Anti-Social
We' not anti-people, just anti-social media. Interesting topics, with some logic, originating from the island paradise of Key Biscayne, Florida.
Anti-Social
Council Candidates: Charles Collins / The presidential debate and Haitians
WE CONTINUE our series interviewing the six candidates for Key Biscayne's Village Council. Our guest is CHARLES COLLINS, who supports pausing the "Big Dig" projects. We ask about that -- and why he switched running for mayor to council
ALSO, we bring on our reporter Billy Jean Louis to talk about reaction in Little Haiti to Donald Trump's false claim that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in an Ohio town.
ELECTION DATES
- Mail ballots go out - Sept 26
- Last day to register — Oct. 7
- Last day to request mail ballot — Oct. 24
- Early Voting Oct 21 - Nov. 3
- Election Day - Nov. 5.
The views expressed in the following program are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily represent those of the cheapest game independent or Miami corpus state portions were pre recorded and
Unknown:again and again. I think I will have I think she will she will always be my friend.
Tony Winton:Live from Miami, Florida. This is anti social, the podcast where we're kind of like a spice rack for social media to keep it contained in tiny little bottles and hope they don't spill over the counter. I'm Tony Winton
Jan Dillow:and I'm Jan Dillo. Sorry, it's
Tony Winton:hard to write these gags every time. Doesn't always work. I never stretch. It tough room. Okay, well, Jan, it's been an amazing week here in US politics. Election day is November 5, and the ballots are going out in Florida on September 26 that is, as we're recording today, on a Thursday. That is two weeks. Yeah,
Jan Dillow:that's really it's happened up really fast two
Tony Winton:weeks, that's when people start voting.
Jan Dillow:Yeah, there's a lot, and we haven't. It doesn't really feel like we've gotten into like locally. The the meat of it, we haven't had any debates or anything. Well,
Tony Winton:in our main guest today is a local candidate, Charles Collins, who was running for Village Council. And we're doing a series here on antisocial part of our tradition to have all the candidates come on and all of them have agreed, and he will be talking to you in a moment. But before we do that, we did have this kind of amazing thing happen nationally in politics. Did we not?
Jan Dillow:Yes, we certainly did. Everyone is talking about the first meeting between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, but a
Tony Winton:little bit more than that, and one quote in particular, right? One quote in particular, we just have a lot. Sorry, that's my technical error there. So let's turn those all off and we'll try that again. Okay,
Donald Trump:they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame that's
Tony Winton:the former President Donald Trump, talking about what he believed were reports of people eating pets in a town in Ohio, and something that apparently involved Haitian Americans. And it has kind of gone viral that comment and joining us, we wanted to look a little bit here in South Florida, of course, because we have a very large Haitian population. And our new reporter for the key Biscay independent, Billy John Louis is here, and he did a story on that he himself is a Haitian and you know, Billy, tell us what your what your reporting showed. Thank
Billy Jean Louis:you so much for having me on this show, Tony. First thing, first thing I want to address is the fact that you know, during the debate, when former President Donald Trump made the comment, you know the moderator, David Murr, he informed him that after contacting the city of Springfield that there were no credible reports about Trump's claim. And you know, I had the privilege to go to Little Haiti yesterday and talk to a Haitian entrepreneur, as well as you know him being on the cast member of VH one, the reality show called Love and Hip Hop Miami, and so he's telling me how, like he's very hurt to hear, uh, FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP making the comments and that, you know, um, him saying such thing and picking a certain demographic of people, he told me that that is just discrimination. And, you know, it wasn't just him that I talked to. I also talked to his brother, Camille. He told me that while he is, you know, the comment did get under his skin. You know, he, Trump is known to make these kind of comments. And just want to look, take a look back at what he said in 20 2018 former President Donald Trump said, you know, dismissed countries with large population of black people, and he was advocating for an increased immigration of, excuse me, immigrant of. Uh, no way, right?
Tony Winton:So I guess, you know, we've heard these kind of comments before, but this one really seems to have just ignited this, this, this reaction. And you were telling me earlier that you feel it's, it's dangerous,
Billy Jean Louis:you know, our conversation, you know, I, you know, I felt like so many people, like, afraid, I mean, like, they love their pets, right? And, you know, it is dangerous, in a sense, that people are going to be fearful of not being able to, like, have their pets around. And I'm thinking that a group of people could come over to the United States and start eating their pets. So that is what is dangerous, right about his comments, and
Tony Winton:just to quickly follow up, do you Did you get any sense from the people you interviewed that this will spur any kind of action, being active in politics, vote registration? What do you think it what kind of what did you hear when you interviewed folks about it? That
Billy Jean Louis:is a great question. Tony, like the person I talked to. His name is Guy, Marlon du Ray, and he said, after listening to Trump's comment, he will vote Democrat, right?
