Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's old threats & lawsuits re-emerge as Hollywood's Beach One Resort sues over its access to the beach, the latest shoe to drop in The Related Group's Beachwalk project that'd make HB's North Beach a de facto private beach for The Related Group's properties, NOT a public beach for HB residents

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Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's old threats & lawsuits re-emerge as Hollywood's Beach One Resort sues over its access to the beach, the latest shoe to drop in The Related Group's Beachwalk project that'd make HB's North Beach a de facto private beach for The Related Group's properties, NOT a public beach for HB residents

We all knew that it was only a matter of time before we got more facts about this heretofore mysterious lawsuit regarding access to the beach that was obliquely referred to last week around town and at the City Commission meeting on The Related Group's Beachwalk proposal, didn't we? 

And now the South Florida's Sun-Sentinel's Tonya Alanez has assembled some of the latest relevant facts to better connect-the-dots that should cause quite a ripple when you look at the big picture...

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-hallandale-beach-access-lawsuit-20120613,0,4101185.story

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Beach One Resort's newest buyer sues Hallandale over beach access

By Tonya Alanez, Sun Sentinel

7:34 p.m. EDT, June 13, 2012

HALLANDALE BEACH—

The city has never embraced Hollywood's proposed Beach One Resort on Hallandale's northern border and has twice sued over congestion the project would bring to a high-rise heavy section of A1A.

Now, it's Hallandale's turn to be sued over the 41-story hotel/condo.

The dispute, this time, revolves around beach access.

Although the plot of land for the proposed Beach One Resort at 4111 S. Ocean Drive is in Hollywood, the beach directly in front of it is part of Hallandale's North Beach Park.

Because a Hallandale park-improvement plan would eliminate an existing 20-foot right of way dedicated to beach access, developer — Mazal Tov 11, LLC — which is buying the resort property for $15 million is suing Hallandale and the former developer.

Beach access for the 477-room hotel/condo is "an essential term of the contract" and the spat is hanging up a planned June 15 closing on the property, according to a lawsuit filed May 30 in Broward Circuit Court.

"The seller [Beach One Resort, LLLP] possessed actual knowledge, or should have known, that the city of Hallandale Beachintended to close beach access to the property, but misrepresented and concealed this fact to the seller," the lawsuit says." The buyer would not have entered into the contract or made [$2.2 million in] payments if it knew that the property did not have beach access."

A Mazal Tov spokesman, Marc Schmulian, indicated that a resolution may be in the works.

"We're working very hard to get this thing resolved as quickly and amicably as possible," Schmulian said Wednesday.

The Hallandale City Commission met in executive session June 7 to discuss the lawsuit.

Hallandale officials, through city spokesman Peter Dobens, declined to comment on the pending litigation.

Olga De Los Santos, corporate counsel for Beach One Resort, didn't have much more to say: "We are under strict orders not to comment on pending litigation. Regretfully, we can't comment."

Beach One Resort, slated for a 1.6-acre lot at the northeast corner of South Ocean Drive and Hallandale Beach Boulevard, has long been a source of tension between Hallandale and Hollywood.

Hallandale Mayor Joy Cooper attended an October 2008 Hollywood commission meeting to complain that the project would bring problematic congestion to an area already dense with high-rise condos and luxury hotels, especially in front of an adjacent Hallandale fire station.

At that meeting, Hollywood city commissioners unanimously approved zoning changes to allow the developer to move forward with the project, which is expected to generate $1.2 million a year for the city.

Hallandale officials hurriedly filed two lawsuits against Hollywood and the developer, objecting to the project, the effects its traffic would have on the fire station and claiming some Hollywood commissioners were biased against Hallandale Beach.

One of the lawsuits was dismissed by a judge and the other was settled when Hallandale and the original developer agreed on a valet-parking plan.

Mazal Tov is also suing over that valet agreement, saying the seller "actively concealed" it. Had it been disclosed, Mazal Tov would not have entered into the contract because it "burdened the property in perpetuity," the lawsuit says.

That agreement calls for Beach One Resort to provide mandatory valet parking when its holds special events drawing 400 or more guests; its purpose was to ensure that event traffic would not spill onto A1A or impact the neighboring fire station.

Construction has yet to begin on the project which is designed to include a restaurant and lounge, fitness facility and meeting space.

"The concerns raised by Hallandale, we have sought to address and the developer has sought to address, and, we believe, has been resolved," Hollywood spokeswoman Raelin Storey said Wednesday.

"I think we're past that issue now, and we hope that the developer and Hallandale could work out any other issues that remain."

My previous posts on the Beach One Resort project from 2008 are below.

Yes, back in the days when Mayor Joy Cooper was making her wild threats against the City of Hollywood and was threatening to charge an entrance fee to access the public beach -North Beach- near the Beach One Resort property, something she has neither the legal power or authority to do, of course under the Florida Constitution.

Is there nothing Mayor Cooper won't say or do or threaten in order to get her way?

For the record, since facts really do matter, esp. in this case, at the 2008 Hollywood City Commission meeting where the plan was unanimously approved, the public meeting where 

a.) Mayor Cooper, then-City Manager Mike Good, then-City Attorney David Jove & Company arrived having completely failed to do their basic homework, and actually know the relevant rules that applied next door in Hollywood. Yes, Jove being Jove!

