Showing posts with label Mike Good. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Good. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

First Day of Hallandale Beach's 2013 Budget Workshop on Monday is royal debacle for HB taxpayers in favor of more accuracy, financial oversight and prudent decision-making. And free speech!; On the plus side, the Hallandale Beach City Commission didn't declare war on Cuba or The Bahamas, so there's that; recycling in Sweden is SO much easier than in Hallandale Beach

Meanwhile, in another place and time, but also of this world and year... For someone like me who's a longtime recycling enthusiast, one of the best things about Sweden in general and Stockholm in particular is the average person's very strong personal commitment to keeping that beautiful city -and its public nature areas- free of trash and debris. You pay a few Kroner more for products packaged in recyclable plastic or aluminum, like maybe 20 cents on a 12-ounce Coca Cola can, at both retail stores and from street vendors in kiosks, but you always get your money back via self-serve machines like the ones pictured above at stores. (I did this myself with some Coke products at the the Hemköp grocery store in the basement of the Åhléns Dept. store at Ringvägen and Götgatan, across the street from the Skanstull T-bana in the southern commercial heart of trendy and fun Södermalm.)
This recycling system has the psychological advantage of creating a real financial incentive in consumers of all political temperaments or persuasions to return items to stores, as well as incentivizing people to pick-up any recyclables they ever see lying on roads or in parks -and get that found money themselves- which is one of the reasons that Stockholm is SO CLEAN! 
They make it as easy as possible to recycle, the polar opposite of the approach in Hallandale Beach, where the city itself puts up real and meaningful obstacles.

First Day of Hallandale Beach's 2013 Budget Workshop on Monday is royal debacle for HB taxpayers in favor of more accuracy, financial oversight and prudent decision-making. And free speech!; On the plus side, the Hallandale Beach City Commission didn't declare war on Cuba or The Bahamas, so there's that; recycling in Sweden is SO much easier than in Hallandale Beach
Only five Hallandale Beach citizens showed-up for the start of the meeting, including me, at 4:15 pm, so we few were significantly outnumbered by city employees by a factor of about 8:1, mostly Dept. heads.
Surprise! The meeting started late...

Hallandale Beach civic activists Csaba Kulin and Maggie Ivanovski each spoke for three minutes at the very beginning of the meeting after, a propos of nothing, Mayor Cooper felt the need to share her opinion on the George Zimmerman trial.

The mayor's comments were as predictable as they were completely unnecessary and inappropriate, and yet another reminder of the large obstacles this city faces in ever becoming a normal city instead of merely her personal plaything.

Csaba and Maggie's spot-on comments came before any Dept. or subject budget presentation and concerned a.) the Parks Bond issue & cost overruns at B.F. James Park, and b.) the number of new city employees that have  been hired since City Manager Renee Miller was hired as HB's City Manager over a year ago, having pledged to at least some of us in the community of her best efforts to instill some real oversight on city activities and keep costs under control.

Not that either thing she promised me last summer is readily-apparent to even the most casual of observers, since I still see the same bad things routinely taking place in the same bad way
in the same exact places and circumstances.
I'll be doing a video on that soon that I think will give you a sense of how true this is.

After the two of them were finished, when it would have been perfectly appropriate and sensible to make a motion to allow the public to speak after each Dept.'s presentation of what their request is and why, since as the mayor is so fond of saying over the years about city Workshop meetings, which this was in part, they "have flexibility," no HB commissioner had the good sense to do so, least of all, the mayor.

For all his faults, to give him his due on this, even former City Manager Mike Good allowed citizens to ask questions after Dept. budget presentations when he and Mayor Cooper were running things up in the infamous and cramped Room 257 at HB City Hall.

I know because I was one of the handful of persons who regularly took advantage of the opportunity to remind him, the Commission and the staff about their previous promises to the public that had gone unfulfilled and in many cases, never even attempted, or if they had, as was the case with the city's recycling program after they bought tens of thousands of bins, done
haphazardly, unprofessionally or in a general half-assed fashion.

The city's ass-backwards recycling program and approach remains a very frustrating and disheartening mess in my opinion, given the resources they have now but don't properly utilize, to say nothing of their lack of effort to be intelligent about capturing more by using known consumer behavior in this small city.

Those budget meetings were one of the rare times in the year in this city when you got a chance to really hold Dept. heads to the fire and make them responsible or publicly acknowledge problems that they consciously ignored the rest of the year, which would now get a full airing.
Well, at least as much of an airing as you can have when City Manger Good and Mayor Cooper each had a microphone in a small room when you are about ten feet away, at most.

