to keep control of the city and keep us in the dark while our money is drained away.

The CFD and the twins don't want a recall. It was never about that.

Kevin Vericker
November 4, 2011