Foolishly, this crew thought they'd just show-up and be given preferential treatment and be given special rights at the meeting that actual Hollywood citizens didn't enjoy -to speak for fifteen minutes instead of the three minutes allowed during public comments- until Mayor Bober set them straight on the rules, and

b.) the meeting where I publicly spoke in favor of the Beach One Resort project, having attended most of the previous public meetings on the issue, where both the developers and the city staff were friendly, forthcoming and professional, something that can't really be said here in HB the past few years, where the city has attempted to keep public information from the public about development issues until the last possible moment.

It was at this 2008 meeting that a very interesting and telling fact emerged that was NEVER publicly mentioned again at Hallandale Beach City Hall.

And a most delicious and telling fact it is, too.

When the clueless HB crew were clearly losing their cool and their argument, they complained that Fire Chief Sullivan never received some pertinent documents from Hollywood to look over, but without missing a beat, it was quickly pointed out that the docs in question had in fact been sent to Good, who had, in fact, received them.

You see, it really wasn't the City of Hollywood's problem that then-City Manager Mike Good, the person in charge, never gave those particular docs to Chief Sullivan.

He had them, but for whatever reason, he chose not to share them with Sullivan.

Yes, incredibly, the Cooper Crew actually wanted to complain about something that the City of Hollywood had absolutely no control over, and then fumed about it.

Really.

Tell me truthfully, is that not THE perfect fact to explain to people who don't live here how things are routinely done at Hallandale Beach City Hall?

Not just poorly and unprofessionally, but incompetently and sometimes, as we've previously, discussed, perhaps even illegally as well.

Naming Names Herald-style -Beach One Resort Hotel in Hollywood Passes Round One

Oct. 3, 2008: http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/naming-names-herald-style-beach-one.html

Beach One Resort's Approval in Hollywood Provokes Wrath and Harsh Words at Hallandale Beach City Commission

Oct. 18, 2008: http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/beach-one-resorts-approval-in-hollywood.html

Cleavage Grows Larger b/w City of Hallandale Beach and Hollywood After Beach One Resort Approved

Oct. 21, 2008 http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/cleavage-grows-larger-bw-city-of.html

If Mayor Cooper, former City Manager Mike Good, Fire Chief Sullivan -and then Asst. City Manager Antonio- were genuinely so concerned and serious about the public safety of HB residents and visitors when saying that the Beach One Resort shouldn't have been approved by the City of Hollywood for that site next-door to the iconic HB Water Tower and the HB Fire/Rescue station below it, then how come they, the so-called leaders of the City of Hallandale Beach, NEVER made arrangements to erect even a single Fire Truck warning sign, like the one above -commonplace in all parts of this country!- placed ANYWHERE on State Road A1A/Ocean Drive and east-bound Hallandale Beach Blvd./State Road 858 as you approach the Fire/Rescue Station in question, to warn drivers and pedestrians?

You know, as is done everywhere else in this country routinely?

So much for their genuine concern about public safety and attention to detail! 

Then and now!

Folks, they never erected one prior to that 2008 Hollywood City Commission meeting and four years later, nothing has changed at that intersection and immediate area -there's still NO WARNING SIGNS there of any kind!

Yes, actions really DO speak louder than words, and by that measure, it's yet another example of the City of Hallandale Beach saying one thing and doing quite another.

Above, another classic 2008 photo of mine highlighting the city's inability to do something right and their lack of attention to detail -this is the city's first "warning" sign that you see about surveillance cameras at the beach. 

It's on the back of a a west-bound Stop sign that's on the opposite side of the street as you are driving east. And as you can see is frequently obstructed by palm fronds.

But of course, courts have already ruled that if the public can't see a posted warning or road signs, they're really NOT posted. 

Yes, that so-called "warning" is still there, and the city has never posted any other more-visible warning signs at the entrance.

It's one of dozens of facts and problems about the beach and this city that I told HB Assistant City Managers Jennifer Frastai and Franklin Heileman about four year ago, over the course of nearly an hour, in the conference room of the City Manager's office at City Hall.

Frastai has NEVER done anything about any of the dozens of matters I brought to her attention that day, including the ones related to public safety, most of which are still all around us today. 


Frastai also NEVER followed-up with me as she said she would, despite my giving her multiple email addresses and phone numbers she could reach me at. 

As almost everyone in this city who is paying attention knows, I'm one of the easiest persons to reach in this city, but somehow, she couldn't be bothered.

Which is why Jennifer Frastai simply can't be trusted -there's no logical follow-up.

Above, in this July 2008 photo of mine, you can see one of two kids playing on top of the OLD dirt mound on the Beach One Resort property. 

Given how often it rains here, I guess it's a good thing he didn't get swallowed up by any sand that wanted to channel quicksand, huh?

But what about the dirt mound that's there NOW?

