Showing posts with label 2014 Florida elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2014 Florida elections. Show all posts

Monday, November 3, 2014

What time is it in Hallandale Beach? Time for Chuck Kulin and Keith London. Time for GENUINE reform, transparency, oversight and accountability!

Hallandale Beach City Hall. October 13, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2014 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

What time is it in Hallandale Beach? 



Time for Chuck Kulin and Keith London.
Long past time to FINALLY make this oceanside Broward County city the better-run city it ought to already be but ISN'T now, with genuine transparency, meaningful financial oversight and strict fidelity to Florida's Sunshine Laws.
REAL accountability!

The only way that'll ever happen is to systematically remove the legion of apathetic and underperforming people at HB City Hall, starting with the five-member City Commission that so consistently frustrates and angers its own residents and Small Business owners with its leaps in logic, defense of failed crony capitalism and stealthy behavior and dimwittedness that leaves citizens stunned.

Fortunately, two of its 5 City Commission seats are up tomorrow and there's the strong possibility we can turn this ship around, even as Mayor Cooper charges straight ahead towards the approaching iceberg, as if she can simply bully the financial iceberg like she can her own citizens.

Vote for Chuck Kulin for Seat 1 and Keith London for Seat 2

Thursday, October 16, 2014

He's no Houdini! Why Hallandale Beach Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders is so worried: He can't hide anymore from his crony capitalism and dismal record of words & votes against logic, common sense, financial accountability -and HB's future Quality-of-Life. The tide of change against him is rising, NOT fading. Vote for Kulin!


Contents below are a slightly-expanded version of an email I sent out last night to people all over Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, greater Broward County and throughout South Florida who care about cleaning-up one of the most incompetent and corrupt local governments in all of Florida, the City of Hallandale Beach.

He's no Houdini! Why Hallandale Beach Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders is so worried: He can't hide anymore from his dismal record of words & votes against logic, common sense, financial accountability -and HB's future Quality-of-Life. The tide of change against him is rising, NOT fading
Dear Friend of Common Sense in Hallandale Beach,

Hallandale Beach Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders is worried.
And he has good reason to be worried.
He's NOT an escape artist like Houdini, and his dismal and ruinous record in office is all around us! 

Right where we can see it.

Comm. Sanders knows that after six years of his consistently unsatisfactory performance in office, six years of his continually being shown as not only un-informed but also consistently
dis-connected from the legitimate concerns of the majority of HB residents and small business owners, six LONG years of his consistently being disrespectful of them while casting votes that've negatively affected them and their family's present and future Quality-of-Life, that the tide of change against him is rising, NOT fading.

Despite his recent (ill-chosen) boast in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that he was perfectly prepared to stand by his record in elective office after six years, the reality is that Comm. Sanders CAN'T defend it. 

The unintended irony of this, of course, is that his record can also NOT be defended by his own supporters among the anti-reform Cooper Rubber Stamp Crew, or among City Hall's selfish crony capitalism crowd of friends. 
Friends who love being rewarded for being friends of the powers-that-be: with COHB and HB CRA dollars.

But then that only stands to reason, since despite six long years of opportunities to do so, Comm. Sanders himself has been unwilling to defend his own record and votes with anything even remotely resembling logic or reason. 

Not just at the time Comm. Sanders was casting his predictable Rubber Stamp votes, but unable even to explain those votes and policy views with any degree of persuasion or conviction in the minutes, hours, days or weeks AFTER he's cast those same votes against
common sense and financial accountability, often at the same time.

Most of us who have paid even the slightest amount of attention to what happens in Hallandale Beach and its neighboring cities know that Comm. Sanders has never had to publicly defend that woeful record of poor performance, despite how egregious many of Sanders' actions have been, whether in the area of his questionable ethics, uniformily poor
judgment, or even his failure to consistently show-up at public meetings fully-informed and prepared to ask cogent questions, as the HB community has a perfect right to expect of any elected official.