Tony Winton:So, well, we'll see. We'll keep following that. I mean, it's this. These things have a shelf life of you know, it's not to know, there's so many other things that will happen between now and Election Day, but it just we wanted to bring it to our listeners, because we are launching a publication that is serving that area of Miami, the Liberty City independence, a soft launch has already started. You're writing stories for both Key Biscayne and that new community that we're reporting for and we just wanted to bring your reporting to our listeners. Thanks for showing on coming on Billy. We appreciate it. Thank you so much, and we'll be back right after this. You
Jan Dillow:and we're back. I'm Jan dilem,
Tony Winton:I'm Tony Winton, and you're listening to antisocial.
Jan Dillow:And we are going to be continuing today with our our interviews of all of the village council candidates. And today we have a gentleman who may be well known in the community, but it's his first four, eight, I think, into elected office. He's been very active locally and a frequent vocal presence in the chats. But Charles, why don't you tell us about yourself and why you're running and welcome
Tony Winton:to anti social. Sorry.
Charles Collins:Thanks Tony. Thanks Dan, thank you for having me. Well, I'll do the My name is Charles Collins. I identify as a 72 year old, third generation native and born in Coral Gables. I spent most of my career with Miami Dade County. And my likes are analytical research, writing and historical renovations, which I'm good at, and my dislikes are public speaking, which I am so bad at, and I was once sent to media training and failed.
Tony Winton:Well, we're going to be very nice to you here. Yes, we are, although we will ask a couple of tough questions, though, but we'll start off. Why don't we start off with some of the big I guess that first question is, why are you running? Why did you decide to do this and and, and our listeners know you also ran for mayor, and then, kind of like, change direction?
Charles Collins:Well, I think everybody knows by now, I ran for mayor on a single issue that I was concerned with. I didn't really think it warranted a lot of attention or campaigning. I got my legal standing. I challenged the law. Ultimately, I think only two of us ultimately filed complete financial disclosures. According to the legislature, you're talking
Tony Winton:about form six basic, yes, this is the financial disclosure. It's a full
Charles Collins:financial disclosure to it's a full financial disclosure that the legislature added into the requirements for municipal officials. Previously, it had only been, well, not only every state and county official, including school board, I believe, fill out a full financial disclosure. It's called form six. The municipalities at the time were only required to fill out a less rigorous form one, and the state Ethics Commission had learned that the 30% of the complaints coming to the Ethics Commission were from these local municipalities. So. So the legislature added it to the in the 2024 no 23 session added it as a requirement for municipal officials, and they had till January 1 2024 to resign, or after that date, they were required to file by July 1, without getting too deep in the woods. The law firm that represents the village, or represents a lot
Tony Winton:of Weiser road municipal practice is one of their things,
Charles Collins:came up with a class action suit to they argued. They presented the argument that because the village is a volunteer board, and I'm not sure what the rest of their legal argument was, but anyway, it was a violation of privacy, and they took that to District Court, and they were issued an injunction. Excuse me, but my initial filing wasn't based on the form one or form six. I was trying to show that that it wasn't burdensome, that I was filing as a candidate under this injunction, or threatened injunction because I wanted to show the legislature that, or the state legislature, that it was not causing people not to run. That was the shot against it, that it was scaring candidates away, and council members were resigning, and there weren't quorums in certain towns. Anyway, it was a disaster scenario, and I thought by filing myself, I could at least show the courts that it's not prohibitive to have to file financial disclosure. And at the same time, I was hoping to show, because I am not a wealthy person, I wanted to show that it wasn't really about how much you're worth. The whole form six debate is based on how much you're worth year to year, and it's a tracking system. So it's not we're not playing who's got the money who doesn't. It's about transparency in government. And as it turned out, the injunction went through. But at this point, of all the candidates and all the council members, is only Joe and I have actually are in full compliance with the legislature's wishes. So whatever happens going forward, we're good.
Tony Winton:Well, let me, let me follow up a little bit there, because essentially, and I understand the argument, it's a transparency argument. And as a reporter, I can't really argue against transparency, but it, but it is kind of a, you know, you essentially have said that the reason you did it was to for to prove a point. Um, but, you know, this is a you're now running for council, and is that say something about you, that that you take position sometimes to just kind of prove a point, as opposed to trying to maybe accomplish legislation or do something else. I guess that's that's what I'm getting at.