The present dirt pile on The Beach One Resort property at at 4101 S. Ocean Drive in Hollywood. May 11, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

The present dirt pile on The Beach One Resort property at at 4101 S. Ocean Drive in Hollywood. May 30, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Above, a June 2008 photo of mine from near the Hollywood-HB border on the beach, looking south. What do you know, there's one of the filthy and rusty pipes that the HB Dept. of Public Works has left in the middle of the public beach for years!

Yes, Mayor Cooper, her Rubber Stamp Crew and City Manager Antonio sure have a very strange and unusual way of showing HB taxpayers and visitors to the area how much they really care about the public's beach, don't they?

Yes, four years later, they're still there: both the rusty pipes and the very people responsible for being so careless and callous about an invaluable resource -the public's beach.

Above and below, both from June 2, 2012: At top, my friend and fellow Hallandale Beach civic activist, Csaba Kulin, at a place that ought to be one of the city's crown jewels and a natural meeting place for the whole community -but isn't: the City of Hallandale Beach's very poorly-maintained North Beach park, with the iconic HB Water Tower and The Beach Club condo towers to his right. 

Below, with The Apogee development in Hollywood right behind him, currently under construction.

Above and below, proving the maxim that rust never sleeps. 

But at the City of Hallandale Beach's poorly-maintained and dirty North Beach, it also never moves. May 30, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

The public beach, especially in a city that is as small as ours, is an invaluable natural resource to this city's present and future residents.

Unfortunately, it's a resource that Mayor Cooper has already clearly indicated thru both her words and deeds that she's perfectly willing to cede de facto control over to a developer for mere peanuts, in order to get The Beachwalk project approved next Wednesday night.

FYI: On Saturday I'll finally be posting "Part 2 of 2 re The Beachwalk project in Hallandale Beach -Initial comments & ruminations on Wednesday night's HB City Comm. meeting; calling out Carole Pumpian, crony capitalism mercenary"

Part 1 of 2 re The Beachwalk project in Hallandale Beach -Initial comments & ruminations on Wednesday night's HB City Comm. meeting; calling out Carole Pumpian, crony capitalism mercenary

Above, my friend and fellow Hallandale Beach civic activist, Csaba Kulin, at a place that ought to be one of the city's crown jewels and a natural meeting place for the whole community -but isn't: the City of Hallandale Beach's very poorly-maintained North Beach park, with the iconic HB Water Tower and The Beach Club condo towers to his right. He's looking south with Hollywood Beach to his back, in particular, the construction site for The Related Group's 20-story condo project, The Apogee, which is actually in Hollywood. The longstanding rusty eyesores on the public beach that I've previously discussed -last week and many times before The Beachwalk project came on the scene- completely ruins any positive experience you could have, situated as they are right in the middle of the beach. As it happens, Csaba is running for HB City Commission this year precisely because of the longstanding public failure and incompetency of  HB City Hall on a whole host of public-policy matters, or to even acknowledge their role in that failure, of which this unappealing public beach is but one of several obvious examples. This is just the tip of the iceberg. When first-time visitors come to the public beach in Hallandale Beach, they often are left to wonder, "If they can find a way to really screw-up a beach, how bad must things be where nobody goes?" Exactly. So what ought to be a source of great civic pride for us is instead the place that is largely avoided when friends and family come to visit and want to be shown around, because it's so embarrassing and unappealing, Especially with Hollywood Beach and Johnson Street nearby. June 2, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier

Thought it was time to share my initial thoughts, ruminations and tangents on Wednesday night's Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting re The Beachwalk project, which lasted about four-and-a-half hours. 


This will likely be one of several posts on this topic over the next two weeks, until the next City Commission meeting on June 20th, so keep tuned here so you can know exactly what's going on.


Before I get into what I think, here's what's been written thus far since Wednesday, not all of which I necessarily agree are either 100% accurate fact-wise or context-wise, but it's what's out there for now:

Broward Bulldog

Hallandale gives thumbs up to condo king Jorge Perez’s $100 million, high-rise Beachwalk project

By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org

June 7, 2012 AT 12:39 AM,

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/06/hallandale-commissioners-like-condo-king-jorge-perezs-100-million-high-rise-beachwalk-project/

Miami Herald

Proposed hotel gets tentative approval in Hallandale Beach

Miami developer Jorge Pérez gained preliminary approval from the Hallandale Beach commission to build a more than $90 million project on the Intracoastal Waterway

By Carli Teproff

Posted June 7, 2012

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/07/2838243/proposed-hotel-gets-tentative.html

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Hallandale considers 31-story hotel/condo

By Tonya Alanez, Sun Sentinel

6:27 p.m. EDT, June 7, 2012

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-hallandale-beachwalk-project-20120607,0,6092598.story

Just for the record, I remind anyone reading this who may not know: I'm in favor of the property being used as a hotel, and the reason for that could not be any clearer: we need another first-class hotel in this city to meet the demand that is currently using Hollywood hotels.

But I'm NOT in favor of the 84 condo units component that the developer is asking for now, which they are not legally entitled to build without the city's approval.

My own experience of living in Hallandale Beach for over eight years now, plus everything I know and have learned and read about human behavior and parking spaces, tells me that having that many condos located in that location, next to a bridge, on top of the hotel rooms in a 31-story building, will clearly exacerbate the area's already completely-inadequate parking situation, where it's not uncommon for some residents during "the Season" to have to park 3-4 blocks away at night.


