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Showing posts with label Jennifer Frastai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jennifer Frastai. Show all posts

Saturday, June 8, 2013

More Flooding & Operation Sandbag in Hallandale Beach: HB gets drenched-to-the-bone with 8 inches of rain by powerful trailing storms of T.S. Andrea, but the city and Mayor Joy Cooper still act like ostriches when it comes to simple tasks that would serve the largest number of residents in the most-efficient manner possible when they need help. Why? Because that's the way things get done here with her as mayor; Flood relief project is 2 years late; #Hallandale, #andrea, #susierusso, @FanSusieQ

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Local10 News, Miami, WPLG-TV
Floodwaters strand drivers in South Florida
Floodwaters left by Tropical Storm Andrea turn roads into rivers
Local10 reporter Baron James is on the ground and in the water as northeast Hallandale Beach is yet again the scene of standing floodwater after the remnants of Tropical Storm Andrea pass thru northeast Miami-Dade County and southeast Broward County on Friday afternoon and evening, after many days of rain and with the ground already saturated. 
Published On: June 7, 2013 11:06:31 PM EDT, Updated On: June 8 2013 12:11:20 AM EDT
http://www.local10.com/weather/andreas-floodwaters-strand-drivers-in-so-fla/-/1717142/20479428/-/geqkcx/-/index.html

High-tech in Hallandale Beach, 2013 -Orange safety cones! May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
More Flooding & Operation Sandbag in Hallandale Beach: HB gets drenched-to-the-bone with 8 inches of rain by powerful trailing storms of T.S. Andrea, but the city and Mayor Joy Cooper still act like ostriches when it comes to simple tasks that would serve the largest number of residents in the most-efficient manner possible when they need help. Why? Because that's the way things get done here with her as mayor; Flood relief project is 2 years late; #Hallandale, #andrea, #susierusso, @FanSusieQ







The Dept. of Public Works (DPW) location that the City of Hallandale Beach is telling residents to go to in order to pick up sand bags if they need them due to flooding, 630 N.W. 2nd Street, is adjacent to one of the great exercises in make-work that any South Florida government is currently engaged in, in this case, the so-called Historic School House Restoration that is taking years longer to do than it'd have taken to build from scratch.

Almost everyone who knows me reasonably well knows how much I revere history as well as my longtime concern for historical preservation, a fact buttressed by my stack of ten years worth of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Preservation magazine in banker's boxes in my garage, back when I lived in Arlington County, VA for 15 years, something I've mentioned here previously.
http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/#.UbLhwefVCSo

But as for this particular building, well, it's the proverbial exception to the rule.
It's preposterous on its face and nobody I know here has any idea if there's even an actual meaningful deadline for the rehab of this school, or where it will be located for good when it's finished, to say nothing of who'd actually come visit it, given how the city has treated other publicly-owned properties over the years, to say nothing of the deplorable condition of the beach.
(Like the North Beach Building on State Road A1A that the taxpayers of this city own but are NOT allowed to use unless they pay for it, unlike city employees in the past few years who've used it as the site for holiday parties, though most of you reading this already know all this very well.)

In short, this out-of-the-way, nothing little building that is barely thought about is already a White Elephant before it's even finished.
Lack of attention to detail, lack of accountability, lack of...

May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

 Trust me when I tell you that it looks the same now as it did six months ago and nine months ago, and that I have the photos to prove it.
I also have friends who can confirm this who also share my anger at what this place represents, since it's a place I drive by at least once every ten days to see how much time is going by without anything tangible actually getting done.
Therefore it serves as the perfect example of how things really get done here.
They don't.

 That's the mediocre neighborhood where the city's sand bag operation calls home.
That too is an eye-opening experience to behold, and a case study in how simple things have been botched and remain half-assed in Hallandale Beach for so long, that some citizens choose apathy instead of normal civic engagement because it's easier than dealing with the mind-set at City Hall.

It's long been perfectly clear that the sandbag operation is now so unsatisfactory that it no longer meets many residents's basic expectations because it's neither well-organized nor well-managed, and so is actually bypassed by many residents who prefer to buy sand bags at retail shops because it's more predictable and organized.
Yet the city persists in acting like it's actually accomplishing something.

This operation has for years been one of the five most-widely told HB anecdotes by both myself and my friends in explaining to new residents, outsiders and the news media how much this city genuinely seems to be run more for the benefit of the city's employees rather than for the benefit of residents, since nothing else explains the level of absurdity that's apparent to the naked eye.

 If you were starting such a program from scratch in your own town, there are any number of things that you would want to ensure were done and in place before a storm in order to satisfy the residents of this city -your customers!
However fascinating and original that list in your head is, though, frankly, it doesn't matter, since those are NOT now the primary considerations of the City of Hallandale Beach, nor have they been in the nine years that I have lived here.

Here in Hallandale Beach, 
a.) The sand is dumped inside a fence and on the side of a two-lane road
b.) Both the immediate area and the sand itself are uncovered, not even by a tarp
c.) The sand is deposited in an unlit area
d.) They use large orange safety cones as funnels.
Really
May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.


May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.


For many years I've asked a number of common sense questions of the city about how this particular set-up could possibly be anything but a Keystone Kops routine-in-the-rain given all the above parameters.

