Dear friends and neighbors, We’ve known Edmund Malkoon for more than twenty years. We never thought we’d write this letter. Edmund, You sat at our table and stuffed hundreds of Easter eggs with candy. For years, when we put on this Town’s holiday events, you were there setting up. You helped us save the El Mar median. You stood with us on the height-limit and term-limit referendums. That’s the man we voted for. Three times. The last time in 2024. We didn’t know in 2024 that you were running on a political party’s ticket: the door-hangers, the mailers, the slate. We found out after. It bothered us. But we told ourselves that as long as you kept your politics off the dais, it wouldn’t matter. On September 10, 2025, we walked into Jarvis Hall sure you’d vote no. We had every reason to be. Every time this town filled that room, you listened. That night the hall was packed and the portico was standing room only. Thirty-three of the thirty-seven residents who spoke asked you to vote no on the Sea Grape sign. You voted yes. Your vote, instead of the thirty-three who asked you not to. Three days later you were on stage at the Broward Republican Party’s Reagan Day Dinner, being honored for that vote. That was the night we stopped recognizing you. Edmund, what happened to you? We keep asking ourselves. A politician rarely turns in a single night. More often the wanting-to-serve slowly becomes the wanting-to-stay, and a party’s wishes quietly take the place of the people’s. We only know what we watched. When two dozen of us asked you about the sign at a Monday with the Mayor event, your answer was, “We did nothing improper. We did nothing illegal.” Maybe so. But “not illegal” is what’s left to say when you can no longer say it was right. The Edmund who stuffed Easter eggs with us would have walked down Sea Grape Drive and knocked on doors to talk to the neighbors before that vote. Instead, you didn’t listen to the neighbors who live on that street. You didn’t listen to the neighbors who filled Jarvis Hall that night. You didn’t listen to the neighbors of the town you were elected to represent. You listened to what a political party wanted. And when we kept asking why, you told us we were “just making it political.” You of all people know better. Our charter makes every seat on that dais nonpartisan, and in 2012 the State of Florida fined you for putting party labels in a Town race. You signed that order yourself. We retired from Town politics seventeen years ago, and we were glad to be done. We’re writing because this is bigger than a street sign, and bigger than you. The party mailings and the Tallahassee PAC mailers are back, the same playbook as 2024. If it wins again on November 3, it stops being one bad year and becomes how Lauderdale-By-The-Sea is run. You’ll read this. We don’t mind. We’d rather say it to your face than behind your back, and we’ve tried. You’re asking us for two more years. You haven’t earned them. Our answer is no, and we’re asking every neighbor who still loves this town the way we do to say no with us. With a heavy heart, Cristie and Marc Furth Lauderdale-By-The-Sea residents and local hoteliers since 1972 | 