What's particularly galled so many of us is that Comm. Sanders has been aided and abetted in that effort by a largely pliant and sleepwalking South Florida news media, that, with a few rare exceptions, never wanted to directly challenge Sanders' myopic and upside-down world view, to say nothing of personally holding him and his ineffective words/votes to account for the reality of the abymally poor governance we see in this city no matter where we go.

Now part of that is because Sanders, even after so many awful years in office, always wanted to play the role of voice for the disaffected and forgotten in this community. 

As IF that could in any way be explained by his six years of ALWAYS voting FOR real estate developers, no matter how incompatible or harmful the individual project was to the nearest neighborhood or the city at large

And year-after-year, the local South Florida news media -with a few exceptions- has lacked the mettle, gumption and attention-span to directly and publicly challenge Comm. Sanders on that faux pose of his, though the facts are clear they could've clobbered him using his own words and votes whenever they chose on a whole host of issues.
But sadly for us, the news media has consciously chosen NOT to challenge and press Sanders to fully explain his strange utterings and troublesome votes up on the dais. 

That failure has only exacerbated the growing sense of frustration and alienation in this city among reasonable people who simply want it to be MUCH BETTER than has been allowed to be.

One of the few shining exceptions to this apathy by local South Florida journalists has been Local10's Glenna Milberg.

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/video-local10s-glenna-milberg-examines.html
actsofsedition video:  Local10/Miami: "City's pricey purchase." 
On July 26, 2012, Local10 reporter Glenna Milberg went to Hallandale Beach to learn more details about the curious case involving Pastor and City Comm. Anthony A. Sanders' rushed sale of his and his wife's property at 501 N.W. 1st Avenue to the city in 2009 -when the city had ZERO written plans for what it would actually do with the property afterwards!- for about $89,000 more than it was actually worth. Sanders continues to stonewall Hallandale Beach taxpayers about the exact details of this deal as he has now for over three years, and he refused to speak with Milberg on Thursday. Outside of the city-owned property that the city now receives $10 a year in rent for, Mayor Joy Cooper's explanation was unconvincing for HB taxpayers. Three years later she continued to hem and haw when asked simple questions -and to defend the indefensible- as she still can't logically explain what the rush was to buy the property at a higher price, esp. if there was no definite plan in place. It was left to former Comm. Keith London -the only vote against the purchase and Cooper's re-election opponent in November of 2012- to again explain why this deal was so egregious from HB taxpayer's point of view. It's just one of the dozens of inexplicable and nonsensical things that I've personally observed with Hallandale Beach taxpayer or CRA funds under Mayor Cooper's reign since I moved here. Uploaded July 27, 2012. http://youtu.be/XlOgkrL9CWI



People like you and your neighbors who want policy arguments at HB City Hall to be over commonly-agreed-upon facts and the best way to make good ideas become a reality, the exact opposite of what we've had in this city for far too long, with Sanders always on the wrong side of both common sense and history.

Six years later, with Sanders continually failing to rise to the responsibility, and in fact, to be found wanting by the majority of Hallandale Beach residents, even among those in NW HB, Sanders knows that the real disaffected people in this city are the very citizens,residents and small business owners like you who for years have been made to feel like uninvited and unwanted outsiders at your own City Hall.

Forever being treated shabbily, callously or even publicly insulted, by both an autocratic mayor and a power-hungry city manger, as they and their bureaucratic minions continually tried to flip norms of public democratic participation on its side, so they alone could be
left alone to form this city in their own image(s).

Far too often, despite our best efforts to positively change the culture of entitlement and self-evident wrong-way driving up on the dais, we were forced to watch in silence as this happened, with Comm. Sanders sitting up on the dais totally oblivious to what was taking
place, and not at all interested in putting HB residents and small business owners first, not forever second to someone else's interests.

