FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. This photo of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 classic "To Catch a Thief" is the large Twitter photo on my @hbbtruth account

Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan, with iconic City Hall in the distance, on left, in Kungsholmen. In my previous life, I was definitely born there.

A reminder of why I and my savvy, sensible friends -like @UdenCatherine - push back vs. the serial nonsensical public policy + misanthropy fm #HollywoodFL City Hall, both the City Comm. as well as its often imperious, feckless, highly-paid, thin-skinned bureaucrats. THIS! ☀️🌴🏖️😎. Hollywood Beach, March 2025
Showing posts with label COVID19. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COVID19. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Quick thoughts re the prospective Todd Delmay vs. Hillary Cassell 2026 Florida House 101 race -to the bottom- that most of SE Broward probably would prefer to ignore because BOTH avoid giving answers to hard policy questions.

Quick thoughts re the prospective Todd Delmay vs. Hillary Cassell 2026 Florida House 101 race -to the bottom- that most of SE Broward probably would prefer to ignore because both avoid giving answers to hard questions about



South Florida Sun Sentinel
Lawmaker who jumped party to face challenger 
Anthony Man, South Florida Sun Sentinel
February 12, 2025

Democrat Todd Delmay is challenging Democrat-turned-Republican state Rep. Hillary Cassel in what’s likely to be the hottest South Florida legislative election in 2026.

Best known in LGBTQ civil rights and Democratic political circles, Delmay is announcing his candidacy on Wednesday.

He’s challenging Cassel, who was best known in the fields of insurance law and politics — until December, when she denounced the Democratic Party and switched her registration to Republican. She was rewarded with an appointment as vice chair of a state House committee and a social media post of praise from President Donald Trump.

Read the rest of the article at:

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/02/12/florida-legislator-who-switched-parties-after-last-election-gets-2026-challenger/

-----

In case you missed the news, niche Identity Politics candidate Todd Delmay, A Democrat who IMO has truly done NOTHING OF NOTE in #HollywoodFL that has not been either LGBTQ-related or of a generally virtue-signaling nature, has decided that his over-weaning personal ambition and ego now compel him to force his way back into the public eye and come before the public once again.
 
Delmay has apparently decided that he of all people is best situated to take full advantage of Democratic Party voters in HD 101 who feel, oddly, betrayed by Hillary Cassell, who, herself, IMO, had/has done very little, and seldom if ever was seen at Hallandale Beach or Hollywood City Commission meetings or Civic Association meetings BEFORE she decided in 2021 to run for the non-Minority state House 101 seat for SE Broward. 
Contrary to pretty much everything you thought you knew about running for office, right?

In doing so, Cassell took FULL advantage of Covid 19 in a way that few other South Florida candidates did as successfully, owing to the reality of the many older people in this area's very clear phobia about going out in public, even in 2021. 

Yes, Covid-19 was really Cassell's critical ally, as well as her ready-made excuse for largely ignoring or interacting with the voters, and instead, made everything about the election turn on marketing herself, and taking advantage of the large number of attorney dollars her campaign was flush with.
And, on the chance you didn't know it already, Cassell also chose to spread a lot of those campaign dollars on/at the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, to show her, um, new-found concern about the area she had largely avoided appearing before previously in a matter affecting public policy. 
Or just to gripe about something.

But as we know, given a choice, lawyer lobbyists don't identify themselves as lobbyists on campaign disclosure forms, they identify as lawyers. You know, like Lincoln.
So that's why when the stories came out about her $ haul, seemingly everyone EVERYONE ever mentioned in the articles about her was an attorney, NOT a lobbyist. And I know I was not the only person to notice that in Broward or Tallahassee, because I got emails about it, even from Politico and other out-of-town reporters I know.




https://x.com/hbbtruth/status/1873828558176682366


Todd Delmay now is attempting to foist himself on Hollywood residents yet again, after failing to capture fire in 2022 because he had, literally, done NOTHING OF NOTE in the Hollywood or larger SE Broward community, and could NOT answer hard questions about real issues.
Instead, to the extent he said anything, it was always the same 2-3 things, according to friends who did actually see him, albeit, at grocery stores, not at public events.

Here's how bad I think Delmay's lack of self-awareness is: Delmay says he's the "Founder of the Hollywood LGBTQ+ Council," a niche group that seems like a LGBTQ version of a Latin or Brazilian or Italian Chamber of Commerce group. If a bunch of people want to network among like-minded people, no harm, right? 
But what have they ACTUALLY done since they were created? 
Besides appearing at events around town where they are sort of... the featured attraction?

