Csaba Kulin asks Hallandale Beach City Attorney Whitfield THE question HB citizens have long wondered, esp. as the Broward IG's Office has been busy investigating the city and turning-up mountains of incriminating and jaw-dropping evidence: Who at HB City Hall is supposed to make sure that applicable laws, ordinances and rules, especially those regarding ethics and conflicts of interest, are followed and enforced fairly? Teaser Alert: You won't like her answer

Csaba Kulin in front of Hallandale Beach City Hall. January 7, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

So, did you hear what Hallandale Beach City Attorney V. Lynn Whitfield said at last week's Hallandale Beach Planning & Zoning Advisory Board meeting about ethics and her role in the city, during yet another one of her so-called Ethics talks to them?

My trusted friend, Hallandale Beach and Broward County civic activist Csaba Kulin did.

He knows because he's the one person in this city to ask City Attorney Whitfield THE  important question that's long been needed to be asked, as HB citizens have woken-up to hear and read yet another jaw-dropping story about what Hallandale Beach's elected officials and highly-paid city employees have allowed to happen at City Hall while dodging their sworn and fiduciary responsibilities to Hallandale Beach citizens: oversight and accountability.

To wit, who at HB City Hall is supposed to make sure that applicable laws, ordinances and rules, especially those regarding ethics and conflicts of interest, are followed and enforced fairly?
Whitfield's answer will no doubt surprise you.

No matter how much you may wish it were not true, the reality is that Hallandale Beach City Attorney V. Lynn Whitfield DOESN'T seem to be getting any smarter about learning where she works, who she works with, who she really works FOR, or even what's really been going on in this city for years and adapting so that she remains firmly on the right side of the community's concerned and informed citizens.

We've already had a do-nothing City Attorney who didn't care about any of those things, and who excelled at ignoring all the routine corruption, incompetency and illegality going on all around him. 

His name was David Jove and he's currently laughing all the way to the bank on the ridiculous pension that HB citizens like you and I are paying for.

The pension that Jove "earned" from NOT saying anything or doing anything when he should have but consciously chose NOT to.

Whitfield certainly DOESN'T seem to appreciate the great harm that she's already done to herself or her reputation in this community, especially with its citizens, who gave her the benefit of the doubt after she was hired in 2011, vis-a-vis the corruption in this city and the pathetic excuses she's publicly made for why CRA money was allowed to go out the door for years to the CRA Board's friends and allies, with no tangible plan or intent by City Hall officials to EVER see whether it went to where it was supposed to go, even IF the idea that was approved had made sense, few of which ever did, of course.

Broward Bulldog

Broward Inspector General: Hallandale leaders don’t know what they’re talking about, By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org
April 23, 2013 AT 6:21 AM

The Broward Inspector General’s final report on the “gross mismanagement” of millions in tax dollars by Hallandale Beach is sharply critical of city leaders it says have shown a “basic misunderstanding” of what’s gone wrong.

Hallandale Beach city managers past and present, the city attorney, the mayor and other city officials defended the handling of funds of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency in formal responses included in the 56-page report released last week.

Read the rest of the article at http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/04/broward-inspector-general-hallandale-leaders-dont-know-what-theyre-talking-about/

You'd think the city's many highly-paid CRA employees and Assistant City Managers could've handled the straightforward task of double-checking and verifying submitted information by grant and loan applicants, wouldn't you, but you'd be dead wrong.

Year-after-year that job was always, apparently, someone else's job, but whose exactly?

Really, WHO was responsible for doing that?

Hallandale Beach City Hall and their flacks can't say and won't say, and neither will former City Managers Good or Antonio, who think that no harm can come to them despite all the harm they've done to this community's bottom line and Quality of Life, thru their neglect and lack of common sense and professionalism.

So what did City Attorney Whitfield say?

You can pretty well assume since I'm writing this that it was something that's NOT positive about cleaning-up HB City Hall and actually injecting a degree of normalcy or even professionalism, something that most people in town thought that she would at least try to do, at a bare minimum, given how obvious predecessor Jove was about hearing no evil, seeing no evil and speaking no evil.

Again, back when they were trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.