Charles Collins:So the second part of my filing for mayor was I was told that you could not file to run for mayor then resign that race and file for a second race, that it was against the charter. And I felt differently. And we went back and forth and back and forth. And so I finally decided, as part of this filing to run for mayor that I would run until the primary was over. I assumed I would have gotten knocked out in the primary. But even if I didn't, I resigned in the primary, and then I refiled the paperwork to run for council, and by the time it actually happened, I submitted my resignation. I took the paperwork to the bank, I set up my next account. I got back two hours later, there was no problem. So the second part of this wasn't only just my pet peeve and trying to pry that window open towards transparency. It was also about trying to change the regulatory process of the election that the argument was that this was going the form six would would reduce the number of candidates running, and I felt by expanding the election process, we would expand the pool of people that run. It's a lot of work to run in that summer campaign, and it's a lot of money, and at the end of it, you got a lot of name recognition. You've got a lot of sweat equity into it. Why shouldn't you be allowed to then switch over to council race? You should theoretically be the front runner.
Tony Winton:Well, I'm sorry, who told you that? Who was it? The clerk told you that? Or add me what I couldn't you couldn't you could you said, you some Yeah,
Charles Collins:yeah, when I excuse me, yes, it was the clerk. And then I spoke to Chad about it too. And when I
Tony Winton:was I laid all this out Chad Friedman, the village attorney, turning, okay,
Charles Collins:I laid this out to Chad at, uh, I laid it out to the whole council at a meeting and said, Look, I'm not coming after Joe. He's a friend of mine, but I wanted to to set this precedent. And then after the meeting, Chad said, it's not going to work. Okay, fine, we'll find out. So, like I said, I'm not going to pay for a lot of attorneys and try to litigate it. I was just going to, I'd be a disruptor, I guess, and get something done.
Jan Dillow:I'm. Okay, so, so is, does that mean that your candidacy is a question mark? Then
Charles Collins:no, no, no trying to understand what you're saying. I wouldn't be I'm saying that from here going forward in the next election cycle, in 2026 anybody can run for mayor. You run to the primary, you fall out of the primary, you can run again for council. Okay? I It works. It works. I'm going to demonstrate. I may not win Council, but I, I've done the process. I set a legal precedent. Okay, okay,
Tony Winton:but go ahead.
Jan Dillow:I'm sorry. I just wanted to, so I'm not trying to, like, press you if you don't have an answer or you don't want to answer this question, but you, I did also want to say, I mean, it sounds like you were proving a point, which, well done. Are there any other because we're going to ask you about several things that are going on in the village, but is there any other issue that you really want to that that caused you to say, I really want to run there's something that's a burning desire that I want to change.
Charles Collins:I think, I think that can we'll get into that. Okay, yeah, I have issues as the issues come up, as anybody know that reads the chats, there's two with more points of view on every topic. And originally we weren't getting a lot of people filing to run for council. I feel strongly about an issue. The other guy, the incumbent, feels strongly. The other way, I thought, if nobody else is going to file, I'm going to file. And I recruited some of the people that are running. Tried to to recruit other people to run. So here we are. We got six fairly qualified and I'd say excellent choices to choose from. Three of them are going to make it. Three of them aren't well,
Tony Winton:let's talk about some of the big issues here. We have asked everybody, because they are issues that face the entire community. And before we do that, though, I want to play a couple of sound bites from the village council meeting this past Tuesday, where the council voted six one to approve a first reading $95 million budget. It includes $55 million worth of capital expenditures, and the bulk of that are for what is known as the Big Dig. This is the large the first phase of the large resiliency project that involves storm water and protecting the coastline and burying the power lines and all the stuff. We've covered it a lot in the newspaper, and there was this discussion, you know, about growing unease, I guess is the way I'd call it. We've had some of the other candidates talk about it. Frank Kaplan, one of your rivals, the former running council member, former mayor, saying why he was voting in favor of this project. The
Franklin Caplan:premise, you know, to begin that if we didn't do this, we could save money on the budget. Well, of course we could. If we didn't do any of this, would we be playing Russian roulette? You know, the storm water system is absolutely perfect for 15 years. Is that settled wisdom and truth, or is that is that wistful thing, wishful thinking. I think it's time we speak to this.
Tony Winton:And then council member Fernando Vazquez, who is an engineer, and actually, before his elected service, was working for a com the one of the engineering firms the village hired. Mr. Vasquez, kind of said that the village seems to be losing the public discussion war, if you will, the public argument about moving forward. Here's what he said.
Fernando Vazquez:We just have a lot of information out there that is becoming very difficult to manage, very difficult to assert that we're moving in the right direction, even though I know that we're doing the right thing. Mayor, I fully support it, 1,000%, you know I do, but I just think that we have a lot of moving pieces. I just think sometimes taking a little bit of a step back.
Tony Winton:And the manager, you heard him coming in there a little bit, Steve Williamson, a former Army Colonel Army Corps of Engineers, this is very much his signature program, saying that just asking the council members to stay the course and to trust the team of experts that he's put together,
Steve Williamson:We have some very, very good professionals in place who know what they're doing.
