City of Hallandale Beach thumbs its nose at the FL Joint Legislative Auditing Comm., even as the common sense rationale for JLAC to perform a thorough audit of the entire Hallandale Beach CRA has NEVER been more overwhelming -or more desperately needed by the citizens of this community -after hearing the continued obfuscation and spin of Messrs Cooper, Lewy & Sanders after years of their personal mischief & neglect that has gotten the city's CRA in this mess in the first place. THEIR personal lack of oversight and accountability for the crony capitalism merry-go-round that they were only too happy to feed with CRA dollars. "Faster! Faster! Faster!" they yelled like small children. Meanwhile, CRA Attorney Zelikow is oblivious to the numerous conflicts-of-interests right in front of him. Oblivious, myopic, it's all the same thing when poor oversight is apparent like it is here in Hallandale Beach

 

 July 10, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved. The photo of HB City Hall above was snapped on my way into Wednesday's meeting that proved to be such a truly embarrassing debacle for long-overdue accountability and transparency for the taxpayers of this city, who are perpetually run roughshod over by Mayor Joy Cooper and her current Rubber Stamp Crew of Alexander Lewy and Anthony A. Sanders. 

The City of Hallandale Beach thumbs its nose at the FL Joint Legislative Auditing Comm., even as the common sense rationale for JLAC to perform a thorough audit of the entire Hallandale Beach CRA has NEVER been more overwhelming -or more desperately needed by the citizens of this community -after hearing the continued obfuscation and spin of Messrs Cooper, Lewy & Sanders after years of their personal mischief & neglect that has gotten the city's CRA in this mess in the first place. THEIR personal lack of oversight and accountability for the crony capitalism merry-go-round that they were only too happy to feed with CRA dollars. "Faster! Faster! Faster!" they yelled like small children. Meanwhile, CRA Attorney Zelikow is oblivious to the numerous conflicts-of-interests right in front of him. Oblivious, myopic, it's all the same thing when poor oversight is apparent like it is here in Hallandale Beach

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Defiant Hallandale commissioners reject call for new legal opinion on CRA spending http://t.co/9FySftQ2L6
— Broward Bulldog (@BrowardBulldog) July 11, 2013

The tweet the next day in the Broward Bulldog, a genuine journalistic enterprise, unlike the faux newspaper that receives a sweetheart CRA loan and comes complete with a propaganda column by Mayor Joy Cooper.

Wednesday night the City of Hallandale Beach City Commission thumbed its nose at the bipartisan Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee (JLAC), voting 3-2 to reject JLAC's formal request that the Hallandale Beach CRA Board of Directors -the five-member City Commission- get an Attorney General's Opinion from FL Attorney General Pam Bondi's office. 

Voting against the specific JLAC request: 

Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper -by phone on her vacation somewhere in the world- and HB Commissioners Alexander Lewy and Anthony A. Sanders.

Voting to comply with JLAC request: HB Commissioners Michele Lazarow and William Julian.

At one point in the frequently confounding and rambling discussion that so often willfully ignored common sense and the past ten years of history in thsi town, when HB CRA Attorney Steven W. Zelkowitz (of GrayRobinson PA) was saying why he believed the HB CRA Board should NOT accede to the JLAC's common sense request and instead listen to himself and Hallandale Beach City Attorney V. Lynn Whitfield, Zelkowitz commented that FL Attorney General Pam Bondi -and presumably her office full of experienced litigators- had no more expertise in CRA law and related matters than anyone else, and that she was just a member of the Florida Bar just like him.

Essentially, Zelkowitz was telling his bosses and the people of this city that AG Bondi's opinion was due no special deference, so why bother asking for it, even though it's free?

No, don't do that, instead, better to listen to the two attorneys on the dais.
Which is not too self-serving and parochial, now is it?

July 10, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

More than is usually the case at a meeting at HB City Hall, it's really too bad you readers could not have been present as eyewitnesses in the Commission Chambers and heard the venom and self-justifying nonsense coming from Mayor Cooper over the the poor quality public loudspeaker when she was speaking and frequently interrupting others about about how neither the Broward Inspector General's Office or the JLAC had the authority to demand anything of them, much less, make them pay back funds to the city CRA that were used for things that are (clearly) inappropriate.
Like fireworks.

In her first few months on the job last Summer, HB City Manager Renee Miller made quite a concerted effort to be seen around town in public as a genuine reformer and genuine believer in and practitioner of meaningful transparency -perhaps to curry the acceptance of the reform element of this city with which I and my friends are associated with, even in her personal conversations with them and me.

Unfortunately, in the ensuing months, Miller has, thru her own actions and words, revealed herself to be anything but that much-needed reformer for this town's frustrated citizens taxpayers.

Instead of being that much-desired breath-of-fresh-air, Miller has been no change at all from her immediate predecessors, Mike Good and Mark A. Antonio, who realized that the secret to their keeping their job was being able to count to one -and keeping Mayor Cooper happy.

Even if that meant pretty much ignoring the desires, opinions and policy choices of the other four elected members of the HB City Commission, a fact that's been obvious to anyone paying attention.

On Wednesday night, HB City Manager Miller was particularly adamant about the city NOT paying back any funds to the CRA.

The CRA that -surprise- she is the Director of.

Wednesday night was classic cocksure and autocratic Joy Cooper, constantly maligning people and groups with a different perspective and impugning the true motives of others.

Even those that weren't there in the room to defend themselves, like the JLAC, who certainly never expected that anyone who had fallen into such a financial and ethical hole like the city's CRA has has fallen into under Cooper the past ten years, would have the gall to question the bona fides and motives of the very people trying to throw her and the CRA a rope to get out of the hole.
But question and malign them she did -it's who she is.