 I've asked why people who live in low-lying areas that are always hit hard -mostly in northeastern HB- are, from what I hear, NOT able to get sandbags in the weeks before hurricane season starts, and even more importantly, why the city adamantly refuses to fix these self-evident problems, or at least relocate the sand prior to approaching storms or once it's clear that clouds bringing downpours are static, like what we had here a week before Christmas in 2009, Dec, 18th and 19th, that left much of NE HB under water.

 The city already has the necessary resources it needs to show some common sense and relocate the sand, the bags and the shovels to a better location that is well-lit, has some cover, and that makes it easier to distribute, no matter the weather.
Even a place that can do two of the three tasks is greatly preferable to continuing to have it in a location that has none of them. 

 Despite the city patting themselves on the back afterwards, the city was judged by the people I know in that area to have responded very slowly, and actually made things much worse in some cases by needlessly driving their city trucks thru streets like NE 8th and 10th Avenue where the wakes that were created went straight into residents homes.
People were irate!!!

 (Because it's HB, once the city finally erected some small warning signs on the north side of Hallandale Beach Blvd., near NE 10th and 12th Avenue, in one case, they actually left some of the signs up for more than four months, which confused drivers, esp. out-of-town visitors coming out of Gulfstream Park's northern entrance at HBB, many of whom go north on NE 10th up to Atlantic Shores Blvd. to avoid the heavy U.S.-1 traffic to the west.)

 The whole scene is embarrassing and completely counter-intuitive to helping the largest
number of residents as quickly as possible.
But the city won't budge despite how ridiculous it is and needs a more sane and logical operation.

 Just so you know, this is one of the many dozens of problems in the city -and constructive suggestions- I spoke to Assistant HB City Manager Jennifer Frastai about four-and-a-half-years ago that she never followed-up on, and never contacted me about which flowed from our infamous one-hour meeting at City Hall in the City Manager's conference room, mentioned most recently on the blog on April 29th:
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/having-long-tradition-of-white-flight.html

If some of this sounds familiar it should, as I previously wrote about this problem on the blog in my post of  August 25, 2012 titled, 
As "Isaac" approaches South Florida, key differences re-emerge between how Hollywood and Hallandale Beach cope: Hollywood Residents, Business Owners Can Fill Their Own Free Sandbags; Hallandale Beach residents can once again get sand-bagged and dumb-founded

*By the way, I noticed Friday night that the street on the west side of HB City Hall that the HB Police Dept. regularly uses was completely impassable, even while U.S.-1 in front of HB City Hall was bumper-to-bumper from HBB south to Ives Dairy Road until about 9:30 p.m., making for a very unsafe scenario for ambulances trying to reach Aventura Hospital on U.S.-1 and N.E. 209th Street.

 I know because I live near HB City Hall and ended-up walking along U.S.-1 to the Aventura Target on N.E. 213th Street to get some things because the traffic was so bad.

** Oh, and as usual, as I found out around 8:30 p.m., ALL the street lights on S.E./S.W. 3rd Street near the FEC Railroad tracks were out, AGAIN -and all the ones from Bluesten park north to 3rd Street- meaning during a downpour there, you are literally taking your life into your hands at night!
Even if your car's defrost is on overdrive!

 HB comes up at 6:57 in this Channel 7 video:






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Monday, April 29, 2013

Having a long tradition of 'White Flight' and a large part of Hallandale Beach's community, essentially, boycotting the local public high school, Hallandale High School, is nothing to brag about. Unfortunately, it's been the sad reality under Mayor Joy Cooper; One of the persons at Hallandale Beach City Hall most-responsible for nothing changing for the better on this issue, Jennifer Frastai, will speak at Tuesday's meeting re education policy in Broward, at Hollywood City Hall at 6 pm. But Frastai won't talk about the real problems here -anything but that!; @MayorCooper


Above, as it has been for many years, one of my three photos of Hollywood City Hall that are three of the first six photos you see on Google Images when you look up Hollywood (FL) City Hall
It's currently #2 after having been #1 for years. I'm always surprised that there aren't more older, historical photos of this or the previous Hollywood City Hall listed on Google. Looking west towards Hollywood City Hall from the half-circle in front of the Hollywood branch of the Broward County library. June 2, 2008 photos By South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved
I realize that for some of you, much of the following will seem like ancient history once again repeating itself, and some very bad history at that, but stay with it.
Most people don't know the same facts that you do, and they deserve to.

My comments are after the announcement.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: News and Announcements <listserv@civicplus.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 10:51 AM
Subject: Hollywood to Host Consortium of Broward County Education Advisory Boards

Email Notifications
The City of Hollywood Education Advisory Board is participating in a forum of 16 education advisory boards from throughout Broward County to exchange information, explore issues affecting education, and discuss new Broward County School District initiatives. A meeting of the Consortium of Education Advisory Boards will take place Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. in Room 215 at Hollywood City Hall, 2600 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood. Meetings of the Consortium are typically held on a quarterly basis.

