Showing posts with label Andrew Markoff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andrew Markoff. Show all posts

Monday, July 9, 2012

Csaba Kulin's reasonable questions about the Broward IG's inspection, Comm. Sanders' continued stonewalling, Comm. Julian's laughable threats, and their poison-pen cheerleader, Andrew Markoff, who continues to show his naïveté with every comment he makes. They desperately need apologists, and does he ever fill the bill!


501 N.W. 1ST Avenue, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009-3301
Why was it so urgent for the City of Hallandale Beach to quickly purchase this property from Anthony and Jessica Sanders if there was no actual plan in place for what the city would do with it afterwards? A property the city now receives $1 a year in rent? (Yes, one dollar.) How was it that Josh Brown was able to use the address of a non-profit in a city-owned building as his election campaign address? Who let that happen? 
Just some of the questions Hallandale Beach citizens continue to wonder about and want answers to as the Sanders continue to stonewall the Broward Inspector General -and the HB citizens that Comm. Anthony A. Sanders is SWORN to serve. 
Csaba Kulin's reasonable questions about the Broward IG's inspection, Comm. Sanders' continued stonewalling, Comm. Julian's laughable threats, and their poison-pen cheerleader, Andrew Markoff, who continues to show his naïveté with every comment he makes. They desperately need apologists, and does he ever fill the bill!

For the record, I should note that the reasonable comments and questions below from my friend, fellow Hallandale Beach and Broward civic activist and Hallandale Beach City Commission candidate Csaba Kulin, were first posted online at the Broward Bulldog in response to Bill Gjebre's July 5th, 2012 article, Broward IG questions former Hallandale commissioner about CRA deals, newspaper loan
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/07/broward-ig-agents-quiz-former-hallandale-commissioner-about-cra-deals-newspaper-loan/


That is to say, before several of Andrew Markoff's subsequent slimy, factually-inaccurate and deliberate race-baiting comments directed towards Csaba and other pro-reform residents of Hallandale Beach who commented there.
People, who, like me and many of you reading this, want genuine transparency with real financial accountability at City Hall.

That is to say, unlike Markoff himself, who's not only happy to continue to sing the praises of the powers-that-be, but also continue kissing the butts of the folks in power now, like Mayor Cooper and Comm. Sanders.


In fact, he's so besotted with some people in town that he's quite literally asking us to completely disregard all the years we've had of seeing Bill Julian consistently make a fool of himself in office, and would somehow have us believe that Julian is now an acceptable candidate for elective office, despite what we have witnessed with our own eyes.


Julianthe antithesis of what any responsible community would want due to his lack of scruples, bad judgment and years on the dais of sheer Elmer Fudd-like befuddlement.

(Julian's years of parking his car illegally in Handicapped and/or Emergency parking spaces where everyone could see it, all over town, doubtless requires a solid few months with a very experienced psychiatrist. But then how would he explain away his own despicable behavior for years? His coping mechanism seems to be pretending that you either don't know or don't see him doing it. Hmm-m... Yes, that's normal!)

Given what they have had to put up with for far too many years, Hallandale Beach citizens have had absolutely enough nonsense and lack of candor from this city's elected officials and highly-paid city employees to last them a lifetime, and they are ready to make that fact known come election day.


While it may be news to the likes of a Markoff or the Miami Herald 's Editorial Board, in the year 2012, Hallandale Beach residents DON'T have to turn a blind-eye to the continuing
incompetence and financial melodrama of and complete lack of candor from perpetually-befuddled Comm. Anthony A. Sanders, just because he is African-American.
No, we don't have to employ double-standards like what Markoff would prefer, we merely need to be consistent about what is or is not acceptable behavior and performance in office.

Which is why we're going to continue to treat Sanders like every other two-bit pol who's quickly found himself in over his head, and who can't justify with a straight face, why anyone not related to him -or named Joy Cooper- would want him on the scene one day longer than necessary, given his sorry and undistinguished track record.


