Mayor’s comment about speaking Spanish angers commissioner, others during meeting
Surfside Mayor Shlomo Danzinger and Commissioner Nelly Velasquez often butt heads at town commission meetings.
But at Wednesday’s meeting, their usual conflict escalated further. As Danzinger spoke about a proposal to extend the length of elected officials’ terms, Velasquez attempted to chime in to voice her disagreement. Danzinger asked her to stop interrupting him.
Then the mayor asked, “Does anybody know how to speak Spanish to tell it to her?” Members of the audience audibly gasped at the comment, and Danzinger used his gavel to bring the room back to order.
When asked about the remark, Danzinger told the Herald he was “trying to get information clarified to the commissioner.”
“It appeared that Commissioner Velasquez was having difficulty understanding,” Danzinger said, “so I thought perhaps maybe it was a language barrier.”
Velasquez told the Herald she considers Danzinger’s remarks racist and called them “very disappointing.” She added that she was born in the U.S. and speaks English “perfectly.” Velasquez said she feels Danzinger targets her during meetings both because she is a political rival and because she is a woman.
She said she does not think Danzinger enforces the rules as harshly when it comes to his male political allies. Velasquez, who admitted she did interrupt the mayor, said even when she follows the rules at commission meetings, she feels like she gets “shut down.”
“It’s discrimination, and it shouldn’t be happening,” Velasquez said. “That’s just not right at any level for an elected official — especially the mayor, who’s the presiding officer — to be doing that.”
This comment comes after a number of tense exchanges at commission meetings. Last week, Danzinger asked the police to escort Surfside’s former mayor, Charles Burkett, out of a public meeting after Burkett broke the meeting’s rules by addressing a commissioner directly in his comments.
At the same meeting Danzinger repeatedly chastised Velasquez for violating rules about when she could speak. At the meeting, which discussed a memorial on the site of the Champlain Towers South collapse, Velasquez criticized Danzinger’s relationship with the developer that bought the site.
Another tense moment came later on in Wednesday’s meeting. Velasquez clashed with Danzinger and Vice Mayor Jeffrey Rose over a proposed charter amendment designed to enforce the rule that requires all commissioners to be Surfside residents. Velasquez said she thinks this proposal is targeted at her because she sold her house and now rents an apartment in Surfside. She said she suspects it’s a ploy from her rivals to get her off the commission.
“This is discrimination,” Velasquez said during the meeting. “What is it, because I’m Hispanic?”
Danzinger did not back down from his comments. He told the Herald anyone who thinks he is racist should “ask our town manager, who I supported and entrusted our entire town’s operations to, who is Hispanic, how I feel about the Hispanic people.”
Eliana Salzhauer is a Surfside resident and former commissioner who attended the meeting on Wednesday. She said the mayor’s comment was “unacceptable.”
“He’s just a racist, homophobic misogynist with a gavel,” Salzhauer said. “In a small town with a huge Hispanic population, that won’t be forgotten.”
Salzhauer’s allegations of homophobia were based on Danzinger’s opposition to flying a Pride flag in Surfside last year. Salzhauer has been a vocal critic of the mayor. She said she thinks his most recent comment “should be the nail in his coffin politically.”
Danzinger has filed paperwork to run for reelection in 2024.
“Anybody who knows me knows that I have no ill will towards any group or race or nationality,” Danzinger told the Herald. “Unfortunately, in my position, I can’t sit and worry how people perceive things.”
This story was originally published August 3, 2023 at 1:58 PM.
