Meet the candidates running for Miami Beach Mayor
MIAMI BEACH - Miami Beach residents have four options to replace termed-out Mayor Dan Gelber. Early voting is underway now. Election Day is November 7th.
There's Former City Commissioner Michael Gongora, Former State Representative Mike Grieco, Former MTV Chairman Bill Roedy, and Current City Commissioner Steve Meiner.
CBS News Miami reporter Morgan Rynor spoke to each of them individually to talk to them about their top priorities. This is what they had to say in their own words:
Question 1: Tell me about who you are?
Gongora: I'm a native Miamian and I've lived in Miami Beach since 1992, started my law career right on Lincoln Road, and got active in our city wanting to make a difference. I ran for commission the first time in 2006 and had the pleasure of being elected three times to serve as commissioner for our city, where I worked to improve quality of life, make our city safer and really elevate Miami Beach for our residents.
Grieco: I'm Mike Grieco, proud father of freshmen over at Beach High, also a former prosecutor. Worked in the Gangs and Narcotics Unit for six years, been living on the Beach since the late 90s. Former city commissioner, proudly also served in the state legislature for four years.
Roedy: Grew up in Miami. Spent my first two decades here, went off to West Point, after West Point, volunteered to go to Vietnam, trained as a Special Forces Airborne Ranger, fought on the frontlines of combat, and then after Vietnam came back and retrained as a nuclear missile base commander, and commanded nuclear missiles as part of NATO, defending the homeland, if you will, and then went to Harvard Business School. After Harvard Business School, joined media for 33 years. First HBO, taking it across the country for 10 years, and then much bigger, took 20 brands across 2 billion people in almost every country, 200 countries, MTV and Nickelodeon.
Meiner: I am Commissioner Steven Meiner. I was elected in 2019. I grew up in New York but moved to Miami Beach in 2007. My wife Shannon and our two kids live here in mid beach in Miami Beach. I'm a federal attorney with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
Question 2: All four candidates said public safety is their top priority. Here is HOW they plan to make Miami Beach safer.
Gongora: I'm the Miami Beach Police endorsed candidate. I'm working with them to put more police out on the streets to increase the police budget and make sure we do everything so that everybody feels safe here in Miami Beach.
Grieco: I'm the only one here with law enforcement experience. I was the one that brought the air and sea show, solved our problems for Memorial Day. I was the one who created the park ranger program and essentially eliminated all the crime in our parks.
Roedy: I had 11 years running the military in combat, so I feel like I can relate to the police very well. Need to get out the cars more, in need to be on the street, need to have a real-time crime center up and running, more severe surveillance cameras, we have to stop the drug trafficking on the streets where everybody sees it, and gun violence everywhere, and we just need a lift in morale and accountability and enforcement on small crimes.
Meiner: Number one is police visibility, and we have a new police chief working closely with him. That is the number one deterrent, but we also have a municipal prosecution team here in Miami Beach and a couple of years ago and 2021, we weren't prosecuting, we had an 8% success rate, and I had to dig that information out, but once I did, I proposed, that our commission passed under my leadership, a series of legislation, we're at a 90% success rate now on convictions.
Question 3: How would you help with traffic congestion?
Gongora: Traffic is a complicated problem number one, we need city traffic control officers out on the street during peak hours and key locations. Number two, I'm going to work with Miami Dade County to calibrate our traffic lights which are out of whack in certain areas. And third, we have to work with the state because two of our major roads, Collins Avenue and Alton Road are state roads
Grieco: So traffic is an interesting issue because a lot of times we are a product of our own success, and we're also a product of the lack of management on the mainland. So what we see here on the beach, when we get backed up from the mainland, we really just have to keep our intersections clear, we need to be focusing on residents, but we also need to start creating our own infrastructure. We need to create a scenario where people who live on the Beach could potentially work on the Beach, and can potentially play on the Beach, as opposed to what we have now, which is too many commuters, too many people living on the Beach, but working Downtown or people working on the Beach, but living in Doral or in Kendall, and I want to create more housing for folks who live here.
Roedy: You can do technology, which is just coordinating much better the traffic lights. There's lack of coordination, as I see it, even between the three entities that control the streets, state, county and the city. Just simple, simple as that. You need more coordination, and then if you lend AI technology, you can I believe have greater synchronization of the lights.
