4 November 28 - December 4, 2024 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | news | letters | coNteNts | MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | ▼ MEDLEY AS TOWN HALL TURNS WELCOME TO MEDLEY’S POLITICAL SOAP OPERA. BY THEO KARANTSALIS O n November 5, voters in Med- ley elected Lily Stefano, a for- mer town councilwoman, to serve as mayor of the small municipality west of Hialeah. Stefano’s triumph over longtime incum- bent Roberto Martell came less than five months after the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s Office dropped charity fraud and grand theft charges against Stefano in con- nection with the nonprofit she ran, the San- tana Moss Foundation. “The people of Medley deserve a leader who understands struggle, who has faced ad- versity and emerged stronger, and who will never shy away from a challenge when standing up for our community,” Stefano tells New Times. Stefano faced adversity in 2021 after she was arrested and charged with one count of organized scheme to defraud over $50,000, a first-degree felony, and one count of grand theft over $20,000, a second-degree felony. She was accused of defrauding Feeding South Florida (FSF), a local food bank, out of an estimated $24,000 worth of food items and selling food FSF had donated to the Moss Foundation. As New Times reported in June, the state attorney dropped the charges in exchange for a “voluntary” $10,000 donation from Stefano to FSF. “That moment represented justice and allowed me to turn the page, to step forward with my head held high, and to run for the office of mayor,” Stefano says. Stefano trounced the 12-year incumbent by a 58 to 42 percent margin in the vaguely wedge-shaped town of 1,036 residents along the Miami Canal. “Receiving the support of the town’s citi- zens is the very best thank you she [Stefano] could ever imagine from her years of selfless service to the town’s residents and businesses,” Stefano’s attorney, Ben Kuehne, conveyed in a statement to New Times. “She looks forward to a long and successful tenure as Medley mayor, working alongside the residents and businesses to make Medley great again.” Martell, meanwhile, has some legal busi- ness of his own pending in Miami-Dade Cir- cuit Court. The now ex-mayor has filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against two fellow Medley residents and former town employ- ees, one of whom mounted a failed bid for the five-member town council in 2022 — a cam- paign Martell endorsed. An amended complaint filed in October alleges that “[d]efendants Yenny Lorenzo and Olga Quin have individually, and through entities that they control, shamelessly and relentlessly disseminated lies to people falsely suggesting that Martell is ‘corrupt’ and has taken ‘bribes,’ and has engaged in the crimes of violating campaign laws.” “In 2022, I ran unsuccessfully for council,” Lorenzo wrote in a May 6 response to the court. “Mayor Roberto Martell and Councilperson Ivan Pacheco are motivated to silence me in order for them to run without me as an opposing candidate.” Medley would seem to be an odd setting for high-stakes court proceedings. A 5.98-square-mile industrial town made up mostly of warehouses and mobile home parks, Medley’s 443 households had a me- dian income of $38,583, according to 2022 U.S Census estimates. Of the town’s 736 registered voters, 299 are over the age of 66, according to a recent Miami-Dade County analysis. The electorate is concentrated in two trailer parks, known around town as “8181” (Medley Mobile Home Park at 8181 NW South River Dr.) and “Lake- side” (Lakeside Retirement Park, 10601 NW 105th Way). That said, one could do a lot worse than winning a seat on the dais at Medley Town Hall. A year ago, the mayor and council unan- imously voted to give themselves a raise, in- creasing annual salaries for council members to $59,879.53 and mayoral compensation to $230,871.72 — $30,000 more per year than Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava gets paid. In addition to the mayor’s race, two of Medley’s four town council seats were up for grabs on November 5. One went to Lourdes Rodriguez, who’d made an unsuccessful bid to fill Lily Stefano’s seat after the latter’s arrest in 2021. The other winner was Arturo Jinete, a Medley police lieutenant whose wife was the town’s police chief until her contract expired on October 31. The aforementioned Ivan Pa- checo filed an unsuccessful lawsuit seeking to disqualify Jinete for failing to abide by the town’s residency requirements. On November 7, Rodriguez, Jinete, and Stefano were sworn in. “There was a big celebration,” one of the sitting council members, Edgar Ayala, tells New Times. | RIPTIDE | GET MORE NEWS & COMMENTARY AT MIAMINEWTIMES.COM/NEWS Lily Stefano, Medley’s newest mayor Lily Stefano photo ▼ MIAMI STATUE OF LIMITATIONS WILL LA’S PAT RILEY STATUE BE DWYANE WADE FIASCO 2.0? BY NAOMI FEINSTEIN T he Los Angeles Lakers are honoring for- mer coach and current Miami Heat presi- dent Pat Riley with a new statue outside Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. On November 18, the organization announced it has commissioned a statue of Riley that is set to be completed in 2026. Riley will be the eighth Laker icon to be honored in the arena’s Star Plaza, joining statues of Elgin Baylor, Kobe Bry- ant, Chick Hearn, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Jerry West. Riley won six championships with the Lakers — four as a head coach, one as an assistant coach, and one as a player. “Pat is a Lakers icon,” Lakers owner Jeanie Buss said in a statement. “His professionalism, commitment to his craft, and game preparation paved the way for the coaching we see across the league today. My dad recognized Pat’s ob- session and ability to take talented players and coalesce them into a championship team. The style of basketball Pat and the Lakers created in the ‘80s is still the blueprint for the organization today: an entertaining and winning team.” The announcement comes mere weeks after Riley’s current team unveiled its own statue in honor of NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade — which instantly became the laughingstock of the internet and sports world as fans saw resemblances to everyone from Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix to the Tin Man from The Wiz to a Darkseeker from I Am Legend. The Atlantic’s Ross Anderson dubbed it “The Worst Statue in the History of Sports,” besting (or is that worsting?) the infamous Cristiano Ronaldo bust. “The statue gives him the thick, grizzled look of a man in his mid-50s,” Anderson writes. “He seems to suffer from a rare elephantiasis, hy- perlocal to the jaw. The eyes are all wrong. If Wade ever had to flee the country, and for some reason, the detectives who pursued him over- seas had only a cast of this statue to identify him, he would likely remain at large forever.” Still haunted by the Wade unveil, New Times’ immediate thought was: Who will bring Pat Riley to life in bronze form? And, a split-second later: Will it be Omri Amrany and Oscar León, the team behind the likeness that has been seen and roasted around the world? Hey, it’s not like we’re going all that far out on a limb. Rotblatt Amrany Studio of Chicago has already crafted statues of five of the aforemen- tioned Lakers, plus more than a Mount Rush- more’s worth of sports icons, including Michael Jordan, David Beckham, Vince Lombardi, Gordie Howe, and Ken Griffey Jr. New Times was not alone in our thought. “Will they be using Wade sculptors?” a per- ceptive and quite handsome individual who goes by @REOSuperFan asked on the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Hope Pat Riley’s statue is as good as Dwy- ane Wade’s,” another tweeter chimed in. Another cut straight to the quick: “Mark your calendars, the Dwyane Wade statue’s ‘worst like- ness ever’ reign comes to an end in 2026.” Given everyone’s eagerness to learn whether the Rotblatt Amrany Studio will be creating the Riley statue, we took one for the team and gave the studio a ring. We posed our question. “I am not at liberty to disclose,” our interlocutor responded. As professional journalists, we’d never so much as imply that she answered our question. But it kind of felt like she answered our question, if you know what we mean. At any rate, and just to be on the safe side: Sorry in advance, sports fans. [email protected] “HOPE PAT RILEY’S STATUE IS AS GOOD AS DWYANE WADE’S.”
