A Sign of Hallandale Beach's Endemic Apathy is Staring Right at You -Get Even on Election Day!

Looking east from U.S-1 at the main construction site of what will be the retail component of The Village of Gulfstream, on what used to be the huge West parking lot of Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino.
September 17, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier

I've got dozens of photos that I've taken over the past year of the construction all along U.S.-1, many of which I will be posting in coming weeks.




September 17, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier

The sign above on U.S.-1 and S.E. 5th Street, across from the Gulfstream Park Race Track
& Casino, lets you know that you're just feet away from the Hallandale Beach City Hall and the Hallandale Beach Police Department Headquarters.
But what should really be erected there is a warning sign complete with skull and crossbones: Beware all ye who enter forth...

In the time that I've lived here, it's continually shown itself to be a completely dysfunctional government, one that gives every impression of holding itself both apart and above the citizens and residents it's supposed to serve and protect, almost daring you at times to complain about its queer habits and erratic behavior by means of comparison to what's generally thought of as "normal" everywhere else.

The crazy thing is, they really DON'T seem to think they have to follow the laws that govern everyone else in the state of Florida and the United States, whether of logic and reason, contracts, or, more to the point for this blog and the city's residents, simple things like the Florida Statutes on Sunshine Laws and Public Records to name but one.
You see, they love nothing so much as, alternately, playing a game of "Pass the buck," or,
attempting to tie you up in knots of red tape and double-talk.

At times you'd swear they've perfected the legendary Abbott & Costello "Who's on First?" comedic routine, and adapted it to sub-tropical municipal government in trying to confuse you about who's really responsible for anything.
(Video of their routine at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M)
And good luck in trying to get an accurate and up-to-date City Hall organizational flow chart!

City employees in Hallandale Beach routinely refuse to answer reasonable questions posed to them bycitizens, and often even berate you for having the nerve to ask!
This has happened to me and many other residents I know enough times to be more than a sheer coincidence, even though I have a low threshold for tolerating govt. employee apathy or incompetency.
At some point, when you see the same behavior exhibited over and over again in just about every dept., you come to understand that it's just S.O.P. at Hallandale Beach City Hall.

One of the first things that any visitor here notices that both self-evident and quite shocking in its own backward way, is the blatant disregard by the HB Police Dept. and HB Fire Dept. for basic safety rules.
Common sense rules of behavior that are in place in every other American town, no matter how large or obscure.
City employees -and friends of theirs- routinely park "their cars" directly in front of the building's east entrance, often for hours at a time. That's right, I said for HOURS at a time.

While in every other town you'd find a clearly posted sign saying simply: "No Parking, Fire Zone, Cars Will be Towed," in Hallandale Beach, there are NO signs at all.
(Not even signs warning you that you are being monitored by security cameras when you are in the parking lot, as is standard procedure everywhere else. Par for the course!)

I've personally observed parked HB city vehicles parked there at the east entrance that have prevented HB Fire & Rescue vehicles from getting as close as possible to the building.
I've also personally spoken to individual members of HB Fire & Rescue after such incidents, and they were positively indignant that they are forced to put up with this sort of behavior in the Year 2008.

Oh, and one last thing.

The lights that are supposed to illuminate this sign in front of Hallandale Beach's City Hall HAVEN'T worked properly in over FOUR YEARS, either.
Just like their cousin down the block on U.S.-1/South Federal Highway, at the city border with the City of Aventura.

Since I've lived here, I've mentioned this simple fact to dozens of Hallandale Beach city officials, including Mayor Joy Cooper, City Manager Mike Good, his staff, the mendacious Police Chief...
None of them have done a thing, which is why, as of September 8th, 2008, the sign was STILL completely dark at night!

Around September 15th, an evening visit revealed that 1 of the 2 lights had finally started working within the previous few days.
But NOT both!

September 17, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier
Part of this light is from my camera flash.

September 17, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier
In this photo you can clearly see what's what.

A Sign of Hallandale Beach's Endemic Apathy is Staring Right at You -Get Even on Election Day! Six weeks from today!

Video below shot on September 17, 2008 by South Beach Hoosier

A Sign of Hallandale Beach's Endemic Apathy is Staring Right at You -Get Even on Election Day!

Welcome to Dark and Scary Hallandale Beach!

Monday September 22nd, 2008

U.S.-1/South Federal Highway
7:45 p.m.

You know that 'Welcome to Hallandale Beach' sign that's been out for over FOUR YEARS that I'm always complaining about?

Which one, there's two of them. The one in front of Hallandale Beach City Hall, or the one on the Broward County/Miami-Dade boundary with the City of Aventura, near the entrance to The Village at Gulfstream?
The latter.
What about it?
It's still out!

Now you can see for yourself what bad governance looks like.

