Now that #HallandaleBeach Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders has resigned in disgrace for misconduct in office, what's next for HB? Some thoughts on what's happened and what's to come
Make no mistake about it.
What the residents and Small Business owners of Hallandale Beach have had to endure
for so many long and bitter years while the city was under the firm-but-incompetent and unethical thumb of the Cooper Rubber Stamp Crew, led by Mayor Joy Cooper, who has been Mayor since 2000, is unlike anything any South Florida community has had to put up with.
That long-running horror show at Hallandale Beach City Hall on US-1 a softball toss across the street from Gulfstream Race Track & Casino co-starred Comm. Anthony A. Sanders as the guy on the dais who never learned a lesson that he could sucessfuly carry over and put into practice at the next meeting.
The guy who never learned to expand his knowledge base or his frame of reference to make himself better understood by the community at large.
The guy who consistently refused to meet with concerned homeowners in NE Hallandale Beach when they wanted to express their adamant opposition to the Diplomat RAC a few years ago, and would not even deign to return residents phone or email messages.
The guy who (has still) never learned to accept that sometimes, other people who live in HB or who have an interest in it, really DID/DO have better ideas and public policy prescriptions than what he and his cronies thought at the time or think now is best and have decided, no matter how unpopular their ideas and policies are with the city at large, to unleash those bad ideas on the city.
Wanna guess what will happen?
Very, very bad things -constantly.
And that's been the all-too-true reality with Sanders ever since 2007.
The guy on the dais in a multicultual Broward city who takes much, if not most, of the longstanding public criticism of his own words and actions in public office as nothing less than racism, and seems to encourage his small band of fervent supporters to defend him in public not by offering facts and persuasive arguments, but rather by attacking others as racists.
And see this Twitter thread to Florida state Senator Gary Farmer that concludes with this
Whether Senator Farmer now fully grasps these simple facts, I couldn't tell you. Perhaps you should ask him the next time you see him.
But he doesn't seem to be in HB very often, though, does he?
Perhaps you might want to speak to him about that situation, too!
For roughly ten-plus years, most reasonable people in Hallandale Beach, regardless of race. age, class, gender or geographical location within the city, waited and waited to see a flash of recognition by Comm. Sanders that he needed to change his small-minded and intractable way of doing things,and actually evolve.
But they never saw it, and now we know that the very troubling things that I have told you all for years in-person, via emails and on my blog about Comm. Sanders and his associates were, factually, T-R-U-E.
@Florida_Bulldog
Broward Inspector General report: Hallandale Beach commissioner Anthony Sanders “engaged in pattern of misconduct”
And now, actions -finally!- have consequences in Hallandale Beach:
My response to @Florida_Bulldog - Hallandale freezes payments for city development, jobs programs citing waste, fraud
And now, actions -finally!- have consequences in Hallandale Beach:
@Florida_Bulldog - Hallandale freezes payments for city development, jobs programs citing waste, fraud
And since I started writing this post early last week, there's been more news:
Per a previous email that many of you reading this no doubt received from me, you'll notice that neither the South Florida Sun Sentinel or the Miami Herald have yet to write any Op-Eds about this matter involving ethics and character. or rather, the lack of them.
Why do you suppose that is?
Some of you know who did -and who did not- predict this very thing last month.
And already, rumors are flying, albeit, under-the-radar, about who in the larger HB community will make a move soon to publicly announce for the Sanders seat.
You can already imagine how Mayor Joy Cooper is going to try to use this to her own benefit politically, and encourage one of her many female cronies and apologists in town to run, with her usual cast of characters to help finance the effort.
As of today, there are Three Competing Schools of Thought:
1.) If Sanders resigns, some people in HB might try to become and serve as an interim Commissioner only as a civic responsibility, just to help the city deal with budget related matters until a special election is held. not as a prelude for them to compete in an upcoming campaign.
* Reminder of irony: city's existing written rules for replacing members were the very rules Mayor Joy Cooper did NOT follow in selecting Sanders in 2007.
2.) Others in HB may well see their best chance of ever becoming a City Commissioner by trying to be appointed by 4 members of City Commission, with the intent to run for that seat in upcoming weeks as well, and try to translate their words and actions into an election victory months from now.
3. ) A third and distinct group may well decide to forego trying to be appointed and instead make a public declaration of their intent to run and try to mobilize support within this very chaotic and fragmented community.
In this group, I think you should expect to see many of the faces of the same unqualified
people who never are seen at public meetings in Hallandale Beach and never publicly share their own policy POV and prescriptions, who put themselves forward before the debacle that led to Leo Grachow.
You should expect to be be snowed in the coming weeks by people you have never heard of or seen, with amazing tales from this group about their "community service" that, well, nobody actually has ever actually seen.
More in the next few days!