Nobody EVER leaves a HB City Commission meeting muttering to themselves afterward, "I didn't really understand the issue until after Comm. Sanders spoke and explained it."


A clear majority of this city, the very people that Sanders has continually dis-respected for 46 months with his smug attitude and complete indifference to them, have had enough of his behavior and conduct and his unwillingness to tell the truth in a public setting without city employees whispering sweet nothings into his ear.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/ig-investigation-finally-plus-more.html

Like most people with common sense, a majority of HB residents rightly recognize a duck (or rubber stamp) when they see one -or two or three or four- sitting on a long dais at City Hall.
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...duck!: Ross, Julian, Sanders, Lewy.
They are exactly what they look like, though the local press corps seem to go out of their way not to mention it, which is why we do.


What this community most certainly doesn't need any more of is Markoff's smug elitist liberal sensibilities and double-standards masquerading as fairness.
Especially since Comm. Sanders has had plenty of time to rise or fall based on his own words and actions, and he has been found wanting -in the extreme.


The simple truth is that people like Markoff must attack and besmirch folks like Csaba, Mike Butler, Keith London and myself and others who want a degree of normalcy for this city, and must make up stories and anecdotes about their pique because what are their alternatives, to actually talk about what's happened here with candor?
No. that's the last thing they want - an accurate accounting.

Nope, folks who can't accept that they're on the losing side of history, and defending the indefensible to boot, do NOT want to talk about reality with someone who really knows the facts.


He's free to defend the city's status quo powers-that-be that have created a reality for residents and taxpayers that is so unappealing and unremarkable, since that's his choice, but then choice is something that he would deny others, since if there's nothing else that you should have picked-up on about this Markoff character it's that this arrogant, elitist and self-appointed city Political Commissar, has never learned that no matter what your politics are, you never win by feeling that its your job to hector other people with lives of their own and telling them what THEY ought to be doing in the community.
As if it was up to HIM.


And yet in far too many of his online screeds, somewhere in the text, even when it has nothing to do with anything, Markoff has been ballsy and arrogant enough to take some people to task for NOT doing what he thinks THEY ought to be doing, as if it was up to him to decide, not them.
Can you imagine?


Other than bashing Comm. Keith London, who, like me, tried for a while, perhaps too long, to be friendly and civil to him and educate him a bit about local govt. and politics in Boward, there's nobody that Markoff enjoys bashing online at various places in his simultaneously creepy and patronizing fashion more than yours truly, even though though the truth is that I ought to spend less time on this blog ruminating about this city's present and future. than I do.


But despite what I think I ought to be doing, Markoff he is forever expending time and energy writing a half-dozen or more paragraphs about me and what I ought to be doing, and forever writing snide personal remarks apropos of nothing other than his odd fixation, which, by the way, for the record, is NOT at all flattering.
Trust me, online stalkers aren't funny and I didn't say creepy by accident.

At this point, Markoff's only real value is entirely comic -watching him chase his Tall Tales, while avoiding the truth that threatens to undermine the Alternative Universe he has carefully constructed in his own mind.

So, that said, more than usual, consider the source when you read Markoff's weird, inaccurate and off-putting online comments anywhere, esp. as it relates to me or anyone I know, like Csaba below, who has earned this community's trust and respect the old-fashioned way -from talking-the-talk and walking-the-walk.


His honesty, insight, consistent integrity and tireless work-ethic are exactly what we need on the HB City Commission to clean up the mess we've got now and get this city moving forward -finally!

Above, Hallandale Beach City Hall Complex at night, photo of August 7, 2011 by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved
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Well there certainly hasn't been a lack of attention paid to what is being written and said here about the current Broward IG investigation of Hallandale Beach.  
It's a shame that so much of what is being written here shows a lack of knowledge of the facts. Where to start?