Parking so far from where you live is, unfortunately, something I have experience with from the few months I lived in the popular and highly-educated Rogers Park area of Chicago, right off of Lake Michigan, in the mid-1980's. The neighborhood's #1 complaint was the perennial search for a parking spot at night that was not too far away -and lack of a visible police presence.

Despite what The Related Group says and has promised, I believe their current plan for a five-story garage with mandatory valet parking is still inadequate. 
If anything, their parking lot structure needs to be larger.

I also remain firmly OPPOSED to the idea of having the future of this city's invaluable resource,  the public beach -the North Beach park and the adjacent parking garage- coupled with the approval of this development project.


Doing that completely lets the city's elected officials and administrators off-the-hook for being so egregiously irresponsible and negligent for YEARS for not only what has been allowed to happen there, but also for what its actual future might be.

I'm not willing to turn that responsibility over to a third-party with no experience in doing that, especially for an initial period that is thirty years in length.

The present Hallandale Beach Mayor, Joy Cooper, the present City Commission as well as its predecessor, and the present and previous City Managers, have stood on the sidelines for YEARS and done nothing as the North Beach area has been allowed to become a regional running joke in SE Broward/NE Miami-Dade.

It's gotten demonstrably more physically run-down and dirty by the year, which is something that anyone who has spent any amount of time over there knows is true, much less, someone like me, who has been there hundreds of times over the past few years alone, as this blog has documented, with my camera and video-cam in-tow to accurately record the neglect.

I've recorded the decline alright, and unlike HB elected officials and Dept. heads who are actually responsible for the problem, I've actually spoken to other regular beach-goers and the Jeff Ellis lifeguards about what THEY thought about the beach's sad decline, what they've heard, and what they wanted to see in the way of improvements.

Let's be perfectly serious. 

HB City Manager Mark Antonio lives in North Miami Beach, not here.
He is never seen around here on weekends nor at the beach.
Given that, why would what he thinks actually matter to people who are there all the time, and who actually know a thing or two about its current declining state, especially given his own hand at letting that occur on his watch the past two years despite constantly hearing about how bad it was?
Even the mayor's pals who are in favor of the project and spoke that night, felt it necessary to say what a mess it had become.
That should tell you something!

June 2, 2012 photo of Hallandale Beach's North Beach, looking south from the The Apogee construction site, in Hollywood, by South Beach Hoosier

In my opinion, City Manager Antonio has actually been less-than-useless on this subject, and has actually become an actual obstacle and additional problem to deal with in resolving it, given his ostrich-like behavior and unwillingness to put pressure on the city's employees and engineers who work for him to get on top of things and actually hold them accountable.
Antonio has no reasonable explanation for why he has continually failed the citizens of this city on this crucial subject.


Trust me, in this city, you NEVER see this mayor, this city manager, the DPW manager and 4/5ths of the city commission over at the beach on weekends, not even for even an hour, even though it's an invaluable asset.

That studied avoidance explains a lot -it shows they didn't want to know.

And now, we're supposed to believe these same irresponsible people with power when they claim they're suddenly interested in the actual experience of beach-goers? No.

We're supposed to believe them when they say that if this project is approved as currently drawn-up, they'll put pressure on the developer in the future to fix things when they themselves were totally unresponsive to citizens about maintenance issues and aesthetics when THEY were in charge?

It's simply NOT believable.
NO SALE!

June 2, 2012 photo of Hallandale Beach's North Beach, looking east from Surf Road, late on an overcast afternoon, by South Beach Hoosier

I tried but failed to send many of you reading this a copy of the FLIP video I made of Related's attorney Debbie Orshefsky's presentation, but it was 34 minutes in length, too long to be sent under the FLIP parameters, which is about 15 minutes.

In retrospect, I should have stopped recording after about 15 minutes and then re-started, and then sent it in two or thee parts, but it didn't occur to me at the time.

I may download it to my computer and then re-edit it to put on YouTube soon, but I'm in no hurry to do that since that meeting was only the First of two Readings.

If I do, I'll let you know here on the blog beforehand.

My reason for wanting to send the video was simple  -to show you that I was 100% accurate when I mentioned to some of you during the break around 10:15 p.m. that in The Related Group's presentation, when they showed their rendering of how attractive they could make North Beach look, complete with fancy cushioned chairs -but what about the rest of us- they never showed the already-approved Beach One Resort project north of the HB Water Tower in the rendering.

Or, the under-construction The Apogee, also owned by The Related Group, just north of that.nstead, they waited 'till towards the very end when they showed the lineup of properties along the beach in HB and Hollywood from the ocean's perspective, and it was only then that you could see the distinctive sail design of what was then called Beach One Resort, and I'm pretty sure they showed The Apogee being much smaller than it is scheduled to be.