When you go to their website, what do you see on the landing page? https://lgbtqcouncil.com/
A five-year old video of the LGBTQ flag that was raised on one of the flagpoles on the east side of Hollywood City Hall.

That required that the U.S. POW flag be removed from the city's flagpoles, and thus become a mini-controversy on many Social Media sites for some veterans, as well as the hapless NextDoor app site that's home to so many posts that clearly get written and posted in anger, not after quiet reflection about the true facts. 
I myself received about a dozen emails from people around the city, many from people I had never met or heard of before, all asking me why the POW flag was shunted aside and why, in their opinions, the city did such a poor job of communicating publicly what they were doing, and how long the flag would be there, and what was to become of the POW flag?.

Oh, I almost forgot. There's also another video on the landing page about... buckle up, not what they've been doing the past few weeks or months but about... The Hollywood LGBTQ Council Launch Event
The event from five years ago! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvL9j5mSTO4&t=6s

This is largely a self-promoting video produced by NBC6 where Todd Delmay talks about... "Changing the conversation in Hollywood." What?
How has the conversation been changed and what does that even mean in a very blue city in a very blue county where pols are prone to virtue-signal without even being asked to?

The entire website seems to be built for the purpose of developing a mailing list for someone, not actually discussing possible effective methods or policy prescriptions for solving the genuine problems that are all around us in South Florida, and SE Broward in particular?
Me, I think that someone is... yes, Todd Delmay.
The one person who can... actually access the information requested on the website.

Just to remind, Todd Delmay was NOT big on appearing at public settings in Hollywood in 2021 and early 2022 where he could be asked hard questions about the issues that one needs to really know and understand to properly serve the public from Tallahassee. Like the area's dysfunctional public transportation system for instance, the general uselessness of the Broward MPO, or the generally mediocre quality of the public schools in Hollywood and Hallandale Beach, where McNicol Middle School in Hollywood just blocks from I-95 on Pembroke Road has long been viewed (and even rated by the School Board) as THE worst Middle School in the entire county.

(Why is that true? What are the factors that led to that becoming a stone cold fact? Silence. Nobody wanted to talk about it. Least of all, Todd Delmay or Hillary Cassell, to say nothing of the handful of lackluster School Board candidates that year. Clearly, lack of money was NOT the problem for McNicol Middle School being deemed a school that by any reasonable standard had failed to do what it was supposed to do, for the kids who went there.
Local kids who deserve much better.)

I say all of this as someone who was, to be blunt, completely (and who largely remain now) COMPLETELY UNIMPRESSED by the once-reclusive Hillary Cassell. In 2021 I wrote often on my blog, on Twitter and in emails some of you received, about how her entire 2021-22 campaign seemed to consist of two things: Receiving LOTS of money from attorneys -many from outside Broward- and getting positive (paid-for?) spin about that very money in one online Florida political website that is nothing close to being the home of honest, objective journalism. 
Or even pretends to be.

The familiar news reporters at Channel 4, 6, 7 and 10 as well as both South Florida newspapers largely gave Cassell a free Hall Pass, and she took FULL ADVANTAGE of that to get elected in 2022. 

This, despite the fact that most people at the Civic Association meetings I attended across the city, from Hollywood Lakes to Downtown Parkside Royal Poinciana to Hollywood Hills... had both largely never heard of her, and could NOT tell me one thing about her that they'd heard or read that was the least bit persuasive or positive about her.

It was crazy, but then for lots of people in SE Broward, Hillary Cassell was female, a Democrat, and an attorney, and THAT was ENOUGH!
At least, against two very uninspiring male candidates who failed to articulate a compelling message or vision, take your choice. And SE Broward, having failed to push her to explain herself, got exactly what it deserved.
Got what IT voted for.

But now, they're surprised that Cassell, to her credit, may actually wants to see positive results on some issues she feels strongly about or knows something about, and not just spin her wheels in the minority for YEARS.
 
In my opinion, there are perhaps two dozen people in Hollywood I can think of, to say nothing of the rest of House District 101, who are MUCH more qualified to run against Hillary Cassell than Todd Delmay.
Especially if one is inclined to run as the Angry Democrat candidate if that suits you best- based simply on what they have ALREADY DONE for their own neighborhood or the city at large to make it better and improve the Quality of Life.
And that includes some of you!

