As Town Hall Turns: Welcome to Medley's Political Soap Opera

On November 5, voters in Medley elected Lily Stefano, a former town councilwoman, to serve as mayor of the small municipality west of Hialeah.

Stefano's triumph over longtime incumbent 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 connection with the nonprofit she ran, the Santana Moss Foundation.

"The people of Medley deserve a leader who understands struggle, who has faced adversity 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 citizens 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 business of his own pending in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. The now ex-mayor has filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against two fellow Medley residents and former town employees, one of whom mounted a failed bid for the five-member town council in 2022 — a campaign 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 median 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 "Lakeside" (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 unanimously voted to give themselves a raise, increasing 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 Pacheco 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.