Fernando Vazquez:Yes.
Steve Williamson:And sometimes it's hard step back and let those people do their job. sometimes it's hard to step back and let those people do ther job.
Tony Winton:So, I guess that's the question for you, with that little bit of a background, the first vote has been cast. We have this large expense. Could be 310 350 who knows very, very large expense, what is your position on the Big Dig, and what should the village be doing?
Charles Collins:I think what's come up is, I think Lucho has been in, probably the leader on this argument is that this thing sort of developed a life of its own. We're looking at NOAA flood charts that say by in 100 years, 20 was it? 2124 we're going to be under 11 feet of water. What can we do to mitigate that? Do. Well, we can. It's lights out. So what we're talking about is short term solutions in a global scale. It's a glacial it's it's 25 years. This is a 40 year plan, but how are we going to address it? How can we push that inevitability down the road as far as we can, I think there's two approaches, or this is my understanding. Mind you, I'm an electrician, not a plumber, so we'll get into undergrounding later, but the two approaches are one. Basically we do like New Orleans. We start putting up higher walls, higher dunes, pushing out the water, and then we start pumping it out faster than it comes in. Another approach is we follow like the keys that we basically raise the island, we we raise the streets, we raise the buildings. We let the water flow through the the Big Dig that's before us now, leaving aside the utility side of it, just to just the storm water, is because if we do raise the streets, we push storm water into private property. A lot of that property is low, low lying, it's the original mcelhones, or below flood rate, below BFE, if we didn't have those homes, or if we could raise those homes, we could raise the streets, and we're not spending half a billion dollars, or whatever it's going to be on pumping the rainwater out. Now mind you, this is rainwater. This isn't about hurricane mitigation or anything else. Which brings the second part of the argument is, is rainwater are really our first priority. We've got issues with and and that kind of money. There's a lot of stuff we could be addressing, but I don't think we can do it all. We've got the causeway, we've got the beaches. We have undergrounding. There is resiliency in the sense of raising the island. We've got a building code now that's sort of getting us there. As the old mackles come down and have 50% kicks in, they come down, we're getting the island up. We're going at least partially in that keys direction. I think there's more we could do in that direction with the building code. I was in ground zero. And Andrew, trust me, overnight, this entire island can change. If those mackerels are at 50% just 50% repaired, they have to come up to code, and the whole island gets elevated overnight. I don't see the huge rush on the rainwater issue. I think Lucha pointed out that, you know, we haven't been taking care of what we got. It's how are we going to take what's coming? Let's look at what we got now and at least know what our baseline is. The fact that all of these engineers and people we hired recently to examine, and apparently none of them actually went down and looked at what we had, I tried to find out. Well, we have the drawings, don't we? What is the theoretical capacity of this system? If it was operating 100% we could do that math. That doesn't take a study. So yeah, I think there's, there's two schools of thought on this issue. I don't think the fact that that Vasquez is is a well, I won't even go there, but let's just say there's two schools of thought on the deal. And as I mentioned before, I'm going to put myself up as as one side of the deal Frank's Frank stacked his ground and not to get off topic, but, well, we'll leave it there. We'll get we'll get around to other issues.
Tony Winton:I hear your argument is that there's just not enough you've heard, I'm hearing not enough information. Do you doubt the work that's been done before? It sounds like you think that work has been has been done the village pay a lot of money for it has been insufficient. What? What is it you're actually saying?
Charles Collins:I'm saying I don't think we, it appears we haven't done everything we can do to to engineer what we do have. How much pipe have we got in the ground? What would it carry if it was completely clean, if we put a million or 5 million into what we got, what would come out the other end? That would be a good place to convince me that's that this is worthwhile. I'm not saying it. It's not a deal. It's not a deal. I just saying I don't think it's the only deal, and it's the only deal right now.
Jan Dillow:It's, it's my understanding, though, that we're, we're getting to the end of the useful life of what we have now with these, with the with our current system. So if we have to rebuild it, isn't there an argument that, you know, you should be rebuilding it for the future, and not, you know, using bubble gum to, you know, plug up holes?
Charles Collins:Who said that it was at the end of its useful life?
Tony Winton:Well, I mean, I think that's been the, basically the position of the administration that. The system is, when we started reporting on this earlier, it wasn't designed, excuse me, with sea level rise in mind, it wasn't part of the original calculations. And it's going to run a run into a physical problem of being able to move water out just by gravity. That's essentially the conclusion. And then the second level, which we haven't even talked about yet, is the fact that the water that's flowing out right now is untreated. We're just putting dirty water into Biscayne Bay. The new system would have some filtration capacity.
Charles Collins:Who told you that?