This area has genuinely taken lots of things for granted for a very long time. Coasted along like there were always 
more people who would move here from elsewhere to take the place of young families who moved out of Hollywood or Hallandale Beach once their own kids had to go to a public Middle School and they suddenly saw for themselves that was a very bad option.

That blase attitude came at a huge cost, and now there are multiple TROUBLING problems that demand a smart, savvy, open-minded person who cares more about achieving positive results for the largest number of people, both here and around the state, than merely getting credit publicly.
And it desperately needs people who can see things from other's POV. 
But Todd Delmay?
 
My sense of things is that THAT has never been his persona thus far, so why would you suddenly expect him to be someone else?
Is he someone who CAN work effectively on issues with state House Republicans, knowing that they may well disagree with him on the social issues that he cares about most?
Them, in a party that already enjoys a super-majority in the state House that is only going to get larger next year as many Dems term-out?
Todd Delmay? 

No! Hard, hard pass!

I should think that by now, most of you know the difference between both having and then successfully mobilizing behind a genuine voice -or a faint echo- in order to do the most good. But maybe I'm wrong.
There's now plenty of time for people like these two -and others- to either surprise us, or for them to... NOT show any kind of desire to change and grow at all.

P.S. 
I was going to send this right before New Year's Day but decided to wait it out a bit... and see if anything changed. Nope!
Anthony Man/Broward Politics has left Twitter for Dem-leaning Bluesky. 
His last tweet was Nov. 24th, 2024.


 
So, for all practical purposes, he has chosen to make himself even more irrelevant to what's going on in Broward than before, which is really saying something, given the mountain of interesting or compelling stories happening that he consistently showed ZERO interest in covering in the paper, or even mentioning on his Twitter feed, as a head's up to folks who follow him. 😴🫣

So, you might as well Unfollow his feed like I did -even though he Follows me, for whatever that's been worth- and use that Follow of yours on someone who is curious, open-minded and continuing to generate and post new and original content, instead of rehashing something for the umpteenth time, which, IMO, has long been his specialty.
Just a thought... 





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Monday, September 13, 2021

What is the empirical data from Memorial Regional Hospital that the City of Hollywood is relying upon to re-open, and no longer be the only city of 58 in South Florida whose City Hall is closed to the public?




What is the empirical data from Memorial Regional Hospital that the City of Hollywood is relying upon to re-open, and no longer be the only city of 58 in South Florida whose City Hall is closed to the public?


As I noted, among other things, in my blog post of Tuesday August 24th, 2021, Intentional misdirection and shell games at Hollywood City Hall. Closing of City Hall is leaving #HollywoodFL residents and stakeholders irate at seeing their ability to attend so-called "public meetings" in-person and hold elected officials and staff to account. 

https://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2021/08/intentional-misdirection-and-shell.html, for the record, there are a total of 58 incorporated cities in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.


But of those 58 incorporated South Florida cities, Hollywood was the ONLY city that consciously chose to close its City Hall to the public.

That blog post was the followed-up to my first post on this subject on Tuesday August 17, 2021

It's more than a little convenient for the City of Hollywood to decide to close City Hall again. Yes, just as another key Hollywood City Comm. mtg. is coming up on Wed. the 25th re The Related Group's controversial, incompatible 30-story luxury condo building on public land.
Early on, even before it happened, suspicions among fellow Hollywood civic activists were that the city closed City Hall, seemingly, based on lots of anecdotal evidence among the public about the number of city staffers who got COVID19 or more likely, got sick enough to not be able to work.
Based on personal observations before the closing, it was abundantly clear that far less than 40% of city employees who had worked at Hollywood City Hall before the pandemic continued toiling any time recently.

So now that you mention it, Dave, what IS the total number of city employees working at Hollywood City Hall right now? And what percentage is vaccinated?
The city is coy and refuses to say, but we do have eyes, don't we?

And our eyes don't lie, especially when they were at Hollywood City Hall in the middle of the afternoon, trying to get answers from people there because nobody-but-nobody was answering their phones. Hello Planning Dept.!

But the city's decision to close City Hall was made with ZERO empirical data that was shared WITH the public.

