FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
South Florida nature... acting crazy... in Hollywood Beach.
A lonely waterspout came ashore as a tornado on Hollywood Beach at 12:43 pm Friday afternoon, just two miles from where your faithful correspondent was busy writing on his laptop.
Local10 News was doing their noontime news broadcast when it first became evident on radar so dispatched their Sky10 helicopter over to the beach to capture what was is -usually- a very quick, hit-or-miss event
It wasn't the Hindenburg Disaster, and there were no physical injuries, just LOTS of... VERY freaked out people. I didn't find out about this until 4:30 pm, so I can't report on this with anything resembling my usual eyewitness reportage.
via Reporter Rosh Lowe, @roshloweWPLG WPLG Local 10 YouTube Channel April 21, 2023
The slow windup set-up... as it makes its way from off-shore towards the beach and the Broadwalk.
IF you ever wondered why so many otherwise normal and relatively contented people who have lived in South Florida for quite some time eventually packed-up and left, well, there are, of course, 1001 reasons that combine varying degrees of logic and common sense, and not simply foolish whims followed upon. That's especially the case when people choose to make life decisions on one of the deadly hot days of July in South Florida, when the life and energy can literally be sucked out of your body for doing nothing more physically demanding or complicated than simply getting out of your car and walking into an air conditioned store. Inescapable Fact: Air conditioning explains South Florida's growth and history so much more than geography ever possibly could plausibly explain. Often, some reasons for leaving the area are better than others, and one non-personal reason is that you simply get tired of living somewhere where the general idea of NOT taking of advantage of other people is not the outlier, but rather the exception to the rule. And so it goes in Hallandale Beach, with a company that I'd never heard of before called 400 Broward Inc., which owns property on Foster Road in the Northwest part of the city. This company apparently thought nothing of renting out its apartments to people without properly informing them that the building was in foreclosure, and which based on the Local10 video below, has owners who seem keen to keep their tenantssecurity deposits, to boot. Hallandale Beach Commissioner Keith London recently penned an email that explained his own take on the situation affecting at least 26 HB residents, which has been handled so badly by so many parties, including some information explaining how, according to Comm. London, the HB CRA fits in to the equation, or blame if you will. Comm. London states in his email that as of now, "The CRA has NO defined plan for this building or the vacant land," which is located right near a new planned Hallandale Beach Fire Station and the new HBFD HQ. Well, this sort of non-sensical and half-assed approach to public policy and taxpayer funds by the HB CRA will NOT surprise longtime readers of this blog, since for nine years, one of the running ethical and journalistic themes of this blog, quite literally, the subject of dozens of posts here, has been the circumstances and fall-out of the grossly-under-reported story of what actually took place in 2007, when a small plot of land in NW Hallandale Beach -with an extant building- belonging to City of HB Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders and his wife Jessica was purchased by the HB CRA. Purchased for more than it was worth! This purchase was made despite there being... yes, no written, agreed-upon or voted-upon plan for how that specific land would be used for the betterment of the HB community in fulfilling the stated aims and intentions of rules and language establishing CRAs by the State of Florida. That Comm. Sanders was allowed to vote on the deal at the time and did NOT choose to (or be asked to) recuse himself -facts which were NOT publicly reported at the time or after except by myself- is typical for how common sense public policy and issues involving ethics, Sunshine Laws, propriety and notions of govt. oversight have been handled in HB for so long under a series of City Attorneys and City Commissions under Mayor Joy Cooper. That is to say, with no public push-back by any responsible law enforcement or ethical group to investigate the circumstances at the time, or afterwards. In fact,under the property deal that the city negotiated with Anthony and Jessica Sanders, as I've mentioned numerous here previously on the blog -and which most people in South Florida who know me personally also know- I personally told the Office of the Broward Inspector General that Comm. Sanders was even allowed to continue to use the building for FREEAFTER it was purchased. Now THAT is a sweetheart of a deal.