Meiner: I was a sponsor of a traffic workshop that we held earlier this week, and I'm gonna continue to be at the forefront of every quality of life issues. I answer emails, I answer our residents, and there's a lot more we can do back to the basics. As I say, we really need to focus on what our residents see and are concerned about on an everyday basis.
Question 3: Where do you stand on overdevelopment and what would you do?
Gongora: I believe that responsible development should mostly stick within their permitted FJR and height requirements. What we've seen over the years, and some of my opponents have supported high-rise projects on the Lincoln Road surface lots, a huge high rise at the Deauville, projects that I was opposed to, and I'm similarly opposed to the Clevelanders, most of the buildings here on Ocean Drive are very small and they're more than five stories with a few exceptions.
Grieco: It's interesting because most people think that we are a growing city when in fact, our population has actually decreased over the last 10 years. So the issue is that some of the development that's been happening in the city is bad development, the type of development that promotes transient living, short-term rentals, things that I fought against for years when I served as a city commissioner, no major developments went up. We focused on infrastructure. Now, all you hear about is expanding density, building and building and building, and I'm the one that has the relationships in Tallahassee that can potentially stop this with these preemption bills.
Roedy: Big notch over-development is a third issue that I think it's important to everybody, the residents here because we've made mistakes. Why have we made mistakes? Because we've been beholden to developers, and there are situations where you have to pay for play or influence peddling, and the beauty about my campaign and my mayorship, is that I'm not beholden to any developer. Why? Because I've never taken a penny, never have, never will, take a penny from a developer so, I don't have a problem or a challenge of being beholden to a special interest group.
Meiner: We're dealing with overdevelopment issues, and I have legislation currently, to limit overdevelopment and traffic.
Question 4: Miami Beach recently passed an ordinance that allows police to arrest a homeless individual if they deny shelter. Do you support or oppose this? What would you do?
Gongora: We can't let Miami Beach become like we see parks in San Francisco that have become homeless encampments. So this new law doesn't require police to arrest homeless people. It's one more tool available to them because Miami Beach spends a lot of money on homeless shelters on reunification of homeless with their families, on job training, even on medication through the Lazarus project, something that I sponsored as commissioner, but sometimes they don't want to accept the service. They either have mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, and they're out there doing things that really are bad for our community.
Grieco: I would have been a no on the concept of arresting people essentially because they're homeless. I think that that is very heavy-handed. There are 101 ways to address homelessness. We do not have some unique homeless issue here in Miami Beach. Some of these folks, first of all, have been living here for years. They're my constituents too. The newer folks that are coming, cities all around the country are seeing an increase in homelessness, and we need to be showing more of a heart, and we need to make sure that we're providing as many opportunities as possible, whether it be mental health treatment, alcohol, drug treatment. These are things that we have been falling short on over the years.
Roedy: I understand why it was important to do, but you can't arrest your way out of homelessness. What I believe is every homeless person is a crisis in humanity, and it should not be normalized. It's not normal to sleep on the streets. We need better data with each homeless person so we can identify him, and we also have a budget over $8 million to help homelessness. We have facilities across the bay, we need to make sure that they are equipped and set up for all the different reasons why you're homeless.
Meiner: I actually am one of the sponsors of that legislation, which passed our commission, and really what it is, it's actually humane because of what it takes. It's somebody sleeping on our streets, an individual who's homeless, and it's unfortunate, but usually in most cases, they have mental health issues, addiction issues, and we're offering them shelter, we're offering them services. It's only if they deny those services, and they're sleeping on our streets, that our police have the discretion to make the arrest.
Question 5: Fun fact about yourself that most people don't know.
Gongora: I do like to have fun. I like arts, culture, music, and theater.
Grieco: Through my years of high school in college, I actually wrote on garbage trucks, worked in incinerators and really know what real hard work means.
Roedy: I had a pet alligator, and I loved that pet alligator. It was at the time when you could buy a pet alligator, so my grandmother found one on 79th Street at a little hole-on-the-wall pet shop at a shopping center. I think it's still there on 79th Street off Biscayne Boulevard.
Meiner: I love to play baseball. I actually played competitively till about seven years ago, and my friends joke that once I retired from baseball, I picked up getting involved in politics.