It looks like this -years and years of continually making a bad first impression on visitors at night.

That's the City of Hallandale Beach, Florida in a nutshell in the Year 2008.

Talk the talk, Walk the walk, But write that campaign check!

While looking for something else last night, I came across these little nuggets of information.
Make of it what you will:

http://query.nictusa.com/pres/2007/Q2/C00431569/A_EMPLOYER_C00431569.html

CONTRIBUTIONS BY EMPLOYER

HILLARY CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT

FEC Committee ID #: C00431569
This report contains activity for a Primary Election
Report type: July Quarterly
This Report is an Amendment Filed 04/13/2008

CITY OF AVENTURA 2,000.00
CITY OF BAKERSFIELD 4,600.00
CITY OF BAKERSFIELD FIRE DEPARTMENT 500.00
CITY OF BOSTON 400.00
CITY OF BUFFALO 500.00
CITY OF CHICAGO 1,205.00
CITY OF HALLANDALE BEACH 300.00
CITY OF LOS ANGELES 1,500.00
CITY OF MAHTOMEDI 2,300.00
CITY OF MIAMI 1,000.00
CITY OF MIDWAY 300.00
CITY OF MILLBRAE 500.00
CITY OF NEW YORK 500.00
CITY OF NEWARK, NJ 4,600.00
CITY OF PHILADELPHIA 100.00
CITY OF PORTLAND IN OREG 70.00
CITY OF PROVIDENCE 1,000.00
CITY OF SACRAMENTO 350.00
CITY OF SAN JOSE 1,000.00
CITY OF SANTA CRUZ 275.00
CITY OF SEATTLE 100.00
CITY OF ST LOUIS 1,000.00
CITY OF SUNNYVALE 250.00
CITY OF SYRACUSE 2,300.00
CITY OF TULSA 1,000.00

Hallandale Beach Blog recommends outside.in as a news source

Update: outside.in was acquired by Patch in 2011 and is no longer is in operation.
"After 3 years & 4 months of organizing the web around neighborhoods, outside.in has been acquired by Patch."

While I suspect that for many of you, the existence of this company I'm going to speak of has long been "common knowledge," Hallandale Beach Blog was very pleased to recently discover a new source for local news and info that will do much for bloggers all over the country who want to keep their own unique voice, and NOT become simply an echo chamber for the MSM, responding only to whatever the columnists, reporters and editors of the large newspapers in their towns deign to make public.

(That said, I'm aware of the fact that they have a financial connection with the Washington Post.)

The company is called outside.in and they are, so they say, "The web’s leading platform for neighborhood news and conversation."

By going here, you can not only find recents posts of, well, mine, but also find posts by other bloggers and news sources around the world that mention these same communities that we both share an interest in.

In the short weeks since I first discovered this site, I've been able to find more than a fair amount of interesting news about these communities that I'd never have known about otherwise, thru more traditional search engines or tools.

It's actually rather addictive as you think of more and more places that you can keep tabs on.

As larger numbers of consumers become aware of outside.in and realize that its sheer ease of use and great utility for keeping up with places and topics of interest to them really sinks in, literally
allowing users to see maps indicating where these described activities are taking place, word-of-mouth will quickly spread.

There are also great functions on the page that allow you to look for these posts by either name, zip code or topic, within the community, to really zero in on a topic of interest.

The high degree of personalization is what I like best.

http://outside.in/Aventura_FL

http://outside.in/Hallandale_FL

http://outside.in/Hollywood_FL

http://outside.in/Miami_FL

Next HB Resident Forum on Tuesday at 6 p.m.

If you've had ideas, gripes or questions that you've been meaning to get off your chest the past few months, or have questions about items scheduled to be discussed at the next Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting scheduled for Wednesday, May 21st at 1:30 p.m., please keep in mind that Tuesday night's Resident Forum meeting will be the last one hosted by Comm. Keith London until August.


I've been meaning to mention this here for the past two weeks, but on the chance that you didn't know it or don't read the newspaper regularly, both Comm. London as well as Hollywood Mayor Peter Bober were named to the Miami SunPost 50 list at the beginning of the month.


Also named to the list was the late George Berlin of Aventura, one of the original partners of Turnberry Associates, who was so instrumental in so many aspects of that part of NE Dade becoming something more than just the weird no-man's land between Greynolds Park and Gulfstream Park Race Track, when I was growing-up in North Miami Beach in the 197o's, since there wasn't much around there besides a few Turnberry buildings.

As to the idea of the forums, which I've been to three of so far, it's politically self-evident that smart and pro-active information outreach and sharing throughout the community is an important element of both effective governance and electioneering, yet given what I've seen over the last four years, it seems to be a point lost on all but a few people in Hallandale Beach, Hollywood and Aventura, save Keith London, Peter Bober and a handful of others.

