Showing posts with label Hector Castro. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hector Castro. Show all posts

Monday, October 1, 2012

It's long past time to put the BEACH back in Hallandale Beach. For there ever to be a successful balance between business, town, and nature in Hallandale Beach, Mayor Joy Cooper must first be kicked-out of City Hall in 5 weeks; @MayorCooper

Late afternoon, North Beach, Hallandale Beach, FL, February 10, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
It's long past time to put the BEACH back in Hallandale Beach. For there ever to be a successful balance between business, town, and nature in Hallandale Beach, Mayor Joy Cooper must first be kicked-out of City Hall in 5 weeks; @MayorCooper
While it might look nice and inviting from afar, the sad and galling reality for far too many Hallandale Beach residents who want to enjoy their public beaches, is that in the ten years under Mayor Joy Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew at City Hall, the city's highly-paid top bureaucrats and the city's ineffective Dept. of Public Works -now headed by Hector Castrothe public beaches have been consistently neglected and poorly-maintained for MANY, MANY YEARS.

A frequent sign of the times for beleaguered Hallandale Beach residents and their guests at the city's public beach area: Above, snapshot of a poorly-maintained public beach -finding a used condom near one of the few park benches at North Beach at 4 p.m. on a Friday holiday afternoon on a beach full of families. January 2, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
In fact, there are several places at the beach where it's self-evident to even the casual observer that the city is NOT even in compliance with its own rules or ordinances -or even state laws- and hasn't been since I moved here in late 2003. 
To say nothing of showing initiative or common sense there.




Mid-afternoon, North Beach, Hallandale Beach, FL, April 8, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

Yet despite the fact that the beach is an invaluable resource and the reason that many people have consciously chosen to live in Hallandale Beach instead of somewhere else in south Florida, Mayor Cooper and 3/4ths of the City Commission -and those bureaucrats- have chosen to squander time, energy and large sums of money on one terrible idea after another elsewhere in the city because of either personal connections or their push for the furtherance of crony capitalism, rather than in making the investment in making the public beaches cleaner, more attractive and more interesting for residents and guests alike. 

More recently,  in her role as head of the Florida League of CitiesMayor Cooper has neglected the city even more than usual, as she has flitted from one part of the state to another, acting like a Queen Bee.
Believe me, the people she meets in other Florida cities in that FLC capacity have no earthly idea of what a poor job she has done for years by any sort of objective measure. 


Above, July 26, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, 

In 1999, while I was still living and working in the Washington, D.C. area, Hallandale voters went to the polls and decided to overwhelmingly approve a charter question asking whether the name of the city should officially be changed to Hallandale Beach.
As I understand it, the slogan that was used at the time was something along the lines of "Put the beach back in Hallandale."

In my opinion, in the year 2012, after all the dozens of fact-filled and photo-filled posts I've posted here documenting the deteriorating conditions of the city's public beaches, it's long past time to not only put the BEACH back in Hallandale, but to put genuine oversight and meaningful financial accountability to taxpayers in it as well.


That will clearly NOT happen if Joy Cooper and her thin-skinned, myopic and  and aggressively-negative personality is returned to office on November 6th, because she has had ten long years to display such abilities and respect for the citizens and resources of this city, and yet everyday, we see further signs that she lacks both the ability and desire.

It could hardly be more obvious.