I can tell you that It was NOT something that you as a citizen taxpayer would appreciate as either her boss and the person who is ultimately paying her salary, with the idea that she is making an honest attempt to look after YOUR best long-term interests, not Mayor Joy Cooper's.

To say nothing of you and I and everyone else in this city paying CRA Attorney Steven W. Zelkowitz of Gray-Robinson over $200 an hour to say and write preposterous things in the city's official response to the Broward IG Report.

Things that are not only NOT true or believable -and I'd be willing to bet, not believable to a grand jury that ought to hear the evidence!- but which, frankly, read like an Introductory college fiction writing assignment.

You'd almost think Whitfield and Zelkowitz were talking about some other city, not the one we live and work in.

Hallandale Beach turns tables, accuses Broward Inspector General of “factual inaccuracies”

By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 

April 11, 2013 at 6:30 AM

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/04/hallandale-beach-turns-tables-accuses-broward-inspector-general-of-factual-inaccuracies/

Broward Inspector General slams Hallandale for “gross mismanagement”; CRAs elsewhere eyed

By William Gjebre and Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org 

March 6, 2013 at 6:10 AM, 

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/03/broward-inspector-general-slams-hallandale-for-gross-mismanagement-of-cra-funds/

So, what did Whitfield say?

I can tell you it was NOT something that's going to endear her to you or help her one bit in creating any degree of space between her and unpopular and increasingly belligerent City Manager Renee C. Miller on the larger issue of whether either deserves to keep their jobs.

Yes, whatever good will Whitfield may or may not have earned up until now, or even any latent sympathy you may've had for her last year because of her brain surgery, has been erased the past few weeks by her own inexplicable actions and words.

And that includes the troubling and perhaps even haunting words that she uttered at last Wednesday's P&Z meeting, when she was asked a direct question, which shows she really HASN'T learned anything at all about how things have been here, and how they (largely) still are with her around.

HallandaleBeachBlog YouTube Channel video: Csaba Kulin re Hallandale Beach City Attorney Whitfield's comments re her role on ethics. Uploaded May 3, 2013. 
http://youtu.be/dtpFnVOFA-I

*That's real thunder you hear in the background, not SFX! The audio will be better next time.

Hallandale Beach civic activist Csaba Kulin speaks about the comments of Hallandale Beach City Attorney V. Lynn Whitfield on her role at HB City Hall re ethics enforcement, conflicts of interest and making sure that state laws and city ordinances are properly followed, including laws that protect citizen's rights, via Florida's Sunshine Laws in the state constitution.

Kulin is a member of the city's Planning & Zoning Advisory Board and Whitfield's very curious comments that she is "not the ethics police" and that her role as HB City Attorney does not make her responsible for making sure that the City Commission, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) or various Advisory Board members are actually complying with applicable laws and rules, came in response to Kulin's question to her during the April P&Z meeting, when she was giving another one of her occasional primers on ethics to the Board.

Very troubling questions about a lack of ethics and competency at HB City Hall, self-evident crony capitalism, and conflicts of interest have hovered over Hallandale Beach for many, many years, with its reputation among its own citizens and the rest of South Florida getting only worse by the year, as one embarrassing example after another has emerged of the city engaging in highly questionable behavior, and perhaps even illegal conduct.

In April of 2013, the City of Hallandale Beach was the subject of a scathing final report by the Broward County Inspector General's Office that specifically used the term "gross mismanagement" to describe the city's non-existent oversight and public accountability over millions of dollars in its CRA, which is comprised of the five members of the elected City Commission, including the mayor. Example after example is cited of near-invisible oversight of the CRA's activities by the elected City Commission, and the employees of the CRA and City Manager's office, with ZERO follow-up to see whether funds were spent for the purposes for which they were intended, or even whether various projects given funding were ever actually accomplished. 

This comes as no surprise to Hallandale Beach's most-concerned and involved citizens, including Kulin and myself, most of whom have viewed the CRA -as it has operated in this city- as little more than a city slush fund to reward the City Commission's favored social and non-profit groups and political allies, a fact that is bolstered by the IG Report, with lots of often incomplete or completely missing files and documents for grants or loans, and no apparent effort to double-check and see whether so-called "non-profits" really qualified for that designation.

