By Agrippina Fadel
Is any publicity good publicity? Commissioner Marlon Bolton seems to think so.
He recently posted a heartfelt note to Sun-Sentinel on his Twitter account thanking the newspaper for “reporting on his Turkey Giveaway.”
“I am happy that I was able to impact many Tamarac residents faced with food insecurities,” Bolton said, promising his constituents to “build back better Tamarac.”
He refers to the Sun-Sentinel article posted on December 16, which dives into the commissioner’s Thanksgiving initiative – as part of the broader report about the Tamarac government’s corruption and misuse of funds.
Bolton may also be hedging his bets that most Tamarac residents don’t subscribe to the Sun-Sentinel, or won’t go past the online paywall to read the full report.
Parks and Recreation Foundation, known as PAROT, normally funds the equipment and services for city parks, yet it was asked to write checks to local restaurants and supermarkets to cover the cost of Bolton’s Turkeys. The foundation also wrote a $500 check to the Great Commission Center and Outreach, a Tamarac nonprofit created in 2020.
According to Sun-Sentinel, PAROT’s chairperson Julie Fishman wrote an email to the city commission members, asking them to “stop making problematic requests.”
The fate of the gift cards that PAROT had paid for became more apparent when they showed up at a Private Food Drive in Plantation on November 22, over a week after the Tamarac event they were intended for. As reported by Red Broward, the food drive was sponsored by the Great Commission Center and Outreach.
The nonprofit supporting Bolton’s initiatives and using gift cards from his events has a website that does not work and a made-up mailing address at 1317 Edgewater Drive in Tamarac.
As the city investigates the corruption allegations and the funding for commissioner’s events, is Bolton trying to gaslight his constituents with cheerful thank you notes when newspapers writing about his exploits?
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