From where I sat in the Comm. Chambers, directly opposite the Power Point presentation,  they made it seem like The Apogee is short-and-squat; it's not. 
It's 20-stories.

http://apogeebeachcondos.com/

Here are some renderings and posts of mine from four years ago re what was then called Beach One Resort, which has already been approved by the City of Hollywood to be 40 stories.
Reminder: I attended 95% of the meetings on this project in Hollywood, which has that iconic design which will be the southern entrance to Hollywood Beach :

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/naming-names-herald-style-beach-one.html

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/beach-one-resorts-approval-in-hollywood.html

Here's an update on what's going on with that project, which has largely been ignored by the news media:
http://therealdeal.com/miami/blog/2012/03/05/developer-of-40-story-waterfront-project-in-hollywood-beach-seeks-partner/


As for the clearly negative shade effects of these two towers -plus, The Beach Club towers- on HB's North Beach, you'll notice that nobody-but-nobody said anything about that!

Surprise!

Well, as long as you're at North Beach before 2 p.m., you'll get some sun, but after that, forget about it!

In my next post, the second of two on this subject, with many more sure to follow, I will be discussing this development proposal, the role of the Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce in it and share some interesting facts about it and its president Carole Pumpian. 

Those future posts will include questions never asked or answered Wednesday night that would have shed more light on some important facts about the project that local citizen taxpayers need to know about so they can see whether or not the City Commission is really looking out for YOUR best interests -or theirs.


The Second Reading is Wednesday June 20th at 6:30 p.m.

First shoes drop: Sue-happy Hallandale Beach vs. Hollywood re Beach One Resort

My comments about this matter will appear in this space later tonight, after today's dispatch in the Miami Herald by Breanne Gilpatrick.
I'll have a lot to say!

The only bias displayed in this matter is the City of Hallandale Beach's overconfidence in foolishly thinking they were entitled to money from the developer.
Nope!
______________
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/story/813288.html
Hallandale Beach suing Hollywood over hotel
By Breanne Gilpatrick
December 15, 2008

Five months ago Hollywood and Hallandale Beach city commissioners were practically holding hands as they looked for ways to save money by sharing city services.

But times change and now the neighbors are in a spat. Hallandale Beach recently sued its northern neighbor, objecting to a recent Hollywood development vote and saying some commissioners were biased against Hallandale Beach.

Hallandale Beach says traffic from a proposed 41-story hotel bordering its city, known as Beach One Resort, will block vehicles leaving a nearby fire station, according to two lawsuits filed against Hollywood and the project's developer last month in Broward Circuit Court.

The complaint also says "some members of the Hollywood commission clearly based their vote not on the evidence at all, but on bias.''


Earlier this month, attorneys for Hollywood and the developer asked Broward Judge Robert B. Carney to dismiss the case, saying the lawsuits are based on a misrepresentation of the city's development rules.

Hollywood Mayor Peter Bober said the suits won't stop the cities from cooperating on other issues.

''I don't think that just because we have this one disagreement that's headed to court that we won't be able to work together on a personal level,'' he said.

Reader comments at:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/story/813288.html?commentSort=TimeStampAscending&pageNum=1#Comments_Container

Decreasing value of Miami Herald endorsements: Herald ignores a city, yet blithely gives its' endorsement

Below is the email that I wrote and sent earlier out this afternoon to Edward Schumacher-Matos, the Miami Herald's once-in-a-while Ombudsman.
I had lots of cc's and bcc's on that, including lots of names of TV and print reporters and elected officials I interact with, both locally and national, who have an interest in accurate, timely and responsible reporting of news in government.

I've had a letter like this in mind for quite some time and when there was nothing printed over the weekend to dissuade me, out it went.
_____________________________________
October 27th, 2008
re Decreasing value of Miami Herald endorsements: Herald ignores a city, yet blithely gives its' endorsement

Dear Mr. Schumacher-Matos:

Having grown-up in South Florida with the Miami Herald from the late 60's thru the late '70's, and being intimately involved with many national, state and local elections in Dade County, including
many hectic 24/7 months spent as the day-to-day State Campaign coordinator under Mike Abrams for Gary Hart's winning 1984 Florida Presidential Primary upset victory, I can still recall a time and place when the endorsement of the Herald was something of tangible and intrinsic value.

Value not only to the endorsed political candidate and their supporters, but also to open-minded voters and other media as well, and not just those in South Florida, but nationally, because that endorsement was NOT one that could be easily dismissed with a wave of a hand as a case of
institutional party bias or cozy business/professional cronyism, as was/is true with many too many newspapers across the country, including, perhaps most famously, The Chicago Tribune, a fact I fully realized but still didn't like when I lived in the Chicago area for a few years.

After I left North Miami Beach in the Fall of 1979 for life at Indiana University in Bloomington, and consistently voted absentee from there 'til 1983, despite my personally knowing many of the Miami-area politicians who were running in Dade County -as well as their families- my Mom in NMB would STILL cut out the Herald's list of endorsements in the Sunday paper and mail it first thing Monday morning so I'd get it.
Just to be sure, she'd call the next night with her own analysis of the various Herald picks, and we'd compare notes just in case I was going to send the absentee ballot back before getting her letter with the Herald's picks.

(I had a mail subscription to the afternoon Miami News while at IU, but the 3-4 day delay was clearly problematic as far as following local news from afar in those pre-Internet days, as you might well recall.)

