Showing posts with label Peter Hernandez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Hernandez. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

re Hollywood extending the iconic Broadwalk south to Hallandale Beach city line; new Diplomat Development Agreement at tonight's 6 PM Hallandale Beach City Comm. mtg. will show what lessons have been learned -if any. We'll be watching!

re Hollywood extending the iconic Broadwalk south to Hallandale Beach city line; new Diplomat Development Agreement at tonight's 6 PM Hallandale Beach City Comm. mtg. will show what lessons have been learned -if any. We'll be watching!
My friend and fellow Broward County civic activist Csaba Kulin wrote the comments at the bottom of this email re the Diplomat Development Agreement while up in Cleveland for the summer, far from our oppressive heat and humidity. It's well worth reading because he knows the subject better than nearly anyone, and not just because he lives next door to the Diplomat Golf Course.

I'll be at Hollywood City Commission's 1:00 PM meeting and then head over to Panera Bread for a bit to get properly caffeinated and prepared, before heading over to Hallandale Beach City Hall to watch for any hijinks there.


If you know/hear anything useful about the new Diplomat Development Agreement this during the course of the day, please call me, since though I'll have my phone on mute at the afternoon meetings,I'll head out of the Chambers to call you back.

Interesting news at this morning's Hollywood CRA meeting, or at least, new to me...


I'll have more about this soon, but it's very interesting because as many of you know -and Comm. Hernandez pointed out- The Diplomat does NOT currently mention or promote the Broadwalk, largely because they want to keep all hotel guests on their property as much as possible.

Later, Mayor Levy discussed his speech to a group where he spoke about this Broadwalk expansion idea and it was warmly received. He then mentioned that he'd spoken to Diplomat management and they said they thought it'd be a good idea.
But the question in the minds among many people would be this:
Does The Diplomat really think that or did they just tell the mayor what he wanted to hear?

I don't know the answer to that question.
I will believe The Diplomat when they actually mention the Broadwalk by name in their own promotional materials and mention it online.
That would show a clear change in their attitude.

Many of you will recall that for years I've publicly asked why, if they are serious about it making it successful, The Diplomat didn't properly promote their golf and tennis property in HB.

I even said that very thing at the Broward County Comm. hearing many years ago when their first effort to build multiple incompatible condo towers on the perimeter of the golf course, which would have put many HB residents in near-perpetual shade, esp. on Diplomat Parkway.
The County Commission correctly rejected their plan.

It was rejected because, in part, The Diplomat could not explain why there are ZERO directional signs for their property on any main street in Hallandale Beach, even while there are, in fact, ones for very small churches, a point I mentioned.

The Diplomat's General Manager at the time was very unhappy that I asked questions he could not answer, and was cursing me as he got up from his seat one row behind me at the County Chambers, leaving after a loss he never saw coming.
Their defeat came about in large part due to Csaba's efforts, as well as my own to show South Florida residents and officials what was being proposed against the wishes of the city's residents, many who also spoke out against The Diplomat's plan to swamp a gridlocked area with thousands of more cars on an F-rated road.

Eight years later, there are still ZERO directional signs in HB for the Diplomat's Golf and Tennis property on HB streets. 
Draw your own conclusions about how committed they were to making that a success.

Louis Birdman, partners sell 127-acre Diplomat property in Hallandale for $43M
Dev site was approved for high-rises with 1,200 units
https://therealdeal.com/miami/2018/05/30/louis-birdman-partners-sell-127-acre-diplomat-property-in-hallandale-for-43m/ 

I've deleted the recipients of Csaba's email list and left the officials who are involved in the process.

​​​
​​

 ---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Csaba Kulin 
Date: Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 11:05 PM
Subject: New Diplomat Development Agreement Wednesday Evening
To:
Cc: Mayor Keith London <klondon@hallandalebeachfl.gov>, Vice Mayor Michele Lazarow <MLazarow@hallandalebeachfl.gov>, Commissioner Michael Butler <mbutler@hallandalebeachfl.gov>, "Comm.Rich Dally" <rdally@cohb.org>, "Comm. Anabelle Taub" <ataub@cohb.org>, Leigh-Ann Dawes <ldawes@hallandalebeachfl.gov>, Laurent Thibault <Fairways400@gmail.com>, Diane Lyon Wead <dianelyonwead@usa.net>
Friends,

 Tonight as I was preparing for Wednesday’s (June 6, 2018) City Commission Meeting, I noticed Item 13 E.

