Below are some thoughts by some very concerned Broward County citizens on what's going on up at
Andrews Ave. with the Broward County Commission, with my own comments just below them, which are, in large part, excerpts of an email of my own sent to the writers and the much larger community who receives my emails.
The emails are in reverse-chron order with some identifiable email info removed, and some blank spacing eliminated, but otherwise identical to how I received it over the weekend.
The comments are pretty self-explanatory and the official govt. response speak volumes.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Charlotte Greenbarg
Date: Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 11:04 AM
Subject: FW: Another arrest: J. Eggelletion from Mae Smith
To: Charlotte Greenbarg
Read the whole list of emails. Interesting. Go Mae!
To all who have the authority or power to take responsible action:
----------
November 10th, 2009
Up until now I've always avoided forwarding emails to you for all the obvious reasons, but as you can see below, other concerned citizens in Broward are noticing the very same sorts of 'curious' things that we've been noticing and taking note of for quite some time and also asking why?
Their emails and questions ring familiar to us and resonate deep inside because they contain the same lyrics from that same old sad song of incompetence and misfeasance sung by Broward County administrators and elected officials, starting with Bertha Henry and her assistants.
To cite one recent example, Broward County administrators DIDN'T properly keep the public information on their website accurate or up-to-date on their so-called Courthouse Taskforce, under Broward Commissioner Ilene Lieberman as Chair.
(When you're looking for fresh objective eyes on a subject, why was a Broward Commissioner on the Taskforce in the first place, thereby effectively giving her two votes on the matter?
Someone who reportedly owned land in the immediate area?
And then made the Chair?
The entire Courthouse Taskforce had self-evident professional and personal conflicts of interests of the sort that, in a well-run county would've never allowed them to pass muster, since there was nobody on it who was even openly agnostic about needing a new facility, much less, critical of the county's self-serving bias with taxpayers dollars.
But with just a few rare exceptions, seemingly everyone in South Florida media just looked the other way, because the Broward County Commission desperately wants a new Courthouse, and doesn't much care what taxpayers say or think, or what sorts of behind-the-scenes moves they have to finesse in order to get their way.
There's a reason why the Broward County Commissioners don't want to have a public referendum on this issue.
If the media is supposed to be 'watchdogs' for the public, why did South Florida's media
suddenly go deaf, mute and blind on this issue and never ask tough questions about the
personnel makeup of this Taskforce, and why did the Editorial Boards of the Herald and Sun-Sentinel just sit on the sidelines and take one for the home team, i.e. The Establishment, and never ask?
Do you know what they call a place where the 'watchdog' doesn't bark?
Of course you do, because you live here, too. They call it our reality -South Florida 2009.)
Under Comm. Lieberman's watch, the Taskforce waited until hours AFTER their last scheduled public meeting before finally putting up the agenda and any and all relevant updated info, docs and renderings, as well as the Minutes of the previous meeting, which was supposed to be online for the
public to examine long BEFORE that meeting ever started.
In a well-run community where there is actual punishment and public rebuke of those who don't play by society's norms and laws, and who continually don't do what they're supposed to do, there's a real tangible downside to those who don't place the info on the county's website WEEKS BEFORE, if not days before, as the County kept trying to peddle their sad-luck mold stories to anyone in the media who'd ask, complete with arranging tours of supposed off-limit areas.
But this isn't a well-run county as we all know, so it WASN'T done.
There was no public accountability.
That's why in the days prior to that final public meeting of Broward's Courthouse Taskforce, I emailed Comm. Sue Gunzburger's office to let her know about this failure by the county to properly keep the public FULLY informed.
Her always-helpful staff forwarded my concerns to the top of the county.
Later, I received what I can only describe as a series of pathetic, self-serving excuses from one of County Administrator Bertha Henry's assistants.
These rather silly and unsatisfactory missives were very similar to the ones I received this past Spring when I grilled them about the fact that ONE YEAR after-the-fact, the relevant information and Minutes from the FINAL public meeting of the county's Charter Review Commission in April of 2008, including the actual arguments for and against individual items being proposed for the Nov. 2008 ballot for county voters, as well as the actual procedural and final votes by the individual committee members, were STILL NOT on the county's website.
So, after posting them every few weeks, what, they just forgot to do it BEFORE the actual election?
Call me old-fashioned, but I happen to believe that Broward County's citizen taxpayers, having already paid for all the costs involved, had an absolute right to actually read that information and
see for themselves why some proposals made the cut and others didn't, and know specifically who said what when.