This is a great example of what Hollywood's doing: http://www.miamisunpost.com/050808newshollywood.htm


I knew the race track best as the home of the Broward County Youth Fair -SO MUCH closer than the Dade County Youth Fair, way down in Tamiami!- where I went on what I think was probably the first blind date of the 3-4 I ever went on, with a friend's cousin down from Chicago for the holidays.
When he first broached the idea, perhaps at his mother's suggestion, I do recall asking why he'd never mentioned her before. Hello, literary foreshadowing!

But the good news was that she turned out to be funny, bright AND gorgeous, and resembled nothing so much as a blond teen version of Pamela Sue Martin, then of the Sunday night ABC-TV show, "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries"
http://www.pamelasuemartin.net/television/nancy_drew/diamond_triangle/diamond23.htm

(Later when I was at IU, she played "Fallon Carrington Colby" on "Dynasty.")

I think the word SMITTEN was invented to describe my feelings for Pamela Sue Martin!


When she pulled up to my house in my friend's (her cousin's) Camaro, dressed in her sharp-looking cheerleader varsity jacket, with the megaphone pin on her school letters, I was positively dumb-struck.

The only real downer for the evening for me was that she was SO obsessed with then-popular teen heart-throb Leif Garrett, who was the featured performer the night we went to the Fair, that we spent most of our time hopping from one seat to another, trying to get a better vantage point, which was her idea, not mine.

It wasn't a total loss, since we did some things together the rest of the time she was visiting, but I lost the early opportunity to develop some rapport because of her desire to invest so much time and effort in moving around the stands.

By the way, speaking of the area that later became Aventura, I still remember when the Service Merchandise catalog store near Loehman's Plaza was THE place to go in NE Dade for nice radios and stereos, especially once the Gold Triangle store at Skylake Mall that I once worked at, closed for good. (I worked in sporting goods.)
________________________________
http://www.miamisunpost.com/archives/2008/04-24/042408sunpost50KeithLondon.htm
The 2008 SunPost 50
April 24, 08
Keith London
The Rabble-Rouser


http://www.miamisunpost.com/archives/2008/04-24/042408sunpost50PeterBober.htm
The 2008 SunPost 50
April 24, 08
Peter Bober
Fresh Blood


http://www.miamisunpost.com/archives/2008/04-24/042408sunpost50georgeberlin.htm
The 2008 SunPost 50
April 24, 08
SPECIAL HONOR
George Berlin
The Pioneer

HB ignores city website's problems and Gulfstream Park

Thanks for swinging by the Hallandale Beach Blog to take a peek at what's going on around the area and my take on that, good, bad and in-between.

I've been juggling quite a lot of things in the air over the past few weeks, both personal and professional, so apologize to those of you who make a point of giving me some of your time occasionally, to see what's what in this part of Southeast Florida, hard by Gulfstream Park Racetrack and the Atlantic Ocean.

I've still got a lot of HBB posts in frozen storage, waiting for your eventual perusal, that I've already written, and hope to defrost them over the next few days, perhaps even before the next scheduled City Commission meeting on Wednesday April 2nd.

They're waiting, not-so-patiently, for some fact-checking inquiry emails I sent out to some third parties, so I can post them without having any doubts as to their factual accuracy or contentions.
Over the next few days, I'll expect to post some of those for you to compensate for the paucity of posts here lately.

I think you'll see that the wait was worth it, since there are many areas of discussion and debate that I've not commented on since the beginning of the year.

Some of those comments will be about what's transpired -or hasn't- since the beginning of the year, as well as thoughts and reflections on the all-day Special HB City Commission Meeting on February 27th at the HB Cultural Community Center.

That particular public meeting attracted a hardcore group of about 2-3 dozen for most of the day, with others drifting in for periods of time to check out what was going on, especially after lunch.

As it happens, for whatever it's worth, one of those late-arriving people was Comm. Dorothy Ross, who was a no-show until approximately 1:22 p.m.

The day resembled nothing so much as a roller coaster, with moments of real insight and lucidity quickly followed by moments of high camp, bathos and over-reaction to reasonable questions posed to staffers.

The scheduled agenda was a discussion of the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) Lower East Coast Plan Requirements, the EDAW Citywide Master Plan and the Citywide Traffic Study by HDR Engineering, Inc.

I was present from just before the 10 a.m. kickoff until about 6 p,m., and left only because I'd already heard the EDAW presentation before, right after Christmas, which was about 75% complete by the time I split.

Plus, I'd gotten no sleep the night before and the coffee at the Cultural Center didn't agree with me.
Or maybe I'm just too used to the coffee from Denny's and Dunkin Donuts, and the Folgers I buy that I liberally use French vanilla cream with to get it just right.
Next time I'll know to bring my own.

