Hallandale Beach City Commission terminates contract of embattled City Manager Daniel Rosemond on a 3-2 vote

Wednesday night the Hallandale Beach City Commission terminated the contract of embattled City Manager Daniel Rosemond on a 3-2 vote, with Vice Mayor Keith London, Comm. Michele Lazarow and Comm. Anabelle Taub voting for, and Mayor Joy Cooper -speaking via telephone from her home- and Comm. Anthony A. Sanders voting no on the motion authored by Vice Mayor London.

I'll have more to say Thursday afternoon on the very angry, heated meeting that went nearly four hours and that was forced to take a recess several times when shouting matches between Commissioners grew too heated for the proceedings to continue. 

The last recess came about when apparently self-evident but-heretofore-unreported facts were made public by Comm. Anabelle Taub about just who in the community had been heavily involved in engaging in what were by any reasonable standards, some vicious and unethical perhaps behavior during the recent election campaign.

Not surprisingly, it involved Joy Cooper's Rubber Stamp Crew and its well-financed backers and acolytes in the area that had caused the South Florida Sun-Sentinel to label Hallandale Beach as the site of "the dirtiest" election in all of South Florida in its editorial endorsing newcomer Anabelle Taub and incumbent Michele Lazarow.

For those of you reading this blog post far from this ocean-side city in southeast Broward County where the temperature reached 84 degrees today, that's really saying something considering how low things have been in South Florida for many decades. 
Among those involved: Commissioner Sanders' very own adult son.

The meeting was full of both dry, stone-cold, documented facts about Rosemond's persistent failings and lapses in ethical judgment and, being Hallandale Beach, some quite "imaginary" views voiced by several of Mayor Cooper's typically thin-skinned friends and cronies -as well as some out-of-town friends of Rosemond- that described Hallandale Beach as a very well-run city and Rosemond as about the nicest, most capable guy you could know. 
Yes, IF only it was actually true...

But the problem for the people who believe in the alternative universe version of HB is that the mountain of inconvenient facts about the reality there the past dozen years under Mayor Cooper are known by far too many people in the area -including reporters- and belie that naive, preposterous fiction and attempt to spin and misrepresent the truth. Considering that he was the person who had formally requested the meeting under the city's charter rules to try to stave off being fired, it was typical HB melodrama that Rosemond was... NOT present.

I think you know where I come out on this: Daniel Rosemond should have been fired for cause years ago when he was only damaging the HB CRA, not the whole city thru his consistently arrogant and condescending attitude towards the public and Small Business community, as well as his bosses, the City Commission, plus his inability to take constructive criticism or actually resolve self-evident problems.

Here's link to the agenda from tonigt's meeting, with Supporting Documents

https://hallandalebeach.granicusideas.com/meetings/238-december-28-2016-city-commission/agenda_items

I've updated and expanded my last blog post since it was originally posted:
#ethics & threats: The reasons ex-Hallandale Beach Comm. Alex Lewy was booted from City of Hallandale Beach Police & Fire Pension Board. Threatened Broward County PBA members if they didn't support him in his election bid 

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/ethics-threats-reasons-ex-hallandale.html

Dave 

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

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

https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies

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

Firing City of Hallandale Beach City Attorney Whitfield was a good start, but the fact remains that there are several city employees and Dept. heads who need to go ASAP in order to have the city move forward. There's no point in pretending that's not the case.

Above, Hallandale Beach City Hall, November 2016. "And the flag was still there..."
Photo by me, South Beach Hoosier. © 2016 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

Local10 News, WPLG-TV, Miami

Secret audio implicates Hallandale Beach city attorney in alleged improper conduct
Commissioner Bill Julian can't seem to hang up his phone
By Bob Norman - Investigative Reporter
Posted: 11:58 PM, November 01, 2016

Read story at:

http://www.local10.com/news/bob-norman/secret-audio-implicates-hallandale-beach-city-attorney-in-alleged-improper-conduct

Local10 News, WPLG-TV, Miami

Hallandale Beach fires city attorney; mayor walks out of divided meeting

City Attorney V. Lynn Whitfield gives emotional farewell
By Bob Norman - Investigative Reporter
Posted: 11:36 PM, November 29, 2016

Read story at
http://www.local10.com/news/bob-norman/hallandale-beach-mayor-walks-out-of-divided-citys-meeting-

Firing City of Hallandale Beach City Attorney Whitfield was a good start, but the fact remains that there are several city employees and Dept. heads who need to go ASAP in order to have the city move forward. 