Maybe they'd have noticed as I did from having actually been there in person, the highly anti-democratic comments and votes taken by the Broward city mayors who were appointed to the CRC,
under Chair Lori C. Moseley of Miramar, all of whom, coincidentally, were women.
In my opinion, the worst offender of all was Cooper City mayor Debby Eisinger, whose comments and behavior made me think that what she'd really like to be in another life is a despot.
And not a benevolent dictator, either.
Last year there was a proposal before the CRC to take a resolution to the County Commission to support a process that would lead to a procedure that allowed the public to place legitimate agenda items on the County Commission agenda
With 19 members present, 13 votes were need to pass.
http://www.broward.org/
page 10
It lost 13-5.
Only two women on the CRC voted yes: H.K. "Petey" Kaletta and Burnadette
Norris-Weeks.
Six voted against: Debby Eisinger, Lori Moseley, Patricia Good, Maggie Davidson, Hazelle Rogers, Jodi Jeffreys-Tanner.
Page 20, On the proposal for the creation of an advisory MTA, which I strongly supported and which passed 15-4, voting against were Debby Eisinger, Lori Moseley and Patricia Good
On the proposal that received the lion's share of media attention last year which would allow Broward County citizens to vote in November for or against a County-wide elected mayor, George A. Morgan, Jr. the Exec. Director of The Broward Workshop put it plainly on page 73 in his submitted remarks: "...The voters have a right to decide this important issue... Don't take their right to vote away..."
At page 84, Mr, Morgan speaks in person
On page 127, you can see who voted for and against which led to the motion failing on a 10-9 vote, failing to get the 13 votes.
The women voting to prevent Broward County voters from deciding this issue themselves:
Burnadette Norris-Weeks, Maggie Davidson, Hazelle Rogers, Jody Jeffreys-Tanner
and our ol' pal, Debbie Eisinger.
Cooper City mayor Debbie Eisinger voted against all three, earning her the booby prize.
That Eisinger, Joy Cooper and a few other Broward pols recently endorsed Attorney General candidate Dan Gelber, see Gelber rolls out more Broward endorsements
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.
Posted by Anthony Man on October 7, 2009, it caused me to write a post a few weeks ago
that you'll soon see, tentatively titled without exaggeration, Rogue's Gallery of Broward
Officials Endorses Dan Gelber - Includes Joy Cooper, Naturally.
All of these important matters about the CRC were seemingly only observed by myself, since the Herald and Sun-Sentinel's coverage of that final public meeting was woefully short of what was needed or required.
So as to your question of what sort of people possess the chutzpah to think they can do nothing,
after-the-fact, when it suits them, and think they can get away with it, I'd suggest it's the very same
people who don't do what they're required to do, before-the-fact, when it suits them and they think
they can make it stick.
The answer, of course, is the Broward County Commission, though sometimes, it's also the Hallandale Beach City Commission for the same exact inexplicable reasons.
Except when it's not at all inexplicable but patently obvious to both you and me: because they can.
It's the same reason that the Hallandale Beach City Commission last week refused to agree to Comm. Keith London's common sense plan to post the Diplomat Country Club's very unpopular Local Activity Center (LAC) application on the city's feeble website.
Nobody would even second the motion.
Joy Cooper, William Julian, Dotty Ross and Anthony A. Sanders all just sit there like bumps on a log, as the silence echoed throughout the Commission Chambers.
Why?
Because they don't want you to know!
And trust me, in a few weeks, they'll be criticizing HB citizens from the dais just like Mayor Cooper was doing in earnest last Wednesday morning, over the city's very unpopular RAC plan, saying that people in the community were "uneducated" and were spreading lies, etc.
It was typical Joy Cooper theatre-of-the-absurd.
Yet they won't post the important yet very unpopular LAC plan on their own website so that people in the community can actually see what the specific details are.
THAT is what passes for normal in corrupt and poorly-run Hallandale Beach, Florida in the year
2009.
If you're interested, you can see some of my own contemporaneous comments about the myriad actions of both the Broward Charter Review Commission and the Courthouse Taskforce by going here,
http://hallandalebeachblog.
and here, http://hallandalebeachblog.
Andrews Ave. with the Broward County Commission, with my own comments just below them, which are, in large part, excerpts of an email of my own sent to the writers and the much larger community who receives my emails.
The emails are in reverse-chron order with some identifiable email info removed, and some blank spacing eliminated, but otherwise identical to how I received it over the weekend.
