Pembroke Pines election: Seven hopefuls vie for two district seats on City Commission
Seven candidates are seeking two district commission seats in Pembroke Pines in a race where everyone agrees on one thing: They want to be closer to the people.
The election is March 19. There also will be a three-person citywide mayor’s race to replace retiring Mayor Frank Ortis.
Commissioners serve four-year terms and earn a $23,620 annual salary. Commissioners also receive a stipend for car expenses at $553 a month, and get travel reimbursement.
They also receive $913 a month for all other expenses to do their job, although receipts are not required, and there are no specific requirements how the money must be used.
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In one district, an incumbent, Commissioner Jay Schwartz, has two challengers, Brandon Carrero and Catherine Minnis, who said they can do the job better. In the second district, four people — Misael “Ace” Almeria, Maria Rodriguez, Glenn Theobald and Chris Ziadie — want their chance at an open seat. Their issues are what’s on the minds of city residents: housing, traffic, and what happens if some public schools are closed.
District 2
The district generally runs University Drive east to Flamingo Road and Sheridan Street south to Pines Boulevard.
Carrero said the commission can give off “pettiness, elitist attitude,” and he wants to be the one to change that. “I want to be the voice of many,” he said, and be the “change we need.”
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Among his chief issues: looking at infrastructure needs with a focus on the older eastern end. That includes addressing roadways and traffic concerns.
The chief brand officer for American Bancshares Mortgage in Miami Lakes, Carrero said there’s a question if people are getting the services they pay for that the city has outsourced. That includes the permitting department.
He also doesn’t want to work in a vacuum: “We are commissioners of Pembroke Pines, not each district, we have to work together for the betterment of the city at large. Decisions we make impact the other districts.”
The Broward school district plans to close or overhaul at least five schools in 2025, with dozens more possible in the next few years. Among the schools considered underenrolled within city limits because it has less than 70% its capacity includes a middle school and four elementary schools in the city borders.
That worries Carrero who said teachers could lose their jobs, property values could fall without a neighborhood school, and now a school could become overenrolled after absorbing students from a closed school. “Closing a school has unintended consequences that cannot be undone,” he said.
To mitigate potential damage, he said he’d propose to keep any empty building as a school, particularly a vocational school, or maybe an expansion of the city-run charter school, which could then hire Broward teachers. The city’s administration reported Friday that the waitlist for grades K-12 is 4,972 students. The lottery is open to anyone in the state but priority goes to city residents.
Expanding the city’s charter school to keep the neighborhood school might make more sense “versus giving it to some developer to redevelop,” Carrero said. “The students need to be the priority and everything else is secondary.”
Minnis retired in December as a senior project coordinator for the county’s Office of Economic and Small Business Development. She said the “No. 1” issue for residents is traffic congestion. The solution: “We have to get people out of their cars.” She said she would advocate for mass transportation enhancements to make that happen.
She also wants a concentration on affordable housing. She sees homeless sleeping in parking lots of abandoned buildings and wants to see an effort to both help those people off the streets and use vacant land to build affordable housing.
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“It’s a major problem,” she said of the homeless. “We’ve tried to close our eyes to it.”
“Affordable housing is defined as many things to many people,” Minnis said, whether it is young people starting their lives or seniors struggling to get by. “Many people are in need now,” she said.
Schwartz, the incumbent, is a pilot who was first elected in 2012.
“The city of Pembroke Pines needs experience,” he said, with leaders well-equipped as to take on existing challenges. “Certainly we have traffic, we have recycling and waste disposal, infrastructure and a transition inside City Hall with Mayor Ortis retiring.” The change he said is not years away but rather “the next few weeks. The future is literally next week.”
Among his issues: a pending proposal expected before the commission to seek new recycling technology to push for “zero waste, anti-incinerator.”
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Broward County is mulling a waste-to-energy incinerator, which would burn waste to create electricity on whatever couldn’t be recycled, but Pembroke Pines has rebuked that idea.
“I’m in favor of new technology that will help improve the quality of life of everyone, and protecting our environment in the process,” he said.
He said he has a proven record: In 2015 Schwartz arranged meetings to rally outcry against an exploratory oil drilling application, which would have been six miles west of Miramar. The well would drill through five layers of earth — down at least 11,300 feet — including the Biscayne Aquifer, which provides most of Broward County‘s drinking water.
And he’ll speak out against the School District’s idea for closures, although no specifics have been announced yet. “I don’t believe the School Board and administration is going in the proper direction for the community.”