Not only did the City of Hollywood fail to place a required public notice on its Sunshine Board -outside of City Hall's south public entrance door- but ominously and egregiously, utterly failed to publicly disclose ANY info regarding what data and evidence would be needed in the near-future to change the status quo and open up again.
No publicly-disclosed parameters of any kind.

In short, the powers-that-be at Hollywood City Hall have decided that they alone will set and monitor whatever parameters may exist, and then let us know when they want to, absent any independent or objective data or evidence.

I contacted the offices of Gov. DeSantis and Attorney General Ashley Moody in advance of the closing to apprise them of what was going on here, as well as on the first day City Hall was closed to the public, letting them know the city was failing to follow Florida's Sunshine Laws.
Laws, NOT suggestions.

There has been little mention of it on the Hollywood Residents - Speak Up group site on Facebook that I joined last month 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1023412084491625/ or elsewhere, but several well-informed people in Broward suggested early on to me that the REAL reason Hollywood City Hall was closed to the public was because of communications and pressure from Hollywood-based Memorial Healthcare Systems that was placed on City Manager Wazir Ishmael and Mayor Josh Levy.

In short, in the opinion of many, and myself, MHS apparently felt the city wasn't doing enough to show solidarity with MHS' continual dire warnings that they've been trumpeting on every single South Florida TV station for weeks. To wit, The Sky is Falling.


Subsequent to my Open Letter to Hollywood City Hall, I received a response from both Mayor Josh Levy and City Manager Wazir Ishmael on August 24th, printed below


Hi David, the widespread transmission of Covid right now, in the entire county, is at as high a point as ever before and including within the pool of 1,300 city employees.  Lots of cases, with personal impacts and which also cause quarantines of other employees.

By restricting access, the City government is protecting the public and the employees from non-essential contacts and gatherings that may cause more transmission and may put people in a health emergency, when that could be avoided.

All residents rely on the city to continue the function of essential services of the local government.  Residents would also expect that we do not facilitate situations where are not advisable for public health, such as creating indoor gatherings at community centers at this time.  That is the intent here, to protect the public, and it is with guidance from health professionals at Memorial and beyond.

As soon as the case numbers and rates go down, the City Manager will reopen the buildings.  


Josh Levy, Mayor

City of Hollywood

------------

Good morning David,

Thank you for writing to express your concerns about the restrictions on public access to City of Hollywood facilities that went into effect Monday, August 23, 2021. We share your frustration with the situation we currently find ourselves in pertaining to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning late Spring/early Summer 2021, signs of lower hospital admittance for COVID-19, as well as a lessening of the local positivity rate, afforded us the opportunity to restore public access to City Hall and other City facilities and with that, a return to normal procedures for in-person participation and attendance at public meetings. Unfortunately, we now find ourselves in a much graver situation than we experienced during previous spikes in this pandemic.

The recent surge in positive cases, fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant, has caused the positivity rate in Broward County to skyrocket to 17.8% during the Florida Department of Health’s (FDOH) most recent reporting period of August 13-19, 2021. To put that into perspective, the average positivity rate during the same period in 2020 – a time when City of Hollywood facilities were completely closed to public access and the prevalent COVID-19 viral strains were not as aggressive and contagious as the Delta variant – was 7.48%. Just two weeks ago, Broward’s positivity rate was 15.9%. The City received a report this week from Dr. Randy Katz, Medical Director of the Hollywood Department of Fire Rescue and Beach Safety and the Director of Emergency Medicine at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, that nearly 50 percent of the hospital’s bed capacity is occupied by COVID-19 patients. Additionally, City employees, particularly our first responders, have been testing positive for COVID-19 at a higher rate in recent weeks.

Recognizing that official scientific data clearly demonstrates a situation that continues to deteriorate, the City administration deemed it logical and prudent to reinstate restrictions on public access to City facilities as a protective measure to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the City administration has prided itself on being proactive in implementing sensible protective measures. Though we work closely with our municipal and County partners, the City has never been reluctant to implement protective measures when the administration has deemed it necessary to protect public health.