The complete report, FINAL REPORT RE: GROSS MISMANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC FUNDS BY THE CITY OF HALLANDALE BEACH AND THE HALLANDALE BEACH COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY is at
http://www.broward.org/InspectorGeneral/Documents/OIG11-020HallandaleFinalE-REPORT04-18-13.docx.pdf


*Due to exhibits, the IG Report takes almost a minute to download.

The Broward IG returns serve on Hallandale Beach's embarrassing and mis-behaving tinhorn pols & officials re HB CRA. They get a dose of cold hard reality poured on them, the first of so many to come in their well-deserved comeuppance in the court of public opinion. Their karma is going to be a bitch!; @MayorCooper, @SandersHB, @AlexLewy

This latest bit of reportage by the Broward Bulldog's Bill Gjebre regarding Hallandale Beach City Hall's unethical crew of misfits and sycophants, is particularly compelling precisely because the guilty parties are completely bereft of the slightest bit of remorse, and are having taxpayers pay their legal bills to boot.

This all causes me to wonder... If this were the American West's court of public opinion of the mid-18th century, a place that my ancestors actually lived in, in the Hill Country of Texas, there are more than a folks at Hallandale Beach City Hall who'd have good reason to be fearful of the smell of tar-and-feathers in the air.

Then as now, unethical or morally-suspect actions by those with a public trust have especially serious consequences.
Especially when they involve pols who seem to have repeatedly abused their power thru the squandering of public funds.

Just saying... 

Miami Herald

Broward IG: Hallandale leaders don’t know what they’re talking about

By William Gjebre, The Miami Herald

Posted April 23, 2013

The Broward Inspector General’s final report on the “gross mismanagement” of millions in tax dollars by Hallandale Beach is sharply critical of city leaders it says have shown a “basic misunderstanding” of what’s gone wrong. 

Hallandale Beach city managers past and present, the city attorney, the mayor and other city officials defended the handling of funds of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency in formal responses included in the 56-page report released last week. 

Read the rest of the article at: 

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/23/3360640/broward-ig-hallandale-leaders.html

Breaking News: Broward Inspector General's Final Report on Hallandale Beach City Hall's longstanding corruption & incompetency with CRA released today - FINAL REPORT RE: GROSS MISMANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC FUNDS BY THE CITY OF HALLANDALE BEACH AND THE HALLANDALE BEACH COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY

Above, Hallandale Beach City Hall Complex on S. Federal Highway/U.S.-1, where attention to details and appearances has never been their strong suit in the nine years I've lived here, since returning to South Florida after 15 years in the Washington, D.C. area. Thanks to the city's incompetent, myopic and poorly-managed DPW, the spotlights seen above in 2011 on the city's monument sign, at the corner of U.S.-1 & S.E. 5th St., have NOT worked since June of 2012. Which is to say that they have NOT worked since City Manager Renee C. Miller has been in place. But attention to details and appearances really DO matter when you are a government, and the situation with the lights is but the tip of the iceberg. The city's log of Visitors & Lobbyists, which is required by law to be up-to-date, was TWO MONTHS old as of last Friday. Really. August 7, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

FINAL REPORT RE: GROSS MISMANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC FUNDS BY THE CITY OF HALLANDALE BEACH AND THE HALLANDALE BEACH COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY

http://www.broward.org/InspectorGeneral/Documents/OIG11-020HallandaleFinalE-REPORT04-18-13.docx.pdf

Now we need to see some logical follow-up in the way of prosecution.

Please be advised that the report can take up to a minute to open due to the many exhibits. 

It took 55 seconds for me.

Follow-up email to FL Gov. Rick Scott about MILLION$ more down the drain at Hallandale Beach City Hall. MORE of what we already knew and always suspected and now it's Q.E.D. yet again -Bill Gjebre in Broward Bulldog: "Hallandale city managers erased millions in code violation fines with little oversight"; @MayorCooper, @SandersHB, @AlexLewy

Palm tree obstructing the sun's powerful rays  at Hallandale Beach City Hall. And if there's any City Hall in Florida that needs more sunshine and scrutiny, it's Hallandale Beach's. May 28, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

Below is a a copy of my Tuesday morning email to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, with copies to various Florida Legislative leaders and other public officials and interested parties throughout the Sunshine State, about the latest details to come out on what's been happening in one of the most unethical, incompetent and anti-taxpayer outposts in Florida, Hallandale Beach.
There's even less financial accountability and management oversight than we thought, and we didn't think there was very much to begin with.
And the shoes just keep dropping...