So, all that said, for me personally, nothing quite illustrates the depths to which the Herald has sunken in more recent times then their strange endorsement last Saturday for the two seats on the Hallandale Beach City Commission, because that's where I happen to live now.

Not because of which candidates the paper's chosen to endorse, per se, based on the seven candidates making a group house-call on the Herald's Pembroke Pines office on Oct. 14th, but rather because the newspaper itself has seemingly made the conscious editorial decision to NOT send a reporter to cover Hallandale Beach's twice-monthly, often contentious City Commission meetings since June.

And that June meeting was covered by the Herald largely because it was a Joint Meeting with the City of Hollywood, which almost always gets a Herald reporter assigned to cover their City Commission and CRA meetings, as well as those involving Bernard Zyscovich and his positive constructive ideas for reshaping Downtown Hollywood.
Since I actually attend them, I'm in a position to say so.

(Well, almost always covers, since the Herald NEVER reported on the City of Hollywood's unanimous 5-0 approval on October 15th -at the second hearing- on the application of FORTUNE International's four-year effort to construct an iconic 41-story Beach One Resort hotel on State Road A1A and Hallandale Beach Blvd., right on the city's border with Hallandale Beach.
In fact, the Herald has yet to run a single photo of the area itself, or even an artist's rendering of the building, designed by world-renowned architect Carlos A. Ott, which could very likely become a Hollywood landmark for decades to come at the entrance to Hollywood on the beach.
Not to worry, though, I have a photo of it on my blog, with a link to all the hotel specs at Hollywood's website.)

And the Herald has maintained this position towards HB even though big news was being made there which has broad and long-term policy and process implications for all the citizens and residents of the city, of which the following are but the more obvious ones that the Herald has been completely AWOL on:

1.) In early August, a new interim commissioner, Anthony A. Sanders, one of the two Herald-endorsed candidates, was initially selected NOT elected by three of the five commissioners less than fifteen minutes after Comm, Fran Schiller's letter of resignation was read by City Manager Mike Good.

This was done despite the fact that the resignation would not become official until WEEKS LATER, with a regularly scheduled Commission meeting still coming up BEFORE that effective date of resignation on Aug. 29th, which would have afforded the city plenty of time for its citizens to be fully engaged in the process, NOT the orchestrated behind-the-scenes effort by the mayor and city manager to hand-pick a member.

I personally like and admire Pastor Sanders and was the very last person to actually speak with him before he and his wife Jessica left the previous City Commission's meeting, and could've supported the idea of his selection IF it had simply taken place according to the city's own established procedures -and in the Sunshine with appropriate public notice.

I would've even been open to the idea of supporting him and voting for him, because it disgusts me that this city which calls itself "Progressive" has had such an antiquated system of representation, which allows power to be concentrated in the hands of one geographic part of the city, east of the FEC railroad tracks, instead of one where there is equal opportunity to participate and be heard on the issues.
Myself, I'd prefer a system involving district seats plus at-large seats.

But sadly the process in Hallandale Beach that night WASN'T in the Sunshine, and in the interim, Comm. Sanders has adopted a tone that clearly suggests he believes he's entitled to the Commissioner position because of his many very commendable efforts in the city in the past, which rubs me and many other civic-minded HB residents who follow such things the wrong way.
And understandably so.

We want independent voices on the City Commission committed to reform, transparency and accountability, NOT puppets that rubber stamp.

Since you and the newspaper clearly don't know this fact, Mr. Schumacher-Matos, it's common knowledge that HB City Manager Mike Good actually wrote Comm. Schiller's resignation letter.
In fact, Schiller said as much that night, not that your readers would know that, since nobody from the paper was there.
(And so much for notions of separation-of-powers in a City Manager form of government, eh!)

That vetting process to fill the vacancy was wholly and substantially different from the process the city had previously insisted upon using to fill a vacancy less than 18 months before, with the resignation of Comm. Joe Gibbons upon his election to the State House in November of 2006.
Why throw out the city's existing procedures with WEEKS to go before Schiller's resignation was effective???
There's a question!

It's a question the Herald has never asked.

The only part about "the fix" that didn't quite work, this being HB and all, was Sanders being unaware that Mayor Joy Cooper would announce her selection of him -oh, I mean the Commission's!- on that particular night, as he was informed of the news via telephone by yet another HB Commission candidate, Alexander Lewy, an aide to Rep. Kendrick Meek, who was himself endorsed this week by the Sun-Sentinel.

I know this because a visibly-shaken Lewy was standing right next to me outside the City Hall chambers that night after the announcement, speaking to Pastor Sanders, while I was describing the whole un-democratic process on my cell phone to Herald editor Rory Clarke.
Lewy told me what he was doing, whom he was speaking to and what was being said to him.
Yes, there's no substitute for first-hand facts!

2.) Another curious issue unexamined by the Herald is the appraisal value of Sanders-owned property that the City of HB has long sought to purchase, with wildly fluctuating estimates.
And this week, you have the sorry spectacle of the city even paying for an ad -below- in a free local community rag that doesn't actively practice journalism -the South Florida Sun-Times, Oct. 23rd issue, page 13A- labeled Setting the Record Straight.