F.Y.I. - According to some on the dais, there'll be an encore performance of the EDAW presentation some night in the near future, though I didn't hear a specific date mentioned.

I'll try to find out when and where that'll be and share the news with you here.

Some past essays that have heretofore not yet posted are due primarily to the photos I've taken not coming out quite as well as I either wanted or expected.

This is especially the case with a series of photos I've taken over the past few months of
a.) construction activities at Gulfstream Park,
b.) the Broadwalk along Hollywood Beach,
c.) ongoing construction of Trump Hollywood,
d.) the unsightly physical conditions of the beach,
e.) current locations of prospective commuter train stations, as well as various activities at
f.) the Arts Park at Young Circle.

The latter issue in particular is still a subject of great frustration with me, for the City of Hollywood's STILL not coming thru on assurances made to me at City Hall last February concerning public safety issues on the east side of the circle.

Plus, there's that old reliable, the complete absence of a single bus shelter, 15 months after the road construction activities on the Circle concluded, and the old bus stop positions were reinstituted, at the largest transit stop in SE Broward.

I hope to arrange a meeting sometime soon with Mayor Peter Bober's staff to discuss some of these matters, since I've been a vocal supporter of his efforts over the years to change the dynamics of Hollywood, a place that I first saw when I was seven-years old.

It's been very frustrating not be able to post certain of these comments, since I aim to be timely and topical here, but I've noticed over the past few months that my photos, whether taken with my old but always reliable Canon camera, or a Fuji disposable, seem, well, blah to be honest, on my Blogger page.

Certainly more so than many of my friends' photos -with similar cameras- on their own blog pages around the country, especially up in the D.C. area.

I hardly need to say here that good photos really help amplify a particular point or contention, so this inability to post many of the photos I've already taken the past year, has caused me lots of aggravation and gnashing of teeth.

I recently got a new digital camera which should hopefully allow me to post my comments and photos in a much more contemporaneous fashion.

Some other examples of posts not published include my observations on the all-day Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting regarding the approval of the DOMUS project's variance on U.S.-1 and S.E. 8th Street, where the Italian restaurant was formerly located, across from Gulfstream Park.

I wanted to write about my conversations with the Norberg family, the antics of State Rep. Steve Geller, in his role as lobbyist and grand inquisitor on behalf of a client, using every legal trick in the book to prevent a nearby Hallandale Beach property owner from publicly opposing his client's request for the change.

I found his performance truly appalling and hope to post a rough transcript of it here later for your perusal.

Considering how much the face and dynamics of Hallandale Beach and U.S.-1 will be changed forever once this gets built, the Herald deciding not to send a reporter, thereby missing the anger, theatrics and histrionics, really speaks to how uneven the Herald's local coverage is.

Not that their national or state coverage is anything to shout about either, with a few exceptions, as I'm constantly mentioning at my other blog, South Beach Hoosier.

Most of these posts will take the form of taking a serious look at some of the sort of everyday things that make me particularly cringe everytime I see them in Aventura, Hollywood or Hallandale Beach, since they are well within the scope and capability of most cities, just not these apparently.

Obviously, one of the things I'm very behind in commenting upon is the City of Hallandale Beach's proposed Master Plan, which was unveiled for the first time just after Christmas at a community forum at the HB Cultural Center before roughly about 100 or so interested city residents.
http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/DocumentView.asp?DID=437

In the next few days I'll also have some thoughts on the two Resident Forums hosted by Comm. Keith London that I've attended recently, including the first one back on February 19th, the night before what was scheduled to be the next-to-last evening Commission meeting of the six-month 'experiment' the Commission voted for last year.

You'll recall that the debate last year among HB residents who showed up at HB City Hall consisted largely of arguing the self-evident point that evening meetings allow the greatest number of citizen taxpayers to attend.

Each Forum with Comm. London was held in Room 192, a small room adjacent to the City Hall Chambers, and lasted roughly two hours, attracting a very vocal and opinionated group of HB citizens.

I was very pleased to be there even under the cramped conditions, especially to hear some honest and passionate back-and-forth about issues that need to be addressed in the city, even if I didn't always agree with every idea I heard.

To state the obvious, these Forums were an excellent idea, and it's a pretty sad reflection on the past civic practices in Hallandale Beach that nobody ever thought to do it before.
(As of today, at least, nobody has ever told me of a prior practice.)

Frankly, it should've been the actual practice of all city commissioners here all along, sort of like a professor's office hours.

There are always some things you just don't want to say aloud in class -or before a microphone at a City Commission hearing.

These Forums provide that opportunity, esp. for the city's residents who are on the shy side.

Before I forget, I did want to second Comm. Keith London's apt comments at the Feb. 27th meeting about something I could hardly believe, though I saw it for myself.