 One of the topics that will be discussed during this meeting is the Hollywood City Commission’s recent passing of a resolution opposing the practice of high-stakes testing in the public schools. Donna Greene, vice chair of the Hollywood Education Advisory Committee, will make a presentation about the process of gaining Commission support for the resolution. Additionally, Jennifer Frastai, assistant city manager of the City of Hallandale Beach, will discuss the reorganization of the Hallandale Beach Education Advisory Board and Renee Grutman, chair of Cooper City’s education advisory board, will discuss Cooper City’s Resource Fair.
You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to News and Announcements on www.hollywoodfl.org. 
If clicking the link doesn't work, please copy and paste the link into your browser.
Since I'm on the mailing list, why am I getting this announcement for the first time the day before it happens?

Do you recognize that name above, Jennifer Frastai?

 She's one of the two Hallandale Beach Assistant City Manager whom I and many other concerned HB residents and small business-owners hold personally responsible for much of what doesn't work or has seldom-if-ever worked properly within the City of Hallandale Beach's inefficient and bewildering bureaucracy, few of whom actually live here.

 (The other is Nydia Rafols, whose fingerprints, like Frastai's, are all over the lousy public policies currently pursued here, and the self-evident problems that never get resolved, esp. involving the city's Dept, of Public Works, which is forever chasing its tail and making no progress on matters, years after-the-fact.)

In my own opinion, and in the opinion of many other Hallandale Beach residents who actually pay close attention to what actually happens in this city -an effort in contrast to the local South Florida news media, print or TV, or the taxpayer-supported faux newspaper that was specifically and negatively cited by the Broward Inspector General in his report on corruption at HB City Hall, the South Florida Sun-Times- Frastai is someone who has largely escaped the sort of negative public scrutiny that in many other parts of the country would be hers, given her very mixed -at best- track record.
Especially given how many things Frastai has touched over the many years that are no better now than they were years ago.

 Given the important topic under discussion on Tuesday night in Hollywood, Education Policy in Broward County, it's important to note that she's the same HB city employee who spent almost 25 minutes of a recent HB City Commission meeting talking about the high-minded "changes" to the HB Education Advisory Board when it needed, maybe, 10 minutes.

 I know because I was there in attendance and taped it on my camcorder.
I deleted it once I got home and listened to it again because of how ponderous and unrealistic it all seemed given where we are and given her own record while acting as the city's liaison for education for years.

 The faux earnestness with which she spoke was especially meaningless and even irritating given how this city currently operates, a point that was hammered home subsequently by Mayor Cooper herself, as if I could have written it any better, complete with punchline.

 Mayor Cooper has wasted little time and has promptly and predictably shown how little regard she had for this high-minded effort to reach out to new faces and new people in the community and get them involved.
People with varied backgrounds and perhaps even some educational/childcare expertise on the Education Advisory Board.
Yeah, it sounds great in the abstract, but what about in reality?

Mayor Cooper showed her true colors and provided the punchline by re-naming her tennis pal, Barbara Southwick, to the same Education Advisory Board that she's already been on for years.

So much for dynamic changes!
So what was all THAT talk about positive changes and new faces, then?

 Yes, Joy Cooper, the longtime Hallandale Beach mayor who has NEVER once publicly called for or even convened a single community-wide meeting or forum, say on a Saturday morning morning, that dealt exclusively with any of the myriad of difficult education issues and very real challenges facing this city.
A city where hardly any kids who live east of U.S.-1 -where most of the population is- actually go to the public high school that's in this city.

Having a tradition of White Flight and a large part of the community, essentially, boycotting the local public high school, Hallandale High School, is nothing to brag about.

 (And who has been the Education point-person at Hallandale Beach City Hall while all of this was allowed to happen, year-after-year?
Jennifer Frastai.) 

Real estate brokers covering S.E. Broward sure don't boast about THAT fact it when talking to families considering a new home in HB, esp. those moving to the area from out-of-state, do they?
And why would they, since the basic facts would cause most reasonable people to question why they should want to move here if the people who already live here WON'T send their own kids to Hallandale High School.

But then that's been Hallandale Beach City Hall's modus operandi for so many issues under Joy Cooper the past ten years -if she pretends the problem doesn't exist, it doesn't.
And you can be pretty sure the news media will ignore it completely, too, which makes everything worse, since there's no public pushback against bad public policy that doesn't help anyone, yet continues year-after-year.

For those of you who don't already know, Jennifer Frastai, one of the speakers Tuesday night is the same person whom I spoke to for almost an hour to in the HB City Manager's conference room four-and-a-half years ago with another HB Assistant City Manager present who hasn't been around for years, Franklin Heileman.
Yes, just the three of us in the HB City Manager's conference room.

I described to her in detail just about every single problem and every single example of HB City Hall's longstanding myopia, incompetency or lack of oversight that I'd personally observed -and taken photos of- one neighborhood at a time, and placed on my blog.
That's why it took almost an hour.
The truth is, though, there were always a lot more photos and examples I didn't post but could have.

And just so you know, just as I reminded them that wasted afternoon, everything I mentioned was something I'd already communicated to the very people at HB City Hall who were supposed to be in charge of that, so I already followed the chain-of-command.
But it was broken, apparently, permanently.

Even though no organizational flow-chart of the city or even a complete list of areas of responsibility existed then or even currently at HB City Hall or on the city's website, I made an effort to find out who the right person to talk to was.
And in ZERO instances did any of the city employees I communicated with actually do anything to resolve the problems facing HB residents, taxpayers and small business-owners.
Really.

Why do you suppose I started my blog in the first place, anyway?
Simply to complain about stuff?
Hardly.

