Nov. 6th is Next Chapter of HB Mayor Joy Cooper vs. Aristides Pelecanos story

Below is a copy of an email that I sent on Monday to Bob Norman, columnist of the Broward Palm Beach Post New Times and the widely-read Daily Pulp blog.
See http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/ and http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/


I hadn't planned on posting it here, butsince his email address is just as odd as I'd been told it was by other local reporters, who say that their email to him frequently gets bounced back and forth, I decided this approach was better than anything else.

"Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
bobnorman@floridapulp.com "
_________________________
Monday Oct. 27th, 2008

Dear Mr. Norman:

I've kept this email in cold storage waiting to send it to you until I actually had the answer to my original questions of the Oct. 8th email before sending you the copy of the email below, since you were the first and only person in South Florida -to my knowledge- to chronicle the appalling situation last year with Hallandale Beach resident Aristides Pelecanos and the animus that Mayor Joy Cooper clearly has developed for him.

There's news on that front, which is that last Sunday, the city, thru Director of Development Services Richard Cannone, published a notice in the Herald advertising the November 6th public meeting at 6 p.m. of the city's Unsafe Structure Board at the City Commission Chambers, where Mr. Pelecanos is one of three parties that are appearing that night.


I originally sent the Oct. 8th email below to a few dozen people in the Hallandale Beach and Broward County area, along with a few up in Tallahassee, all of whom are desirous of seeing some positive reform and changes take place in this city, and have it brought firmly into the 21st Century, which is not the case now.
I chose to send it (to them) on October 8th, one year to the day your story originally came out.

I've sent it now to you, notwithstanding your criticism of my blog in your column of Sept. 25 http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2008/09/mayor_joy_cooper_blows_up.php
because I felt it was quite unlikely that any other recipient of an email from Mayor Cooper regarding Mr. Pelecanos would think to share it with you.
Your story last year painted such an unfavorable portrait of Cooper in action, merely by relating the true facts of the case and letting readers judge for them self.


That's a common situation in this city, where the mayor is afraid NOT of crazy allegations, mis-statements of facts or even nasty innuendo, but rather of someone simply telling the public the truth, of supplying them demonstrable facts and trusting them to be able to make sense of it on their own, with perhaps a nudge or two.

That's how bad things have gotten here in Hallandale Beach in the year 2008.

On October 15th, I witnessed this in person again at the HB City Commission meeting, where Cooper and City Manager Mike Good completely mis-characterized what happened earlier in the day up in Hollywood at their City Commission meeting, where the second reading was held on the Beach One Resort hotel on A1A and Hallandale Beach Blvd., on the border of the two neighboring communities.

This despite the fact that you can see the digital tape of what transpired on Hollywood's website.
http://www.hollywoodfl.org/Media/Archives/ccm101508/ccm101508_Indexed.pdf

(Not that the Herald covered the story, failing to have reporters at either City Commission meetings, so they were completely in the dark about what happened The Herald hasn't had a reporter attend an HB City Commission meeting since June.)

In case of Mr. Pelecanos, Cooper could've simply shown some common sense and do what the system was set up to do, but once again, as she and Comm. Dotty Ross did months ago with the tumult abd controversy surrounding the HB Police/Fire Pension Board, where, rather than listen to the reasonable concerns of HB residents and officers from both the HB Police and the HB Fire/Rescue, who spoke out against her efforts with both conviction and anger -and who urged her not to let her own bias come into play- she did what she always wanted.
As usual.

She was the driving force behind the decision to hire outside legal counsel to tell her and her cronies on the Commission exactly what they wanted to hear, costing city taxpayers an amount that's been estimated over $10,000 in completely un-necessary legal expenses.
For personal pique and spite so it would seem, because the predictable result came quicker than she expected: the State of Florida told her NO!


A high-and-tight fastball thrown right under her chin to brush her off the plate.

All that un-necessary melodrama, personal invective and expense simply because Mayor Cooper allowed her personal bias and desire to trump common sense, and simply let someone other than a Commissioner to serve.


As if Cooper and Ross's absence from that Police/Fire Pension Board, which almost always votes unanimously, would truly be missed!
So much time, money and energy, plus all the turmoil, for what?

For personal reasons having nothing to do with the proper running of the group.

Sadly, since I returned to South Florida, that's been par for the course for her, since it often seems as if Mayor Cooper is channeling Humphrey Bogart's role as Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, with Cooper and Ross's spot on the Pension Board serving much the same role as those missing strawberries from the ship's galley, which so consumed Queeg.