Andrew Markoff, what is it that you don't quite understand about "No plan"?
Former City Manager Mike Good had no written or approved plan for the purchases of land and homes in Northwest HB. 
None.

If there was a plan, regardless of who devised it, that actually existed, we'd all know about it because there would have been meetings or workshops when it came up.
If there was a plan, Mayor Cooper and Bill Julian would've been taking credit for it for years, and many people in this town whom you are constantly denigrating but whon are performing a real service, as well as myself, would have filed public records requests at City Hall to either see it, or get copies of it to see what it actually says and try to make sense of it. 
And maybe even some TV or newspaper reporters would do so as well.

But nobody has done any of those things over the years for the simple reason that there is NO PLAN.
It's the worst sort of helter-skelter, with no logical ultimate purpose that anyone at City Hall or anywhere else can explain with a straight face.
That's the whole problem!

There was no written policy, there was no oversight and accountability, just reckless spending by the City Commission because they decided they wanted to buy something.

This is why your strange constant defense of the urgent purchase of Comm. Sanders property makes no sense to anyone who was paying attention to things in 2008.
Since there was no plan to use that land for some larger purpose that the commission was in favor of, such as assembling smaller parcels together to either build something themselves for the community, or even to assemble the parcels for the purpose of selling it in total to some company or developer to make it possible for them to construct something that was needed or wanted, with the city banking that money, there was no logical reason to rush the purchase, much less, make the purchase.
No reason at all.

All these years later, the city taxpayers gets a dollar or so a year in rent for that property from a non-profit that has also received lots of money from the city.
So where's the rationale, why was it purchased when it had no purpose, and why doesn't the city sell it to someone who will build something there that will create jobs and pay taxes?

Also, why is it that in all the places you leave your comments, you have refused to acknowledge your own connection to one of the groups that is under investigation by the IG, the Palm Community Action Coalition? 
What exactly is it that do you do for them, and what is their actual purpose, since the documents on the city website are very vague.

I would love to see a public list of members of the Board for this group, that includes its boss, Jessica Sanders, so if I see one of them around town I could ask what they actually do for the money, and why it's such a big secret?
Also, why is it that this group, of all the so-called non-profit groups in town, the newest one, the one with the commissioner's wife in charge, is the only one in the city that gets office space and use of city personnel and resources at the Hepburn Center? 
Why? 

Now onto Bill Julian, who was so quick to attack me for making the following reasonable comments in a previous Bulldog article, happy to intentionally mischaracterize what was actually said between us at City Hall following a meeting, in order to make himself look good here.

The Broward County Inspector General should move as soon as possible to either indict or clear those people that proposed or voted for these giveaways. Mayor Cooper, Commissioner Sanders and former Vice Mayor Julian are on the November ballot and they MAY be a target of the investigation.

Julian then says: Casba, I have asked you if you would run your campaign as a gentleman, and it looks like you will not, as expected. Since you have no records of any service in Hallandale , I guess sending out e-mails is your plan to be a commissioner. The voters are much smarter than you would believe, and they will know the truth, about you soon enough.I have a ten year record of service to the people of Hallandale, and that is known to all residents as I have lived here for over 57 years.

I will be calling the IG. and volunteer to answer any questions they might have.

Well, Mr. Julian finally wants the same thing I was asking for since this investigation was made public -clarity and honest answers from people who know them. 
He now says he wants his name cleared ASAP. 
His attempts to turn my comments back on me have only served to show who's really going to “campaign as a gentleman.”
He can't even tell the truth when there's nothing to gain from lying.

While it's a good thing he volunteered to talk to the IG, the truth is that since he's running for office, he didn't really have much choice, did he? 
In a word, no.
Now, everyone else at City Hall should follow Julian’s example and talk to the IG and completely disregard Markoff's advice, apparently based on watching so much TV, but ignoring reality and appearances.

I for one am looking forward to Comm. Sanders and his wife finally telling everyone their side of the story, but it's not unreasonable to ask why such a simple thing has taken  almost four years? Especially if you did nothing wrong.