He spoke with what I thought was the appropriate amount of pique regarding the sheer absurdity of members of the Commission being handed documents by staffers after walking into the Cultural Center for that all-day meeting, and being expected to digest 42 pages -over a cup of coffee and a bagel!

Then being expected to digest it all and ask some probing and relevant questions based on what you've read -as opposed to whatever ones you walked in with.

I though those comments were long overdue, but raise an even bigger question.

Why in the world would anyone think that would produce good results?

And why are SO MANY bad practices within the City of Hallandale Beach allowed to persist?
Personally, I've always thought that there ought to be a LOT MORE information available to HB citizens in advance of those City Commission meetings, as well as the Planning and Zoning Meetings, the only two meetings that the city requires COMCAST to televise.

In that respect, the contrast with the City of Hollywood could hardly be more stark, since I routinely receive an automated email notice from them days in advance of a meeting, complete with an agenda and information or links about the topics.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel!

Honestly, the information has already been gathered and inputted by the staff, and the computer does all the hard work, so what's to argue about?

That would allow citizens to print-out whatever parts of the meeting they're most interested in at home, and either bring that print-out with them to the meetings, or refer to it while watching the telecast from home.

Where's the downside to this?

Compare that to what the City of Hollywood does by making everything available at your fingertips.

http://www.hollywoodfl.org/city_clerks/comm_meeting.htm
City Commission Agendas
Regular Meetings are broadcast live on the internet on the first and third Wednesday of each month at 1:00 PM EST. Meetings are also broadcast live on the City's cable television Channel 78.

City Commission Agendas
City agendas are in Adobe Acrobat format (pdf) through DocDepot, an online searchable repository for the agendas, minutes and results. Click here for information on how to download the free Acrobat Reader.
Please click on the DocDepot link, which will open a new window. You will then be able to search by meeting date or a keyword to find a specific agenda.

Also, I've never mentioned it thus far this year, but there continue to be really nonsensical problems with the city's website, a subject that ought to be a subject for future discussion at Commission meetings, so citizens can highlight their real world problems with the site.

Last year, the website caused such incredulity on my part that I made two separate trips to the City Manager's office, last September and October, in order to find out if I was just the latest in a long line of people complaining -or the first.

Once there, I broke it down very simply and asked the secretary/receptionist there to try to access something on the city's website on her computer that the Mayor and City Manager had claimed at an earlier hearing were, in fact, there.

The secretary/receptionist had no luck accessing the info either.

Reason: because it wasn't there.

Their office also seemed to have no idea in September and October that the most recent "Agendas & Minutes" actually posted on the website were from April, counter to what had been said publicly.

Not that you could actually even find the Minutes, though.

Trust me, the problems remain long after the finger-pointing & buck-passing have faded into bad memory.

For instance, at http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/index.asp?NID=226 , as recently as two weeks ago, it was impossible to access the links for Meeting Agendas prior to May 16th, 2007, nor was there any kind of explanation why or even a link to where they were now located.

If it had been incorporated into the actual Minutes from those hearings, which would make sense, why was there no information stating that, much less, a link taking you to this magical place? Incompetency or laziness?

As it is, if you try to access the first five agendas on that page, i.e pre-May 16th, you will get the following message:

We're sorry, but there is not a web page matching your entry.

You entered: www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/DocumentView.asp?DID=371&referrer=http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/index.asp?NID=226

Because of numerous bad experiences with them since I moved here, I've never been a fan of the City Clerk's office performance to begin with, for reasons I'll tell you about in greater detail in the future, since it's too exasperating to get into any detail here.

But I will tell you that their passive aggressive attitude towards city residents, almost trying to bait them into getting upset, has twice led me to complain to the City Manager's office since last summer alone.

And those are just the two incidents I actually had the time to follow through on, rather than let it pass without comment.

And trust me, I hear similar complaints about that office too often around town for it to be unique to me.

Another disturbing thing is that on the drop-down menu for the City Commission, the word Agendas appears twice, when it's only needed once, and the first time, it's under the category "Agendas & Minutes."

But, of course, as you might surmise, there are NO actual Minutes to actually be found there, and haven't been since I can remember.

Where exactly are the HB City Commission Minutes since June 20, 2007 on the city's website???

And why are COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY AGENDAS listed under the City Clerk's office rather than their own CRA drop down menu?

And why is the only item listed from almost eleven (11) months ago, May 4, 2007?

And just to make it better, as if that wasn't embarrassing enough, when the page actually opens up, it says, "We're sorry, but there is not a web page matching your entry."

You entered: www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/DocumentView.asp?DID=373&referrer=http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/index.asp?nid=578

Click here to go to the home page

So what happened to that information exactly?

Did it just disappear?

That's par for the course in the inexplicable and serpentine world of HB's City Hall.

