Watch the puppets dance! Remembering the 2010 Hallandale Beach City Manager search that was sabotaged by Mayor Cooper, Comm. Julian & Comm. Ross, to the utter dismay of the city's residents

Butler1Mike video: 2010 Hallandale Beach City Manager search gets sabotaged by Mayor Joy Cooper, Comm. William "Bill" Julian & Comm. Dotty Ross.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKU6JYV_wBI&feature=colike

Watch the puppets dance! Remembering the 2010 Hallandale Beach City Manager search that was sabotaged by Mayor Joy Cooper, Comm. William "Bill" Julian & Comm. Dotty Ross, to the utter dismay of the city's residents.

This is the follow-up to my post of Sunday the 10th, Hallandale Beach Commissioners spending taxpayer $$$ in a hurry -and NOT in the Sunshine! As usual, Comm. Sanders just sits there and waits to be told what to say and how to vote
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/hallandale-beach-commissioners-spending.html 

Here's the all-too-true back-story on the video above, which was created by my clever and resourceful friend, Michael Butler of Change Hallandale fame. (See more on Michael and his website at the bottom.)

Yes, "I do not want to discontinue this process" said Mayor Cooper.

But the "process" as such at that point was to bring in some suitable candidates selected by the consultant and have them actually visit and tour the city, meet some residents, and see what's what so they and their family could determine if they really wanted to proceed forward.

But "going forward" by ONLY interviewing the incumbent acting-City Manager, Mark A. Antonio, is not proceeding, it's sabotaging. 

This whole sham was made worse and even more ironic -if possible- by the fact that weeks earlier, the mayor was publicly against Antonio even being considered, a fact known by 99% of the HB citizens in the Commission chambers that night, including me.

This long and ponderous evening Commission meeting is one of the rare times in the past 43 months in office that Comm. Sanders actually did the right thing by HB residents, and believe me, there aren't many of those, so they're easy to remember.

Trust me, it's far less than one handful in almost four years in office. 

Frankly, considering how oblivious he is to issues that residents and business owners really care about and have been upset about for many years, how very little he actually contributes to anything during meetings, the way he carries himself around town, as well as the almost clueless way his small cadre of supporters act, unable to see or accept how genuinely unpopular he is after 43 months of sitting there on the dais like a bump on a log, Comm. Sanders has led a very charmed life.

Very charmed.

Especially for someone with such a truly awful voting record that's chock-full of poorly thought-out votes against increased public accountability, financial transparency, and for his always seeming to be against the increased scrutiny and oversight of spending that residents desperately want in a city where the budget has nearly doubled the past six years.

With, as I've stated so often here, so very little to show for it compared to other cities and towns in South Florida.

Where did all that money go?

Sanders' awful track record in office, which causes SO MANY voters who gave him the benefit of the doubt four years ago and voted for him despite their reservations -instead of listening to me and voting for Arturo O'Neill, someone who would've made a positive difference for the community, not a negative one like Sanders- continues to provoke dumbstruck looks on people in this community who pay close attention.

They just shake their heads and say, "I won't be fooled again."

And they won't.

That particular night in 2010, though, with only Comm. Keith London and Comm. Sanders actually committed to an open process that gave HB residents -the people actually paying for the consultant- the time they clearly wanted to let the public "process" play itself out, instead of changing the rules at halftime, the public ended up getting screwed by Mayor Cooper for the umpteenth time when Cooper, Julian and Ross became determined to short-circuit that "process" for good.

Of simply picking up their ball and walking away at halftime.

To the amazement of many people in the room, but not my own or Arturo's, Comm. Ross actually had the temerity to actually mock the public at this and prior City Commission meetings for their commitment to the process we were promised by the Commission but not given.

But then from Comm. Ross' point of view, what the public got for its trouble was less important than the fact that by pulling-the-plug and screwing over the residents yet again that she was supposed to represent, she got to leave this evening meeting and go home to sleep.

And after all, isn't THAT the most important thing?

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CHANGE HALLANDALE BEACH

- A fact-based website run by my friend and fellow Hallandale Beach civic activist, Michael Butler, which goes directly after the longtime incompetency and crony capitalism at Hallandale Beach City Hall with cold-hard logic, quantifiable figures, graphs, charts and videos. 

