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Showing posts with label Keith London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keith London. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Some things never change, like the abysmal level of #ethics in Hallandale Beach. Names change, roster of allies change, but HB determined to see itself as special and deserving of special rules, not ones the rest of world and Florida are governed by

Some things never change, like the abysmal level of #ethics in Hallandale Beach. Names change, roster of allies change, but HB determined to see itself as special and deserving of special rules, not ones the rest of world and Florida are governed by
Below are my Twitter responses to Red Broward blogger Tom Lauder's piece from last Tuesday 
about some very curious doings behind Hallandale Beach City Hall at the Cultural Center, a place where the city's self-evident political, racial and social polarization are always present during Early Voting.
 
@RedBroward BUSTED? Hallandale Beach Commissioner Caught With Illegal Voter Card Targeting African-American Churches
That polarization, especially its racial component, is something that I have personally witnessed to my amazement dozens and dozens of times the past 15 years, which was often carried-out with the help of former Mayor Joy Cooper and her campaign supporters, always so quick to help someone who can help them out when nobody is looking.
But nothing compares to the skullduggery that takes place on the actual Election Day, esp. at the neighborhood sites in Hallandale Beach, where you can be forgiven for plausibly thinking the Balkan Wars of the 1990's were still taking place.
Yes, for so long, rather than fighting over what were the best ideas or best solutions for the city's many longstanding problems, problems and imperfections that I can literally recite from memory, what you find are years-old personal and political grievances writ large never far from the surface, complete with the motley cast of characters and hangers-on always play to type and cliché, with fist-fights, calls to 911 and then the rush to cast themselves as a victim to their friends and the general public. It's all so sad and pathetic and... predictable. 

(I even recall the Election Day scene at Ingalls Park in southwestern Hallandale Beach within the past ten years, where several Hallandale Beach police cars were forced to respond to a call about an actual fight involving involving Dr. Deborah Brown herself, where about 6-8 HB cops were positioned afterwards in the area to keep Brown and her Cooper-supporters from trying to physically intimidate or verbally harass supporters of pro-reform candidates at Ingalls Park that I knew. Yet another low in a sea of so many head-shaking things under Cooper's reign of ruin.)

Most of you know will know nothing at all about this matter below, but on the chance that you have been thinking about things other than elections today, five days before the real Election Day, it's a sad reminder that so many of the things that I and so many of you have fought against for many years, namely, against unethical behavior, doesn't just exist but THRIVE in a city of less than 5 square miles.
A city where it should actually be quite easy to reach residents, Small Business owners and voters if you were serious about communicating your concerns and solutions.
By the way, please don't sleep on the #scoop that I mention below regarding what former HB Mayor Joy Cooper did when contacted by the Office of the Broward Inspector General and the Broward state's attorney regarding the only arrest made in the entire years-long HB CRA scandal that wasted tens of millions of dollars.
http://www.broward.org/InspectorGeneral/Documents/20130418OIG11020FinalReport.pdf

http://www.broward.org/InspectorGeneral/PublicationsPress/Documents/OIG11020-201405219-BrownMemo.pdf

--------
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2014-05-20-fl-hallandale-band-director-arrest-20140520-story.html
School director charged with stealing city funds
Robert Nolin, Sun Sentinel

The director of a private arts school in Hallandale Beach — and onetime recipient of a city humanitarian award — has been charged with bilking thousands in city funds earmarked for a student trip.

Deborah Brown, 52, Hallandale Beach, surrendered herself to Broward Sheriff's investigators Monday on a charge of grand theft. A warrant had been issued for her arrest last week with bond set at $1,000.

Brown, band leader for Gulfstream Middle School in Hallandale Beach, is also director of the Palms Center for the Arts, a nonprofit school for drama, dance and music. In March 2010, she received a $5,000 grant from the city's Community Redevelopment Agency for a class trip to Washington, D.C.

According to police reports, Brown only spent $323 on the trip. The remainder she diverted for private use: $2,000 in cash withdrawals for herself and her brother; $683 for a payment to an Orlando resort timeshare; $258 for a rental car; and $200 in cellphone costs.

