An open letter to Florida CFO Jeff Atwater about the long overdue need for CRA reform in Florida. Today's Florida Bulldog expose by William Gjebre is a perfect example of why these spending/ethical reforms were needed... YESTERDAY: @Florida_Bulldog: Fort Lauderdale to use “poor people’s money” to subsidize transit for affluent?

@JeffAtwater CRA = slush fund? @Florida_Bulldog: FTL to use “poor people’s money” to subsidize #transit 4 affluent? https://t.co/XKd5iRjy1V

— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) October 20, 2015

October 20, 2015

Dear Mr. Atwater:

Per the enclosed story from this morning's newest expose in the Florida Bulldog, 

'Fort Lauderdale to use “poor people’s money” to subsidize transit for affluent?,'

I had some quick thoughts to share with you.

I do so because your record in public service shows that more than seems true with 

99% of the elected officials in this state, you've proven to be someone who shows 

via word and deed that you believe in both the spirit and letter of Florida's laws 

governing public accountability and spending, not just the abstract idea of them. 

Given my experience in Hallandale Beach, which I have recounted to you previously, 

where over a period of years, tens of millions of HB CRA dollars were mis-spent with 

no genuine accountability and no meaningful oversight, -where the Broward Inspector 

General's damning report showed high-ranking, highly-paid city/CRA staff 

essentially went on the 'honor system' with recipients who were friends of HB 

City Hall, including NOT even requiring CRA fund recipients to show any evidence 

they were actually doing or making progress towards what they claimed they'd 

accomplish with the CRA funds- I keep waiting for the Florida Legislature to do what

they keep saying they want to do, namely, tighten-up CRA rules so that clearly-understood 

rules are set so that both the public and the cities will know in advance what city CRA 

Boards can and can NOT do with CRA funds.

And chief among these is NOT continue to use them as slush funds and "found money" 

to pay for the things involving public policy that those in charge DON'T want the public 

either to get wind of or have any real input on, regardless of how many people it might 

ultimately affect.

This continuing misbehavior by local government corrodes public trust and alienates 

people who do believe that CRAs can serve a very useful purpose.

After all, how can I trust someone in government who will do whatever they want 

whenever I'm not looking?

I appreciate that you're no longer in the legislature and are sensitive to the limits of your 

own office's authority and official duties, but if the legislature is going to keep punting, 

why not consider launching a public campaign to bring some of these excesses to light, 

and create some momentum for more pressure to be exerted to make the needed reforms

that Florida residents deserve?

The current system, and the repeated reluctance of city/CRA attorneys to tell their 

bosses to rein-in their worst instincts, puts the honest public officials in Florida who DO 

believe in transparency and genuine public engagement in difficult positions, especially 

when their bosses or their colleagues who don't believe in openness, want to continue 

to keep their thumbs on the scale to get their way and keep the public thoroughly 

disadvantaged -and in the dark.

Given all the spending horror stories that have taken place throughout the state with 

respect to CRAs, why is the effort to finally enact meaningful CRA reforms in Florida 

NOT being pushed seriously NOW in Tallahassee?

Just wondering, since the public knows that it's LONG OVERDUE

I just posted this letter to my blog.

In the near future, I'll be happy to post any response that you and your office or any of 

the state legislators receiving this email as a cc choose to respond with. 

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

end of letter

Here's the article and the tweet about it that I encourage all of my blog's readers to share. 

Fort Lauderdale to use “poor people’s money” to subsidize transit for affluent? https://t.co/0O6jtyVTUv

— Florida Bulldog (@Florida_Bulldog) October 20, 2015

Florida Bulldog

OCTOBER 20, 2015 AT 5:41 AM

Fort Lauderdale to use “poor people’s money” to subsidize transit for affluent?

By William Gjebre, FloridaBulldog.org 

OCTOBER 20, 2015 AT 5:41 AM

Fort Lauderdale’s recent approval of a no-bid contract to update the plan for the troubled Northwest-Progresso-Flagler Heights Community Redevelopment Agency has raised concerns about a lack of public input amid a rush to add projects not in the current plan at the expense of community needs.

