It was like a Sunshine Law violation waiting to happen: All but one of the city council members showed up to the kick off of Mayor Jeff Porter‘s reelection campaign Thursday night — an intimate affair with about 100 or so people in the Champion’s Club at the Miami-Homestead Speedway. In a rare sign of […]
Voters in Homestead passed two bond referendums that will raise $25 million to build a much needed police station — the bank the cops currently use is riddled with mold and radon — and finally renovate the Seminole Theater, which many city leaders hope can be a beacon to downtown revitalization. It wasn’t a great […]
Both former Mayors Steve “Shhhhh” Bateman of Homestead and Michael “Muscles” Pizzi of Miami Lakes — who were arrested in August on separate public corruption charges — sent holiday greetings via email to their friends and supporters. Pizzi, who has used Gmail to communicate with his peeps before, sent his note Dec. 31, and it […]
The Miami Herald appropriate calls it the year of the bust. That’s because 2013 was particularly packed with political corruption — or at least the kind we found out about, anyway. But it was also the year of disgust as electeds promoted corporate welfare for the millionaire owner of the Miami Dolphins, another millionaire bought […]
As expected, the Homestead City Council on Tuesday killed the deal between the city and Dade Medical College to redevelop 19 properties in the downtown and make it a vibrant, bustling commercial center. Well, almost. The college still has until January to get the site plans approved under the current agreement — for which an […]
You can expect the Homestead City Council today to kill the plan to revitalize the downtown vis-a-vis Ernesto Perez, founder and former CEO of Dade Medical College and serial campaign contributor, who has an agreement to buy 19 city properties under extremely favorable terms and wants an extension on his plans to develop the area […]
Former Homestead Mayor Steve Bateman might have thought the worst was over, but today he faces additional charges of public corruption for misuse of campaign funds. In August, Bateman was arrested on charges of unlawful compensation for using his position as mayor to secure a secret lobbying gig he never disclosed. Then he is suspended […]
In what seems like an early guilty verdict, at least in the court of public opinion, former Homestead Mayor Steve Bateman — suspended last month after his arrest on public corruption charges — was shut out of the runoff in Tuesday’s primary city election. Former Councilman Jeff Porter came out of the first round with […]
More than 1,100 people have already voted in the Homestead primary as early voting opens today for the last chance to cast a ballot before Election Day Tuesday. That includes 810 absentee ballots returned as of Friday and 169 and 154 early voters casting in person on Thursday and Friday. That’s already more than the […]
Voters have been steadily trickling into the Homestead public library for early voting. I don’t know what has them so excited. Because despite mounting anticipation, the mayoral debate in Homestead last week was a little anticlimactic. Here’s a race where one candidate, the former incumbent before he was suspended by the governor, has been arrested […]