The fund diversion was uncovered during an audit of the city's CRA by the county's inspector general.

In January 2010, two months before the alleged theft, Brown received Hallandale Beach's Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award for 25 years of community service.

City spokesman Peter Dobens said Brown was never a city employee and only received grant money for her after-school music program. "We haven't had a relationship with her for a couple of years," he said.

Despite the arrest, Brown will retain her band leader job. Under School Board policy, employees charged criminally will not be disciplined until their case is concluded. "It doesn't affect her current job status," district spokeswoman Nadine Drew said of the arrest.

Mayor Joy Cooper said Brown's educational work has benefitted the community. "Dr. Brown has helped many needy children through PCA's art programs," she said.

rnolin@tribune.com or 954-356-4525

----
"The Broward County Inspector General’s Office has launched another inquiry into Hallandale Beach’s Community Redevelopment Agency, three years after finding the city “grossly mismanaged” millions of dollars in CRA funds."
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2016/06/browards-inspector-general/

Joy Cooper did this WITHOUT ever telling the elected HB City Commission about the letter she received from law enforcement, never asking them what they thought should be done, or even having a recorded vote on the matter.
Instead, Cooper wrote back that her good friend, the convicted Dr. Brown, did NOT have to pay back the thousands of dollars she stole that, according to her own CRA application, was supposed to help kids, a fact that she took full advantage of when she was using the money to buy cosmetics or help pay for her condo.
Just as she had done previously dozens of times, Joy Cooper just decided she would nudge the elected City Commission out of the way and substitute her own very bad judgment.
Predictably.
So yes, you are right, I have provided you with a bit of a scoop, since I first heard about it when it took place, but I ask you, how come the South Florida news media has STILL never reported on this fact, despite it taking place LAST YEAR?
Why didn't they mention it?
   
@RedBroward BUSTED? Hallandale Beach Commissioner Caught With Illegal Voter Card Targeting African-American Churches






















More tomorrow re the ethical scandal behind the ethical scandal at Hallandale Beach City Hall that the South Florida news media has slept on the past 18 months.
Even if you think you know how thin-skinned, self-referential and flat-out LOW former Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper was prepared to go in order to hold onto power, you just won't believe the level of chutzpah Joy Cooper can show, even to law enforcement officials.
Really!
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Thursday, October 18, 2018

How do you solve a problem named Mike Satz? Speculation by Buddy Nevins on whether Broward's state's attorney should run for re-election after 42 years in office gives me a chance to piggy-back and raises some questions of my own regarding Satz & Co's underwhelming performance and the state of ethics in Broward County and Hallandale Beach today, as per Joy Cooper

How do you solve a problem named Mike Satz? Speculation by Buddy Nevins on whether Broward's state's attorney should run for re-election after 42 years in office gives me a chance to piggy-back and raises some questions of my own regarding Satz & Co's underwhelming performance and the state of ethics in Broward County and Hallandale Beach today, as per Joy Cooper

 How do you solve a problem named Mike Satz?

Now there's a question...

 As veteran Broward County political observer and Broward Beat blogger Buddy Nevins writes about and speculates about some of the behind-the-scenes moves swirling around whether Broward State Attorney Michael Satz will defy common sense yet again and run for re-election after being in office since 1976, and who might or should run for the office if he doesn't, I hold a mirror up to Satz and his many past failures to act in ways that I believe he should have.

 That includes one huge lingering question that so many people in Hallandale Beach, Hollywood and other parts of South Florida routinely ask me when I'm minding my own business somewhere, regarding the arrest last December by the FBI of then-Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper on multiple felony counts: "Dave, what took Satz so long?" He sat on almost five years of audiotapes of Joy Cooper bragging about her influence to undercover FBI agents posing as real estate interests.