For some of you newcomers to this blog, in case you forgot whom I'm referring to in paragraph six regarding the very curious pensions changes that were made by someone at HB City Hall that netted million$ more to certain high-ranking people, by someone that HB City Hall won't name, it's former City Managers Mark A. Antonio, Mike Good, R.J. Intindola and former City Attorney David Jove. 

They're among the handful of people that this city's most well-informed and active citizens personally blame for the tens of millions of dollars that have been wasted and squandered the past 5-6 years, and whom logic and reason dictate should receive the highest degree of scrutiny by by public officials and law enforcement personnel in Tallahassee and at the Broward County Courthouse.
I've deleted the email addresses for obvious reasons.

-------------

To: Gov. Rick Scott cc: FL Attorney General Pam Bondi, FL CFO Jeff Atwater, Sen. Don Gaetz, Sen. Jack Latvala, Sen. John Thrasher, Sen. Joseph Abruzzo, Dominic Calabro of Florida Tax Watch, Broward Inspector General John W. Scott and Tim Donnelly of the Broward State Attorney's Office
April 3, 2013 Dear Governor Scott: Tens of million$ of tax dollar$ squandered here, tens of million$ of CRA dollar$ squandered there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. Sadly in the case of the city I've lived in the past nine years, Hallandale Beach, citizens have seen tens of millions of dollars continually squandered with no genuine accountability or oversight by either elected officials, or, highly-paid but incompetent city officials, despite all of them having a moral and fiduciary responsibility. And now we saw yesterday, via one of the articles below, that our well-founded suspicions have been confirmed as fact with even millions of dollars having been given away as party favors by the current City Manager and her two predecessors in forgiven fines. I'm sure you won't be too surprised to learn that the current City Manger doesn't want to end her power to play Santa Claus, saying that actually having the elected City Commission make the decisions about waiving fines over $50,000 would slow down the bureaucracy! Governor Scott, it's this city's longstanding incompetent bureaucracy, fiefdoms and mis-management that's responsible for literally ruining this city's current morale and future Quality of Life in the first place, by saddling current and future taxpayers with exorbitant bills for services that are NOT rendered: clean competent government.    And even now, three former City Managers, a former City Attorney, and a couple of dozen highly-paid former and current city employees are now laughing all the way to the bank, courtesy of beleaguered Hallandale Beach taxpayers, thanks to a very mysterious decision made over ten years ago regarding pension payments that were changed to exclusively benefit about 40 highly-paid city employees. And almost as if they needed to square the circle on their own jaw-dropping incompetency, many months after it was first requested, the City of Hallandale Beach STILL can't produce contemporaneous documents that say who the individual was at HB City Hall who decided, without City Commission approval, that these particular city employees would get their prior years of service paid-out to them at a MUCH-HIGHER rate than they actually earned at the time. In fact, HB City Hall STILL claims it doesn't have the full list of these former and current city employees who have benefited enormously from this mysterious decision by this mysterious official that will cost HB taxpayers millions and millions more than it should. What does all of this tell you about the scope of HB City Hall's lack of accountability to residents, taxpayers and small business owners? And the crazy part is that we still have in place many of the very same individuals legally and morally entrusted to do right by the citizens of this city, but who were and are so irresponsible about fulfilling their responsibilities that they didn't ever bother to verify any information submitted to the city for city/CRA grants or loans, before or after the funds were handed over to so-called non-profits, at least some of whom were actually NOT legally considered non-profits at the time by the IRS. Not that this salient legal distinction prevented City Hall from giving the money away to their cronies anyway, because as the city's very own documents have shown, there was never any appropriate follow-up to ensure that the funds were being spent properly or even as they were intended. Really. Do you see the unmistakable fact pattern that's present here, year-after-year? Governor Scott, THAT self-evident fact pattern of illegality, incompetency and gross mis-management is our daily reality in this city. Where's the cavalry? Broward Bulldog Hallandale city managers erased millions in code violation fines with little oversight By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org  APRIL 2, 2013 AT 6:23 AM http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/04/6915/ Broward Bulldog Split Hallandale commission votes to give Miami developer Tibor Hollo big break on fines By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org  MARCH 22, 2013 AT 6:13 AM http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/03/split-hallandale-commission-votes-to-give-miami-developer-tibor-hollo-big-break-on-fines/ And just a reminder, sir, it's all true and verifiable! Sincerely, DBS ----- Tuesday's email was the logical follow-up to my March 14th, 2013 email to Governor Scott about longstanding unethical behavior and corruption at Hallandale Beach City Hall, My open letter to Florida Governor Rick Scott about the longstanding corruption and incompetency at Hallandale Beach City Hall and environs re the HB CRA: More shocking proof of what I've written you several times in the past: Serial malfeasance and millions of dollars squandered by public officials as State laws/ethics were ignored, and with little genuine public oversight or transparency. Broward Inspector General Scott assails Hallandale Beach for past and continuing "gross mismanagement" -possible "criminal misconduct"; @MayorCooper, @SandersHB, @AlexLewy http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/my-open-letter-to-florida-governor-rick.html It started out like this... and got even better... FYI: Some follow-up to my March 7th email to you about longstanding culture  of corruption and incompetency at Hallandale Beach City Hall:  Broward Bulldog Hallandale mayor, ex-city managers defend millions in suspect spending to county agents By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org  MARCH 14, 2013 AT 6:10 AM http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/03/hallandale-mayor-ex-city-managers-defend-millions-in-suspect-cra-spending-to-county-agents/ And the pull-quote? Probably this: City records regarding payments to non-profit groups were so lacking, the report said, that investigators were “unable to reliably assess the amount of possible losses suffered by the CRA as a result of ‘misapplication of funding by non-profits.” Florida law does not permit the CRA to fund charitable donations to non-profits, the report said.