See http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=16993&titleId=25162 and
http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=9898&titleId=25162 and it's almost comical to compare the excuses that Captain Queeg uses to explain everything away with those of Mayor Cooper and City Manager Good and his staff.

The problems and screw-ups are never their responsibility, but someone else's.

Cooper's over-size ego and desire to have her finger in every aspect of governance of this small town has resulted in the current reign of ruin, where longstanding, self-evident problems are never properly dealt with, even something as simple as, well, getting the lights that shine on the City Hall sign fixed.

It's now four-and-a half years and counting.
Yes, LONGER than the U.S. involvement in World War II.
How do you like that for an fact-based anecdote, Mr. Norman?


I snapped this daytime photo of the sign above on Sept. 17th, the latest of several I've snapped over the past two years to clearly "illuminate" the problem.

Things are now pitch black PLUS.

For at least the past two weeks, every single public parking lot light next to the HB City Hall and the HB Police Dept. HQ has been out, as well as those next to the HB Cultural Center, where Early Voting has been taking place, and will 'til Sunday afternoon.
I've snapped many photos of it and video as well, which appear on my blog.

So. conservatively speaking, how many times in over four-and-a-half years do you think the Mayor, the City Manager and all of the individual city employees saw that City Hall sign inoperable?
A conservative guess would be thousands of times, right?

Of course, the city sign on U.S.-1 north of the Aventura line still hasn't been fixed during the same amount of time.

Closer to home, or HB City Hall itself, the safety light closest to City Hall''s east-side public parking and their own security camera has been out since late January or so, even BEFORE the city's security camera was ever installed -just a few feet away.

Now, logically you'd think that would matter to the city, esp. the Hallandale Beach Police Dept. next door, and they'd want the most lighting possible in the public parking lot or near their security camera showing that public lot -NOPE!
The HB Police Dept. just continues to ignore the problem even as their own side of the building, to the south, has FOUR count-em FOUR security cameras within about thirty feet of one another.

Yes, the security cameras that HB taxpayers paid for which have NO warning or informed consent signs anywhere near them at City Hall and the HB Cultural Center behind it, as is common in most government buildings in the country in the year 2008.
Nope, zero signs!

Above, a photo from October 2nd showing to the right, the public parking lot light that
hasn't worked for at least eight months, and to the left, the security camera attached to the
underside of the overhang.

And did I mention the fact that some members of the HB City Commission had to be told of Tallahassee's decision by local news reporters calling them for comment, days after the decision was made AND the city already knew the result, because Mayor Cooper, City Attorney David Jove and City Manager Mike Good weren't especially keen to say they'd lost.
Bullies and sore losers, what a powerful combination!

Since you don't seem to know this, Mr. Norman, when Tallahassee said no to Mayor Cooper, the first place anyone could hear the news and read the official correspondence itself was not the Miami Herald or the South Florida Sun-Sentinel or even local TV talking heads, but rather my humble little imperfect blog, Hallandale Beach Blog. on April 3rd:
Tallahassee Rules Against Mayor Cooper and Comm. Ross
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/tallahassee-rules-against-mayor-cooper.html

While that's clearly a very sad reflection on a whole host of issues re journalism and passive local news coverage in South Florida in the year 2008, it doesn't change the fact that I was the first person to make the news public.

It doesn't mean that I'm always right, of course, but it does tend to show that contrary to your recent blog comments, my blog is generally comprised of a little bit more information than just 'personal opinions' as you described it.

By the way, per your post on William Ayers, on 9/11, I got off the D.C. Metro at the Metro Station just past 8:30 a.m., went up the elevator and put my Walkman on to re-join the Howard Stern Show, which I'd been listening to on my daily morning walk from my home to the Ballston Metro station.

Once in D.C., I took the elevator that comes up next to the Olsson's Bookstore and walked the few blocks to my consulting job at a law office on Pennsylvania Ave. It was across the street from DOJ and the FBI HQ, and the last thing I'd read on the ride in from my place in Arlington was the William Ayers piece in the NYT.

If United #93 had used The Mall as its flight path into the U.S. Capitol building, as many have surmised, I'd have been able to see the approach from my floor, high above the street, and if it had gone into the White House, I'd have heard it from four blocks away.
As it was, from our large porch, we could see the smoke far past the Old Post Office across the street, and over at The Pentagon.