Nobody can explain to me why City Advisory Boards and Committees are listed under both the City Commission and under City Clerk on the drop-down menu, when there's no logical reason that someone would think to look there first.

Here's Aventura's simple method of dealing with this:
http://www.cityofaventura.com/commission/advisory.htm#traffic

Logically, Advisory Boards and Committees should have their own line of drop-downs, along with the info I suggested above, along with a page informing the public what their recent activities have been.

And why is there no list on the city website of members of the various city Advisory Boards, with information about their terms, along with information about whom the particular staff contact is?

Again, the City of Hollywood shows exactly how this should be handled to make it easy for everyone concerned:
http://www.hollywoodfl.org/html/CitizensTransportation.htm

On the HB city website, why is the City Manager's photo on the City Commission page, when his is office is a separate entity that works for them, and has its own separate page already?

And why does the City Manager's office page not list the staff's names and their particular areas of responsibility or expertise, so that when you call, you know whom to direct your inquiry to?

Where's a simple flow chart?

And why is there a Calendar function to the right of the Development Services homepage that lists the City Commission meetings, but NOT one on the City Commission's own home page?

That I suggest is crazy.

When the city's website was finally changed, there was much talk about how it'd make things easier.

Did nobody think to run the sort of routine diagnostic or organizational examination of it prior to it coming online to check for problems?

It sure doesn't seem like it.

Speaking of Development Services as I was a few minutes ago, is there a reason why the online version -the only version?- of Current Development Activity In The City of Hallandale Beach
http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/DocumentView.asp?DID=203 has NOT been updated since last February, to reflect any changes?

It's 14 months later!

Plus, we all know what the deal is with The European Club, so why can't the website be accurate 12 weeks into a new year?

Because I had to leave the February 20th City Commission hearing around 10 p.m., right after the discussion of the Pension Board, I never got the opportunity to hear the Commission discuss the pros and cons of Item 8C, about placing campaign finance reports on the city website, though I did read the staff material available.

I'll hope to gave some info on that soon, so we'll BOTH know.

It's yet another common sense move the city should make towards transparency, but that, once again, may in fact be the kiss of death for it.

Finally, though I still have lots on my mind and stored up in the computer, I'll close with this golden nugget for you readers to ponder -and if you have an answer to it, let me know.

It's a matter that should be of concern to everyone in the city who values history and accuracy, since it shows how blind and oblivious the City of Hallandale Beach usually is.

I've personally wondered about it since the first day the city's website changed, and I mentioned it to almost everyone I met at the time, to see if they had noticed it, too.

When I've been at public city meetings or forums and have seen City Hall folks try to give either me or other citizens the run-around or brush-off, rather than simply answer a question or acknowledge a genuine problem, and try to get it resolved as efficiently and expeditiously as possible, I've thought of this one thing until my head literally hurts.

How is it possible that in the City of Hallandale Beach in the year 2008, when there is one entity above every other that has always received and commanded the Lion's Share of publicity for this town, there are ZERO photographs, especially of an historical or iconic nature, of Gulfstream Park anywhere in City Hall's public areas, or a current or past one on the city's website?

Yes, Gulfstream Park Racetrack, the place right across the street from City Hall that employs all those people and brings in all those visitors who spend money here.

In fact, the word Gulfstream never appears on the city's own website page labeled History of the City http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/index.asp?nid=333

How is that at all remotely possible???

Who was the Hallandale Beach genius who decided that made sense?

To me, that's beyond insane, that's reason enough for junking the City's website and starting over from scratch, but this time, asking for citizen input, even of high school kids, because it's indeed certifiable proof of some very poor management and oversight at City Hall.

It's worse that obliviousness, it's routine!

We all know that people who've relocated here and made the kind of financial investment they have into their expensive homes and condos in Hallandale Beach, like over at The Duo, did not sign up to live in a city that gives every impression of NOT having the faintest clue as to what they're doing, and, in the process, give citizens the worst possible return for their investment and taxes, scoffing at normal transparency.

Citizens here are entitled to so very much better than they've been getting at City Hall for years.
Again, how can a City Hall that ignores Gulfstream Park's longtime economic and social contribution to the city over the years, ever expect to be taken seriously by its residents and the larger South Florida community?

Beats me.

To quote the immortal words of young Hamlet, the Danish Prince: "Aye, there's the rub!"

To see photographs and drawings on old postcards of Gulftream Park Racetrack's glamorous past, complete with its royal-palm lined club house entrance, fantastic cantilever grandstand, et al, see: http://www.cardcow.com/search2.php?substring=gulfstream%20park

South Florida suffers in the comparison -AGAIN!; DC's Shaw neighborhood is getting cleaned-up!

This is a January 31st post I made on parent blog, South Beach Hoosier, which has obvious lessons for Hallandale Beach.
________________________________
Wow!!!

