Some news/thoughts re Editorial @SunSentinel - "To change decorum and direction, choose Anabelle Taub and Michele Lazarow in Hallandale Beach"; Hollywood candidate forum tonight at Summit Towers condo

To change decorum and direction, choose Anabelle Taub and Michele Lazarow in Hallandale Beach | Editorial https://t.co/QkFLB2jrmn pic.twitter.com/BGnJWvpuXr

— Sun Sentinel (@SunSentinel) October 19, 2016

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Editorial
October 18, 2016 

9:09 PM

Anabelle Taub, Michelle Lazarow are picks in Hallandale Beach

Citizens deserve so much better than what they're getting from today's five-member Hallandale Beach City Commission, which has divided into camps like two high school cliques.

Arbitrary time limits squelch discussion on big issues, shouting matches break out and police have been called to remove certain commissioners. Relationships have gotten so bad that a parliamentarian had to be hired to enforce Roberts Rules of Order.

Neither side looks good in this 3-2 commission split. Both have attitude, mud stains and investigations into backroom shenanigans, one worse than others. Something has got to give. The Nov. 8 election offers that opportunity.

Read the rest of the editorial at: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/endorsements/fl-endorse-hallandale-beach-20161018-story.html

October 20th, 2016 

4:55 PM

I expect to have some more interesting news for you on Friday about what's REALLY going on at Hallandale Beach City Hall these days. If you haven't been by the newly-renovated HB City Hall yet, as I was again this afternoon, it could hardly be made more clear that the citizens of Hallandale Beach REMAIN the very last priority of the crew running things there, compared to the comfort and care of city staff. Surprise!

The place may've gotten a new paint job and some new walls and furniture, but the endemic culture of incompetency and corruption remains!

Tomorrow, photographic proof of just that. 

Seeing is believing.

That email and blog post will also likely include some carefully chosen thoughts about bungling and ethically-challenged HB Comm. Bill Julian, especially about all the articles about his #ethics that you are NOT seeing publicly, including at the faux newspaper, the South Florida Sun Times, @SFSunTimes, which for so many years has been so deeply intertwined with so much of the longstanding corruption and cronyism at HB City Hall while it received sweetheart deals, year-after-year, thanks to Mayor Cooper & 
Commissioners Julian and Anthony A. Sanders via their votes on the HB CRA.

In exchange, it has faithfully served as Mayor Cooper and the city's propaganda sheet, rather than simply serving the citizens and business community by showing up on time at public events and fairly and accurately reporting the facts about what was/is being said and happening in plain view of everyone.

Tonight I'll be in Hollywood at the Summit Towers condo candidate forum at 7 pm, which will feature Hollywood Mayoral and District 1 City Commission candidates.

That's at 1201 S. Ocean Drive, with overflow parking available at the nearby public parking lot on Azalea Terrace near the Hollywood Beach Community Center.

Hope to see some of you there! 

Dave 

Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth

https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

When Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper says "setting the record straight" in her "column" at the taxpayer-financed faux newspaper, grab your wallet or purse, and be prepared to endure self-serving, nonsensical rationalizations that fail both the logic and reality test

Above, the perpetually-ridiculed and taxpayer-financed faux newspaper, South Florida Sun-Times, with one of the most egregious and laughable front pages of the past few years -and that's saying something! August 30, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

With only 16 weeks to go until Election Day, what's the over-and-under on the number of times that the faux newspaper, the South Florida Sun-Times, will place mayor and "columnist" Joy Cooper, Comm. Anthony A. Sanders or former Commissioner and occasional "columnist" William "Bill" Julian on the front page, knowing that if they aren't on the City Commission after November, there will be no more taxpayer dollars going to crony capitalist and propaganda sheet owner Craig Farquahar?


The whole enterprise is like one massive con job, designed to portray Cooper and her Runner Stamp Crew, as well as her clique of friends and hangers-on around town seem robust and civic-minded, instead of the combative, thin-skinned, not-so-bright and despotic autocrats they have repeatedly shown themselves to be. 


It's the most crass and craven sort of propaganda you can imagine, made worse by the fact that it's financed in part with Hallandale Beach taxpayers' dollars, a sytem of information control that Cooper, Ross, Julian, Sanders and Lewy all want to see continue as long as they can manage it, because the very last thing they want is a real community newspaper that is dedicated to factual reporting of what is -and isn't- going on here.
They positively hate THAT idea!