I taped the whole meeting and at times could barely control my frustration at what I was seeing and hearing, but then that's how every meeting with Mayor Cooper goes, since logic and reason never intersect, and her aggrieved sense of pettiness, the perpetual chip on her shoulder that she parades around with, is treated like it was the same thing as immutable facts.

If many of you readers far from these shores had been there, you'd have gotten an eagle's-eye view of what sort of seriously disconnected elected officials and city administrators HB citizens have been up against for years at HB City Hall in their efforts to get to the truth about where all the money went.

Their battles to get an honest audit of the whole CRA, not the mini-audit of selected area of the CRA that the city did a few years ago, which made Marcum LLP's report a must-read whodunit, full of anonymous or ghost-like employees who must've removed all those massive amounts of files and documents they couldn't ever find, and hundreds and hundreds of exceptions to the city's very own rules.

That. of course, is to say nothing of all of the city employees approving money going out without checking for appropriate forms or approval or was even being spent for the purposes for which it was intended...

(And that was just in the small portion of the CRA that the City Commission would allow to be examined, since as the folks from Marcum LLP were always at great pains to remind everyone, what they did was NOT, technically an audit.

MARCH 9, 2012
Wednesday night's HB City Comm. mtg. re the gory details of Marcum LLP's audit of the City of Hallandale Beach and its entrenched anti-Sunshine, anti-taxpayer culture
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/wednesday-nights-hb-city-comm-mtg-re.html

MARCH 7, 2012
Csaba Kulin continues connecting-the-dots on Marcum LLP's devastating audit of Hallandale Beach, revealing how city's own rules were routinely broken and leaving taxpayers on the hook

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/csaba-kulin-continues-connecting-dots.html

MARCH 6, 2012
More on the $20 Million of Hallandale Beach city contracts that went unchecked -Csaba Kulin re Marcum LLP's limited audit of "Exceptional" Hallandale Beach City Hall and its longstanding dysfunctional practices that insult HB taxpayers
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/more-on-20-million-of-hallandale-beach.html )

After the despicable performance by Cooper, Lewy & Sanders, the common sense rationale for JLAC performing a thorough audit of the entire HB CRA has never been more overwhelming -or more desperately needed by the citizens of this community.

And what can you say about Steven Zelkowitz, the HB CRA attorney, the hired-hand from GrayRobinson PA  who doesn't realize or doesn't care that Murvin Wright of the CRA Advisory Board -appointed by Mayor Cooper!- and whose meetings Zelkowitz is supposed to attend, is a walking/talking poster boy for conflict-of-interests. 
But Zekowitz is THE expert. LOL!

Don't know what's worse, that Zelkowitz really believes what he says or that he's dumb enough or naive enough to continue to believe what he hears from the very people at HB City Hall who've been guilty of trying so hard to hide the truth and evade responsibility for their own actions for so many years.

So, what do you residents, taxpayers and small business owners of Hallandale Beach say about the possibility of having a JLAC "field hearing" in Hallandale Beach in the coming months, so that members of the Committee can come into the belly of the beast and see for themselves how millions of CRA dollars have been squandered for one thing after another over the years with no tangible positive results that HB residents can see or feel or taste.

Come see the longstanding graffiti, still highly-visible in the same places year-after-year on the city's main roads, especially on U.S.-1/Federal Highway, directly in front of and in some places ON the new and old HB City Halls.

I don't know about you, but when I see lots of graffiti, I think "blight."
And when I live in a city that doesn't do anything about it for years...

Self-evident graffiti ignored for years by the powers-that-be at HB City Hall, the Police Dept. and the CRA staff that is supposed to actually help get rid of blight, not just ignore it, as I told then-City manager Mark A. Antonio and the City Commission in 2011 at a City Commission meeting, where I publicly chastised him and the city Commission for ignoring what was right in front of the very building we were all in.
Why did Antonio and Mayor Cooper and the hundreds of HB city employees do nothing about it I asked?

Despite coming into the same building for work every weekday for over ten years, City Manager Antonio said he'd never seen any of legions of graffiti-covered signs that were and are and have been up-and-down U.S.-1/Federal Highway for many years once you head north from the City of Aventura in Miami-Dade County, despite the signs hiding-in-plain-sight right in front of Hallandale Beach City Hall -and Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino and the Village at Gulfstream Park retail complex directly
across the street- courtesy of, among others, "esc" and "HGS."

July 10, 2013 photos by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved. Above, directly in front of Hallandale Beach City Hall on U.S.-1/South Federal Highway. Below, directly in front of the main Hallandale Beach Post Office directly south and across the street from HB City Hall. Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino and the Village at Gulfstream Park retail complex are across the street.   

Yes, a lot of people in town are slowly coming around to the idea that only this sort of shock treatment, a visit, will cure the sick patient that is the HB CRA and the people who run it so badly.

(The longstanding eyesore and firetrap that is the old HB City Hall on West Dixie Highway & S.W. 3rd Street., less than a half-mile from the present City Hall, will get an update with photos soon on the blog, where the city's neglect of what it has been to its residential neighbors across the street has long been one of my pet projects.)

The JLAC can come and hear first-hand from HB residents about how they cringe at hearing the preposterous things said routinely in this city at CRA meetings by the Directors.
Or as was the case on Wednesday night, hearing how things like expending CRA funds for fireworks are really economic measures according to the mayor and city manager, which help people within the CRA.

Hmm-m... despite the fact that fireworks actually take place in an area that is NOT in the CRA -the beach?

That's an odd argument to make, but it's just part-and-parcel of the unreality that exists here.

To those of you who've asked me recently, even before Wednesday night's debacle, I agree with you: "What a friend we have in Jesus." 
Still, I don't want to leave things strictly up to fate or karma, so I'll happily sign your petition for Recall of Comm. Sanders in a heartbeat, just tell me when and where to go, and I'll sign and help you get even more signatures. 

The number of signatures needed to trigger a recall election of Comm. Sanders is actually much lower than you think.