Scott Strawbridge, who serves on the CRA’s 14-member advisory board, has called for outside review of the agency after he and his colleagues were informed that City Manager Lee Feldman signed a $24,500 contract with a private firm in August to amend the current CRA plan, last updated in 2001.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2015/10/fort-lauderdale-to-use-poor-peoples-money-to-subsidize-transit-for-affluent/

Dave 

Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth

https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies

http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/HallandaleBeachBlog

Reverse engines! Reluctantly but prudently, All Aboard Florida wises-up and agrees to have a Fort Laudedale scoping meeting after all, on May 29th; 5 weeks later, still no response from SFRTA Executive Director Joseph Giulietti about whether or not Hallandale Beach will have a station as part of their proposed Tri-Rail Coastal plan

Fresh from my email Inbox and into your transportation stream of consciousness...


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

From: All Aboard Florida
Date: Thu, May 16, 2013 at 10:18 AM
Subject: AAF to host additional open house in Fort Lauderdale for EIS process

Having trouble viewing this email? Click here.

May 16, 2013 All Aboard Florida and the Federal Railroad Administration announce an additional public scoping meeting/open house in Fort Lauderdale as part of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process. The EIS will evaluate the potential environmental and related impacts of constructing and operating an intercity passenger rail service between Orlando and Miami with intermediate stations in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. The public scoping meeting/open house will be held on Wednesday, May 29, between 3:30 and 7 p.m., at the Holiday Park Social Center, 1150 G. Harold Martin Drive, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33304. We invite you to attend and share your comments on the project. There will not be a formal presentation or comment period. Information from previous public scoping sessions will be shown at this venue. If you cannot attend but wish to submit a comment, they must be mailed or emailed to Catherine Dobbs, Transportation Industry Analyst, Office of Railroad Policy and Development, Federal Railroad Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20590, or catherine.dobbs@dot.gov. For more information on the meetings, please contact Public Affairs Manager Ali Soule, 305-520-2105, or eis@allaboardflorida.com. Thank you, All Aboard Florida Team Please visit our website for more information and share this email with interested parties so they can receive updates from All Aboard Florida. Make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

-----

My May 6th blog post, below, about my perspective on the public outreach efforts of All Aboard Florida and SFRTA/Tri-Rail, left no stone un-turned -or thrown if it deserved it

For those of you who are curious, I have still never received a response to my April 12th email to SFRTA Executive Director Joseph Giulietti about whether or not Hallandale Beach will have a commuter train station as part of their proposed Tri-Rail Coastal plan, which currently shows no proposed station here in their released plans.

Tomorrow will make five weeks and counting since I wrote it, which itself, was the second effort to get an honest answer from SFRTA/TRi-Rail, with my previous email never getting a response, either.

More Transit Policy Woes in South Florida: With stealthy and self-sabotaging friends like All Aboard Florida and SFRTA/Tri-Rail, pro-transit advocates in South Florida don't need any more enemies; 'All Aboard Florida' fails to schedule a single public scoping meeting in Broward County this Spring despite Fort Lauderdale being a proposed station, while SFRTA chief refuses to answer a simple question -Will Hallandale Beach have a station under the proposed Coastal line plan?; Just because you're pro-transit doesn't mean you have to ignore displays of transit incompetency or mismanagement when you see it!

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/more-transit-policy-woes-in-south.html 

'Visioning' and Public Participation: Comparing and contrasting Ft. Lauderdale and Hallandale Beach's approach to planning for the future -one is open to constructive criticism & suggestions from its populace, and the other is stealthy and closed-minded. Guess which one I live in?; @MayorCooper

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 photographed on February 20, 2013 and continuing this  week. The sign 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. Eight months ago. 

And which you can only see at night, below, when you walk up to it with your camera and use a flash!

Speaking of visioning, that's a form of vision, too -myopia.