Since Comm. Sanders can NOT defend that abysmal record of his, naturally -along with his cohorts among the Cooper Rubber Stamp Crew- he's eager to change the subject of this Commission race to something else, anything else -and distract voters from his own inability to make a positive difference for the whole community.
Year-after-year. 

Please don't let him get away with it again!

IF there were actually honest-to-goodness candidate debates and public forums in this city, venues where HB residents and small business owners like you could speak truthfully about their legitimate concerns and fears, without Mayor Cooper and City Manager Miller constantly interfering -or running to protect Comm. Sanders from his own words and actions on the dais- trust me, my good friend, HB civic activist Chuck Kulin, would be constantly reminding Comm. Sanders that he was running against HIM and Sanders' failed record for reasons that he'd only be too happy to enumerate and articulate, with facts and precision that make the case.

But now in the last 20 days, even after all of Chuck's hard work on his campaign, absent those public venues to directly challenge Comm. Sanders and his votes directly on the record, and the news media's reluctance to print or air what so many of us know about Sanders' record in a way that aligns with what most of us have grown-up thinking is reasonable to expect in an election campaign, Comm. Sanders is relying upon the friends and cronies of Mayor Cooper and the myriad businesses who deal with HB City Hall to finance him and run interference for him.



Anthony A. Sanders/Commission Seat No. 1 Qualified as of 6/19/2014M4M5 , M6M7M8G4

People who are determined to keep this seat on THEIR side, opposing needed reforms and more meaningful public accountability and public input.

That’s why I need your help and am writing you now. 

Three weeks from this morning we'll all wake-up with the knowledge that the opportunity
to positively change things in this community has come and gone for another two years.
Do you want to wake-up feeling good that morning, energized and positive that this city can FINALLY start being the sort of place we can all take pride in, or, do you want to be suffering from a headache, knowing that things CAN and often DO get worse in this city
when consistently ineffective and inattentive incumbents are returned to their seats at City Hall?

If you want it to be the former and not the latter, please contact Chuck and offer to help him in this campaign however you can, doing what you can right now to show Comm. Sanders that he is going to be replaced by someone who can and will be a positive can-do voice for
you, common sense and financial accountability.

Chuck Kulin
1835 E. Hallandale Beach Boulevard, #130, Hallandale Beach, Florida 33009
Cell 954-804-2210 

E-mail ChuckKulin2014@gmail.com
www.chuckkulin.com/


It seems to me that we are so close to winning this pivotal seat, and so close to sending Sanders packing -but we can only get there when everyone looks themselves in the mirror and is willing to expend some time and effort in changing the dynamic and reality of this city.

There's now less than 20 days left.
What are YOU going to do?

Friday, October 10, 2014

Updated: It disappeared! South Florida Sun-Sentinel article -online Thursday- re allegations of indecent exposure being investigated by the Broward Sheriff's Office against Hallandale Beach Comm. Leo Grachow has disappeared completely from website; @TweetsByMAOS has more news on this unraveling story that HB City Hall is trying to stonewall


Blog updated October 14, 2014 Woman accuses Hallandale commissioner of indecent exposure in condo sauna
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/hallandale/fl-grachow-hallandale-sauna-20141009-story.html

So what happened to South Florida Sun-Sentinel's article -online Thursday- by Susannah Bryan re allegations of indecent exposure being investigated by the Broward Sheriff's Office against interim Hallandale Beach Comm. Leo Grachow, who is running in November to retain Seat 2 against former HB Comm. Keith London?