The comments are pretty self-explanatory and the official govt. response speak volumes.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Charlotte Greenbarg
Date: Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 11:04 AM
Subject: FW: Another arrest: J. Eggelletion from Mae Smith
To: Charlotte Greenbarg
Read the whole list of emails. Interesting. Go Mae!
Charlotte
From: Warence Mae Smtih
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 5:52 PM
To: 'Dave Reierson'; 'Henry, Bertha'; 'Keechl, Ken'; Commissioner Diane Wasserman-Rubin; Commissioner Ilene Lieberman ; Commissioner John Rodstrom ; Commissioner Ken Keechl; Commissioner Kristen Jacobs; Commissioner Lois Wexler; Commissioner Stacey Ritter; Commissioner Suzanne Gunzburger
Cc: Michael Mayo
Subject: RE: Another arrest: J. Eggelletion
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 5:52 PM
To: 'Dave Reierson'; 'Henry, Bertha'; 'Keechl, Ken'; Commissioner Diane Wasserman-Rubin; Commissioner Ilene Lieberman ; Commissioner John Rodstrom ; Commissioner Ken Keechl; Commissioner Kristen Jacobs; Commissioner Lois Wexler; Commissioner Stacey Ritter; Commissioner Suzanne Gunzburger
Cc: Michael Mayo
Subject: RE: Another arrest: J. Eggelletion
To all who have the authority or power to take responsible action:
Commissioner Eggelletion was removed from office in September it appears on the website as if he still represents the district. Why is it taking so long to remove his name off of the website? This is misleading to the residents of District 9. When School Board Commissioner Beverly Gallagher was removed from office; the school board immediately removed her pictures and name from all business of the school board. The school board felt a need take immediate action. Is there a reason for you to be so slow to remove his name?
Today Ex-Commissioner Eggelletion turned himself into the Broward County Jail. The Feds has him on one corner and the State Attorney’s Office finally has him on the other. I don’t think Governor Crist is stupid and I don’t think you are. What are the chances of the Governor Crist re-instating him to office? All material and websites that advertise his name as Commissioner for District 9 should be removed NOW!!!!
Warence “Mae” Smith
President of St. George Civic Association, Inc.
From: Dave Reierson
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 5:15 PM
To: 'Dave Reierson'; 'Henry, Bertha'; 'Keechl, Ken'
Cc: Mae Smith; Michael Mayo
Subject: Another arrest: J. Eggelletion
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 5:15 PM
To: 'Dave Reierson'; 'Henry, Bertha'; 'Keechl, Ken'
Cc: Mae Smith; Michael Mayo
Subject: Another arrest: J. Eggelletion
Commissioner Keechl and Ms. Henry:
The attached story about another arrest of former Comm. Eggelletion further questions your approach about your unwillingness to update your website. Your official website states that he remains a Broward County Commissioner and that he represents District 9. I seems that you put little value in the content of the website, even the home page and somehow this inaccuracy about who holds an elected office is a small issue to the Commission and to the County Administrator.
Dave Reierson
Oakland Park, FL
From: Dave Reierson
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 11:20 PM
To: 'Henry, Bertha'; 'Keechl, Ken'
Subject: RE: J. Eggelletion
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 11:20 PM
To: 'Henry, Bertha'; 'Keechl, Ken'
Subject: RE: J. Eggelletion
Ms. Henry:
I guess that makes sense to you, but certainly not to me. Updating of the web site is dependent on actions of the Governor? There is a vacant spot on the Broward County Board of Commissioners, but you seem to be not willing to acknowledge it on the web site. Apparently the web site is not expected to be current or accurate, even when it addresses a matter as important as our elected officials. Evidently that is also quite acceptable to the other Commissioners. It also seems to me that this update to the website should be quite manageable and a rather simple task. Certainly that is our expectation in the private sector, but in the public sector our expectations are expected to be much lower? This makes me continue to wonder how well the large tasks are being managed.
Dave Reierson
Oakland Park
From: Henry, Bertha
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 7:07 PM
To: Keechl, Ken; 'Dave Reierson'
Subject: RE: J. Eggelletion
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 7:07 PM
To: Keechl, Ken; 'Dave Reierson'
Subject: RE: J. Eggelletion
Dear Mr. Reierson,
We expect the Governor to make an appointment any day now. Once done, we will update all at once.
