Above, the screenshot I snapped on Monday of
the "Client" web page of the Ear-Q Corporation
website. http://www.ear-q.com/
You'll notice that it not only has a photograph of
Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper, due to
their creation of her personal website, but also
features the official City of Hallandale Beach
icon.
It also features The Future Foundation Inc.,
which seems to be the 'favorite son' charity over
at Hallandale Beach City Hall.
A Google search proves quite instructive.
Where's their website?
It can't be found.
But a search does turn this up thru a cache:
The Future Foundation, Inc is a Not for Profit Corporation dedicated to providing educational and cultural arts experiences for youth residing within the City of Hallandale Beach. Activities and events are provided free of charge to our participants. The Future Foundation also provides grants up to $5,000 to non-profit organizations to support their efforts to provide opportunities for education and arts to our youth in our community.
Guess where their mailing address is?
Hallandale Beach City Hall.
Guess what's the first thing on the city's website,
under FAQ?
| 1. | How to Contact the Future Foundation |
And when you click the provided link,
www.thefuturefoundationhallandalebeach.com.
what do you get?
Server not found
If you believe the number-one FAQ that people
accessing the city's perfectly awful website want
to ask is this, you are sadly mistaken.
But in Joy Cooper and Mike Good's 'alternative
reality' where the city is well-run, perhaps it is.
What more can you say about such people?
A lot more...
Today I'll try to explain how, among other things,
the recent troubling episode involving Dr. Nelson
Santiago and his no-bid contract from the
City of Hallandale Beach further illustrates the
wide gulf in political cultures and openness between
the City of Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.
More than is usually the case, actual facts matter
here.
So, like our friend Joe Friday from Dragnet,
here are the facts that are known as of now.
Back in mid-January, I received both the agenda
and all pertinent docs for Hollywood's Technical
Advisory Committee ONE ENTIRE WEEK
before their meeting about a property in north
Hollywood Beach.
A property that, quite frankly, I didn't know much
about or have any opinion about one way or the other.
I didn't go to the actual meeting and have no idea
of how the committee ruled.
But if I had wanted to spend a few minutes finding
out about it, the City of Hollywood had given me
a reasonable amount of time to come up to speed
with it via the docs that were filed with it.
I bring this up because when I first received it,
I quickly realized that this simple example of a
computer-generated email offered an insight into
the vast differences between how things are
routinely done in Hollywood and how dreadfully
they have been and continue to be done here
in Hallandale Beach, since I returned to South
Florida from the Washington D.C. area in late
2003.
In November, two weeks before HB Planning
& Zoning Board meeting on the Diplomat
LAC, the Hallandale Beach Commission
vote 4-1 against Comm. Keith London's
common sense motion to put the LAC proposal
application and related onto the HB city website.
So, even as Mayor Joy Cooper was ripping
HB citizen taxpayers at the very same Commission
meeting and calling them "uninformed" and
"uneducated" for opposing the city's RAC proposal
-done to get in before Amendment 4 is
approved this coming November by Florida
voters- Commissioners Cooper, Julian, Ross
and Sanders didn't say or do ANYTHING about
actually getting pertinent information on the
Diplomat project into the public realm,
so they could read it and make sense of it.
So what happened?
Precisely what the Mayor, the City Manager and
the Diplomat all wanted.
The Diplomat tag team of Debbie Orshefsky
and Suzanne Friedman and their consultants
got to have their meetings around town without
worrying about HB and Hollywood citizens actually
being able to see the relevant docs actually in print,
and raise questions based on what they themselves
had said or promised to do.
(They were aided in this effort by someone who is
a longstanding paid "spy" for the city, more details
of which you'll be hearing about this weekend on
my blog. As you anticipate that, though, ask
yourself this simple but troubling question:
In the year 2010, what sort of creepy elected
officials are so craven that they think it's actually
appropriate to pay someone in the city to spy on
their neighbors, like they were a member of the
Soviet era Secret Police, or KGB?)
Keeping with their policy of NOT officially putting
the agenda or all relevant information for City
Commission and P&Z meetings on the city's
website until the Monday morning of the week
of those meetings -despite the fact that the
deadline for agendas is 5 p.m. Friday-
because the December P&Z meeting was moved
to a Tuesday to accommodate a Wednesday
afternoon City Commission meeting, the
relevant documents were not placed on the
city's website until about 28 hours before
the meeting started.
Twenty-eight hours.
On a project that directly affects the lifestyles
and Quality of Life of thousands of HB and
Hollywood residents and visitors.
So how this pertain to the recent no-bid contract
awarded to Joy Cooper's internet guru friend,
Dr. Nelson Santiago?
First, a quick recap using selected excerpts of
my own Monday blog post to connect-the-dots.
As you may recall from my previous emails and
blog postings, no-bid contracts awarded to pals,
cronies and political supporters of HB City Hall
are nothing new, and the specialty of Joy Cooper
and Mike Good.
This recent case with Santiago is but the latest
example of thousands of taxpayer dollars being
given to people, thru grants and CRA loans,
whose degree of demonstrated expertise in a
particular area is, perhaps, rather secondary
to their personal connections and political
support of the Mayor Cooper's and City
Manager Good's agenda.