 “DISCUSSION OF THE AMENDMENT TO THE DIPLOMAT DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT (STAFF: CITY MANAGER AND CITY ATTORNEY)”.

 The meeting will start at 6:00 P.M. but it is at the very end of the Agenda, so I cannot tell you what time the Item will come up for discussion. No detail is given in the Agenda.

 As you know, the Diplomat Golf Course had been sold recently. We heard rumors about the sale, we asked several Commissioners what is going on but we got no good answers. The City Manager made some comments as to what he is going to do with the “extra” money from the new developer. It is obvious that something was going on, out of the view of the residents.

 Disgraced former Mayor Cooper and her similarly disgraced friends on the City Commission sold us out two years ago to the developers. Those commissioners are now gone, possibly going to jail.

 We had been told that we cannot un-do the approved Development Agreement but we had been assured by members of the current City Commission that they do NOT support any changes to the current Development Agreement. I hope we can trust their words.

 I do not want to sound the alarm bells at this time but I need to give you a “heads- up”. We need to watch Chanel 78 Wednesday evening, contact our city commissioners and do not be shy to speak up.

 I do not think everyone at City Hall understands that we, the residents of Hallandale Beach, will fight tooth and nails to keep the Diplomat Golf Course a green space, not a condo jungle.

 The main architects of the last deal, Cooper, Sanders and Julian learned the hard way, leave the Diplomat alone. They just did not listen.

 Make sure you to let your views known to the City Commission.

 Csaba (Chuck) Kulin
President
Fairways North, Inc. 
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

BREAKING: #HollywoodFL - Contentious City Comm meeting: City Manager Ishmael directed to negotiate a separation agreement for City Atty. Jeffrey Sheffel

Developing story...

The Hollywood City Commission was set to reconvene at 4:30 today after contentious 1:00 PM City Commission meeting results in call by Comm. Richard Blattner -supported by Commissioners Traci Callari and Peter Hernandez-  for Hollywood City Manager Wazir Ishmael to enter into negotiations with City Attorney Jeff Sheffel for the purposes of creating a separation agreement for Sheffel, following months of drama and reports of chronic complaints in his office.

These reports included unhappiness with turnover within City Attorney's office due to existing culture there -i.e. Sheffel himself- Sheffel's arrest in March for DUI,  and 
more recently, as was discussed at length today, an email from the Assistant City Manager to Sheffel alleging that the City Attorney's Office was behind in paying legal bills to outside counsel defending the city, and also was exceeding his spending authorization in settlements.

Much debate on what true facts were and whether facts were subject to interpretation. 
No seemed to be the consensus - the facts are black and white.

 City Attorney Sheffel later said he was short-staffed and that was part of the cause for some of the highlighted problems but Comm. Traci Callari quickly shot back that the reason that he and his office were short-staffed was directly because of his own actions and behavior at the manager.

In his motion, later rescinded after Sheffel agreed to meet with Dr. Ishmael, Blattner was supported by longtime Sheffel opponents Callari and Peter Hernandez, who called for Sheffel to resign at the first City Comm. meeting following his March arrest. 

 Publicly supporting Sheffel at the meeting were Mayor Josh Levy and Comm. Debra Case,
while Commissioners Kevin Biederman & Linda Sherwood seemed more on the fence but not at all happy at the various reports.

Update: Before the end of the second half of the 4:30 PM session, Hollywood City Manager Wazir Ishmael announced that he and the City Attorney Sheffel have reached a meeting of the minds regarding a Separation Agreement.
Commissioner Traci Callari made clear following this bit of news that she would like to discuss this development in more depth at the next City Commission meeting, on June 7th.
May 31st, 2017 Update
I will be updating this story tonight with some insight and quotes from from some of the parties involved, including their public comments during the early afternoon meeting, where I was the only person from the media(!) present.
CBS-4 News came by for the continuation after I sent them an email.

