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

Monday, August 14, 2017

Now that #HallandaleBeach Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders has resigned in disgrace for misconduct in office, what's next for HB? Some thoughts on what's happened and what's to come











Now that #HallandaleBeach Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders has resigned in disgrace for misconduct in office, what's next for HB? Some thoughts on what's happened and what's to come

Make no mistake about it.
What the residents and Small Business owners of Hallandale Beach have had to endure 
for so many long and bitter years while the city was under the firm-but-incompetent and unethical thumb of the Cooper Rubber Stamp Crew, led by Mayor Joy Cooper, who has been Mayor since 2000, is unlike anything any South Florida community has had to put up with.

That long-running horror show at Hallandale Beach City Hall on US-1 a softball toss across the street from Gulfstream Race Track & Casino co-starred Comm. Anthony A. Sanders as the guy on the dais who never learned a lesson that he could sucessfuly carry over and put into practice at the next meeting.
The guy who never learned to expand his knowledge base or his frame of reference to make himself better understood by the community at large.
The guy who consistently refused to meet with concerned homeowners in NE Hallandale Beach when they wanted to express their adamant opposition to the Diplomat RAC a few years ago, and would not even deign to return residents phone or email messages. 

 The guy who (has still) never learned to accept that sometimes, other people who live in HB or who have an interest in it, really DID/DO have better ideas and public policy prescriptions than what he and his cronies thought at the time or think now is best and have decided, no matter how unpopular their ideas and policies are with the city at large, to unleash those bad ideas on the city.
Wanna guess what will happen?
Very, very bad things -constantly.

And that's been the all-too-true reality with Sanders ever since 2007.

The guy on the dais in a multicultual Broward city who takes much, if not most, of the longstanding public criticism of his own words and actions in public office as nothing less than racism, and seems to encourage his small band of fervent supporters to defend him in public not by offering facts and persuasive arguments, but rather by attacking others as racists.

















































And see this Twitter thread to Florida state Senator Gary Farmer that concludes with this




 Whether Senator Farmer now fully grasps these simple facts, I couldn't tell you. Perhaps you should ask him the next time you see him.
But he doesn't seem to be in HB very often, though, does he?
Perhaps you might want to speak to him about that situation, too!


































For roughly ten-plus years, most reasonable people in Hallandale Beach, regardless of race. age, class, gender or geographical location within the city, waited and waited to see a flash of recognition by Comm. Sanders that he needed to change his small-minded and intractable way of doing things,and actually evolve.
But they never saw it, and now we know that the very troubling things that I have told you all for years in-person, via emails and on my blog about Comm. Sanders and his associates were, factually, T-R-U-E.



@Florida_Bulldog  
Broward Inspector General report: Hallandale Beach commissioner Anthony Sanders “engaged in pattern of misconduct”

 And now, actions -finally!- have consequences in Hallandale Beach:

My response to @Florida_Bulldog - Hallandale freezes payments for city development, jobs programs citing waste, fraud





And now, actions -finally!- have consequences in Hallandale Beach:
@Florida_Bulldog - Hallandale freezes payments for city development, jobs programs citing waste, fraud

And since I started writing this post early last week, there's been more news:


































Per a previous email that many of you reading this no doubt received from me, you'll notice that neither the South Florida Sun Sentinel or the Miami Herald have yet to write any Op-Eds about this matter involving ethics and character. or rather, the lack of them.


Why do you suppose that is?


Some of you know who did -and who did not- predict this very thing last month.
And already, rumors are flying, albeit, under-the-radar, about who in the larger HB community will make a move soon to publicly announce for the Sanders seat.

You can already imagine how Mayor Joy Cooper is going to try to use this to her own benefit politically, and encourage one of her many female cronies and apologists in town to run, with her usual cast of characters to help finance the effort.

As of today, there are Three Competing Schools of Thought:

1.) If Sanders resigns, some people  in HB might try to become and serve as an interim Commissioner only as a civic responsibility, just  to help the city deal with budget related matters until a special election is held. not as a prelude for them to compete in an upcoming campaign.

* Reminder of irony: city's existing written rules for replacing members were the very rules Mayor Joy Cooper did NOT follow in selecting Sanders in 2007.

2.) Others in HB may well see their best chance of ever becoming a City Commissioner by trying to be appointed by 4 members of City Commission, with the intent to run for that seat in upcoming weeks as well, and try to translate their words and actions into an election victory months from now.

3. ) A third and distinct group may well decide to forego trying to be appointed and instead make a public declaration of their intent to run and try to mobilize support within this very chaotic and fragmented community.

In this group, I think you should expect to see many of the faces of the same unqualified 
people who never are seen at public meetings in Hallandale Beach and never publicly share their own policy POV and prescriptions, who put themselves forward before the debacle that led to Leo Grachow.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/observations-re-leo-grachows-selection.html

You should expect to be be snowed in the coming weeks by people you have never heard of or seen, with amazing tales from this group about their "community service" that, well, nobody actually has ever actually seen.
More in the next few days!






Dave 

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Monday, February 13, 2017

Watch out Hallandale Beach taxpayers! Stop them before more CRA money goes into another foolish, sweetheart deal. Hallandale Beach CRA wants some people to make a profit while taxpayers & Small Business get to play the Bank and bear all the burdens and risks. Why would that be a good idea?