Consider the following excerpts from my post of January 17th, 2009:

Sometimes, coincidences happen for a good reason, and I think such is the case today.
I was already in the process of writing something that I was going to post this weekend about the deplorable conditions of the beach, when the Broward Palm Beach New Times' Juice blog did a piece yesterday afternoon that covers much the same ground.
It's just below my comments 

Have you all read Hallandale Beach Commissioner Keith London's interesting email yet about developments at last week's HB City Commission meeting -which I didn't attend- regarding conditions at the beach?  Here's the germane portion for this email:
There was a presentation from two high school students requesting the implementation and participation of a beach clean up in the City of Hallandale Beach.  During the clean up, the waste will be sorted, measured and cataloged by type and volume of waste on the beaches. The students informed the Commission that in past clean-ups, cigarette butts accounted foe 46% of the waste. 
Armed with this information, I made a motion requesting the city attorney the feasibility of a creating a future ordinance "to make smoking illegal on City of Hallandale Beach public beaches".The Motion passed 3:2. London, Ross, Sanders for, and Cooper and Julian against.
I really commend these high school kids and only wish I'd been there to speak with them afterwards, to say so in person, since that's the kind of positive reinforcement they need.

If high school kids are so appalled by what even they can see at their beach that they actually feel compelled to show up at City Hall to complain about it -and we'll assume that they don't share that public policy gene like us- just remember they're NOT the only ones to notice, just the only ones with enough resolve to press the issue.
How truly embarrassing for this city!!! 

As we all know from our travels, in many if not most American communities fortunate enough to have a beach, especially those dependent on tourism, the beach is an invaluable resource that's esteemed, treasured and given extra care and concern.

It's a place where city officials and elected officials constantly visit and hover around to keep track of not only its physical and aesthetic condition, but also to gauge the mood of resident and visitor beach-goers to see if there's any problems or concerns there they need to be aware of.

They are pro-active, NOT reactive and slothful and full of excuses as they are in Hallandale Beach. 

That public sentiment is often an early indicator of the residents' collective feeling about the town itself, since when resident taxpayers feel that a place as high-profile as the beach is going downhill, and not being properly looked after, it's only natural that they suspect that other things in the city they can't see are falling apart, too.

It's only human nature, but it's something the City of Hallandale Beach has been in utter denial about for years, as one problem after another has been left to fester there.
Yet when confronted with the reality, they've instead put their heads in the sand.
The evidence is all around you.

That's why I and many other HB residents I've spoke to over the past 18 months want the city to emulate the City of Hollywood, where the city's Parks and Rec. Dept. manages their award-winning beach, doing a great job that makes them the envy of South Florida.
Just because our beach is so much smaller doesn't mean it has to be managed SO poorly and with so little regard for either safety or aesthetics.

The citizens of this beach-side city deserve MUCH BETTER than they get with regard to beach maintenance and overall attractiveness, and over the next week or so, I will be posting numerous photos to my blog to illustrate the exact nature of the problems I've witnessed first-hand over the past two years.
And letting others in the South Broward area who have an interest know about it, too.


Ask yourself a question: If a well-managed but land-locked city like Coral Springs had a beach this size, what would it look like and how would it be managed?
Now compare that image in your head with the current reality of ours under Mayor Joy Cooper.  
'Nuff said!

Monday, June 18, 2012

re Beachwalk project in Hallandale Beach: Hallandale Beach Mom with common sense writes re the conditions at HB's North Beach. Yet City Hall STILL won't accept ownership of longstanding problems there, just like they've ignored city's education/White Flight problems for years



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Yes, it seems so nice from a distance, but ... 
North Beach, Hallandale Beach, FL


Earlier today I received an adroit comment regarding my post of last Friday titled, Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's old threats & lawsuits re-emerge as Hollywood's Beach One Resort sues over its access to the beach, the latest shoe to drop in The Related Group's Beachwalk project that'd make HB's North Beach a de facto private beach for The Related Group's properties, NOT a public beach for HB residents
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/hallandale-beach-mayor-joy-coopers-old.html


In just a few sentences, she managed to get to the heart of so many longstanding problems in this city: the unwillingness of elected officials and highly-paid city employees in charge to first acknowledge the problems and to solve them to the satisfaction of Hallandale Beach taxpayers residents, and business owners.
Instead, out of habit or personal preference, they either ignore, deny, or kick the can further down the road.


Or, as has often happened when I've publicly discussed these matters, found myself personally attacked for pointing out what everyone but them seems able to see right in front of our collective faces. 