I had the opportunity to talk to Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy for a bit following the recent Young Circle Roadway Study at the Lippman Multi-Purpose Center, and naturally, the situation with the City Attorney was one of the subjects we discussed. 
Also in attendance Thursday night at the event were Hollywood Commissioners Debra Case and Richard Blattner.

 From the City of Hollywood:

 UPDATED: Meetings of the City Commission
Tuesday, June 6, 2017

A Special City Commission Meeting and a City Commission Workshop have been planned for Tuesday, June 6th at City Hall in Room 215. The meeting is at 3:00 p.m. regarding a separation agreement with the City Attorney and the workshop is at 4:00 p.m. regarding the proposed Safety Enhancement District in Emerald Hills. City Commission meetings and workshops are broadcast on the City’s Government Access Channel, Comcast Channel 78, AT&T U-Verse Channel 99 and streamed online on the City’s website at 
http://www.hollywoodfl.org/146/Watch-Commission-Meetings [http://www.hollywoodfl.org/146/Watch-Commission-Meetings 
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, October 3, 2013

What will Peter Deutsch do Thursday night to try to win over angry Hollywood neighbors/residents who want no part of any Doral Ben Gamla Preparatory Academy in their neighborhood -or the arrogant Ben Gamla parents and their galling sense of entitlement and antipathy towards others? My educated guess is that Deutsch doubles down and is as arrogant as ever

"The turnout was very passionate on both sides," Hernandez said after the meeting. "The parents from the school seem to have had a plan, and that was to hijack the town hall meeting in order to bring their point across, discarding the many concerns from the district's neighborhoods."
-Hollywood City Commissioner Pete Hernandez, Miami Herald, April 1, 2013
Most of you readers coming to the blog today would probably guess that given all the previous fireworks involved, as well as the particular narrative and physical circumstances involved with this school controversy in Hollywood, literally, right across the street from Hollywood City Hall, to say nothing of the many and impassioned fact-filled blog posts I've had here about him and his Hebrew Charter School empire, it'd really be quite a feat of gall for Peter Deutsch & Co. to try to play the Jewish card again at this late date, when some of the leading opponents of the expansion of this charter school at this site are Jewish themselves, including my friend, longtime Broward civic and education activist Charlotte Greenbarg of Hollywood, the president of the Hollywood Council of Civic Associations.
(Once-upon-a-time, Charlotte and her family lived in North Miami Beach, just like your faithful blogger when he was a kid in the 1970's.)

 But to think such a thing only means that you haven't been following Deutsch as closely as you needed to, and for that, I largely blame the local Miami and Fort Lauderdale newspapers and TV stations for failing to do their jobs fully, since whatever else he is, Peter Deutsch is consistent about always trying to play the angles, no matter how distasteful it may appear to outsiders, in order to gain an advantage.

 Given that fact, at tonight's 6 p.m. meeting, you mustn't discount either Deutsch's ability or willingness to play dirty or do whatever it takes to get what HE wants, which is implicitly what he told outraged residents of Hallandale Beach to their face a few years ago -when he tried to shoe-horn a high-school into a single-family Northeast HB residential neighborhood- and told them that -to repeat myself from many previous posts in this space- it didn't matter what they or their neighborhood thought or wanted, or even what HB's elected officials thought or wanted, he'd get what he wanted.
That's who he is.

 The fact that the South Florida news media clearly shied-away from showing the full extent of that unattractive side of his personality and tactics, plus, never showed video examples of the sheer arrogance and galling sense of entitlement of many of the Ben Gamla parents at the required public meetings when they had their chance to speak, only confirmed many things that people I know and respect have long thought about the majority of Miami's news media.
Simply put, many of them, but not all, are afraid of genuinely rocking-the-boat and holding people with power or influence to account publicly, whether that's a former South Florida congressman or 'concerned' drive-by parents, who live far away, who think nothing of bad-mouthing and trashing an entire neighborhood or city simply because the people actually living there DON'T want to play the role of dupes in an encore performance of what has already happened repeatedly at other Academica charter schools, as I've previously noted. 