Tony Winton:Well, that's also part of the spec. And the county just passed a an ordinance that the village will probably have to get some kind of approval for because the level of pollutant removal that an ordinance calls for, apparently, is not achievable, according to folks we've interviewed so far,
Charles Collins:yeah, I think I heard the, well, that ordinance was passed, I think about two weeks ago, right? And I think one of the issues there we were hearing is that the workaround is, if we can pull those permits before the effective date of the ordinance, which I think is the 25th 2025 August, something like that, we could get exempted. So, yeah, there's workarounds. Do we want to get exempted? That's another political decision, right?
Tony Winton:But continuing at the current gravity system, continues the pollution,
Charles Collins:continuing with the one that we have, with the Yeah, but continuing with the new system as designed, we're going to continue to pollute. I've had I asked, I sent a letter to the manager. I'm going in lieu of this. I'm sure this, this is in their paperwork, because it's been floating around since 2017 what is the economic impact on our existing system of the ordinance? Was it calculated before? Was a calculated after? If it was calculated, what is that number?
Tony Winton:So to summarize, then the what you'd like to see happen is an evaluation of the current system to determine really how much useful life it has, and then eventually a stormwater system. Or did I hear? It sounded like you were also kind of saying, kind of more like, let's focus on raising properties, you know, a Florida Keys type of approach and essentially a let it flood type of approach to it.
Charles Collins:Yeah, I think if we, as I mentioned before, the system is designed for the lowest common denominator. We're trying to protect the metaphorical mayor's mailbox. I don't know if you guys know what that means, but he was using his mailbox as an example of he can't even get to his mailbox when it rains. So it became sort of a tongue in cheek shot at Joe, but it wasn't meant as a pejorative. It literally. It's a great analogy. If we raise the mayor's mailbox, if we raise the homes, then we don't have so much pressure on the stormwater system. And then maybe we could go back and look at the stormwater system we bought. And maybe we don't need to two inch an hour. We need to one inch an hour. It's like trying to solve a simultaneous equation. Is the engineering possible that we could determine how much there? I can't even get a straight answer of how many Mackle homes, or how many homes exist right now that are at BFE. If every home we take off of that list, we raise the flood level, the cheaper our stormwater system gets.
Jan Dillow:Well, I think, I think that maybe we need to move on to the next Yeah,
Tony Winton:I mean, a lot of other things going on here in Key Biscayne, but that's obviously a complex topic. It is going to be a lot more debate about it, but thank you. We.
Charles Collins:Let me finish it up with one. I think I mentioned this right, that the Big Dig takes the $13 million bond. Yes,
Tony Winton:yes, the first draw from the bond is part of the financing plan.
Charles Collins:I think you pointed this out in like last June or something, right? Yeah. So, as you may remember, one of the issues I had with the original bond back in 2020. Was it that they called it the blank check bond that typically general obligation bonds are attached to a specific project, and you're voting on the project, and the funding in one boot, the Geo, the 100 million dollar bond was, yeah, we're going to do beaches, and there was no specific dollar amount set
Jan Dillow:for each thing, but there was generically, yeah, but it
Charles Collins:wasn't like, you know, we're going To do 10 million here. We've got a number 13 million of the bond is going to a project. This is what I wanted to see years ago. This is what we're getting. You could actually make the argument that this is a referendum by proxy, that if you're not in favor of you. If you want to sort of take a go slow approach, you can vote candidates that vote the go slow approach. They need. The trick with the bond issues are you need a super majority five votes on council instead of the usual four. There's three seats open, and the math works out if all three of those seats go to people that are in the mindset of Brett Moss, they could block the $100,000,000.13 million, 14 million. And I don't know if it'd kill the project, but it would certainly send a message to the management that they're not. The people are not in favor of this project, and ultimately, that's who's got to make the decision. I'm not saying that we shouldn't listen to the experts, but I think it's
Tony Winton:but you are saying we shouldn't listen to the experts. That's exactly what you're saying.
Charles Collins:I'm not saying don't listen to the experts. You have to decide if that advice is worth the price they want you to pay.
Tony Winton:It's a value proposition. Okay? I hear you. Let's let's move on to another topic. This has been a really emotional one in Key Biscayne, the death of a beloved tutor, Meagan Andrews, hit by an E bike driven by a 12 year old fatality that many people saw coming and blame assigned to the village council and to the administration for not acting faster in passing a regulation that at least our unofficial scientific poll has shown it's very popular and supported widely and broadly in the island. What's your take on one how we got to this place, in terms of how the council reacted to a public safety issue, how he would react and what needs to happen next?