More than anything it shows the complete lack of candor and leveling with taxpayers that Comm. Sanders has been known for ever since the mayor put him on the commission in 2008 with Julian's help, since he repeatedly refused to meet with residents of NE before the vote on the Diplomat project.
I guess he couldn't be bothered.

In my 30 years of working for the Cleveland Archdiocese, my boss, the Bishop, would never have allowed me to wear two hats in any sort of business situation. 
I had a choice, one or the other, and like all bosses, if I didn't do that, there be problems for me.
That's why I'd like to hear how it is that the ministry of Pastor Sanders and the official duties of HB City Comm. Sanders can be reconciled now or in the future, without him making a choice, one or the other?

And like many people in this community, I wonder why he and his wife seem so oblivious to the appearance of all these things over the past four years, and are only now willing to say anything, or why she can't get a job that doesn't involve receiving money from the city directly or indirectly. It all seems very curious and more drama than we need with all the problems this city has.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Latest on Broward IG's investigation of curious Hallandale Beach CRA policies & loans; despicable Bill Julian talketh, Andrew Markoff spinneth, but neither tells the whole truth, of course. They can't because the real facts are NOT their friend.


May 16, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier. 
© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

Note to former Hallandale Beach City Commissioner William "Bill" Julian, a 2012 candidate who claims to be honest and full of integrity but is anything but that: 
Most real agents or people who carry real badges denoting some power DON'T park in handicapped parking spaces like you did for SO MANY YEARS all over this city, esp. to hang-out with your pals and eat and drink at The Beachside Cafe on the city's North Beach. Why couldn't you just act like a normal human being and park in the nearby city garage for about a dollar an hour? It would have been so easy.


But instead, for many, many years, as regular beach-goers and the young Jeff Ellis & Associates lifeguards could see for themselves, literally dumb-founded at your sheer audacity, you regularly parked in THE only disabled parking space at North Beach near the sidewalk. Or, if that space was occupied by someone for whom it was actually intended, equally as bad and carrying the identical FINE amount as parking in a disabled spot, you parked your car in the Handicapped Access parking spot, a spot legally designated to allow cars and vans to discharge people in wheelchairs or persons who otherwise required assistance getting out of the vehicle. 


But it's NOT for parking! 
And most assuredly, it is NOT for parking by able-bodied City Commissioners like you were who wanted to drink and eat with your pals and be lazy about it.
So why did you do it, year-after-year?
Because YOU felt entitled and owed something.

You were so full of yourself that you had no problem in putting your little calling card right out where everyone could see it on your dashboard, and your pals in the Police Dept. of Thomas Magill always looked the other way because of who you were, didn't they? Yes, they did, on those infrequent times when they actually came to the beach.
But the truth of the matter is that, in the end, all your pomposity and sense of entitlement showed was what a truly despicable person you are, because that's what people who park illegally in handicapped spaces are -despicable.
And you did that for MANY YEARS!


Elsewhere on the ethics beat, Bill Gjebre has the latest news on the Broward IG's continuing probe of the City of Hallandale Beach and its CRA program run by the City Commission.
Mostly more of Bill Julian being Bill Julian: saying that he won't talk publicly about what he told the investigators and then quickly babbling like a brook.
Broward IG questions former Hallandale commissioner about CRA deals, newspaper loan
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/07/broward-ig-agents-quiz-former-hallandale-commissioner-about-cra-deals-newspaper-loan/


So, to repeat what we already knew, there never was a written plan for the Sanders property when it was bought and there is still no plan for it now that the city rents it out for a dollar a year to serial CRA fund recipient Deborah Brown.
No plan!


So why all the urgency at the time then to purchase it, Comm. Julian and Mayor Cooper, if there was no written plan or strategy? 
Well, as is mentioned elsewhere in the reader comments, Julian was a puppet in good standing and didn't ask and probably didn't even care.


