FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

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Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Some things never change, like the abysmal level of #ethics in Hallandale Beach. Names change, roster of allies change, but HB determined to see itself as special and deserving of special rules, not ones the rest of world and Florida are governed by

Some things never change, like the abysmal level of #ethics in Hallandale Beach. Names change, roster of allies change, but HB determined to see itself as special and deserving of special rules, not ones the rest of world and Florida are governed by
Below are my Twitter responses to Red Broward blogger Tom Lauder's piece from last Tuesday 
about some very curious doings behind Hallandale Beach City Hall at the Cultural Center, a place where the city's self-evident political, racial and social polarization are always present during Early Voting.
 
@RedBroward BUSTED? Hallandale Beach Commissioner Caught With Illegal Voter Card Targeting African-American Churches
That polarization, especially its racial component, is something that I have personally witnessed to my amazement dozens and dozens of times the past 15 years, which was often carried-out with the help of former Mayor Joy Cooper and her campaign supporters, always so quick to help someone who can help them out when nobody is looking.
But nothing compares to the skullduggery that takes place on the actual Election Day, esp. at the neighborhood sites in Hallandale Beach, where you can be forgiven for plausibly thinking the Balkan Wars of the 1990's were still taking place.
Yes, for so long, rather than fighting over what were the best ideas or best solutions for the city's many longstanding problems, problems and imperfections that I can literally recite from memory, what you find are years-old personal and political grievances writ large never far from the surface, complete with the motley cast of characters and hangers-on always play to type and cliché, with fist-fights, calls to 911 and then the rush to cast themselves as a victim to their friends and the general public. It's all so sad and pathetic and... predictable. 

(I even recall the Election Day scene at Ingalls Park in southwestern Hallandale Beach within the past ten years, where several Hallandale Beach police cars were forced to respond to a call about an actual fight involving involving Dr. Deborah Brown herself, where about 6-8 HB cops were positioned afterwards in the area to keep Brown and her Cooper-supporters from trying to physically intimidate or verbally harass supporters of pro-reform candidates at Ingalls Park that I knew. Yet another low in a sea of so many head-shaking things under Cooper's reign of ruin.)

Most of you know will know nothing at all about this matter below, but on the chance that you have been thinking about things other than elections today, five days before the real Election Day, it's a sad reminder that so many of the things that I and so many of you have fought against for many years, namely, against unethical behavior, doesn't just exist but THRIVE in a city of less than 5 square miles.
A city where it should actually be quite easy to reach residents, Small Business owners and voters if you were serious about communicating your concerns and solutions.
By the way, please don't sleep on the #scoop that I mention below regarding what former HB Mayor Joy Cooper did when contacted by the Office of the Broward Inspector General and the Broward state's attorney regarding the only arrest made in the entire years-long HB CRA scandal that wasted tens of millions of dollars.
http://www.broward.org/InspectorGeneral/Documents/20130418OIG11020FinalReport.pdf

http://www.broward.org/InspectorGeneral/PublicationsPress/Documents/OIG11020-201405219-BrownMemo.pdf

--------
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2014-05-20-fl-hallandale-band-director-arrest-20140520-story.html
School director charged with stealing city funds
Robert Nolin, Sun Sentinel

The director of a private arts school in Hallandale Beach — and onetime recipient of a city humanitarian award — has been charged with bilking thousands in city funds earmarked for a student trip.

Deborah Brown, 52, Hallandale Beach, surrendered herself to Broward Sheriff's investigators Monday on a charge of grand theft. A warrant had been issued for her arrest last week with bond set at $1,000.

Brown, band leader for Gulfstream Middle School in Hallandale Beach, is also director of the Palms Center for the Arts, a nonprofit school for drama, dance and music. In March 2010, she received a $5,000 grant from the city's Community Redevelopment Agency for a class trip to Washington, D.C.

According to police reports, Brown only spent $323 on the trip. The remainder she diverted for private use: $2,000 in cash withdrawals for herself and her brother; $683 for a payment to an Orlando resort timeshare; $258 for a rental car; and $200 in cellphone costs.

The fund diversion was uncovered during an audit of the city's CRA by the county's inspector general.

In January 2010, two months before the alleged theft, Brown received Hallandale Beach's Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award for 25 years of community service.

City spokesman Peter Dobens said Brown was never a city employee and only received grant money for her after-school music program. "We haven't had a relationship with her for a couple of years," he said.

Despite the arrest, Brown will retain her band leader job. Under School Board policy, employees charged criminally will not be disciplined until their case is concluded. "It doesn't affect her current job status," district spokeswoman Nadine Drew said of the arrest.

