Coral Springs Election 2006 Results: THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN ( At least some of them)

Coral Springs Election 2006 Results:
THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN
( At least some of them)

Looks like we will be having a interesting tongue twister every time the city commission meets.  Brook..Bruck..Boccard….Say it quickly several times and see if you cannot make a mistake….as the voters have spoken and the results are in:  Scott Brook is Mayor, Vincent Boccard and Claudette Bruck has made it to city commissioner seats!

With 2000 voters less than the previous election a minority of the voters have elected a majority of the city commissioners. This perhaps is the single most important issue facing the city of Coral Springs: How to get people out to exercise their democratic right to vote. Only 7400 voters turned out.  Quite pitiful.  For a town of 130,000 what happened to all of the voters?

Our analysis of the election really proved to be that there were no surprises.  Coralsprings.com had chosen to support 2 out of the 3 winning candidates. The one choice that we did not get right, we really did not get wrong either. Tom Powers and Claudette Bruck were the only close votes, and we liked them both. In the end we picked Tom for his police experience, but we made no druthers about Bruck who was the only Female candidate running and will be the only woman sitting on the city commission.  Bruck brings her years of experience in dealing with government and volunteering numerous organizations including one that is helping the homeless. 

The Mayor race was a close fought one as well. However, as predicted, the voters recognized the fact that Scott Brook was the right choice. Scott winning also brought justice to the fact that John Sommerer, a past mayor of the city  who held office for more than 10 consecutive years, was not deserved of the position. The fact is during his term of office term limits were imposed but not respected by him as he was on one those city commissioners at that time to exclude himself from the law. There was some ‘mud slinging’ at the end of the campaign by Scott, which I certainly hope did not influence any of the voters. However, Scott is now the youngest Mayor in Broward County, and along with Michael Udine who was elected Mayor of Parkland, will hopefully form a bond to change some of the senior moments that Broward county seems to have these days.

Bravo to Vincent Boccard! Here was the one candidate that has always given his 100% for the city despite 2 failed election campaigns.  He easily defeated Mitch Kraft, who tried to ride the support of his wife who is a sitting member of the Broward County School Board. Mitch raised a staggering amount of money for his campaign, mostly from outside sources. He had more than 5 times the funds that Vince had, and for the most part ran a losing campaign. Vincent will be a fine city commissioner as he knows how to walk the walk and talk the talk.

Great as well is the amount of votes that 2 of the 4 candidates in the Seat 4 race received.  Mike Natalie and Robert Paison received pitiful support from the voters. These two “professional” candidates were what we call opportunists, hoping to get into office based on nothing more than last minute campaigning and the hope that the voters would be stupid enough to vote for them. The two candidates were rejected by the voters, as they should have been. These guys always seem to appear at city meetings and events, prior to an election. If you want to get into office, you need to be more active, other than a ‘pretty face’.  Hopefully, these two will turn in their hats, and not become the perpetual losing candidates for office in Coral Springs.  The extra $13,000 per year a city commissioner makes is just not worth it!

The citizens have also given the city $10,000,000 to build a badly needed Public Safety building .  However, more interestingly the people of Country Acres have voted to join the rich people of Parkland rather than the poor people of Coral Springs…all 57 of them.  Who cares!