At one point, about ten minutes into this, after writing some things down, Frastai put her pen down and looked at Heileman sitting right next to her at the other end of the conference table, and asked if all the things I was saying were true, and, implicitly, whether I'd really mentioned the problems and posted these photos on the web.

I'll give Heileman credit at least for being honest about that, since he just nodded, because he knew it was all true.
She seemed a bit stunned.

We then went mentally thru a tour of a city where City Hall couldn't or wouldn't see longstanding problems right in front of residents' noses every day, inconvenient reminders that city employees ignored problems that needed to actually be solved.

Well, despite my reminding Frastai that photos of everything I said were already on the Internet, with its location, length of the problem, et al, on my blog, in case she wanted to confirm my comments, and despite my having given Frastai multiple ways of contacting me my phone or email to let me know what she'd done, she NEVER did anything about the problems I mentioned to HER that afternoon.
She never contacted me, either.

Frastai's the same person whom former City Manager  Mike Good put in charge of making sure that the newly-purchased recyclable bins were placed on the beach in places where beach-goers could use them, to make it as easy as possible, after I criticized both of them at a City Hall budget meeting in 2009.

(Yet it still, needlessly, took many months and even now, is inconsistently done, and seems to be organized in such a fashion to make it for the convenience of city employees, NOT actual beach-goers, the same way the city continues to mis-allocate picnic tables down at South Beach, while there are only two at North Beach, which are often monopolized all day.
The city has foolishly re-purposed hundreds of the recyclable bins to be used for regular garbage and city employees actually hide them, which is why you don't see recycling bins near the baseball stands at Blusten Park all these years later, while they remain next to the fence on S.W. 5th Street, some of which have not moved in years.
Why did taxpayers pay for something that the city has no clear intention of using properly and with common sense?)

Most of which I mentioned here last June 15th,
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 defacto private beach for The Related Group's properties, NOT a public beach for HB residents

By the way, I think it's awesome that this Education meeting in Hollywood tomorrow is scheduled for the same time and date that the City of Hallandale Beach is hosting their beach re-nourishment meeting over at The Hemispheres Condos.

Yes, the meeting with responsible federal and state officials who, presumably, know what they're talking about and who'll be straightforward with those of us who show-up, creating a real nice contrast with what we usually get at most HB meetings, where blame is placed on outsiders -or those of us here in town who favor genuine reform and transparency- is thrown, to say nothing of the mis-direction, half-truths and spin dumped by the barrel-full.

But NOT a forthright discussion about public policy where ALL the germane facts surrounding an issue or vote are publicly revealed -or even given to the City Commissioners by the city staff, as CRA meeting of February proved- and of the problems that are before us.

 Because, apparently, the unvarnished truth seems to really hurt someone's feelings at HB City Hall, so instead, we get the charade of democracy, not the real thing.
Year-after-year...
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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Part I: Investigating the continuing dysfunction, lack of appropriate disclosure of public information and the generally imperious anti-citizen attitude at Hallandale Beach City Hall under Mayor Joy Cooper; Matters that anyone could see if they just looked -I looked and here's what I found in late February 2013

This email was the first of two emails sent to City of Hallandale Beach (COHB) officials and employees at Hallandale Beach City Hall in the last week of February regarding longstanding problems that citizens continue to experience with the lack of timely public disclosure of public information, proper legal public noticing of scheduled public meetings, and the continuing problems with the city's clunky website, to say nothing of very curious choices about what is and is NOT placed on the city website by city officials.

 It's instructive to note that any Hallandale Beach resident or visitor going to the city's website would've found the very same things that I did when I was looking. 
My only advantage, if you can call it that, was being familiar enough with how poorly-constructed the city's website is and how decidedly non-user friendly it is, with almost no intuitive feel to it at all.

 And, of course, the common sense borne of experience to actually notice what was missing and to be able to double-check other places on the website to see if it'd been placed there by either mistake or on purpose, or was simply MIA.

 For the tens of millions of dollars the City of Hallandale Beach annually spends, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me and many other concerned residents and small business owners in this city to expect that a current city employee drawing a paycheck actually engages in some degree of quality control and checks things once in a while, to see if everything is where it is supposed to be, and to aggressively fix problems when they encounter them, something which is NOT happening now.
Not by any stretch of the imagination.

 A reasonable person might think that the head of the city's IT Dept, Ted Lamott, or the city's public spokesperson, Peter Dobens, might be the two people who by title are the ones that ought to be doing that as part of their job already.
That it wouldn't actually be necessary to mention it to them.

 Yes, because that is more or less what they're already being paid for, isn't it, public communication.
And yet we STILL have a website that is not well-organized enough, one that lacks even a basic directory that is properly constructed.

 Instead, when searching for information, even when you use the proper name or subject fields, relevant and germane information does NOT appear.
And much of the information placed on the website is placed there in a format that is NOT searchable.

 Why would you consciously chose to do that unless what you want to do is make the search query more difficult for users instead of easier?

 Lamott and Dobens are paid to make information available to the people who need it, including taxpayers and residents, but nobody I know in this city thinks they're getting their money's worth from either one of them, and that includes yours truly.

Two years ago, I spoke in minute detail to Lamott following a City Commission meeting he had spoken at, after which I spoke for three minutes under public comments about the longstanding website problems that continued to be ignored by him and the city.