The notifications regarding these public health restrictions have been widely distributed on the City’s social media sites, posted at entrance points to City facilities, included in e-mail notifications and posted on the City website.  These notifications contain an explanation of the need for the current measures and information on how to access City services and reach City staff.  Each of the public meeting notices on the Sunshine Board provides information on how the public can participate in the meeting by contacting the meeting coordinator.  Additionally, the public is welcome to come to City Hall to provide in-person comments at meetings of the City Commission/CRA Board by registering online so that we can accommodate the need for physical distancing.  During the past 18 months, City staff has been working diligently to refine and offer services to our residents and businesses through our online platforms and portals. These procedures have worked and public participation has not been curtailed. In fact, the ability for residents to easily provide their feedback to the City Commission via our online public participation comment submission portal has increased participation in City Commission, CRA, and Planning and Development Board meetings.

Please note that the restrictions and procedures we have put in place are strictly in the name of health and safety to our residents and City staff and by no means should be perceived as any deliberate attempt to suppress public participation. These measures are temporary and shall remain in effect until scientific data demonstrates that the situation has improved enough to lift the restrictions. We certainly take your comments to heart and will continue to change and adapt as conditions dictate. We appreciate the public’s patience and understanding as we continue through a pandemic that, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has claimed approximately 628,000 lives in the United States.

Thank you again for expressing your concerns.


Wazir
Wazir Ishmael, Ph.D.
City Manager
--------------------

I am not persuaded by what I received and my objections remain.
In fact, they are even stronger than before, as every day since then has shown that the concerned public is being inconvenienced for reasons that fail the logic and common sense test, since there's no reason for any extraneous city employee to be in the Commission Chambers during the 4-5 meetings a month the public wants to attend.
But it's the public that has to cool its heels outside.

And you'll notice that the City Manager says nothing about the important TAC meetings, which I used to attend faithfully.

Nearly every Hollywood civic activist and civic association president I know -and I know a lot of them- has told me that they believe Planning Dept. Director Leslie Del Monte much prefers the TAC meetings being ZOOM meetings, even though the public hates them because they can not see the interaction of people in the room, esp. the lobbyists and attorneys schmoozing with TAC participants before and after the meetings.
Plus, I've heard complaints that when you are hooked up to a TAC meeting, your screen does NOT list everyone who's watching, so you have no idea who is hearing your comments.


Dr. Ishmael, having brought up MHS in his response to me, surely must know that at any point in time, 15-20% of the patients at Memorial Regional Hollywood consists of Miami-Dade residents, a figure that I pick not out of thein air, but rather from a TV interview I watched within the past two months. Don't need to make up the numbers.

But neither Dr. Ishmael or Mayor Levy actually disclose what the numbers are or what they need to be, do they?

On Tuesday I'll be placing a Public Records request with the Hollywood City Clerk on for all correspondence over the past 6 months between anyone at Hollywood City Hall, both the City Commission and administrators, and executives at Memorial Healthcare Systems.
Should provide some interesting reading.

And I'll share what I find here with you on my blog, since I believe you deserve to know the truth about why your city seems unable to adapt like 57 other South Florida cities.

By the way, not that it matters, per se, but my niece is an ER doctor at Yale New Haven Hospital, a facility in a city and county with a higher COVID19 rate than Hollywood's and Broward's. 

The City of New Haven hasn't closed their City Hall.
And, of course, neither has any other city in South Florida.

Just Hollywood.




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Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Real Estate developers are clearly exploiting current lack of public transparency/engagement regarding development in #HollywoodFL during #COVID19 pandemic. Why's the city doing nothing to compensate? Residents are frustrated w/lack of participation.

Real Estate developers are clearly exploiting current lack of public transparency/engagement regarding development in #HollywoodFL during #COVID19 pandemic. 
Why's the city doing nothing to compensate? Residents are frustrated w/lack of participation.

I'll have much more to say about this subject in the coming days here on my blog, but for now I have two simple questions that I and many other concerned Hollywood residents believe are well worth asking and pondering: 

a.) Why is the current Hollywood City Commission -especially the two newly-elected members, Linda Hill Anderson and Adam Gruber- ignoring both the "optics" and the real life public policy dimensions of this situation, and NOT offering a reasonable solution for the Planning & Development meetings, as long as the city's less-than-dynamic pandemic rules prevent full in-person public participation by the neighborhood and the larger community?

b.) How come the City of Hollywood has the resources to arrange things so that the Hollywood Sustainability Advisory Committee, a committee that many if not most of you may not have even known existed, can have Virtual meetings that allows for citizen engagement, as they are on Thursday, yet for some reason, they can not do that for the much-more important Planning & Development Board?  