More than almost any recent South Florida-centric story I can think of, this recent news report by Local10 reporter Terrell Forney spoke volumes about what life in South Florida has increasingly become for residents of South Florida, even for lots of well-to-do and resourceful people I know who previously thought they'd live here for the rest of their lives. Which is to say, way past #frustrating. They see something like this outrage in HB happen that should NOT ever happen and ask how things like it can KEEP happening here. To little or no public outrage. Some people manage to deal with it by only being around South Florida for part of the year, which has increasingly become the chief coping mechanism for many people I know with longtime connections, homes or relatives back in Ohio and North Carolina. But for others, well, unless they get out of the area for a bit every now and then to recharge themselves, they get emotionally beaten down and burned-out by the daily assault on their conscience of so much chronic apathy, gross official/govt. incompetency/myopia, and lack of resolve by society at large to publicly hold irresponsible and unethical people and businesses accountable for their actions. It weighs on them in visible ways, and you can only imagine how it is for people with less resources at their disposal. As of today, there has been no organized public outcry against the company behind this self-evident unethical housing melodrama, which is typical of how public life and society in South Florida operate unless a well-funded individual or influential group with some backbone and resolve decides to finally wade in and get directly involved. And start calling people and groups out with a vengeance. See my tweets below the Local10 video to be reminded of an important underlying issue regarding the proposed new Hallandale Beach Fire Station and Fire Dept. HQ, a matter I have written about previously on the blog many times before, with various degrees of shock and amazement, as the powers-that-be at Hallandale Beach City Hall continually sought to foolishly place a valuable tool and resource in the worst possible location for it and the public's safety -because they can! It's another example of the longstanding nonsensical public policy notions that have been percolating inside Hallandale Beach City Hall disguised as economic development, when it's really nothing more than the marriage of the city's longstanding practice of crony capitalism and an Edifice Complex under longtime Mayor Joy Cooper. Local 10 News, Miami Hallandale Beach apartment residents forced from homes after building goes into foreclosure Commissioner fights to have city help relocate tenants By Terrell Forney - Reporter Posted: 6:04 PM, March 23, 2016 Updated: 6:08 PM, March 23, 201 http://www.local10.com/news/local-10-investigates/hallandale-beach-apartment-residents-forced-from-homes-after-building-goes-into-foreclosure# In reverse chronological order:
ICYMI: While U see desperate people heading to University Hospital's E.R., the City of Tamarac see $$$, via @RLNOOZhttp://t.co/1qDrdYC7ax
— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) March 8, 2014
Here's my comment to the Local10 story above and the predictable reader comments that appeared the first week after it aired.
I only came across it Saturday night.
Watch that and read those comments first before seeing what I've posted below.
"I can't say specifically that we went door to door and say you all have this type of facility directly in front of your house," said David Martinez, acting director of the city's capital improvements. Martinez added that he didn't believe an impact study was done.
Yes, local government making conscious decisions to NOT do an impact study.
No, THAT can't possibly have any bad consequences, now can it?
This reminds me so much of the half-assed nature of municipal bureaucracy here in Hallandale Beach. A few years ago, the city paid for a consulting firm to do a Transportation Master Plan.
The consultants they hired were clearly smart, savvy, motivated and were very open to hearing from residents about their concerns, certainly more open to ideas and suggestions than the mayor and the city commission and City Manager and their retinue ever were.
But then the former were being paid to listen to the public -the electeds just pretended to be.
But at the heavily-promoted final presentation meeting -heavily-promoted on my blog, not by the city on any of its portable electronic message boards - I asked a series of logical and common sense questions during the Q&A that nobody else though to ask before me, and then made some predictions about things to come.
Did the city make drivers of its FREE Mini-bus system available to speak to the consultants to answer any questions about common complaints or suggestions they heard on a daily basis, since they were the city's eyes and ears on this subject? No.
That sort of managerial genius and decision-making explains why so many years later, the #1 place in the entire city where passengers utilize the service to get on and off the city's mini-buses is a place where there is NO timetable or map at all for passengers to check -the Publix on Hallandale Beach Blvd. & SE 14th Avenue.
Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders, the city commissioner who claims he primarily represents the city residents who use public transportation on a regular basis, in NW HB, despite the fact that all commissioners are at-large, DIDN'T even bother showing-up for the meeting.
Years later, that is crystal clear since residents show a facility and knowledge of it that is continually above his head. Where's the sense of personal accountability?
That failure by an elected official like Sanders to even show-up meant that Sanders could NOT only NOT hear anything said by taxpayers and residents at the meeting, but also meant that he couldn't be asked hard questions by me and other residents about about why nearly 90% of the city-maintained bus shelters had lights that DIDN'T work at night -for YEARS at a time, despite it being self-evident, as any drive at night will show, including the bus shelters closest to HB City Hall.
A fact that is STILL TRUE!
In all of Hallandale Beach, there's but one city-controlled bus shelter on the east side of busy U.S.-1, north-bound, one of the three main streets in the city.
And that one bus shelter is NOT at or near Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino or the next-door Village at Gulfstream Park retail complex, but rather 2 blocks south of the Hollywood cityline. Why?
No explanation has ever been publicly given for such stupidity or why all these years later, the city can't manage to keep more than 10% of its own bus shelters lit at night for its own residents.
Again, where's the sense of personal accountability at HB City Hall among elected officials or city employees? MIA.
And I didn't even mention yet that there are now LESS bus shelters in the city than there were five years ago, much as I predicted would happen, given the mindset here.
Does that sound like any kind of Transportation Master Plan that you would want your city to have?
So, those of you commenting here that there may've been public meetings about where the pump stations would be located, how come Jeff Weinsier couldn't find any record of them and how come the city officials couldn't refute him by stating when and where they were held.
No, instead, you impugn these particular residents as being too lazy to get involved.
Based on what evidence???
What we all know now is that the one person who appears on camera who ought to know the answers says nothing at all about any such meetings, and even while stating that he doesn't think an impact study was ever done, also never adequately explains why some pumps stations were placed on medians and some weren't, which is something that residents directly-affected were certainly entitled to know about beforehand.
And yet they weren't, now were they?
Again, that sounds exactly like how things happen in Hallandale Beach -conscious stealthiness to keep the residents in the dark.
Some of you folks ought to stop reflexively defending government bureaucrats who can't or won't explain their own actions and decisions when given a chance to, instead of being sympathetic to the plight of the residents who were just minding their own business. Instead, you choose to bash these residents with legitimate and justifiable concerns just because you don't like the fact that someone else chooses to make a housing/lifestyle choice that's different than yours.
I wouldn't live there, but would I want to wish that person's home gets flooded, like some of you clearly do?
You're biased.
Only wish the Local10 website was better and required people to use either their real names or a certified name that couldn't be changed so that in the future, I'd know better than to waste my time reading the comments of dopes, given so much of what I've read here.
C'est la vie.
----- One of my most-popular blog post on that City of Hallandale Beach Transportation Master Plan debacle was posted on June 9, 2009, and has been seen 3242 times as of right now, titled, Tonight's Hallandale Beach Transportation Master Plan meeting is a Sign of the Times in HB: We Need Change! http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/tonights-transportation-meeting-is-sign.html
And so ends the celebrity portion of this blog post.
The subject of our last blog post on Wednesday morning was the Hallandale Beach community's growing sense of frustration and consternation over what might actually transpire at that night's City Commission meeting. Specifically, Agenda item 14E regarding the $52,000 in fines owed by Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino to city taxpayers on account of their NOT following the Building Code with respect to their construction of their temporary barns. They had no permit and started building anyway. Really. Like it wouldn't be noticed.