So, whatever good points you or I or anyone else had regarding the budget particulars were left unsaid Monday afternoon and night because Mayor Cooper refused to  allow any members of the public to speak once City Manager Miller ran  thru the agenda for the next three days and her 'laundry list of priorities, which really should've been a list of the Commission's priorities,
of course, but I digress.

Which is why a motion should have been made, so Cooper would've been forced to public defend her position that no taxpayers of this city should be able to talk about the budget after they hear the financial "facts." 

No, she doesn't want to hear from you until September when it's too late, because then it's a done deal.
The 2013 HB Budget train will have already left the station with her as conductor, and she will tell you if you ask that "you should've spoken up earlier" when you had the chance.
But, of course, you really didn't have that chance to make constructive suggestions and informed criticisms, did you?

But here's the thing: Not showing up at the meetings , though, only encourages Mayor Cooper, so it's important that you try to attend on Tuesday or Wednesday after 4 p.m., and see whether the tables are finally turned, since they'll be going on for hours.

If you think you as a Hallandale Beach taxpayer, resident or small business owner ought to be able to ask informed questions after hearing the Dept.'s presentations, instead of commenting without knowing all the facts, why don't you call the HB City Commission and tell them you want the budget process to be one where there's genuine community input, not lip service, and you want them to pass a motion making that a reality on Tuesday and Wednesday?

You can reach the Commissioners at these phone numbers:
Michele Lazarow   (954) 457-1320
Bill Julian   (954) 457-1317
Anthony A. Sanders   (954) 457-1319
Alexander Lewy   (954) 457-1315

It's your money after all, not theirs.

And don't forget to bring your cameras with you!

Friday, May 3, 2013

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.


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

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, 


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.

Monday, April 29, 2013

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


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

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

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

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

Do you recognize that name above, Jennifer Frastai?

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

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


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

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


I know because I was there in attendance and taped it on my camcorder.

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

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

Mayor Cooper has wasted little time and has promptly and predictably shown how little regard she had for this high-minded effort to reach out to new faces and new people in the community and get them involved.

People with varied backgrounds and perhaps even some educational/childcare expertise on the Education Advisory Board.
Yeah, it sounds great in the abstract, but what about in reality?

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

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

Yes, Joy Cooper, the longtime Hallandale Beach mayor who has NEVER once publicly called for or even convened a single community-wide meeting or forum, say on a Saturday morning morning, that dealt exclusively with any of the myriad of difficult education issues and very real challenges facing this city.

A city where hardly any kids who live east of U.S.-1 -where most of the population is- actually go to the public high school that's in this city.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most of which I mentioned here last June 15th,
Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's old threats & lawsuits re-emerge as Hollywood's  Beach One Resort sues over its access to the beach, the latest shoe to drop in The Related Group's Beachwalk project that'd make HB's North Beach a defacto private beach for The Related Group's properties, NOT a public beach for HB residents

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

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: 

Thursday, April 18, 2013

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

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.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Happy 4th Anniversary, Mayor Cooper's un-necessary, taxpayer-subsidized office! Which, four years later, STILL isn't even listed on City Hall's own building directory; #HallandaleBeach, @MayorCooper


Above, Hallandale Beach City Hall, October 15, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
Happy 4th Anniversary, Mayor Cooper's un-necessary, taxpayer-subsidized office! 
Which, four years later, STILL isn't even listed on City Hall's own building directory

Under the City of Hallandale Beach's charter, the only additional power that the elected mayor
has that the four elected city commissioners don't possess is the right to call a meeting and
the right to preside over it. 
That's it.
That's the whole list.

Over four years ago, Mayor Cooper convinced then-City manager Mike Good that despite the
fact that these differences were very slight on the face of it, she believed that she needed to have a much-larger office than her colleagues on the commission, and so, thousands of tax dollars were spent to ensure that Mayor Cooper got what she wanted.
Yes, no expense or amount of feigned ignorance is spared to keep her happy.

And not just a larger office in the back with the other commissioners, but right on the main hallway, just a short distance from where visitors get off the elevator.

Which is how four years ago this week, just as the mayor returned from the first Obama
Inaugural, at taxpayer expense,
that office burst onto the scene, becoming perhaps the only mayor's office in Broward County
or all of South Florida that isn't actually listed on their own City Hall's directory, in this case, the one located to your left as you walk thru the front lobby door.

Yes, because every queen must not only have her own palace, but her privacy... even it's paid for with taxpayer dollars.

In other news, somehow, inexplicably given the known facts, Hallandale Beach doesn't land
on the list of the worst-run cities in America because of... well, a technicality.
Because it's not among the 100 largest cities:

I know what you're thinking.
What a cruel fate for Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper -to be denied her rightful 
pride-of-place on a list of the worst-run cities in America, merely because our town is too short for the ride. 
Yes, it's so very, very cruel...

Thursday, November 1, 2012

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/