Here we go again. Two people, including a former elected city commissioner, will appear on the ballot for North Miami Beach mayor in a special election scheduled for December 5 to replace Anthony Defillipo. Defillipo was removed from his post in early June after being charged with 3 felonies in connection to voting in the city of North Miami Beach despite living in Davie, a suburban town located in Broward County. Defillipo is the third elected mayor in a row of the small city of North Miami Beach to leave office under a cloud of public corruption. According to court records, Defillipo’s trial, having been postponed twice, is now expected to begin February 5.
Running for mayor is former North Miami Beach commissioner Paule Villard, a retired member of the City of Miami Police Department first elected in 2018 until she lost her 2022 reelection bid by 257 votes to Jay Chernoff who had previously served for 19 years in municipal office.
Villard will face business owner Evan Scott Piper, who served a 3-month stint as an appointed commissioner in 2018 when Commissioner Frantz Pierre was removed from office by then Gov. Rick Scott related to public corruption crimes, he later pleaded guilty to. Piper is president of The Piper Companies, which focus on construction, automotive and marine services, and medical services.
North Miami Beach’s History of Public Corruption
As far back as the 2007 election, two political groups replaced one another back and forth promising reform until the 2020 election saw a 4th commissioner with no long standing political ties in the city elected to the seven-member board ushering in a brief 2-year window for new political leadership that Villard belonged to.
In 2018, Defillipo replaced former mayor George Vallejo who left office as part of a deal to plead guilty to a complicated scheme of steering campaign funds to out of state shell companies. It was later learned through court records that his wife had also been given a no-show job with a developer while Vallejo routinely voted in favor of this developer’s project.
Vallejo himself was elected as a reformer to replace former mayor Myron Rosner who lost reelection after allegations came to light that he was extorting city bus bench advertisers to give his reelection campaign free advertising. Under Vallejo’s leadership, the city privatized NMB Water and the sanitation service causing service disruptions and increased costs despite promises. Eventually, NMB Water was returned to direct city management but outsourced sanitation continues to be a problem for city residents.
Rosner was also elected to replace the political leadership that had been in place since 1989 who voted to give themselves lifetime health insurance benefits while NMB Water fell into disrepair. During this time, a city director pled guilty to money laundering and grand theft of over $2.3 million dollars ($3.2 million in 2023 dollars) of funds meant to replace over 4 miles of piping in the aged pipe system.
Defillipo’s New Level of Public Corruption
The lead up of the 2022 election saw a racially-charged resistance led by Anthony Defillipo and Barbara Kramer, a commissioner who was term-limited in 2022 to the new voting bloc. Defillipo and Kramer had both been censured by the city commission for racist outbursts at in-person city meetings and in social media interactions with the public.
Kramer also founded a political organization under the name of WakeUp NMB, Inc. with Defillipo and among others, Lyn Su, a former Republican State House candidate who expressed to the Miami Herald Editorial Board support for the Proud Boys, a group linked to the organization of the January 6 insurrection. This new group was pivotal to defending Defillipo’s claims that he still lived in the city and was acting in the best interests of the city by organizing a public relations effort and denouncing critics of the mayor’s actions. The WakeUp members who support Evan Piper can occasionally be seen using the Trump-like rallying cry “Make NMB Great Again!” on online postings.
Defillipo’s New Level of Public Corruption
The lead up of the 2022 election saw a racially-charged resistance led by Anthony Defillipo and Barbara Kramer, a commissioner who was term-limited in 2022 to the new voting bloc. Defillipo and Kramer had both been censured by the city commission for racist outbursts at in-person city meetings and in social media interactions with the public.
Kramer also founded a political organization under the name of WakeUp NMB, Inc. with Defillipo and among others, Lyn Su, a former Republican State House candidate who expressed to the Miami Herald Editorial Board support for the Proud Boys, a group linked to the organization of the January 6 insurrection. This new group was pivotal to defending Defillipo’s claims that he still lived in the city and was acting in the best interests of the city by organizing a public relations effort and denouncing critics of the mayor’s actions. The WakeUp members who support Evan Piper can occasionally be seen using the Trump-like rallying cry “Make NMB Great Again!” on online postings.
Defillipo, a realtor, also admitted to being involved in real estate transactions that required city approvals to move forward. This practice is explicitly prohibited under state law and routinely leads to felony charges of elected officials. With no sign of state prosecutors into Defillipo’s business activities, in February 2022, the commission moved to curb Defillipo’s practice of abusing his authority to move city approvals for projects he was involved in by passing a new ethics ordinance.
As the November 2022 election drew closer, the public began asking where the mayor was living as public records showed that he had sold his family home of many years in December 2021. Public records in Broward County indicated that he was living in Davie. A formal ethics complaint and later an investigation by an outside law firm hired by the city confirmed that Defillipo was living in Davie in violation to his oath of office and had resigned his office automatically. Meanwhile, Paule Villard lost her reelection bid changing the makeup of the commission’s decision-making majority to one controlled by Defillipo.
According to court documents in the ongoing employment lawsuit by former city manager Arthur Sorey, Defillipo instead of quietly resigning or agreeing to provide evidence he did live in North Miami Beach, attempted to negotiate a deal with Sorey who would receive a comfortable severance package to leave city employment before having an opportunity to review Defillipo’s residency.
The city commission remained at a stalemate as the three Haitian American commissioners boycotted meetings run by Defillipo while court proceedings continued. Defillipo and Chernoff filed separate lawsuits using the same team of attorneys. Eventually, after nearly 4 months, a judge gave Defillipo a favorable order requiring all commissioners to attend meetings which would allow him to fire the city’s manager and attorney. Before the next meeting, the city attorney abruptly resigned. At the meeting, the manager was fired for cause which triggered a loss in pay and benefits for Sorey. Mark Antonio was hired as a temporary city manager who proceeded to aggressively replace staff. After another 2 months, Mario Diaz with only 2 years of experience of management at a tiny village was hired as permanent city manager.