On Saturday afternoon, one of the nicest days weather-wise we've had in many weeks, I was able to spend a few hours with my friend and fellow civic activist Csaba "Chuck" Kulin driving around and looking at many places/problems in all parts of the city that he or I -or in many cases, most of you- have some very legitimate concerns about as it affects public policy or public money or, in the case I'm writing about today, BOTH!
(I'll get to those other concerns in future posts, with helpful facts and photos as usual to give you the context and nuance you need to make your own decisions.)
One of those concerns is actually going to be the focus of a 6:00 PM public meeting tonight of the Hallandale Beach CRA, Agenda item 10-A, that I strongly urge you to attend and ask some very hard questions about, lest money from the Hallandale Beach CRA once again be used to continue the many frustrating YEARS of unsound public policy and irresponsible financial moves under Mayor Joy Cooper when she and her Rubber Stamp Crew had a firm lock on deciding issues at Hallandale Beach City Hall, as both City Commissioners and Directors of the CRA.
Those days are now over, thank goodness, and a 3-2 pro-reform majority currently holds sway in Hallandale Beach, but there are still many stinky deals that are legacies of those previous bad ideas, and one of them will be discussed tonight.
Do I even need to tell you that the people who want your money will be well-represented to try to take it away from you, no matter how fiscally unsound their ideas will be for you and the larger community.

 See the link to see how it's being portrayed by city staff.

 17-451
https://hallandalebeach.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=2954847&GUID=D4960F1D-E852-4741-AB9F-958E4F5AF01B&Options=&Search=

 10 A. Resolution

A RESOLUTION OF CHAIR AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE HALLANDALE BEACH COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY, HALLANDALE BEACH, FLORIDA, APPROVING THE EFFECTIVE DATE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE HALLANDALE BEACH COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY AND DONALDSON-WEST VENTURE, LLC; AUTHORIZING THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR TO EXECUTE AN AMENDMENT TO THE DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT; AND PROVIDING AN EFFECTIVE DATE. (STAFF: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR)

 I leave it to Csaba to further explain the general particulars and remind you that his letter below is merely an overview of what the problem to be dealt with is, so please show up tonight prepared to become better informed as well as let your voice for logical public policy and fiscally-sound financial decisions be heard by people on the dais who have said they are for doing things now the right way in this community: with the maximum amount of accountability, transparency and common sense. 
Which is to say, qualities which have been all too rare the previous 12-plus years here.
Where the public's best long-term interests are protected and enforced rather than private interests getting first dibs on public monies, no matter how preposterous their scheme is.
We have to prevent a situation in future where HB residents and Small Business owners will be cursing themselves and the fact that on February 13th, 2017, they failed to wake-up to what's involved here -and what this bad deal represents- when this sweetheart deal can be killed if you simply let your elected representatives know that you are against more bad, fiscally unsound deals that benefit a few at the risk of the the whole community.
After all, since the November 2016 election that changed the direction of things in Hallandale Beach and set a course for a different direction, have you heard or seen people at City Hall like Mayor Joy Cooper and Comm. Anthony A. Sanders or their sycophants in the community who backed bad deals like this publicly profess any regret or remorse for championing bad deals that hurt taxpayers and the community as a whole, with precious little to show for millions of spent CRA dollars?
No, you have not, and for the simplest of reasons. 
They DON'T regret their votes for these bad deals and they don't have remorse for wasting millions of dollars.
Their regret is that they can not continue to approve bad deals because they no longer have the will and means to force that upon the community, even when everyone speaks out against it.
Now, things are different. 
But you still need to do YOUR part.
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February 13, 2017
RE: CRA February 13, 2017 Item 10 A Donaldson-West Venture, LLC
Chair Person, Vice Chair, Directors, Executive Directors and Staff,
The CRA received during the previous administration an unsolicited proposal from Donaldson-West Venture, LLC to build 10 townhouse units on Foster Road. The developer is asking for $90,000.00 “CRA Contribution” per unit, a total of $900,000.00. It is broken down to $184,000.00 the value of the three (3) CRA owned lots and $716,000.00 of CRA Gap Grant funding.
It is a typical Hallandale Beach CRA “Private/Public Partnership” project from the past administration. The CRA provides free land, the CRA provides grants to build the building and the CRA helps buyers to buy it. The CRA socialize the costs and privatize the profits. The “public” bears all the costs and the “private” gets all the profits.
I have three areas of concern and I hope I will be able to ask you about them Monday.
My first concern is the value of $184,000.00 placed on the three (3) CRA owned properties, it is unjustifiably low. Using the Broward County Property Appraiser’s value is not realistic. The CRA must hire its own appraiser and base the appraisal on recent transactions in the area, the size of the parcels etc.
The recent CRA purchase of the apartment building, across the street from the new fire station (Foster and N.W. 2nd Ave.), may be a good yardstick. How do the two properties compare as far as price the CRA paid per acreage or square feet? 110 N.W. 5th Street for $1,300,000.00 may be another good example.  
My second area of concern is the lack of information in the backup for the justification for the $716,000.00 CRA Gap Grant funding. How did Donaldson-West Venture arrive at that number?
We need an expert hired by the CRA to tell us if that amount is the right amount and if it is justified.
Is the $716,000.00 dollars the entire cost of construction? 
My third concern is that on top of the $90,000.00 “CRA Contribution” per unit there may be up to $50,000.00 in other subsidies (first time buyer etc.) for up to $140,000.00 per unit cost to the CRA.
Is it a prudent decision to spend so much money on one project benefiting so few people?
Does the CRA have so much money that it can afford to practically give a free apartment to 10 lucky people?
I hope the CRA Board of Directors will wait for an appraisal on the value of the land, get the justification for the Gap Grant funding and see if the CRA has the money now, before the completion of the upcoming audit. 
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Dave 
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