So, continuing on the subject of Satz, per this story and tweet below by blogger Red Broward, i.e. Tom Lauder,
Hallandale Beach Mayor Keith London Pays Disgraced Former County Commissioner With PAC Funded By Developers & Casinos
https://redbroward.com/2018/10/15/londonpac/

 First, I have known and communicated with Tom for many years. I meant to his tweet on Monday afternoon when I first saw it and read the piece.
I even meant to respond to the other day via a tweet storm but got tied up with something else before I really could.
Then, once I started, I didn't have enough time or energy to do it justice the way I wanted to... folks, real tears!
I discovered that my beloved laptop's not working properly so that what I wrote and saved as a file there on Monday night when I got home isn't available for me to write and post here now.
So, that said, I've added a smaller ad hoc version of that response of mine to Tom's story and tweet below my own tweet.

There's more at: https://twitter.com/RedBroward/with_replies

 Tom: I appreciate that you have a very different take than me re Keith London, now Hallandale beach mayor and someone that I have known for roughly 12 years, many of them when he and I spoke or saw one another 3-4 times a week at times when things were going crazy at South Florida's #1 home of chaos, Hallandale beach City hall.

 That's your right, of course, but Keith -whom I haven't spoken to for longer than 45 seconds in more than 5 years, despite so many people even now persisting in thinking that we're somehow tied to the hip like we often seemed to be years ago- has to deal with reality and one of them is that #Gaming and #Gambling interests have ALWAYS mattered in a small city with two separately-operated casinos & race tracks. (The town and this part of Broward was run by Organized Crime just a few decades ago, as any historian can tell you, and as I know you know as well.)

Not to tell you what to think or how to write your posts and tweets but... personally, I think it'd be a good idea to remind your readers when you write about people associated with Hallandale Beach's "gaming interests" who are communicating with or helping Keith with some effort of his, like it's some sort of nefarious plot, you simply need remind them to take a look at a map and see that Gulfstream Park Race track & casino and its Village at Gulfstream are, literally, across the street from Hallandale Beach City Hall.
AND it's still THE largest employer in the city, such as it is.
That explains Gulfstream Park's interest in what goes on across the street.

But that said, I also need remind you that I have personally been one of the -if not THE- biggest critics of Gulfstream Park's management and its operations in the city for the entire length of the 11 years that I have had my influential blog that LOTS of well-informed people in South Florida read to get insight and perspective they don't get elsewhere.
It's why so many people call me and write me to tell me something or even argue a point, including TV/print reporters and newspaper columnists, some of whom are outside of South Florida but who have an interest in what goes on in South Florida, good and bad, whether in Miami, Tallahassee or Washington, D.C.
It's why reporters and bloggers and other, like you, tag me in their tweets, because they know I know the score and can usually add something to what's on the table.

 At HB City Commission meetings as well as many public events and especially on my blog, I have openly laughed at and enjoyed publicly poking large holes in Gulfstream's feeble excuses for all sorts of actions they've taken over the years, including their well-known propensity in the past to use ex-mayor Joy Cooper as their personal go-to person to get everything they wanted.
Sometimes, as in 2013, that included quite justified large fines for operating against the city's own code and trying to get away with things simply because of who they are -used to calling the tune.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/gulfstream-park-race-track-casino-will.html

 Cooper, typically, loved to say she'd take care of it and tried to ram waivers of fines down the HB City Commission without any documentation or even any staff prep, and ignore their proscribed government oversight role. Cooper didn't care, but she also didn't get her way because I let the public know what was what. And one TV reporter in particular - Bob Norman of Local10.

 Local10: Mayor wants $52K fine against Gulfstream Park waived
No vote taken on waiving fine at Hallandale Beach budget meeting
By Bob Norman, Reporter, bnorman@Local10.com, and Ben Candea, Senior Web Producer, bcandea@local10.com
Published On: Oct 04 2013 06:13:16 PM EDT   
Updated On: Oct 04 2013 11:51:10 PM EDT
http://www.local10.com/news/mayor-wants-52k-fine-against-gulfstream-park-waived/-/1717324/22282006/-/p0vivbz/-/index.html


My intimate knowledge of the facts and not just the prevailing media or party narrative, along with some demonstrated shrewdness, plus, actual results, are why I've succeeded in getting negative stories about Gulfstream and other parties on local Miami TV newscasts when they've acted in truly egregious ways that shocked any reasonable person's idea of propriety.
In this case, Gulfstream Park was used to carrying a Big Stick -and was not afraid to use it.
But I'm not afraid of bullies.
Guess how that turned out in the end because of me?