Mayor Joy Cooper said Brown's educational work has benefitted the community. "Dr. Brown has helped many needy children through PCA's art programs," she said.

rnolin@tribune.com or 954-356-4525

----
"The Broward County Inspector General’s Office has launched another inquiry into Hallandale Beach’s Community Redevelopment Agency, three years after finding the city “grossly mismanaged” millions of dollars in CRA funds."
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2016/06/browards-inspector-general/

Joy Cooper did this WITHOUT ever telling the elected HB City Commission about the letter she received from law enforcement, never asking them what they thought should be done, or even having a recorded vote on the matter.
Instead, Cooper wrote back that her good friend, the convicted Dr. Brown, did NOT have to pay back the thousands of dollars she stole that, according to her own CRA application, was supposed to help kids, a fact that she took full advantage of when she was using the money to buy cosmetics or help pay for her condo.
Just as she had done previously dozens of times, Joy Cooper just decided she would nudge the elected City Commission out of the way and substitute her own very bad judgment.
Predictably.
So yes, you are right, I have provided you with a bit of a scoop, since I first heard about it when it took place, but I ask you, how come the South Florida news media has STILL never reported on this fact, despite it taking place LAST YEAR?
Why didn't they mention it?
   
@RedBroward BUSTED? Hallandale Beach Commissioner Caught With Illegal Voter Card Targeting African-American Churches






















More tomorrow re the ethical scandal behind the ethical scandal at Hallandale Beach City Hall that the South Florida news media has slept on the past 18 months.
Even if you think you know how thin-skinned, self-referential and flat-out LOW former Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper was prepared to go in order to hold onto power, you just won't believe the level of chutzpah Joy Cooper can show, even to law enforcement officials.
Really!
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Thursday, October 18, 2018

How do you solve a problem named Mike Satz? Speculation by Buddy Nevins on whether Broward's state's attorney should run for re-election after 42 years in office gives me a chance to piggy-back and raises some questions of my own regarding Satz & Co's underwhelming performance and the state of ethics in Broward County and Hallandale Beach today, as per Joy Cooper

How do you solve a problem named Mike Satz? Speculation by Buddy Nevins on whether Broward's state's attorney should run for re-election after 42 years in office gives me a chance to piggy-back and raises some questions of my own regarding Satz & Co's underwhelming performance and the state of ethics in Broward County and Hallandale Beach today, as per Joy Cooper

 How do you solve a problem named Mike Satz?

Now there's a question...

 As veteran Broward County political observer and Broward Beat blogger Buddy Nevins writes about and speculates about some of the behind-the-scenes moves swirling around whether Broward State Attorney Michael Satz will defy common sense yet again and run for re-election after being in office since 1976, and who might or should run for the office if he doesn't, I hold a mirror up to Satz and his many past failures to act in ways that I believe he should have.

 That includes one huge lingering question that so many people in Hallandale Beach, Hollywood and other parts of South Florida routinely ask me when I'm minding my own business somewhere, regarding the arrest last December by the FBI of then-Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper on multiple felony counts: "Dave, what took Satz so long?" He sat on almost five years of audiotapes of Joy Cooper bragging about her influence to undercover FBI agents posing as real estate interests.






So, continuing on the subject of Satz, per this story and tweet below by blogger Red Broward, i.e. Tom Lauder,
Hallandale Beach Mayor Keith London Pays Disgraced Former County Commissioner With PAC Funded By Developers & Casinos
https://redbroward.com/2018/10/15/londonpac/

 First, I have known and communicated with Tom for many years. I meant to his tweet on Monday afternoon when I first saw it and read the piece.
I even meant to respond to the other day via a tweet storm but got tied up with something else before I really could.
Then, once I started, I didn't have enough time or energy to do it justice the way I wanted to... folks, real tears!
I discovered that my beloved laptop's not working properly so that what I wrote and saved as a file there on Monday night when I got home isn't available for me to write and post here now.
So, that said, I've added a smaller ad hoc version of that response of mine to Tom's story and tweet below my own tweet.

There's more at: https://twitter.com/RedBroward/with_replies

 Tom: I appreciate that you have a very different take than me re Keith London, now Hallandale beach mayor and someone that I have known for roughly 12 years, many of them when he and I spoke or saw one another 3-4 times a week at times when things were going crazy at South Florida's #1 home of chaos, Hallandale beach City hall.