There's no point in pretending that's not the case.

On Monday I told many off you via a fact-filled email that was sent to concerned citizens 

throughout Hallandale Beach, Broward County and South Florida -and members of the news media- and then later, posted here at Hallandale Beach Blog, that on Tuesday, the first big step towards creating a new, positive and more-inclusive future for Hallandale Beach and its long-suffering residents and Small Business owners at Hallandale Beach City Hall would begin. And so it has....

Well, one down, but there are several more heads at Hallandale Beach City Hall that need to roll, including temperamentally-challenged City Manager Daniel Rosemond.

To be sure, it was a nice way to start, getting rid of City Attorney V. Lynn Whitfield, a 

woman who for years has acted one way publicly, but acted quite another way behind-the-scenes, as I know from first-hand experience.

Besides the dozens and dozens of times I saw Whitfield in action at public meetings over the years, where she often looked the other way at ethical situations involving elected officials and city employees that cried out for her to say or do something publicly, I got a chance to know the reality of her personality.

But before I mention that, consider this 2013 video I recorded with my friend and fellow Hallandale Beach and Broward County civic activist Csaba "Chuck" Kulin, who is a recent member of the city's Planning and Zoning Advisory Board, who has been a watchdog on finances, ethics and the appearance of impropriety in this area of Broward for many years.

The video speaks for itself regarding what seems to have been Whitfield's inexplicable willingness to look the other way on ethics and conflicts of interest in Hallandale Beach when it's right in front of her.

Csaba Kulin re Hallandale Beach City Attorney Whitfield's comments re her role on ethics. Uploaded May 2, 2013 https://youtu.be/dtpFnVOFA-I

That came when I repeatedly tried to tell her about the City of Hallandale Beach having illegally stolen a Hallandale Beach citizen's property, and then used it later without this person's permision or consent, in what was a profit-making enterprise, for which the citizen whose property was used received NOTHING.

I know the facts better than anyone because I was that citizen whose property was stolen by the city and the city-funded Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce.

The facts and context involved being what they were, and which would clearly point to it being an embarrassing episode for the city if made public, I thought it would be best tp go thru the system and for the City Attorney to know all the facts, so she could urge the City Commission to do the right thing.

But City Attorney V. Lynn Whitfield could hardly have cared less about knowning the facts involved when the city she represented had broken the law.

In fact, her own staff was witness to her yelling at me while I was outside of her office in January of 2014, when I stopped by the City Attorney's office one day while doing some errands in an attempt to schedule a meeting with me, a Hallandale Beach citizen, so that she would know what had taken place, since it had happened before she was hired by the city.

City Attorney Whitfield couldn't possibly have known all the germane facts, so, foolishly, I thought a calm and relaxed conversation of maybe 10-15 minutes with her in the near future, with supporting documents that would make clear the city's self-evident liability, would be a positive thing.

Instead, Whitfield kept insisting that I tell her then and show her my proof on her computer. Right then and there!

Well, as stated before, I was running errands that day and had only stopped by HB City Hall because my phone calls were not being returned. 

I am one among many other Hallandale Beach citizens who over the years have had bad and troubling experiences with city employees and elected officials lying about what they would do to address problems.

Given that fact, I was not about to fall for the trap.and do something stupid and allow her to buffalo me into having a meeting before it was appropriate.

More importantly, before I had time to make sure that I had someone with me who could witness anything that was done, said or agreed to.

Experience is the best predictor of behavior, no?

Someone on Whitfield's staff even told me that she had a history of refusing to meet with anyone from Hallandale Beach who had hired a lawyer, which is interesting in that she so often met and spoke with lawyers for people with interests before the city who were not even Hallandale Beach residents -like I was then. 