 But all of that said -and it's easy to find on my blog's archives- it is demonstrably true that the Diplomat Hotel and its management team and crew of legal and PR mouthpieces also had a TON of influence at HB City Hall and used that influence and leverage routinely to get what THEY wanted, too, even when HB residents made clear that they were against it, including, famously, the 2009 RAC plan that called for multiple condo towers to go up around their golf course north of F-rated Hallandale Beach Blvd. that were all over twenty-five floors and would have ruined many residents quality of life, including people on Diplomat Parkway who paid thru the nose for homes with unobstructed golf course views and who did not want their home in near-perpetual shade.

 Gulfstream has tried to exploit that perception and beat them at their own game. It's that simple.

 So when writing about the amount of campaign funds that Gulfstream Park gave, be sure to mention that while Gulfstream backed both Michele Lazarow and Annabelle Taub-Lima in their pre-acrimony days vs. Diplomat-backed, ethically-flawed ex-HB Comm. William "Bill" Julian, they still got out-spent by the Diplomat and its minions desperate to get Cooper's pawn Julian back on the dais to do her bidding.
Just saying, proper context and perspective have a place in the Keith London pieces you write.
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Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Longtime #HallandaleBeach civic activists and past supporters of Mayor #KeithLondon and Comm. #MicheleLazarow are DISMAYED and EMBARRASSED at what is taking place at City Hall now, with personal/political expediency trumping common sense and rational public discourse

Today's blog post serves as a logical follow-up to my last one regarding the long overdue arrest of longtime Hallandale Beach Mayor and despot Joy Cooper by the FBI on three felony counts and one misdemeanor count.

#schadenfreude - Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's long-overdue public comeuppance and takedown for her despotic, authoritarian and corrupt reign at HB City Hall finally comes via an arrest by the FBI. Cooper's arrest suddenly awakens the long-slumbering South Florida news media to the high level of corruption and incompetency taking place there that I told you about at the time. So where were they? #ethics

I regret that this post of mine today will necessarily be about one-fifth as long as I'd like for it to be, but I have had much less time over the weekend to work on it than expected because of another big writing project of mine that's considerably more important to me and my future long-term happiness than the latest jaw-dropping antics and escapades in Hallandale Beach, so this is what will have to suffice for now until a few more days pass and I can connect all the dots for you here on the blog.

 Before I get into it, I remind you that a a candidate's debate is scheduled to take place tonight at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center from 6:30 until 9 PM, featuring the five candidates running to fill the term of disgraced former HB City Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders, whose resignation was NOT his idea, after the Broward Inspector General raised public questions about his fitness for office after they reported nothing but holes in his accounts of where $800,000 of HB CRA went -and why.
I will be at the debate so if you have not seen me in a while or have thought I did in fact move out to Las Vegas afterall in early October, please come over and say hello and see for yourself that it's really me, not a clone.

 Excerpt from Hallandale Beach's Monday afternoon press release:

You are cordially invited to attend a Candidates Forum on February 27, 2018 from 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center located at 410 SE 3rd Street, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009.
This forum will feature the qualified candidates for the March 13, 2018 Special Election to fill the unexpired term for Commission Seat 1. South Florida Sun-Sentinel editorial page editor Rosemary O’Hara will serve as the moderator for this event.
All interested parties who plan to attend this event are encouraged to offer their questions on 3X5 cards the day of the event and/or email Ms. O’Hara in advance at rohara@sun-sentinel.com as she will be the sole judge of any and all questions asked.

A livestream of this event can be found of the City’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/CityOfHallandaleBeach

 As for the latest news that I can mention quickly here, with much more facts and concerns and video to come in a few days, many longtime Hallandale Beach civic activists, friends of mine and past supporters of new Hallandale Beach Mayor Keith London and Comm. Michele Lazarow are DISMAYED and EMBARRASSED about what has been taking place at HB City Hall these days with them in the majority, where personal and political expediency seem to keep trumping common sense and rational public idiscourse regarding many different issues, large and small, including eliminating one of the city's few common sense procedures.