Barboryte wrote:

I went to this beach once and never again. I would rather drive to Hollywood boardwalk and spend money there and have my kids play in the sand and enjoy plenty of showers and clean beach.Maybe it's time to get up and sell and move from this town. All I see is our town being sold piece by piece to developers with absolutely no regard to the residents. 
Her comments are not unlike many I received over the recent years during the battle against Peter Deutsch's Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter School trying to force itself down the throats
of a single-family residential Northeast HB neighborhood, on N.E. 8th Avenue, with the promise of far more kids and traffic coming from outside of HB and southeast Broward than the neighborhood either wanted or could stand.


But associated with that issue was the related one that is the abject failure over the eight-plus years that I've lived here of Mayor Cooper and the City Commission and City Managers Good and Antonio to be serious and convene a citywide forum at the HB Cultural Center, say on a Saturday morning, run by a moderator and with experts present, where the city's educational problems and future could be FINALLY be discussed, calmly but honestly.


Frankly, it's as if everyone at HB City Hall was so afraid that the truth would be uttered by so many dozens and dozens of HB parents that it would actually hurt someone else's feelings, so instead, we simply had to just pretend, year-after-year, that the problem didn't really exist.
But it did and it still does.


Specifically, that would mean publicly airing a problem that I've written about here on the blog a few times but which nobody at HB City Hall wants to publicly acknowledge, but which as everyone who has lived here for any amount of time knows, is one of the main reasons that families move away from Hallandale Beach: the popular perception that the nearest public high school, Hallandale High School, is unsatisfactory and a poor educational choice.


So instead we have either White Flight to the more western suburbs of this county, or high school age kids attending private or charter schools located outside of this city.
That's NOT how you build a community -or keep one intact.


But year-after-year this problem has been allowed to exist below the radar.
And equally so, the awful conditions of this city's public beaches, which clearly ought to be a jewel and natural meeting place for the community, but which isn't.


Which, of course, explains why you are much more likely to run into someone you know from HB at Hollywood Beach, near Johnson Street on the Broadwalk, than you are at HB's own beaches.
People have and are voting with their feet -and their cars.


I'm now going to quote myself.
Really.


From my January 19, 2009 blog post titled, Welcome to Hallandale Beach: where old cigarettes and condoms party at the beach that HB Cops ignore!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/welcome-to-hallandale-beach-where-old.html

As we all know from our travels, in many if not most American communities fortunate enough to have a beach, especially those dependent on tourism, the beach is an invaluable resource that's esteemed, treasured and given extra care and concern.
It's a place where city officials and elected officials constantly visit and hover around to keep track of not only its physical and aesthetic condition, but also to gauge the mood of resident and visitor beach-goers to see if there's any problems or concerns there they need to be aware of.
They are pro-active, NOT reactive and slothful and full of excuses as they are in Hallandale Beach. 
That public sentiment is often an early indicator of the residents' collective feeling about the town itself, since when resident taxpayers feel that a place as high-profile as the beach is going downhill, and not being properly looked after, it's only natural that they suspect that other things in the city they can't see are falling apart, too.
It's only human nature, but it's something the City of Hallandale Beach has been in utter denial about for years, as one problem after another has been left to fester there.Yet when confronted with the reality, they've instead put their heads in the sand.The evidence is all around you.
So, I was at North Beach on Saturday for well over an hour, checking things out, and as usual, it was fine as long as you only saw it thru the prism of the palm trees along Surf Road.
Yes, from there, everything always looks fine!


 Above, July 26, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

But once you've parked in the garage (the one that the mayor seems perfectly willing to give away) and were actually standing on the beach, you could tell that it was as filthy and unappealing as ever, though to be fair, for once, I didn't find any condoms or liquor bottles over near the rusty pipes that have been on the beach for years...