From: Keechl, Ken
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 12:47 PM
To: 'Dave Reierson'
Cc: Henry, Bertha
Subject: RE: J. Eggelletion
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 12:47 PM
To: 'Dave Reierson'
Cc: Henry, Bertha
Subject: RE: J. Eggelletion
Dave:
Under the Broward Co. Charter, this decision is that of Broward County Administrator Bertha Henry. I have cc’d her on this email. Ms. Henry, please respond to Mr. Reierson directly.
Thanks for your continued support, Dave.
Ken
Ken Keechl, District 4 Commissioner
Vice Mayor Broward County
From: Dave Reierson
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 11:59 AM
To: Keechl, Ken
Subject: J. Eggelletion
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 11:59 AM
To: Keechl, Ken
Subject: J. Eggelletion
Commissioner Keechl:
I see that J. Eggelletion is still listed as a Commissioner of the Broward County Board of Commissioners. His website states that he represents District 9. Neither is true. Why hasn’t this been corrected?
Dave Reierson
Oakland Park, FL----------
November 10th, 2009
Up until now I've always avoided forwarding emails to you for all the obvious reasons, but as you can see below, other concerned citizens in Broward are noticing the very same sorts of 'curious' things that we've been noticing and taking note of for quite some time and also asking why?
Their emails and questions ring familiar to us and resonate deep inside because they contain the same lyrics from that same old sad song of incompetence and misfeasance sung by Broward County administrators and elected officials, starting with Bertha Henry and her assistants.
To cite one recent example, Broward County administrators DIDN'T properly keep the public information on their website accurate or up-to-date on their so-called Courthouse Taskforce, under Broward Commissioner Ilene Lieberman as Chair.
(When you're looking for fresh objective eyes on a subject, why was a Broward Commissioner on the Taskforce in the first place, thereby effectively giving her two votes on the matter?
Someone who reportedly owned land in the immediate area?
And then made the Chair?
The entire Courthouse Taskforce had self-evident professional and personal conflicts of interests of the sort that, in a well-run county would've never allowed them to pass muster, since there was nobody on it who was even openly agnostic about needing a new facility, much less, critical of the county's self-serving bias with taxpayers dollars.
But with just a few rare exceptions, seemingly everyone in South Florida media just looked the other way, because the Broward County Commission desperately wants a new Courthouse, and doesn't much care what taxpayers say or think, or what sorts of behind-the-scenes moves they have to finesse in order to get their way.
There's a reason why the Broward County Commissioners don't want to have a public referendum on this issue.
If the media is supposed to be 'watchdogs' for the public, why did South Florida's media
suddenly go deaf, mute and blind on this issue and never ask tough questions about the
personnel makeup of this Taskforce, and why did the Editorial Boards of the Herald and Sun-Sentinel just sit on the sidelines and take one for the home team, i.e. The Establishment, and never ask?
Do you know what they call a place where the 'watchdog' doesn't bark?
Of course you do, because you live here, too. They call it our reality -South Florida 2009.)
Under Comm. Lieberman's watch, the Taskforce waited until hours AFTER their last scheduled public meeting before finally putting up the agenda and any and all relevant updated info, docs and renderings, as well as the Minutes of the previous meeting, which was supposed to be online for the
public to examine long BEFORE that meeting ever started.
In a well-run community where there is actual punishment and public rebuke of those who don't play by society's norms and laws, and who continually don't do what they're supposed to do, there's a real tangible downside to those who don't place the info on the county's website WEEKS BEFORE, if not days before, as the County kept trying to peddle their sad-luck mold stories to anyone in the media who'd ask, complete with arranging tours of supposed off-limit areas.
But this isn't a well-run county as we all know, so it WASN'T done.
There was no public accountability.
That's why in the days prior to that final public meeting of Broward's Courthouse Taskforce, I emailed Comm. Sue Gunzburger's office to let her know about this failure by the county to properly keep the public FULLY informed.
Her always-helpful staff forwarded my concerns to the top of the county.
Later, I received what I can only describe as a series of pathetic, self-serving excuses from one of County Administrator Bertha Henry's assistants.
These rather silly and unsatisfactory missives were very similar to the ones I received this past Spring when I grilled them about the fact that ONE YEAR after-the-fact, the relevant information and Minutes from the FINAL public meeting of the county's Charter Review Commission in April of 2008, including the actual arguments for and against individual items being proposed for the Nov. 2008 ballot for county voters, as well as the actual procedural and final votes by the individual committee members, were STILL NOT on the county's website.