The selection two weeks ago of Rich Dally as a Hallandale Beach City Commissioner, that is, a complete unknown with no tangible public track record of being a well-informed voice in the community for increased #reform #accountability and #transparency at HB City Hall, at a HB City Commission meeting where the sole issue on the written public agenda was the expected selection of then-Vice Mayor Keith London to become interim mayor until November's election because of Joy Cooper being removed from office by Governor Rick Scott, NOT a vote on filling London's seat, caused most of the people I know and respect in the city to recoil at the very idea of the current majority channeling the very worst instincts of the since departed Cooper, whose thin skin and huge ego were constantly on display for the past 15 years, no matter the issue under discussion.

What the public saw after Keith London was voted in as interim mayor on a 2-1 vote was a government action that was NOT on the public agenda, should NOT have taken place then without the proper public notice being given, and what in almost every respect, resembled the sort of thing that Joy Cooper loved doing.
That is to say, doing something not because it was the right thing to do for the community at large, or even some part of it, but rather because she thought she and what I have long called her "Rubber Stamp Crew" thought they could get away with it.
It was that simple.
For years!

Then as now, it was exactly what it looked like, and yet I would hazard to say that few people who know Keith London even a fraction as well as I do, would have expected such a cynical, self-destructive and negative thing to be his first official act as Mayor.
And yet it was.

He squndered his opportunity to look like he was up to the challenge of running things instead of being the opposition, and seemed to act petty and argumentative just for the sake of being that way, with no apologies for how things appeared to the public.

 Keith London voted for Dally to sit on the five-member HB City Commission until November, someone whose name he could not even pronounce correctly, and seemed to know very, very little about, yet took Comm. Michele Lazarow's nomination and endorsement of Dally as enough proof of his qualifications despite London having publicly nominated my very good friend and confidante, Csaba Kulin, for the post. Why?

 Why did Keith London's replacement on the City Commission have to be named within ten minutes of London's elevation to the mayor's seat when the seat of disgraced Comm. Sanders has stood empty since last August, six long months ago?
He couldn't say and nether could anyone else on the dais.
Not that they tried.

Nor did they explain why they would vote on the three nominated candidates -Dally, Kulin and another friend of mine, Hallandale Beach businessman Rob Raymond- alphabetically instead of polling the three members and requiring them to name whom they were for on the first ballot.
Instead, because D comes before K and R, Dally was selected 2-1 and there was no vote on Kulin and Raymond.
#bizarre

 The fact that Dally did such a very poor job of explaining who he was or why anyone in the city should have any confidence in him or even why HE deserved to be selected -after he was selected!- only made things worse and more laughably embarrassing for the city in general and him personally, since at no point did Dally actually state what his legitimate qualifications or expertise was.

 What we were to learn over a few minutes was that he and his girlfriend have twins, that he is a loyal Democratic functionary, serving as head of the Broward Young Democrats.His actual job was never mentioned.
In short, he appears to be nothing but Alex Lewy 2.0, someone who aims to be a career politician with nothing to personally recommend him, as the many dozens of people who have called me in disgust or written me in the days since the absurd decision was made have all complained about in angry tones.
The whole thing could have been avoided if common sense were in abundance, but in HB, common sense is a rare mineral.

It would have been very easy for Keith London, Michele Lazarow and Annabelle Taub to show some common sense at the meeting and announce that the City Commission would take nominations for the former London Commission seat at the next scheduled Commission meeting, which would allow enough time for the public to weigh-in and for people to talk with their family and friends about whether they should place themselves in harm's way or not in nominating themselves.