This is a slightly-expanded version of an email of mine from four days ago about how things were really going here in Hallandale Beach two months into the new year -and eight months into the regime of the new City Manager, Renee Miller.

It was prompted by a number of conversations I've had with weary HB residents and exasperated business owners, and informed people on the outside looking in with concern.

Everyone has the same basic question about the new City Manager - "Where are all those positive changes in attitude and organizational culture we were promised at HB City Hall last year?"

In Ft. Lauderdale, Broward County's largest city, its active corps of high-minded citizen's input, with lots of big problems on the plate to solve, plans for its future to the extent they can, with the resources they have, and that includes the public.

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 which ran all day on a weekday and was NOT televised or recorded.

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

-----
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.

That’s one proposed outcome of a new plan, called Vision Plan 2035, offering residents’ views of what the city should become.

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

So what happens when you tell the South Florida news media what is going on here, and specifically, about the public being barred from asking questions at the City Commission's annual day-long Visioning meeting the past few years as they discussed -usually  with a taxpayer-paid consultant getting a $5-10k for a few hours- what THEY would like he city should be like in the future.
Without the public being  able to comment at all on the sort of predictable brain-dead ideas and  expensive schemes involving crony capitalism and taxpayer dollars that they love?
. 
Well, here in South Florida, when the news media is told about such things -and more, as I have dozens and dozens of times- typically, the reaction of the news media is to just just shrug their shoulders and ignore the story altogether. :-(

Comparing and contrasting Fort Lauderdale with Hallandale Beach

The Sun-Sentinel's Broward Politics blog had this interesting post yesterday afternoon by Brittany Wallman about Fort Lauderdale Comm. Carlton Moore and the controversy about whether or not he should be allowed to vote on his successor next week.

To which I responded with... well, at least tried to.

But as has been the case so many times in the past, the comments wouldn't go through as written, despite doing everything I was prompted to do.

"Oh well, I don't really need their website to comment do I" he said with a laugh.
____________________________________________________
Broward Politics blog
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
New Fort Lauderdale commissioner will be appointed Tuesday
Posted by Brittany Wallman at 4:15 PM

Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Carlton Moore will be replaced Tuesday, Nov. 4, the day his resignation takes effect. He has served on the City Commission since 1988.
Commissioners in June agreed to let Moore have a vote on who will replace him. The interim commissioner who is selected will stay until the city elections in the spring.
But Mayor Jim Naugle apparently has changed his mind. He said at the Oct. 21 meeting that Moore shouldn't be allowed to vote on the matter.
Read the rest of the post at: http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2008/10/new_fort_lauderdale_commission.html


This story has a lot of resonance for me.

Unfortunately, the City of Fort Lauderdale CAN'T beat the current Broward record of voting for an interim Commissioner less than fifteen minutes after a resignation is announced, currently held by the City Of Hallandale Beach, set on August 5th.

Another big difference is that FTL will be voting for the replacement the day the resignation of Comm. Moore is official, while the City of HB voted for Comm. Fran Schiller's replacement, Anthony A. Sanders, less than fifteen minutes after news of the resignation was made public.


This quick un-publicized vote came at Mayor Joy Cooper's insistence, despite there being well OVER three weeks before Comm. Schiller's resignation would become official.


In fact, there was still another regularly-scheduled HB City Commission meeting BEFORE the Schiller resignation would be official.

But a publicly scheduled meeting with proper advance notice given, where the citizens of HB could gather and publicly discuss the matter, likely in front of local TV news cameras, was NOT at all what Mayor Joy Cooper wanted.

So the vote went ahead -with Comm. Schiller NOT voting on her successor- but with Comm. Dotty Ross voting for Pastor Sanders despite publicly saying that she knew almost nothing about him, even remarking that he hadn't so much as filled out a form that she could look at.

See for yourself at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2063633124352034112

That's just a small example of the difference between how the Cities of Fort Lauderdale and Hallandale Beach practice democracy in the year 2008!