July 10, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved. Above, Hallandale Beach City Hall Complex on S. Federal Highway/U.S.-1, as I left Wednesday night's meeting. To remind you again, this is where attention to details and appearances has never been their strong suit in the nine-plus years I've lived here, since returning to South Florida after 15 years in the Washington, D.C. area. Thanks to the city's incompetent, myopic and poorly-managed DPW, the spotlights on the city's monument sign above, at the corner of U.S.-1 & S.E. 5th St., have NOT worked since June of 2012. Which is to say that they have NEVER worked since City Manager Renee C. Miller has been City Manager. But attention to details and appearances really DO matter when you are a government, don't they? The situation with the lights not working on this sign is but the tip of the iceberg. Seeing this sort of thing all over the city, it's hard not to imagine how badly more-complicated things that are hidden away from the public are really botched, isn't it? Exactly.

This was the first news article posted online by the only visible reporter who showed-up, though it's clearly incomplete, as we've come to expect from that newspaper, given how short their editors like pieces to be, shorn of context that explains why things happened the way they did. 
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/hallandale/fl-cra-hallandale-response-20130710,0,505886.story

Of course, that doesn't prevent their reporters from actually trying to develop independent sources of information and actually going around the city herself to speak with people who know what's going on, instead of only dealing with people at HB City Hall.

But that's NOT what they do at that newspaper.

Not now, not ever, and that's why it's so terribly unsatisfying and frustrating to the people who live here.

They know implicitly that this lack of effort by TV and print reporters and columnists to really dig below the surface, is something that Mayor Cooper counts on and has been extremely appreciative of over the years-reporters who don't independently observe and only report, when they do show-up, on what's visible, only playing the role of court transcribers and re-writer of press releases.

And that's part of why it is that Mayor Cooper's reign of ruin and malicious and willful mischief with the CRA has been allowed to continue for so long, and why people like Alexander Lewy and Anthony A. Sanders can get away with their questionable antics because nobody in the news media is paying attention, lifting a finger and holding them to account.

A bad press corps is a license to steal.

A bad press corps that doesn't even bother to show-up is... our reality in Hallandale Beach

"High Noon" in Hallandale Beach on Wednesday night? After so many months of HB City Hall intentionally stonewalling the public, the city's long-running CRA scandal and the Broward IG's damning report of the HB CRA Board, alleging "gross mismanagement" of millions of dollars, will FINALLY get a public airing on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at HB City Hall; Is the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Comm. poised to come to the rescue of long-suffering HB residents who've longed for a complete audit of the entire CRA for many years, and want to see some punishment after years of ZERO accountability and little tangible to show for the MILLIONS that went out the door?

Above, looking north on U.S.-1/S. Federal Highway at the scene of so much of the toxic public policy problems in our small ocean-side city the past ten years, where logic, reason and integrity rarely if ever intersected, with residents, taxpayers and small business owners always taking it on the chin and the powers-that-be doing whatever they wanted with no fear of punishment: the Hallandale Beach Municipal complex, 400 S. Federal Highway. January 29, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. ©  2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

"High Noon" in Hallandale Beach on Wednesday night? After so many months of HB City Hall intentionally stonewalling the public, the city's long-running CRA scandal and the Broward IG's damning report of the HB CRA Board, alleging "gross mismanagement" of millions of dollars, will FINALLY get a public airing on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at HB City Hall; Is the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Comm. poised to come to the rescue of long-suffering HB residents who've longed for a complete audit of the entire CRA for many years, and want to see some punishment after years of ZERO accountability and little tangible to show for the MILLIONS that went out the door?

Today's important blog post consists of two parts. The first is a group email that I sent out this morning around 8:45 a.m. to a much larger than usual number of people in South Florida and around the state, after having noticed a new and interesting post over at Broward Bulldog regarding the never-ending scandal that is the Hallandale Beach CRA, and the efforts of the powers-that-be at HB City Hall to cover-up all the financial facts for as long as possible and avoid a thorough audit by credible third-parties. It's pretty self-explanatory.

I also have something from somebody for you to peruse the insightful email that was sent out last week by former HB Commissioner Keith London regarding Wednesday night's important HB CRA Board of Director's meeting at City Hall, the very first opportunity the public has had to discuss this matter, despite the Broward Inspector General's report on the city's "gross mismanagement" having come out months ago.

Besides the usual assortment of well-informed Hallandale Beach, Hollywood and Broward residents, activists and bloggers, and the handful of reliable news media members I trust, I also sent it to Florida Governor Rick Scott, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi,  Florida CFO Jeff Atwater, Florida state Senators Don Gaetz, Jack Latvala, Joseph Abruzzo and Jeremy Ring, state Rep.Lake Ray, Broward Inspector General John W. Scott and Broward County Commissioners Sue Gunzburger and Barbara Sharief, both of whom represent parts of Hallandale Beach in their district.

Sen. Gaetz is the Florida Senate President, Sen. Latvala is the Chairman of the Ethics and Elections Comm., while Rep. Ray and Sen. Abruzzo are the Co-chairmen of the important Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, which Sen. Ring is a member of.

Sen. Ring is the only state legislator receiving my email today who is actually from Broward County. 

You more regular readers of the blog who pay attention and who connect-the-dots quicker than the news media know perfectly well why contacting state Senator Eleanor Sobel and or state Rep. Joe Gibbons would've been a waste of time, reasons which I explained in a recent post about this matter.