So again, firing City Attorney Whitfield was a good start, but the fact remains that there are several City of Hallandale Beach employees and Dept. heads who have a long and well-established history of showing a pronounced antagonism towards sharing facts and public documents with elected officials and citizens when they are supposed to.

There are lots of HB city employees who are clearly opposed to engaging in transparency and treating citizens with respect or civility, to say nothing of ones guilty of goofing around that is legendary in this small oceanside city, where it often seems like every other city employee has a city car of their own to drive around in, with taxpayers paying the tab.

It's long been known that there are certain locations in HB where for several hours a day, you can be sure of seeing a completely different city vehicle drive past nearly ever few minutes.

Question: Where are they all going if the problems in this city never actually get fixed, as is abundantly clear?

No, for years under imperious Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's Rubber Stamp Crew of Julian, Sanders and Lewy, Hallandale Beach citizens and Small Business owners all had to glumly accept as "normal" conduct and behavior that was not only completely unsatisfactory, but often proof of the insidious culture of corruption, cronyism and incompetency that has long held sway here.

After all, and this may surprise some of you newcomers to the blog, Hallandale Beach is a city that, under Joy Cooper, once signed a secret deal with somone in the community to act as a paid spy and lobbyist at city meetings and community forums, both to voice enthusiasm for the city's position in public and to monitor who spoke out publicly against the city's position. Really.

I know because I'm the person in South Florida who first broke the news about it happening in 2010, a story that combined creepy elements of cronyism, corruption and breaking ethics and lobbying rules in one fell swoop.

I'm the person who made sure that the sordid story about elected officials betraying the pubic trust got reported publicly in the first place.

APRIL 5, 2010 

Joe Kessel is the spy/mole for Hallandale Beach City Hall's Ruinous Mike Good & Joy Cooper Regime

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/joe-kessel-is-spymole-for-hallandale.html

April 9, 2010 

The Kessel Chronicles, The Story Thus Far -Now with YouTube!

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/kessel-chronicles-story-thus-far-now.html

That April 9, 2010 post of mine has this nugget that still shines today and gives anyone reading this blog now and in the future a real taste of how bad things have been done at Hallandale Beach City Hall in the past -and continue to be:

Never seem inclined to find out how an entrenched culture of corruption could develop here where HB city employees would think it's normal or appropriate to try to physically prevent citizens like me from attending a publicly-noticed meeting at City Hall for 15 minutes, until they canceled it right before yours truly finally got there -thanks to the assistance of Comm. London- as happened to me just last month?

Did Assistant City Manager Mark Antonio, he of the $150k-plus salary, and a member
of the Evaluation Committee that was meeting that day try to explain to me when he saw me there, why the meeting was suddenly canceled once they knew I was trying to get to the meeting? More to the point, did he even attempt to explain why I, the only citizen trying to attend the meeting, was physically prevented by city employees from getting to the meeting? No, he did not. 

Instead, Antonio just scurried back to his office like a petulant child, actually yelling at Comm. London, as he hurried to his bunker of an office, safe from the reasonable questions of a citizen taxpayer.
That my friends, is the low moral and professional caliber of people currently working at Hallandale Beach City Hall -and he's one of the persons in charge. Now multiply that unprofessional attitude dozens of times. It explains an awful lot here, doesn't it?

On Tuesday afternoon, the ship that is the new leadership at HB City Hall finally 

started changing directions.

Obviously, it won't all be smooth sailing in the future, and there will clearly be difficult times when some hard and unpopular decisions will have to be made or even agonized over.
Good thing, then, that there's so much "deadwood" at Hallandale Beach City Hall to be tossed overboard in the coming weeks and months to help lighten the load and help the ship pick up some much-needed speed to be where it ought to be.

Dave

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

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

https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies

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

Attention: SPECIAL Meeting of Hallandale Beach City Commission on Tuesday at 4:30 PM to discuss contracts of City Manager Daniel Rosemond and City Attorney V. Lynn Whitfield

Above, Hallandale Beach City Hall, November 2016. "And the flag was still there..."

