Broward’s tiny village could vanish

Lazy Lake chastised for improper elections

Broward’s smallest municipality could cease to exist after the county’s corruption czar criticized it for not having a proper election in years.

Lazy Lake only has just one small street. It doesn’t have a stop sign or a traffic light. Only 22 people live in its 13 houses on a patch of land not quite as big as a city block. The village is surrounded by Wilton Manors.

It hasn’t had a regular election in years. The council members serving since 2016 weren’t elected according to state law, the county inspector general found.

The inspector general — the office empowered to ferret out fraud, mismanagement and corruption in the halls of government — said Wednesday it found “that unqualified individuals are governing the Village of Lazy Lake.”

“Not unqualified in the brain part — people on the board are all very brilliant people,” clarified Mayor Evangelos “Evan” Anthony. “It’s ‘unqualified’ to the parameters what one needs to do to be a candidate.”

After a properly run election next March, Anthony said he will propose merging the village with

Wilton Manors. He said it’s not a direct cause-andeffect, rather simply a matter of convenience.

“It’s just the times where we’re at. It’s got to be run that way; it can’t be that sort of bohemian-type thing,” he said. “You can’t run a bohemian-style entity when the government is involved.”

If the merger happens, Wilton Manors would collect property taxes and provide city services. All Anthony wants is for the village area to be preserved.

He even has a new name: Lazy Lake of Wilton Manors.

The neighboring city is willing to discuss it.

“They have not formally approached us. But if they did, we’d be happy to talk to them about it,” said Pamela Landi, Wilton Manors assistant city manager.

The OIG was blunt about Lazy Lake’s need for formal elections and warned that after an election on March 17, 2020, protocols must be established “to ensure this grave error is never repeated.”

The council has five members and a mayor.

“We never [have had] any ballots casts because nobody is ever opposed. We have difficulty getting a quorum,” said Councilman John Boisseau.

Lazy Lake, where Town Hall is a mailbox, isn’t used to being in the ire of anybody.

Its most infamous election scandal until now is when it received complaints from the county in 1977 for turning in an old shoebox, size 9D, that was used to collect ballots.

In 1995, the village received national attention when the 13 homeowners agreed to sell the village if an investor gave them $15 million. The offer included 13.5 acres of land, a 3-acre lake stocked with fish, a street and trees.

There were no bidders. Inspector General John

W. Scott said the village is in violation of state law. The investigation started in 2014 when the village’s clerk, mayor, and council were accused of violating the state’s Sunshine law requires meetings be held in the public eye. When the office saw there was no village election in March 2018, it requested copies of meeting notices and minutes.

Later that year, Anthony sent the OIG council meeting minutes and one meeting cancellation notice. “Most disturbingly, there were no documents relating to any March 2018 election, such as legally required candidate qualifying papers,” according to the investigation.

The current council has agreed to “minimally operate” until the next election.

Boisseau, whose wife is also on the council, has no hard feelings. “Even though we’re a little community, we have to go by all the rules dictated by the community,” he said.

He said in this tiny town, people change the lightbulbs on the one public street when it burns out.

“We have great neighbors and we get along,” Boisseau said.

The village attorney, Don Lunny, could not be reached for comment despite calls to his law office and cellphone.

Already changes are in the works. The village hired a firm to be responsible for village clerk responsibilities and is digitizing many of its paper records. The village also bought a board to post public notices and placed it at the main gate. It arranged to “unlock the doors at the meeting location to make meetings more accessible to the public.”

And earlier this year the village created its first website to post agendas and archive records.

Until now, the village has been run informally: “It was de facto: ‘I’ll be the mayor, you be the council,’” Anthony said.