I have previously discussed the work of the JLAC a few times before here on the blog and the important role they might have if the Broward County Commission didn't do anything last month, which is exactly what happened

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/cgi-bin/View_Page.pl?Directory=committees/joint/Jcla/&File=index_css.html&Tab=committees

Local10 video: Hallandale Beach CRA accused of misspending $2.1 Million
Broward County Commission takes no action on audit request.
Reported by investigative reporter Bob Norman
Published On: Jun 04 2013 07:11:25 PM EDT, Updated On: Jun 05 2013 11:01:19 AM EDT
http://www.local10.com/news/cra-accused-of-misspending-21m/-/1717324/20425002/-/3mpae4z/-/index.html

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Broward Bulldog

Hallandale may seek Attorney General opinion on CRA spending; statewide impact seen

By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 

July 9, 2013 AT 5:56 AM

Hallandale Beach city commissioners on Wednesday will consider asking the Florida Attorney General for a ruling on how community redevelopment funds can be spent, a decision that could have a far-reaching impact.

“This is an opinion that would affect every CRA in the state of Florida,” Hallandale Beach Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) attorney Steven Zelkowitz cautioned city commissioners at a recent meeting.

Read the rest of the post at:

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/07/hallandale-may-seek-attorney-general-opinion-on-cra-spending-wide-impact-seen/

Until I saw this article an hour ago, I was planning on sending out an email later this afternoon that I thought you'd find of great interest 

In it I'd cordially invite everyone to attend this "High Noon in Hallandale Beach" re the HB CRA scandal on Wednesday at 6 pm at HB City Hall, and come watch in awe as the city once again tried their best to obfuscate, lie and spin its way out of a hornet's nest while denying any culpability at all.

http://cohb.org/files/2013-07-10/Exported%20OV%20Docs/Agenda%20Outline%20for%202013-07-10%2018-00.htm

http://cohb.org/files/2013-07-10/Additional%20Information-%20Abruzzo-Ray%20Response%20Letter%20FINAL.pdf

And, of course, I'd have implores you of the great importance in attending this meeting so that you, too, can bear witness to what some of us concerned HB residents have been watching in plain sight for years while responsible parties did nothing but avert their eyes.

I call it "High Noon in HB" because of what's truly at stake tomorrow night:

HB City Hall's longstanding lack of ethical integrity and the CRA Board's desire to "Win friends and influence people" thru old-fashioned crony capitalism  and dollars not their own, with little-to-no public accountability, despite  lots of high-paid staff that never inspired confidence among the public and who never evinced much-if-any concern with such picayune matters as laws, norms and ethics, to say nothing of the community's long-term best interests.

Those of you who think you will hear an even semi-plausible or reasonable explanation from Mayor Joy Cooper, Comm. Alexander Lewy and City Manager Renee Miller for why they have fought so hard to prevent a public meeting on the facts of this matter of great public importance, down to them publicly haranguing members of the public -and publicly haranguing other members the elected City Commission- who DID want to talk publicly

and candidly about it, and the millions of CRA dollars that have flown out the door with so little tangible to show for it, are, I'm afraid, in for a great deal of disappointment.

This is not Japan, so they will NOT apologize for their longstanding stonewalling, nor will they oblige you in trying to explain their stealthy actions and words of the past several months, just as they believe they never needed to publicly explain to you why they have fought so hard and for so long to prevent a public audit of the entire HB CRA from ever taking place.

And no, to answer another question I anticipate, you will also NOT hear any reasonable explanation tomorrow night, years-after-the-fact, for why Comm. Lewy, after midnight at a HB CRA meeting with few if any residents still in attendance, tried to funnel over $200,000 in CRA funds to a group controlled entirely by Comm. Anthony A. Sanders  and his wife, Jessica.

And to do so without ever mentioning the actual name of the group publicly, but instead, by erroneously referring to their so-called stellar track record.
A "track record" that the facts show is anything but stellar and a non-profit group which is and has been anything but transparent and accountable to the public for the money they've received for so many years from the city.

In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for battlefield conversions.

Below is the simple and common sense email from Keith London that he sent out last week to give the area an idea of what was really going on, and which I forwarded to many of you here in South Florida and around the state who are not on his email distribution list.

By the way, as of this morning, I've still NOT received all the public documents I formally requested weeks ago via a Public Records Request about Mayor Cooper, City Manager Miller and lobbyist Judy Stern and their intense lobbying efforts to prevent the Broward County Commission from voting for an audit of the HB CRA via the Broward County Auditor's office.

Surprise!!!

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NOT in my email but posted here on the blog for your information and education:

The reference above to Comm. Lewy refers to his actions and words at the public meeting of July 19, 2011, mentioned in my blog post of August 1, 2011

While you were sleeping: Comm. Alexander Lewy's budget chicanery & Liberal Guilt just cost you another $200,000-plus. For what and for whom, exactly?

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/while-you-were-sleeping-comm-alexander.html

See also:

FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2013

Csaba Kulin asks Hallandale Beach City Attorney Whitfield THE question HB citizens have long wondered, esp. as the Broward IG's Office has been busy investigating the city and turning-up mountains of incriminating and jaw-dropping evidence: Who at HB City Hall is supposed to make sure that applicable laws, ordinances and rules, especially those regarding ethics and conflicts of interest, are followed and enforced fairly? Teaser Alert: You won't like her answer

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.ca/2013/05/csaba-kulin-asks-hallandale-beach-city.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Keith London
Date: Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 10:30 AM
Subject: Finally- Hallandale's First Public Meeting to Discuss the Response to the OIG Report