If the national media had made a reasonably serious effort to interview Ayers last year and get the whole story in mind-numbing detail, this whole issue would be old news, but when he said no thanks, they said, "Okay, we give up."
There were no Barbara Walters or Diane Sawyer full-court presses to get
Ayers and pin him down.

And so, instead, here we are.

________________________________
Wednesday October 8th, 2008

3:00 p.m.

Dear Michael:

A couple of hours before last night's tepid and poorly-conducted HB CandidateForum, while I was writing on my blog about the sort of questions I hoped wouldbe asked of the candidates to elicit some insight into their thinking -as opposedto the silly ones that were actually asked!- I received this completely randomand un-expected email from Mayor Cooper, which I suspect I was not supposedto receive.

(Or maybe I was? She's so dis-organized it's hard to tell at times.)

As opposed to the mayor's crazy out-of-the-blue, post-midnight email screed to us a few weeks back, the one where she criticized us and took us to task,for, among other things, simply wanting to get together with others in the community who want to change the longstanding dysfunctional culture of cronyism and secrecy here in Hallandale Beach, as if she had some sort of royal veto power over citizens like you and I and the First Amendment.

(Per my previous comments to you, I'll finally be posting her email to us on my Hallandale Beach Blog site soon, and I'll dissect it with some vigor.
I also plan to run more photographic proof from around the city of her 'reign of ruin' that simply can't be refuted.)

If you look closely, you'll see that it is the same AOL email address that Mayor Cooper uses for her revisionist tracts/Commission accomplishments(!) that the South Florida Sun Times foolishly runs as if they were true, in lieu of, well, simply sending someone to cover HB's twice-a-month Commission meetings and reporting on it like a real newspaper.

Call me old-fashioned, but she really shouldn't use personal, non-official email to discuss pending city action, esp. one where she has evinced a very strong personal bias, since it leaves her and the city's taxpayers open to all sorts of legal consequences.

And just to drive home the point of how dis-organized Mayor Cooper is, the email references Mr. Aristides Pelecanos, whose name the mayor mis-spells as "Peliconas."

Wow, for a guy whom she personally has it in for, you'd think she'd know how to spell his name by now.

After Bob Norman of the Broward Palm Beach New Times recently cited my blog post on the mayor's absurd over-reaction to Comm. London showing some fortitude, and refusing to back down on his assertions that City Manager Good and his office had once again refused to provide docs in a timely fashion so that he could review them prior to a vote -in this case, the final 2009 HB City Budget- I reminded you and many others in the community of the devastating Norman column last summer on Mayor Cooper's all-out attempt to make Mr. Pelecanos a former resident of HB.

And in case you forgot, Mayor Cooper all but admits that she wants Mr. Pelecanos in foreclosure. Such a delight, our mayor!

--------------------------------------------------------http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2007-08-23/news/storming-the-castle/#Comments

Broward-Palm Beach New Times

Storming the Castle

Hallandale Beach and a Broward judge are trying to drive a man from his home

By Bob Norman

published: August 23, 2007

In Florida, the old adage about a man's home being his castle isn't just talk. It's the law.It's almost Holy Writ...

-----------------------------------------------

Yesterday on my blog, HB candidate forum tonight; Yet another bad idea
promoted by Mayor Joy Cooper; some odds and ends, or
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/hb-candidate-forum-tonight-yet-another.html

I revisited the whole issue of Comm. London's comments, and show why I knowthey're true: because I was there when he asked for the docs and have photographicprooof that I was there. The individual that the mayor is emailing here wrote the following on The BPBNew Times website following the publication of the Norman story:

"Complete B.S. Mr. Norman never investigated any "so called" facts.
Never contacted the Golden Isles Homeowner's Association and never spoke to Mr. Pelecanos neighbors.

A journalist should investigate the story and all facts before publishing it.
A surprising revelation for a seasoned journalist like Mr.Norman.Comment by alex berkovich from Hallandale Beach on Oct 8th, 2007, 21:44 pm "

Obviously, since you live in that immediate area and are actually on the GIA, as the Secretary, you'd have a better idea than me of what is actually afoot here, as I have never met this Berkovich person before and frankly, don't even know if they're a HE or a SHE, as it were. http://www.drberkovich.com/

Is Alex Berkovich the husband of the dentist?