So, after posting them every few weeks, what, they just forgot to do it BEFORE the actual election?
Call me old-fashioned, but I happen to believe that Broward County's citizen taxpayers, having already paid for all the costs involved, had an absolute right to actually read that information and
see for themselves why some proposals made the cut and others didn't, and know specifically who said what when.
Maybe they'd have noticed as I did from having actually been there in person, the highly anti-democratic comments and votes taken by the Broward city mayors who were appointed to the CRC,
under Chair Lori C. Moseley of Miramar, all of whom, coincidentally, were women.
In my opinion, the worst offender of all was Cooper City mayor Debby Eisinger, whose comments and behavior made me think that what she'd really like to be in another life is a despot.
And not a benevolent dictator, either.
Last year there was a proposal before the CRC to take a resolution to the County Commission to support a process that would lead to a procedure that allowed the public to place legitimate agenda items on the County Commission agenda
With 19 members present, 13 votes were need to pass.
http://www.broward.org/
page 10
It lost 13-5.
Only two women on the CRC voted yes: H.K. "Petey" Kaletta and Burnadette
Norris-Weeks.
Six voted against: Debby Eisinger, Lori Moseley, Patricia Good, Maggie Davidson, Hazelle Rogers, Jodi Jeffreys-Tanner.
Page 20, On the proposal for the creation of an advisory MTA, which I strongly supported and which passed 15-4, voting against were Debby Eisinger, Lori Moseley and Patricia Good
On the proposal that received the lion's share of media attention last year which would allow Broward County citizens to vote in November for or against a County-wide elected mayor, George A. Morgan, Jr. the Exec. Director of The Broward Workshop put it plainly on page 73 in his submitted remarks: "...The voters have a right to decide this important issue... Don't take their right to vote away..."
At page 84, Mr, Morgan speaks in person
On page 127, you can see who voted for and against which led to the motion failing on a 10-9 vote, failing to get the 13 votes.
The women voting to prevent Broward County voters from deciding this issue themselves:
Burnadette Norris-Weeks, Maggie Davidson, Hazelle Rogers, Jody Jeffreys-Tanner
and our ol' pal, Debbie Eisinger.
Cooper City mayor Debbie Eisinger voted against all three, earning her the booby prize.
That Eisinger, Joy Cooper and a few other Broward pols recently endorsed Attorney General candidate Dan Gelber, see Gelber rolls out more Broward endorsements
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.
Posted by Anthony Man on October 7, 2009, it caused me to write a post a few weeks ago
that you'll soon see, tentatively titled without exaggeration, Rogue's Gallery of Broward
Officials Endorses Dan Gelber - Includes Joy Cooper, Naturally.
All of these important matters about the CRC were seemingly only observed by myself, since the Herald and Sun-Sentinel's coverage of that final public meeting was woefully short of what was needed or required.
So as to your question of what sort of people possess the chutzpah to think they can do nothing,
after-the-fact, when it suits them, and think they can get away with it, I'd suggest it's the very same
people who don't do what they're required to do, before-the-fact, when it suits them and they think
they can make it stick.
The answer, of course, is the Broward County Commission, though sometimes, it's also the Hallandale Beach City Commission for the same exact inexplicable reasons.
Except when it's not at all inexplicable but patently obvious to both you and me: because they can.
It's the same reason that the Hallandale Beach City Commission last week refused to agree to Comm. Keith London's common sense plan to post the Diplomat Country Club's very unpopular Local Activity Center (LAC) application on the city's feeble website.
Nobody would even second the motion.
Joy Cooper, William Julian, Dotty Ross and Anthony A. Sanders all just sit there like bumps on a log, as the silence echoed throughout the Commission Chambers.
Why?
Because they don't want you to know!
And trust me, in a few weeks, they'll be criticizing HB citizens from the dais just like Mayor Cooper was doing in earnest last Wednesday morning, over the city's very unpopular RAC plan, saying that people in the community were "uneducated" and were spreading lies, etc.
It was typical Joy Cooper theatre-of-the-absurd.
Yet they won't post the important yet very unpopular LAC plan on their own website so that people in the community can actually see what the specific details are.
THAT is what passes for normal in corrupt and poorly-run Hallandale Beach, Florida in the year
2009.
If you're interested, you can see some of my own contemporaneous comments about the myriad actions of both the Broward Charter Review Commission and the Courthouse Taskforce by going here,
http://hallandalebeachblog.
and here, http://hallandalebeachblog.
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