 Like in my August 27th post:

As Wednesday night's Town Hall meeting at Hollywood City Hall re Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter School looms, more and more people are raising and asking tough-but-reasonable questions about the use of Broward taxpayer money for more of Peter Deutsch's Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter Schools. Some even dare to wonder how high those management fees Deutsch and his business partners pay to Academica really are, and whether taxpayers will find out

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/as-wednesday-nights-town-hall-meeting.html

 * Reminder as you read the following: The Doral Academy network is one of four large South Florida charter-school chains run by Academica, the state’s largest charter school operator. These four school networks -the Doral, Mater, Somerset and Pinecrest academies are owned by nonprofit companies that are managed by Academica, a for-profit company based in South Miami, which is the state’s largest charter school management company and led by Fernando Zulueta. 

 -----
Press Release from City of Hollywood last week read as follows:
The Department of Planning and Development Services is hosting two separate community meetings on current development proposals.  The first meeting is on the proposed Sheridan Station Development.  The second meeting is on the proposed Doral Ben Gamla Preparatory Academy. 
The community meeting for the Sheridan Station Development will be held on Thursday, September 26 at 6:00 p.m. in the City Commission Chambers, Room 219, Hollywood City Hall, 2600 Hollywood Boulevard.  This meeting will provide City staff with public input as the project begins the Development Review Process which includes public hearings.  This is not a meeting where any decisions will be made.  It will be an opportunity for the the public to get an update on the status of the project slated for the area just east of I-95 between Sheridan Street and Taft Street.  Some of the topics will include:  proposed changes to the project, update on number of units and amount of commercial space, update on the Florida Department of Transportation's role in the project and the status of off-site/on-site improvements.
The Community Meeting for the Doral-Ben Gamla Preparatory Academy will be held on Thursday, October 3 at 6:00 p.m in the City Commission Chambers, Room 219, Hollywood City Hall, 2600 Hollywood Boulevard. This meeting will allow the public to find out more about the proposed expansion of the charter school, ask questions about the development proposal and provide feedback that will be considered as the project moves through the development review process.   This is not a meeting where any decisions will be made.  The proposed location for the school is 2636, 2648 and 2650 Van Buren Street, near the charter school's current campus.
Both of these meetings are open to the public and interested residents are encouraged to attend.  For questions about either project, please contact the Department of Planning and Development Services at 954.921.3471.   
-----
Miami Herald
In Hollywood, fight over charter high school gets noisy
By Carli Teproff, cteproff@MiamiHerald.com
October 1, 2013
Every morning when school is in session, traffic along Hollywood Boulevard and the surrounding streets slows to a crawl as parents drop their children at the Ben Gamla Charter School, which houses kindergarteners through eighth-graders.
Nearby homeowners say the traffic is unbearable. And it's going to get a whole lot worse, they insist, if a proposal to build a high school across the street serving 1,050 students is approved by the city and the school board. 
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/01/3663977/in-hollywood-fight-over-charter.html
 -----

 South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Passionate response to plans - Community meeting on Ben Gamla school expansion planned for Thursday
By Sara Shell, Staff Writer
September 29, 2013
When Hollywood City Commissioner Peter Hernandez took office, he promised constituents he'd have regular town hall meetings to discuss the happenings and get feedback from District 2.
There was no shortage of feedback during his second town hall meeting of the year, focusing on the proposed expansion of the Ben Gamla charter school. More than 300 residents showed up, creating an overflow crowd at City Hall, and another community meeting on the subject is planned for Thursday. 
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/hollywood/fl-cn-gamla-0929-20130927,0,585149.story
NBC6 video: Church-State Separation Issue at Hollywood's Ben Gamla Charter School Revived After Comments by Founder Former congressman Peter Deutsch was quoted as saying the school, which teaches Hebrew language and culture, builds Jewish identity among its students 
By Ari Odzer, Tuesday, Sep 17, 2013, Updated 2:01 AM EDT
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Church-State-Separation-Issue-at-Hollywoods-Ben-Gamla-Charter-School-Revived-After-Comments-by-School-Founder-224003041.html





This includes the reader comments at the Miami Herald website





JewishTelegraphicAgency news
Jewish public schools? Hebrew charter franchises offer radically different models 
By Uriel Heilman 
July 1, 2013 2:36 p.m.
http://www.jta.org/2013/07/01/life-religion/jewish-public-schools-hebrew-charter-franchises-offer-radically-different-models





Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)