Their own worst enemy: Big problems lie ahead for Gulfstream Park if they continue keeping HB community in the dark, esp. re night racing

Above, the sign of advertising infamy, the Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino sign that tells you that you are about to get close to the Twilight Zone of Marketing in South Florida, where multi-million dollar companies act like hapless Elementary School PTAs in the 1960's, wasting resources and opportunities left and right.
As I've mentioned in this space many times before, this sign facing southbound U.S.-1/Federal Highway from the intersection of U.S.-1 and Hibiscus, is at one of the premier advertising spots in all of Broward County, yet this sign has NOT been illuminated at night in over THREE YEARS.
This proves that having access to millions of dollars and amazing resources doesn't make your company intelligent or wise or prescient.Just poorly managed.

Below, the same sign from a slightly lower angle, with the Race Track complex visible above the shrubs. You'll immediately notice that the green spotlight on the left is completely missing, leaving only the brace in the ground, as it has been for about a year. The spotlight on the right is complete, but STILL broken three years later.
I was going to run photos of this that I took last weekend, when I was also taking shots of the infamous Hallandale Beach red-light camera one block away.
Instead, I've chosen to post these two photos that I shot of the sign on August 16th, 2010. Nothing has changed.
And I do mean nothing!August 16, 2010 photos by South Beach Hoosier
Their own worst enemy: Big problems lie ahead for Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino if they persist in playing their stealthy games in Tallahassee with legislators and lobbyists while continuing to keep the Hallandale Beach community in the dark about their plans for night racing.
If they thought South Floridians already DON'T care about them...
So, do you recall how I recently mused out loud in this space that the geniuses over at Gulfstream Park Race Track were their very own worst enemies?

Sure you do!

In case you didn't... it's here, from February 14th:
Magna's bankruptcy, Frank Stronach, Gulfstream Park to be topics of Hallandale Beach City Comm.'s closed meeting Wednesday; night racing at Gulfstream
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/magnas-bankruptcy-frank-stronach.html

I went on a bit about their terrible management of their world-famous facility, whether in dealing with aesthetics, customer service, public safety or their perfectly dreadful marketing, wherein every move they seem to make seems worse than the last one, which can only make the folks at Forest City Enterprises more angry that they are tied together with Magna.
Above, August 16, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier of the Forest City Enterprises trailer at the northwest corner of the Gulfstream Park parking lot, with that neglected Gulfstream Park sign on the other side of the palm trees.

Above, December 14, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

So, if you thought having a sign on U.S.-1 that you don't illuminate at night for the tens of thousands of drivers passing by every day is dumbfounding, how do you feel about their sign on the Aventura side of the property, on U.S.-1/Biscayne Blvd. facing N.E. 215th Street, where for AT LEAST two weeks between Thanksgiving and mid-December, in the heart of holiday shopping advertising, they had a sign that had... wait for it... NOTHING on it?
Above, the sign as it appeared on December 12th, 2010, with nary a persuasive letter to be found.
It's beyond dumbfounding, it's marketing suicide.

But for two weeks, while the shops and restaurants at Village at Gulfstream were open and screaming for shoppers, Magna & Forest City put their worst face forward. How can you make money for your shareholders if you don't even try to compete?

Oh, by the way, only one of the spotlights on this sign has worked since Spring of 2010. Plus, well, there are other self-evident problems here that Magna is either ignoring or blind to but which your faithful blogger noticed right away.
More on that soon...


Above, December 14, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier
South Florida's lack of concern or interest in Gulfstream Park is best illustrated by the fact that roughly 20 hours after the Miami Herald went online with the story below on Friday the 25th, not a single person who'd read the article even bothered to leave a comment, pro, con or otherwise.
And here we are five days later, and there is STILL nobody interested enough to say anything.
That's about as real a sign of lack of relevance as one could find.

Concerned Hallandale Beach residents who've been paying close attention, like myself and many of the people I interact with everyday in all sorts of places, the very people who have to deal first-hand with the traffic that the track produces, are getting angry at Magna's close-mouthed tactics and lack of forthright communication with the public.