 We spoke outside the Commission Chambers in the City Hall breezeway and I told him with one glaring example after another that taxpayers were fed-up with problems never being resolved to their satisfaction.
I gave him my contact information and told him that i expected him to get cracking on fixing the problems.

Well, this being where we are, I'm sure that regular readers of the blog will not be surprised to discover that none of the specific website problems I told him about were ever dealt with, and Lamott never contacted me, despite having proclaimed how much he wanted feedback.

Yes, the same exact situation that has occurred so many times in the past with me and others I know in dealing with HB city employees.
They say they want to know but when you tell them what the problems are, you never hear from them again, i.e the Jennifer Frastai Rule.

This email was sent on February 26th, 2013 to the following people:
Sheena James, City Clerk, COHB; Ted Lamott, Director of IT, COHB; Renee C. Miller, City 
Manager, COHB; V. Lynn Whitfield; City Attorney, COHB; Liza Torres, CRA Director, COHB;
Michele Lazarow, Commissioner, COHB -just elected in November and someone I voted for.

-----
Why isn't today's Hallandale Beach Planning & Zoning meeting listed on the city's website calendar?

Last month's CRA Advisory Board meeting, a meeting mandated by the City Commission in December, as well as the eventual Visioning meeting, were also NOT listed on the city website's calendar.

Additionally, that CRA Advisory Board meeting was NOT posted on City Hall's public notice bulletin board near the elevator, even as the meeting was starting.

Why in the year 2013 is getting accurate and timely PUBLIC information onto the city's own website SUCH a difficult and continuing problem for the city?

And shouldn't making sure that public information is actually made public quickly something that logically Peter Dobens should be responsible for, given not only what his position is in the city, Title: Public Relations / Public Information http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/directory.aspx?eid=165 but former City Manager Mark Antonio's tortured rationale for why the city would hire yet another employee in the first place to perform such tasks?

Before Dobens was hired, Antonio was very adamant at public meetings about that and yet taxpayers and residents continue to see the city fail or unable to do very simple tasks with regard to making public information "public" that other cities seem to be able to do quite easily.

Why in the year 2013 is the city sometimes using Micro Office Word 97 for the P&Z agenda instead of PDF, as is the case today?

Who, specifically, decided to change the format of the HB P&Z meeting Minutes from Verbatim to Action Minutes, given that those meetings are held during the day when few people can attend, instead of at night as they ought to be, or, as I'd prefer, Saturday mornings at 10 a.m. when the largest number of Hallandale Beach residents can attend and participate?

On complicated or controversial matters, someone who was did not physically attend the meeting would have a very hard time following just how it came to be that decisions were made the way they were, if one were to rely solely on the new Minutes format.

Context is important and under a new system that eliminates context, a HB resident or interested party is left with few choices other than to try to find someone who attended the  meeting and have them explain what happened and why.

As someone who has been VERY critical publicly of the city's website for many years at public meetings for self-evident reasons, what are taxpayers to make of the fact that on the website now, in Docs  under "General Announcements," there has been nothing added there since January of 2012?

Thirteen months without any additions of any kind?
Really?

This has the cumulative effect of making me and other residents think that a.) a lot of relevant material is completely missing and was never uploaded when it was supposed to be, and should still be now, and, b.) that the whole category needs to be completely re-imagined and re-configured to be made more accurate and timely so that residents can find information more easily.

There should also be a parameter on that category, if it is kept, that allows a customer to pull either up "Most Recent" or "Most Popular" or both, so you don't have to swim thru ALL the listed documents while looking for something specific.

Frankly, the current category and layout has the practical effect of making you forget what you are actually looking for about halfway thru wading thru the list.

Why are Mayor Cooper's so-called (South Florida Sun-Times) "columns" posted on the city's website?

I would appreciate it if you could please forward to me the name and contact information for the CRA Advisory Board's attorney, as they are not listed on the city's website. 

As it happens, there's nothing current or accurate on the city's website about when the CRA Advisory Board will have their next meeting, or even whether they still need members, and if so, for what categories. http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/?nid=50#HBCRA
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Tuesday, March 5, 2013

To Hallandale Beach's frustrated and beleaguered taxpayers who've reached their limit after SO MANY YEARS of unsatisfactory performance by city's DPW -esp. re proper maintenance/appearance of public beach and city parks- outsourcing some DPW tasks ought to be on the table for active consideration. So why is City Manager Renee Miller not even going to consider the idea during the next year given DPW's dismal track record?


JUST AS TRUE NOW AS IT WAS WHEN IT WAS WRITTEN IN JUNE 2012! "So this is where our tax dollars go to die?" My friend and fellow civic activist Csaba Kulin, wondering when we're FINALLY going to get the clean and inviting public beach that Hallandale Beach residents believe we're entitled to but have never received under Mayor Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew. Instead, we get rusty, bacteria-filled pipes in the middle of the beach and garbage cans on the beach -without lids- at the windiest place in the entire city. And a public building across the street from the beach that the public can't use for free, but which city employees can -for their holiday parties. Go to http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/latest-info-photos-re-related-groups.html 
2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved 

To beleaguered Hallandale Beach taxpayers, residents and small business owners who've reached their limit after SO MANY YEARS of unsatisfactory performance by city's DPW -esp. proper maintenance of public beach and city parks, which look awful- out-sourcing some DPW tasks looks better and better. So why is City Manager Renee Miller not even going to consider the idea during the next year when DPW's dismal track record is so clear?

