Surfside Mayor Schlomo Danzinger finds himself embroiled in controversy over remarks against commissioner Nelly Velásquez that can be perceived as racist.
During a meeting Wednesday, the mayor was speaking for a proposal which would extend the term limits of the elected officials to which the commissioner kept interrupting him in a low voice to express her disdain.
Even though what she commented was not picked up by the microphones, it was enough to draw the ire of Mayor Danzinger who then uttered in frustration: “Does anybody know how to speak Spanish to tell it to her?”
Video from the meeting shows that the crowd attending the meeting were left shocked and awed by the comments.
Speaking with NBC6, Mayor Danzinger said he is only human and has made mistakes, but that the inappropriate comment was made out of frustration with commissioner Velásquez and that it wasn’t said with the intention of hurting anyone.
Velásquez says that the mayor tried to make it seem as if she was not cooperating to move along his project of extending term limits.
“He’s got a situation with me also, because I don’t agree with a lot of the things that he’s doing and he’s not pro our town and I call him out on things all the time and that’s where we stand to have issues,” Velásquez said.
“That’s just something that a professional person doesn’t do. And I felt highly, highly offended, embarrassed, humiliated. It was just so demeaning. And I just I just didn’t appreciate it. And I don’t think that’s something that someone at his level should be doing,” Velásquez told NBC6.
“It may have been a language barrier, because we live in Miami and english is the second language,” Mayor Danzinger told NBC6.
The mayor did say he apologizes to whomever was offended by the comment and that it wasn’t made against any group of people or nationalities.