Now, of course, Julian actually has the gall to sound resentful when asked why he said and did certain things while in office for ten years, as if wasn't really him, just his doppelgänger.
All this has really proven is that Julian was never fit to be a city commissioner in the first place and the fact that he never really learned anything at all, proves it, just as is the case with Sanders.
Simply showing up is not good enough.

In the interest of complete accuracy and everyone reading this blog knowing the true facts, I must note here that once again, the very same Andrew Markoff who has spent so much time over the years publicly defending mean-spirited Mayor Cooper and the recently departed small-minded City Manager Mark A. Antonio, and the whole culture of corruption, incompetency and second-rate accountability to the public that they had come to embody, someone who has remarked so often that everyone who's been critical of them, including myself and many of you reading this, are not just wrong, but fail to understand how local govt. is supposed to operate, is the same guy who in a matter of hours on Thursday had already commented three times on the Broward Bulldog website about a story put up in the morning.


Which is to say that, yes, once again, as he has so many times at so many South Florida websites and blogs, Markoff actually wrote more words and lines than the author of the article that was being posted.
And yes, once again, as has become increasingly common in his efforts to attempt to divert people away from the facts surrounding this investigation or any questioning of what City hall wants, he used his poison pen to attack a South Florida reporter for being a tool of... well, whatever the latest conspiracy theory  in his head is these days.


Though I have never spoken with him in person nor spoken on the phone, I'm quite sure that Bill Gjebrejust like another recent target of his, Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayois not losing any sleep about what mendacious Markoff thinks of him, and for good reason, given Markoff's chronic inability to tell the truth or keep his thin-skinned feelings and long-standing grudges out of the way.


If you read his querulous comments at the Bulldog website and had never heard of this blog, you might be surprised to discover that Markoff is actually part of one of the groups that is under current investigation, the Palm Community Action Coalition, which receives money from HB City Hall and is run by Comm. Anthony A. Sanders' wife, Jessica,


Yes, it sounds familiar alright, because it's the very same group whom I've mentioned here many times before whose sweetheart deal with City Hall gives them -her- the use of an office on city property at the Hepburn Center, and the use of city personnel and resources, despite their lack of publicly communicating just what this group actually does other than act as a paid booster squad and cheerleaders for City Hall policies.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/22/v-fullstory/2863431/inspector-general-digging-into.html


As usual, in both his written comments on websites and in person at City Hall, where he has felt perfectly at ease attacking Comm. Keith London and myself, and in May, adding Sun-Sentinel columnist Mayo in one comment at a May city commission meeting that Mayo was present at, as part of this personal conspiracy theory of his that must explain everything, Markoff has once again neglected to mention that he is part of a group being investigated.


Markoff has already picked his side in the status quo vs. reform battle in this city, and he's selected the side of Mayor Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew and their crony capitalism pals in the community, which perhaps is part of why she selected him for the city's Charter Review Committee advisory group, though he carefully avoids mentioning that publicly, too, as well as the fact that he was alone on an island there in his Minority Report, an outcast amongst his own kind.


Yet despite having chosen sides, Markoff still wants to act like he's an umpire who can call balls and strikes on others, based on his own very liberal politics and strange whims and sensibilities. The sort that caused him to sit in front of Panera Bread for so long trying to get people interested in an Obama front group he was involved with.


That sort of intellectual dishonesty, always a disqualifying character trait for me, is part and parcel of why nobody I know in this town trusts Andrew Markoff.
It's also part of his personal M.O., as he has verbally stabbed numerous people in the back in this community over the years who've attempted to befriend him or help him in some way, myself included.


A few years ago, I was foolish enough to spend dozens of hours with him, giving him a reality check tour of this city to point out why things were the way they were here -poorly-run in every way, shape and form- and why it was so important that they be changed.
I even ran what essentially was a free ad for his own website on my blog for around six months or so, a website that I'd actually made suggestions about.