Do you recognize this "temporary" facility at Gulfstream Park's south parking lot. No, it's not the Hindenburg 2.0's new air hangar. What you're looking at above, looking east, is the "temporary" horse barn being constructed on the south side of the Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino, to the southeast of the Village at Gulfstream Park retail complex off U.S.-1/South Federal Highway, that is the center of an ethics controversy surrounding the rogue activities of a mayor in a city that has seen plenty of those -Hallandale Beach. September 27, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
Of a highway robbery led by Gulfstream Park's defender-in-chief and HB Mayor Joy Cooper, with her standing in the way of the taxpayers of this city actually collecting what they were legally due for Gulfstream Park's own indifference to the rules they are REQUIRED to follow. The Building Code is not a hatbox full of suggestions and recipes for success, it's the way things have to be. Period. Well, after expending lots of time and energy and thought to all of that prior to the meeting guess what happened? Correct, it was deferred until the November 20th City Commission meeting, which is the same date the they were already scheduled to consider Gulfstream Park's odd, 11-story Pegasus statue and Pegasus Park project, which I have previously written about here on the blog, with some links to some articles about it below. But back to the request for a deferral and how that really ignited a fuse.
Supposedly, the City Manager's office found out late Tuesday afternoon that nobody from Gulfstream would be available to attend the City Commission meeting, even though it is only across the street from HB City Hall and the meeting has been known about by all concerned. Just like the THREE meetings this year with senior city staffers that Gulfstream Park blew-off because they couldn't manage to get themselves together, a fact that was publicly disclosed in the staff's background docs I included in my previous post.
Agenda item # 14E under City Business
E. CONSIDERATION OF GULFSTREAM PARK PERMIT FINES FOR PERMIT #13-2881, GULFSTREAM TEMPORARY BARNS. (STAFF: DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT SERVICES) (SEE BACKUP) (Staff Report, Supporting Docs)
Specifically, the city staff was told late Tuesday afternoon that "Nobody from Toronto" could be here. (Actually their headquarters is located in a suburb of Toronto, Brampton.)
But the real problem is the fact that the only one of the five city members of the City Commission to know in advance that Gulfstream Park wouldn't be present and had requested a deferral was -surprise- Mayor Cooper, longtime recipient of their campaign largess. The rest of the commission found out Wednesday night during the meeting, despite the City Manager's office knowing for roughly 24 hours.
Comm. Michele Lazarow was especially indignant about the way things were handled by the City Manager's staff, yet again, with Gulfstream Park going thru their preferred conduit, Mayor Joy Cooper, instead of directly contacting the City Manager's office as they should've. Which, of course, has sort of been my main point in my emails and blog posts about this matter, no? Transparency, public accountability and treating all businesses in HB the same and NOT forever having a culture that encourages showing favoritism. As you may have gathered from what I've written with respect to this matter and her general outlook on things, Mayor Cooper isn't too interested in that sort of even-handed policy. She has always liked to play favorites and pick winners and losers among the business community in the city. And she doesn't really care what you think about that. At the Hallandale Beach Planning & Zoning meeting I attended in late September, when it came time for public comments I rose up and strode over to the microphone to ask what i thought would be some pretty easy questions for them to answer, since neither I or anyone else is against it per se, it was just that as usual, Gulfstream Park has been ham-handed in what they were doing and keeping the community in the dark, justr as they have for years about night racing. Almost everyone I know had heard about the plans but where was something definite that you could look at over at the park or online? Exactly. Under-the-radar!!! There also seemed to be a lot of confusion about it and when it would start, since previous media stories about this project, below, had given this past April as a starting point and these were not at all accurate. They only started blocking off the enormous NE parking lot and re-configuring the main access road from the northern entrance on Hallandale Beach Blvd. in late September or early October. I asked the reps from Gulfstream Park to show me and the P&Z Comm. and the public in the Chambers any renderings of what this statue would look like from US-1/Federal Highway, since that's how the vast majority of the public would see it forever once it was finished -by driving by. They had nothing to show me. All they had was the same rendering of the statue, taken from below it, which tells you nothing about what it would look like from hundreds of feet away. They couldn't answer other obvious questions, either. I was really dumbfounded at the lack of forethought that the'd given this matter but then if you know that they haven't even considered what an 11-story statue would look like from the main road near it when there's currently nothing between it and the road, at least for now -even more enormous than described- you know what kind of people you're dealing with over there. And the results show it, too, which is sort of the problem, no? Perhaps this new guy is supposed to help resolve problems like that...