Share

Everyone, This is a reminder there is a meeting scheduled for next Wednesday, July 10, 2013 at 6:00PM of the City Commission in conjunction with the Hallandale Beach Community Redevelopment Agency (HBCRA) Board of Directors to review and discuss the City's/HBCRA's Final Draft Response to the Broward County Office of the Inspector General's Investigative Report. The response to the OIG and Florida Legislature is due on 7-16-13, two weeks from today. There is NO back up material at this time. This meeting would not be taking place if not for Commissioner Lazarow making a motion seconded by Commissioner Julian and majority voted by Commissioner Sanders. Copper and Lewy voted NO to a public meeting and would still like everyone to believe nothing happened. The following are the links to the documents from the Broward OIGs office for your review: Broward County Office of the Inspector General, “Regarding Gross Mismanagement of Public Funds by the City of Hallandale Beach and the Hallandale Beach Community Redevelopment Agency: The Inspector General made various recommendations on report page 56 related to ensuring the independence of the CRA and requested a status report by July 16, 2013. We are interested in the policies and procedures that City and CRA management intend to implement to ensure compliance with the requirements of Chapter 163, Part III, F.S. Letter from the Florida Legislature Joint Legislative Auditing Committee requesting the following: Please provide documentation to support how the initial amount was determined. If any estimates were used in determining this amount, please provide an explanation of the basis for using such estimate and how the estimated amount was calculated. Also, please provide the detailed spreadsheet that Ms. Ladolcetta references in her response.   Please provide the specific authority upon which the City relied to use CRA monies for the above-noted expenditures. Absent specific authority to support the use of CRA monies for expenditures not authorized by Chapter 163, Part III, F.S., or not included in the CRA Plan, it appears that the CRA monies should be restored to the CRA Fund. In addition, to resolve the disagreement, we request that the City Council, sitting as the governing board of the CRA, request an opinion from the Attorney General regarding the specific expenditures in question. The City Council should ask the Attorney General the following question(s): (1) Is the use of the CRA funds for such expenditures allowable under Ch. 163, F.S.? and (2) if not, should the City restore the funds to the CRA? In addition, we suggest that the City Council agree to abide by the Attorney General’s Opinion. Please provide a copy of the status report to the Committee at the time it is sent to the Inspector General. Hallandale’s Staff Response to the preliminary OIG report. This is referred to as “staff’s response” because the meeting next week is the first time the OIG report is an official agenda item. To date, there has never been an official motion, resolution, vote or action by the city commission or CRA board of directors related to this important issue. The lack response and oversight of this issue by Cooper has cost the taxpayers an additional $40,000 for the CRA attorney because of the additional work necessary to appropriately respond to the OIG Report and the Joint Legislative Committee Letter. In Cooper’s and Lewy’s opinion, this issue is being appropriately handled by the City and CRA attorneys and requires no further discussion or explanation to the public; hence no transparency.  Please clickhere to listen and watch the June 17, 2013 CRA meeting: But Cooper and Lewy refuse to respect the opinion of The State of Florida Attorney General the highest attorney in the great State of Florida. Please read the opinion here. Please plan on attending this meeting and supporting open transparent government. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need additional material. Regards, Keith Keith S. London   Cell: 954-494-3182 email: keith@keithlondon.comwww.keithlondon.com

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The Broward IG returns serve on Hallandale Beach's embarrassing and mis-behaving tinhorn pols & officials re HB CRA. They get a dose of cold hard reality poured on them, the first of so many to come in their well-deserved comeuppance in the court of public opinion. Their karma is going to be a bitch!; @MayorCooper, @SandersHB, @AlexLewy

This latest bit of reportage by the Broward Bulldog's Bill Gjebre regarding Hallandale Beach City Hall's unethical crew of misfits and sycophants, is particularly compelling precisely because the guilty parties are completely bereft of the slightest bit of remorse, and are having taxpayers pay their legal bills to boot.

This all causes me to wonder... If this were the American West's court of public opinion of the mid-18th century, a place that my ancestors actually lived in, in the Hill Country of Texas, there are more than a folks at Hallandale Beach City Hall who'd have good reason to be fearful of the smell of tar-and-feathers in the air.

Then as now, unethical or morally-suspect actions by those with a public trust have especially serious consequences.
Especially when they involve pols who seem to have repeatedly abused their power thru the squandering of public funds.

Just saying... 

Miami Herald

Broward IG: Hallandale leaders don’t know what they’re talking about

By William Gjebre, The Miami Herald

Posted April 23, 2013

The Broward Inspector General’s final report on the “gross mismanagement” of millions in tax dollars by Hallandale Beach is sharply critical of city leaders it says have shown a “basic misunderstanding” of what’s gone wrong. 

Hallandale Beach city managers past and present, the city attorney, the mayor and other city officials defended the handling of funds of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency in formal responses included in the 56-page report released last week. 

Read the rest of the article at: 

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/23/3360640/broward-ig-hallandale-leaders.html

To Hallandale Beach's frustrated and beleaguered taxpayers who've reached their limit after SO MANY YEARS of unsatisfactory performance by city's DPW -esp. re proper maintenance/appearance of public beach and city parks- outsourcing some DPW tasks ought to be on the table for active consideration. So why is City Manager Renee Miller not even going to consider the idea during the next year given DPW's dismal track record?

JUST AS TRUE NOW AS IT WAS WHEN IT WAS WRITTEN IN JUNE 2012! "So this is where our tax dollars go to die?" My friend and fellow civic activist Csaba Kulin, wondering when we're FINALLY going to get the clean and inviting public beach that Hallandale Beach residents believe we're entitled to but have never received under Mayor Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew. Instead, we get rusty, bacteria-filled pipes in the middle of the beach and garbage cans on the beach -without lids- at the windiest place in the entire city. And a public building across the street from the beach that the public can't use for free, but which city employees can -for their holiday parties. Go to http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/latest-info-photos-re-related-groups.html 
2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved 

To beleaguered Hallandale Beach taxpayers, residents and small business owners who've reached their limit after SO MANY YEARS of unsatisfactory performance by city's DPW -esp. proper maintenance of public beach and city parks, which look awful- out-sourcing some DPW tasks looks better and better. So why is City Manager Renee Miller not even going to consider the idea during the next year when DPW's dismal track record is so clear?

My post today consists of a copy of an email I sent on Friday afternoon, March 1st, to the City of Hallandale Beach's Dept. of Public Works' interim director, Earl King, a longtime employee at DPW.