With this particular gang of nit-wits and overly-ambitious egos based on nothing but sandcastles, there's them and then there's everyone else.
There's their point-of-view and then there's, well, that's it.

October 1, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved 


It's one of the reasons that the faux paper doesn't post letters to the editor, online or in-print. 
They don't want to antagonize their bankers and partners in crime like Cooper, who, along with her husband, have threatened the fake newspaper's owner before for once having dared to print something by another Commissioner that was 100% true, but unflattering to Cooper and her thin-skinned ego.
Well, obviously, she couldn't let THAT slide!


So rather than simply take a deep breath and recognize that if you're a politician, no matter where, there will always be people who disagree with you or who genuinely dislike you, a fact that you have to accept, and one self-evident to people around the world -but not to the Coopers- their first reaction was to strike back and show everyone who was boss -them!


They actually forced the people running the fake newspaper to actually go out into the community and drive around at night to retrieve as many of the distributed copies of the issue as possible.
And to destroy them.
And to agree to never make reference to it again.
Or else!


Needless to say, the bully's threats worked.
That's Joy Cooper in a nutshell.


-----
In case you're new to this particular story, go back to these prior pieces that connect-the-dots:

February 16, 2012 Miami Herald's Fred Grimm weighs in -again- on the faux newspaper in Hallandale Beach and its sweetheart deal from HB City Hall to be a propaganda arm

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/miami-heralds-fred-grimm-weighs-in.html

FEBRUARY 14, 2012 More about Hallandale Beach's unscrupulo​us crony capitalism deal b/w the faux newspaper, the SFST, and Mayor Joy Cooper, Cub Reporter...

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-about-hallandale-beachs.html

FEBRUARY 14, 2012 Csaba Kulin on Hallandale Beach's crony capitalism deal with a fake newspaper that stands ethics on its head and takes CRA money in exchange for being a City Hall propaganda machine

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/above-september-12-2010-issue-of.html

South Florida Business Journal
Why fight City Hall when you get a handout?
by Kevin Gale, Editor in Chief
Friday, February 10, 2012, 12:10pm EST
http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/blog/2012/02/why-fight-city-hall-when-you-get-a.html

Sweet deal for owners of Hallandale newspaper that features mayor as columnist

By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 

February 9, 2012 at 6:11 AM

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/02/sweet-deal-for-owners-of-hallandale-newspaper-that-features-mayor-as-columnist/

From the blog's cold storage vault, circa 2010: Another Hallandale Beach story the South Florida news media originally ignored for YEARS: faux journalism & crony capitalism with taxpayer dollars for allies of HB City Hall

Above, the never-ending embarrassment for us as Hallandale Beach taxpayers and the world of journalism. October 8, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

What follows is a Draft of a March 2010 blog entry that while it contains certain elements regular readers may recognize from previous posts here, was never itself posted online this way. And was, of course, 100% true when I wrote it, too.

Looking at it now, I can't help but wonder if Broward Inspector General John W. Scott and his crew of investigators, who are already busy investigating the city, have spoken yet to former Hallandale Beach CRA Manager Bobby Robinson or former HB Director of Development Services Richard Cannone, now of Calvin, Giordano & Associates.


(At HB City Hall Cannone is now considered a registered lobbyist and has visited HB City Hall numerous times on behalf of The Related Group's Beachwalk proposal on the Intercoastal that was unanimously rejected in January by the HB Planning & Zoning Board, but which, this being HB, comes back anyway to the entire City Commission this coming Wednesday night. More on that in a separate blog post on Mo0nday.)
If not, Mr. Scott & Company should definitely be making a VERY STRONG effort to do so -now.

I can personally think of about a hundred or so concerned Hallandale Beach citizens who, given enough of a head's up, would be happy to bring a cup of coffee with them from Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts and then plop down $10 a piece to sit down and observe an interview held in the middle of the auditorium of the HB Cultural Center, so we could finally hear their own accounts of what was REALLY going on that had/has so many HB taxpayers rightly upset.


How public information about development proposals was kept from the public, or so we can all find out which squeaky wheels in town were asking to be greased via CRA funds, with an almost guaranteed lack of appropriate accountability or follow-up.


Reminding you again, the following is from March 2010...


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

The City of Hallandale Beach subsidizes one-sided propaganda thru $50k grant to FAUX newspaper.