 My post today consists of a copy of an email I sent on Friday afternoon, March 1st, to the City of Hallandale Beach's Dept. of Public Works' interim director, Earl King, a longtime employee at DPW.

It was occasioned by some questions he asked me following my very critical comments and pointed questions re DPW's performance to City Manager Renee Miller during Thursday night's Quadrant meeting in NW Hallandale Beach, held at the Foster Park facility that opened a few months ago, which did NOT have enough parking for the number of people who showed up, low as that was. 
While having the meeting there was a nice idea in the abstract, it was clearly less so in reality, especially since the rest of the facility was open and full of people.

(Why are the city's Quadrant meetings never held on Saturday mornings at 10 a.m., when the largest number of HB citizens can actually attend, instead of weeknights? 
And given the low turnout of citizens these things usually get, why are they not televised and streamed online, when the city already has both the technology and ability to do so?
Even to allow phone-in and email questions to be asked and answered?
It's the year 2013, not 1913, and isn't the goal of these meetings in the first place to be "outreach" and education?
Sort of makes you wonder, doesn't it?)

I should note for the record here that Thursday night's meeting, the second of the year, was held in a room that was full of more city employees than citizens, and the only members of the five-person City Commission who were in attendance were Commissioners Michele Lazarow and Anthony A. Sanders. 
Due to an upset stomach, I didn't attend the first meeting, for Southeast HB, the part of town that I live in, so I don't know who exactly from the HB City Commission attended.

During the Q&A portion of the program, after HB City Manager Renee Miller's opening presentation on the upcoming city budget, I made a series of pointed remarks and asked some equally pointed questions regarding the performance of DPW, especially as it regards the maintenance of the two things that taxpayers in a small city like this feel they should be able to take for granted: the city's small number of public parks and even more importantly, what ought to be the city's Crown Jewel, but isn't, the city's public beach.
Above, a photo I took on Sunday March 3rd at the city's North Beach: the useless 10-foot steel pole that's full of bacteria, rust and holes, the one that has been there for YEARS, was STILL THERE, taunting us. And so were the piles of cigarette butts that haven't been cleaned up since... And the garbage cans without lids.
Because I was filming the entire meeting on my FLIP Mino HD camera, mounted on my tripod, from one side of the room and next to a wall, frankly, I'm embarrassed to say that my voice wavered a little bit more than I'd have liked, since I didn't want to overpower the camera mic just a few inches away, so it was NOT exactly a star-turn by me by any stretch of the imagination.

Still, I do think my questions and justified anger came through to everyone in the room who was actually paying attention, which clearly is not always the case among the assembled city employees, largely Dept. heads.

For those of you who are relatively new to the blog and who do NOT already know, the subject of DPW's performance and what many very upset residents like feel is the need to actually out--source some of their duties, with an equal reduction in their budget, has been the subject-du-jour for not only dozens of previous posts here since this blog was started, but also a subject that has been much discussed at various formal and informal meetings I've attended over the past six years here in the city.

After all, why do we want to keep doing the same exact thing with the same exact people that is clearly NOT WORKING to residents' satisfaction?

For those of you who do NOT already know, it's important that you understand that unlike is the case in many if not most other Florida cities with a public beach, here, it's the responsibility of DPW, not the city's Parks & Recreation Dept., for the maintenance and appearance of the public beach.
Here, the only thing that the city's Parks & Recreation dept. is specifically responsible for are the Chickee Huts and the children's playground equipment located at South Beach.
That's it.

Everything else on the beach from the city's border with Hollywood to the north down to the South Beach border with the La Mer condominium, is DPW's responsibility, including the area occupied by the city's North Beach building off of State Road A1A, underneath the city's iconic beach ball-colored Water Tower.

That building is currently being rented by the city to real estate developers, The Related Group, for use as their customer "model" for their Beachwalk development project on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway two blocks to the west.

Regular readers of the blog will recall that as a particularly bad deal for city taxpayers that was approved by the HB City Commission last August, where I and many other HB civic activists were against anything other than it becoming the quality hotel we were promised it'd be, which everyone in the city agreed we needed, including me, but NOT with residential units as part of the deal.

And a bad deal because it also gave The Related Group practical if not legal control of the North Beach area, which Mayor Cooper, the City Commission and the two previous City Managers have all allowed to deteriorate for many years to the point that many Hallandale Beach residents will NOT take visiting friends or family members to the city's public beach because of how depressing it is, because of how bad it looks and is maintained.

Now though, as has been the case since the North Beach property was given to the city years ago for FREE -by Related no less, after being the "model" for the next-door trio of towers known as The Beachclub- the taxpayers and residents of this community DON'T have access to one of their own buildings, a two-story building with views of the ocean.

A building that every other city in South Florida would love to have in their city but steps from the ocean and made a point of pride in their community in no time at all.

But here in Hallandale Beach, that building has been mired in public controversy from the start both because of how long it took the city to make repairs after it was given title to the property
-over THREE YEARS- and because of Mayor Cooper and the trio of City managers who do NOT want the public to be able to use their own facility, and have NEVER allowed a single public meeting to take place where its future could be openly discussed.