These continuing series of bad decisions and remarkably poor judgment at HB City Hall are VERY troubling signs for all concerned.☹️

 Troubling precisely because this bum's rush tactic to get Dally on the dais is the same one employed years ago at a City Commission meeting I was present at where Mayor Cooper personally selected and insisted upon unethical Anthony A. Sanders being installed as a Commissioner at a City Commission meeting where the issue was NOT on the public agenda.
That Cooper did not allow the public to ever speak on the matter, as I wrote on the blog at the time, was a germane fact which the South Florida news media failed to ever mention in their accounts.

Hallandale Beach already has an agreed-upon process for selecting a City Commissioner in the event of a vacancy, and it's the one used as recently as 2014, and, the same one used that resulted in Keith London becoming a City Commissioner in 2007. 

 But if you can believe it, having avoided using it one week, it was promptly tossed-out by London, Lazarow and Dally last week at their meeting despite its great popularity with civic activists like me and many of the people I know precisely because it requires candidates to explain their interest, their qualifications and be subject to questions from the public and the Commissioners.
None of those things took place two weeks ago with Rich Dally.
Why?

That's a very good question.
You already know the names of the three people whom you should ask about it: London, Lazarow and Taub.

I don't personally know anyone in Hallandale Beach besides Comm. Lazarow who plans on voting for Dally in November when he runs for a full term. Nobody.
Everyone who has contacted me since Dally's selection has told me that under no circumstances will he be getting their vote.
Just saying...

I honestly don't think Rich Dally has any idea of what is in store for him in the coming months. 
(Or even, perhaps, on this blog.)
It won't be pretty.
An engaged citizenry and news media are unlikely to take Rich Dally's word for anything.
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Wednesday, February 7, 2018

#schadenfreude - Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's long-overdue public comeuppance and takedown for her despotic, authoritarian and corrupt reign at HB City Hall finally comes via an arrest by the FBI. Cooper's arrest suddenly awakens the long-slumbering South Florida news media to the high level of corruption and incompetency taking place there that I told you about at the time. So where were they? #ethics

#schadenfreude - Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's long-overdue public comeuppance and takedown for her despotic, authoritarian and corrupt reign at HB City Hall finally comes via an arrest by the FBI. Cooper's arrest suddenly awakens the long-slumbering South Florida news media to the high level of corruption and incompetency taking place there that I told you about at the time. So where were they? #ethics



This is my first public post on what's happened in Hallandale Beach the past two weeks and my -your/our- giant sense of #schadenfreude at Mayor Joy Cooper being arrested by the FBI, just as I had always dreamt it would happen in my writer's mind, even while I've written dozens of emails to friends and news media in Broward and South Florida and state officials in Tallahassee, and a like number of phone calls.

Just days before she had to turn herself into law enforcement authorities to avoid a perp walk arrest in public, while walking from the Winn-Dixie to Panera Bread on Hallandale Beach Blvd., I nearly ran head-on into the despotic Joy Cooper as she and her paranoid and combative tag-team partner 
husband walked into one of my favorites, Piola. 
Cooper saw me on the sidewalk about 12 yards away and did a quick double-take.
Perhaps she didn't recognize me dressed-up with a suit and tie! :-)

It may have been her last meal in public before reporting to jail Thursday morning, after clearing-out most of her official office at HB City Hall earlier!

For you newcomers, Cooper is the same creepy, feckless, liberal, anti-democratic misanthrope who, among other depredations, at a Hallandale Beach City Comm. meeting many years ago, while talking to then-Comm. Bill Julian of her "Rubber Stamp Crew" as they walked into the room, called me 
"a Nazi" and then called Comm. Keith London "a Hitler."

And she did all of this on the second floor of HB City Hall when I was the only member of the public -actually, the only other only person there!- in the room, going over some careful notes I'd taken earlier, before the meeting was adjourned.
A meeting where she gave off her usual vibes that she wishes it weren't open to the public.
I hadn't said anything all day, just sat in the chair, taking notes when something seemed esp. ill-considered or preposterous. Which was every few minutes.

But that was enough to raise Joy Cooper's ire and make her say what she really thought.
As I've long said, Cooper (and her insufferable ego) is her own worst enemy! 
She's done it again!
Same Doral-based newspaper & Editorial Board that's ignored Hallandale Beach for years now suddenly imagines itself an expert. #arrogance #chutzpah LOL!