At the top is a photo of what that URL looks like at 3:30 p.m. today, many, many hours after I started being deluged with phone calls, emails and texts from people in the area asking me:
1.) if I knew what happened in the incident,
2.) why the city was trying to cover it up by refusing to legally produce public records for the newspaper, and 
3.) why the article disappeared from the Sun-Sentinel's website.
Unfortunately, I have no definitive answers, but strongly suggest you contact the newspaper directly and ask her; sbryan@tribune.com

For more on this issue, see what our friend up in Deerfield Beach, Chaz Stevens had to say on the matter, first yesterday afternoon, BEFORE the story disappeared, complete with some details;




https://www.myactsofsedition.com/blog/2014/10/09/bolo-issued-for-commissioner-leo-grachow-and-his-penis/


Chaz subsequently posted the following:



http://www.myactsofsedition.com/blog/2014/10/10/hallandale-beach-candidate-leo-the-lien-grachows-personal-financial-armageddon/

and then there was this well-aimed blast at the Heart of Darkness in Hallandale Beach, 400 S. Federal Highway


http://www.myactsofsedition.com/blog/2014/10/10/we-send-up-a-public-records-flare/

plus this


http://www.myactsofsedition.com/blog/2014/10/11/a-leo-grachow-penis-gate-update/

and most recently,


http://www.myactsofsedition.com/blog/2014/10/12/the-s-s-story-that-was-pulled/

It's noteworthy to me, and a rather sad commentary on the general lack of a sense of old-fashioned competitiveness or enterprise journalism among South Florida's news media that days after this story saw the light of day, at least for a few hours, that neither the Miami Herald or any of the four English-language TV stations have reported word one on this story, or why the City of Hallandale Beach is fighting so hard to keep public information AWAY from the public that is entitled to it by state law.
At least as of 9:50 a.m. today.

Why do you suppose that is?
Look at who runs things there: Mayor Joy Cooper, City Manager Renee C. Miller and City Attorney , V. Lynn Woodward. 
It's exactly what it looks like. 
People who do NOT want to see former HB Commissioner Keith London elected over Cooper-supported interim HB Commissioner Leo Grachow. 
Joy Cooper wants to keep her Rubber Stamp Crew intact!

These are, after all, the very same people who refused to turn over public information -phone records and text messages- that I was legally entitled to under the state constitution and had had formally requested in 2013 through a PRR.
I strongly suspected those records would show Cooper and Miller and others lobbying the members of the Broward County Commission and County Adminstrator to prevent an audit of the scandal-plagued Hallandale Beach CRA, which has wasted millions of dollars under Joy Cooper.

I never got those records I was legally entitled to, but I was proven 100% correct.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/latest-on-curious-case-of-at-city-of.html

Meanwhile just on Sunday, with nothing on this blog newer than this post re Grachow, I had 2,355 pageviews, and I suspect most of them were headed to this particular post. 
Because what was their alternative if they wanted more news on this subject, other than from Chaz?
The so-called professional news media of South Florida was asleep at the switch!

My last blog post about Leo Grachow was this much-read one from June 19, 2014. Since the story hit the fan last week, nearly everyone around South Florida and environs who covers or follows politics and local govt., esp. in Broward County, to say nothing of Hb residents themselves, has been looking at it: 
Observations re Leo Grachow's selection as Hallandale Beach's interim Commissioner: "I thought he was a perfect fit for the job." So says a clearly disconnected-from-reality Comm. Bill Julian, who DIDN'T rate Grachow best, but instead voted BEST the least-qualified of the 3 finalists! Meanwhile, the candidate giving the single-best oral presentation, Chad Lincoln, received a 1 (out of 25) from HB's notoriously thin-skinned Mayor Joy Cooper; voting distribution chart

2014 Florida elections, Broward Sheriff's Office, Chaz Stevens, crime, Hallandale Beach, indecent exposure, Joy Cooper, Keith London, Leo Grachow, My Acts of Sedition, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Susannah Bryan, 

Friday, August 1, 2014

It's a damn shame that FL House Rep. Joe Gibbons will now have to go to Tallahassee to do his job instead of... avoiding South Florida reporters armed with 'inconvenient facts; Florida redistricting meets Broward County Commission Seat 1 race


It's a damn shame that FL House Rep. Joe Gibbons will now have to go to Tallahassee to do his job instead of... avoiding South Florida reporters armed with 'inconvenient facts' in his continuing attempt to explain away his dreadful record of insignificance in Tallahassee, and longstanding track record of perpetually looking the other way at what was taking place in his supposed "home" of Hallandale Beach under the direction of his friend Mayor Joy Cooper, especially as it relates to the misuse of the city's CRA,with her directing ill-founded schemes that made it an ATM for her political cronies and pals.