The kind of evidence that Mayor Joy Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew of Commissioners Dotty Ross, Anthony A. Sanders and Alexander Lewy, plus City Manager Mark A. Antonio CAN'T refute with any of their serial lies, half-truths, mis-statements of fact, or exaggerations from the dais. 

Theirs is a strange Looking Glass world of un-reality that can quickly confuse -or frighten!- normal people not prepared for such self-evident mendacity. 

Which is where Michael comes in stage-left and I come in stage-right...

See the evidence for yourself and see what's REALLY going on in Hallandale Beach from Michael's well-informed perspective at http://www.changehallandale.com

Michael's YouTube Channel, Butler1Mike, sure to start getting busy again soon, is at: http://www.youtube.com/user/Butler1Mike

As I mentioned the other day after hearing from him, Michael's website is currently migrating over to WordPress -which I've also frequently considered moving HBB to- so that may explain any technical problems you may run into from time-to-time in seeing the very useful information Michael has there.

Even now, Michael is hard at work putting the finishing touches on an important subject to Hallandale Beach residents and business owners involving millions of dollars, as is my friend Csaba Kulin, whom I spent some time with today to hear how his research was going.

Csaba and Michael continue to be excellent examples of American civic activism at its best, continuing to pour their time and energy into delving into serious financial matters that few others have either the time, energy or inclination to do.

Sadly for all of us who live in this city that ought to be so much better, save Comm. Keith London, their work ethic and dedication to getting the true facts and financial numbers out to the community -which the mayor and her cronies can't bear- completely laps the remaining members of the present HB City Commission, as well as former Commissioner Julian, who is running again after being kicked-out in 2010.

Julian's large role in that 2010 City Manager search debacle, and his own confusion as to what he was doing and saying, will NOT be forgotten by HB voters in November, because it was the perfect example of his general unfitness for office.

Don't think that the dreadful track records of Julian, Sanders and Cooper won't be discussed to a fare thee well, both here on the blog in the future and during the coming 2012 political campaign for Hallandale Beach mayor and city commission, of which Csaba is a candidate for the latter.

That simple contrast both informs and illuminates who really deserves your support and is deserving of your thanks.

I'm proud to have Michael and Csaba as friends.

And those of you who live here should be very thankful that they consciously choose to do the hard work and heavy lifting that 4/5ths of our current elected city officials WON'T do.

Update on the Hallandale Beach City Manager search -tentative schedule sees selection process ending in three weeks

This helpful email below from Hallandale Beach City Commissioner Keith London made its way to my email inbox on March 1st, and it gives a good overview of the "process" and what's at stake in the future for this city's citizen taxpayers and business owners as the city prepares for current City Manager Mark A. Antonio's departure in June.

Based on my own conversations around town with other residents, politically-oriented and otherwise, my own intuition, plus, hearing some of the most well-informed and articulate voters in this town speak a few weeks ago at one of Comm. London's monthly Resident Forum, where the city's consultant, Colin Baezinger, appeared for the last of the two-hours at the HB Cultural Center to speak to us and answer questions for just under an hour, we do NOT want a City Manager who will not roll-over, fetch or play "dead" in order to keep his or her job.

(I'd have posted the video I shot of Baezinger interacting with the public that day, but because I got caught up into listening and didn't stop and start the video-cam every so often on individual subjects, it's far long for me to post directly here via Blogger, or, even cut into segments and place on my YouTube Channel. I definitely need to learn from that mistake!)

We want someone who will proactively take advantage of the geographical, social and people resources here to get this city to the point it should've been at many years ago. 

Instead, the same practical everyday issues of a lack of core competencies and effectiveness in dealing with problems and the citizens who want solutions, a very stubborn unwillingness to change or adapt clearly failing public policies that have no public support, and a very, very strong distrust of the motives, ethics and and work-ethic of Hallandale Beach City Hall administrators and employees themselves, hangs over this city like a dark ominous cloud that simply won't blow away.

Far too much time and energy at HB City Hall is spent on little more than outright deception of taxpayers and business owners to prevent them from knowing what's REALLY going on, all in furtherance of Mayor Cooper's effort to keep up the facade that she is in control and that everything is okay.
It's NOT.

And then residents like me and many of the well-informed people I know who have lived here far longer than I, feel compelled to push-back on those deceptive efforts from City Hall, wasting precious time and energy we;d all rather see channeled productively elsewhere, rather than constantly having to point to the many pink elephants in the room, none of which those in charge and earning nice salaries and benefits claim to be able to see.
Yes, intentional myopia.