 That's your right, of course, but Keith -whom I haven't spoken to for longer than 45 seconds in more than 5 years, despite so many people even now persisting in thinking that we're somehow tied to the hip like we often seemed to be years ago- has to deal with reality and one of them is that #Gaming and #Gambling interests have ALWAYS mattered in a small city with two separately-operated casinos & race tracks. (The town and this part of Broward was run by Organized Crime just a few decades ago, as any historian can tell you, and as I know you know as well.)

Not to tell you what to think or how to write your posts and tweets but... personally, I think it'd be a good idea to remind your readers when you write about people associated with Hallandale Beach's "gaming interests" who are communicating with or helping Keith with some effort of his, like it's some sort of nefarious plot, you simply need remind them to take a look at a map and see that Gulfstream Park Race track & casino and its Village at Gulfstream are, literally, across the street from Hallandale Beach City Hall.
AND it's still THE largest employer in the city, such as it is.
That explains Gulfstream Park's interest in what goes on across the street.

But that said, I also need remind you that I have personally been one of the -if not THE- biggest critics of Gulfstream Park's management and its operations in the city for the entire length of the 11 years that I have had my influential blog that LOTS of well-informed people in South Florida read to get insight and perspective they don't get elsewhere.
It's why so many people call me and write me to tell me something or even argue a point, including TV/print reporters and newspaper columnists, some of whom are outside of South Florida but who have an interest in what goes on in South Florida, good and bad, whether in Miami, Tallahassee or Washington, D.C.
It's why reporters and bloggers and other, like you, tag me in their tweets, because they know I know the score and can usually add something to what's on the table.

 At HB City Commission meetings as well as many public events and especially on my blog, I have openly laughed at and enjoyed publicly poking large holes in Gulfstream's feeble excuses for all sorts of actions they've taken over the years, including their well-known propensity in the past to use ex-mayor Joy Cooper as their personal go-to person to get everything they wanted.
Sometimes, as in 2013, that included quite justified large fines for operating against the city's own code and trying to get away with things simply because of who they are -used to calling the tune.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/gulfstream-park-race-track-casino-will.html

 Cooper, typically, loved to say she'd take care of it and tried to ram waivers of fines down the HB City Commission without any documentation or even any staff prep, and ignore their proscribed government oversight role. Cooper didn't care, but she also didn't get her way because I let the public know what was what. And one TV reporter in particular - Bob Norman of Local10.

 Local10: Mayor wants $52K fine against Gulfstream Park waived
No vote taken on waiving fine at Hallandale Beach budget meeting
By Bob Norman, Reporter, bnorman@Local10.com, and Ben Candea, Senior Web Producer, bcandea@local10.com
Published On: Oct 04 2013 06:13:16 PM EDT   
Updated On: Oct 04 2013 11:51:10 PM EDT
http://www.local10.com/news/mayor-wants-52k-fine-against-gulfstream-park-waived/-/1717324/22282006/-/p0vivbz/-/index.html


My intimate knowledge of the facts and not just the prevailing media or party narrative, along with some demonstrated shrewdness, plus, actual results, are why I've succeeded in getting negative stories about Gulfstream and other parties on local Miami TV newscasts when they've acted in truly egregious ways that shocked any reasonable person's idea of propriety.
In this case, Gulfstream Park was used to carrying a Big Stick -and was not afraid to use it.
But I'm not afraid of bullies.
Guess how that turned out in the end because of me?

 But all of that said -and it's easy to find on my blog's archives- it is demonstrably true that the Diplomat Hotel and its management team and crew of legal and PR mouthpieces also had a TON of influence at HB City Hall and used that influence and leverage routinely to get what THEY wanted, too, even when HB residents made clear that they were against it, including, famously, the 2009 RAC plan that called for multiple condo towers to go up around their golf course north of F-rated Hallandale Beach Blvd. that were all over twenty-five floors and would have ruined many residents quality of life, including people on Diplomat Parkway who paid thru the nose for homes with unobstructed golf course views and who did not want their home in near-perpetual shade.

 Gulfstream has tried to exploit that perception and beat them at their own game. It's that simple.

 So when writing about the amount of campaign funds that Gulfstream Park gave, be sure to mention that while Gulfstream backed both Michele Lazarow and Annabelle Taub-Lima in their pre-acrimony days vs. Diplomat-backed, ethically-flawed ex-HB Comm. William "Bill" Julian, they still got out-spent by the Diplomat and its minions desperate to get Cooper's pawn Julian back on the dais to do her bidding.
Just saying, proper context and perspective have a place in the Keith London pieces you write.
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Thursday, October 11, 2018

Over a year later, where are the positive results of the City of Hollywood's new Vacation Rental ordinance? How's the compliance rate? About what WE expected and less than the city promised.