Occasionally trotting their PR person, Suzanne Friedman, across the street to Hallandale Beach City Hall to make nice and exchange meaningless blather to her bosom pals on the HB City Commission at their meetings -as she is scheduled to do Wednesday morning- and just once-in-a-while at that, is NO SUBSTITUTE for their management's adamant refusal this far to level with the citizens who would most directly be affected by any future plans of theirs, including occasional night-racing.
(If you didn't already know, Gulfstream has been considering having twilight racing for the last six Fridays of the season, after Daylight Savings Time kicks-in soon, from March 18th to April 22nd, with a first post time around 3 p.m. But all the racing has to be finito by 7 p.m.)

Magna has plenty of space at their facility to convene a large public meeting for all interested parties, in and out of the city, for them to finally do the right thing.
So what's preventing them from doing so?
Is it sheer stupidity, risk-averse management, complete clueless-ness...

Refusing to tell the truth about their plans and continuing to act like they can do whatever they want to do, with absolutely no negative consequences, is the road to ruin for them, as it will not only cost Magna the community's trust, short-term and long-term, but revenue as well.http://www.midevelopments.com/

-----
Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/24/2084652/gulfstream-now-says-it-wants-year.html

Gulfstream now says it wants year-round racing
Gulfstream only intensified its dispute with Calder, which said Tuesday that it is considering year-round racing starting in July.
By Jim Freer, Miami Herald Writer
February 25, 2011

A dispute between South Florida’s thoroughbred tracks intensified Thursday when Gulfstream Park said it plans to have racing year-round during the 12 months beginning July 1.

That is the latest salvo in a battle that began early this year when Gulfstream and Calder Casino & Race Course each told Florida racing regulators of plans to hold races in December 2011. For more than 20 years, Calder has been the only South Florida thoroughbred track to have racing in December. Gulfstream’s announcement Thursday came two days after Calder said it is considering year-round racing from July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012.

The tracks have until Monday to submit their 2011-12 race dates to the Florida Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering, which gives automatic approval.

Gulfstream hopes to settle the dispute by Monday and avoid head-to-head racing, Tim Ritvo, the track’s vice president for racing, said Thursday.

He said that Frank Stronach, chairman of Gulfstream and its parent MI Developments, will meet Friday in Louisville, Ky., with Bill Carstanjen, chief operating officer of Churchill Downs Inc., the parent company of Calder.

As of Thursday, both tracks plan to race head-to-head at least on Saturdays and Sundays starting July 1.
Barry Rose, a trainer and owner with horses stabled at Calder, said there is widespread concern about how that would impact the tracks and the state’s racing industry.
“There are only so many wagering dollars available, and it would be hard for both tracks to maintain the same kind of purse level if they race head-to-head,” he said.
Gulfstream, in Hallandale Beach, traditionally holds races from early January through late April. Calder, in Miami Gardens, races the remainder of the year.
Gulfstream, with winter racing, has larger purses. It expects that December would be a strong economic month — if Calder is not running. In its strongest response, Calder announced Tuesday that starting Saturday it will not allow Calder-stabled horses back onto its property if they run in non-stakes races at Gulfstream during that track’s meet that runs through April 24. That will cost Calder-based owners some anticipated race revenues over the next two months and make it hard for some trainers to pay stable workers, Rose said.
Calder imposed the restrictions to help ensure that it “will have a healthy horse population” when it begins its race meet April 25, especially if it runs year-round, the track’s president, Austin Miller, said Tuesday.
Calder vice president John Marshall said Calder has to consider its cost of being the only Florida track open year-round for stabling and training.
On Wednesday, Gulfstream said that by Saturday it will have about 200 temporary stalls for horses that are vanned from Calder to race at Gulfstream and are not allowed back into Calder.

