ETHICAL. HONEST. SINCERE. LEADERSHIP. 2009-2013.
During my campaign for City Council in 2009, I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish. I am proud that I have done the things I said I was going to do. As opined in the Gazette in May 2010, my “reasoning and legal background has offered the rationale” that the others sometimes lack.
● Drafted the motion creating the ad hoc committee to propose a new logo and tag line for the city.
● Moved forward the Ecology Board’s desire to have a rain barrel workshop and promote and ensure commercial recycling within the City.
● Appointed Board members of diverse gender, age, race, and nationality to serve on our City Boards.
● Assisted the Education Advisory Board in recognizing the School Board employee who drafted and implemented our Education Pact.
● Advocated for the Education Advisory Board’s proposal for the City to adopt a partnership with Take Stock in Children for students at Miami Springs schools.
● Requested the Council consider the Education Advisory Board recommendation for a Civics Week.
● Assisted the Architectural Review Board to ensure the Board was part of the process for development of commercial areas of the City.
● Strongly opposed the removal of the Architectural Review Board from the process for development of commercial areas in my second term.
● Supported the creation of the ad hoc committee to work with the consultant to provide residents’ feedback related to commercial redevelopment.
● Served as the liaison for the Architectural Review Board, the Board of Parks and Parkways, and the Code Enforcement Board.
● Opposed the adoption of the Calvin Giordano & Associates plan for lighting and signage because it did not take into account the previous plan prepared by the Architectural Review Board and passed by Council.
● Worked with the Board of Parks and Parkways to ensure our tree canopy was protected by objecting to and seeing that a poorly-written ordinance was ultimately repealed and that nuisance plants remained banned from being planted in the City.
● Ensured there was money budgeted to plant trees within the City.
● Achieved the goal by planting more than 100 trees in 2011-2012 and putting us on track to plant 100 more trees in 2012-2013.
● Suggested a donate a tree program to encourage not just the planting of more trees but the opportunity to provide for memorials within the City.
● Residents can watch the webcast of the meetings and watch previous meetings on the www.miamisprings-fl.gov website.
● Our City website has been redesigned and is more user friendly.
● Requested the Council use objective criteria when reviewing the City Manager, which was rejected by the City Council.
● Suggested having food trucks at the City's 85th birthday party and designed, drafted, and distributed a flyer with all the restaurants listed on one side and a map on the other side to promote local restaurants.
● Objected to late agenda items except in emergency situations and posted information provided at Council meetings under "At My Chair" on my blog.
● Encouraged supplemental marketing efforts at the Golf Course because it continues to suffer huge deficits.
● Advocated for additional notice provisions for residents when their property will be affected.
● Argued that the City should provide adequate and clear notice to citizens when there is a review by a City Board or the City Council.
● Encouraged our City Department heads to develop a long range plan for maintaining and replacing our aging facilities.
● Proposed a Citizens Bill of Rights for our Charter and an Ethics Ordinance to be included in our code (both were rejected as unnecessary by the Council).
● Encouraged the preparation of a sign code for our commercial areas to help decrease the sign pollution in Miami Springs, which has not been done yet.
● Opposed an early extension to the contract on our cell phone tower because the increase in demand for broadband is likely to make the tower far more valuable in the future.
● Explained that the City could not adopt the police officers' request to pay an additional percentage of their pension cost because the current pension agreement is grandfathered in and changes would result in losing our grandfathered status.
● Insisted that the agreement between the City and CMI be memorialized in writing to protect our citizens' assets.
● Supported the hiring of an expert in pension planning for the negotiations with the PBA and the General Employees Retirement Fund.
● Encouraged additional code enforcement, especially in commercial areas.
● Objected to using speculative future income as a consideration when passing the budget.
● Objected to passing a budget that required us to dip into our reserves to balance our budget.
● Objected to discretionary spending after the Council used the undesignated fund balance.
● Objected to the reversal of variances denied by the Board of Adjustment because there were no new circumstances to support the variance.
● Advocated against incurring debt as a City.
● Argued against allowing shingle roofs without limitation because the Building Official clearly recommended that tile roofs were more reliable and lasted longer.
● Argued that if there was a conflict of interest, a Councilmember should be able to abstain from voting and, in fact, did abstain from voting in votes impacting all groups where I am an active member.
● Objected to reorganizing the Directors who report to the City Manager and giving only some a return of the 3% removed from their pay in 2011-2012.
● Suggested that eight years was enough for Councilmembers to serve and that Charter Section 3.06(7) should remain unchanged.
● Demanded attention to detail from our City Administration when item after item submitted by City Directors and on the agenda was fraught with errors.
As a candidate, I also encouraged annexation, building a relationship with the Miami Springs Airport Area Chamber of Commerce, and the building of the new Community Center. As your Councilwoman, I supported these items and encouraged the use of red light cameras to improve safety at our intersections, served as a voting delegate at the Florida League of Cities Conference, was selected to be the one representative from Miami Springs to participate in the Good Government Initiative.