It was occasioned by some questions he asked me following my very critical comments and pointed questions re DPW's performance to City Manager Renee Miller during Thursday night's Quadrant meeting in NW Hallandale Beach, held at the Foster Park facility that opened a few months ago, which did NOT have enough parking for the number of people who showed up, low as that was. 

While having the meeting there was a nice idea in the abstract, it was clearly less so in reality, especially since the rest of the facility was open and full of people.

(Why are the city's Quadrant meetings never held on Saturday mornings at 10 a.m., when the largest number of HB citizens can actually attend, instead of weeknights? 

And given the low turnout of citizens these things usually get, why are they not televised and streamed online, when the city already has both the technology and ability to do so?
Even to allow phone-in and email questions to be asked and answered?
It's the year 2013, not 1913, and isn't the goal of these meetings in the first place to be "outreach" and education?

Sort of makes you wonder, doesn't it?)

I should note for the record here that Thursday night's meeting, the second of the year, was held in a room that was full of more city employees than citizens, and the only members of the five-person City Commission who were in attendance were Commissioners Michele Lazarow and Anthony A. Sanders. 

Due to an upset stomach, I didn't attend the first meeting, for Southeast HB, the part of town that I live in, so I don't know who exactly from the HB City Commission attended.

During the Q&A portion of the program, after HB City Manager Renee Miller's opening presentation on the upcoming city budget, I made a series of pointed remarks and asked some equally pointed questions regarding the performance of DPW, especially as it regards the maintenance of the two things that taxpayers in a small city like this feel they should be able to take for granted: the city's small number of public parks and even more importantly, what ought to be the city's Crown Jewel, but isn't, the city's public beach.

Above, a photo I took on Sunday March 3rd at the city's North Beach: the useless 10-foot steel pole that's full of bacteria, rust and holes, the one that has been there for YEARS, was STILL THERE, taunting us. And so were the piles of cigarette butts that haven't been cleaned up since... And the garbage cans without lids.

Because I was filming the entire meeting on my FLIP Mino HD camera, mounted on my tripod, from one side of the room and next to a wall, frankly, I'm embarrassed to say that my voice wavered a little bit more than I'd have liked, since I didn't want to overpower the camera mic just a few inches away, so it was NOT exactly a star-turn by me by any stretch of the imagination.

Still, I do think my questions and justified anger came through to everyone in the room who was actually paying attention, which clearly is not always the case among the assembled city employees, largely Dept. heads.

For those of you who are relatively new to the blog and who do NOT already know, the subject of DPW's performance and what many very upset residents like feel is the need to actually out--source some of their duties, with an equal reduction in their budget, has been the subject-du-jour for not only dozens of previous posts here since this blog was started, but also a subject that has been much discussed at various formal and informal meetings I've attended over the past six years here in the city.

After all, why do we want to keep doing the same exact thing with the same exact people that is clearly NOT WORKING to residents' satisfaction?

For those of you who do NOT already know, it's important that you understand that unlike is the case in many if not most other Florida cities with a public beach, here, it's the responsibility of DPW, not the city's Parks & Recreation Dept., for the maintenance and appearance of the public beach.

Here, the only thing that the city's Parks & Recreation dept. is specifically responsible for are the Chickee Huts and the children's playground equipment located at South Beach.

That's it.

Everything else on the beach from the city's border with Hollywood to the north down to the South Beach border with the La Mer condominium, is DPW's responsibility, including the area occupied by the city's North Beach building off of State Road A1A, underneath the city's iconic beach ball-colored Water Tower.

That building is currently being rented by the city to real estate developers, The Related Group, for use as their customer "model" for their Beachwalk development project on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway two blocks to the west.

Regular readers of the blog will recall that as a particularly bad deal for city taxpayers that was approved by the HB City Commission last August, where I and many other HB civic activists were against anything other than it becoming the quality hotel we were promised it'd be, which everyone in the city agreed we needed, including me, but NOT with residential units as part of the deal.

And a bad deal because it also gave The Related Group practical if not legal control of the North Beach area, which Mayor Cooper, the City Commission and the two previous City Managers have all allowed to deteriorate for many years to the point that many Hallandale Beach residents will NOT take visiting friends or family members to the city's public beach because of how depressing it is, because of how bad it looks and is maintained.

Now though, as has been the case since the North Beach property was given to the city years ago for FREE -by Related no less, after being the "model" for the next-door trio of towers known as The Beachclub- the taxpayers and residents of this community DON'T have access to one of their own buildings, a two-story building with views of the ocean.

A building that every other city in South Florida would love to have in their city but steps from the ocean and made a point of pride in their community in no time at all.

But here in Hallandale Beach, that building has been mired in public controversy from the start both because of how long it took the city to make repairs after it was given title to the property

-over THREE YEARS- and because of Mayor Cooper and the trio of City managers who do NOT want the public to be able to use their own facility, and have NEVER allowed a single public meeting to take place where its future could be openly discussed.

I think that's it for the preface!

The subject header was: Mr. King: Per your question to me last night... and my response that the answer was "dozens and dozens" of examples of HB DPW's sheer myopia, incompetence and laziness for years

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March 1, 2013

Per your question to me last night... and my response that the answer was "dozens and dozens" of examples of HB DPW's sheer myopia, incompetence and laziness:

Again, you might want to have that conversation with Assistant City Manager Jennifer Frastai and have her try to explain to you just why it is that despite my giving her multiple emails and phone numbers to contact me, she NEVER followed-up with me or did anything at all about the dozens of problem I cited in minute detail for her and then-Assistant City Manager Franklin Heilman over the course of one hour when the three of us were in the conference room outside the City Manager's office -over four years ago.
Well over 90% of all those matters are STILL problems.