In case you did not know, the Planning & Development Board is one of the six citizen advisory Boards and Committees in Hollywood that REQUIRES appointees to file both a yearly Financial Disclosure Form as well as quarterly Gift Disclosure Form, while the Hollywood Sustainability Advisory Committee is... not.

That distinction shows what the city itself believes are the most important boards, no?

https://www.hollywoodfl.org/155/Boards-Committees

 

Color me less-than-impressed with how the city and its elected leaders have handled this matter thus far, and less-than-impressed that it may well be DAYS before most of the public in Hollywood ever finds out what really happened Tuesday night at Hollywood City Hall.

Clearly, I am not the only one who feels that way right now.


My tweet from Tuesday afternoon: https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/status/1354197430493978624



Below, my post to Nextdoor Hollywood from Monday at https://nextdoor.com/news_feed/?post=174916686&init_source=search



Dave

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Wednesday, December 30, 2020

When it's a question of "Use it or lose it" for South Florida governments and federal funds, you can pretty well guess that all logic and reason goes out the window QUICK to spend, spend, spend... But now, state/local governments have an additional year to account for CARES Act funds, so will better decisions be made?

When it's a question of "Use it or lose it" for South Florida governments and federal funds, you can pretty well guess that all logic and reason goes out the window QUICK to spend, spend, spend... But now, state/local governments have an additional year to account for CARES Act funds, so will better decisions be made?

If you are a longtime reader of the Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog -let alone a relative newcomer like so many of you are in our stay home New Normal era of coronavirus- I know that you're as shocked as me to learn that in Miami-Dade County, federal CARES Act money is paying for many, many things that are NOT directly related to what most reasonable people would consider any aspect of the COVID19 pandemic. 

Or, as a very knowledgeable civic activist friend here in Hollywood told me when this article appeared in the Herald last Thursday, "The thing is, you can only imagine how much worse the flim-flammery  must be in Broward!"

Miami Herald
Cities scrambling to meet CARES deadline. Here's why that means more money for police
By Aaron Leibowitz and Joey Flechas, Miami Herald
December 24, 2020

With the deadline to allocate COVID-19 relief funds less than a week away, local governments across Miami-Dade County are scrambling to make sure they don't leave money on the table.

They're giving out more grocery gift cards. They're distributing rent and mortgage assistance. They're even getting reimbursed for costs with no direct connection to the pandemic — namely, salaries for police and firefighters dating back to March.

It's all part of a mad dash to the Dec. 30 deadline for Miami-Dade to distribute $474 million in CARES Act funds. As of Dec. 7, only about half of that money had been spent with more in the pipeline. Among the outstanding amount was $50 million from a $75 million pot intended to reimburse municipalities for COVID-related costs.

"It doesn't look like it's working out very well," said Joseph Corradino, the mayor of Pinecrest and a member of the Miami-Dade League of Cities executive board. "It looks like the deadline is getting short for everybody to get their act together."

Read the rest of the story at: https://t.co/PyLdk40ngg?amp=1

It's even crazier than it sounds when you know that cities 

"no longer needed to present documents to justify the use of CARES Act dollars for public safety workers. Instead, police and fire salaries "are deemed significantly COVID-19 related, thereby alleviating the need for extra paperwork such as duty rosters [and] daily activity reports," Miami-Dade's chief financial officer Edward Marquez said in a Dec. 7 memo."

https://twitter.com/aaron_leib/status/1342133685701775360

This in an area of the U.S. renown and some would even say infamous for trying to gouge the federal government, especially when it comes to weather-related cleanups, with many local municipalities specializing in hurricane hocus pocus. 

Legitimate expenses related to preparation, response and clean up are one thing, of course, but South Florida is also known for submitting requests to FEMA for cleanup payments when storms did NOT... actually hit our area.

You can only imagine how this all looks to the rest of the country. 

I guess it's a good thing the news media, especially national TV, never deigns to mention it, huh?


Miami Herald 

FEMA denies Irma money for three cities. One desperately needs it to pay off a loan

By Aaron Leibowitz, Miami Herald
December 2, 2020

The federal government has rejected millions of dollars in requests by three Miami-Dade County municipalities to pay for debris cleanup after Hurricane Irma, saying substantial parts of their submissions failed to properly document the work and prove it was eligible for reimbursement.

El Portal, Miami Shores and Florida City each used the same consultant, Disaster Program & Operations, to help with the complex reimbursement process after the September 2017 storm. After a lengthy review, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the cities submitted flawed paperwork — and not just minor errors.