-----

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/28/2090957/gulfstream-calder-settle-dispute.html Miami Herald
Gulfstream, Calder settle dispute over race dates in DecemberBy Jim Freer, Miami Herald Writer

March 1, 2011
Local racing Track Dates Calder 7/1/11-12/2/11 Gulfstream 12/3/11-4/8/12 Calder 4/9/12-6/30/12 South Florida’s thoroughbred tracks resolved a scheduling dispute Monday, with changes that include Gulfstream Park rather than Calder Casino & Race Course holding races most of this December.

Gulfstream said it will start its next season Dec. 3, 2011 and race during the remainder of December in a meet that will end April 8, 2012.

For more than 20 years, Calder has been the only South Florida thoroughbred track to have racing in December.

On Monday, Calder announced that it would end its 2011 season on Dec. 2 — one day before Gulfstream opens. That will avoid a rare situation in which two neighboring tracks have races on the same days.

Calder on Monday also said it will begin its 2012 season April 9, adding two mid-April weeks during which Gulfstream traditionally has held racing.

The tracks’ announcements, made separately, ended a dispute that started over the attractive December dates and escalated last week when both said they planned to race every week during the 12 months beginning July 1, 2011.

Officials of the two tracks declined comment Monday when asked about negotiations that led to their new schedules, and on whether Calder received any money in an adjustment in which Gulfstream is gaining December at least for one year.

However, last Friday, top officials of Churchill Downs Inc. (Calder’s parent company) and MI Developments (Gulfstream’s parent company) began a weekend of meetings and phone calls. On Saturday, Gulfstream president Steve Calabro said “we’re working on it,” when asked about efforts to resolve the dispute and avoid head-to-head racing.

On Monday, the two tracks met their deadline to file final dates with the Florida Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering for the 12 months beginning July 1, 2011. Florida Thoroughbred tracks pick their race dates with automatic approval from that regulator.

Sam Gordon, president of the Florida Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association group of trainers and owners said he was not aware of any financial arrangements between the tracks.

“Maybe they both realized how costly it would be, and maybe someone blinked,” he said. “We’re glad that both sides took our recommendations and will not race head-to-head.”

With the dispute settled, Gulfstream will continue its season through April 24. Calder will then have racing from April 25 through Dec. 2.

Gulfstream will hold a race meet from Dec. 3 through April 8, 2012.

Calder will race from April 9, 2012 until June 30, 2012.

If the tracks had raced head-to-head, trainers and owners would have “been in a difficult position of having to choose and take sides,” said Bill White, one of the leading trainers at Calder who also races at Gulfstream.

“This was a dispute between the tracks, and they were using us as leverage,” he said. “It is great that this is over and we can focus on our business of putting on a show and winning races.”

There also were concerns among trainers that there would not have been enough wagering dollars to keep revenues at normal levels at either track or enough horses to fill races.

In a statement, Calder vice president of racing John Marshall said Calder and Gulfstream running head-to-head “would mean the end of the South Florida racing circuit and deny local horsemen the chance to make a living as they currently do.”

In a statement, Gulfstream vice president of racing Tim Ritvo said he expects the addition of December racing “will enhance our stakes schedule and the overall quality of our product.”

He added that Gulfstream believes the change “is in the best interests of South Florida racing.”

Gulfstream’s annual schedule includes the Florida Derby, which is on April 3 this year.

"Lewy the Liar" - Alexander Lewy, Hallandale Beach's sycophantic, self-serving and insincere candidate for City Commission

Above, the email that was sent out by Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper on Sept. 25th with the subject heading:
Mayor Joy Cooper invites you to SUPPORT ALEX LEWY (Sep 28, 2010)


Just curious, how many of the names on the invite above are lobbyists?
That's a good question.

Well, at first glance there's Suzanne Friedman, of course, who has worked for The Village at Gulfstream Park and on behalf of the unpopular Diplomat LAC proposal to put a handful of very large condo towers on the perimeter of the Diplomat Golf Course in NE Hallandale Beach, where expensive upscale single-family homes and numerous low-slung condos have long existed in close proximity.

It was pushed by the owners of the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa in nearby Hollywood, the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union.

