Housecleaning: Old Hallandale Beach Blog header to archives

To free up some space at the top for more photos, I'm retiring this old header I've used since creating this site and putting in in archives, while retaining a shorter version.

HallandaleBeachBlog is where I try to inject/superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and insight onto local Broward County and South Florida government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now.

On this blog, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger and laser-like attention on the coastal cities of Aventura, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.

IF you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be in stultifying traffic, be paying higher-than-necessary taxes, and continually musing about the chronic lack of accountability among not only elected govt. officials, but also of city, county and state employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, eager work-ethic mentality that residents deserve.

This is particularly true in the town I live in, Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood.

There, the "Perfect Storm" of apathy, incompetency and cronyism is all too self-evident.

Sadly for its residents, HB is where even easily-solved, quality-of-life problems are left to fester for YEARS on end, because of myopia, lack of common sense and unsatisatisfactory management among the Mayor, Joy Cooper, the City Manager, D. Mike Good & the City Commission, excepting the recently-elected Keith London.

London's election at least offers the possibility of righting the direction of a city with lots of potential, but whose citizens have become, quite frankly, numb and shell-shocked to its myriad outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of mismanagement and lack of foresight.

On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion, merely kicked -once again- further down the road.

(Yet this cast of characters, led by Vice Mayor William Julian and Commissioners Dorothy Ross and Francine Schiller voted in early May to triple their annual pay from $21,196 to $75,000 for a part-time job, before they retreated due to public pressure.)

I used to ask myself, rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show that through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?"

Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable but skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time, and wanting questions answered in a honest and logical way that citizens have the right to expect.

Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change.

City of Hollywood candidate forums schedule

After last week's City of Hollywood commission meeting, having planned on speaking about item # 8, opposing the city's intent to cast a vote in favor of a resolution opposing the Florida Hometown Democracy amendement, http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2007/10/broward-county-pols-fear-florida.html
I noticed this handy bit of information on the city bulletin board, and had the city clerk's office run me a copy so that I could share it with you.

In case you missed them when they first came out, here are some of the latest Hollywood stories that I've read which have caused me to wonder about Hollywood's future, and precisely whom the buck stops with, if anyone.
Not that I agree necessarily with all the comments below.
Judge for yourself.

http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2007-10-04/news/terrible-trio/
Terrible Trio, The Wasserstrom conviction should have at least a few pols shaking in fear — but, hey, this is Broward, byBob Norman, October 4, 2007

http://www.miamiherald.com/466/story/253153.html
Hollywood truck theft: a stunt or a crime? by Todd Wright, Sept.27, 2007

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2007/09/the_nightmara_continues.php
The Nightmara Continues, by Bob Norman, Sept. 12, 2007

http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2007-09-13/news/judge-and-jury/
Judge and Jury, Judge Lazarus takes justice into his own hands in the Keith Wasserstrom trial
by Bob Norman, Sept. 13, 2007