Some of you might even remember it from four years ago.
Not from you going to it, but for me running it on my blog for so long, just to help him out.


No matter, after awhile, completely out-of-the-blue, after not having spoken to him in over 18 months, he felt that it was time to attack me.
The next thing I knew, I was being repeatedly attacked over on the Broward NewTimes blog comment forums by him.
It was so odd. 


Attack me and others who want new faces and policies at City Hall so this city can get out of its funk and be a more normal city.
This experience of trying to be friendly to him only proved again the validity of the maxim that no good deed goes unpunished.


As we've mentioned previously with respect to our frequent use of the Frog and the Scorpion fable on the blog and in my emails in the past to describe the actions and behavior of the mayor, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
Markoff, like Mayor Cooper, can't help being who he is, and Teaser Alert, in the end, he always turns on people who help him, so watch out...


And now you know the rest of the story...

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Bad news for HB's profligate tax-and-spend (and borrow) pols: Rasmussen Poll: 60% Favor Considering Spending Cuts in Every Government Program

Above, Hallandale Beach City Hall Municipal Complex. October 3, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier

Though the Rasmussen Reports poll results below are from a national poll, the voter sentiment I detect in my travels around Broward County and South Florida indicate it's even worse around here, esp. as it applies to myopic spending policies that we feel in our collective wallets and purses.
Especially in Hallandale Beach.

That's bad news for Joy Cooper's Rubber Stamp Crew in Hallandale Beach that never paid attention before the recent audit that showed conclusively, with damning proof, how financially irresponsible and negligent they have been for YEARS, completely failing their oversight responsibility to taxpayers and residents, while at the same time, quite literally, giving City Managers Mike Good and Mark A. Antonio carte blanche with respect to spending decisions, even while having no actual plans in place for what they were doing.

Not just nothing available online on the city's website, nothing on paper anywhere in the entire Hallandale Beach City Hall complex for you to read and make sense of.

The MARCUM LLP audit, Draft:
Hallandale AUP DRAFT 8-24-2011.pdfHallandale AUP DRAFT 8-24-2011.pdf
328K View Download

Audit report shows missing records and disarray in Hallandale Beach’s redevelopment agency
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2011/09/audit-report-shows-missing-records-and-disarray-in-hallandale-beach%E2%80%99s-redevelopment-agency/

My September 23rd, 2011 response here on the blog to the draft of the audit findings of the city was titled, re Draft copy of Marcum Rachlin's audit of the City of Hallandale Beach; the entrenched anti-Sunshine, anti-taxpayer culture at HB City Hall

Over-and-over for years they have done the same thing, so where are the tangible, positive results they can point to, millions of dollars later?
At this point, as my friend Mike Butler of Change Hallandale fame has been saying for quite awhile, we ought to be able to see some visible signs of where those millions of tax dollars went, right?
So where are they?


As of today, we still have large parts of the largest park in the city, Peter Bluesten Park, that is unsafe for adults and children at night because of the city's sheer neglect and lack of proper maintenance, something those of you who care will soon be able to see on my blog, complete with photos and video, that show it's been like this for well over TWO YEARS.
And HB City Hall has known all about it.

This park is only located two blocks from HB City Hall, and yet it seems like in the mind of City Manager Mark Antonio, it's out of sight, out of mind.
He's wrong -yet again.
It's not.

(And yes, in case you forgot me mentioning it here on the blog in the past, that's the very same HB city park that for well over a year DIDN'T properly deploy the recycling bins the city taxpayers have already paid tens of thousands of dollars for, and for this same time period, the city intentionally placed regular-sized garbage/recycling bins outside of the emergency exit for the main park building located there, a fact that you could see as soon as you walked thru the north gate.
Sure, because that's the kind of common sense you want to see from people working with and supervising small children.
People who will argue with you and say that they know best when they clearly don't.)