Below Comm. London's email, consultant Colin Baezinger also details what the tentative schedule for the next few weeks looks like so that HB residents can interact with some of the candidates, something that we were NOT able to do in the summer of 2010, when Mayor Joy Cooper and City  Commissioners William "Bill" Julian and Dotty Ross hijacked the transparent process that HB residents had been promised, and then completely short-circuited it by literally changing the rules in the middle of the search, just as we were all about to find out who some of the candidates were.

All because the mayor decided that Antonio should be considered for the job after all, flip-flopping on her earlier contention that he NOT even be considered.

Given the subject of my last blog post here, Hallandale Beach Commissioners spending taxpayer $$$ in a hurry -and NOT in the Sunshine! As usual, Comm. Sanders just sits there and waits to be told what to say and how to vote

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/hallandale-beach-commissioners-spending.html
I thought you might benefit from knowing what the current plan is.

As my next blog post will clearly show -and then some- having a written plan to select a new City Manager may work in next-door Hollywood, where I participated in the public process in January and wrote about my observations here that led to Douglas Hewett earning his selection there, after a very impressive presentation to the Hollywood city Commission, which I filmed.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/doug-hewett-named-new-hollywood-city.html

But here in Hallandale Beach, a plan is just a couple of words on a piece of paper, and can be thrown-out whenever three people on the HB City Commission with a track record in office of consistently voting against the long-term best interests of its citizens find the public "process" either too taxing for their brains -or want to go home.

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Everyone,

The City of Hallandale Beach Commission will be making one of the most important decisions affecting our City with the hiring of a new City Manager.  The new City Manager will be chosen in the next six weeks.  Please take a moment to mark your calendars with these important dates (please see email below for the schedule).

The choosing of a new city manager will affect every resident and business in “our” community.

This decision will most likely live longer than many of the elected officials’ current terms and should not be taken lightly.  The decision will be made through a detailed vetting process with the assistance of an outside consultant; yet no process is perfect.  The commission will have a relatively short amount of time to review the applications and interview the short list of candidates.  Personally, the accomplishments of an individual are very important, but how this person fits into “our” community with the existing unique set of issues and all the potential to be a first class city waiting to be unlocked, will weigh heavily for me.

Please participate and attend these meetings to meet and great all the candidates. I look forward to the next phase of improvement and the positive future in “Our” city.

Sincerely,

Keith

Keith S. London

City Commissioner

Hallandale Beach

954-457-1320 Office

954-494-3182 Cellular

www.KeithLondon.com

http://www.facebook.com/KeithSLondon

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From: Colin Baenziger [mailto:Colin@cb-asso.com] 

Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 05:11 PM

To: Cooper, Joy; Lewy, Alexander; Sanders, Anthony; Ross, Dotty; London, Keith 

Cc: Amiraian, George; Rafols, Nydia M 

Subject: City Manager Search Update - Be Sure Your Calendars Are Marked... 

I wanted to give you a quick update on the City Manager Search Process.  Right now, we are in the midst of checking out the most promising candidates.  We do have it down to less than a dozen although I do not want to release any names at this point.  If we find something in a candidate’s background that we do not like, we will drop the candidate.  If the names have already been released, the media may want to know why a candidate has been dropped and I would prefer not to be in that situation.  

I can tell you that I am very pleased with the field.  All the candidates are highly qualified and the field is diverse in terms of experience, race and gender.  While the candidates are primarily from Florida, we do have some diversity there as well. 

The important upcoming dates for you to remember and be available for are: 

March 14th:  Background materials for the candidates arrive and are distributed to the commissioners.

March 14th to 21st:  I will be available to answer any questions you may have.

March 21st:  I will be at city hall to meet with any of the commissioners who wish to discuss the candidates.

March 21st:  Also, on March 21st, the Commission will select the candidates who will be finalists and be interviewed for the position.

March 30th:  Candidate arrive, meet the staff, tour the city and an evening reception is held so they can meet the public.  The Commission only needs to be available for the evening reception and not the other events.

March 31st:     The Commission interviews the finalists one-on-one and as a full commission.  Typically these events go from 8:30 a.m. to about 3:30 p.m.

April 2nd:      The Commission selects the next City Manager. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me. 

Best wishes and be well!