Fear and Loathing in Hallandale Beach: City rife with feuds, conspiracies and a call for state takeover.

Monday morning's Miami Herald article on Hallandale Beach is the worst kind of after-the-fact journalism, sort of what you might've seen at a crummy state college newspaper in the mid-1980's before the Internet existed, since the twonreporters don't talk to even one HB citizen who is actually well-informed and knows the real facts. 
Despite how easy it is in 2018 because of technology to find one or two or five well-informed persons.
That's not journalism, that's just plain old apathy, nothing less.

Seriously, would you take restaurant recommendations from someone who doesn't ever eat out?
Of course not, so why would you listen to people in HB who really don't know what's going on ramble about things they don't understand?
And why would newspaper reporters post their comments when that's apparent.
It's mind-numbing -and pretty insulting!

This article is so feeble that it is unable to even convey a reasonable sense of context for recent past history in HB, beyond simply regurgitating some news headlines, most of which never appeared in the Herald itself because they stopped sending a reporter to cover the city many years ago.
Plus, it fails to give people in HB credit who actually deserve credit for attempting to reform things and bring genuine transparency and accountability.
Instead, it treats everyone as being on one side or another.

Or In Anabelle Taub's case, alone on an island, becoming increasingly irrelevant to the process and ultimately, engendering LOTS and LOTS of anger among former supporters.  

Where's the Herald story on Comm. Sanders resigning after funneling $800,000 to people and groups DIRECTLY connected to him? And his family?
Oh, that's right. They NEVER ran one.
That gives you an idea of how myopic, patronizing and out-of-the-loop the Herald is in 2018.

Bythe way, I read this article by 10 AM and yet nobodycalled me or texted me or emailed me their thoughts about it before 6 PM Monday night when I left my office for the day.
That's how few people read the Herald.
That is a portrait of irrelevancy.








@FLGovScott - What's Past is Prologue: Freud & Jung together could NOT possibly plumb the depths of thin-skinned, ethically-challenged mayor & town bully 's super-size ego and sense of entitlement. 🌴🏖️🌊http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2017/11/whats-past-is-prologue-thin-skinned_18.html …


Damn, I'm prescient! 😊 "An open door policy for developers is Mayor 's credo. Always has been, always will be," sayeth me in 2012. "mayor who just can't say NO" to real estate developers. http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/video-channel-10-investigative-reporter.html …


Memories! " Mayor defending her freelancing, breaking of city's rules in order to help her friends." "Special Rules for Special People" form of advocacy = rogue activities of mayor in city that has seen plenty of thosehttp://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/on-wednesday-night-hallandale-beach.html …


"Observations on the Dysfunction Junction in : Thin-skinned Mayor ": "Look honestly upon the uniformily unsatisfactory results that years of this myopic and self-destructive behavior has wrought for everyone involved in the city"




@richardcorcoran @JeffreyBrandes @CGreenbarg @SueGunzburger @Florida_Bulldog In short, exactly like I've been saying for over 10 years, complete w/ , photos & video. But now, AFTER an arrest, media is interested - NOT when it was happening! 😏http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/hallandale-beachs-bright-future-depends.html …



In 2010 was w/ in his car waiting to film GUILTY Cooper, Julian & Ross arrive @ HB PostOffice w/ "outhouse" festooned w/racist fliers, i.e. London = Mexican, one re & . Took photos of 'em! Media yawned!





@GlennaOn10 1/ Sorry, but @RosemaryOHara14 is NOT a credible person to speak on or anywhere else re what's taken place in past 12 years under Mayor 's unethical reign of ruin/incompetency. 😏😠@RedBroward @BillyCorben @crespogram @dwightyoakamfan



2/ Over 5 months since Comm. Anthony Sanders🤥 resigned in disgrace, @RosemaryOHara14's @SoFlaOpinion STILL hasn't posted 1 Op-Ed re him steering nearly $1M in city/CRA funds to groups/church he controlled + family. The same Sanders THEY always endorsed. Why?🤔😠




Mayor 's allies -esp. at faux newspaper she poured LOTS of CRA 💰 into- rush into the breach w/ bec they don't like . Facts have NEVER been her friend during her ruinous reign, so won't become friends now.