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.

http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/calendar.aspx

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?

http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/DocumentCenter/Index/354

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?

http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/documentcenter

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?

http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1710

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

Friday begins a very bumpy couple of weeks for real estate developer Jerome Hollo and his plan to NOT pay Hallandale Beach taxpayers the $450,000 that Florida East Coast Realty owes them. And a storm is coming...

View Larger Map

Above, looking south from the southwest corner of U.S.-1 & Atlantic Shores Blvd., back when it actually had an operating business, near the entrance of Mardi Gras Casino. The building immediately south of the one in the foreground has NEVER  been open in the nine years I have lived here, which gives you some clear idea of both how truly incompetent the former owners were, thinking it'd be a gold mine someday -and then the recession hit!- and how genuinely short-sighted and incompetent the Hallandale Beach City Commission and HB CRA -the same guilty parties!- have been that entire time, allowing a location that should've been a key economic engine along U.S.-1 to simply rot before residents eyes year-after-year. To say nothing of the empty space south of that which used to be the Kelly Chevrolet dealership. That whole area has been largely ignored by HB City hall for years, chronically poorly-lit and dangerous at night. And Joy Cooper has been mayor the entire time that's been the reality. Coincidence? I think not. Nice job, HB Chamber of Commerce!  

Friday begins a very bumpy couple of weeks for real estate developer Jerome Hollo and his plan to NOT pay Hallandale Beach taxpayers the $450,000 that Florida East Coast Realty  owes them. And a storm is coming...

AFTER the city has already given him and his company $25k in a CRA grant to demolish HIS eyesore buildings on U..S.-1, near the eastern entrance to the Mardi Grass Casino.
https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=25.994793,-80.14272&spn=0.001432,0.002663&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=25.994793,-80.14272&panoid=lV8wFVvQtGrRxC-Nmi7lHw&cbp=12,222.26,,0,-8.97

Hollo might want to consider putting a construction hat on, because I have it from good authority that a storm is coming, and part of that storm will consist of cold, hard facts raining steadily on the head of him and his company.
Facts of the sort that his regular retinue of assorted attorneys, consultants, PR pals and business sycophants will NOT be able to unspin.