District 3
Vice Mayor Iris Siple is one of the three candidates seeking the open mayoral seat. That means her commission seat is open. Four candidates want the job.
The district generally runs U.S. 27 east to Flamingo Road, and north of Pines Boulevard north to Sheridan Street.
Almeria said he has been a resident of his district for 24 years and owns the Ace Embroidery Screen Printing and More business there. His son is a Pembroke Pines police officer, and public safety is a priority.
He said he stands apart because of his desire to be easily accessible to the community.
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Election | Questionnaire: Misael “Ace” Almeria, candidate for Pembroke Pines City Commission District 3
“We lost that touch of humanity,” he said. “Everything is politics, politics, politics. I’m more about serving people. I want to be the people’s voice.”
He said he sees the need for affordable housing, and believes the solution might be financial help from the county and state.
It’s his first foray into city politics.
Theobald is a retired attorney who worked for two police departments — the Miami-Dade Police Department and Martin County Sheriff’s Office — in roles from police officer up through legal counsel. He served as Under Sheriff in Martin County and during his career managed both people and budgets.
“I am the only candidate that has created successful multiagency/public-private task forces responsible for internal and external agency cooperation,” he said.
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But retirement three years ago didn’t turn out to be as much fun. “I miss serving the community,” he said, confessing retirement “feels empty.”
He’s drafted legislation, and run task forces and “after you do that for you career, (to then) play golf and do those things you’re supposed to do when you retire, it doesn’t have the same meaning and same purpose.”
That’s why he wants to serve and pledges that half his salary will go to charity and the rest for taxes. He’s not about collecting another income: “I’m not a politician, I’m a public servant. I’ve been one my entire life.”
A 35-year resident, Theobald said public safety is his top priority because “without that, everything else kind of falls apart.”
Traffic is a concern and he said there’s an easy fix: “We have old technology,” he said, saying a two-mile drive can take 25 minutes. “If you hit one light you’re going to hit them all. Come on, there’s better technology. It’s the quality-of-life issues for the people who live here.”
Traffic bottlenecks around school zones, he said, as parents let out one child at a time. But he believes if the city could provide charter school buses to relieve the crowds for those within two miles of their school not eligible for a bus, parents would take the city up on it.
“This is an easy solve,” he said.
If the School Board insists on closing schools, Theobald said he would suggest mixed-use areas with commercial on the ground floor and affordable housing built on top. This helps the young people priced out of buying their home in the city, he said.
“We’re not attracting young families into Pembroke Pines; it’s the same families living here, and their kids are living with them because they can’t afford to move out,” he said.
Rodriguez works for County Commissioner Tim Ryan as his communications and outreach coordinator. She said that gives her a countywide perspective of how to get things done.
She wants to see more emphasis on the Spanish-speaking community who might need translation on city pamphlets: “Make sure our government is working for all people and someone on the commission (needs) to prioritize that.”
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Rodriguez also wants to see more effort to making services user-friendly. “Pines has come a long way but I still think it’s still hard to go online and pay your water bill. My mom will call me on a monthly basis, ‘I can’t figure it out.’ It’s not user-friendly.”
Traffic woes can be helped with better technology that senses cars waiting at the lights, she said, and wants to see more public transportation.
She points to a pilot project underway in Hollywood where the city has expanded its Sun Shuttle micro-transit system to the western portion of the city by testing different routes within the western zone for ridership trends. Hollywood recently added service to the Yellow Green Farmers Market after seeing ridership growth along the 441 corridor.
Rodriguez also said she wants an emphasis on pedestrian and bicyclist safety.
“I know how to advocate and be a fighter for our city,” she said.
Ziadie is a general manager for Harbor Freight Tools. This is his fourth run for Pembroke Pines office, and he unsuccessfully ran in 2010 for a County Commission seat.
A resident since 2002, traffic congestion tops his list. He also wants a greater effort on community safety, and to do that he wants police and fire members to be receiving competitive pay. “Otherwise they’ll go someplace else,” he said. “Our pay is competitive, I just want to keep it that way.”
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And Ziadie wants to keep an eye on the books to “control any unnecessary spending.” Even though the tax rate can stay the same, because property values are increasing, it means homeowners will pay more in taxes. “It’s simple math,” he said.
While Broward County considers the possibility of a waste-to-energy incinerator, Ziadie said he stands with the current City Commission that opposes it. “Folks are really scared,” he said. “We should be repurposing things, recycling and composting. I’m totally against the incinerator, it’s bad for the environment. We just can’t have that at all.”
Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com. Follow on X, formerly Twitter, @LisaHuriash