2013: Two Democratic state senators short-circuit Florida Legislature’s plan to audit troubled Hallandale Beach CRA: Eleanor Sobel and Oscar Braynon II. 



When will media cover mayor 's pals & trying to help her stay out of prison, just like they helped her prevent and legislature fm performing audit on HB CRA -that wld have revealed MILLIONS 💰mis-spent?🤔 😠



Where were Oscar Braynon II, Joe Gibbons, Shevrin Jones & Barbara Sharief when CRA was wasting MILLIONS 💰 -in THEIR district- under , which @BrowardIG's Final Report called "gross mismanagement" re YEARS w/lack of accountability? Missing in action! 😠



Archives: 's non-compliance w/'s to cover up messages to/from Mayor , HB CityMgr., &nd to prevent fm doing independent audit of HB CRA so public wld FINALLY know where all the MILLIONS 💰 went.



Archives: Primer on how an apathetic news media/Editorial Boards and legislature largely ignored the CRA scandal under Mayor that wasted MILLION$ 💰via crony capitalism, to help supporters of her "Rubber Stamp Crew." 😠 http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/per-tonights-crucial-hallandale-beach.html …

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
OPINION
Hallandale - needs a new - way of doing - business
January 30, 2018
Michele Lazarow

Michele Lazarow is a Hallandale Beach city commissioner.
Hallandale Beach is an easy punching bag for the editorial board. Corruption has dominated the headlines in our city for years. Along with it has come a series of ugly encounters involving elected officials. What I believe was missing from the Jan. 28 editorial was an understanding of the political and ethical divide in our city.

Joy Cooper, Bill Julian and Anthony Sanders have been political allies who have voted together, campaigned together, raised funds together and been part of the problem that has driven the negative headlines about Hallandale Beach. Cooper is under felony indictment. Julian escaped criminal charges but admitted on camera to soliciting and agreeing to accept gifts from a developer while negotiating his vote for their project. Sanders resigned last year after the Inspector General's investigation revealed that he and his family pocketed tens of thousands of dollars as he voted on millions in contracts at the taxpayer's expense.

Fighting their corruption has never been easy and has at times created an ugly spectacle. Recently, Commissioner Anabelle Taub enlisted people to take video of Vice Mayor Keith London and me in an attempt to intimidate and harass us as she uses it to spin an inaccurate depiction of our actions on social media. While it may not have been the ideal way to handle the situation, Vice Mayor London responded by approaching them as they sat in commission chambers. He took video of them so that they would know that they were not going to harass us while maintaining their anonymity.

Following Mayor Cooper's recent indictment, our city has an opportunity to move forward without the kind of political division and infighting that have plagued Hallandale Beach for so long. Most of all, we have an opportunity to move past the corruption that has permeated city hall and return power to the residents of Hallandale Beach.

As elected officials, we won't agree about every issue. However, we can move from an era of fighting over each disagreement to one where debate is robust, decorum is routine and policy, rather than politics drive decisions. The residents of Hallandale Beach deserve nothing less.

Rather than lumping all of Hallandale Beach's leaders together, give those of us who have fought against the corruption an opportunity to usher in a new era in the city.

We have a special election on March 13. The Sun Sentinel's Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O'Hara will moderate a debate between the candidates, scheduled on Feb. 27 at 6:30 p.m., at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center. If you live in Hallandale Beach, please make a point of being there so that you can get to know the candidates and their qualifications. It is critical that we elect someone who can help usher in a new way of doing business and running government in our city.

Rather than reviving the mistakes of the past, we must take the opportunity to choose our best and most qualified to help lead us into a brighter future.

Michele Lazarow is a Hallandale Beach city commissioner.


And to conclude, something having not much to do with Joy Cooper personally, except for the fact that it involves Hallandale Beach City Hall and a lack of moral scruples.



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