Charles Collins:Well, I have a huge backstory to bicycles. I was a part of the original Everglades club. We talked about next door. We were talking to a UF alum. I started the bicycle clinic at UF in the 70s. I was a bicycle mechanic. I came home, I the Dade County bike 305, works out of my warehouse. And I still do volunteer tours of the gables, historic tours. They have a bike walk, Coral Gables that does a monthly tour. So on one side of me, I want to support bicycles, micro mobility, that whole agenda. So obviously I'm not thrilled about a complete block. But given what we've got, my job as council member is to reflect the wishes of my constituents, of the constituencies, and if the island, if the majority of the Mets, the beauty of this thing again, you get a referendum if you want to try to move forward. I've got a lot of the point of my my experiences. I got a lot of options I can offer. I'm not saying I'm bored. I'm just saying I can. I'd like to work on other options besides the complete ban. But if that's what people want, that's what the job of the Council is to do. So again, I'm let's see how the election goes. I'll stand on whatever I I don't even know where to take the position right now. Yeah, I mean, as an old man, I appreciate them not running up behind me anymore, but on the other side, a world class city would have, you know, segregated bike lanes, like they do in Europe, where you got bicycles, mobility, cars, everybody's pedestrians. Do we have the real estate right now? No, but we could do it if it was a priority.
Jan Dillow:Be costly, though?
Tony Winton:Yeah, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't have the sound queued up for the millions run that every, every, every answer. We're running out of time. So I want to make sure that we get some of your thoughts on some of the other issues. We had a really big crime issue in the community here. Gymnastics coach by the name of Oscar Olea now facing charges. He's on trial, and of course, he's innocent until proven guilty, but it is a history of alleged sexual abuse that extended back many years, and questions raised about how the village may not have been able to act criminally, criminal prosecution at the time. That is what the law enforcement has said. But the issue about whether a permit should have been granted, and you know, again, not acting quickly or decisively in a potential public safety issue. Have you have any thoughts about that?
Charles Collins:Well, I was a union rep at the parks department for the county for a long time, and background checks, drug testing, we even had annual ethics training it had to take every year. I. Yeah, when I got here, I was shocked. There. I talked to the guys. When I joined ass club. I was talking to the kids, the young adults, and they, none of them had background checks. There was no, you know, it was just sort of, I was shocked. And I went to the manager, and I went to, who else I didn't go to, to the parks director, but anyway, and I brought him our man basically told him what our processes had been at the county forever, that vendors, anybody that even goes near a kid has got a level two background check, has as long as I can remember, almost the fact that we weren't doing it. I think this speaks to the problem. It was just, you're not they're not tuned to it out here. It's, it's well, but we're also safe. And I think what the point of it is, is we're done. It's, it's nothing we can do about it now it's past. I'm not going to, I'm not going to get involved in interdepartmental or personnel matters at this point. But I think, yes, we could have done a better culture sooner and avoided the problem. But now that it's done, we do have the culture. We have become aware. We've reacted to it as a village, even the vendors, it's extended now I think third party isn't like this, vendors employees covered so well,
Tony Winton:that's the issue. This was a vendor's employee.
Charles Collins:Well, as I understand it, even under all the rules we got now, because nobody ever reported this guy, he would have passed a background check.
Jan Dillow:Yeah, okay. And one of the other issues that's been very active is the silver sands development. It was just passed. It passed on a first reading, and there's going to be another one coming up, I guess in the next couple of months or so. Yeah,
Tony Winton:if you're elected, you you would have guessed get to vote on this, on the second reading. What's your feeling on that? Well,
Charles Collins:I prepped wrong, because I figured by the time I got there, this would be a done deal.
Tony Winton:Well, you know, it's the village council, Key Biscayne. You know, they won four or five hour meetings. You never know what could happen.
Charles Collins:Okay, like the rest of us, I love, you know, the old sandbar and all that stuff. I hated to see it go. I had a long story I was going to tell you about when I graduated the class of 70 in gables. And we used to do the Biltmore all the time. And I go, we brought the whole show over there. We used to rent that place every year for the whole hotel. But anyway, I think under the existing zoning laws, it's, it's the best case, worst case. I mean, we, you know, we don't, we don't want greater density. But my understanding is this guy could have put 150 100 foot, 150 feet on that lot, or if he had enough lobby, it's a boutique hotel. It pointed. I think it could have been a lot bigger if he had wanted to be it's going to be a high end hotel or a condo. Yeah, that was the only thing, though, I hate, you know, it's like the the underlying to the whole village is it's changing. It's a terrible thing to use the word gentrifying, if that's because that implies we weren't good before. But yeah, developers are going to come. They've got more money, they got more time, they got more connections. They'll just wait in the weeds until they can get their zoning variances. So in lieu of what could possibly have gone on that property, I think it's a good thing.