When the concerned citizenry of HB publicly proclaimed its genuine desire in 2013 for JLAC to perform an independent audit that would investigate where all the millions in CRA dollars went over the recent past, with Joy Cooper deciding where the money went, as I've written here many times, what did Joe Gibbons do?Nada!

It's also a shame that as soon as the FL House does what they need to do in order to meet the judge's order, regardless of how long it actually takes, Gibbons will inevitably say that there's just "not enough time" left for a no-holds-barred debate with Beam Furr in the HB/Hollywood area, a debate the public wants 
PRIOR to the primary for the Broward County Comm. District 1 seat.

You don't have to be as prescient as me or as familiar with Gibbons' M.O to know that cold, hard facts are NOT and have never been Gibbons' best friends.
Instead, Gibbons will no doubt continue playing the role of elusive rabbit to Furr's measured, fact-based issues campaign that actually compares and contrasts their records.

As it happens, I will have a nice fact-filled blog post next week on the issue of ethics and Joe Gibbons, and as you can imagine, it will deal with his lack of them, even when dealing with the federal government.
Who lies to the feds about something that's so easy to check on? Guess!

It'll feature irrefutable facts and a back-story that you have never read or heard about before.
Yes, think of it as my primary campaign 'contribution.' :-)

Monday, June 23, 2014

#tonedeaf -Once again, Hallandale Beach's thin-skinned, attention-hog of a mayor, Joy Cooper, is saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time to frustrated Hallandale Beach residents, taxpayers & small business owners. This time, about increasing the minimum wage, despite the fact that as residents know only too well, far too many of the city's employees and contractors consistently under-perform and yet have no fear of repercussions they'd face anywhere else

Well, so much for starting the new week off in a good mood.
Today's New York Times should serve as a real wake-up call to those in the Hallandale Beach community who, counter-intuitively given the mountain of evidence to the contrary, have been content for years to simply look the other way regarding the lingering questions about Mayor Joy Cooper whenever any discussion occurred amongst straight-talking family members or out-of-town friends about how a city like Hallandale Beach, located in a great geographic location between Miami and Fort Lauderdale and next to the beach, has continued to be such a self-evident mess under her the past dozen years.

That a mean-spirited woman like Joy Cooper with such a demonstrated history of being completely oblivious to the reality of how poorly Hallandale Beach has been run for years under her ruinous anti-democratic reign, and how manifestly under-performing and insolent such a high percentage of the the city's employees have been and continue to be -including Dept. heads and key Administrators- is, admittedly, NOT news.

So that said, why should any of us who DO pay attention to matters hereabouts be the least bit surprised that Cooper is now publicly trying to draw attention to HERSELF by calling for a pay increase for those same employees, as well as the city's army of not-so-competent contractors -i.e Lanzo on NE 14th Avenue in the never-ending pipe/road project from hell; or the firm responsible for the city's third-rate website or the one responsible for the poorly-performing streaming of City meetings, often with no audio or picture for 30 minutes or more...?

More $$$ that Joy Cooper wants to dole out that comes from us -with her taking the bows and thanks- when what we should really be getting from HB City Hall is a long overdue refund and an apology. In fact, multiple apologies!

How truly out-of-touch with HB residents and small business owners is Mayor Cooper?
As if any of us needed more evidence to add to the mountain that's staring us in the face, the article below from today's New York Times shows us.
She wants taxpayers to be be paying more in salary to employees and contractors, Exhibits A and B in what is at the heart of this city's problems: incompetency and bad performance.