I think that's it for the preface!

The subject header was: Mr. King: Per your question to me last night... and my response that the answer was "dozens and dozens" of examples of HB DPW's sheer myopia, incompetence and laziness for years

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March 1, 2013

 Per your question to me last night... and my response that the answer was "dozens and dozens" of examples of HB DPW's sheer myopia, incompetence and laziness:

 Again, you might want to have that conversation with Assistant City Manager Jennifer Frastai and have her try to explain to you just why it is that despite my giving her multiple emails and phone numbers to contact me, she NEVER followed-up with me or did anything at all about the dozens of problem I cited in minute detail for her and then-Assistant City Manager Franklin Heilman over the course of one hour when the three of us were in the conference room outside the City Manager's office -over four years ago.
Well over 90% of all those matters are STILL problems.

 Given my experience, not surprisingly, I have zero faith and trust in anything Frastai or Nydia Rafols says or does, and know better than to waste my time speaking with them
With them, anything I say goes in one ear, out the other.
And others in this community have learned from my experiences, and know better than to trust them to do the right thing.
And the problems remain for HB residents to look at and deal with -everyday.

 Given the significant commitment of public funds to construct and maintain city facilities, it's important that the city establish written policies and procedures documenting processes
for evaluating facilities construction methods and maintenance techniques to determine the most cost effective and efficient method or technique. 
Or something...

 But the failure to do so or actually have those standards mean anything tangible, as well as the city's failure to actually hold employees accountable for their performance to ensure that a dollar's worth of service of effort is given for every tax dollar spent, is why Hallandale Beach taxpayers, residents and business owners for years have had to sit back and watch the following unfold, chosen from dozens of similar examples that could be cited with facts and photos.
We think the city government's number-one priority should be to give efficient, competent and reliable service to taxpayers, NOT be an employment agency

 -An excerpt from my blog, which in some way or fashion has been there since I started it-
This monument sign on the west side of the intersection of U.S.-1 and S.E. 5th Street, across from Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino and the Village at Gulfstream Park retail complex, alerts you to your proximity to HB City Hall and the HB Police Department HQ. It's a place and culture whose very own words and actions have made clear to taxpayers of this city -regardless of age, race or income- that it holds itself apart from and above from the very citizens it's supposed to serve, often acting like they don't have to follow the same laws that govern everyone else in the state of Florida and the U.S., whether of logic, reason or contracts. (More to the point of this blog, the Florida Statutes on Sunshine Laws and Public Records.) City employees in Hallandale Beach routinely refuse to answer perfectly reasonable questions posed to them by taxpayers, and as I have found out myself and witnessed, are not above berating you for even having the nerve to ask! As it happens, it's also not a very safe area, despite who operates here, and over the past nine years, the public parking lots have often been pitch-black for 6-9 months at a time, including in front of the HB Police Dept. HQ. Then-Police Chief Thomas Magill even shrugged his shoulders at City Comm. meetings when told about this a few times. As if they couldn't make a worse first impression, at one point, even the spotlights shining on this sign didn't work at night for over FOUR YEARS, either. October 13, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
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 For the proof of what I told you last night about this same sign, Mr King, as Example # 1, look at the photos in the email at the bottom. 
It speaks volumes for the city's dreadful performance at handling even simple tasks.

 It's for just some of these reasons that many of Hallandale Beach's best-informed and most-articulate residents and business owners believe that some -though not necessarily all- of DPW's services should be privatized, especially the maintenance of city parks, the city beach and the medians on the three main streets -A1A, U.S.-1, and Hallandale Beach Blvd.
It's why I asked my question to City Manager Miller at last night's NW Quadrant meeting about her level of interest on a scale of one-to-ten about outsourcing some duties, and am very disappointed that she replied that in the coming year, she would NOT use it at all, despite what so many believe is DPW's longstanding pitiful performance, which is like a thumb to the eye of every taxpayer.

 What are HB taxpayers to think of her unwillingness to make positive and necessary changes that meet with the approval of the very people who live and work here?

 And now, the recent news that taxpayers may possibly be paying up to FOUR TIMES more for maintenance of median strips, but with no corresponding cuts in city employee ranks,
despite city employees' poor performance?
There's no inherent logic in that decision, but then logic and reason seldom have ever intersect in this community the nine years I have lived here.

 You see, Mr. King, some of us here still recall that after Hurricane Wilma, lots of DPW employees were dispatched to re-plant flowers on the median strip on U.S.-1 in front of HB City Hall, even while there were still real problems here that were of a much-higher priority, including around City Hall itself, where, to cite but one dumb but very frustrating example, the city's own wooden Stop signs lay on the ground for MANY WEEKS, and lots of city parking lot lights were out, as if somehow public safety was a low priority, even while it was staring right at them.

 And yet what was taken care of first? 
Re-planting flowers in front of City Hall and installing holiday lights!

 I've got news for you, Mr. King.
More than a few members of the local news media know all about that in the same way they already know most of the things I could write and cite here, which have previously appeared on my blog about the city bureaucracy's longstanding unsatisfactory and dysfunctional performance.