Photo by me, South Beach Hoosier. © 2016 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

Attention: SPECIAL Meeting of Hallandale Beach City Commission on Tuesday at 4:30 PM to discuss contracts of City Manager and City Attorney.

On Tuesday the first big step towards a new, positive and more-inclusive future for Hallandale Beach and its long-suffering residents and Small Business owners at Hallandale Beach City Hall begins...

I earnestly hope that as many of you as possible will make plans to attend and not only meet your new resident-friendly elected leaders, but also let them know just what you think about what we have all had to glumly accept as "normal" conduct and behavior for so many years, and what you want instead in the city's top two bureaucrats.

The only two city employees the HB City Commission directly hires and is 

responsible for providing oversight over.

On Tuesday afternoon, the ship that is HB City Hall finally starts changing directions.

SPECIAL Meeting of #HallandaleBeach City Commission on Tuesday @ 4:30 PM to discuss contracts of City Mgr. Rosemond & City Att'y Whitfield. pic.twitter.com/iod4Xqmpub

— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) November 29, 2016

Dave

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

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

https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies

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

The view from here: Connecting the collective energy of a community and channeling it into positive results has never been easy. But in Hallandale Beach, city officials are USUALLY a big part of the problem, not part of the solution. And that behavior continues apace...

May 20, 2012 photo of Hallandale Beach's very own "South Beach" by South Beach Hoosier. 

© Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

The view from here: Connecting the collective energy of a community and channeling it into positive results has never been easy. But in Hallandale Beach, city officials are USUALLY a big part of the problem, not part of the solution. And that behavior continues apace...

The following post is an expanded version of an email that I sent out last Thursday afternoon to about 300-plus concerned residents, Small Business owners, civic activists, politicians and members of the news media in Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, Broward County and South Florida.

It's an email that I actually wrote many weeks ago and have kept in cold storage, waiting until last Thursday to send out, chiefly, for reasons concerning the calendar year that make perfect sense from my point of view.

Last Thursday, Dec. 31st was, officially, Renee C. Miller's last day as City Manger of Hallandale Beach, where, three-and-a-half years after being selected over candidates that I thought were better, and after she promised me and her many other doubters in this community to tangibly change the culture -and pathology!- of the city's bureaucracy and management style, top-down, she was finito.

It's clear in retrospect, as it was to me after just six months on the job, that Miller accomplished little of the things that she promised me and other concerned residents and small business owners to directly improve the quality of life in the city and the city's management. 

Those of you who were at the city's poorly-attended Town Hall meeting over on the beach in January of 2013 who saw Miller alternately ignore or obfuscate when I asked her some fact-filled questions that directly called her out on unfulfilled promises she had made to city residents -and to me to my face- including ones about Dept. heads ignoring longstanding citizens complaints that were self-evident, even after they were told about them or shown contemporaneous photos of the problem, know exactly how pathetic it was.

Yes, continuing the pattern in Hallandale Beach where ignoring a genuine problem was treated by City Hall as the same as actually solving it.
Like it was a question of psychology, not competency.

Yes, the red tape at HB City Hall is as exhausting and thick as ever, and the mood is as autocratic as ever, too. Which is why Small Businesses continue to move out of the city rather than continue having to jump thru hoops -or continue hitting their heads against the wall.

All of this continues to take place while the city's poorly-run and crony-filled HB Chamber of Commerce acts like an ostrich, with its head buried in the sand, instead of being innovative and proactive.

That is, unless it's time for its president and its Board to play the role of taxpayer-subsidized cheerleader for certain entrenched pols and business interests in the city who already have undue and outsized influence in this city of under 40,000, relative to their contribution to making it better.

Or at least as good as it ought to be already -but clearly isn't. 

My blog post about new Hallandale Beach City Manager Daniel Rosemond will be up on the blog later in the week. Teaser Alert for you newcomers to the blog -I'm NOT a fan of Rosemond.