That proposal not only would've ruined the green views of HB residents who have lived there for years, but also threatened to make the current traffic disaster even worse, though the nearby roads already have the LOWEST possible ratings from FDOT they can have.

It's an area of Southeast Broward County with so much consistently congested traffic that former Broward County Comm. Diana Wasserman-Rubin admitted in a meeting with HB residents just days prior to that vote that she completely avoids the area because it's so difficult to get around.

Fortunately for Hallandale Beach and nearby Hollywood residents, the Broward County Commission decisively nixed that proposal the second time they looked at it this past Spring.

Alexander Lewy not only supported the unpopular and incompatible project, but has also received campaign contributions from some of the the folks behind it who were most interested in cramming it down the throats of HB residents.
Just saying...

Another lobbyist's name I recognize is lawyer Marty Cassini -said by everyone I know to be a really nice guy- who's a former staffer for former Florida Senate Minority Leader Steve Geller, and who is married to the mayor's daughter, Jaime.
As of a few weeks ago, Mayor Cooper's husband and son-in-law had contributed roughly about $1,500 combined to Alexander Lewy's political campaign.

And now on to my post for today, written ten days before the November 2nd election.

The title I've chosen today is particularly apt and gets to the heart of what so many Hallandale Beach citizen taxpayers and business owners -and other well-informed Broward County residents and civic activists- find so very unappealing and downright appalling about Alexander Lewy as a person and political candidate: "There's no there there."

"Lewy the Liar" - Alexander Lewy, Hallandale Beach's sycophantic, self-serving and insincere candidate for City Commission

Yes, I know, I know.
That quote about what is and is not "there" was first supposedly used by the author Virginia Woolf to describe the City of Oakland many, many, many moons ago, but it also accurately describes the lack of anything genuine about Lewy but his ambition.

His oleaginous insincerity positively knocks you out from the get-go if you are not careful, so beware.

He is, I'm afraid, one of those rather sad persons that I have met in my travels after growing-up in South Florida, in Bloomington, IN and then Chicago, Evanston, Wilmette, and then Arlington, VA and Washington, D.C., who NEVER quite seem to realize that by the time someone is close to age thirty, like Lewy, they should no longer have ambition as a substitute for a personality.
And yet they do, utterly convinced of their own destiny to be an important person.

Correct, this is the part where I channel some of the Midwestern values I assimilated over the years while living, learning and working in the Hoosier State and the Land of Lincoln, and say that it's better to be a person who does important things for others, rather than to be a person who thinks they are important.

What can I say, it's low-hanging fruit and I grabbed it, but that doesn't change the fundamental fact that it's completely true with respect to Alexander Lewy.

As I've personally observed him in person for years in his capacity as a staffer for U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a resident of Hallandale Beach, and now as a two-time political candidate, Alexander Lewy is completely insincere and self-important in ways that would make many veteran congressmen I could name -and knew in Washington- positively blush.

To give but one illuminating example of this, earlier this year at a public hearing on the Diplomat LAC project, a friend of mine who is not only, arguably, one of the most-respected persons in South Florida, but also someone who's frequently sought by the local South Florida news media for their opinions, asked Lewy if he'd be running for office again soon.

While I am not entirely clear one way or the other if Lewy quite knew whom my friend was, per se, or even their longstanding reputation for honesty and integrity, I am 100% positive that the answer he gave in response to that rather simple and harmless question was that he was NOT going to be running again anytime soon.

Well, the kicker is that I knew that Lewy's answer was completely untrue, and the reason I knew it was untrue was because Lewy himself had already made a change on one of his own social media sites to indicate that he'd be running again this year for the Hallandale Beach City Commission, having already lost here in 2008.

Question: Why would Lewy lie about something like that?
There's absolutely nothing to be gained, and very few people even cared in the first place.
Exactly!

It's who Alexander Lewy is, sad to say.
A person seemingly incapable of even a scintilla of honesty, no matter the subject matter.

The next time I happened to see this particular friend of mine again, when we were at yet another civic event (outside of Hallandale Beach), they eventually told me the strange-but-true tale involving The Ambitious Mr. Lewy.

When I informed my friend that they has been intentionally deceived by the very source himself, the only thing I can print here that they muttered in response to finding out they'd been lied to, face-to-face, is "Lewy the Liar."

Of such unexpected moments are insightful political slogans born.
"Lewy the Liar," indeed!

I have known this stone-cold fact about Alexander Lewy for many months, and am happy to finally be able to share the news with you here.

As predicted, the other shoe has dropped in the battle over the Diplomat LAC before the Broward Planning Council on Thursday

Well, as was quite predictable, the other shoe has
finally dropped in the battle over whether or not
and the high-powered and well-connected
attorney/lobbyist team for the Westin Diplomat
Resort & Spa and their owners, the Plumbers
& Pipe Fitters Union, will be able to cram
a large development project into a family
neighborhood in Hallandale Beach -that borders
and directly affects residents of Hollywood-
where their absurd and grandiose plans for multiple
27-story condo towers on secondary streets
are completely incompatible with the character
and nature of not only the neighborhood in question,
but directly contrary to the City of Hallandale
Beach's own adopted Master Plan of last year.

To wit, a completely calculated partial-retreat
in order to appear reasonable in their requests.

Below is the letter from Greenberg Traurig
attorney Debbie Orshefsky that was transmitted
to the Broward Planning Council yesterday
in advance of their Thursday morning meeting
to decide the Diplomat's application.
I believe you already know who most of the
names are.

Neighbors and residents of HB and Hollywood
have no problem with them ACTUALLY doing
what they are legally entitled to do NOW,
since nobody wants them to close the Diplomat
Country Club, but the Diplomat management
-Starwood- and owners has only to look in the
mirror to see who's actually responsible for them
being in the economic bind they are currently in:
they have a particular product few people
want.

Their property is not just poorly-marketed, but,
for the current market, charging far-too-much
for such an undemanding and uninteresting
golf course.
It's that simple.

Consumers with plenty of choices vote with their
feet and with their wallets everyday and this is
no different.
Currently, consumers are making themselves
heard, but the Diplomat and Company
is NOT listening to that evidence and customer
feedback.

That's their problem to resolve, and not one
to be borne by neighbors and residents of HB
and Hollywood, who, after all, DON'T owe the
union a profit, no matter how much their
well-financed PR team has tried over the past
few months to paint a sky-is-falling scenario
if they don't get their way on this application.

This issue is truly an example of where the
more you know the true facts at hand,
as well as the historical context for those
particular facts, the more you realize how
truly flimsy the Diplomat's arguments are.

Meeting starts Thursday promptly at 10 a.m.



Below, some recent past paid ads opposed to
the Diplomat LAC.



-----


-----

Unpopular RAC proposal and Diplomat Country Club expansion affecting Hollywood and Hallandale Beach

Darkness on the Edge of Town,
October 30, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Above, the City of Hallandale Beach's pathetic
monument sign on the median of U.S.-1 that
greets north-bound visitors from Aventura
-relocated a bit since Spring- which STILL
doesn't work at night.

What a telling and dreadful first impression
for visitors.

It's been well over FIVE YEARS since there
was a light shining on this particular sign,
which is as simple and stark a reminder of the
longstanding gross incompetence and mismanagement
of the current Cooper & Good regime as you
could find in the city.

(Well, actually it's first by a nose, since tomorrow,
the so-called Community Center under the
A1A Water Tower celebrates 27 MONTHS
of being closed to average HB citizens and taxpayers,
but occasionally open for HB City Hall pals and
cronies, as I've chronicled here many times before.)

To give you some useful context for understanding
this fact, that's LONGER than the U.S.'s involvement
in World War II.

So where's the light? Good question.
Why don't you ask that question of the man
responsible, John Chidsey, the city's DPW
Director since February?

Soon, you'll be able to see the video I've shot
the last few months of it looking neglected
and forlorn at night.
------------------------------

Below, some photos I snapped Saturday night around
6:30 p.m., after spending some time writing and
reading at Panera's.