Was spending some time on the computer yesterday double-checking some information about a local matter back up in DC, and happened to come across some really amazing news that took place in the long-beleaguered Shaw neighborhood of Washington, something that should've taken place years ago if the city was run more for the benefit of its citizens and residents instead of the commercial interests.
The amazing photos tell the tale better than I ever could.

Whether they represent gang territory, a drug market, the
site of other criminal activity or some combination of all those things, DDOT and MPD crews were out this morning removing all of the shoes from one of the trees on the south side of the 400 block of Q Street NW. This particular problem has been ignored for years and residents have stated that the sight of these shoes caught up tree branches, or on cobra-style street lights, contributed to a threatening environment — much like gang tags.

I found this most happy nugget on the post of January 29th on the forum and blog of DC Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 2CO2's Commissioner Kevin Chapple.
http://chappleanc.com/public/index.php/sitesnsounds

See also the cogent blog comments and photos at both the dcist and jimbo.info
http://dcist.com/2008/01/29/ddot_removes_sh.php and http://www.jimbo.info/weblog/2008/01/the-deshoeing-of-the-sycamore.html

I can only imagine what people coming home from work all around the greater Washington area must've thought when they first turned on their TV.
Rather than being confronted with the latest in a series of never ending bad news, whether drive-by shooting of innocent kids, or the latest account of ethics/criminal charges involving some local pol, actually heard some positive and uplifting news for a change: nothing.
They were too dumbfounded for words!

I'm sure that the whole electronic armada of Washington's local TV news satellite trucks were on hand to record the event for posterity, and get the somewhat dazed comments of happy neighbors, who, in all likelihood, probably thought the shoes might never come down before the whole tree did.

South Florida public policy types like myself can only look from afar and sigh wistfully when confronted with this.

Not only the actions taken but also the impressive way that Mr. Chapple has empowered his community with useful information to communicate to the general public and neighborhood activists -and the outside world- the likes of which I've never seen or heard about in this part of the world.

Knowing how things are really done down here, we can only bow our heads in shame when comparing Commissioner Chapple's efforts to the rather shocking bare-bones or even schlock government website portals that so many local elected officials down here hide behind.

Let me remind you of but one example I've already written about before in this space.

This past summer, during the height of the drought, when I tried to alert the City of Aventura to a rapidly spreading water leak on a sidewalk alongside U.S.-1, after nobody at Aventura City Hall would take my phone call shortly before 5:00 p.m., I sent an email with all the particulars to the mayor, city manager and assorted council members, hoping that someone would see it.
Moments later, my email to them was returned to me, marked as possible spam by Aventura's own website!
What a slap in the face!

After this confounding affair, I called the Aventura Police Dept., and reported the water situation, but only after asking the officer I spoke with why it was that the Police Dept. were the only folks in the so-called "City of Excellence" actually answering their telephone during normal city business hours.

And let's not forget life in the the postage stamp-sized duchy where I live, the City of Hallandale Beach.

Nearly a year after I first alerted City Hall officials to some rather obvious longstanding problems on A1A, U.S.-1 and Hallandale Beach Boulevard, as well as at the public beach, and later placed supporting evidence by way of photographs of just some of the offending problems on my blog, www.HallandaleBeachBlog.blogspot.com , the city STILL hasn't done a single thing to rectify these solved problems!
In fact, recent walking tours of the offending areas show it's actually worse!

There is a car fender/bumper and other small auto parts, as well as broken glass, from some sort of car accident that took place almost three months ago, on the south sidewalk of the 1100 block of East Hallandale Beach Blvd.
There's been yellow tape around it all this time, but it never gets cleaned up!!!!!!!

I'll have photos of that perfect example of the city's incompetency up on my Hallandale Beach Blog in a few days, including some from a point of view that show how ridiculously close it is to the Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce.
It's not hiding, it's in plain sight: on one of the three main roads of the city.

In November, I had what I thought at the time was an earnest one-hour talk at City Hall with two people from City Manager Mike Good's office about the myriad problems I'd publicly
identified in this blog, and discussed over and over with my family, friends and fellow citizens.

Armed with enough facts & figures and logic & reason to leave them somewhat dazed at the amount of specific information I could give them without notes, I started telling my story.

After about thirty minutes of recounting one embarrassing anecdote after another of the city's cluelessness -like placing giant water pipes in the Fire Lane of an apt. complex full of senior citizens, without anything around it!- I got my second wind.

After a while, the two city employees seemed to get a bit shell-shocked at the sheer amount of detailed information I could identify that was self-evident to anyone with eyesight.

Towards the end, they seemed somewhat pained at how far short the city seems to be in delivering for its citizens and residents, if not outright embarrassed.
But maybe I'm projecting.