Colin at 

Colin Baenziger & Associates

… Experts in Local Government Recruiting 

(561) 707-3537

Visit our website at:  www.cb-asso.com

Csaba Kulin brings some common sense perspective to the Hallandale Beach City Manager search debacle of Wednesday night

What follows is a copy of an email from this morning from my friend and Hallandale Beach civic activist, Csaba Kulin, to the Hallandale Beach City Commission, responding to their truly jaw-dropping performance Wednesday night, the subject of my last post.
He watched the commission meeting via the Internet.
http://fl-hallandalebeach.civicplus.com/index.aspx?NID=717

In case you forgot, the cc recipient below, David Jove, is the HB city attorney.

Here's what was supposed to be discussed:

http://fl-hallandalebeach.civicplus.com/files/2010-09-15/Staff%20Reports/00005963.htm

CITY OF HALLANDALE BEACH, FLORIDA

MEMORANDUM

NR10-043

DATE: September 07, 2010
TO: Honorable Mayor and City Commission
FROM: Nydia M. Rafols Sallaberry, Deputy City Manager
SUBJECT: Agenda Item – Discussion of Hiring a City Manager – CAD# 017/10

Pursuant to City Commission’s adopted schedule on the subject, Colin Baenziger, with Colin Baenziger & Associates, will be presenting to the City Commission the list of semi-finalist candidates for the position of City Manager during the September 15, 2010, Regular City Commission Meeting. Furthermore, Mr. Baenziger has advised staff that he will be available on September 16, 2010 to meet with each Commissioner to answer and discuss questions the Commissioner(s) might have regarding the semifinalists’ information. Finally, it should also be noted that per the adopted schedule, the City Commission should receive the semi-finalist materials on September 14^th. Staff will be forwarding these as soon as they are received.

In the meantime, should you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me.

NMR

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Here is Csaba's email:

Mayor Joy Cooper
Vice Mayor William Julian
Keith London
Commissioner Dorothy Ross
Commissioner Anthony Sanders
cc Mr. David Jove

Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 12:40 PM
subject Agenda item 7A, Hiring of City Manager

Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor and Members of the City Commission,

I am very disappointed in the way the selection process was conducted and the way it ended.

I was very optimistic at the beginning that a reputable firm was hired to conduct a search for a new city manager, decided on the qualifications of the applicant, identify a certain number of applicants meeting those requirements and the Commission deciding the best person for the job.

Once the above process started, the job was posted in newspapers and other sources a "CONE OF SILENCE" should have been imposed on each and everyone on the Commission. This is the procedure in every other contract the Commission or the City intends to enter into. It is the only fair way and legal way to treat all applicants equally in the process till it is time for the Commission to make a decision on finalists and eventual hiring.

That not the way the process played out. First, the Commission changed the qualifications required to apply from having a masters degree to "preferred" to have one to suit one applicant. At that point the job postings should have been repeated. Some applicants may have decided not to apply due to the master's degree requirement.

The second point is, from the very beginning all through the process there was praise of one applicant from all of you. Recently when the Commission hired a new auditor I did not hear you constantly praising the then current auditor. There was a "cone of silence".

My third point is that during the September 15, 2010 City Commission meeting Agenda item 7A said "discussion of hiring of city manager". That is not what transpired. Your Honor, you started out with a statement that in a nutshell said that you decided that you want to hire Mr. Antonio and let us stop the process and hire him. How is that fair to all the others who took the time, effort and money to apply. If you took that approach to selecting an auditor, I would think the City would find itself in court.

Now I just wait for the "other shoe to drop" and see the Commission to give Mr. Antonio a contract like Mr. Good had with a large increase in salary. Just for comparison sake, Cuyahoga County in Ohio (over a million residents) looking for a new County Administrator (manager). The salary is $175,000.00. Salaries in Florida should be lower than up North due to the nice weather year around and much lower in a city of about 38,000 residents.

I hope each and everyone of you look at the fairness of the process and ask yourself if you think it was the best this City Commission can do? How can you be sure that you hired the best applicant you had? The process was so tilted to one way that we may never know. There is always going to be a question as to what if?

I know, you are going to argue that hiring a city manager is different from hiring an auditor, but in honesty, is it?

I intend to bring this issue up during the public meeting and ask our city attorney if this process conformed with the letter and the spirit of the law. Please do your research ahead of the time I will ask the question.

Sincerely,

Csaba Kulin

President, Fairways North, Inc.

VP, United Condominium Associations of Hallandale Beach