Excerpts from an email that I sent out Friday to some of the
concerned citizens and elected officials of this city and region,
and the South Florida press.
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April 28, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier
Just received some very interesting info this morning
from Rasmussen Reports via their free daily updates,
something you might want to consider getting as well.
The article, below, on voter sentiment regarding govt.
spending was just released at 10:30 a.m. this morning,
and is exactly in line with everything I hear from public
policy types and politically-involved citizens at events
I attend throughout South Florida, yet other than with
the recent case with BSO, the Broward Sheriff's Office,
which has gotten a lot of media attention, where exactly
are the meaningful yet intelligent cuts in govt. spending
that you can point to that ought to have been forthcoming?
77% See Politicians Unwillingness to Cut Government
Spending as Bigger Problem Than Voter Resistance to
Tax Hikes
Where are the media reports showing examples of local govt.
getting smarter and slimmer thru technology, that were all
the rage just a few years ago?
The manana bureaucracy I encounter in South Florida on a
daily basis seems as dysfunctional and non-responsive as ever,
with our own city of Hallandale Beach being Ground Zero
for dysfunctional govt. for reasons that we all can recite.
April 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier
April 2009 photo by South Beach HoosierPerfect example of govt. dysfunction: Last August
at the city's public budget meeting at HB City Hall, I specifically
challenged HB City Manager Mike Good and his staff to explain
the logic of the city persisting for years in using garbage cans
without lids at THE windiest place in the whole city
-the public beach.
(It's not like that last fact is 'Breaking News'.)
His response: lots of talk. no action, just like his
promise moments later to place blue recycling
bins on the beach itself.
The logical results are self-evident to anyone, above,
a photo from a Saturday last month around 3 p.m. or so.
Nine long months later, the city still uses the same exact
garbage receptacles, sans lids, which is part of why the
beach is SO dumpy and unattractive, and there are
still no blue recycling bins on the public beach,
where beach-goers actually are, to make encourage it,
not make it impossible.
Here in Hallandale Beach, fellow citizens and residents
appealing improperly-cited code violations from the
city still get a very rude, lethargic and combative response
from City Hall when availing themselves of their rights
under the state's Sunshine Laws to get public records
they need to successfully appeal.
Hallandale Beach police officers get approval to drive their
police cars even farther into the far western Broward suburbs
to get home -at Hallandale Beach taxpayer's expense.
Yet the public beach here that is so terribly maintained is
NEVER patrolled by these same HB police officers in ways
that are even remotely comparable to our neighbors,
especially on three-day holiday weekends like this one.
Everyone who ever goes to the beach knows this is true,
it's "common knowledge," but HB City Manager Mike
Good and Mayor Joy Cooper and their Rubber Stamp
Crew just shrug their shoulders, like they have no real power
to change that policy, or create a new positive dynamic.
That's just another reason why they are each so personally
contemptible -their sheer laziness and apathy.
April 28, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier
Above, hen coming home to roost in Hallandale Beach
about wasteful govt. spending and utter lack of competency?
The contractor lifeguards are literally overwhelmed on
these sorts of weekends, yet the HB Police will NEVER
be seen on or near the beach except in the case of an
actual emergency, despite how large the crowds will get,
the amount of illegal/underage drinking taking place
in public, etc.
I'll be there late Sunday morning before returning home
for the Indy 500 telecast and will record the scene with
some photos before I leave, which you'll see soon.
Prediction: it will be just like last year's Memorial Day
Weekend... and the year before that and the year before....
To me, it'll be very interesting to see whether or not
-or to what extent- South Florida pols and those
in Tallahassee are able to resist this popular citizen
sentiment that this Rasmussen Report pinpoints,
the one that for some citizens, found catharsis thru
the recent Tea Party movement that the Miami
Herald and Beth Reinhard ignored for months
while other media round the country covered it
like a real story.
And what effect, if any, that sentiment will have on
South Florida pols in the next 16 months before the
Nov. 2010 election.
Will they accept the new economic/spending paradigm,
or will some, like the tone-deaf Broward School Board
and its administrators, with their fatal obsession with
large pots of construction money and lobbyists' money
and largesse, for a dysfunctional system that is actually
losing students and their tax-paying parents in droves,
persist in their old parochial views, and keep calling this
a temporary hiccup, eager to go back to their prior
ruinous spending behavior?
Channel 4's Jim DeFede has some thoughts on
South Florida's bureaucracy and fixes his gaze south on
Miami-Dade County and the very unhelpful 311 "Help Line"
that M-D taxpayers are paying for, but being poorly-served
by:
DeFede: Why I Hate Miami-Dade 311
Have a safe Memorial Day holiday and remember what
and whom we honor this weekend!
Just as an FYI, my earliest ancestor who fought for this
country once marched from Alexandria, VA with
Capt. George Washington and other colonists as part
of General Braddock's long march to the French-controlled
Fort Duquesne in Pittsburgh.
Years later, under very different circumstances,
he served as a Revolutionary War spy for General
George Washington against the British Army
he'd once fought alongside.
After the war, for his brave efforts, he received
a large parcel of land north of Steubenville, Ohio
-where the first Federal Land Grant office
was later located- which is why my ancestors
were among the very first citizens of Ohio,
having crossed the Ohio River and relocated from Washington Township, PA, south of Pittsburgh, even before Ohio became a state in 1803.
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For more info on recent developments with BSO
and their budget battles with the County Commission,
please see WFOR's Ted Scouten's report from Monday
Details Emerge About BSO Layoffs
and some other recent BSO stories at
Also take a look at these two Scott Wyman blog posts from
Friday's Sun-Sentinel Broward Politics blog:
County savings targeted in fight over budget deficit