Agenda item #10 involving Hollo was pulled from Wednesday night's Hallandale Beach City Commission consent agenda and is likely to come back for discussion on Wednesday night February the 20th.

10.  CONSENT AGENDA A.   A RESOLUTION OF THE MAYOR AND CITY COMMISSION OF THE CITY OF HALLANDALE BEACH, FLORIDA, AUTHORIZING THE CITY MANAGER TO FULLY MITIGATE ALL CODE COMPLIANCE LIENS ON REAL PROPERTY LOCATED AT 801, 805, 811 AND 821 NORTH FEDERAL HIGHWAY, HALLANDALE BEACH, FLORIDA, AND TO AUTHORIZE THE RELEASE OF SAID CODE ENFORCEMENT LIENS; AND PROVIDING AN EFFECTIVE DATE. (STAFF: DEVELOPMENT SERVICES) (SEE BACKUP) (Staff Report, Supporting Docs)

Staff Report is at
http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/files/2013-02-06/Staff%20Reports/00011990.htm
Supporting Documents at
http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/files/2013-02-06/Item%2010A/index.html

Contradictions! If Hallandale Beach's budget can nearly double in 6-8 years under Joy Cooper, with little tangible to show for it for taxpayers, why can't taxpayers at least have city employees who earn their salaries thru diligence, performance and attention to detail -instead of none of those? Like having a safe, well-lit area for Early Voters outside the city's Cultural Center for the first day of an event that's been known for SEVERAL MONTHS?; @MayorCooper

Butler1Mike YouTube Channel video: Hallandale Beach Mayor Cooper contradicts herself, saying that she didn't vote for the city's overly-generous pension plan in 2001 that lasted for many years, but then defends the pension plan that the city had that has (or will) make multi-millionaires out of several employees, including three former City Managers, as entirely appropriate for a city so small. Yes, here as she has so many times over the nine years that she has been mayor, Joy Cooper shows herself to be one enormous ball of contradictions, which is why there is never an intersection of logic and reason and genuine taxpayer accountability in her city. Just her doing whatever she wanted, saying whatever she wanted, and flying by the seat of your pants! Uploaded October 31, 2012. http://youtu.be/xhlnEezjZGU
http://www.youtube.com/user/Butler1Mike


No Broward city let's you down more consistently and more predictably when it comes to attention to detail than...

For those of you who were there last Saturday morning at 6:45 a.m. like me, how awesome was it to see all the hustle-and-bustle and nervous energy of so many voters, candidates and their friends milling around the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center, the only site in the city for Early Voting, and just as about any of us could've predicted, about half of the city's parking lot lights and safety lights around the Center were NOT working.

When it was near pitch-black.

Just like last week, last month and last year.

Just like 2008's Early Voting!

Like it always is!

All October 27, 2012 photos below by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

The light above in the foreground is from my camera's flash, otherwise none of the signs would be legible to you.

Again, without my flash, you'd see no shadowy figure crossing at the designated place. You know, without lights that actually work, those security cameras aren't nearly as effective.
Looks like the lights on the access route from S.E. 3rd Street were out, of course!
Not that the police or the police chief who drive on it constantly ever notice and do something about it. 
Nope!

Yes, you'd never know by the appearance of so very much neglected maintenance that the city's Police Dept. HQ was just steps away, given how very lax the city has been for so many years about basic safety and common sense and liability issues.

"Liability," what's that?

If you're like me, how funny was it to see the myriad candidates and their devoted friends and family members handing-out their campaign palm cards to voters lined-up on a median strip in the parking lot, south of the Cultural Center -and outside of the "no campaigning zone"- waiting patiently for a Broward Supervisor of Elections official to come out and have the first few people come inside to exercise their right to vote, and yet the folks at the end of the line could NOT even read the palm cards they were handed because they were so far from a working light and it was so very dark?

Yes, good times, indeed!

What could be better than lots of senior citizens parking and walking around in poorly-lit parking lots early in the morning? What could possibly go wrong? 

So, do you see all the dozens of Early Voters lined-up at 6:57 a.m.?

Who needs city Dept. heads and employees who actually show a little foresight once in a while, and who earn their salary thru hard work and attention to detail, when you can, instead, have SO MANY of the sort that we seem to have been blessed with here in Hallandale Beach?