My comments are below the article

Top boss at Hallandale City Hall quits http://t.co/YZTKtrJFHP

— Susannah Bryan (@savannah1023) October 12, 2015

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Hallandale city manager quits

By Susannah Bryan, Staff writer

October 15, 2015

After more than three years at the helm, Renee Miller plans to step down as city manager by the end of the year.

Her resignation will take effect Dec. 31.

Miller, 38, cited a desire to spend more time with family in a resignation letter to her five City Commission bosses.

"I know it was a surprise to most of the members of the dais," said Miller, who is married and raising a two-year-old daughter. "But as family people, they understand the need to seek a better work-life balance. And that's what I'm really looking for."

In her resignation letter, Miller described her past three years as city manager as both a blessing and a challenge.

Read the rest of the article at:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-city-manager-quits-hallandale-20151012-story.html

Connecting the collective energy of a community and channeling it into positive results has never been easy.

But it’s especially difficult when the people running the city at City Hall have a LONG track record of NOT being either particularly competent or inspired, consistently DON’T follow Best Practices -or even Common Sense- and NEVER feel the slightest bit of public remorse for continually refusing to be held personally accountable to the public for their actions, words and votes.

No, unfortunately, the people currently at HB City Hall DON’T sweat the details the way they should, nor do they show any tangible interest in dramatically improving the city’s present and future Quality of Life and capture its true potential, thru either proven sensible ideas or meaningful innovation, to satisfy the citizenry and the Small Business community.

Year-after-year, the powers-that-be at City Hall have rejected adapting to new realities and making the overdue needed changes or improvements, despite concerned citizens and business people conscientiously pointing out the many, many self-evident problems at public meetings that anyone who lives and work here see and experience every day, but which City Hall continues to ignore.

Because this city has the wrong caliber of people making policy AND carrying it out, lots of potential opportunities to markedly improve and revitalize this city in exciting and innovative ways come and go –completely unrealized, leaving others to benefit from the city’s myopia and indecision -and bad judgment.

To this city’s current and future residents’ detriment, we’ve seen a culture take root at City Hall of arrogant,  self-interested elected officials and bureaucrats who are demonstrably anti-democratic and anti-accountability in their mindset, and impervious to change, even when it’s obvious to everyone but them.

It’s the difference between selflessness and selfishness.

The current crew prefers to continue doing things in the same old unproductive and unsatisfactory way that they have done them for years, even when it’s clear to everyone concerned that these tired, old methods and practices simply DON’T work and produce positive results and outcomes.

That reluctance to change was highlighted by their years of denial of the facts and engaging in completely self-serving and promiscuous behavior with respect to employing crony capitalism with limited public (CRA) funds, so that their friends and political supporters benefited.

In fact, more than three years and a half years later, many of these very same officials who did NOT provide anywhere close to the level of oversight and accountability they were legally bound to perform, still can NOT bring themselves to posting onto the city’s website, the Broward Inspector General’s damning report about their years of completely negligent and unsatisfactory oversight of the city’s CRA.

You have to be willing to imagine a different future and strategy for success before you can make it a reality.

Faking it, as this city has done for so many years, simply doesn’t work.

Me? I’m just someone working hard to spark and accelerate change for a better and more dynamic South Florida for EVERYONE, not just certain favored people, or forces in town who think they have a veto on every good idea that comes into town.

I'll have some more thoughts to share with you next week about the city and some thoughts about the caliber and quality of people we need to be willing to step up to the challenge of confronting the longstanding idiocy and incompetency that has held this city back, and as we are all too aware, kept its beleaguered residents unhappy with the results HB City Hall has continually portrayed as "normal," but which would clearly be unacceptable in 99% of this state's cities and towns.

My most recent previous blog post is here:

Happy Holidays from Hallandale Beach: A taste of chutzpah, hypocrisy & incompetency with your eggnog -again!- thanks to Mayor Joy Cooper

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/happy-holidays-from-hallandale-beach.html

Dave 

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

https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies

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

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

Entrepreneur Luciana Preguerman and other Fashion Row shop owners in Hallandale Beach draw a line in the sand over the City Commission/CRA threatening to sabotage an already-approved and budgeted plan for street improvements they've been desperately waiting for, and are livid over the new CRA Director's inability to logically articulate why they're considering such a move. They want answers before Monday night's important CRA meeting at 5 p.m.