Tony Winton:Charles Collins, we have really reached the end of art. We could keep talking lots more topics, but we have reached try to more or less keep the time the same for everybody. It is time for your closing argument. So give you time. If you've written something to make your you have one minute. You don't super we're not too bad. Are we? No. Okay, so you ready? Well,
Jan Dillow:we don't want it to go down 20 minutes. No,
Tony Winton:exactly. No. Filibusters Exactly. And I didn't ask you about, like, if you're elected, will you shorten the council meetings? I have been trying to get that one in here, but anyway, it's your turn, okay,
Charles Collins:so my closer, my objective, my objectives for filing for council include promoting environmental and sustainability, in short, to protect Paradise from the environment developers and reckless spending. With 35 years experience in government, I bring a wealth of expertise to the table. Additionally, I have deep roots in South Florida, with family history dating to the turn of the century and four decades of dedicated volunteers civic and political involvement. This includes supporting municipal bonds and advocating for early municipal incorporations, including Key Biscayne. Of all my involvements, the one I best exemplify is my long term quiet civic engagement is my most cherished experiences was serving as the stage manager and volunteer DJ for 30 plus annual Key Biscayne, Fourth of July parades going back to 1982 yet nobody ever knew my name. So thank you for considering. Considering my candidacy, I look forward to the opportunity to contribute to our community's growth and success.
Tony Winton:Charles Collins, candidate for village council, thank you for coming on being our guest. We'll be back right after this paradox.
Unknown:Bridge to America bridge as you turn back home, wonderful,
Tony Winton:and we are back on anti social. I'm Tony Winton and I'm Jan Dillo, as our guest leaves the studio here at wonderful WLRN. Great, great spot to be it
Jan Dillow:really is I feel so I feel so authentic here. We've even got the
Tony Winton:real we have the really super nice microphones. Yeah, thank you. WRN, now when it's their pledge drive, we're really going to have to help
Jan Dillow:them to be fair, I know, but us first, yes, that's
Tony Winton:Well, I mean, we talk about social media feeds, besides, you know, we talked about, obviously, the presidential debate, but the other in South Florida, we didn't have time to talk about earlier this situation involving a Miami Dolphins player,
Jan Dillow:yeah, that was really all over my media feeds. Tyree kill, yeah. And it was really amazing. I was I was actually very impressed with him, that he was able to perform it to the standard that he did afterwards. But,
Tony Winton:and, you know, we're taping this on a Thursday. He's playing tonight against buffalo, right? So we'll see. He's on his way to the game. It's 1030 in the morning or so, and it's pull over, if you haven't seen the video. It's on our website. Yeah, body cam.
Jan Dillow:It's pretty it's pretty amazing. And the dolphins came out very strongly, you know, in, you know, upset with the police department, who they work with, you know, every, every week to get the, you know, to, you know, for the for the games. I mean, they pay
Tony Winton:extra money to have extra cops. There a lot, yeah, and, you know, it's built into the whole industry that is the NFL, right?
Jan Dillow:We've got the nd, and now we've got the nd, NCAA, right, wait a minute, in n, a, c, p, right, in double A, C, P, N, double
Tony Winton:A, C, B, right. Sorry, we
Jan Dillow:started talking about athletics. Is that NCAA,
Tony Winton:but I mean, the larger issue is, and, you know, we Billy also, who was on earlier in the show, wrote a story about this as well, just trying to get reaction. Because it just, you know, the the tension that these kinds of incidents cause is real, and it keeps happening, right? It happens in a multicultural city like Miami or New York or wherever. And what comes to my mind is the apparent lack of progress now, people, there are people defending some of the police the union, of course, saying that, you know, he could have complied with the orders, officers, commands and all this other stuff. But if you listen to the tape that was a really aggressive,
Jan Dillow:you know, it does not come through from that tape that that that he was not complying, or that it, I agree with you. It looked very he
Tony Winton:rolled his window up, right, that's and the officer didn't like it, right? And, and if you watch it carefully the you know, we're actually looking at it frame by frame. He didn't even have a chance to get out of the car. He finally lowers the window down, the door is wedged open, and he isn't even given a chance to stand,
Jan Dillow:right? I think that's what I was focused on more than the Yeah, he's the window. The hands
Tony Winton:reach in, one of them, grabbing him by the hair, and he's yanked out of the car he didn't have, you know, you say comply with the police. Okay, that's what I was taught, you know. Okay, don't argue with the officer. He has a badge and a gun, you know, right? He didn't have a chance to stand up and do what the officer said, because he was literally thrown, pulled out of the car and immediately on the ground and handcuffed. Yeah,
Jan Dillow:yeah. I was very surprised. And. Mean, I think he's right. He's he probably feels, to a certain extent, that, you know, if this can happen to me. Well, he said, If this can happen to me, what if my name wasn't Tyree, kill Exactly. Yeah. How many other people can it happen to well, and I will, I will say
Tony Winton:this that you know, having spoken to both in key, Biscayne in Charles press and Frank Souza, the chief of police here, that this is part of training protocol, is de escalation, right? That is, that is something that that officers train good departments train on. It is a part of the curriculum, you know, to avoid this thing is de escalate. De escalate. De escalate. I have witnessed interactions locally with the kibas game police department where they've had to put somebody under arrest, and it is at the end of a, there is a there is a there is a much softer imma. Put it this way, I can't see every single one, the ones I witnessed, the tapes I've seen, right? It's a little slower process.