Government employees who have a larger sense of entitlement -and a seeming chip-on-their-shoulders- than would seem normal based on the constant sub-par look of the city, both aesthetically and maintenance-wise.

City employees who, for whatever reason, perhaps tradition, think that their performance is NOT Job One, but rather an abstract idea that they never have to actually reach, just pretend to aspire to at Dept. meetings.

After all, if we've learned anything in nine years of living here, it's that there are absolutely no consequences to employees' continued poor performance or chronic bad attitude or perpetual surliness to taxpayers, the real bosses, of course.

(I sometimes wonder what it's like in the cities where all those City of HB employees live, since so few Dept. heads and regular employees actually live here, otherwise perhaps they'd take more pride in their job. Clearly, not, though.)

Yes, the fact that it's been known for several months now that this location would be the City of Hallandale Beach's ONLY site for Early Voting made it entirely predictable that on the first day, many voters would think they'd beat the rush by showing-up to vote first thing at 7 a.m.

And for those of you reading this far from these shores, yes, even here in sunny South Florida, at this time of the year, it's very dark at 6:45 in the morning.

Of course, most of these voters, unlike most of us who regularly attend civic meetings or City Commission meetings at or around Hallandale Beach City Hall, and thus, who already know how bad things are safety-wise around City Hall and Bluesten Park two blocks away when the sun is NOT out, could't have planned for how very poorly prepared the city was.

I guess it was a good thing, after all, that there were no surprise guests from the Romney-Ryan team showing-up as some had been saying via the grapevine and some emails I received the night before, since even with the TV camera lights, with so many city lights out, it would've been hard to do anything that would've looked good on TV, either LIVE or recorded for airing later in the day.

Yes, I'd gone there early that morning after getting no sleep overnight to lend some encouragement to some friends who are running for office as pro-reform candidates -Keith London for mayor, and Csaba Kulin, Michele Lazarow and Gerald Dean for City Commission- observe a bit and and snap some photos and video of the activities.

But instead, even while doing those things, I walked into what was yet another discouraging reminder of how poorly-run this city has been under Mayor Cooper the past nine years, and how consistently poor performance has no consequences for employees, no matter who they are or how much money they make.

Changing that pernicious culture of entitlement, bad attitudes and sleepwalking performance at HB City Hall, of making sure that Hallandale Beach taxpayers REALLY DO receive a dollar's worth of work and services for a dollar's worth of taxes, and, finally having real consequences for city employees who are NOT performing up to the public's expectations, no matter who they are, is why I'm voting the way I am on Tuesday.

If you live here and really care about what sort of future this city will have, of what kind of quality of life you and your family can enjoy, I strongly suggest you do the same.

Vote London, Kulin, Lazarow & Dean, YES for City Charter Question #5, and NO to all the other HB Charter questions.

It's now five days and counting 'till the day you can finally reclaim your city back from the very people who have taken you and your neighbors for granted, have constantly tried to squelch your rights whenever they could, and who have made an art of wasting your tax dollars in ways that would be laughable if they weren't so painful and expensive.

There are four candidates in this city who have stood-up when it counted -including right now.
You already know their names - I just said them

Not perfect people, of course, but people much like yourself who genuinely care about this city's future, and who fervently believe that this city's residents deserve -at a minimum- to be properly respected once again by a Mayor and City Commission that doesn't continually embarrass them thru their repeated poor judgment and ethical lapses.
Imagine that?

Actually represented by a Mayor and City Commission with some genuine integrity, and represented by people who are properly-prepared for public meetings, and who aren't afraid of the hard work and heavy-lifting that will surely be required to get this city out of its current slide into irrelevancy.

You've said for years that you wanted honest and hard-working people in charge at City Hall who would fight for real reform and financial accountability, and finally clean-up this city's poor image.
Well, now it's up to you to actually show-up and vote for it and the candidates who will make it a reality.

What sort of city do you want to wake-up to next Wednesday morning?
THAT'S the question you as a voter have to answer positively when you get the chance.

http://kulin2012.com/

http://michelelazarow.com/

http://keithlondon.com/