In any case, since I know that your honesty and insistence on high a degree of basic fairness must be a real thorn in Mayor Cooper's continuing attempt to muscle the GIA the way she tries to roll other myriad groups in the city, I thought I'd send this along and ask you what you think is going on here.

Frankly, I'd be lying If I didn't say that the whole issue with Mr. Pelecanos sounds like a story that was tailor-made for John Stossel of ABC News 20/20, who loves running segments exposing out-of-control govt. officials trying to use their official power for spiteful or personal reasons and vendettas, as most assuredly seems to be the case here with Mayor Cooper and Mr. Pelecanos.

After reading the email, I checked the City of HB website that you and I and everyone else in the city has been complaining about forever, because of its insipid and secretive nature, to see if they now have information on the webpage for the Community Advisory Committee, formerly Code Enforcement board, that you serve on, as referenced below by the City Clerk's office:
http://www.hallandalebeach.org/index.asp?NID=90

Shocker: blank page!

Once again, the perfect metaphor for life in Hallandale Beach under Mayor Joy Cooper and CM Mike Good in the year 2008.

By the way, at last night's candidate event, I honestly thought that Arturo O' Neill and Carlos Simmons did a very good job of outlining their strong desire to see the city make a clean break from the recent sorry past, and change the city's reputation for breeding a corrupt and corrosive culture at City Hall that repels and repulses HB citizens from participating, or feeling like they can have a say in what happens.

They both spoke clearly and specifically about replacing it with a customer-friendly City Hall culture that insists on accountability, transparency and attention-to-detail, even if that costs some long entrenched people their jobs.

That was very encouraging to hear after listening to the usual pablum from the other candidates!

I have continued to make local residents -and reporters I've spoken to!- aware of the great website you recently started full of facts, graphs and videos to bring to light some of the more disturbing aspects of the city's governance under the current Joy & Mike regime. http://www.changehallandale.com/

I think the spot-on comparison you draw between HB and Hollywood and how much money HB spends on salaries in the City Manager's office for a city over three-times smaller than Hollywood is particularly devastating.

As for the the Dotty Ross video you recently added to the site, having been there when Pastor Sanders was selected 3-1 to be an interim Commissioner just minutes after news of the then-upcoming Schiller resignation, with no advance notice to the public, well, it just makes her words and behavior all the more troubling, yet entirely emblematic of her last four years as a puppet of Mayor Cooper.

-----------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: JoyCooper@aol.com

Date: Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 2:36 PM

Subject: Fwd: Code Enforcement Advisory Committee Minutes (Community Advisory)

To: alex@drberkovich.com

FYI. I was reading these and was concerned that Mike is speaking with the NIP as if he is our representative for GIA? I know we are all working hard to make our area better. This needs to be addressed a the next board meeting. Also the Peliconas house on Holiday Drive will be scheduled for Unsafe structures within 3-4 week. There has to be 2 public notices and certified notice. I was also informed by the city attorney that they could appeal the unsafe structure ruling in the courts. We will see.

The system really protects the homeowner at all costs. Joy

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: "Jones, Chinta"

To: "Cooper, Joy" , "Good, Mike" , "Julian, William", "London, Keith", "Rafols, Nydia M", "Ross, Dotty", "Sanders, Anthony"

Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 11:45:13 -0400

Subject: RE: Code Enforcement Advisory Committee Minutes (Community Advisory)
CITY OF HALLANDALE BEACH, FLORIDA

MEMORANDUM

DATE: October 6, 2008

TO: D. Mike Good, City Manager

FROM: E. Dent McGough, City Clerk

SUBJECT: Code Enforcement Advisory Committee Minutes For your review, please find attached copies of the minutes for the Code Enforcement Advisory Board (now known as the Community Advisory Committee) Meetings held in May and June 2008.

Please transmit to the City Commission per procedure.

REVIEWED:

_______________________________ __________________

D. Mike Good, City Manager Date ______APPROVED ______DENIED ______HOLD FOR DISCUSSION COMMENTS: __________________________________________________ EDM/cj

Attachment(s):2 Chinta Jones AOA II/City ClerkCity of Hallandale beach 400 South Federal HwyHallandale Beach, FL 33009 Tel. 954.457.1340 Fax.954.457.1342

Email: cjones@hallandalebeachfl.gov

2 attachments —

Download all attachments Code Enforcement Minutes May 2008.pdf118K View as HTML

Download Code Enforcement Jun 08.pdf124K View as HTML Download