Butler1Mike video: 2010 Hallandale Beach City Manager search gets sabotaged by Mayor Joy Cooper, Comm. William "Bill" Julian & Comm. Dotty Ross.
Watch the puppets dance! Remembering the 2010 Hallandale Beach City Manager search that was sabotaged by Mayor Joy Cooper, Comm. William "Bill" Julian & Comm. Dotty Ross, to the utter dismay of the city's residents.
This is the follow-up to my post of Sunday the 10th, Hallandale Beach Commissioners spending taxpayer $$$ in a hurry -and NOT in the Sunshine! As usual, Comm. Sanders just sits there and waits to be told what to say and how to vote
http://hallandalebeachblog.
http://hallandalebeachblog.
Here's the all-too-true back-story on the video above, which was created by my clever and resourceful friend, Michael Butler of Change Hallandale fame. (See more on Michael and his website at the bottom.)
Yes, "I do not want to discontinue this process" said Mayor Cooper.
But the "process" as such at that point was to bring in some suitable candidates selected by the consultant and have them actually visit and tour the city, meet some residents, and see what's what so they and their family could determine if they really wanted to proceed forward.
But "going forward" by ONLY interviewing the incumbent acting-City Manager, Mark A. Antonio, is not proceeding, it's sabotaging.
This whole sham was made worse and even more ironic -if possible- by the fact that weeks earlier, the mayor was publicly against Antonio even being considered, a fact known by 99% of the HB citizens in the Commission chambers that night, including me.
This long and ponderous evening Commission meeting is one of the rare times in the past 43 months in office that Comm. Sanders actually did the right thing by HB residents, and believe me, there aren't many of those, so they're easy to remember.
Trust me, it's far less than one handful in almost four years in office.
Frankly, considering how oblivious he is to issues that residents and business owners really care about and have been upset about for many years, how very little he actually contributes to anything during meetings, the way he carries himself around town, as well as the almost clueless way his small cadre of supporters act, unable to see or accept how genuinely unpopular he is after 43 months of sitting there on the dais like a bump on a log, Comm. Sanders has led a very charmed life.
Very charmed.
Especially for someone with such a truly awful voting record that's chock-full of poorly thought-out votes against increased public accountability, financial transparency, and for his always seeming to be against the increased scrutiny and oversight of spending that residents desperately want in a city where the budget has nearly doubled the past six years.
With, as I've stated so often here, so very little to show for it compared to other cities and towns in South Florida.
Where did all that money go?
Sanders' awful track record in office, which causes SO MANY voters who gave him the benefit of the doubt four years ago and voted for him despite their reservations -instead of listening to me and voting for Arturo O'Neill, someone who would've made a positive difference for the community, not a negative one like Sanders- continues to provoke dumbstruck looks on people in this community who pay close attention.
They just shake their heads and say, "I won't be fooled again."
And they won't.
That particular night in 2010, though, with only Comm. Keith London and Comm. Sanders actually committed to an open process that gave HB residents -the people actually paying for the consultant- the time they clearly wanted to let the public "process" play itself out, instead of changing the rules at halftime, the public ended up getting screwed by Mayor Cooper for the umpteenth time when Cooper, Julian and Ross became determined to short-circuit that "process" for good.
Of simply picking up their ball and walking away at halftime.
To the amazement of many people in the room, but not my own or Arturo's, Comm. Ross actually had the temerity to actually mock the public at this and prior City Commission meetings for their commitment to the process we were promised by the Commission but not given.
But then from Comm. Ross' point of view, what the public got for its trouble was less important than the fact that by pulling-the-plug and screwing over the residents yet again that she was supposed to represent, she got to leave this evening meeting and go home to sleep.
And after all, isn't THAT the most important thing?
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CHANGE HALLANDALE BEACH
- A fact-based website run by my friend and fellow Hallandale Beach civic activist, Michael Butler, which goes directly after the longtime incompetency and crony capitalism at Hallandale Beach City Hall with cold-hard logic, quantifiable figures, graphs, charts and videos.
The kind of evidence that Mayor Joy Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew of Commissioners Dotty Ross, Anthony A. Sanders and Alexander Lewy, plus City Manager Mark A. Antonio CAN'T refute with any of their serial lies, half-truths, mis-statements of fact, or exaggerations from the dais.
Theirs is a strange Looking Glass world of un-reality that can quickly confuse -or frighten!- normal people not prepared for such self-evident mendacity.
Which is where Michael comes in stage-left and I come in stage-right...
See the evidence for yourself and see what's REALLY going on in Hallandale Beach from Michael's well-informed perspective at http://www.changehallandale.
Michael's YouTube Channel, Butler1Mike, sure to start getting busy again soon, is at: http://www.youtube.com/
As I mentioned the other day after hearing from him, Michael's website is currently migrating over to WordPress -which I've also frequently considered moving HBB to- so that may explain any technical problems you may run into from time-to-time in seeing the very useful information Michael has there.
Even now, Michael is hard at work putting the finishing touches on an important subject to Hallandale Beach residents and business owners involving millions of dollars, as is my friend Csaba Kulin, whom I spent some time with today to hear how his research was going.
Csaba and Michael continue to be excellent examples of American civic activism at its best, continuing to pour their time and energy into delving into serious financial matters that few others have either the time, energy or inclination to do.
Sadly for all of us who live in this city that ought to be so much better, save Comm. Keith London, their work ethic and dedication to getting the true facts and financial numbers out to the community -which the mayor and her cronies can't bear- completely laps the remaining members of the present HB City Commission, as well as former Commissioner Julian, who is running again after being kicked-out in 2010.
Julian's large role in that 2010 City Manager search debacle, and his own confusion as to what he was doing and saying, will NOT be forgotten by HB voters in November, because it was the perfect example of his general unfitness for office.
Don't think that the dreadful track records of Julian, Sanders and Cooper won't be discussed to a fare thee well, both here on the blog in the future and during the coming 2012 political campaign for Hallandale Beach mayor and city commission, of which Csaba is a candidate for the latter.
That simple contrast both informs and illuminates who really deserves your support and is deserving of your thanks.
I'm proud to have Michael and Csaba as friends.
And those of you who live here should be very thankful that they consciously choose to do the hard work and heavy lifting that 4/5ths of our current elected city officials WON'T do.
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