Above, the document that memorializes the fact that the City of Hallandale Beach subsidizes one-sided propaganda thru a grant and loan to FAUX newspaper.
And yes, that is the same FREE fake newspaper that gives Mayor Joy Cooper a "column" to extol her particular brand of ill-informed nonsense and half-truths without fear that a Letter to the Editor will EVER appear that directly refutes and corrects her serial mis-statements.

The Sun-Times not only DOESN'T run them, they DON'T print ANYTHING the slightest bit critical of Hallandale Beach City Hall, Mayor Cooper or City Manager Mike Good and his high-paid staff.
Just so you know, as of just a few months ago, HB's city manager and staff made more in salaries than the Hollywood City Manager's Office, despite the City of Hollywood being well over THREE TIMES larger in both size and population.
Guess who'd never ever mention that salient fact? 


Yes, Craig Farquhar's faux newspaper that serves as propaganda arm to Hallandale Beach City Hall.

November 8, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier

The faux newspaper that serves as the propaganda arm to Hallandale Beach City Hall and the Joy Cooper & Mike Good Regime, the South Florida Sun-Times.
This particular vending machine is located but two feet away from one of the emergency fire exits of The Flashback Diner on U.S.-1/South Federal Highway, across from Gulfstream Park.
In a normal, well-run city, they'd be removed to another place on the property.

But in Hallandale Beach, a trio of vending machines can be placed right next to an emergency exit in a building one block from HB City Hall, and nobody there EVER notices the self-evident violation!
They are deaf, dumb and blind to everything around them. .

Twenty years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Hallandale Beach, Florida still needs glasnost!

November 5th, 2009 Update re South Florida Sun-Times, above.At yesterday morning's Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting, I heard the new official Hallandale Beach City Hall stalling tactic regarding the actual citizens and taxpayers of this city being able to see the documents regarding City Manager Mike Good's decision to give $50,000 in city CRA money as a grant to the faux newspaper called the South Florida Sun-Times, above.

Mayor Joy Cooper was practically gloating Wednesday when she foolishly said that she thinks that the particular documents are "proprietary" and can't be shared with public!
Can she really be that arrogant and anti-democratic in public, he said rhetorically.

Can she really think that she can trump the State of Florida Constitution and the protected rights that Florida citizens enjoy under our Sunshine Laws, forever, and that there won't be legal and political consequences for her personally and the city?

To answer my own question, yes, Joy Cooper is indeed that arrogant, that anti-democratic and that egotistical. Proprietary?

Sure, because in the current economy of the year 2009, actual for-profit companies want to model their own behavior on an inferior product like the faux newspaper, the Sun-Times, that doesn't actually generate a profit, has a very poor reputation and that rather than accurately reflect the news of the community in its pages, good and bad, exists as a propaganda arm of Hallandale Beach City Hall and the mayor and city manager who give it money, just like the Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce.

Twenty years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Hallandale Beach, Florida still needs glasnost!

Below, the phony "story" the city placed in the faux newspaper the week before the 2008 election:

This is the phony, one-sided story Hallandale Beach City Hall had placed in the faux newspaper the week before the November 2008 election, in order to try to ensure that Anthony A. Sanders got elected.


It was dis-honestly titled Setting the Record Straight: On the Purchase of Eagles Development Center, and carried no byline or identifying author information.
Most well-informed people in the city have long-believed that it was actually written by someone in the HB City Manager's Office, likely one of the Asst. City Managers.


Which is to say that some highly-paid city employee, whose salary and pension are paid for with taxpayer funds, was instructed to concoct a lie masquerading as a news story, in order to placate at least one elected city official, in order to ensure that facts about an interim City Commissioner were covered-up and that said interim City Commissioner was elected.

That's how absurd life in Hallandale Beach is, and where was the South Florida news media when this originally happened, even after they were repeatedly told what was going on?
Completely Missing in Action, as usual!

Miami Herald's Fred Grimm weighs in -again- on the faux newspaper in Hallandale Beach and its sweetheart CRA deal from HB City Hall to be a propaganda arm

Having known the ins-and-outs about this awful deal for years and writing about it here, and having attended the Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting last year where it finally came out how little the recipients of HB CRA loans were actually paying back, if anything, galling gallows humor to even the most jaded veteran observer of HB City Hall nonsense, it's been interesting to observe how now that the Broward Bulldog has reminded everyone in South Florida paying attention what a ridiculous deal Hallandale Beach taxpayers were stuck with, on behalf of the mayor and three of the four commissioners, everyone wants to get in their licks on the unethical low-hanging piñata...
------

Miami Herald
IN MY OPINION
Hallandale Beach paper shows way to make easy money  
BY FRED GRIMM  
FGRIMM@MIAMIHERALD.COM
February 14, 2012

Money problems have pretty much flummoxed the newspaper industry. Corporate executives spend a lot of time obsessing over various strategies to recapture lost revenues. I worry about Strategy Number 17, which entails columnists in sandwich boards.

Who would have guessed that the solution to the industry’s financial problems would come from a little weekly newspaper in Hallandale Beach? The South Florida Sun Times gets all the credit for the brilliant new business plan: free money. Much better than cranky old guys in sandwich boards.

The Sun Times cache of money comes from the city of Hallandale Beach. The BrowardBullDog.org, a regional non-profit dedicated to investigative journalism, reported last week that the weekly newspaper received $50,000 from the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency back in 2009. The money was ostensibly a loan, but special terms excuse the newspaper from the burden of paying back more than half the money. The Sun Times gets away with repaying the other half at only 2 percent interest over 10 years.

This is what’s known in the financial sector as “one sweet deal.”

CRAs are special defined urban districts that levy taxes to fund infrastructure improvements. Stuff like slum clearance, water and sewer projects, street lights, sidewalks.

In Miami, CRA funds have occasionally been diverted toward the improvement of private property owned by the close relatives of unscrupulous politicians. We know this because newspapers like The Miami Herald dig into the CRA records and report the scandalous truth. Then the unscrupulous politician goes on radio and says unkind things about The Herald. This is the old, tried, true but not very profitable model of newspaper journalism.

In Hallandale Beach, a city conjured out of the Broward tomato fields by mob boss Meyer Lansky, the Sun Times has invented a better way. The newspaper doesn’t investigate the questionable distribution of CRA funds. The newspaper takes the funds.

The $50,000 was the first “loan” given out under a CRA program supposed to rescue struggling city businesses. BullDog.org reports that the Sun Times was the only business in the program allowed to shrug off half the loan.

BullDog.org, looking at the tax records filed with the CRA, noticed that the president of the “struggling” Sun Times was paid $259,193 in 2007 and $239,054 in 2008. The weekly’s vice president received $192,052 and $229,010 those same years.

Experts in employee compensation have a special term for this level of pay: “Wow!”

Under the old newspaper model, a courageous, slightly overweight, aging but still virile columnist would have gone berserk, suggesting that with that kind of executive pay, no wonder the Sun Times needed a bailout from the city. And why on earth, the columnist would ask, would the mayor of Hallandale Beach push such a dodgy deal through the city’s CRA?

Except that Mayor Joy Cooper, the potential object of the Sun Times columnist’s scorn, also happens to be the Sun Times columnist. Admittedly, her style does not recall Chicago’s Mike Royko (“The subject of criminal rehabilitation was debated recently in City Hall. It’s an appropriate place for this kind of discussion because the city has always employed so many ex-cons and future cons.”) or New York’s Jimmy Breslin (“Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”)

But there she is, the mayor/columnist, with her regular space in the Sun Times, with an unfettered opportunity to enhance her public persona. Meanwhile, City Commissioner Keith London (or any other critic of municipal policy) is nowhere to be seen in the pages of the uncrusading newspaper. That may be because London has not only railed about the $50,000 loan, he has criticized the $105,000 the city has spent advertising in the Sun Times over the past two fiscal years. The Sun Times deals were never approved by the city commission, he complained.

(In 2009, a letter was mailed out to city businesses on official Hallandale Beach city stationery stating: “Just about everyone is feeling the effects of the economy and doing what we can to get through tough times. In an effort to promote and support local businesses, the city encourages all businesses to advertise in the city’s only local newspaper.” The love letter was signed by both Mayor Cooper and City Manager Mike Goode.)

A columnist under the old newspaper model would argue that the mayor has a very suspicious relationship with the recipient of so much city money. But the columnist under the much cozier Sun Times model, with the free money strategy, would write, “Hey, suckers. I’m the mayor. I do what the hell I want.”

Read the readers comments at:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/13/2639870/hallandale-beach-paper-shows-way.html

Hallandale Beach residents are eager to speak at Tuesday night's Resident Forum re Mayor Cooper's myopic State of the City speech, and the troubling role of the cliquish, pro-Cooper HB Chamber of Commerce that taxpayers are forced to subsidize

Above, looking west from Hallandale Beach City Hall towards the Hallandale Beach Cultural Community Center, i.e. "the Cultural Center," right before I went inside and voted in the 2012 Florida GOP primary. January 31, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Hallandale Beach residents are eager to speak at Tuesday night's Resident Forum re Mayor Cooper's myopic State of the City speech, and the troubling role of the cliquish, pro-Cooper HB Chamber of Commerce that taxpayers are forced to subsidize

Just over a week ago, I and many other concerned residents and business owners in the greater Hallandale Beach area received an email from my friend and Hallandale Beach City Commissioner, Keith London, reminding us of his upcoming Resident Forum meeting on Tuesday night at 6 p.m. in the HB Cultural Center.


Comm. London also reminded us as well of his longstanding opposition to the taxpayers of this small community being forced to fund the Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce.


That's the group that I and many other concerned and well-informed residents here believe is a particularly standoff-ish and cliquish retinue of ardently pro-development, pro-Joy Cooper, pro-HB City Hall partisans who operate in what can charitably be called a moral 'vacuum,' though it may more accurately be called an 'alternative universe.'


In fact, it's in large part because the HB CoC operates in ways that are DIFFERENT than how most city CoCs in the United States manage and comport themselves, as well as how they are funded -and the particular civic activities the HB CoC consciously choose NOT to perform, roles performed by many if not most CoCs in this country- that best explains why so many people in this area DON'T want to join them.


Well-meaning HB citizens and business owners who truly see things as they are, and NOT how the mayor and city hall pretends they are, folks who simply want city govt. costs contained and not continue to balloon, DON'T wish to be tainted by any association with myopic believers in crony capitalism at its worst.


I say that because some of the people who lead the group here, like realtor Joe Kessel, are well-known for not only their parochial and self-serving nature, but equally known for their willingness to try to take advantage of their position within the community to become part of ownership groups that seek HB CRA loans for ill-conceived ideas that local banks won't touch -and for good reason. 
Again, exactly what Joe Kessel did.


And Kessel did this WHILE already receiving money from the city as a top secret 'consultant' -what I called 'spying'- in a stealthy arrangement that the HB City Commission and the public was intentionally kept in the dark about, but which Mayor Joy Cooper knew all about.
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2010/04/hallandale_mayor_cooper_kessel_contract.php
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/related/to/Joe+Kessel/


No, the HB CoC doesn't act like the CoC group in next-door Hollywood does, nor like most CoCs in the country that are largely self-sustaining thru not only the membership dues they collect, but also thru activities they conduct throughout the year, whether fairs, festivals and other special events for which there's a small charge for the public to attend, or for businesses to participate, as well as general sponsorship arrangements.


Unfortunately for taxpayers, because most of the concerned people paying close attention to what happens in Hallandale Beach already recognize these self-evident facts, the Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce, like the city's faux newspaper, the South Florida Sun Times, both currently exist as little more than one-party propaganda organs for HB mayor Joy Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew, and poorly-functioning PR organs at that.


In the very near future, I'll be posting something else here about the strange role of the HB CoC, and its new president, Carole Pumpian, a woman who has consistently worked AGAINST the long-term best-interests of Hallandale Beach residents 
And for the record, Pumpian doesn't live in Hallandale Beach, either.

I've excerpted Comm. London's email below to give you the pertinent info, but first read
this:
http://www.local10.com/news/blogs/bob-norman/Mayor-No-charge-for-speech/-/3223354/8578562/-/a3y74x/-/index.html


-----

From: Keith London 

To: klondon@hallandalebeachfl.gov 

Sent: Wednesday, February 1, 2012 8:16 AM

Subject: Your Tax Dollars ($20) at Work Mayor Joy Cooper State of the City Address - Reported by Local 10.com

http://www.local10.com/news/blogs/bob-norman/Mayor-charges-residents-20-for-speech/-/3223354/8563986/-/1utfiiz/-/index.html

Everyone,

...Let’s remember this is the same Chamber of Commerce that receives $40,000 - $50,000 every year of your tax dollars from the City of Hallandale Beach in addition to free rent and utilities.

In lieu of paying $20 for information that should be relayed to the residents for free, please attend my FREE “Resident Forum” held the second or third Tuesday of every month at the City of Hallandale Beach Cultural Center .  Free refreshments are offered. 

The items of discussion pertain to current pending issues or anything a resident may want to discuss.  I include significant information and documents to elaborate the points and I always listen to what the residents and taxpayers are saying about the state of Hallandale Beach .

I hope to see you and friend at the next meeting on February 14, 2012 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM to discuss “OUR” city.

Regards,

Keith

Keith S. London

City Commissioner, Hallandale Beach

954-457-1320 Office

954-494-3182 Cellular

www.KeithLondon.com

http://www.facebook.com/KeithSLondon

From: BFoglia

Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2012 07:55 PM

To: joycooper@aol.com

Subject: RE: Mayor Joy Cooper State of the City Address 

Is this a joke? We have to PAY to listen to your Annual State of the City Address? Shouldn't that speech be given in a public forum? This speech is for ALL the people in your community - The City - , not an elite 'lunch crowd' between 12 & 2. This notice has to be a hoax on Hallandale residents.

Barbara Foglia,
a resident.

Csaba Kulin's common sense take on the faux newspaper in Hallandale Beach that gobbles up taxpayer funds, the South Florida Sun Times

It's hard to imagine a more ridiculous, self-serving and un-true headline than this one from August 13, 2009 in the faux community newspaper, the South Florida Sun-Times: AHEAD OF THE GAME: Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper continues to do the job residents elected her to do -once again!

Like the exclamation point at the end of the headline doesn't just prove the point that I've been making here for years about the pernicious and mendacious nature of both the mayor and the faux newspaper that takes Hallandale Beach taxpayer's money by the barrel-full, with nothing positive to show for it.

The letter below from my friend, Hallandale Beach civic activist Csaba Kulin, is a 'teaser' for what is to come in this space regarding the faux newspaper in Hallandale Beach that gobbles up taxpayer funds, the South Florida Sun Times.

On Friday, I sent that upcoming post as an email to a couple of dozen concerned people in South Florida, as well as a number of reporters and columnists, to re-focus their attention on this issue that highlights the sort of blatant cronyism and quid pro quo in HB government that has existed for years.

Yesterday, Csaba emailed this missive to the Hallandale Beach City Commission, the City Manager and the City Attorney.

I will provide the link to the 2003 article Csaba refers to below in my upcoming post on the subject, so that you can read it for yourself and add it to the accumulated mountain of evidence on how this city really operates.

It paints a very grim picture of what happens to democracy and civics when multiple members of the HB City Commission continuously FAIL to pay attention to what goes on right in front of them, in this particular 2003 case, current sitting Commission members Dotty Ross and William "Bill" Julian.
Correct, hardly Breaking News.

Trust me, the 2003 article and my post are both jaw-dropping and eye-opening, and provides an inside look at Joy Cooper's longtime modus operandi.
And yes, I really do mean jaw-dropping and eye-opening.

-----

Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor and Members of the City Commission,

I have spoken against the $100,000.00 plus subsidy to the South Florida SunTimes newspaper during your September 29, 2009 Budget Meeting.

I have no problem with community newspapers, including this one if they serve public, to receive subsidy from the City. But our newspaper stopped serving our community some time ago. The only articles I see in the paper is the Mayor's column and an occasional historical piece by the Vice Mayor. I and others have tried to write letters to the editor without any success. Any information not flattering to the current administration is ignored and suppressed. I had to pay to get any information about an extremely important issue like the Diplomat to get in the paper while the Mayor had all the ink she wanted in the paper in favor of her views.

The South Florida Sun Times had been bought and paid for by the City using the our tax money. That is why it has no credibility in our city and loosing readership. That is why I do not support giving any money to them until they change their editorial philosophy and provide access to everyone in our city regardless of their views about our city government.

The South Florida Sun Times was not always the mouthpiece of the "official line" at city hall. For your information I attached an article by your good friend, Mr. Tony Musto written in December 4, 2004. It is certainly an eye opening article of how our city got where it is today. It should be required reading of every citizen of our city. It still appeared in South Florida Sun Times. Please look at the very end of the article where the editor invites residents of the community write a "feedback" column or "letter to the editor". What a novel idea? I wonder if the invitation still open?
I guess not.

Now I ask all of you stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself "what happened in the past 8 years" to get us where we are now?
If you know the answer, get up at the next commission meeting and change it.

Sincerely,

Csaba Kulin

President, Fairways North, Inc.

VP, United Condominium Associations of Hallandale Beach

Email to HBB; constructive blog comments

Hallandale Beach Blog truly appreciates the many kind emails coming his way the past two weeks, most of which are a direct result of this blog being noted recently by some influential
South Florida bloggers, Critical Miami, http://criticalmiami.com/ , and The South Florida Daily Blog, http://southfloridadailyblog.blogspot.com/ , respectively, whose posts I usually read before 8 a.m. most mornings.

Curiously, about 95% of the emails I've gotten since that wee bit of recent notoriety, for reasons of their own -but for which you can draw your own conclusions- didn't want their name to appear on the blog publicly. Hmmm...

Was especially pleased that one of the emails I received came from a fellow Hoosier, now residing up in Ft. Lauderdale, who was in Bloomington at the same time as your faithful blogger, and so shares some of the same basic timelines in his head for IU's collective highs and lows in that era.

Whether our numerous sports highs, like winning the 1981 NCAA basketball championship against North Carolina, the NCAA soccer titles under Coach Jerry Yeagley, one of which I witnessed in person with friends at Ft. Lauderdale's Lockhart Stadium, after playing at the then-new William Armstrong Stadium, and the exciting Little 500 Bike races that took place there right away after the move from Tenth Street Stadium, back when CBS Sports was airing them on a same-day delay basis on CBS Sports Spectacular.

And new lows, like the very confusing and wildly-conflicting aspects to the police shooting of popular IU football player Denver Smith (no relation), and the off-field recriminations there, as well as the record lowest-ever temperatures in Hoosierville.
Yes, that January 1982 blizzard which caused Bloomington to reach record lows and some bona fide wind chills of at least fifty-below-zero.

(Yet oddly, when it was 15 degrees below and sunny, it was absolutely beautiful, almost too painfully white for my eyes to absorb.
It made me think of some great scenes from David Lean's film production of Dr. Zhivago when I went running! I had to wear very dark sun glasses. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059113/

Wish I'd taken photographs of snowy sites around IU that day, to preserve for posterity.
Not that there not in my head, tucked away under "beautiful snowy day."

That's also when I got out the Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion out of my dresser drawer, and opened it up and inhaled that unique smell that's so imprinted on me, to remind me where I'd be in a few weeks again -Fort Lauderdale, back when it was fun not faux.)

That was the same weekend as the Chargers at Bengals AFC Championship football game a few hours to our east, where the weather was just as bad if not worse, due to the stadium being just off the Ohio River. (They didn't call it Riverfront Stadium for nothing.)

This took place just days after I'd been in Miami over Christmas break, spending time with my family and having fun with friends at all our usual haunts, the beach and some places around town that there was no replicating in Bloomington.

Places I'd missed while away, like delicious subs from the Sub Center on N.E. 163rd Street and piping hot bagels from the Bagel Fare a block away, right next to Congressman Lehman's District office, all frequent haunts of mine during high school.

By the time the Chargers beat the Dolphins 41-38 in overtime in that epic ballgame near the end of my trip -which I watched despondently from my Mother's then-home near The Falls, off South Dixie Highway- I had a great tan for my Dol-fan tears to fall upon.
http://www.greatsportsrivalries.com/1982game/san_diego_miami_1982.html

But within a few short days, the change in temperature was 115 degrees and my tan counted for very little, as we quickly got cabin fever and something that we never ever considered possible came to pass.
All the pizza places in Bloomington closed down -no pizza deliveries during the NFL playoffs!

Again, with respect to the emails, thanks to all of you who've taken the time to let me know that you appreciate the efforts I've made here.
It's nice to hear, since not everyone in the community is quite so open to the idea of constructive engagement, much less, constructive criticism of local government.

For instance, Mayor Joy Cooper of Hallandale Beach.

In case you were wondering, since many of you wrote to ask, I did see what she wrote recently
in the South Florida Sun-Times about blogs.

I read Mayor Cooper's column there, as I do more often than not, just as I did former Hollywood Mayor Mara Giulianti's and now Peter Bober's.

[I should admit at the outset, in case you didn't know, that I've been going to the Hollywood city meetings for years now.
Through sheer exposure and first-hand observations, I quickly became an admirer of Bober's years ago, and his attempts, often alone on an island, to steer the city towards the sort of smart,
common sense and transparent governance that would make Hollywood more attractive to future residents and businesses -while not sacrificing the high quality-of-life that people take very seriously.

To replace the sturm und drag that's allowed allegations/perceptions of shady dealings and cronyism to hang above everything connected to City Hall, sometimes even unfairly, to be replaced by the disinfectant of sunshine.

Two weeks ago, I attended the contentious and very emotional meeting on the future of the S.E. corner of Young Circle, opposite the Arts Park, and will be posting some thoughts on it very soon, having taken about 25 pages of notes.

I made it to City Hall around 4:30, and caught the previous agenda item, being sure to get a good spot and stayed 'till the gavel came down at 12:32 a.m. Thursday morning.

It was very exhausting but also very exhilarating, because Mayor Bober was so fair-minded in his handling of the procedures and his deference to the commissioners and speakers.]

I don't doubt that, at least in her own mind, Mayor Cooper believes she's operating from a point of good intentions, but her good intentions aren't nearly enough when she doesn't insist on measureable results that are meaningful, and doesn't hold anyone accountable for the continuing myriad failures in policy and governance.

I've told the mayor in person before, perhaps no more emphatically than after the Broward County Transit Forum in October in Ft. Lauderdale, at the Convention Center, when she came over to my table while I was on my way out, that while I would try to remain civil, I thought that, if anything, my previous criticism of her, the City Commission, the City Manager and city
government, had been a case of my bending over backwards to be fair.

But with no corresponding effort by the city to follow-up on its many promises made to citizens.

The sad truth of the matter is that any reasonable observer could see for themself that the City of Hallandale Beach has been grossly under-performing for far too long.

It's really too bad that Mayor Cooper is so hamstrung by her own ego and ambitions, that she
can't quite separate what's good for her and what's good for the community, much as happened with Mayor Giulianti at the end of her reign, foreshadowing her own very bitter exit.

The mayor seems both unable and unwilling to consider the possibility that, sometimes, other people in the community have good or better ideas, too, and that sometimes, her notions and
desires simply have to take a back-seat to the greater good of the community.

That she can't be the ultimate authority on everything that ever happens in this city.

Yet that attitude of hers has been so apparent on so many issues since I returned to the area four years ago, that it eventually begins to wear on you.

Over the past few months, people who've voted for her in the past have actually confided to me -once they realized I was HBB- that while they used to attend City Commission meetings from time-to-time, they don't anymore, and it's largely because they find her behavior/attitude towards others, alternately chiding and chilly, so objectionable.
It's simply more than they can handle.

Her constant need to interrupt or hector commissioners and inability to actually let Robert's Rules of Order guide the conduct of meetings, really rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

And her loud, emphatic sighs when she's displeased, while someone else is speaking, really causes the cringe factor to just go off the chart.

In that South Florida Sun-Times column from two weeks ago, Mayor Cooper not only completely mis-characterized the debate of the previous week's City Commission meeting on the future of evening meetings, but also gets into the debate about communication by going out of her way to criticize, of all things, blogs. Hmmm...

excerpted from http://www.southfloridasun.net/330667.html
There were two rumors that I heard about after the meeting. One was we went back to only morning meetings. Hopefully this column will dispel that misinformation. The other was that our city staff that attends the evening meetings are paid overtime. This is absolutely false. Our directors and department heads are all salaried. Their day starts on or before 9 a.m. even on the days we hold evening meetings.

It is regretfully due to many rumors our residents are not clear on the facts. I have and will continue to write and share information with our readers on commission action. Rumors are inaccurate are detrimental to our community as a whole. There is a new spin on the rumor mill, blogs. I have debated with the city manager my views on blogs and giving credibility to new "National Enquirers" of today's times. Many times they are simply misguided or ill informed opinion columns. During our last meeting the City Manager asked to establish blogs within our city website to dispel misinformation. I will let our readers know when it is up. I still encourage residents to contact us directly when they have a complaint or question. We are here to help.

In the interests of accuracy, Mayor Cooper never mentions in her correction that it was a city commissioner, Dorothy Ross -not a member of the public- who mis-spoke about city staffers getting paid overtime for evening meetings.

Someone who's been on the City Commission for years and who has even served as mayor should certainly know better!

Not so coincidentally, when she made her errant remarks, Comm. Dorothy Ross was
speaking against Comm. Keith London's common sense proposal to continue the six month 'experiment' of evening meetings, so more Hallandale Beach citizens could participate.

So much for intelligent discourse and debate in Hallandale Beach.

Res ipsa loquitur!