 I can tell you with certainty that a reporter was all set to put HB thru the ringer when they were looking for a city in Broward County to profile that was doing a poor job of performing post-Wilma cleanup.
I know that because they contacted me to tell me as much.
I'm the person who gave the reporter the tour of the city and gave them photos highlighting the very curious choices the city had made with how to use resources and personnel while many people, including myself, were without electricity for WEEKS.
Though to be fair, after seeing what they saw with their own eyes, my photos hardly did the Keystone Kops performance of the city justice.

 (And honestly, Mr. King, the city's so-called sandbagging operation is the very picture of comedy. No bags pre-filled when the weather is good so they can be stored in a dry and secure place? Piles of sand dumped alongside inside a secure fence or a two-lane road with no lighting at all? And without a tarp being secured to the sand when not in use so it doesn't get washed away during storms? And you STILL use orange safety cones as funnels for the sand bags instead of something that's smarter and more efficient? 
Where to even begin there...)

 Besides, why exactly should HB taxpayers care if some city employees lose their job due to their own inadequate performance, or if the City Manager's office wanted to send a message to everyone within the bureaucracy that continued unsatisfactory performance will no longer be accepted and winked at, when, according to the way things have been at City Hall for many, many years, those same HB taxpayers are NOT supposed to care about the fact that the vast majority of the city's management structure and Dept. heads DON'T  even live here themselves, and thus, DON'T have to put up with the same unsatisfactory, frustrating and mediocre service that taxpayers do?
Why the incongruity in thinking?

 Guess what, Mr. King?
While it's not one of my top priorities, per se, there are lots of very smart and fed-up taxpayers in this city who believe there's growing support for insisting that all management- level positions require those individuals to move to the city limits of HB within a certain defined period -or no job.
Or, as a compromise, pay people who don't live here less, and the converse.

 After all, you can't keep saying that it doesn't matter where the management team lives, but then say, as some do, that it's really important that every city employee keep their job -for life.
Yes, jobs for life!

 That sense of entitlement and the mentality attitude that it breeds is a large part -though not the only reason- why the City of Hallandale Beach is in the funk it's been for years, even as residents and small business owners have had to tighten their belts and make do with less.

 As I told you last night, Mr. King, in this new year, I'm no longer going to be the cordial person who always goes thru proper channels all the time.
The well-informed and cordial person with photographic proof to collaborate his points who waits patiently for well-paid city employees like Jennifer Frastai to never call or write and follow-up on things that are important from either a safety, aesthetic or financial standpoint.
Those days are over.

 Doing that has only resulted in someone like you not even knowing why Hallandale Beach's most-concerned and best-informed taxpayers and residents are so angry at the dismal performance of city management and city employees.

 We want positive results and quality performance and are not opposed to paying a reasonable amount in salaries for THAT.
But creating and continuing to feed an already well-fed bureaucracy who takes advantage of HB taxpayers by consistently giving sup-par performances, and paying more than seems reasonable given the output, well, that's another story entirely.
And it's another reason why the Weston Model looks better and better every day for HB taxpayers, because it pays strictly based on actual performance -and with no bureaucracy.

 How Weston, Florida, a City of 65,000, Gets By on 9 Employees
POSTED BY RYAN HOLEYWELL 
MAY 14, 2012
http://www.governing.com/blogs/view/How-.html

 Since I gave you the URL last night for the blog after you asked, I suggest that after checking that out that you enter the name "Hallandale Beach Blog" into Google's "Images" category in the upper-left column.
Then click on the photos and then click the accompanying posts that used them.
Then you'll see as I stated to you last night, the high percentage of those very same problems in this city cited years ago which are STILL being ignored and avoided.
Ignored by City Hall, Mr. King, but definitely NOT ignored by the city's taxpayers.

 And before closing I want you to fully understand something.
There are a LOT more people than you think who know how badly things have been run in this city for years.
Not just HB residents and small business owners and condo presidents, but many people next door in Aventura and Hollywood, and TV/print reporters, columnists and editors, to say nothing of elected officials and mangers in other cities, as well as people of some importance at the County HQ on Andrews Avenue and even a few in Tallahassee.
That's not bragging, just a statement of fact.

 They're the very same people who'll be getting a copy of this email soon, and the very people who are the reason that my blog, such as it is, a one-man operation, is read, even on bad days, by anywhere from 1100-2300 people a day, and sometimes, like around the holidays, many multiples of that.
I can substantiate what I say and what I write about with facts and photographic proof that doesn't lie.
It's not just my opinion.

 The hard-working and conscientious city employees, ones I've talked to and commiserated with over the past nine years, continue to have to suffer the slings and arrows meant for the others, and who feel both trapped and VERY frustrated, because they know that most of the public's criticism of HB city employees is 100% valid.
They see it everyday themselves.

 Frankly, given your position as interim head of DPW, Mr. King, I'm surprised that you don't see that as clearly as I do, and wouldn't want to make sure that every employee under your command knows that performance and quality is what counts most with Hallandale Beach's beleaguered taxpayers.
That you don't seem to is a matter of real concern.

*Here, in my email to King, I had the photo and caption of Csaba Kulin at the beach that's at the top of this blog post.

 -----
This is my email from three days ago.
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 seen this week. The one 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.(And which you can only see at night, below, when you walk up to it with your camera and use a flash!) That's a form of vision, too -myopia.


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

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

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

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