Over a year later, where are the positive results of the City of Hollywood's new Vacation Rental ordinance? How's the compliance rate? 
About what WE expected and less than the city promised.

 Because I am the way that I am and interested in the sorts of myriad things that I am, and write and Tweet about a LOT, including the #GigEconomy and #Airbnb and public policy, I mention this in case you are interested in some things that touch on all of these things.

 Just got this in the mail today:
Rebecca Stone, Skift Research: The Roadblocks Airbnb Must Tackle on Its Way to Possible IPO: Skift’s Latest Research

As of today I plan on doing an updated blog post sometime in the next few weeks that'll seriously examine and re-examine what I believe to have been the completely ineffective changes the City of Hollywood made last summer to their Vacation Rental ordinance.

Those of you among the public and the press who attended that afternoon might recall that I spoke towards the very end of that Hollywood City Commission meeting on whether to give the city more aggressive (regressive!) tools to enforce the city's new changes to the existing ordinance, after many representatives of the Vacation Rental, real estate and Small Business industry spoke, including Tom Martinelli, Airbnb's Florida Government Relations Director based out of Miami.

 I spoke after people from Airbnb, individual Airbnb or VR hosts and other industry members spoke had the chance to articulate their frustration with the city's refusal to work in good faith with them, to say nothing of many of the City Commissioners NOT understanding that they could NOT simply go back on contracts and MOU's with individual hosts and give the city personal confidential information.

 Among other things I said that it was, sad to say, yet another example of a South Florida municipality putting its faith in the power of a govt. bureaucracy rather than empowering responsible Vacation Rental hosts, in this case, in Hollywood -where I live and know many such hosts- and trusting human behavior, and actually making it easier for Vacation Rental hosts to comply.
A win-win scenario for everyone.

BUT to do so on terms that did NOT open hosts up to what could be unlimited and unwarranted intrusion by city officials (or their hired hands) looking to play gold prospector and recoup money for the city's coffers for its own past failure to have adequate code compliance in place and be able to catch additions made to houses at the time they took place 20, 30 or 40 years ago, rather than try to go after current owners or renters.

 Many of the latter have invested in their future by renting houses in Hollywood that would otherwise be empty if not dowdy, but which are now much-improved by their interest in making it as attractive as possible.

 In many cases, better taken care of than if the city itself owned them, as hearings I attended earlier this year regarding the city's attempt to sell some city-owned parcels proved 
conclusively, when a mirror was held up to the city's owned homes and the eyesores many of them have remained in many neighborhoods.

 It was also hard not to notice that there seemed to be a very lackluster effort shown by the city to go after the repeat offenders that cause a majority of the complaints that are both valid and intrusive to their neighbor's Quality of Life. 

The fact that the city and the person running the program for it, Lorie Mertens-Black, seemed to fail to invite several responsible and articulate Airbnb hosts who were in compliance to speak at their July dog-and-pony show weeks before,

 

Updated: A veritable trainwreck of a public meeting. Wednesday's embarrassing 

Vacation Rental Ordinance Amendment presentation at Hollywood City Hall was 

not a pretty sight by any stretch of the imagination


 gave me plenty of angst and ammo for what happened when the City Commission voted. 

 As we all saw to our exasperation when we saw how my logic and common sense was received last summer. Badly.
After all, there was money to be made!

 I predicted that the compliance rate would be much less than what they expected or had been led to believe by vendors, and would... well, to quote myself:
"As long as the city makes it about meting out individual and collective punishment
and making money via fees, based on what I have personally seen and heard at city
meetings and in conversations with many successful Airbnb and Vacation Rental
hosts in Hollywood, I see little prospect that the city's compliance rate will ever get
much over 40% with the proposed changes."

That's still my perspective as I start cobbling together that new post, and no facts or
evidence I have seen or received from the city of late shows me that I'm wrong.
The fact that this was so predictable doesn't bring me any joy. 

Let me leave you with a sweet teaser of things to come: The city's VR licensing program
is now so inaccurate that it shows properties on its site that may not even be in compliance
any more, since it is accurate as of... Sept. 30th.
"The map illustrates all approved Vacation Rental Licenses that will expire on September 30, 2018."

Why should it even be more than a week inaccurate if the whole point of it is to BE accurate? Also, HOW and WHY would any out-of-town traveler go to the city's website, a site that they wouldn't even know exists? They wouldn't. 

But the city acts like people would do that.

Yet again, completely ignoring human behavior when it comes to this subject.



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