To give you a better sense of how true that is, I'll soon be sharing here -complete with fact-filled photos that leave no question about what the reality of the situation is- one self-evident example after another showing how months after I publicly chastised City Manager Renee Miller for about five minutes straight at the combined NE/SE/Beach Quadrant meeting at the The Hemispheres condominium meeting room over on the beach.
Very specific examples of how it's not just Hallandale Beach residents that have realized how phony Miller's high-minded rhetoric and claims to be a reformer were in 2012, but others in Broward County as well.

The short version is that I told Miller that her claims to actually welcome public/neighborhood input and ideas, were, based on the past two years of history, an exaggerated and self-serving lie, and one that her own staff now realized, too. 
Then told her that the proof that her own staff and Dept. heads were tuning her and her high-minded rhetoric from 2012, and having no problem at all in being publicly insolent to the community, with absolutely no fear of repercussions from HER, were precisely what happened to me and has happened to so many of you, belied by Miller's own unsatisfactory behavior/performance/attitude.

I publicly identified three people -including two Dept, heads: Schanz at Parks & Rec and Parkinson at DPW- whom I had contacted via email, both in September and in the weeks prior to the Quadrant meeting, re specific questions involving the HB Parks bond issue and some longstanding problems with the city's Mini Bus transportation system that directly and adversely affects riders.
Problems that the people in charge showed absolutely no desire to accept responsibility for or attempt to satisfactorily resolve.
It will come as no surprise to you that none of the three city employees responded as we'd have a right to expect, despite sending reminders to them that they had failed to respond.
(And that none of the self-evident problems was resolved either.)

And, of course, they've never responded to me in the weeks and months SINCE the Quadrant meeting, despite the fact that they were in the room when CM Miller specifically said that she expected better of her staff. And that, in the end, the person responsible was her.
Well, in most parts of the country, I'd have heard from one of the three in the days afterwards, but here, nothing from the three of them and Miller.
So, yes, it'll be another example of me having to pull off another embarrassing band-aid re HB City Hall's longstanding incompetency and bungling that the local press continues to ignore and that the public has had ENOUGH of to last them a lifetime.

In case you hadn't realized it, a dubious anniversary draws near.
The next few days mark exactly two years since a serious mistake in judgement was made and Rene Miller was hired as Hallandale Beach City Manager.
Despite plenty of people in town giving her the benefit of the doubt long after she proved how unsatisfactory she was to the task, including some of you, Miller has not only proven a compete fraud as to being a reformer and being willing to try new innovative ideas the public supports, she has in fact tried to consolidate her power at HB City Hall by hiring LOTS of cronies of hers from the City of Miami Gardens, her former employer, including the recently-hired new head of Personnel in HB.

Simply put, after two years of her NOT coming anywhere close to effectuating any of the much-needed positive attitude and performance changes among the city's army of employees, City Manager Renee Miller clearly can't be trusted any longer with OUR city's future.
Miller needs to be replaced as City Manager AFTER November's elections, where new faces on the dais will not repeat past mistakes and ignore the reality of perpetual dysfunction that HB residents, taxpayers and small business owners experience everyday.
A long overdue reality check needs to be firmly delivered at HB City Hall this November.
  
--------------
New York Times
Mayors Put Focus on How to Raise Wages for Lowest-Paid Workers in Cities
By SHAILA DEWAN
June 22, 2014

DALLAS — About one in five people in Hallandale Beach, Fla., live below the poverty line. Though it is a small city — 37,000 people, a horse track and a greyhound track — its mayor, Joy Cooper, bellied up to the table during a jobs committee discussion on Saturday among the nation’s mayors and fired off a few questions about raising the minimum wage, if not for the whole city, at least for businesses with city contracts.

“I want to make sure my employees are cared for properly,” Ms. Cooper said later. “I want to have a high-quality work force.”

Read the rest of the article at: