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/

Csaba Kulin gets the Miami Herald's whitewash treatment: McClatchy's Co.'s Herald practices the opposite of giving credit where credit is due, editing out the name of the one person in South Florida most-responsible for finding out why and how 3 former Hallandale Beach City Managers will soon be multi-millionaires with taxpayer dollars; a story that Miami Herald reporters, editors and management have completely ignored for years!

Where did all the taxpayer money go? Good question! Csaba Kulin knows some of the answers. Imagine if we had City Commissioners here like him and Michele Lazarow who'd actually take their oversight  responsibilities for taxpayers seriously, and ask probing questions instead of just sitting on the dais and playing the role of rubber stamps for the mayor. Hmmm... October 24, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

Csaba Kulin gets the Miami Herald's whitewash treatment: McClatchy's Co.'s Herald practices the opposite of giving credit where credit is due, editing out the name of the one person in South Florida most-responsible for finding out why and how 3 former Hallandale Beach City Managers will soon be multi-millionaires with taxpayer dollars; a story that Miami Herald reporters, editors and management have completely ignored for years!

It's a damn shame that the Miami Herald's editors have once again shown their infamous tin ear for Broward County news, their terra incognita,.

In this case, by editing-out the name from their version of this past week's latest embarrassing story about Hallandale Beach in the Broward Bulldog, written by Bill Gjebre, of the one person in South Florida most-responsible for finding out why and how 3 former Hallandale Beach City Managers and other highly-paid officials will soon be multi-millionaires with taxpayer dollars.

In doing so, they do a serious dis-service to someone whose diligent unpaid hard work for two years first turned-up evidence of financial self-service by Hallandale Beach's three most-recent City Managers, ripping-off Hallandale Beach taxpayers while producing sub-standard results that we can all see around us in this small ocean-side city, HB civic activist and City Commission candidate, Csaba Kulin.

Pension plan pays off big for ex-Hallandale Beach city managers  

Hallandale Beach’s former top managers collect fat pensions from a retirement plan they pushed a decade ago

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/23/v-fullstory/3063859/pension-plan-pays-off-big-for.html  

(FYI: The above story will disappear from Herald website in a few days, unlike Broward Bulldog's website.)

Seriously, folks, whom exactly did you think gave the reams and reams of information with copious notes to the Bulldog's Bill Gjebre in the first place, to get him fully-acquainted with all the pertinent facts and figures, Joy Cooper, the notoriously thin-skinned and ethically-challenged longtime autocrat of a mayor, under whose "leadership" the city's budget has nearly doubled the past 6-8 years, with hardly anything tangible for put-upon citizen taxpayers to point to except a Wastewater Treatment facility? 

Hardly!

And it's certainly not former HB City Manager R.J. Intindola, one of the central parties under-the microscope in the article.

As I've mentioned here previously, Intindola is the smug and poison pen online blogger who lives in Georgia, far from what's actually going on here, but who acts like he's a real player in what happens here. 

He not only isn't, of course, but his name now provokes laughs in people who know that he's been spinning a spiffy PR story about himself for many, many years that is now finally getting the genuine scrutiny it deserved many years ago, and best of all, using the city's own documents.

As we say in France, touché monsieur!

Hallandale’s ex-top managers collect fat pensions from retirement plan they pushed a decade ago

By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org

October 22, 2012 at 6:23 AM

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/10/hallandales-top-managers-collect-fat-pensions-from-retirement-plan-they-pushed-a-decade-ago/

Some of you regular readers of the blog may recall this story from five months ago, in my blog post of May 19th:

Csaba Kulin exposes the multi-million dollar bill to be borne by Hallandale Beach taxpayers for having a disconnected City Commission that was -and is- NOT interested in paying close attention to detail or in asking tough questions. That's how and why former City Managers Intindola and Good have made out like bank robbers

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/csaba-kulin-exposes-multi-million.html

Which was followed-up by a large email and subsequent blog post here on Tuesday:

Thanks to Csaba Kulin's many months of diligently digging thru city records to find the truth -only some of which city had- we now know what the real cost to Hallandale Beach taxpayers has been for having an inattentive City Commission for so many years: Millions and millions of dollars for Intindola, Good & Antonio's pensions!

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/as-predicted-here-months-ago-thanks-to.html

And here's the real kicker -Csaba Kulin already has the proof of the city's embarrassing "smoking gun" that kicks this story up several notches from what's written here. 

The sort that, IF Broward County had a solid and dependable local prosecutor, leads to real investigations, real grand juries and real legal consequences.

A fact that the Miami Herald seems determined to find out about -after-the-fact.

And I happen to know it, too, thanks to months of listening to Csaba connect-the-dots.

Not that the Herald's beat reporter for Hallandale Beach, Carli Teproff, ever thought to look into any of this, even though I've sent her some of the information that positively connects-the-dots, months ago, just as I sent it to the Sun-Sentinel's Tonya Alanez.

Nope, they just couldn't be bothered.

And neither could anyone else in South Florida's deservedly-maligned press corps -except Bill Gjebre of the online Broward Bulldog.

Why?

You'd have to ask Teproff and Alanez for that answer, but I have my own suspicions.

No, seriously, why don't you ask them why they weren't interested in a news story involving a city they covered that involved millions of dollars?

If I was their editor, you can be damn sure I'd be asking, but then I wouldn't work for either news paper, now would I?

Nope.

One, the Sun-Sentinel, with a pay-wall that is suffocating the newspaper and making it even more irrelevant, and the other, the Herald that plans on erecting one soon that will only hasten its likely demise. 
Not that their reflexive geographical myopia helps them any! 

(But lure existing and new customers and eyeballs to pay for what new and original content? Ah, there's the rub! What do they have to offer people dis-satisfied with the current product, more of what they dislike?)

Csaba has done what the smartest prosecutors presenting a case before a jury do -letting people hang themselves with their own words.

In this case, Csaba not only has used their own words to help paint a story, but has also used the documents these folks created, the city's own documents, to show what has been going on for years below-the-surface of Mayor Joy Cooper's economic facade on S. Federal Highway.

A city which, if you didn't already know, has a rapidly declining Reserve fund because of its continual use to balance the city's books on everyday expenses, as well as Cooper's craven crony capitalism, an economic theory that treats the city's CRA funds like an ATM for her friends and supporters.

Especially for her loyal supporters in Northwest Hallandale Beach, where do-nothing Comm. Anthony A. Sanders happily plays the role of bank teller with citizen's tax dollars or CRA funds that are supposed to end blight.

Except Sanders acts like it's his money, not ours, and he wants to be thanked for it at the ballot box in ten days. 
No, I won't be thanking you for squandering money and refusing to face HB concerned citizens in person for over three years.
Sanders & Co. needs to get the heave-ho but quick come Election Day...

Csaba penned some words on Thursday that I have included below that spell it out pretty well for all to see and chew-on, especially the very bitter supporters of Cooper, as well as longtime Commissioners Bill Julian, Dotty Ross and Sanders.

This claque of aggressively loud-mouthed and high-strung supporters, whom, as you might imagine, don't much want to let the real facts and bad judgment of their heroes interfere with their preferred alternative-version of reality, where Cooper, Julian, Ross and Sanders are just super, just like the state of the city, and it's people like myself, Csaba, Mike Butler, Keith London and others interested in reform and transparency who are keeping the city down.

Yes, the Cooper Rubber Stamp Crew's collection of sycophants, oddballs and ne'er do-wells, with their grand sense of entitlement, who, in order to prove their worth to their heroes, almost routinely engage in the most juvenile and almost laughable stunts imaginable, of which stealing others' campaign signs is but, I suppose, the most basic of initiations.

For a few of them who are just barely tethered to reality, though, that also includes making phony phone calls to the Police Dept. in order to try to embarrass and frame people they hate.

(I'll get to that in a few days.)

That so many elected officials who have so very much to be publicly held accountable for, as well as their flunkies, drive around town and act above the law, would be laughable if it weren't so damn objectionable and obvious.

I described it here in detail as recently as Wednesday, and I suggest you go back to that post if you don't get the full picture of what things are like.

And now, finally, here's Csaba Kulin with the latest news on this pension matter: 

I have researched Management Pension Plan for two years. I have all the documents made available to me by the city. I did not find anywhere the City Commission-approved the prior year of service before the pension plan actually started.

The plan started in 2001 and R J Intindola should be receiving 13 months plus 4 years of time purchased. That is a bit over 5 years, not almost 25 years. R J Intindola should receive his 401K retirement, which is a lot less generous, prior to 2001 years of service.

I have been looking for two years for the authorization to give credit for “back service” years.
I was not able to find it for one reason. There is none.

The City Commission approved the plan but NOT the “prior service years”. I have no proof YET but I suspect it was approved, without City Commission’s OK, by the then City Manager R J Intindola. As far as know, R J Intindola was the first beneficiary of his decision.

This is not the end of the story. Will Hallandale Beach try to “claw back” and stop paying out ill-gotten pension payments? Will the Broward Inspector General look at the issue? Will the Hallandale Beach City Commission just say “let us forget about the past and concentrate on the mistakes we will make in the future” or we are going to get to the bottom of this. I will tell you after November 6, 2012
Here is the “smoking gun” from the current City Manager.

Hello Mr. Kulin,

I apologize for the delayed response but I wanted to be 100% sure that this information as correct. The city does not have an item that speaks directly to the credit of back time. I have attached for you all the documentation associated with formal actions adopting the management pension plan for your review.

Renee C. Crichton
City Manager
City of Hallandale Beach

-----

So I ask you, in a City Manager-style form of government like Hallandale Beach has had, who do you suppose made that crucial and expensive decision years ago regarding back time?

Teaser Alert -it wasn't the cute blonde beach lifeguard from Ft. Wayne.

Think much, much higher on the food chain.

Yes, just more reasons to vote for Keith London for mayor and Csaba Kulin and Michele Lazarow for city commission instead of the faces of unethical behavior and inadequate oversight and financial accountability, who desperately want to be on the dais a month from now -Cooper, Sanders and Julian.

http://kulin2012.com/

http://michelelazarow.com/

http://keithlondon.com/

Thanks to Csaba Kulin's many months of diligently digging thru city records to find the truth -only some of which city had- we now know what the real cost to Hallandale Beach taxpayers has been for having an inattentive City Commission for so many years: Millions and millions of dollars for Intindola, Good & Antonio's pensions!

Above, City of Hallandale Beach City Hall: where genuine accountability and financial oversight have been missing for so many years, which is why there is so little tangible improvement to show taxpayers in a city whose budget has nearly doubled the past 6-8 years. October 15, 2012. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

As predicted here months ago, thanks to Csaba Kulin's many months of diligently digging thru city records to find the truth -only some of which city had- we now know what the real cost to Hallandale Beach taxpayers has been for having an inattentive City Commission for so many years: Millions and millions of dollars for Intindola, Good & Antonio's pensions!

Broward Bulldog

Hallandale’s ex-top managers collect fat pensions from retirement plan they pushed a decade ago

By Bill Gjebre

October 20, 2012

A short-lived, perk-laden retirement plan has paid off big for some top Hallandale Beach officials who helped set it up a decade ago – but today it’s costing city taxpayers extra millions of dollars.

Read the rest of the article at:

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/10/hallandales-top-managers-collect-fat-pensions-from-retirement-plan-they-pushed-a-decade-ago/

And who's running for office here in two weeks who voted to approve this financial debacle?

Yes, William "Bill" Julian, shown below on his large campaign signs on the properties of some of Julian's strongest financial campaign supporters, all real estate developers.
I think you may've heard of them!

First, a sign on the parcel owned by real estate developer Richard Shan of Shanco. This is looking north/northwest off of Old Dixie Highway between S.E. 7th and 8th Streets, across the street from the city's largest park, Bluesten Park, about three blocks south of Hallandale Beach City Hall, and two long blocks west of The Village of Gulfstream Park retail complex
on U.S.-1/S. Federal Highway.

    

Second, the Raanan Katz family behind Sunny Isles-based commercial real estate developers R.K. Centers, at multiple locations on their huge retail complexes on both sides of Hallandale Beach Blvd. east of NE 14th Avenue. 
They have lots of Julian signs all over the place.

In this example, a sign as you look north near the Layne Blvd. entrance on the north property, off of Hallandale Beach Blvd., home of Winn Dixie, Boston Market, Panera Bread, Big Lots, Starbucks, Las Vegas Cuban restaurant, et al. 
That's The Duo condo towers in the background, on the south side of the Diplomat Golf Course and Resort.

Please be sure to read my May 19th, 2012 blog post on this subject full of more specific financial numbers and context on the topic of the inattentive Joy Cooper Rubber Stamp Crew and their willful ignorance of the looming pension disaster on the horizon:

Csaba Kulin exposes the multi-million dollar bill to be borne by Hallandale Beach taxpayers for having a disconnected City Commission that was -and is- NOT interested in paying close attention to detail or in asking tough questions. 

That's how and why former City Managers Intindola and Good have made out like bank robbers

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/csaba-kulin-exposes-multi-million.html

Yes, more reasons to vote for Csaba for City Commission two weeks from today...
http://kulin2012.com/

Outsourcing isn't the real problem with beach safety in Hallandale Beach, but rather the actions -and in-action- of David Jove, Mike Good and Mark Antonio at HB City Hall; #HallandaleBeach

North Beach, Hallandale Beach, FL. May 30, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. 
© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

Outsourcing isn't the real problems with beach safety in Hallandale Beach, but rather the actions -and in-action- of David Jove, Mike Good and Mark Antonio at HB City Hall; #HallandaleBeach

Based on the eight-plus years I have of seeing how often Hallandale Beach has been mismanaged, the issue of outsourcing beach safety on the city's public beaches to third-party contractors has never been the main problem, though it seems to have become one now in the eyes of a lot of people who don't know all the facts, including some local and out-of-state reporters, who are latching onto that as a convenient straw man they can attack, often for political reasons.
While it's understandable to a certain extent for people who don't know the true extent of how badly run things are here to think that must be the problem, it isn't.


People, esp. residents of this city, feel a need to explain away the justifiable anger and upset they have over what has happened here recently that's gotten the name Hallandale Beach into headlines and stories all over the world for all the wrong reasons.
But they'd be better off looking closer to home at people whose names they already know.

The real problems lay at the desks -and feet- of a handful of highly-paid people who formerly toiled at Hallandale Beach City Hall.
People who'll be making more then $3 Million in pensions in the future for time they were given credit for that was actually done PRIOR to the current pension plan.
Yes, millions of dollars.


In my opinion, based on all I know and have observed from the center of the storm, the real problems with beach safety in Hallandale Beach are in the actions and non-actions of former City Attorney David Jove and former City Managers Mike Good and Mark A. Antonio.


Yes, the buck stops with them, and what's left over for sloppy seconds rests entirely with the ineffective and tone-deaf fivem-member Hallandale Beach City Commission, that with the exception of Keith London, never actually wanted to look under-the-hood to see what was really going on, even though oversight, rather than policy-making, is actually what most local officials are better at than policy-making.
Here, unfortunately, they are bad at both, since taking some pride in being diligent about mastering the pertinent policy information is not a trait the majority of the commission necessarily values.


Now, though, with Jove, Good and Antonio out of the picture, this city's residents have inherited all manner of bad public policies and unsound decision-making that we'll be paying for and dealing with for many, many years, to say nothing of the huge pensions their assistants will be receiving for the very same reason -credit given for prior years under a different plan, not actually work done under the pension plan in question.


A pension plan pushed on the HB City Commission by yet another former City Manager, R.J. Intindola, who the city's own figures show pockets an EXTRA $96k a year because of this plan that was approved one year before he retired.

A pension plan that ran counter to what the majority of local governments were then migrating to.

Trust me, here on this blog in the coming weeks and months, you will be getting the genuine jaw-dropping pension numbers on these characters -and others- that will animate at least some of the coming political campaign conversation in this town the next 16 weeks until Election Day.

Teaser Alert -NOT: Bill Julian's fingerprints will be on it.

Bur that's in the future, so for now, let's turn our attention back to the topic du jour, beach safety and the incident that brought it to worldwide attention.

My comments after the article. 

--------------------------------------
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Fired Hallandale Beach lifeguard to receive key to city; contract with company may sink

By Ihosvani Rodriguez, Sun Sentinel

5:42 p.m. EDT, July 6, 2012

HALLANDALE BEACH—

City leaders plan to give the lifeguard who was fired earlier this week the key to the city while considering showing the door to the private company that canned him.

Mayor Joy Cooper said Friday she remains horrified by the way Tomas Lopez, 21, of Davie was fired for leaving his post on the beach to help rescue a drowning man outside the company's legal boundaries. Lopez worked for Jeff Ellis Management, an Orlando-based firm that has been providing lifeguard services for the city since 2003.

"I know people across the country are as outraged as I am," Cooper said. "This doesn't reflect our culture. We are a small, caring community."

The city plans to issue Lopez the symbolic key during a ceremony on Monday. The unidentified man who needed rescuing is also expect to attend the event, the mayor said.

Company officials have since apologized to Lopez over the firing and offered him his job back. Lopez has turned them down. The company also announced it would be looking at its emergency protocol policy and possibly retooling it.

But those revisions may come too late, given that Lopez's firing seems to be an international public relations nightmare for both the city and the private firm.

The incident and the company's contract could become an election issue for most city commission members who are seeking re-election in November. Some of the political opponents, including former Vice Mayor Bill Julian, have already made it a campaign issue by pushing for the services to be provided in-house. When it comes to beach safety, Julian said "the real issue is that I think we can do better. We need to bring back our own guys."

Commission members, including Cooper and her bitter political nemesis Commissioner Keith London, have each said they want to revisit the idea of contracting out lifeguard services.

London, who is facing Cooper for the mayor seat, told residents and supporters in an e-mail sent Friday that the incident has provided the opportunity for a second look at beach safety.

"During a time when Hallandale Beach is attempting to attract more visitors with families and young children, I believe this is an opportunity, in light of a near tragedy, to review and potentially enhance the services provided by our first responders," London wrote.

The city began outsourcing the lifeguard responsibilities nine years ago as a cost-cutting measure. In 2009, the city renewed a three-year contract with Jeff Ellis Management worth roughly $1 million.

The contract is set to expire in September.

In firing Lopez, company supervisors said he ran past the boundaries the firm is contracted to protect. Company officials initially said Lopez put swimmers in his area in jeopardy and the firm could've been sued. A review of the contract specifically indicates that the boundary must be protected at all times.

The company is required to reimburse the city $100 for each day a lifeguard is not present.

In 2007, the firm reimbursed the city $500 after it pulled its lifeguards off the beach because of rough conditions. A woman nearly drowned while the stands were left empty and had to be rescued by beach guards from adjacent Hollywood.

Hallandale Beach is the only city in Florida the company provides ocean lifeguards. It does provide guards at community pools for numerous municipalities around the county, including in Hallandale Beach, Dania Beachand North Lauderdale. The lifeguards have said they get paid $8.25.

Dania Beach considered hiring the firm in 2005, but residents and employees vehemently opposed the move saying they were worried about the quality of the company's ocean-rescue training.

Gerry Falconer, president of the lifeguards group United States Lifesaving Association's southeast region, said the company has never sought certification through his association. He said there are several companies that provide similar services around the country, but most are designed to provide lifeguards at public pools.

"It's apples and oranges. At a wave pool, if things go bad, you can just hit a switch and turn the waves off," he said. "You can't do that on the ocean."

Company officials have long stood by its own certification training called the International Lifeguard Training Program, which they say includes ocean training and recognized by insurance companies.

Lopez said Friday he underwent the company's lifeguard training at a pool, which consisted of rigorous swimming and physical exercises. He then had training on the beach after he was hired.

Company president Jeff Ellis could not be reached for comments on Friday. He did say earlier this week he plans to provide city officials with results of an investigation about this week's incident.

Mayor Cooper said she plans to address the issue at the commission's first meeting in August.

There's also a video at URL http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/hallandale/fl-hallandale-beach-lifeguard-more-20120706,0,1727797.story

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To me, outsourcing lifeguard duties on the city's public beaches were never the main problem here, but rather former City Attorney David Jove NOT doing a satisfactory job of completely spelling-out the city's reasonable expectations and requirements in the contract at the time, and subsequently, the City Managers and City Commission's complete failure to provide adequate oversight and suggest timely contract changes when appropriate.
Our old friend, lack of oversight, is the central problem, like dozens of other issues that we all could name that have long plagued this community.

Everything else devolved from that, including HB City Hall's failure to ever talk to the lifeguards themselves, just like the city NEVER spoke to the city's Mini-Bus drivers before they came out with their Transportation Master Plan. 
Really!

Why wouldn't you speak with your own employees and contractors first to see what suggestions they had before you spend so much money, so you can be sure to get the input of people who deal with a situation on a daily basis and incorporate their valid concerns or suggestions?

It's completely counter-intuitive and an example how often common sense has been ignored in this city over the years because that was NOT the way City Manager Good and Antonio wanted things done.

With them, it all started with themselves -top-down, despite the fact they they are not the ones who set policy.

The HB Parks & Recreation may nominally oversee the lifeguard contract, but again, that's in name only, since nobody in that  dept. had or has the power to do anything once the contract was signed. 

No, it all lay with the City Manager's office, and there, Good and Antonio both failed.

For many years, when their supervisors weren't around, the lifeguards have specifically told me exactly what they were missing in the way of resources and tools to do their job to the best of their ability, or what problems they were having with the city NOT doing what they said they were going to do, and taking forever even IF they did it.

Like the state of the lifeguard stands themselves, which are physically sub-par compared to other communities in South Florida.

South Beach, Hallandale Beach, FL. May 30, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. 
© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

And as I've been saying and writing, and as the city already has known for a long time, the lifeguard stations are NOT currently grounded for lightning strikes.

What happens if one is struck overnight during a storm and destroyed, what's the city's back-up plan to have one in place the next morning?

What's the plan?

The truth is that we all already know based on years of experience that there is no back-up plan.

There never is.

Looking south towards North Beach, Hallandale Beach, FL from the Hollywood cityline. Though you really can't see the South Beach station from North Beach, HB City Hall thought they could share one jet ski, when it actually worked! 
What more can you say? May 30, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. 
© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

Whether it was NOT having message boards on the side of the lifeguard stands that they could actually write on anymore because of excessive physical wear-and-tear from the sun and graffiti -and the city being a year behind in getting replacements- or NOT having a single  working jet ski to reach swimmers in peril in strong winds/undertow conditions because the last one was broken, and the city had no back-up plan, and refused to rent one until the previous one was fixed, the problems lay with the city, not the contractor,


Think about the fact that even when it was working, the city expected the two lifeguard stands to share one jet ski among them, separated by hundreds of yards.

When seconds really count!

It's absolutely ridiculous!

But this was how the city "managed" things on the beach on a daily basis for years.
That's NOT Jeff Ellis & Associates' doing, that's the city's!

As I wrote the other day, for quite a long time during the past 2-3 years, the lifeguards had nothing to cope with those sorts of wether/physical conditions, so this whole debate, upsetting as it is, could well have come a whole lot sooner, under much more tragic and deadly circumstances, with genuine drowning victims and lawsuits against the city that they could never possibly prevail in, leaving all of us on the hook.

That they didn't come sooner isn't because of anything the city has actually done, but rather in spite of everything the city HASN'T DONE.

Hope you can attend Monday morning's ceremony at HB City Hall at 10:30 a.m., because my sense of things is that given the amount of lingering concern and anger that remains, it could well prove to be a whole lot more interesting than anything Mayor Cooper is currently counting on.


And don't even go thru the pretense of having a meeting on beach safety in August if you aren't going to require David Jove to answer questions honestly, under oath.

Correction: Rancor among Hallandale Beach Police rank-and-file on Monday afternoon lasts long after labor negotiation meeting concludes

May 28, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier

Note: Earlier today when I first posted this online, in a blog post titled "Rancor at Hallandale Beach Police & Fire Pension Board meeting on Monday afternoon lasts long after the meeting ends," I referred incorrectly to the meeting that took place. It was, in fact, a Hallandale Beach Police labor negotiation, not a meeting of the Hallandale Beach Police & Fire Pension Board. Reps of and members of the HB Fire/Rescue Dept. were NOT present. The post has been changed to more accurately represent what was what.

At a labor negotiation meeting held on Monday afternoon at HB City Hall, rank-and-file members of the city's Police corps who attended were full of rancor long after the (incoming) City Manager, Renee C. Crichton, and City Attorney V. Lynn Whitfield gave their union reps two pages from the city's consultant's report -not even a complete copy- the upshot of which is that there will be no longer be Defined Benefits programs here, and that all members will have to become enrolled in a 401(k).

The Police employees are still working off the 2007-2010 contract because the city has refused to negotiate for the past year; I believe they last talked in July of 2011.

You can believe, as I do, that the public policy change is not only warranted but long overdue for HB's long-suffering taxpayers, yet still be very troubled, even dumb-founded, that the city's approach still found a way to make that change in such a ham-handed fashion that un-necessarily antagonizes city employees.

(That this small city already has TOO MANY police officers, who do far too little as far as many are concerned, is a subject for another time, even while it is a view that most well-informed people I know here firmly believe, based on their own years of personal experience of seeing what is going on here.)

Meanwhile, according to people who know the numbers, Deputy City Manager Nydia Rafols-Sallabery, someone whose fingerprints I believe are all over many of the longstanding failures and screw-ups in this city that I've chronicled over the years -someone who once actually told me at a city Quadrant meeting "not to worry about it" when I was livid that a city program was completely failing to do what it was supposed to do WEEKS after it was started and the Dept. head was ignoring it- is slated to get about $100,000 a year in her pension.

That's per that 2001 HB City Commission vote I wrote about here recently, which was approved by, among others, Dotty Ross and Bill Julian, the latter of whom is now trying desperately to get back on the dais this Fall after being deservedly booted in 2010 for his many years of bad judgment, incompetency and questionable fidelity to rules, ethics and hard work.
Julian is, in the minds of many of this city's most well-informed citizens, pure poison.

That 2001 pension change was done at the urging of then-City Manager R.J. Intindola, which as I wrote last month, is why Intindola is getting an extra $96k a year above what he actually earned. http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/csaba-kulin-exposes-multi-million.html

There were about a dozen HB Police and Firemen still sitting around the room after the official part of the meeting concluded with the handing of the two pages, and many were not only still upset but openly complaining about not only how the whole thing played-out, but at the demands of the HB public.

Here's some free advice: City police should think twice about bitching aloud about actually being expected to do their job when they are in a public building where taxpayers are present. Just saying...

I really don't care how you did things when you were 'on the job' in California, this is a small city with more than its fair share of cops with bad attitudes and personalities, many of whom specialize in vocalizing their sense of entitlement and irritating people just for the hell of it. right now, it's a very average Police Dept., nothing special, and it's time that some of its members wake-up to the new financial reality that after a new Police Chief is hired -AFTER a clear attempt is made to look nationally for someone who sees the opportunities here- some cuts and prescient, and long-overdue re-organization will be required.

Eventually, though, more than an hour after the meeting broke-up earlier than many had expected, all of the people in the room had to get out because of a meeting between the city's staff and the reps/lobbyists from The Beachwalk project, inc. former HB Development Services Director Richard Cannone.

Cannone's involvement in this poorly thought-out Beachwalk deal, so soon after he left the city's employ, causes many people here to get severe heartburn, due to his less-than-exemplary way of disseminating public information to the taxpayers who paid his salary.

Many, including me, wish the City of Hallandale Beach already had an existing revolving-door ethics policy that prevented former elected officials and Dept./agency heads from lobbying the city for 18 months-to- two years after leaving, unless they are speaking as volunteers for genuine non-profits legally-registered with the IRS.

And so it goes...