The public notice sign is on the west-side sidewalk
of Diplomat Parkway, just north of Hallandale
Beach Blvd. and adjacent to the Diplomat
Country Club's property.

October 31, 2009 photos by South Beach Hoosier.
-----
Are you going to Monday night's important meeting?

It's very important for HB citizens and others in the
greater community to keep in mind that there are
more than just the residents in the immediate area
of the Diplomat Country Club who will be
adversely affected by this out-of-scale proposal,
now up to bat for the second time, after folding
their tent last year.

Based on the phone calls and emails I've personally
received within the past week, and what I've heard
from others in conversations, I expect that we'll see
quite a lot of Hollywood residents present and
accounted for at the HB Cultural Center to see what
we're all up against.

As it happens, over the past few weeks, the Diplomat's
lawyer/lobbyist on this project, Debbie Orshefsky,
who along with Diplomat Properties LP's Suzanne
Friedman -formerly of Forest City's lobbying efforts
with The Village at Gulfstream- is attempting to get
this passed here, has greatly increased her public profile.

Orshefsky was at the October 14th City Hall-sponsored
'community meeting' at the HB Cultural Center regarding
their controversial and poorly thought-out RAC proposal,
which featured citizen after citizen taking the microphone
in hand and mocking, attacking and vilifying Hallandale
Beach City Hall, and City Manager Mike Good personally,
for, among other things, not being more proactive about
letting the community know exactly what the city was
planning to do.

I plan on posting video of that highly-charged
meeting onto my blog and my YouTube Channel
soon.

Orshefsky was also one of the forty or so people
in the audience attending Wednesday afternoon's
HB P&Z Advisory Board meeting on that subject,
which I recorded.

http://fl-hallandalebeach.civicplus.com/index.aspx?NID=705

The unpopular RAC proposal was rejected on a
3-2 vote, largely on account of the city's continued
inability to definitively answer the most basic
questions about it, as well as their refusal to even
wait just one month to re-present it when they could
answer those questions to the Board's satisfaction,
and could produce more specific, finalized details
of the plan to the public.

What really bothered me, the Board and the
other citizens in the room the most was
City Hall's embarrassing inability to specifically
answer the simple question of why,
if the RAC is such a great idea,
can't it be used to cover the entire city,
except for residential A1A?

You'd think that given what they're proposing,
they'd have all thought about this question
a little bit, but the reasons given for not doing
this were utterly unconvincing.

It reminded me all over again of why I'm so
openly critical of the way things are done at
HB City Hall, after giving people there the
benefit of the doubt for way too long:
poorly-conceived and executed policy
decisions are wrapped in anti-democratic
stealthiness and obfuscation,
an unwillingness to accept any
constructive criticism, and crowned
with petulance and a desperate
self-serving need to cover-up when
found out.

It seems like I heard at least one metaphorical
reference by someone in the Chambers that
afternoon to the effect that HB City Hall is,
essentially, asking the P&Z Board to sign
onto a blank check without asking any
questions.

In response to P&Z Board members' requests
for the city to wait one month and come back
to the P&Z for approval, Richard Cannone,
the Director of the city's Development Services
Dept., who did much of the city's Power Point
presentation -along with a woman from
Calvin-Giordano who's often at Hollywood
City Hall- said that although the plan wouldn't
really get started until 2011 or 2012, after coming
back from Broward County for approval, the city
DIDN'T want to wait even one month.

This very negative response by City Hall seemed
to genuinely surprise some people in the audience,
many of whom I'd never seen before, because it
seemed at odds with both common sense and the
expressed desires of the HB citizens in the room,
who'd come specifically to actually get MORE
INFORMATION.

Rather than being prudent and reasonable and
agreeing to provide more answers to the public
in the future, the city's response was to
pick-up their football and go home.

After everything that's already happened
with this proposal, all very negative,
this move on Wednesday by HB City Hall
really showed a tremendous amount of contempt
and disrespect for the citizens of this community,
and particularly the ones who found time away
from work or their families to show-up in the
middle of the day.

It only proved once again why the HB P&Z
Board meetings should be held in the evening,
when more HB citizens and business owners
can actually attend and participate, as is the
case in Hollywood.

That's how I was able to learn the details last year
about what was going on with the plans for the
Beach One Resort hotel project on A1A and
HBB, before it ever went to the Hollywood
City Commission for two separate meetings,
both of which I also later attended.
You might recall that this is the project for which
HB is foolishly suing the City of Hollywood.

Wednesday's HB P&Z meeting was the first
time that the city has definitively stated for the
record that the RAC's eastern border north
of HBB was the West side of N.E. 8th Avenue,
and did NOT include the area across the street,
adjacent to the Hallandale Jewish Center
that Peter Deutsch desperately wants to make
another campus of his Ben Gamla Charter
Hebrew School empire, for which he and his
financial partners will be paid over $2 million
a year by the Broward County School system
if the HB City Comm. gives him the zoning
variance he needs to build the K-12 project
in that quiet single-family home neighborhood.

Wednesday afternoon was also the first time
that City Hall publicly said that the original area
to be contained within the RAC zone had actually
shrunk, following a meeting they'd had just days
before with residents from NW HB, who were
VERY concerned that too many residential areas
there seemed to have been tossed into the RAC
grab-bag without any serious thought or
consideration, which echoed the complaints
about indifference cited many times by speakers
at that meeting on October 14th.

This admission that changes had been made
to the proposed zone only heightened the
generalized sense of frustration among many
in the room on Wednesday afternoon,
some of whom, no doubt, feel that the zone
should perhaps be further down-sized,
even if they agree with the general idea of it.

That reasonable option seems obvious to you
and I, but not to HB City Hall, since Cannone
said that they are going forward with the
map/zone they already have.

http://fl-hallandalebeach.civicplus.com/DocumentView.aspx?DID=1224

Yet having declared this in public, I know for
a fact that Cannone will be at the Hepburn Center
again on Monday night at 6 p.m., since civic
activist Mary Washington said as much to me
after Wednesday afternoon's meeting was over.

Talk about sending mixed messages.

But don't call HB City Hall with any ideas
of them sending someone to your neighborhood
group to explain what's going on with this.
That's simply not gonna happen.

It seems to me that in a normal city that's
well-run and that fully understands its
obligations to its citizens to properly explain
its policy proposals, in this instance, it's the
burden of the city to explain or rationalize
why one area is included and another
is excluded, so that residents better
understand the process and the eventual
goal, even if they disagree with it.

You and I don't currently live in such a city.

Of course, some people were angry that the only
way they could even find out whether or not their
home or commercial property was in the RAC
zone was by showing-up and asking.

So now the city's RAC plan which, goes to the
HB City Commission for their Nov. 18th meeting,
which starts in the afternoon, takes a
break, and then concludes in the evening.

Both the unpopular RAC proposal and the
unpopular Diplomat expansion project have
been fast-tracked by HB City Manager
Mike Good for no logical reasons that
can be explained.
Why??

But then that's just the standard M.O.
around here, isn't it?

As always, failing a logical reason that
you can point to based on the evidence
at hand, you have to 'follow the money'
and see who profits from the decision
to push these particular proposals NOW,
exactly a year before next year's election.

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


Published in Miami Herald on 10/25/2009
----------------------
No records found for Suzanne Friedman

http://www.sun-sentinel2.com/lobbyistsbroward/ftLaudlobbyistsbrow_view.php?editid1=639

Lobbyist Name	Orshefsky, Debbie M
Company	Greenberg Traurig
Address	401 East Las Olas Boulevard
City	Fort Lauderdale
Company Phone	(954) 768-8234
Client Name	Diplomat Properties, LP c/o Capital Hotel Manageme
Client Address	584 Cabot Street
Client City	Beverly
Client State	MA
Client ZIP	01915
Client Phone	(978) 522-7009
General Subject	Land Development Approvals
Specific Subject	Land Development Approvals
Registration Date	10/5/2009
Lobbyist Status	Approved
Client Status	Active