Read the whole article at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article247519230.html#:~:text=The%20federal%20government%20has%20rejected,it%20was%20eligible%20for%20reimbursement


https://twitter.com/aaron_leib/status/1334132540463046656


Just since I decided to write about this subject on the blog there's been a bit of a pivot in spending and accountability and reimbursement policy because of the language that Congress inserted into the bill that President Trump signed on Sunday.

Miami Herald
Last-minute law change could mean more COVID relief, grocery cards in Miami-Dade
By Douglas Hanks, Joey Flechas and Samantha Gross, Miami Herald
December 29, 2020


Read the whole article at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article248148830.html

Speaking of the serial mis-communicators in chief over the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and its Editorial Board, as of today, they've yet to mention in print that the bill that President Trump signed on Sunday means that CARES Act money given to state and local governments many months ago does NOT have to be used by Dec. 31. 

It's no longer "Use it or lose it."

But not one word of it in print from the sleepwalking Sun-Sentinel!


It's for many of the reasons stated so well in the preceding articles about local government's performance, namely underwhelming incompetency on the one hand and what can only be called benign neglect of public oversight by local Miami TV stations, that an idea is now percolating just below the surface among many people I am in regular contact with as so much of the South Florida news media increasingly looks to be taking a knee or biting its tongue when it comes to being objective, unbiased, or critical -by name- of the often inexplicable #COVID19 #pandemic responses we've all seen among County/City governments -and some nonprofits- in Broward and Miami-Dade.

The idea, such as it is, is that some prominent #SoFL bloggers -including me- are considering forming a Working Group in 2021 to critically and publicly examine the many mis-steps of the #Broward and #MiamiDade County Commissions, its cities and certain nonprofits.

That is especially true when it comes to South Florida elected officials' not-so-subtle hypocrisy on curfews and the wearing of face masks, where they prefer the school of Do As I Say, Not As I Do.

Along with some others, I'm planning on bringing some much-needed Sunshine to bear on the issues that in my opinion they have not been getting. 

One of the questions to be raised: What happens when unelected Broward County Administrator Bertha Henry makes a decision that is not supported by a majority of the elected nine-member Broward County Commission?

Like, for instance, the recent curfew that went into affect in Broward  that will be in effect December 25th through Monday January 4th from midnight to 5:00 a.m. each day, but which will be 1:00 a.m to 5:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve, Thursday night.

Broward Comm. Steve Geller was trotted out for a press conference right before Christmas and reporters, predictably, talked about it without actually saying out loud what the real process involved was, or for that matter, even mentioning that the emergency documents were signed by Henry, not by Geller or any other elected Commissioner.

So, on the one hand, the Broward League of Cities doesn't like the idea that Gov. Ron DeSantis has legally used his powers to prevent Florida cities from collecting fines on any curfew citations issued, but on the other hand, the mayors of Broward cities have made clear that they do NOT want to be seen or described as being a money-hungry politician trying to nickel-and-dime people to death during a pandemic.

That's known as trying to have it both ways, and up until now, the South Florida news media, and especially the four English language TV stations do not seem at all inclined on calling them out on this self-evident hypocrisy.

Bloggers, though, especially ones like myself who are well-informed and fact-based, have no such compunction about publicly calling out the hypocrisy.

As will be made increasingly clear in the coming weeks and months of 2021.


Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/ 





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Thursday, August 20, 2020

#VoteByMail - The odd, 2020 political issue that nobody could've predicted last year would arouse so much anger and passion. But it's also the issue that, like the weather, everyone feels they're an expert on, even when they aren't. To say nothing of being in the dark about how the finances of the USPS, and why it's so in the red


#VoteByMail - The odd, 2020 political issue that nobody could've predicted last year would arouse so much anger and passion. But it's also the issue that, like the weather, everyone feels they're an expert on, even when they aren't. To say nothing of being in the dark about how the finances of the USPS, and why it's so in the red.

Today's blog post serves as a bit of a follow-up to my previous comments here of July 12th regarding the realities of #VoteByMail, with some links to some interesting articles and columns on an surprising political divide in the U.S. that almost no reasonable person could have imagined last year would cause anger among some Americans: Where do you stand on the issue of local and state governments deciding to send out election ballots to all registered voters regardless of whether or not they requested them, and the potential for abuse.

SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2020
#VoteByMail - A word or two or three about the reliability of absentee ballots, via Wisconsin's recent very negative experience; Friends don't let friends vote for #JenniferGottlieb
https://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2020/07/votebymail-word-or-two-or-three-about.html

Here's a Washington Post story that's likely to be driving much of the #VoteByMail media conversation for a while, despite very few people in America really knowing all the very gruesome financial details regarding the US Postal Service and how it got that way.

It's worth remembering that U.S. Senators from more rural states -including some I know- will always be forced by virtue of public pressure to insist that their constituents not receive any less service than residents in urban areas, i.e. Saturday mail, the one thing that most urbanites are willing to do without in order to reduce costs, both institutional and long-term.

The Washington Post
Postal Service tells 46 states that mail-in ballots may not arrive in time to be counted
The warnings point to a grim possibility: Even if people voting by mail follow all the election rules, the pace of delivery may disqualify their votes.
By Erin Cox, Elise Viebeck, Jacob Bogage and Christopher Ingraham
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/usps-states-delayed-mail-in-ballots/2020/08/14/64bf3c3c-dcc7-11ea-8051-d5f887d73381_story.html


FoxNews Channel
Tucker Carlson: Media go all-in on mailbox conspiracy
Uploaded August 17, 2020
No one is stealing mailboxes. #FoxNews #Tucker
https://youtu.be/KGvpaejsrkU






















🗳 Fueled by mail ballots, Florida voters showed up this summer in remarkable numbers, turning out amid a pandemic at the highest rate seen in a presidential-year August primary since 1992. More than 3.8 million voters participated in Tuesday’s election, according to data posted late Tuesday by the Florida Division of Elections. In South Florida, more than 900,000 ballots were cast — more than two-thirds of them by mail. The increased participation generated expectations of a high-turnout presidential election between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden this November. And if Florida is expected to once again be a key electoral battlefield, mail ballots — one of Trump’s most controversial foils this year — will almost certainly play an unprecedented role. In Miami-Dade, where the number of votes in Tuesday’s election surpassed the number cast in the 2018 midterms by about 100,000, voter participation was up across the board this summer. But Democrats emerged from Tuesday’s election especially enthusiastic about mail voting, which helped boost turnout among voters between the ages of 18 and 34 and among voters who’d never before participated in an August election. Statewide, Democrats voted overwhelmingly by mail, casting more than 1.1 million mail ballots before Election Day began. Republicans, who once used absentee voting to build up pre-Election Day leads over Democrats, submitted at least 766,000 mail ballots, with results still being tallied Tuesday night. You can read more at the link in our bio // ✍️: David Smiley, 📸: @pportalphoto
A post shared by Miami Herald (@miamiherald) on   

South Florida Sun Sentinel
Editorial Board 
Big changes in Broward: Record turnout and a culture change in criminal justice  August 19th, 2020
Broward voters made history Tuesday, both in how we vote, and in who will likely lead the criminal justice system in this Democratic-rich, majority-minority county.
Contrary to elections of yore, when Broward became a national laughingstock for its untimely election results, appointed Elections Supervisor Pete Antonacci delivered a seemingly seamless election under the most trying of pandemic conditions.
Nothing speaks louder on election night than numbers. People want the results, quickly and accurately. And Antonacci's office delivered the rolling tallies without delays, far before Palm Beach County did. It also live-streamed its vote-counting and canvassing board's work. 
Also for the history books, almost 75% of Broward voters made clear that they prefer to vote by mail, which could lead to a record turnout in November's presidential election. This election proves that when government makes it easier and safer for people to vote, and people take sensible precautions, a lot more people will vote. About 25% of Broward voters turned out for this primary, up from 16% four years ago. That's a healthy sign for democracy.
And what's that about not trusting the Postal Service? The USPS delivered.
See the rest of the editorial at:
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/editorials/fl-op-edit-florida-election-takeaways-20200819-27r4kt27ljddxe6qahmxtc5qwi-story.html






President Trump has already offered $10 billion to fix Postal as part of a COVID relief package. Democrats have said no. They’re holding up a relief bill (including stimulus checks and small business relief) until they get more of their policy wishlist demands included.
— Mark Meadows (@MarkMeadows) August 16, 2020





























Latest new re #VoteByMail at: https://twitter.com/hashtag/votebymail?f=live



Dave 
David B. Smith 

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