Snapshot of a poorly-maintained public beach: Finding a used condom near one of the only two park benches at 4 p.m., on a Friday holiday afternoon on a beach full of families. January 2, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier


It could hardly be clearer that HB City Hall and their DPW leadership STILL won't accept ownership of the longstanding problems there.
They act like residents who pay taxes for that beach to be properly maintained CAN'T see what has been in front of us for years and we don't know who is responsible.
They're wrong -we do.
We know EXACTLY who is responsible!

The very problems I telephoned DPW about two weeks ago -FROM the beach- which they said they'd take care of.
Among other things, that included the city's Beach sponsorship signs that we've seen there for the past few years, were still lying on the ground, not properly erected.
And were far from where they were supposed to be.
Like last time we were there.
And the week before that...
And the month before that...

According to the life guards, the sign on South Beach has been under the lifeguard stand -that STILL has graffiti on it- for easily 3 or 4 months, waiting for DPW to do the job they're paid to do -basic maintenance.

It's only further proof to me that, as I've been stating for years, the look and care of the public beaches has fallen so far below what is acceptable, that we should immediately take it away from a clearly-ineffective and dis-interested DPW, and privatize the function, just like the beach life guards are actually contractors for Jeff Ellis, not city employees.

A firm given the money that was previously appropriated to DPW for beach maintenance, and which has properly maintaining an attractive and safe beach as their only function, knowing that if they fail they'll be replaced.
I believe that almost anyone we choose would do a MUCH-SUPERIOR job by us as taxpayers then continuing to expect a dog that clearly won't hunt, like DPW, to suddenly learn to hunt.

Obviously if this happens, there also needs to be a commensurate cut in personnel numbers for DPW, since I'm certainly NOT going to reward DPW for doing a terrible job by letting them keep the same number of employees, since actions and consistent poor performance must have consequences, and that should include some for Hector Castro himself, the DPW Director.

So where exactly is Hector Castro on this matter, and WHY is it that he is never grilled about this longstanding failure at HB City Hall, when it's clearly a big enough and obvious enough problem that even Joy Cooper apologists were mentioning it at the June 6th City Commission meeting?

And why was his immediate predecessor or Antonio or Good never grilled, either?
Where is the personal and professional accountability at HB City Hall?
By the way, the life guards stands we have on the beach are NOT properly "grounded" for lightning strikes, which is both a liability issue and a maintenance issue.

Rather than have the city hand-over de facto control of the public beach called North Beach, so The Related Group can make it a boutique beach that caters largely to their residents and hotel clients for their three properties within four blocks of that location at the Hollywood-
Hallandale Beach city-line, and also maintain control of the public parking garage, too -both for thirty years- we should tell the City Commission to tell TRG, thanks but no thanks.

But do go ahead and build the hotel you can already build, because that is something that nearly everyone in the community agrees we need.
But build it WITHOUT the condo units, and WITHOUT tossing the North Beach parcel in as a sweetener -to a real estate corporation!

Then, we vote in November for a mayor and city commissioners who take their job as public representatives seriously, who actually DO their homework, read the background documents  fully and who actually show-up for HB City Commission meetings ready, willing and able  to ask tough, probing questions of city staff and applicants, for the benefit of this city's taxpayers, NOT for the benefit of developers or a certain group of people in town used to having their way.

And after those sort of people get elected in November -and they are NOT named Joy Cooper or members of her Rubber Stamp Crew named Anthony A. Sanders and William "Bill" Julian-  they can instruct our new City Manager, Renee Crichton, that owing to the longstanding neglect of the city's public beaches for years, fixing the public beaches is now deemed a HIGH PRIORITY, and she needs to come back to them within thirty days with some realistic proposals to make that a reality -ASAP!

One that also includes the possibility of the city privatizing the maintenance of the beach so that it properly reflects the fact that 13 years ago, the people of this community overwhelmingly voted to "put the beach back into Hallandale Beach."