Given my experience, not surprisingly, I have zero faith and trust in anything Frastai or Nydia Rafols says or does, and know better than to waste my time speaking with them
With them, anything I say goes in one ear, out the other.
And others in this community have learned from my experiences, and know better than to trust them to do the right thing.
And the problems remain for HB residents to look at and deal with -everyday.

Given the significant commitment of public funds to construct and maintain city facilities, it's important that the city establish written policies and procedures documenting processes
for evaluating facilities construction methods and maintenance techniques to determine the most cost effective and efficient method or technique. 
Or something...

But the failure to do so or actually have those standards mean anything tangible, as well as the city's failure to actually hold employees accountable for their performance to ensure that a dollar's worth of service of effort is given for every tax dollar spent, is why Hallandale Beach taxpayers, residents and business owners for years have had to sit back and watch the following unfold, chosen from dozens of similar examples that could be cited with facts and photos.
We think the city government's number-one priority should be to give efficient, competent and reliable service to taxpayers, NOT be an employment agency

-An excerpt from my blog, which in some way or fashion has been there since I started it-

This monument sign on the west side of the intersection of U.S.-1 and S.E. 5th Street, across from Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino and the Village at Gulfstream Park retail complex, alerts you to your proximity to HB City Hall and the HB Police Department HQ. It's a place and culture whose very own words and actions have made clear to taxpayers of this city -regardless of age, race or income- that it holds itself apart from and above from the very citizens it's supposed to serve, often acting like they don't have to follow the same laws that govern everyone else in the state of Florida and the U.S., whether of logic, reason or contracts. (More to the point of this blog, the Florida Statutes on Sunshine Laws and Public Records.) City employees in Hallandale Beach routinely refuse to answer perfectly reasonable questions posed to them by taxpayers, and as I have found out myself and witnessed, are not above berating you for even having the nerve to ask! As it happens, it's also not a very safe area, despite who operates here, and over the past nine years, the public parking lots have often been pitch-black for 6-9 months at a time, including in front of the HB Police Dept. HQ. Then-Police Chief Thomas Magill even shrugged his shoulders at City Comm. meetings when told about this a few times. As if they couldn't make a worse first impression, at one point, even the spotlights shining on this sign didn't work at night for over FOUR YEARS, either. October 13, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

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For the proof of what I told you last night about this same sign, Mr King, as Example # 1, look at the photos in the email at the bottom. 
It speaks volumes for the city's dreadful performance at handling even simple tasks.

It's for just some of these reasons that many of Hallandale Beach's best-informed and most-articulate residents and business owners believe that some -though not necessarily all- of DPW's services should be privatized, especially the maintenance of city parks, the city beach and the medians on the three main streets -A1A, U.S.-1, and Hallandale Beach Blvd.
It's why I asked my question to City Manager Miller at last night's NW Quadrant meeting about her level of interest on a scale of one-to-ten about outsourcing some duties, and am very disappointed that she replied that in the coming year, she would NOT use it at all, despite what so many believe is DPW's longstanding pitiful performance, which is like a thumb to the eye of every taxpayer.

What are HB taxpayers to think of her unwillingness to make positive and necessary changes that meet with the approval of the very people who live and work here?

And now, the recent news that taxpayers may possibly be paying up to FOUR TIMES more for maintenance of median strips, but with no corresponding cuts in city employee ranks,
despite city employees' poor performance?
There's no inherent logic in that decision, but then logic and reason seldom have ever intersect in this community the nine years I have lived here.

You see, Mr. King, some of us here still recall that after Hurricane Wilma, lots of DPW employees were dispatched to re-plant flowers on the median strip on U.S.-1 in front of HB City Hall, even while there were still real problems here that were of a much-higher priority, including around City Hall itself, where, to cite but one dumb but very frustrating example, the city's own wooden Stop signs lay on the ground for MANY WEEKS, and lots of city parking lot lights were out, as if somehow public safety was a low priority, even while it was staring right at them.

And yet what was taken care of first? 
Re-planting flowers in front of City Hall and installing holiday lights!

I've got news for you, Mr. King.
More than a few members of the local news media know all about that in the same way they already know most of the things I could write and cite here, which have previously appeared on my blog about the city bureaucracy's longstanding unsatisfactory and dysfunctional performance.

I can tell you with certainty that a reporter was all set to put HB thru the ringer when they were looking for a city in Broward County to profile that was doing a poor job of performing post-Wilma cleanup.
I know that because they contacted me to tell me as much.
I'm the person who gave the reporter the tour of the city and gave them photos highlighting the very curious choices the city had made with how to use resources and personnel while many people, including myself, were without electricity for WEEKS.
Though to be fair, after seeing what they saw with their own eyes, my photos hardly did the Keystone Kops performance of the city justice.

(And honestly, Mr. King, the city's so-called sandbagging operation is the very picture of comedy. No bags pre-filled when the weather is good so they can be stored in a dry and secure place? Piles of sand dumped alongside inside a secure fence or a two-lane road with no lighting at all? And without a tarp being secured to the sand when not in use so it doesn't get washed away during storms? And you STILL use orange safety cones as funnels for the sand bags instead of something that's smarter and more efficient? 
Where to even begin there...)

Besides, why exactly should HB taxpayers care if some city employees lose their job due to their own inadequate performance, or if the City Manager's office wanted to send a message to everyone within the bureaucracy that continued unsatisfactory performance will no longer be accepted and winked at, when, according to the way things have been at City Hall for many, many years, those same HB taxpayers are NOT supposed to care about the fact that the vast majority of the city's management structure and Dept. heads DON'T  even live here themselves, and thus, DON'T have to put up with the same unsatisfactory, frustrating and mediocre service that taxpayers do?
Why the incongruity in thinking?