On Thursday afternoon, Hallandale Beach entrepreneur and Fashion Row shop owner Luciana Preguerman sent the following impassioned email to the Hallandale Beach City Commission/
HB CRA and City Manager, with copies to other interested parties in Hallandale Beach and Broward County regarding the so-called community meeting that was held at her shop, Dekka, on late Wednesday afternoon.

That meeting, featuring the city's new CRA Director, Daniel Rosemond, was, even by Hallandale Beach's all-too-frequently low standards for civic engagement, an unmitigated disaster for HB City Hall.
Worse yet, it left all of the small business owners there who attended, who've been waiting patiently/desperately for years for promised street improvements, to wonder why there has been yet another delay, and who exactly is behind it.

Since Rosemond said that some consideration was being made into including West Dixie Highway, some have wondered if it was an attempt by Commissioners Anthony A. Sanders and Alexander Lewy to funnel yet more CRA funds into Northwest Hallandale Beach.

Lewy has stated several times over the past year that he believes that almost all HB CRA funds should go there, even though NW HB represents only part of the CRA, and would necessarily cause some residents and businesses in other parts of the CRA to consider suing the city if such a policy was ever pursued.

Others publicly wondered if it wasn't all the result of some plan by Hallandale Beach insurance executive and developer Stephen L. Riemer and Riemer Brothers LLC, to use City Hall as a cudgel to force small businesses on First Avenue to close and sell their property, with him swooping in and purchasing them at a discount, since Riemer already own 50 properties in that immediate area.

It did not go un-noticed by those in attendance that Riemer was not present at the meeting, nor were any representatives of his.

Well, we'll all see for ourselves on Monday at HB City Hall at 5 p.m. just what the future of Fashion Row is, if any, as those shop owners once again find themselves in the unenviable position of being forced to watch the City Commission decide their fate and what will happen along N.E. First Avenue.
But at what cost to public trust and business confidence?
-----

Dear City Commission and City Manager:

On behalf of the Fashion Row neighbors association and myself, I'm contacting you to apprise you of some very troubling concerns we have about the community meeting held yesterday at my store at 139 N.E 1st Avenue. 

CRA Director Daniel Rosemond stated not once but (at least) twice that he was under no "obligation" to be at this meeting, or even talk to us about the plan the city had already approved, after numerous property owners expressed their displeasure at his inability or unwillingness to answer their questions fully regarding this unfinished project to their satisfaction.

Am I to understand that after 3 years of united community work to make something concrete, the work on our area has suddenly stopped and yet there is not an "obligation" by the city government to accurately communicate this information to the entire community in a timely fashion?

That he has no "obligation" to explain or disclose relevant information to us, given that we are now only 3 business days away from the City Commission meeting where the already approved budget will be reviewed? 

We were told that a detailed email was to be send to area property and business owners who can't attend (since the meeting was schedule at a time that businesses are still open) and yet we are still waiting for it. We are also waiting for a copy of the complete approved budget that was requested.

Is it a matter of deep concern to us how things are suddenly changing in a way that seems very strange and counter-productive. We have always worked with the city officers in a very open relationship within our community, together, so why is that now changing? What possible reason could you have now for changing what has already been approved when it is in sight of becoming a reality? 

You need to understand that we do not agree with these dramatic changes and I think is very important to share this information.

It seems to us that it is incumbent upon a new city official whose salary is paid for by taxpayers the obligation to communicate in a timely matter, some valuable information to the community that can affects our properties, businesses, safety and security.

We are really looking to a positive outcome that will benefit everybody, since there would seem to be enough abundance in this city for everybody in this city to prosper.

We believe we are being reasonable in thinking that we are due some respect for our past efforts and only seek to exercise our right to be a part of the city's future success.

Sincerely,

Luciana Preguerman