It has appraisal figures that are completely different -and much higher!- than ones cited publicly at the Oct. 15th City Commission meeting by Comm. Keith London.
He alone has sought to put some light on this matter by disclosing the names of the appraisers involved and the specific ID number attached to each estimate, so that city residents would know what's what with those very curious estimates.
The new figures cited in the city-paid ad seem completely unbelievable, given the location of the property and the current real estate market.

Is the city of HB actually bidding against itself for the property of Comm. Sanders and providing him a windfall profit?
Some people think so and the city's handling of the matter ought to raise some antennae among the media about why the process is unfolding the way it is if it's so innocent.

And look at the city's ad, a great deal of which is written like a political endorsement of him.
With taxpayer dollars!


If they'd had more time, the city might've even said that Anthony Sanders was born in a log cabin!

As bad as things are today in the newspaper world, in many if not most American cities, even mediocre newspapers recognize that story as one that at least warrants some independent investigation and reporting, to say nothing of a photo or two of the property, and a specific description of the city's future use for it, other than the vague abstract ideas of simply assembling contiguous properties for some project that never gets fully discussed publicly.
The Miami Herald has not written word one about this, with 8 days to go before Election Day.

3.) Another un-examined issue in the pages of the Herald is Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's intemperate and embarrassing reaction to the Hollywood City Commission's unanimous approval of the Beach One Resort project, and the Hollywood Commission's unwillingness to ignore their own Commission procedures and create a bad precedent by allowing the City of HB to make a lengthy Power Point presentation that other interested citizens and parties could not legally make, even people who live nearby.

Cooper did this just a short time later at the HB City Commission meeting by threatening to begin (illegally) charging Florida citizens a fee to access the public beach at HB's North Beach, and publicly stated her desire to tie the hotel's developer up in knots thru extended litigation.
Did I mention that it was illegal to charge an access fee to a public beach?

4.) And did I mention that in his final remarks at the Hollywood meeting on the 15th, Beach One Resort attorney Joesph L. Herndon publicly stated that the City of HB was completely rejected in their request for $1.5 million dollars from the developer in exchange for, well, basically, just walking away and forgetting their problems?
Yeah, that's neighborly!
Nothing quite says 'Hello neighbor" like "Stick 'em up!"

Most reasonable people might think the above might be considered news, Mr. Schumacher-Matos

More recently, the Herald even ran a preposterous PR note masquerading as news on the City of HB being nominated for an award for excellence from the Florida League of Cities, being one of five nominees.
The story NEVER mentioned the fact that the city, or rather, four of the five HB Commissioners, nominated themself, which is, if nothing else, very convenient, don't you think? http://www.flcities.com/muni_awards.asp

They also used that same same sage wisdom to self-nominate in two other categories.
One was for Comm. Dotty Ross, while she's running for re-election, a fact she happily mentions in her campaign mailers, just as they clearly planned in advance.
What better way to try to rehabilitate someone with as ineffective and mediocre a record as Ross's than to nominate her for an award for "Excellence?"
It's fiendishly ingenious!

In case you forgot, last year Dotty Ross's record included violating Florida's Sunshine Laws by joining with two other Hallandale Beach Commissioners in secret over lunch to vote themselves a 300% salary increase, with no advance notice to the public about the item.
This year, that record has included voting for an ordinance which precludes the general HB public from serving on the Police-Fire Pension Board, and voting against something that's so common sense it's taken for granted in other South Florida cities in the year 2008 -placing the names of people serving on city advisory boards on the city's website with more information about the committee itself.

In an era of exciting new technology that allows for more direct connectivity between citizens and their government representatives than was ever possible, Dotty Ross is firmly anchored to the distant past, as she was against even allowing the City Manager's staff to study the idea of having the city-controlled cable-access channel offering programming other than the HB City Commission meetings and the once a month HB Planning & Zoning meeting, even though this would clearly allow greater direct citizen involvement and participation in public policy.

So instead, 99% of the time, the channel only shows bumpers of city information, over and over and over. Not exactly Must-See TV.

The City Commission also nominated City Manager Mike Good for an award, someone who has largely escaped serious scrutiny in the Herald and other South Florida media that would give reasonable people and media in other cities cause for concern: lack of positive results.
But guess who'll pay the expenses for that bogus field trip to and from Orlando for 4 of the 5 commissioners?
Yes, HB's already-beleaguered taxpayers, that's who.

The idea of HB nominating itself for "Excellence" is personally galling to me precisely because I have been going to all those meetings the Herald has consciously chosen to skip out on.
I have paid attention, taken copious notes and asked questions of others in the chambers and around the city, plus done some independent investigation about some matters that has caused the mayor, among others, to get quite angry.

Galling, because of the self-evidently poor way the city has been run for years, that, among many other things I could cite for you here today on Oct. 27th, is, that last night was at least the 15th straight night in a row that the PUBLIC parking lot adjacent to HB City Hall and the HB Police Dept. HQ has been pitch black at night.
And the west side of the HB Cultural Center, where Early Voting has been taking place and will continue 'till Sunday.

FIFTEEN NIGHTS IN A ROW!
That's a rather novel take on public safety don't you think?