For instance, the $25,ooo no-bid contract given
last summer to Debra Brown, where elected city
commissioners were not even told about this until
a week after-the-fact.
Debra Brown is the sister of Comm. Anthony
A. Sanders confidante Josh Brown, who was
part of the team who received a $90,000 grant/loan
from the Hallandale Beach CRA for a perfectly
dreadful business plan.
A plan which is little more than an extended
propaganda arm of City Hall, despite the fact
that his team didn't even meet the then-existing
low standards that the city had in place for
eligibility to make sure that the money is for
a serious purpose that promotes the specific
written goals of the city's CRA, the most
important of which is what?
Yes, eliminating "blight."
So, how exactly are giant screen TVs being placed
in east-side Hallandale Beach restaurants and
businesses as well as the common rooms of
expensive condos on State Road A1A, running
nothing but paid ads and blather from the likes
of Mayor Cooper and the city, accomplishing
that particular goal?
Especially since the city already has
complete control of an existing cable
TV channel, which they have completely
mis-used for years.
This isn't 1982, where many small businesses in
South Florida weren't properly wired and have
access to Cable TV, and so couldn't play CNN
near the front register of their businesses,
like a dry cleaning shop, or in the middle of
their barber shop or beauty salon.
It's a plan so bad that that they were forced to
admit that they couldn't get a bank loan for it.
Now that the city has given them money, many
recipients have either moved the TVs after they
were originally hooked-up due to either customer
complaints and annoyance, or outrage at
finding-out they were lied to when they were
first told that the TVs were from the City of
Hallandale Beach, with signs to that effect
sighted near some of the TVs at condos.
Theses TVs don't do anything to alleviate blight.
It's all a not-so-clever fig-leaf for a political deal
and money to change hands and promote
Joy Cooper and Hallandale Beach City Hall.
Period.
It's using money for a purpose that most HB citizens
would be opposed to on its face because of stupidity,
if they even knew about it, but because it also
personally benefits people who are supporters of
Comm. Sanders, and longtime Cooper & Good
crony and cheerleader Joe Kessel, it gets approved.
(Does my telling you the facts here make me an official
"naysayer," to use the latest term Mayor Joy Cooper
throws around to describe opponents of her's, after
having already called them -including me- "Nazis"
while at HB City Hall, Room 257,
where Cooper also described Comm. Keith London
as "a Hitler" to another elected Hallandale Beach official,
who, characteristically, said and did nothing upon hearing
this slander?
Then naysayer it is, and proudly so.)
For instance, to cite but one example, the team,
such as it is, didn't actually own any property within
the City of Hallandale Beach, a standard which previous
applicants had to meet.
If there was nothing 'fishy' about this particular contract,
why did it not appear on the City Commission's agenda
that day, along with relevant staff and supporting docs
on the city's website, and come up for a vote by the
elected HB City Commission, instead of secretly
brought-up instead by unelected Good thru "Other"?
It's precisely because they didn't want HB citizen
taxpayers to know about it in advance that Good
and Cooper did this.
That's the exact same route thru which Good,
Police Chief Thomas Magill and Fire Chief Daniel
Sullivan have all been rehired within the past
18 months.
Also in Room 257.
Without it EVER appearing on the public agenda,
without the public being given the opportunity to
speak about them and their past performances.
You know, like a normal city?
Can you name another city in Florida where
the re-hiring of the City Manager, Police Chief
and Fire Chief would intentionally be handled
in such a secretive and manipulative way
in order to keep the public completely in the
dark?
No, only Hallandale Beach under Joy Cooper
and Mike Good would be so brazen as to
attempt to foist this on this city's residents,
regardless of what the state's Sunshine Rules
say, but with the implicit cooperation of noted
wink-wink HB City Attorney David Jove,
it was "Mission accomplished."
And believe me, they're very happy they got
away with it, too.
Add it all together and it sounds to me like a
very intriguing news story and the basis for
formal ethical and criminal investigations by
multiple State of Florida and Broward County
agencies and LEOs.
And failing that, the FBI.
And it's all 100% true.
-----
Previous emails and blog posts on this subject:
Monday March 8, 2010
A simple question re Dr. Nelson Santiago's no-bid contract in Hallandale Beach
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/simple-question-re-dr-nelson-santiagos.html
---
March 5th, 2010
9 p.m.
Over the next few days, I suspect that we will all learn a great deal more
about that other co-host of the since-postponed Kendrick Meek fundraiser
planned for Mayor Joy Cooper's home tonight, Dr. Nelson Santiago.
He appears to have some very interesting ties to Mayor Cooper, her
personal website and a no-bid deal from the City of Hallandale Beach
regarding the 2010 Census.
Yes, no-bid contracts, the specialty of Hallandale Beach City Hall
under Joy Cooper and Mike Good!
Time to put on your Sherlock Holmes caps and start some
serious sleuthing!
Dave
----
http://hallandalebeachblog.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Curious doings: Kendrick Meek postpones fundraiser at Mayor Cooper's house; Alexander Lewy's postage gift from Hallandale Beach taxpayers
Forwarded message
From: Mayor Joy Cooper & Dr. Nelson Santiago <invite@eventbrite.com>
Date: Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 4:47 PM
Subject: EVENT POSTPONED!!!: CONGRESSMAN KENDRICK MEEK for U.S. SENATE
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