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A note from your neighbors
Nobody moved to Lauderdale-By-The-Sea for the politics.
Hi neighbor,
We're a group of neighbors who live here, love it here, and got tired of watching it change from the sidelines. Some of us have been on this island forty years. Some of us moved in last spring. Republicans, Democrats, and plenty of none-of-the-above. None of us are running for anything.
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Here's what's bothering us.
For as long as anyone can remember, this town has kept party politics off the dais. It's in our charter. You don't see a party next to a name on our ballot because the people who built this town knew that drainage, the height limits and reopening the pier aren't Republican or Democratic problems. They're our problems. That's a big part of why most of us moved here.
That's slipping. In the last election, every winning candidate ran with a national party's backing printed on their mailers, and one of them used to chair that party's county organization. Last fall, three Commissioners co-designated the corner of Sea Grape Drive because, in their own words in the minutes, a political party's county headquarters building sits there. Town records show it was in the works for five months and kept off every public agenda until five days before the vote. Thirty-three of the 37 neighbors who spoke said no. It went up anyway. $11,729 of your money to put the signs up, and less than a year later another $5,760 to take them down.
Now the same three votes have put eight changes to our charter on your November ballot: longer terms, weaker term limits than the ones residents wrote, longer for Town Hall to sit on a citizen petition (20 days becomes 30), and ethics complaints shipped to a board in Tallahassee instead of settled in front of you. One of them, buried in a "cleanup" question, lets someone move here in May and run for your Commission in November.
We'd be writing this exact email if it were the other party. That's the whole point. Whoever sits on that dais should answer to the people on El Mar and Bougainvilla and Terra Mar, not to a party committee and not to Tallahassee. Party bosses and part-timers running our town? Not in our paradise.
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Who we're voting for
Three neighbors who answer to you, not to a party.
Each of them has committed to honor the non-partisan charter, put residents ahead of any party, and vote in public with their reasons on the record. Randy Strauss voted no on the sign and no on all eight amendments, both times. All three races are decided town-wide, so your vote counts in every one.
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For Mayor
Randy Strauss
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Seat 1 · District 1
Howard Goldberg
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Seat 2 · District 2
Patrick Ferguson
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NO
on all 8 charter amendments
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The charter is the rulebook residents wrote for our own government, and it has worked for fifty years. These eight changes make the Mayor's term twice as long, raise the cap on years in office from 14 to 16, let a term-limited Mayor jump straight to a Commission seat, give Town Hall twice as long to sit on a citizen petition, send ethics cases to Tallahassee, and cut the residency requirement for candidates nearly in half. Two of the five Commissioners, Randy Strauss and John Graziano, voted against putting any of it on the ballot. Tallahassee doesn't run this town. You do. Every question, in the Town's own words, plus a one-page card to take to the polls, is at letsprotectourparadise.org.
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Election Day
Tuesday, November 3
Vote by mail, early, or on Election Day. Mail ballots and early voting times are at browardvotes.gov.
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Two things that actually move the needle here
Town races in LBTS get decided by a few hundred votes. That's not a figure of speech.
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Check your registration before October 5. Moved, married, changed a name? Voters get quietly dropped more often than you'd think. |
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Forward this to five people on your street. The building group chat counts. A conversation on the beach walk counts more. The three votes that gave you the sign are counting on a quiet November. Don't give them one. |
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Thanks for reading this far.
Your neighbors at Let's Protect Our Paradise
Why you're getting this: you signed up at letsprotectourparadise.org or a neighbor passed your email along. If it's not for you, the unsubscribe link at the bottom works with one click. No hard feelings.
Questions, corrections, or you think we've got something wrong: hello@letsprotectourparadise.org. We answer.
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