Guess what, Mr. King?
While it's not one of my top priorities, per se, there are lots of very smart and fed-up taxpayers in this city who believe there's growing support for insisting that all management- level positions require those individuals to move to the city limits of HB within a certain defined period -or no job.
Or, as a compromise, pay people who don't live here less, and the converse.

After all, you can't keep saying that it doesn't matter where the management team lives, but then say, as some do, that it's really important that every city employee keep their job -for life.
Yes, jobs for life!

That sense of entitlement and the mentality attitude that it breeds is a large part -though not the only reason- why the City of Hallandale Beach is in the funk it's been for years, even as residents and small business owners have had to tighten their belts and make do with less.

As I told you last night, Mr. King, in this new year, I'm no longer going to be the cordial person who always goes thru proper channels all the time.
The well-informed and cordial person with photographic proof to collaborate his points who waits patiently for well-paid city employees like Jennifer Frastai to never call or write and follow-up on things that are important from either a safety, aesthetic or financial standpoint.
Those days are over.

Doing that has only resulted in someone like you not even knowing why Hallandale Beach's most-concerned and best-informed taxpayers and residents are so angry at the dismal performance of city management and city employees.

We want positive results and quality performance and are not opposed to paying a reasonable amount in salaries for THAT.
But creating and continuing to feed an already well-fed bureaucracy who takes advantage of HB taxpayers by consistently giving sup-par performances, and paying more than seems reasonable given the output, well, that's another story entirely.
And it's another reason why the Weston Model looks better and better every day for HB taxpayers, because it pays strictly based on actual performance -and with no bureaucracy.

How Weston, Florida, a City of 65,000, Gets By on 9 Employees
POSTED BY RYAN HOLEYWELL 
MAY 14, 2012
http://www.governing.com/blogs/view/How-.html

Since I gave you the URL last night for the blog after you asked, I suggest that after checking that out that you enter the name "Hallandale Beach Blog" into Google's "Images" category in the upper-left column.
Then click on the photos and then click the accompanying posts that used them.
Then you'll see as I stated to you last night, the high percentage of those very same problems in this city cited years ago which are STILL being ignored and avoided.
Ignored by City Hall, Mr. King, but definitely NOT ignored by the city's taxpayers.

And before closing I want you to fully understand something.
There are a LOT more people than you think who know how badly things have been run in this city for years.
Not just HB residents and small business owners and condo presidents, but many people next door in Aventura and Hollywood, and TV/print reporters, columnists and editors, to say nothing of elected officials and mangers in other cities, as well as people of some importance at the County HQ on Andrews Avenue and even a few in Tallahassee.
That's not bragging, just a statement of fact.

They're the very same people who'll be getting a copy of this email soon, and the very people who are the reason that my blog, such as it is, a one-man operation, is read, even on bad days, by anywhere from 1100-2300 people a day, and sometimes, like around the holidays, many multiples of that.
I can substantiate what I say and what I write about with facts and photographic proof that doesn't lie.
It's not just my opinion.

The hard-working and conscientious city employees, ones I've talked to and commiserated with over the past nine years, continue to have to suffer the slings and arrows meant for the others, and who feel both trapped and VERY frustrated, because they know that most of the public's criticism of HB city employees is 100% valid.
They see it everyday themselves.

Frankly, given your position as interim head of DPW, Mr. King, I'm surprised that you don't see that as clearly as I do, and wouldn't want to make sure that every employee under your command knows that performance and quality is what counts most with Hallandale Beach's beleaguered taxpayers.
That you don't seem to is a matter of real concern.

*Here, in my email to King, I had the photo and caption of Csaba Kulin at the beach that's at the top of this blog post.

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This is my email from three days ago.

Above, the Hallandale Beach City Hall monument sign on U.S.-1 and S.E. 5th Street, across from Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino and the Village at Gulfstream Park retail complex, as seen this week. The one that, thanks to the longstanding unsatisfactory performance of the city's DPW, has lights that haven't worked properly at night since before new-ish City Manager Rene Miller first showed-up last June.(And which you can only see at night, below, when you walk up to it with your camera and use a flash!) That's a form of vision, too -myopia.

In Ft. Lauderdale, the city, with its active corps of high-minded citizen's input, and lots of big problems on the plate to solve, plans for its future to the extent they can, with the resources they have.
Meanwhile in the City of Hallandale Beach, its taxpayers, residents and small business owners are treated like outliers, and are NOT allowed to speak at HB's Visioning meeting.

I guess, possibly due to Mayor Joy Cooper's fear that constructive criticism and suggestions by concerned people who care enough to actually show-up and participate, unlike 99.99% of city, might interrupt the powerful intellectual firepower being displayed by the HB City Comm. at a public meeting that was, sadly, NOT recorded for either posterity or later viewing by the city's citizens.

Which, of course, is wholly consistent, since the "public meeting" was also NOT mentioned on the city's own website, either.
Talk about a circle of negative reinforcement!

Yes, like a cartoon character, the city's elected officials and administration continue to chase their tails and believe they're really making progress, when instead, all they're accomplishing is continuing to depress the morale of their own citizens.
In the process, continuing to ruin this city with their longstanding myopia that fails to see opportunities right in front of them in equal measure to their inability to see the longstanding problems that exist mostly due to their own laissez-faire oversight and management practices.

Myopia is a form of vision, too, just not the particular one you want when tens of millions of tax dollars and your own family's future Quality-of-Life is concerned.
And so it goes in Hallandale Beach...

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Broward Bulldog
Fort Lauderdale draws up vision for the future
By Ann Henson Feltgen, BrowardBulldog.org 
FEBRUARY 19, 2013 AT 6:23 AM

Within the next few months, if city commissioners approve, Fort Lauderdale residents will have the option of receiving and paying their bills for city services online. The savings in postage and personnel will be used to purchase shade trees for residents who use the online pay system, or be placed elsewhere around the city.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/02/fort-lauderdale-draws-up-vision-for-the-future/