All those hundreds and hundreds of police officers in police cars who've cruised in and out of that public area over the past weeks have been channeling Sgt. Schultz from Hogan's Heroes -they "see nothing!"
And that total includes the public parking lot lights that are next to the numerous HB Police Dept.-controlled security cameras. The ones without Warning/informed consent signs.
They still "see nothing!"

So what exactly was the point of taxpayers paying for so many security cameras if Cooper and Good's City Hall can't properly maintain the lighting right next to them?

Sure Mayor Cooper and the City Commission should've noticed it when they walked out of their meeting on Oct. 15th, since their reserved parking spaces in the public parking lot are right near the Police Dept. HQ, and that parking lot was also pitch black that night, too.
(That was likely the fourth night in a row they were out then.)

But to see the problem, Mr. Schumacher-Matos, they'd have to want to see it and then do something about it, right?
They don't.

It could hardly be more obvious to anyone who's paying attention that from the perspective of Messers Cooper and Good, nothing must be allowed to rock the status quo at HB City Hall, because so much of it is built on lies, self-deception, self-promotion and mis-statements of facts to the public, and one small move could bring down the whole mountain.

AVALANCHE!

If you had curious and enterprising reporters here, you'd already know that.

As it happens, the same unsafe pitch black conditions hold true at the intersection across the street from HB City Hall on S.E. 3rd Street at U.S.-1/South Federal Highway, the U.S.-1 entrance to Gulfstream Park Racing & Casino, the city's largest single private employer.
(Actually, that also includes the immediate block north and south, as well as the internally lit green street signs, the latter of which have been out for well over 3 1/2 years.)

That whole stretch of U.S.-1 is like one giant -yes- BLACK HOLE, thru which government
accountability and common sense have no effect whatsoever.
How myopic do they have to be to not see what's right in front of them?

Honestly, do you really think that kind of sheer incompetency would be tolerated, much less allowed to continue for weeks and months on end, IF it happened in front of the cash cow that is the Seminole Hard Rock? No.
Or even the less successful Bank Atlantic Center? I don't.

Nope, someone whose fingerprints are as connected to so many bad ideas, poor results, missed dealines and obfuscation as City Manager Mike Good would've long ago been held accountable, and told that if there were not immediate positive changes, especially in matters involving public safety, he'd be fired -for cause.
But not here.

Above, daytime photo from May 2008
The lights on the city's own City Hall sign haven't worked consistently in over FOUR-and-a-half years.
To give you some perspective on that, that's longer than the U.S. involvement in World War II.
Think about that!

Don't worry, Mr. Schumacher-Matos, despite the Herald having been too busy to cover even some of these matters, I've personally taken photographs and videos of the whole sorry and dangerous episode around HB City Hall to document for other area residents and visitors to take note of,

which you can access by simply going to my blog and looking at posts from the past several weeks.

The simple fact that the Herald would think to print an endorsement BEFORE the newspaper has EVER run a single story on the candidates in the race and the issues of interest to voters, while NOT having set foot in the city's Commission meetings since June, speaks volumes, and calls to mind all sorts of hoary cliches like 'cart before the horse' and so on.
But sadly, to me, it's all static, nonsense and feedback.

Call me old-fashioned, but I was under the general impression that the recent pact that the Herald, the Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post signed was done to facilitate MORE local news coverage, NOT LESS, but apparently I misunderstood the meaning of it all, since, indeed, the Herald's own actions for the past few months in my corner of South Florida belie any recognizable interest in furthering either public good or even basic aspects of journalism, like who, what, why, when, and where.
Or, the less well-known 6th W of basic reporting -"Why not?"

Maybe you should just consider raiding the news rooms of the ids at Indiana University in Bloomington and The Daily Northwestern at NU in Evanston, two perennially excellent incubators of curious news reporters that I've been familiar with over the years.
Then hire their smartest soon-to-graduate students and let 'em loose on Miami-Dade and Broward

Counties and see what happens when some eager and enthusiastic new blood is on the job, because despite a few very good apples in your bunch now, whose morale is quite low, the current status quo at the Herald is positively pathetic from a reader and news consumer's point of view.

Since no one else will tell you this, over the past year, the Herald has failed to have a reporter present at Hallandale Beach City Commission meetings for at least three of the four largest

proposed (and subsequently approved) development projects in the city, all on either U.S.-1 or Hallandale Beach Blvd., two of the largest thoroughfares in all of southern Broward County.

If a tree falls on a grid-locked road but the Herald never reports it, does it really make a sound?

Or, to paraphrase Robert Kennedy, some South Florida bloggers report on news that happens around them and ask "Why?" (Or, more likely here, "Still?")
The Miami Herald ignores things large and small taking place in their own backyard and says "Why Bother?"

Of course, that could finally change tonight if the Herald simply awoke from its long slumber and

decided to get re-engaged, and actually sent someone to cover tonight's HB Candidate's Debate

at the HB Cultural Center at 7 PM.
And afterwards, simply walked around and recorded what's self-evident and in "plain sight."
I'd like to think that were still possible, but given the Herald's recent track record, I won't hold my breath.

Mr. Schumacher-Matos, that's how it looks from my corner of South Florida today.