NYRA Dir. of Racing P J Campo has been appointed Vice President of Racing for Stronach Group, will be based primarily at Gulfstream Park — Mike Welsch (@DRFWelsch) November 6, 2013
It's like the Statue of Liberty has moved into your neighborhood but they hadn't thought that the people in the nearby community would be curious how it would appear to them.
Local10 News video: BSO finance director defends work hours Local10 investigative reporter Bob Norman: Pembroke Pines Commissioner Angelo Castillo is one of many of Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel's hires who come from the world of politics. Published On: Aug 26 2013 11:41:34 PM EDT, Updated On: Aug 27 2013 10:38:45 AM EDT Related article and viewer comments at: http://www.local10.com/news/bso-finance-director-defends-work-hours/-/1717324/21660742/-/46em76z/-/index.html
Sheriff Israel has more trouble: Two cities exploring kicking deputies out and having other police. http://t.co/JdNYOge3uU — Buddy Nevins (@Buddynevins) August 26, 2013
One of the political hires referenced in the Bob Norman video above is state House Rep. Shevrin Jones, FL-101, who has been the subject of some degree of controversy himself. My blog post of August 20, 2013 details what in my opinion and the opinion of many other concerned and well-informed Hallandale Beach residents has been Jones' utter invisibility over the past 18 months -along with state Sen. Eleanor Sobel and FL-100 state Rep. Joe Gibbons- on an issue of great importance to HB citizens and business owners: the financial condition of the Hallandale Beach CRA and the need for a THOROUGH and INDEPENDENT audit of it after many, many years of waste and crony capitalism, which was labeled "gross mismanagement" by the Broward Inspector General's office. http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/complete-lack-of-concern-shown-by.html This August 2nd post by Buddy Nevins discusses Jones' questionable ethical conduct, cozy relationship with lobbyists and his very sloppy way of comporting himself publicly:
Jones will be at tonight's Town Hall meeting at Hollywood City Hall at 7 p.m., which most people will be attending because of the controversial Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter School application. But Jones will be there for... well, rather than me explain it, here's what the city's official press release said last Friday: Hollywood Commissioner Peter Hernandez to Host Town Hall Meeting with Special Guest Speaker State Representative Shevrin Jones Public Safety, Infrastructure Improvements and Proposed Doral Ben-Gamla Charter School on Agenda
The District 2 Town Hall Meeting will provide residents an opportunity to get information and discuss issues relating to public safety, code compliance, utility infrastructure improvements and the proposed Doral Ben-Gamla Charter School. The meeting will be held Wednesday, August 28 at 7 p.m. at Hollywood City Hall, Commission Chambers (Room 219), 2600 Hollywood Boulevard. State Representative Jones will provide an update on his plans for a small business summit in October, crime prevention initiatives and his legislative agenda.
Hollywood’s District 2 generally runs from Pembroke Road to Stirling Road between Dixie Highway to the east and the C-10 canal to the west, north of Sheridan Street, from N. Federal Highway on the east to 24th Avenue on the west, between Hollywood Boulevard and Sheridan Street and from S. Federal Highway to the east to I-95 to the west, south of Hollywood Boulevard. Neighborhoods in District 2 include Liberia, Highland Gardens, Parkside, Royal Poinciana and many others.
For more information on this meeting, please contact the Office of the Mayor and Commission at 954.921.3321 In light of all the above information, it's hard not to think from the outside that at least part of what might be involved with Jones tonight is an attempt to engage in some public relations machinations, even though Hollywood has its own Police Dept., since everyone in Broward County pays for the Broward Sheriff's Office, and there will be few people in attendance tonight who will not have heard about all or most of the above by the time they walk thru the City Commission Chambers on the second floor. I'll be there -carefully observing and chronicling the action to report back here soon.