I recounted many anecdotes, only a fraction of which I've ever mentioned in my HBB blog.

The ones I did mention all had one thing in in common: how poorly the City of Hallandale Beach continues to be managed, administered and coordinated, regarding even the most basic of services.

When I reminded them that the problems were so obvious that I'd placed photos of them on HBB, they just sighed.

Most galling of all, of course, is that I told them that there seem to be a complete absence of any sort of real punishment or rebuke for city employees NOT doing their jobs properly, or ignoring problems that could hardly be more obvious.

And here we are, more than two months-plus since that conversation, and an observant walk around the city reveals that nothing's changed!

Welcome to the City of Hallandale Beach in the year 2008.

One Tree Hill's Hilarie Burton at Aventura Macy's Jan, 19th

Dear City of Aventura Police Dept:

Please begin making preparations for Saturday's traffic jam on U.S.-1 -now!

But seriously.... with Hilarie Burton AND a CW casting call for the entire state of Florida scheduled for the Aventura Macy's on Saturday afternoon, I can only imagine what kind of zoo scene that's going to be. Lots of star gazers and star wannabes.

But is it a scene worthy of some blogging on pop culture?

Why yes, he said knowing there were no IU basketball games or NFL playoff games scheduled that afternoon that would cause him to miss the likely hijinks and hysteria.

Meanwhile... if you don't know who I'm talking about, see http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1122026/ and
http://www.hilarie-burton.com/hilarie.php

'Nuff said!

Ultimate Fan Weekend contest details at: http://www.cwtv.com/thecw/macys

Macy's Aventura Womens & Kids
19535 Biscayne Blvd. Aventura, FL 33180

Macy's press release about One Tree Hill casting call: http://www1.macys.com/store/event/index.ognc?action=locatorDetail&storeId=305&eventId=4884

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/tv/sfl-jeopardy,0,4455614.story
excerpted from
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
By Tom Jicha
January 10, 2008

Macy's at Aventura will become Peyton's place on Jan. 19.

Hilarie Burton, who plays Peyton Sawyer on One Tree Hill, will be signing autographs from 2-4 p.m. at the deparment store.

Burton's appearance is part of the promotion for the CW series' Ultimate Fan Weekend.

Eight fans nationwide will win a trip to North Carolina, where the show films, get a chance to visit the set, meet the cast and walk through a scene.

Not that it's either here or there, but for what it's worth, at the carefully-guarded bunker that is the HQ of South Beach Hoosier/Hallandale Beach Blog, One Tree Hill star Sophia Bush, a former USC Kappa Kappa Gamma -also a Kappa? Ashley Judd at U.K.- is deemed one of the dozen most beautiful women in the whole country.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0124208/

She doesn't make us weak in our knees, she knocks us over like a bowling pin.
If Sophia Bush is ever somewhere publicly within the area code, South Beach Hoosier will be there to take photos!

She reminds us of every every dark-haired IU coed whom we were ever attracted to or smitten by, who was, conveniently, a friend of a friend at Chi Omega or Tri-Delt or Delta Gamma or..., but who'd had the very same boyfriend since high school and all throughout her time at IU.
We hated that!

Housecleaning: Old Hallandale Beach Blog header to archives

To free up some space at the top for more photos, I'm retiring this old header I've used since creating this site and putting in in archives, while retaining a shorter version.

HallandaleBeachBlog is where I try to inject/superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and insight onto local Broward County and South Florida government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now.

On this blog, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger and laser-like attention on the coastal cities of Aventura, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.

IF you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be in stultifying traffic, be paying higher-than-necessary taxes, and continually musing about the chronic lack of accountability among not only elected govt. officials, but also of city, county and state employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, eager work-ethic mentality that residents deserve.

This is particularly true in the town I live in, Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood.

There, the "Perfect Storm" of apathy, incompetency and cronyism is all too self-evident.

Sadly for its residents, HB is where even easily-solved, quality-of-life problems are left to fester for YEARS on end, because of myopia, lack of common sense and unsatisatisfactory management among the Mayor, Joy Cooper, the City Manager, D. Mike Good & the City Commission, excepting the recently-elected Keith London.

London's election at least offers the possibility of righting the direction of a city with lots of potential, but whose citizens have become, quite frankly, numb and shell-shocked to its myriad outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of mismanagement and lack of foresight.

On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion, merely kicked -once again- further down the road.

(Yet this cast of characters, led by Vice Mayor William Julian and Commissioners Dorothy Ross and Francine Schiller voted in early May to triple their annual pay from $21,196 to $75,000 for a part-time job, before they retreated due to public pressure.)

I used to ask myself, rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show that through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?"

Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable but skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time, and wanting questions answered in a honest and logical way that citizens have the right to expect.

Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change.