Yet this same Cooper Crew -Cooper, Dotty Ross, Anthony A. Sanders and Alexander Lewy-that has repeatedly shown that it CAN'T properly maintain what they already have, wants to spend -borrow from the reserve fund- millions more for a park on U.S.-1 where the current Main Post Office is located?

Most of you know how much I've spoken in the past at the myriad public meetings and on my blog about the needs to dramatically improve the city parks and beach, and to introduce more sports/social programs for the very HB adults that are already paying for them, as well as how I've taken Antonio and Cooper at City Commission meetings to task for all manner of things with respect to the dreadful physical & aesthetic conditions of the public parks & beach they are responsible for.
That said, is this really the time to let these same demonstrably irresponsible people make such an important decision, and continue their edifice complex fixation?

Hallandale Beach Government Pays Millions to U.S. Post Office in Yet Another Land Deal

Hallandale Beach ready to buy more land, this time a post office site for about $9 million

Personally, I'd rather wait until after newly-elected people with genuine dedication to notions of financial accountability are transparency are firmly in place at HB City Hall after the election 51 weeks from Tuesday.

People who understand that sound public policy that is meaningful is about making hard choices sometimes, NOT simply continuing a terrible policy of paying for things from a fund that's rapidly being depleted by folks with no common sense or vision.
I mean who buys properties before you have a sound plan in place for what you're going to do with them?
The same people who overpay for properties and then lets their cronies use them for one dollar.

One dollar?
Let me quote myself from that September 23rd post:

That the City of Hallandale Beach has purchased SO much land is troubling enough, esp. since they have so often overpaid for it. But the fact that they have done so WITHOUT an actual City Commission-approved written strategy or plan that makes sense or shows some awareness of the logical consequences of what they are doing -a plan that taxpayers could read- is very, very troubling indeed, since it makes you wonder why some people's land is bought and others is not, even when the latter's might make more sense to some positive public policy.
To cite but one obvious example of this strange process, consider the land that was purchased by the city for more than it was apparently worth that was owned by present-day Hallandale Beach Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders and his wife.
That purchase literally seemed to fly thru the city's bureaucracy, because it was, apparently, so key to some grand plan of the city.
Well, what exactly was THAT plan?
Why all the urgency?
Why the need to over-pay for the property?
And now, three years later, the reality for HB taxpayers is that the city rents the property they claimed at the time was so important, to someone for one dollar a month.
One dollar.
Why?
Where is the logic and common sense in any of this, and why WON'T/CAN'T the City Manager, the Mayor or the City Commission logically explain this episode three years after the fact?
What's the plan?
Me, I don't think there is an actual plan.

Hallandale Beach takes a bath on land deals; properties for redevelopment sit idle for years

If you didn't already know, the person commenting above on some of the websites as "AMWakeUpCall" is HB's self-appointed political commissar, Andrew Markoff.
Almost everyone receiving this email knows what he's all about, but on the chance that this SW HB resident appointed to the Charter Review Comm. by Mayor Cooper is unknown to you, please see my June 13, 2010 post titled, quite accurately,
My upcoming post on Hallandale Beach's self-appointed Political Commissar Andrew Markoff may have words that hurt his feelings -if any. Oh, dear!

In the end, I decided not to follow-up on this post since I realized that talking about all the dozens of hours I spent talking to him about this city and area a few years ago, taking him around to see things for himself that he'd never noticed while living here, even going up to Hollywood City Comm. meetings so he could see how they did things, in short, to connect-the-dots, would seem self-serving and petty.

It was enough that I sounded the alarm and let people who are interested in learning from my own mistake know that when it comes to Andrew Markoff, no good deed of theirs goes unpunished.

See also:

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From: Rasmussen Reports Date: Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 10:37 AM Subject: 60% Favor Considering Spending Cuts in Every Government Program

Sunday, November 13, 2011
Most Americans continue to believe everything should be on the table when it comes to federal spending cuts.

Read the rest of the post at: