Say goodbye to Philip Stoddard. Meet South Miami’s new mayor, Sally Philips

Sally B. Philips woke up Wednesday morning to countertops cluttered with Tuesday night’s celebration: half-full wine and champagne glasses. The chair of South Miami’s planning board and retired psychologist was the mayor-elect for the city of South Miami.

Philips, 76, said she’s “about green,” and likes to minimize waste. So even the election night party at her South Miami home was no different.

“I figured we didn’t need to use plastic cups,” she laughed. “So I pulled these out.”

Philips says she has an environmental bent similar to longtime mayor Philip Stoddard, 62, who declined to run again after five two-year terms as mayor. Stoddard made a name for himself as an environmentalist — he convinced commissioners to require solar panels on new homes and ended most pesticide use on city property, among other actions — and gave his blessing to Philips’ campaign.

“She’s cut out of the same fabric,” he said.

Philips has solar panels on her house and large Tesla batteries to help power it cleanly. She named her home the “tree house” because it’s surrounded by trees — papaya and mamey and fully-grown palm trees.

“But she’s got a woman’s perspective on life and family and I think that’s been missing from the dais,” Stoddard said. “I’ve been on the dais for 10 years with no women, and frankly, it’s an embarrassment.”

Stoddard said he was keen on having an ethical, strong-willed woman on the dais, and Philips fit that description.

She was a school teacher. A welfare worker. A psychologist. She’s good with people, he said.

Philips has been involved on the planning and zoning board for nearly ten years. She’s helped the Budget and Finance Committee work through issues with the city’s spending. In fact, she said, besides Horace G. Feliu she’s the only candidate who’s served on a city board recently.

“I know the people at the hardware store. I know the roads,” she said. She’s been exposed to a host of city issues, but says she is always listening to what residents say. At neighbor’s backyard parties. At music gigs.

She says she knows the people who live in affordable housing developments, and people who would like to live in the city. She knows older residents who would use a circulating golf cart system to pick up groceries and medications.

While South Miami residents can use the metro rail, the majority of residents — and most of South Florida — relies on cars, she said. Living in Boston and New York have taught Philips that residents need other good forms of public transportation.

Though the New York native has moved around a lot, she’s spent the past 21 years in South Miami.

“I’ve been and seen a lot of ways things are done,” Philips said. “All of my experiences have shown me that I’d like to live here.”

It’s the longest she’s ever lived in one place, and she’s determined to do all she can to see it succeed.

She said she never considered running for office until a friend suggested she should.

“Up until now I didn’t think I had any power to make a difference,” Philips said.

She can use her relationships from leading the planning and zoning board and living in the community to her advantage.

“Being a mayor means you have to build a team,” she explained. “ A mayor is just the captain of the team.”

Philips campaigned on seeing The Shops at Sunset Place, an open-air mall along U.S. 1 that has long suffered from vacant storefronts, breathe again. The City Commission spiked a proposed makeover to the mall in 2017, but reversed it with a tweaked version of the plan in April.

Developers will tear down roughly half of the mall, encompassing about 80,000 square feet of mostly vacant retail space, and replace it with three apartment and hotel towers along South Dixie Highway. The new space will also be more pedestrian friendly with room for wider sidewalks and cafe tables.

The mall needs to bring in more foot traffic and life, she said. Right now, people just zoom on past. The mall sits at the heart of the 2.3 square-mile city and has the potential to bring in more revenue and visitors.

But some people are worried about increasing the number of visitors and residents in South Miami, whose population sits at just over 12,000, according to the US Census Bureau.

“We don’t want to increase density and bring in more traffic,” said Feliu, a former mayor. ”Residents are already fed up with that.”

But the commission has to look at the needs and wants of the city holistically, Philips said.

“The downtown needs redevelopment or we will not survive,” she said. “I think of them (Feliu and those against development) as pro-stagnation.”

The city, located just west of Coral Gables and north of Pinecrest, is relatively affluent, Philips said. The median income of about $62,000 is well over the county median, as is the median home price of $480,700.

Living in the city isn’t possible for younger Miamians just out of college or not ready to buy, she said. Philips also hopes to build new affordable housing in the city for those who want to live near their family, for the teachers and police who work in the community.

She also wants to prepare the city for sea level rise, by securing funding to remove septic tanks over the next five years.

These moves will take time and likely won’t be finished in her two years, Philips explained. But the city needs to start setting money aside.

But, Philips said, she has a strong team to get this work started.

The new city manager is a woman. The city clerk is a woman. The new chair of the planning and zoning board is a woman.

“For South Miami it’s the year of the woman,” Philips said.

In a field of five candidates, Philips came in first with 33 percent of the vote, well ahead of the other contenders, the strongest of whom had just under 23 percent.

However, not all South Miamians were thrilled with the results, Stoddard said. On election night, candidates and constituents were packing up their tents outside city hall but stopped in the dark parking lot to read the results on the county website off their cellphones.

“It was a striking scene,” Stoddard, remembering the people pulling up the election results. “There was this sea of people looking down at their phones and not all of them looked happy.”

Feliu won 22.8 percent. The other three candidates were Mark Lago, Lina Sierra and Bruce B. Baldwin.

Voter turnout was 27.7 percent, which is high when there was only the municipal election on the ballot.

Feliu said that since 60 percent of residents voted for another candidate, there should be a runoff. “The votes were split, so it would have been more reflective of what the people wanted,” Feliu said. However, the city charter says the person with the most votes wins, even if that person doesn’t have a majority.

In the past several elections, only two candidates have run for mayor — usually Feliu and Stoddard.

“This is the first time I can remember we’ve had this many people run for mayor,” Feliu said.

Feliu, the mayor of South Miami from 2002 to 2004 and again from 2006 to 2010, has long battled Stoddard for residents’ votes on the issue of development. Feliu ran against Philips on the same issues.

Two incumbents were also reelected — Josh Liebman, who won about 55 percent of the vote in a three-way race, and Robert Welsh, who was unopposed. The three were installed in office Wednesday at South Miami City Hall, 6130 Sunset Dr.

After Philips was sworn in, Stoddard held a party in his backyard. Van Morrison’s “And It Stoned Me” played, and Stoddard did a swing dance with his wife, Gray. Strings of lights hung from the trees and the doors stayed open as other commissioners, the city attorney, city manager and family members passed through with glasses of champagne.

The cake, decorated with blueberries and raspberries, expressed the sentiments of the friends and former coworkers present, reading “Thank you Phil.” The pair could finally relax.

It feels good to go out this way,” Gray Stoddard said. “To have seen everything through feels really special.”

Philip Stoddard left a rubber head behind in the office to welcome Philips on her first day in office. It coos, “Calm down. Don’t be stressed. Take it easy.” But Philips can handle the duties, he said.

“Now they’ll call someone else when their trash doesn’t get picked up.”

This story was originally published February 17, 2020 at 1:42 PM.