Defillipo was only getting started. To reward their attorneys, Defillipo and Chernoff illegally approved the payment of over $110,000 to them. Their attorneys were also awarded a city contract to investigate “financial misspending” which pressured Black staffers to leave or be fired in coordination with the temporary city manager Mark Antonio. In two instances, Black staff were arrested and fired on charges of theft that were quickly dismissed. In October, these personal attorneys were paid nearly $22,000 although it is not known if it is for this contracted work or some other service that could work its way to defraying the cost of Defillipo’s criminal defense.
Defillipo also led the commission to illegally remove Commissioner Michael Joseph, the only attorney on the board, claiming he had breached attendance requirements. In June, a judge restored Joseph to the commission. Without Defillipo and the return of Joseph, the commission remains at a 3-to-3 divide with both sides claiming to represent the people and the mantle of ethical leadership.
Defillipo remains a constant presence in North Miami Beach, showing up to a recent Veteran’s Day event and listing his 3 commissioner allies as integral witnesses for his criminal defense.
Defillipo and his allies continue to this day to push unsubstantiated claims that the city financials were in peril while under the leadership of the previous commission majority advocating for a state-led financial audit. Instead, the city passed the largest budget in the city’s history, with the largest reserves possible, and the city’s budget consultant resigned to protest the city administration’s steps to falsely paint the budget under a fiscal emergency caused by the previous administration.
Candidate Profiles: Evan Scott Piper and Paule Villard
Evan Scott Piper
59 years old
Registered No Party Affiliated
Entrepreneur and briefly appointed city commissioner (2018)
“The city is in a little bit of a difficult time right now. There are a lot of different things that are going on there,” Evan Piper told the Miami Herald. “And I feel that I’m one of the few, if not [the] only person, that has the background, the skills, the ability, and what it takes to start being effective on day one.”
Piper is an accomplished businessperson who excels at networking. He is the president of the North Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce. However, being supported by former Commissioner Barbara Kramer who is also still running for mayor in 2024 raises the concern that Piper is only a placeholder for Kramer or worse, for Defillipo who could return to office should he be able to resolve his criminal case. Piper was also a longtime member of the city’s planning and zoning board, a pivotal board responsible for development application approvals. In one of the last development acts as a member of this board, Piper chaired the board approving the development at 16300 Northeast 19th Avenue that Defillipo was the sales agent for.
Piper claims the ability to unite the two factions on the city commission to return the city to a prior period of greatness without addressing concerns of public corruption that have routinely placed North Miami Beach voters in repeated predicaments of voting for replacement mayors.
Piper is endorsed by the Defillipo allies Commissioners Jay Chernoff, Phyllis Smith and Fortuna Smukler as well as two elected officials from the city of Aventura and State Senator Jason Pizzo who backed Defillipo’s claims of financial misspending in the city of North Miami Beach.
Piper’s campaign has raised $60,966.00 including a $10,000 loan to himself, and has spent $44,795.95.
Paule Villard
63 years old
Registered Democrat
Retired member of the City of Miami Police Department and former city commissioner (2018-2022)
“We need a cop as a mayor who will fight hard for law and order in the city,” Villard wrote in response to emailed questions from the Miami Herald. “As a retired 21-year police veteran, voters first elected me in 2018 because they saw me as someone with proven integrity and public service experience. I want to go back to the city commission to finish the reforms that I started.” Villard touted her voting record to no longer outsource the water plant, and create ethics laws that banned staff from abusing their positions of power. “I personally championed the creation of the city’s first senior center,” she wrote. “I am the only one running with a record of putting the interests of residents first.”
If elected, Villard said she will address budget cuts to police staffing and noted the Washington Park neighborhood has been waiting for a community center. “Even our new senior center and library won’t be open at hours when people expect to use them the most because of unnecessary budget cuts,” Villard wrote.
Villard is not without controversy. However, allegations seem to be mostly contrived by her opponents. Critics focus on Publix gift card giveaways she championed which were opposed by commissioners aligned with Defillipo, voting to increase healthcare benefits to commissioners of which all commissioners benefited while past commissioners like Chernoff still has lifetime healthcare from decades prior, and traveling to study the Boring Company tunnels by invitation of the city administration to reach a better understanding of a bid the Boring Company submitted to create an underground highway that extends the 826 East highway to Sunny Isles from the Golden Glades Interchange to alleviate traffic on 163rd Street, a major traffic corridor of the city.
Her opponents' use of name-calling and cartoonish depictions of her as a thief are at least unfair given her lengthy career in law enforcement and her championing the cause of law and order. Despite anxious online ramblings claiming otherwise, every ethics complaint filed against Villard has returned with no findings of wrongdoing.
Villard’s campaign has raised $3,255.00, including a $225 loan to herself, and has spent $2,180.00.
These two campaigns could not be more different with Piper calling for a return to a past greatness of the city while Villard is focused on law and order. Villard summed up what she believes is the most glaring problem facing the city, “[The] commission cannot be allowed to operate outside of the law. Now voters will say who they think will best follow the rule of law.”
Voter turnout is expected to be very light making every vote matter even more.
Election Day is Tuesday, December 5, 2023 with voting from 7 AM to 7 PM.
For more information on how and where to vote, call (305) 499-8683 or visit the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections website: https://www.miamidade.gov/elections