Jan Dillow:It, I'm sure it is. But, and I think, you know, I think de escalation is really important. I really am. I think I'm very, very supportive of that. One of the issues, though, I think, that you get into is, you know, the the situation that you're in can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming, and it may be more difficult to implement that. So I guess what I'm saying is, you know, when somebody's being you know, arrested on streets of Key Biscayne, I doubt if you're going to have as much pressure upon you as you might have in other situations, which is not to say that you don't need to de Escalate. I'm just saying I think you do in every situation. I just think that it needs to be impressed more, you know, you need to get, you know, more training, because sometimes the situation is going to be very, very difficult. It still needs to be deescalated, yeah, this might have been one of those. I mean, you're in the middle of traffic and, you know, going to the dolphin stadium kind of a thing, right?
Tony Winton:But it's a traffic stop, right? It is a traffic stop. Yeah, it's not. This is a traffic stop that wound up with somebody on the ground in handcuffs,
Jan Dillow:and two other players there, right? Another player also handcuffed, yes,
Tony Winton:another and the other player, Mr. Campbell, was standing, he was out of his vehicle, he was standing in the roadway, and he was arrested for not, I don't know, not driving away or something. I'm not really sure, wasn't arrested. Let me be precise. He was put, he was detained, that he was put in custody, and that's to be very careful. Arrest means you've been charged with something, right? He was, he was, he was put in custody and then quickly released, and as was Mr. Hill, but only after, you know, this incident, I don't know, half an hour, 35 minutes or so, being on a curb wearing handcuffs, watching fans or walking to the game. There are people injured, dolphins, jerseys, walking back and forth. You can watch the body cam, watching the scene play out near the stadium.
Jan Dillow:Yeah, and what did they think, you know, yeah, I agree it was,
Tony Winton:yeah. I, you know,
Jan Dillow:it's unfortunate. Very unfortunate. It is. But
Tony Winton:I when, when this kind of stuff, you know, the question is, when is it going to stop? When is it because there is a, there is a racial component here. I believe there is the, the and the question is, what's the answer? And when you talk to people in law enforcement, the answer is, training, training, training, de escalation. And that's part of why a professional police department is costs money. And if I could loop it back to the budget discussion, they know we were adding two more. The budget Council voted to add two more police officers to the Key Biscayne force. And every officer will have to be trained, and they have to have adequate time off, and they have to have, you know, vacation and all this other stuff, so that people aren't burnt out and everything else. So to the answer, yes, we need a professionally trained equip Police Department. Well, that is something at the end of the day, the community has direct role in. Because, yes, we vote with our dollars to make that happen, to make it a priority.
Jan Dillow:That's absolutely true. And you can also link it back to this year's election, because don't we have a sheriff's election coming up on in November as well. We
Tony Winton:do. And so we're going to try and bring you as many of these candidates as we can. We're going to finish up next week with the remaining two council candidates. We're planning on having the candidates for district seven, which is the county commission district, and anybody else we can get. We've asked, we've actually asked our Senate Senate candidates to come on the show. So and our members of Congress are working here the congressional race. We're working with our partners at WLRN to bring you that as well. Kind of depends on the campaigns also, but we're doing our best, but we're going to ask you to help us. Yep, it's
Jan Dillow:that time again. So. Just as a reminder, we are funded by our readers and our listeners, and we ask you to look into your wallet and think about funding us now and at the end of the year as well. Give Miami days coming up, and we will definitely be asking for your support then, as we are now, right? Thank
Tony Winton:you. And we have no every contribution helps, but there will be a period coming up there is a matching program. So this is an early ask. If you really love journalism, please contact us and volunteer to be a match. That would be very helpful, because match programs really dramatically increase the amount. If you put in a chunk of money and say, I'll give money to the Key Biscayne independent, if other people match me, that is a multiplier. So if you're interested in supporting our journalism, please let us know. Thanks
Jan Dillow:very much. I'm Tony Winton and I'm Jan Dillo.
Tony Winton:Smooth sailing. Everybody.
Unknown:Welcome. Know
